The scale of the situation is that it’s a friggin’ planetkiller weapon. That’s not something you can blame on the rebels. But to use your Hiroshima example, would it have been immoral for a Japanese fighter pilot to shoot down the Enola Gay? After all, there are people on that plane, and shooting it down would almost certainly kill those people.
Even if some of the personnel on the Death Star (either one) were civilians, they’re not innocent. Presumably, they know what it is that they’re working on, and they’re willingly aiding the Empire to destroy planets. At most, you might argue that they didn’t know, and thought they were working on some beneficent project, but in that case, their blood is on the hands of the Empire who so thoroughly lied to them, not on the rebels.
Oh, and since we’re talking about the hypothetical destruction of Endor, it’s worth pointing out the timescales involved. When the Death Star targets a planet, there’s something between several seconds of warning, if you’re watching the sub-beams merging, to perhaps an hour or so, if you see it coming out of hyper and know what it is. There’s no chance at all to evacuate or rescue a planet on those timescales. On the other hand, if the destruction of the Death Star did cause an extinction-level event on Endor, it’d do so over a timescale of years (at least one full change of Endor’s seasons, however long that takes). There is time there to evacuate the population, or to ship in food, or send down hazmat teams to clean up any radioactive messes, and we have no reason to suppose the Alliance didn’t do so, once the need became apparent.
Someone else already pretty much made my point for me, but I’ll reiterate - the rebels may have known the physics of the situation, but we don’t. We’ve seen fiery explosions in space, open docks on the death star with soldiers standing nearby, we’ve seen people who can manipulate items and beings with their minds … all things that are physically impossible in the universe as we know it. Since we were shown no evidence that Endor experienced any ill effects from the destruction of the death star, we can only assume that there weren’t any.
You’re right, and I withdraw that argument. I still say it’s the preferable option, though, based on the amount of people (in which I include Ewoks now) who will be killed either way.
But they would have come up against the same situation - the Death Star being used to destroy their base planet - another time, instead. After all, that’s what the Death Star is for; killing a planet (and anyone on it) in one fell swoop, and being known to be able to that (and so cause fear).
Actually, the Imperials dislike droids as much as they do non-humans. There’s bound to be a good few of the smaller mechanic droids, but not to the extent of the Rebellion.
I’m pretty sure most of the support staff on a modern ship are Navy personnel; I don’t suppose anyone in the Navy or in the know can provide us with an answer?
Yes. Bear in mind with Palpatine; everything goes his way, because he’s set it up to go his way, no matter what happens.
Take manipulating the council to send Obi Wan to kill General Grievous by himself; If Obi Wan loses, that’s good, a thorn is out of his way. If Obi Wan wins, that’s fine, too - Grievous needs to be killed anyway, since he knows too much (and is mostly droid). And either way, Obi Wan* is not on Coruscant with Anakin*, meaning that Palpatine can turn him without him there to stop it.
Palpatine creates the war with the Seperatists, creates the Separatist movement itself, so that a) He’ll have a scapegoat to turn everyone against (non-humans), b) in the short term so he can get more power for himself, and c) in order to get the Jedi to spend themselves; most of the Jedi will die, allowing the purge to succeed; the Jedi will be busy fighting and focusing on the war, and so not on finding the Sith; and to make Anakin fight, to get him more towards the Dark Side.
Hmm. Not sure, but here’s a total speculation on my part.
In the computer game Knights of the Old Republic, it’s found that a species thousands of years ago, the Rakata, controlled an empire of their own spreading across the whole galaxy, making all other species their slaves. Their empire (and most of them) were destroyed by a plague that only affected them, probably a weapon rather than a random virus.
Anyway, when the player meets the Rakata that survive, they recognise him (a human) as being of the slave races. It’s possible that humans were taken as slave labor to the places where they were needed by the Rakata, and so were forcibly spread around the galaxy. Basically, the premise of Stargate.
I don’t know why they alone would be moved and not the other slave races, but one point is that humans can survive pretty much anywhere, compared to other aliens. Wookiees and Twi’lecks wouldn’t do well in the cold, and Mon Calamari and Quarren would do poorly on hot planets, for example. Humans are reasonably hardy and adaptable compared to a lot of other races.
My speculation: Humans are the easiest material for a director to make into characters sympathetic and empathetic to a human audience. Humans, or at least humanoids. Would Spock have worked at all as a character if he were a Trinoc or Puppeteer from Larry Niven’s Known Space Universe?
Spielberg showed a great failure (or cowardice) of imagination by constructing practically all his alien species along the lines of two-eyes-above-one-mouth.
[QUOTE=BrainGluttonSpielberg showed a great failure (or cowardice) of imagination by constructing practically all his alien species along the lines of two-eyes-above-one-mouth.[/QUOTE]
:smack: Lucas, not Spielberg.
Of course, Spielberg is equally guilty of the same sin.
No, it wasn’t. It was perfectly inhabitable at the end of “Returd of the Jedi,” as evidenced by the fact that everything was fine on the surface. That is, therefore, the last word. If it didn’t happen in the movie, it didn’t happen.
Actually, if it happens in the EU, it happened, too. The problem is there’s no mention of it still existing or having been destroyed (that I know of, there may be), so it’s up in the air.
Good question. Slavery for non-humans is galaxy-wide. There are a few cases of non-humans being elevated to high positions, but this would only be if they’d proved themselves ten times over; for example, Admiral Thrawn was a Chiss (blue-skiined humans, red eyes), but he was promoted because he was an exceptional military strategist, and kept out in the backwaters of the galaxy away from everyone else.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the Empire is also pretty patriarchal, at least in the armed forces; while human women aren’t slaves or looked down upon generally, there are about as few women in the Imperial Navy as there are non-humans. Again, one female Admiral (who I can’t remember the name of right now. Blast.) reached that rank, but she too had proved herself as a great military mind and was also kept out of the way guarding the Empire’s research station.
Back to your question, there are some cases of humans being (at least) reduced to slums and begging, if the government or a majority of a planet displeased the Emperor in some way. I can’t recall any cases of humans being used as slaves in name, though.
That’s not to say slave labour was totally gone. Unlike the Old Republic, the Empire was perfectly willing to work with the Hutts and some less powerful criminal organisations, which did use humans (and anyone else) as slave labour.
It’s not comparable, because using atomic weapons on Japan necessarily meant destroying many people and structures that were in no way related to the war. The Death Star was entirely military. It served no purpose other than as a weapon, and everyone aboard it was ultimatly there to further the military aims of the Empire, even if they were not themselves military personnel.
So what? The failure of the Weimar Republic does not invalidate the overthrow of the Nazi Regime that followed it, nor does it deligitimize the democratic government that replaced it in West Germany after the war.
Also, Tattooine isn’t part of the Republic. It’s owned by the Hutts, who are an independent polity.
It would have merely delayed the inevitable. The Rebel headquarters itself needed to remain small and mobile, but to fight an interstellar war, they needed a huge manufacturing infrastructure. The Death Star’s purpose wasn’t just to crush the rebels militarily, but to intimidate those planets in the Empire sympathetic to their goals. Tarkin didn’t need to go after Yavin at all: A couple of demonstrations at Mon Cal or Ithor, and nobody would dare funnel any more material to the Rebel Alliance. The Rebellion had to destroy the Death Star if they wanted to ever have any hope of winning the war.
I’m virtually certain this is not true of Naval vessels themselves, though bases are a different matter. Regardless, even if they are civilians, they know they’re on a military craft or installation, and all that entails. They’re as much a legitimate target as a soldier or a pilot.
So, at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch and Sundance don’t die?
So killing hundreds of Ewoks is preferable to killing the same amount of humans, simply because of your perception of the former’s sapience? I’m baffled.
I served aboard a Carrier. Out of the 5000+ guys (no women back then) there was only a teeny handful of civilians. Very well paid contractors evaluating new systems or gear. They didn’t do any of the day to day operational stuff.
One of the things we run into here is that often, the source material flatly contradicts itself. The movies (prequel or no) contradict many novels; novels contradict other novels. Heck, some novels contradict themselves.
In some of the more recent ones, Jedi characters have even taken to flinging around force lightning (a la the Emperor or Count Dooku), which is a major no-no (and in fact, impossible) for a light-sider in other material. Too much material nowadays. Don’t even get me started on the 5 & 1/2 origin stories for Boba Fett.
If there had been an additional scene at the end of the film showing Butch and Sundance dancing and celebrating many hours after the preceding scene, then no, they would not have died.
It’s not like this is something the movie left to your imaginination. The moon was perfectly habitable after the Death Star blew up. It was quite a few hours later when we see the surface of the moon, and its inhabitants, in perfectly good health.
You may think that’s scientifically unlikely, but so are light sabers, space fighters that handle as if space has air in it, and telekinesis, and we accept all those things as being part of the Star Wars universe.
