We all know Yoda was incredibly powerful, and could use the force like we use our hands. However, in a one-on-one lightsaber battle (not dissimiliar to the battle between Darth Maul and Qui-Gonn or Obi-Wan and Darth Vader), could he defeat the Vader? Maul? The Emperor himself (assumably the most powerful Sith Lord since Exar-Kun)?
There’s a difference between powerful and might sword-fighter. (“Wars do not make one great!”)
If they had a weight-lifting contest, I’d bet that Yoda could beat any of them.
If it comes to a lightsaber battle, however, recall that in RETURN OF THE JEDI, the Emperor does not engage in the light-saber battle himself. He lets Darth protect him and duke it out with Luke. When he does intervene, it’s not with a light-saber.
So do you think Yoda has some lightning bolts in his repertoire like the Emperor, or is that solely a Dark Side power?
I can’t wait to see Yoda go postal in Ep. 2!
The Force-Lightning is a dark-side power 
Well, that was established in the books, which Lucas seems out to prove wrong…
However, I’m sure the Emperor can use a lightsaber - recall that he DID orchestrate (and assumably participate in) the destruction of all but 2 known (trained) Jedi, and the two Skywalker children.
Problem is, even if Yoda could toss around spiffy purple lightning, he’s a coward and won’t do anything with his power, even when it would objectively help. Rather than rescue people, try to mitigate the emperor’s evil, or even help people hide out, he spent, what? 30 years sitting on his wrinkled green butt thinking of lies to tell Luke when Luke shows up eventually. Hell, “size does not matter” and presumably distance doesn’t either. What woulda stopped the little green turd from flipping a relay on the Death Star and preventing it from blowing up Leia’s homeworld? Nuthin’ except the fact that Yoda’s a wuss.
And Yoda’s philosophy sucks: “show any normal human emotion and become evil” my ass. Most good that’s been done in the real world is for good people to get pissed enough to do something. It’s a sick philosophy and I’m hoping that the last scene in Jedi where you see the three evil ghosts (Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda) in the fire is an indication that they’re in hell.)
<rant off>
Fenris
Hey, Obi-Wan never really touted that philosophy, did he? What I think he (Yoda) means by it is more “give in to those emotions without thinking” and you will be a bad bad Jedi.
Anger leads to hate. And hate, as we all know, leads to suffering.
Fenris, I sense much anger in you.
But seriously, I’m hoping Yoda spouts some actual wise sayings this time 'round. You know, instead of reversing all his sentences into Yoda-speak and letting the backwards-ness of it all pass for wisdom.
In his defense, though, by the time the Death Star rolled around, Yoda was probably too old to get the job done himself, what with Vader, the Emperor, and the Empire protecting them. Obi-Wan was more mobile than Yoda, and even he knew enough to keep his ass hid out on a barren planet.
I’m guessing Force powers decrease with age, though I’m sure someone more familiar with Lucasworld can correct me.
It also leads to righting wrongs, freeing slaves, redressing injustice, etc. Yoda’s “Don’t worry, be mellow” philosophy is a philosophy to be preached to serfs by their masters.
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Moi!? 
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If size matters not, why should age or distance? If the little green turd can wiggle his fingers and toss around X-Wings (or AN X-Wing), I don’t see any reason he couldn’t have stopped the Death-Star from going off. Hell. Don’t let that flunky press the button, if needed.
Fenris
Yoda can’t do the darkside lightning trick, but accroding to Lucas he can catch a dark jedi’s force lighting, ball it up in his hands, and toss it back him. If Yoda was in ever in a fight with Vader, my guess is it would come down to a battle of sheer might, both of them would be using the force to rip large walls down and chuck them at each other. Who would win is anyone’s guess, Yoda is the strongest light Jedi we know of, and Vader is supposedly the stongest Jedi ever (goddamn midichlorians) so it would be some fight. My vote is for Vader because:
Well, Marxist charges aside, I was just being facetious.
In his defense, though (look at me, I can’t just let things go), he might’ve been preaching a certain state of mind as opposed to a moral treatise. It seems that there are more or less two paths to what is essentially the same Force - profound mellow goodness or warped sadistic badness. Both are more states of mind than anything else.
True, but then again, if Vader felt Ben’s presence as soon as they were in approximate range, how much sooner would he have felt Yoda? How much sooner would the Emperor have? Yoda couldn’t have snuck onto any Death Star because no real Jedi, evil or not, would have missed him.
And I think it’s established that however powerful the little sage was in the original trilogy, he wasn’t in fighting condition, at least in good enough condition to take on Vader (or the Emperor, or both).
Luke may have indeed been their last hope, as he was inconspicuous enough (Force-wise) to go unsensed, at least for a while, but still had enough potential to eventually become a fightin’ Jedi later on.
Dudes, repressed anger does turn to hatred.
And then there’s the Dark Horse mini-series, Infinities: A New Hope, an alternate universe tale in which Luke fails to destroy the Death Star. There’s a neat Yoda-Emperor confrontation in the end. Yoda wins…by dropping the Death Star on Coruscant.
Crude, but effective.
This sounds an awful lot like what David Brin said about Star Wars in an article he wrote. However, if you’ll read Michael Wong’s rebuttal on stardestroyer.net, you’ll find that this argument doesn’t hold water.
David Brin: “The biggest moral flaw in the ‘Star Wars’ universe is one point that Lucas stresses over and over again, through the voice of his all-wise guru character, Yoda. Let’s see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?”
Michael Wong: “Wrong. If he watched TPM (or even the old classic trilogy) he would see that hate makes you evil. Yoda’s exact words are: ‘Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering!’ Vader also mentions hatred to Luke, in ROTJ. No one in his right mind would seriously argue against the notion that hatred is inherently evil.”
David Brin: "But then, in ‘Return of the Jedi,’ Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying – “If you get angry – even at injustice and murder – it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person!”
Michael Wong: “He is now saying that the instant you feel anger, you become ‘an unalloyedly evil person’ according to ROTJ. Funny thing though- Luke became angry in Return of the Jedi, nearly striking down his father, but he didn’t become ‘unalloyedly evil’. In TPM, Obi-Wan Kenobi is clearly seething with anger when he attacks Darth Maul- he didn’t become ‘unalloyedly evil.’ Again, I must ask- did he watch the same films that we did?”
Oh, just to get back on topic – how powerful is Yoda? He’s a 20th level Jedi Counselor according to the Star Wars d20 RPG.
David Brin’s article can be found here. It’s an interesting read, but I think he carries it a bit too far–to be truly repugnant, a moral vision needs to be coherent, and Star Wars is much more on the addled side of the fence.
Topicwise, I’m confident that Yoda is powerful enough to pull a deus ex machina fully the equal of any Trek-style recalibrating of the sensor array or apfraddling of the starboard power conduits, whenever he’d like to. Furthermore, I think he probably did–I bet he’s the reason the Death Star got built with a big self-destruct button on it.
“Uh…why would they put a button there that’ll blow the entire Thumb Star up?”
“I don’t know, but isn’t it great?!”
–Thumb Wars
I think the vulnerability of the Original Death Star (big cooling ducts) was an example of a mixture of stupidity and arrogance: They can’t think of any better way to do it, and they don’t give the Rebels enough credit to think they could take advantage of the flaw. Reminiscient of another Evil Empire, as seen in Virus-Bearing Scripts (VBS) and open freaking sockets.
“Join the Dark Side. Resistance is futile. We will bury you.”
-Empire Gates of the Soviet Borg Republics.
Another big factor was that Rebel spies were able to steal a complete set of schematics for the Death Star. The destruction of the first Death Star was a near-miracle, the equivalent of a mosquito killing a brontosaurus.
Who says that Yoda is the most powerful of all the Jedi to begin with? Just because he’s the best TEACHER doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the best Jedi. Kind of like someone with their PhD in Mathematics is probably better than the high school math teacher that turned them onto the subject.
Perhaps the ‘emotions will be your downfall’ bit only applies to Luke - Yoda saw what happened to Anakin, and recognized it as a family flaw.
(yes, I know that it was applied it to all Jedi - just makes more sense to me now when I think of it that way)
Now that I’m done speaking sacrilege, I’ll leave.
Coming from a real Star Wars novice (not that I’ve any interest in becoming a big geek like you peo— erm, like some people), let me ask ya something…
Ok, so for Star Wars, Empire Strike Back and RoftJ we’re all presented the Force as sort of a big cosmic semi-spiritual thing with a yin and a yang and all that. Light side and Dark side made sense. But if all the powers are just coming from microorganisms or organelles in the body (not sure which they are) then why is there a light/dark side? I’m assuming the mitichloridans don’t have any moral concepts of their own. Really, light and dark side should just a fairly meaningless arbitary thing depending on whether or not you agree with the guy in question.
This came up from the “lightning is Dark side only” bit. That phrase makes sense if you’re chosing your side like picking a deity and alignment in AD&D and it worked if there was some religious aspect or whatever to the Force, but I don’t see little glowing thingies inside you saying “Hey, this guy’s pretty evil. Let’s give him the lightning power we keep from the nice guys…”
Wouldn’t the mosquito need to like fire a proton torpedo up the poor bronto’s as – I mean, butt?
As per Jophiel’s question. Perhaps because it would be morally repugnant for a light jedi to learn the lightning bolt trick as it can only be used for evil, the collecting it and returning it on the other hand, can be used for defense and so is morally acceptable. I dunno, just pulling that out of my ass.