This. Remember Leia’s greeting to Tarkin: “I should have known you’d be holding Vader’s leash.”
Vader is under the command of Governor Tarkin, and doesn’t get to Force-choke Tarkin’s guys at his own whim.
If one insists on retconning to account for Vader’s advancement after the destruction of the DS, put it down to Palpatine deciding that he needed to place the military under the direct control of his other Sith lord, after learning of the involvement of Jedi Knights in the rebellion.
I always got the impression that The Emperor loaned Tarkin his apprentice so help get things done getting the Death Star on line. Basically the Emperor ordered Vader to follow Tarkin’s orders.
FWIW the recent “reboot” of the comics (that term has [rightly] become loaded with negativity but in this case they basically decided to ignore everything but the movies and continue the story after ANH which is pretty cool) makes it clear that not only was Tarkin in command but Palpatine basically blames Vader for the Death Star’s destruction which puts him in quite the dog house at the moment.
Yeah, The Emperor’s most important project at the moment was the Death Star, so he’d have his two best agents on it. Tarkin’s loyalty is probably beyond reproach, and his coldblooded ruthlessness was certainly top-notch. He was really overconfident in his new toy though, and that was probably one reason Vader was there as well. If something unexpected happens, deal with it. Which, he would have if it weren’t for that meddling Skywalker with the Force all on him and his pal Han swooping in and screwing things up.
I’m guessing when Vader got back to see the Emperor, he was sitting on his throne, shaking his head saying “you had one job…”
But, as I’ve stated above, Vader does get promoted, so palpy cannot have been too mad. Vader, moreover did actually perform well in the battle, unlike Tarkin.
Which works best if you say it in an Al Pacino mobster voice.
I think the one thing that is pretty clear in the movie is that Tarkin is at the top of the chain of command on the Death Star. Whether Vader is a suboridnate or is merely there outside of the CoC is never really spelled out. Vader is expected to defer to Tarkin though. Based on the Sith/military relationship spelled out in the EU and the other movies, I think Vader was there more as an observer and representative of the Emporer then as a direct commander in any form.
But Vader wasn’t promoted - he was given a fleet. A special task force under the command of a special appointee.
The problem, AK84, is that you’re thinking in terms of rule of law. But in an absolute dictatorship like the Empire, the Emperor was free to ignore military hierarchy and the separation of military and civil authority, and appoint his henchmen in charge of whatever he wanted. Hence, Vader.
A Wired article about Vader that I read earlier. Per the article, Vader really isn’t that good of a military commander. You could argue that it’s not really his job, he’s not a general or admiral in the movies. So maybe that’s Tarkin’s job up until he bites it on the Death Star, which is what was mentioned upthread. So the circle is complete.
I doubt that Tarkin is particularly loyal to Palpatine. He has no religious loyalty to the Emperor, not being a follower of the Dark Side. His institutional loyalty can’t be too great, as he’s already betrayed one political master when he turned on the Senate twenty years earlier and backed Palpatine’s takeover. And it seems unlikely that a person at his level of power in the Imperial Government would really believe the nonsense Palpatine put out about the Jedi being traitors themselves, so he’s unlikely to view Palpatine as some sort of a savior. Plus, the Sith themselves view betrayal for personal advancement as a virtue. It seems likely that Tarkin’s loyalty extends only so far as he has more to gain by following him then he does by trying to overthrow him.
Remember too that after encountering Obi-Wan & Luke on the Death Star Vader began to sense that his son was in fact alive. At the end of Empire he makes clear that he’s been pursuing his own agenda, namely capturing Luke, turning him into a Sith even more powerful than himself, then the two of them overthrowing the Emperor. Not to bring back the Old Republic, but to “Rule the galaxy as father & son!” And being in command of the Imperial Fleet is a necessary part of his plan.
God, I feel so nerdy. The nerdiness’ not coming off!!!
Love the typo. Picturing Vader with a pint of Guinness.
Personally, the impression I get was that Tarkin was in command, but that Vader could have removed him from command at any time, if he deemed it necessary. Whether Tarkin understood this fact, I do not know.
Just because you’ve got an absolute dictatorship doesn’t mean you don’t need a bureaucracy. There just isn’t enough time to micromanage everything. So you leave the bureaucrats in place, and let them keep running things as they always have, but you also remain ready to remove them if they move against you.
You guys are close, but you have to think of this in terms of roles and the difference between staff and line officers.
Tarkin, Ozzel, Piett et al. are line officers. They hold command grade within a structured hierarchy. When one passes or is away or somesuch the next in line is in command. Think of it - to cross universes - with Picard ALWAYS stating who has the bridge (and command) when he leaves. He only gives it to line officers - those rated for command.
Vader, on the other hand, is essentially a staff officer - if any military rank truly applies to someone best described as the most overpowered staff specialist in the 'verse. He is on board the Death Star, but is not in any way in command. Tarkin is in overall command of the operation in Episode IV. That’s why Vader defers to Tarkin in all military options. Remember, Vader’s in charge of the interrogation of Leia, but it’s Tarkin who comes up with the strategy that gets something out of her.
Vader takes the TIE fighters out because that’s one of his roles during combat. He’s always been a great small craft pilot and mixing it up that way suits his skills and - Tarkin probably thinks - keeps the amateur out of the way during the engagement.
By the time of Episode V, as noted upthread, Vader has been given essentially a commodore status. Not in command of the Executor fleet but instead acts as owner-aboard for the fleet. He doesn’t give orders to Joe Blow ensign, but he DOES get to give orders to Admiral Ozzel and Captain Piett. Big difference in his status between IV and V.
Or, in a bit of fan wankery that just occured to me, and which I’d welcome your evaluation…
Question: Why didn’t the force warn Vader on the Death Star? He’s extremely powerful with it and it should have been setting off alarm bells.
So Vader should have been telling Tarkin, “Force sense tingling! You and I are getting the fuck off this thing…NOW!” Instead, the force is silent to Vader until he nears Luke in the trench.
Soo…the force, bitch that it is, knows that Luke and Anakin are fated to meet. It influences Vader without his knowing to take those fighters out there with the two mooks. It brings Vader close enough to sense Luke but not quite enough to kill him. That sets in motion the entire chain of events that leads to the death of Palpatine on DS2.
So the entire thing is a set up by the force to eliminate the Emperor and redeem Anakin Skywalker. Remember, with the establishment of Eps I - III, the entire six movie set is no longer about overthrowing the Emperor…it’s about the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker.
The problem with all of this is that Tarkin is NOT a military officer, he’s a civilian governor (a GRAND governor, in charge of multiple sectors). The reason he’s in command on the Death Star is that it is HIS baby…he initiated both the project itself and the research installation that came up with it. Neither Tarkin nor Vader are actually in the formal chain of command. Tarkin isn’t an admiral or a commodore or any kind of actual space-naval officer. He’s the civilian project manager and proprietor. Remember that the Death Star was on its shakedown run…it hadn’t officially entered service yet. This was the “maiden voyage”…sort of a government terror exhibition. I don’t think, given the fact that Tarkin was still an active Grand Moff with all of the responsibilities that position requires, that he would have had TIME to actually command the DS in any kind of long-term fashion.
So the situation was a special circumstance in the first place.
I think that the Force did warn Vader. Note that he said that the Force was more powerful than the Death Star (which it was) and he got off the thing. He seemed surprised by the Force he sensed in Luke (not that he knew it was Luke.) There was zero chance that Tarkin was going to do anything based on Vader’s sense of the Force - he ignored notification of the weakness of the DS, remember?
In the context of Ep. IV the force was mysterious and not well known. Odd since the Jedi were powerful only about 18 years before, and they were hardly a secret organization.
I always thought that it was more like the old Soviet system of Captain and political officer, although not exactly analogous. Tarkin was in charge of the project and therefore nominally in charge of Vader but that was a delicate relationship. When Tarkin releases the force-chock, I think it was more of “I’ll let him go but later I’ll kill you first” manner of following orders.
He really should’ve sprung for that piece of plywood.
I don’t think this is right at all. Tarkin spends the entire movie in an Imperial Navy uniform, so he’s either active duty, retired but still wears the uniform, or a Qaddafi-esque martinet who gave himself a military rank he didn’t earn. The last two options make him seem kind of buffoonish, which undercuts his credibility as a villain. He’s clearly a governor of some sort (Leia addresses him as such) but I’m pretty sure he’s a military governor, and still an active military officer.
I don’t know how much EU stuff you want to bring in, but according to his Wookiepedia entry, Tarkin was an admiral when he proposed the Death Star project, and was made a Grand Moff in order to give him the authority necessary to carry out the plan. From the article, at least, (I’m not sure what book/comic/video game/whatever this came from originally) it sounds like a promotion, and there’s no indication that he resigned his military commission. when he became Grand Moff. It’s noted elsewhere in the 'pedia that Grand Moffs were created specifically to deal with problem sectors, such as ones with significant amounts of Rebel activity. As such, Tarkin almost certainly would have remained in command of the Death Star after the destruction of the rebel base: crushing opposition to the Emperor was his explicit duty as Grand Moff.
Incidentally, the entry on Grand Moffs describes the following hierarchy (“Oversector governor” = Grand Moff, according to the article:
But it also notes that:
So, to the extent that Wookiepedia is a reliable source, it seems that Vader technically outranked Tarkin, but the Sith love for head-games and power struggles meant that it was never clear precisely where one position stood in relation to the throne. Which, while clearly a post-hoc rationalization, does fit in pretty well with how the Sith are described, and how fascist governments tend to work in the real world.
With respect, this isn’t quite right. Yes, an absolute dictator is not constrained by the rule of law in the same sense as, say, an American President, but he does face constraints upon his actions. In particular, he needs the military and security services to support him, or at least consider him to be the least-bad option. This doesn’t mean he has to keep all of the security appartus happy, all of the time - but if Palpatine consistently acts in ways that the Imperial fleet brass consider illegitimate and harmful to their interests, he’s going to have a Very Serious Problem.
Dictatorships don’t have electoral politics, but they absolutely have politics.