He’s a general in ep3.</nitpick>
Miller, thanks! I was aware of his military history but for some reason I forgot about it when I was posting that. It was actually Tarkin’s command of an atrocity against protesters (he landed a troop vehicle on top of a crowd of protesters) that led Bail Organa to throw in with the rebels.
From the a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing file, consider what a guy like Tarkin might well believe circa Ep IV even in light of the prequels:
- About eighteen years before, the Jedi were hardly a secret organization; they openly claimed they had neat-o prowess thanks to the force.
- I say “eighteen years before” because that’s when they done got mowed down real good by good old-fashioned Stormtrooper marksmanship.
- This guy - who lost several limbs before winding up in an iron lung, and now interrogates as feebly as he breathes - is all that remains of 'em.
Just how impressed should Tarkin be with the force? Just how surprised would he be if Vader’s ever all “I have you now” right when a big freighter swoops in to strike the unsuspecting with impunity, prompting a flat “Whaaat” before the wheezing burn victim finds himself on the business end of a collision?
I think you’re assigning too much agency to the Force. The Force doesn’t “plan” things. It’s not like the Christian concept of Providence, where everything that happens is in furtherance of a discrete goal. It’s more like the Tao, which is sort like a natural law. The Force didn’t “intend” for Anakin to be redeemed, any more than gravity “intends” for a book to fall off a shelf. It’s just something that happens because of the way the universe works.
Also, the Force explicitly has both a light and a dark side. While the light side might “want” Anakin to be redeemed, surely the dark side “wants” equally for him to remain corrupt.
As for why Vader didn’t get a presentiment of the danger the Death Star was in, I think he did. That’s why he flew out personally to shoot down rebels: he sensed that there was a legitimate danger, and he tried to stop it. Force prognostication is explicitly unreliable: “Always in motion, the future is,” as the puppet said. At best, it seems to give you an idea of how the future might play out. Perhaps even how it’s most likely going to play out. But it’s not certain. Palpatine claimed to have forseen Luke joining the Dark Side, and I don’t think he was lying - but Luke was smart, good, or just plain lucky enough to avoid that fate.
Also, I wanted to share this re-edit of Tarkin’s death.
The way I understand the canon is that there is one, singular, Force. The “light” side works with it, mends it, and follows it. The “dark” side abuses it, tears it apart, and wounds it. I think that the natural state of affairs is the “light” side, but not due to any conscious intention, just that the Force mends itself. Kind of like how if you try to cut a hole in a gel it slowly fills the gap back up. If you go around breaking apart the Force, it will try its hardest to get back to the natural state of affairs. How subtle, far reaching, or powerful this “backlash” is up in the air though.
Yeah, I kinda hate the canon definition of the Force. It’s part of the Word of God explanation for the prophecy about Anakin restoring balance to the Force from the prequels. “Balance,” in this case, meaning that the dark side was purged from the Force entirely. Problem is, I don’t see how that could possibly work, as long as humans (and the other bazillion sentient races in the galaxy) continue to remain prone to fear, anger, jealousy, and all the other emotions that lead to people collecting and abusing power. Surely, even as Palpatine is taking the long fall into the reactor core, there’s some untutored force sensitive on some distant planet, who’s just discovered that if he concentrates, he can make people do what he tells them, and is already scheming on how he can use it to take advantage of people.
“Happened before, all of this has. Happen again, all of it will.”
Here’s a fanwank that just occurred to me: Vader didn’t sense Luke or any other danger because sensing his former friend Obi-Wan overshadowed everything and clouded anything else he may have felt. Further Ben knew this would be the case and that was what made him feel it was safe to:
- Hide Luke in a place Vader knew about
and
- Have Luke leave Tatooine to learn the Force.
Ben thought that as long as he was with him he could hide Luke from Vader. Even after death he had some influence but it wasn’t perfect which is why at the end Vader could sense the Pilot who destroyed the Death Star was string in the force but not who he was.
I am sure there are holes in this but it seems to make some sense.
If we go by the movie “Star Wars,” e.g. the film that was released in 1977, then it’s pretty apparent that Vader isn’t even in the command structure.
The comparison to Nazi Germany is apt; Tarkin’s at the top of the Wehrmacht, and Vader is the SS guy whose job it is to do the dirty work and keep an eye on the troops.
That makes a fair deal of sense, really, in the context of the Star Wars universe as it was created at the time - the Senate still exists and has some last vestige of power but the creation of the Death Star emboldens the Emperor to dissolve it.
Now, that’s as of 1977 (and it still works though Empire; it makes sense Vader would take over after the annihilation of the Death Star and all the senior officer corps.) Since then, of course, the story’s been so screwed around with that the original movie is hard to make sense of in the context of the “expanded universe.” The whole “Sith come in two” thing was invented later, Vader’s immense power and centrality to the universe was invented later - it wasn’t quite as screwed up as the TV series “Lost” but it was definitely made up on the fly, and “Star Wars” the movie is a bit harder to make sense of if you try to fit it into the so-called “canon.”
Vader is a knight, not a general or a noble. Not killing an underling that offended him was an act of courtesy in the house of a local lord.