The Endor Holocaust

September 4, 2006 9:31 AM

"The ewok population is effectively extinguished. Most were killed in a mass-extinction event affecting life on their homeworld, due to unavoidable fallout and debris from the destruction of the Death Star II. The Rebel Alliance is culpable but perhaps innocent. All ewoks would have been better off if the tribe which made contact with the rebels continued with their original plan of killing and eating the commando team's leaders." (Rebuttal [PDF]).
posted by interrobang (88 comments total)

"The Death Star is destroyed! The Emperor is dead!"
[music, dancing]
"Ooh, look at the fireworks!"
"Wait a minute..."
posted by gottabefunky at 9:36 AM on September 4, 2006

Rebel Alliance field officer Bren Derlin was quoted as saying that the death of all the Ewoks on Endor was the "sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."
posted by moonbiter at 9:41 AM on September 4, 2006

Wookiepedia^ is not trustworthy at all! I mean, ANYBODY can edit it!

Someone, please, think of the traditional authority figures!
posted by grobstein at 9:53 AM on September 4, 2006

I'm sorry, but is there anyone who really wasn't okay with mass Ewok extinction?
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2006

Someone, please, think of the traditional authority figures!
posted by grobstein at 12:53 PM EST on September 4 [+] [!]

Authority figures? Does Kenner make those too?
posted by Pastabagel at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

"is there anyone who really wasn't okay with mass Ewok extinction?"

*raises hand*

It's not canonical. If George Lucas does another trilogy that takes place after Return of the Jedi in which the Ewok are extinct and the forest moon of Endor erupted into a ball of fire due to its proximity to the destruction of Death Star Two, then I'm aboard. That ain't gonna happen. This is just a bunch of fan wankboy bulldada. Everyone with sense knows that the Endor planet itself (a gas giant) had a greater gravitational pull, that the Death Star Two debris eventually fell into that planet (not its moon), and the bulk of DS2 was disintegrated in Endor's atmosphere. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we're all just stuck with the annoying little boogers.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:13 AM on September 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed- casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia-this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.
posted by darkripper at 10:23 AM on September 4, 2006

any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.

but the Ewoks, they didn't sign up for a holocaust!

Whether or not it happened is up to the people with far too much time on their hands to decide.
posted by knapah at 10:35 AM on September 4, 2006

(Galactic) Freedom isn't free.
posted by spaltavian at 10:41 AM on September 4, 2006

Metafilter: just a bunch of fan wankboy bulldada.
posted by eriko at 10:43 AM on September 4, 2006

ZachsMind writes "Everyone with sense knows that the Endor planet itself (a gas giant) had a greater gravitational pull, that the Death Star Two debris eventually fell into that planet (not its moon), and the bulk of DS2 was disintegrated in Endor's atmosphere."

Bull. Shit. One over r squared, man. That fucker was orbiting the moon; i.e. it was already trapped by the moon's gravitational field. The debris would fall to the surface of the moon.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:53 AM on September 4, 2006

The next time I start to feel like my weird hobby x, y, or z is a big fat waste of time, I'm going to come back to this post and think, "At least I'm not doing this."

or, what knapah said.
posted by Kwine at 10:53 AM on September 4, 2006

Mr_roboto: Yep. And things would have been even worse if it was a Star Trek orbit, which "decays" over a period of time roughly equal to the amount of minutes left in the episode if anything goes wrong with the ship.

Apparently, the Federation has redefined "orbit" to mean "circular course around a celestial body which you use a lot of engine power to follow very slowly".
posted by dansdata at 11:06 AM on September 4, 2006

Wow. The geek centre in my brain just exploded. I wonder what sort of damage it caused to my neck and shoulders...

It would depend on rates of acceleration, the effect of explosive forces on cranial integrity...
posted by sindark at 11:16 AM on September 4, 2006

The rebel fleet blew up most of the debris.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:19 AM on September 4, 2006

The debate continues among die-hard Star Wars fans on the Internet, sporadically.

.
posted by languagehat at 11:22 AM on September 4, 2006

People forget that the Ewoks themselves killed off the Garzoonians, less than 20 quartic months ago. You guys have short memories.
posted by storybored at 11:22 AM on September 4, 2006

Remember Qui-Gon talking to Jar-Jar: "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." That's racist talk, so it's not surprising the rebels didn't care about the Ewoks.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:27 AM on September 4, 2006

Wasn't this all a long time ago? And far away?
posted by Joeforking at 11:36 AM on September 4, 2006

The ability to destroy a space station is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.
posted by fatbobsmith at 11:37 AM on September 4, 2006

You Star Wars apologists make me sick. Denying the Ewok Holocaust is like denying the Armenian genocide, except it's stupid instead of evil.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:41 AM on September 4, 2006 [2 favorites]

OMGFANBOIFLAMEOUT
posted by Sparx at 11:50 AM on September 4, 2006

You know, I felt sort of stupid making paper dolls of the Supernatural characters. Now? Not so much.
posted by FunkyHelix at 11:55 AM on September 4, 2006

This is both rather cool and rather frightening, I can't decide which wins out though.
posted by edgeways at 12:01 PM on September 4, 2006

I've been bottling this up but that two faced wanker Yoda got my back up. How come he struggles to keep a bit of piping from falling on Anakin whilst letting Dooku escape but then when it comes to Luke trying to lift a spaceship it's all 'Size matters not'. And then there's bragging about 800 years of training Jedi, no mention of how well that actually went.
posted by biffa at 12:03 PM on September 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

It wasn't a holocaust. It was the birth pains of a new, free Endor.
posted by PlusDistance at 12:05 PM on September 4, 2006

Too soon.
posted by brundlefly at 12:07 PM on September 4, 2006 [6 favorites]

The next time I start to feel like my weird hobby x, y, or z is a big fat waste of time, I'm going to come back to this post and think, "At least I'm not doing this."

A-men. Yesterday I was thinking about big of a dork I am. And today, I read this thread and suddenly I dont feel so bad. At least I'm not discriminating between different levels of canon in the SW universe.
posted by SirOmega at 12:15 PM on September 4, 2006

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
and other science facts (la la la),
Then repeat to yourself, "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
For Mystery Science Theater 3000!"
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:20 PM on September 4, 2006

Too soon.

Congrats for inspiring my first good laugh of the day.
posted by mkhall at 12:21 PM on September 4, 2006

For some to be free, sometimes others have to suffer because of that. Fortunately only half of the moon got hit, so the other half survives, and that's not bad for people who couldn't, or wouldn't, fight against the enemy. Why, some may say that they harbored them. But not today. The important thing is that truth, and justice, have prevailed. Now watch this drive.
posted by Zack_Replica at 12:43 PM on September 4, 2006

The Death Star was not orbiting the Forest Moon OF Endor. Watch RotJ again. It was orbiting Endor itself. The gas giant was in the way of the Death Star, which is what caused the artificial count down thing towards the end of the movie. The count down thing was about how much time it'd take for the Death Star to pull around Endor (the planet not the moon) so that it could actually shoot at something. Han & Leia and the Ewoks only had a certain amount of time to get into the Imperial base and turn off that thingamajig so the Rebels could attack the Death Star before it blew up ..something. I forget what, but it was moderately important at the time.

The Death Star wasn't orbiting a moon. It's the SIZE of a moon. It woulda looked pretty stupid orbiting something that was roughly its same size.

And yes this is fanwanking bullshit but it's FUN.

So.

=P
posted by ZachsMind at 12:56 PM on September 4, 2006

What a load of crap, everyone knows the Endor Moon landing was faked.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:06 PM on September 4, 2006

You're right there, MRK - that was no moon.
posted by Sk4n at 2:08 PM on September 4, 2006

ZachsMind, I think you are conflating the original movie -- where the Death Star had to clear the gas giant of Yavin to destroy the rebel base -- and the third movie -- where the Death Star 2 had a good ol' time blowing up Rebel Ships of the Line crewed by bipedal Sea Bass (at least until said SotL mixed it up with the Imperial fleet).

There was no countdown in the latter, nor do you even actually see the gas giant that the Forest Moon is presumably orbiting.

Also: moons come in all shapes and sizes -- from the 12.7 km Demios to the 120 km - 900 km Death Stars (no one seems to be sure) to the 5,26.4 km Ganymede.
posted by moonbiter at 2:19 PM on September 4, 2006

5,262.4 km Ganymede, that is.
posted by moonbiter at 2:20 PM on September 4, 2006

ZachsMind, I think you're mixing up IV and VI. Unless I'm mistaken...

In IV, the Death Star was attacking the rebel base on the fourth moon of Yavin (Yavin 4). The planet, Yavin, was in the way between the DS and Yavin 4, which is why there was a countdown. When the DS cleared the planet, it would be able to target the moon on which the rebels had their base. Fortunately, the Alliance destroyed the DS before it could fire on the moon.

In VI, there was no such interposing planet or countdown. The planet was named Endor, and it had a forest moon - hence, the Forest Moon of Endor. The DSII was orbiting that Forest Moon. Hence, when it was destroyed, the debris would fall on the moon (where the ewoks lived). Han and Leia had to disable the DSII's deflector shield, which had the controls located on the moon before the fleet arrived so the fleet could attack the DSII.

An interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia notes a source of confusion in VI about this:

Endor itself is not the moon, but instead the planet which the moon orbits (or orbited). The planet Endor is never explicitly shown in the film, which the novelization explains by asserting that it was destroyed some time earlier and that the moon now orbits its star in a planetary orbit of its own. It should be noted that in three scenes in the film, a pinkish planet can be seen briefly in the background, in the vicinity of the forest moon, though the two bodies are never seen at the same time. This, coupled with the fact that a moon separated from its planet is defined in astronomy as a planet in its own right, has caused some fans to speculate that this pinkish planet is in fact Endor.

Dammit, on preview, what moonbiter said.
posted by darkstar at 2:23 PM on September 4, 2006

*sigh* I apologize to myself and my family for what I'm about to do.

The Death Star I was orbiting Yavin in A New Hope. There was a countdown that was counting down the time it took for the Death Star to clear the horizon and have a direct shot to Yavin 4 which is where the current Rebel base was. In Return of the Jedi, the Death Star II was under construction orbiting the forest moon of Endor (The movie never really showed Endor the gas giant, just the moon, if I can remember correctly about that) It was orbiting Endor because Endor contained the shield generator that was protecting the Death Star II while it was being built. Any sort of countdown they would have had was based on when the rest of the Rebel fleet would have jumped into the system.
posted by Phantomx at 2:23 PM on September 4, 2006

Haha! a trilogy of dork replies!! *high five*
posted by Phantomx at 2:24 PM on September 4, 2006

Hahahaha! :D

*high fives Phantomx*
posted by darkstar at 2:25 PM on September 4, 2006

And, Of COURSE, they come from users with names like moonbiter, darkstar and Phantomx!
posted by darkstar at 2:27 PM on September 4, 2006

...yeah well you all suck.

Okay, if it wasn't orbiting Endor the planet, and it couldn't have been orbiting Endor the moon, what the hell was it orbiting?
posted by ZachsMind at 3:14 PM on September 4, 2006

It was orbiting my big moon.
posted by storybored at 3:20 PM on September 4, 2006

C'mon, Zachsmind. Own up to not being a true star wars nerd. Don't worry, though. You can console yourself with the knowledge that none of these c***s can spell wookiee.
posted by nthdegx at 3:22 PM on September 4, 2006

Zachsmind, if the Death Star II wasn't orbiting the moon, then how could the shield generator located on Endor be guaranteed access to the Death Star?
posted by nthdegx at 3:23 PM on September 4, 2006

I hate myself, and have no dog in this race but:

How could the generator been in anything else but geostationary orbit around the moon of endor?
posted by Sparx at 3:33 PM on September 4, 2006

Zachsmind, it was orbiting the moon. It was in a geosynchronous orbit. The station that Han and Leia were sent to shutdown was generating a force field that was projected up to and around the Death Star. You can see that in the hologram during the mission briefing. The only way that the force field could have worked is if the Death Star was in a fixed point above the moon.
posted by veedubya at 3:33 PM on September 4, 2006

It wasn't a holocaust. It was the birth pains of a new, free Endor.

Free of Ewoks, that is.

Too soon.

Brilliant.
posted by quin at 3:36 PM on September 4, 2006

Also, if the Ewoks were wiped out, does that mean that the Christmas special never happened?
posted by veedubya at 3:36 PM on September 4, 2006

“You can see here the Death Star orbiting the forest moon of Endor.”


posted by Tenuki at 3:38 PM on September 4, 2006

By which of course I mean - how could the death star not have been in geostationary orbit around the generator? They're gonna transmit energy through a moon suficiently dense to be effectively a planet? Super efficient!

There's a party in my typing hands and everyone's invited
posted by Sparx at 3:39 PM on September 4, 2006

veedubya known nerd herder asks does that mean that the Christmas special never happened?

Wish I could say the same for Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure or Battle for Endor. Though according to Fanboy Timeline they occured between ESB and RotJ, officially they were Bantha fodder
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:44 PM on September 4, 2006

How could something the size of a moon orbit something that's ALSO the size of a moon? Isn't that what scientists are bitching about with Pluto and Charon? That technically Charon isn't Pluto's moon that they're actually kinda orbitting each other? Charon's over half Pluto's size. That's not orbiting. That's dancing! Somebody call the southern baptists!
posted by ZachsMind at 3:54 PM on September 4, 2006

If you look at the screenshot, there's a vast difference in size between the moon and the Death Star. The Death Star is the red ball about 5mm above Threepio's head.

The only thing that would concern me about the orbit is that the Death Star seems to be orbiting too close to the moon's surface for it to be geosynchronous.
posted by veedubya at 4:01 PM on September 4, 2006

Can moons have moons?
posted by Tenuki at 4:03 PM on September 4, 2006

Also, if the Ewoks were wiped out, does that mean that the Christmas special never happened?

Surely there could have been ewoks offworld at the time. Perhaps captured and forced into performing in circuses or caged away in labs being studied with grants from the Imperial Institute of Science or even serving as slaves/pets to the fantastically powerful/wealthy.
posted by porpoise at 4:10 PM on September 4, 2006

That's no moon.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 4:17 PM on September 4, 2006

veedubya, how do we know how fast the FMoE is rotating? Maybe it rotates faster than earth, so a geosyncronouous orbit's period is shorter and its altitude lower...
posted by nicwolff at 4:20 PM on September 4, 2006

Zachsmind, it was orbiting the moon. It was in a geosynchronous orbit.

If it's a moon, it's not geosynchronous.

It's moonulosynchronous, you dumb nerf-herder.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:21 PM on September 4, 2006

Cool, I am proud member of the nerd-based community.

Zachsmind, a moon can range in size from a 'lil asteroid-type thing like Mars's moon Demios to a planet size monster like Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Calling the Death Star the size of a small moon is accurate because it's a big-ass battlestation, but that doesn't mean that it isn't much, much smaller than a large moon.

Charon and Pluto are a whole other can of Blenjeel sand worms.
posted by moonbiter at 4:24 PM on September 4, 2006

How could the DS have a shield generator on the FOrest Moon, if it was not in GS orbit around said moon? It could be at the Lagrangian point fore or aft of that moon, in the moon's orbit.
posted by notsnot at 4:53 PM on September 4, 2006

ROU_Xenophobe, I think we've established that it's no moon, it's a space station.
posted by veedubya at 4:59 PM on September 4, 2006

The reasoning that I came up with having to do with all these really low 'orbits' and remaining in place over a part of the surface is that they use the massive engines to stay in place. This could explain that as the ship loses power, the ship immediately starts falling down directly to the surface. I certainly don't think the writers of scifi think about this, but it seems to explain why ships can remain directly overhead a certain part of the surface and stay pretty close.

It also explains why when the ship in revenge of the sith pitches up or down or whatever it did, why everything in the ship started falling down the floor.

hehe hooray for this thread
posted by Phantomx at 5:26 PM on September 4, 2006

I'll just repeat what my wife said when I showed her that. "It's fucking fiction, people!"
posted by avriette at 5:30 PM on September 4, 2006

So your wife would have no problem with a novel where somebody shot a guy six times in the head and he just laughed and walked away, because hey, it's fiction?
posted by languagehat at 5:41 PM on September 4, 2006

Each of the individual death star particles used nanotech self-destruct devices to ensure that the technology wouldn't fall into the wrong hands ie. rebels, scavengers, or collectors.
posted by drezdn at 5:43 PM on September 4, 2006

Yeah, I think one big source of confusion is that the name Endor is used for both the planet and the moon.

The generator and the ewoks were on the forest moon. The DSII was in a stationary orbit above the generator, i.e., orbiting the moon.

The DS was much smaller than the moon Endor, as seen in the screen capture above. BUT, in "A New Hope", recall that it wasn't sitting next to a planet, it was alone in space. Hence, it was difficult to gauge exactly how large it was from a distance when the TIE fighter was racing toward it. It thus might look like a natural moon and not a battle station. But, as has been noted, even it's relatively small size would qualify it as "moon" sized if it were a natural body.

And yes, veedubya, in my universe, the Christmas Special never happened.

And Han shot first.
posted by darkstar at 6:01 PM on September 4, 2006

The Jedi Ewok Academy on the far side of the forest moon of Endor is stil going strong however, 7803 graduates to date!
posted by Vindaloo at 6:04 PM on September 4, 2006

Look, all this talk ignores one salient fact. The Ewoks weren't wiped out. They left of their own accord. Well, not all of them but at least one -- he was the Head or CEO Ewok. This is how it happened: Knowing they were doomed, but without space technology, they clambered on top of each other and formed a gigantic Ewok pyramid. The CEO Ewok, climbed to the very top of this pyramid and with the gravity being so low was able to leap into space.
posted by storybored at 7:26 PM on September 4, 2006

...also the Ewoks killed off the Gazoonians with reverse pantaloon technology, stolen by Jen the Ewok warrior-prostitute, from Darth Mulberry.
posted by storybored at 7:33 PM on September 4, 2006

Wookiees get the chicks, while Ewoks hold their sticks.


posted by Tenuki at 7:40 PM on September 4, 2006

sa-weet. now if we can just get a shot of the ewok mooning us, everything'd be perfect.
posted by Zack_Replica at 8:00 PM on September 4, 2006

languagehat: So your wife would have no problem with a novel where somebody shot a guy six times in the head and he just laughed and walked away, because hey, it's fiction?

If the same novel has interstellar travel, the ghosts of dead teachers, tree-living dwarf teddy bears, giant pit monsters, samurai monks who levitate things, cyborg villians, droids who talk in a vocabulary of beeps, screaming spacecraft in space, giant space worms, gravity in a spacecraft perpendicular to the vector of acceleration, and elite soldiers who can't hit the broad side of a barn (and are too stupid to lob a grenade at two pinned-down defenders), a guy who gets shot six times in the head laughing it off would be par for the course.

That's what's so silly about this whole thing, the Millennium Falcon is a big whopping silly and impossible collection of blatantly transparent plot devices. But then again, the entire series is a silly and impossible collection of blatantly transparent plot devices. This is probably why we love it so much. It's surprisingly entertaining in spite of being such a badly written bit of escapism.

Star Wars isn't Science Fiction. It isn't 2001, Ringworld, Rama, Foundation, Contact, Dayworld, Logan's Run or Dune. It's a fantasy just like Snow White, The Dark Crystal, The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, The Firebird and The Black Cauldron. Endor is saved by the most powerful force in filmmaking, "happily ever after."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:17 PM on September 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

I think wookieepedia user Werthead neatly summarizes the only obvious conclusion in his post on the relevant discussion page (to be read with Comic Book Guy voice):

"I find this discussion intriguing, even if it does open up a can of worms regarding Star Wars vs. real physics (which gets into the whole Newtonian physics debate etc). The simple fact is that if a 900km metal sphere with energy sources capable of propelling it into hyperspace and vapourising planets from a quarter-million km away detonates less than 2,000km above a terrastial surface, the surface of that planet would be first irradiated, then incinerated when the blast hit it seconds later, and then buried under tons of molten metal. The only way that Endor could survive is if the planetary shield was operational. The problem is that there is limited evidence that Endor has a planetary shield. The projection of Endor and the DSII shown on Home One only shows a single shield beam emanating from the ground installation up to the station. The width of that beam when it intersects the ground would be dozens if not hundreds of km wide, enough to cover all Imperial ground assets on the surface. There is no need for the Empire to build dozens of shield generators to cover the entire surface of the planet, since 99% of the surface is valueless to the Empire. Certainly the situation with Echo Base on Hoth confirms that a single shield generator cannot cover an entire planet. Naturally, the fact that the Empire is prepared to build something so preposterously huge as the Death Star II in the first place may counterargue this since the resources to cover Endor with multiple shield generators would be minute compared to the scale of the actual project and the general paranoia following the destruction of Death Star I may have made this a viable idea, the ultimate failsafe mechanism to prevent forces landing elsewhere on the moon and assaulting one single shield generator. Naturally this would entail the construction of dozens if not hundreds of additional shield generators across the surface of Endor, of which there is no evidence for or against. However, the situation in the novel Star by Star, in which thousands of simultaneous impacts against the Coruscant planetary shields (presumably among the most most powerful in the Galaxy) causes them to overload and shut down may indicate that even a fully-operational planetary shield giving 100% coverage to Endor (a far smaller body) would be insufficient against the sheer bulk of the DSII's explosion and the resulting debris impacts. The fact that Endor does appear intact in subsequent material, however, makes much of the debate academic. Endor is intact in later materials, ergo there was a planetary shield. Just my 2 cents. --Werthead 17:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)"
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:29 PM on September 4, 2006

"This, coupled with the fact that a moon separated from its planet is defined in astronomy as a planet in its own right, has caused some fans to speculate that this pinkish planet is in fact Endor."
posted by darkstar at 8:23 AM AEST on September 5

No, dammit! If Pluto isn't a planet anymore then there's no way in hell I'm gonna let that punk-ass Endor get away with calling itself a planet.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:30 PM on September 4, 2006

"How could the DS have a shield generator on the FOrest Moon, if it was not in GS orbit around said moon? It could be at the Lagrangian point fore or aft of that moon, in the moon's orbit."

To clarify, you mean in the same orbit around the sun as the moon (assuming the original planet was destroyed as mentioned previously).

Also, for that to work the moon could not have any rotation.

Thanks, PlusDistance.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:13 PM on September 4, 2006

There was a delightful brouhaha about this on Wikipedia: there was an article on the subject that got deleted after a lot of debate. I'd love to know where all this fits on the geek hierarchy.
posted by Paragon at 11:33 PM on September 4, 2006

If the same novel has interstellar travel, the ghosts of dead teachers, tree-living dwarf teddy bears, giant pit monsters, samurai monks who levitate things... Star Wars isn't Science Fiction... It's a fantasy just like Snow White, The Dark Crystal, The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, The Firebird and The Black Cauldron. Endor is saved by the most powerful force in filmmaking, "happily ever after."

I completely agree, and (sorry, fanfolk) I have little respect for the Star Wars movies or canon (though the first three were fun, and by "the first three" I mean the ones now called IV, V, and VI or whatever fucking thing). I just thought "It's fiction!" was a weak argument.
posted by languagehat at 5:27 AM on September 5, 2006

Paragon, that last link has the line of the debate.

...this is about non-notable non-canon unverifiable speculation about something that didn't happen in a film.
posted by eriko at 5:30 AM on September 5, 2006

But what about all the dead Ewoks, guys?
posted by interrobang at 6:55 AM on September 5, 2006

Spray the planet with zombitrol and they'll be good as new.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:08 AM on September 5, 2006

Thank you for this post. I'm so sick (SO SICK!) of the MSM ignoring this story! Once again the Internet leads the way.
posted by OmieWise at 7:47 AM on September 5, 2006

I can prove that Ewoks were not killed in a cataclysm created by the explosion of Death Star 2. See, there was no Death Star 2, and there were no Ewoks. Therefore, no killing of Ewoks took place. The ewoks were midgets and child actors (some were both) in costumes. That's right, none of this ever happened. This isn't the hypothesis you're looking for. Move along.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:48 AM on September 5, 2006

We never saw anti-air emplacements at the DSII's shield site, and the Rebel fighters could have easily taken out the DSII ground shield and then moved to attack the Death Star proper. There would have had to have been a planetary shield around Endor's forest moon, since the only tactical option they considered was a ground assault (see Hoth).
posted by cowbellemoo at 8:55 AM on September 5, 2006

cowbellemoo, there was a shield around the moon. Han was piloting a stolen Imperial Shuttle and used an old, but still valid, authorisation code to pass through the shield. Luke and Leia's presence on the shuttle was detected by Vader, and he decided to let them through anyway.
posted by veedubya at 9:07 AM on September 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

Bah, this is easy to fanwank away.

How was the DSII in such a low orbit to begin with? It's established that technology to manipulate gravity exists, both to provide artificial gravity on ships, and to enable the "repulsorlift" devices that allow objects to hover.

The notion that the DSII could not have been in geosynchronous orbit doesn't take this into account. Given that gravitational manipulation is possible, it's clear that gravity has been artificially lessened in the area around the DSII to allow it to stay in geosynchronous orbit so close to the surface of the moon. It would also stand to reason that this device is on the moon itself, just like the shield generator, because during construction you want to minimize the amount of stuff you need to initially lift into orbit.

(BTW, the rebels would obviously be aware of this, and would do what is necessary to take out the shield generator without affecting the repulsor generator. This may be why a ground team was needed, rather that striking the site from orbit.)

This not only solves the problem of the entire DSII raining down on the moon, but also means that the pieces that do rain down don't cause catastrophic damage, because they come down with much less force.

QED. Suck it, haters.
posted by bjrubble at 11:08 AM on September 5, 2006

If, bjrubble, an unseen and unmentioned antigrav doodad was operating in parallel with the shield transmitter, and (rather importantly) wasn't in the same complex and therefore blown up with the shield transmitter, and if furthermore the antigrav doodad was able to affect all or most of the spreading wreckage of the DSII, then your theory would work.

If, on the other hand, the DSII had its own inertia/gravity/whatever hardware - which one presumes it did, since it was "fully operational" and without that stuff everybody would be floating around/smeared into paste when the finished DSII headed off to do stuff elsewhere - then when it blew up and all of its systems stopped working, its wreckage would behave like any other lumps of ordinary matter.

The DSII did indeed seem to be far too close to Endor to be in a proper geostationary orbit. But if you're geostationary and too close, then you're in another of those Star Trek too-slow orbits. So, when your thrusters or gravity manipulators or whatever stop working, you'll drop like a rock onto the surface of the body below. This would, of course, greatly increase the amount of wreckage that'd hit Endor, compared with what would have happened if the DSII were in a proper orbit - much of its wreckage, in that case, would have stayed in orbit or shot off into space.

A close orbit is a fast orbit. A distant orbit is a slow orbit.

Now I've got to go and play Spacewar.
posted by dansdata at 2:24 PM on September 5, 2006

dansdata: It's clearly established in the opening scenes of Episode IV, that the laws of physics that apply to our universe do not apply to the Star Wars universe. There is at least one additional force at work. This force transmits the sound of starship engines in the vacuum of space, keeps the crew and passengers of various spacecraft from becoming red smears on the walls, and crash-lands two droids in the same neighborhood of the son of the guy who is chasing them. My claim is that this force should be called "Narrative Cliche Force" or NCF.

We know that Endor experienced no ill effects from the explosion of DSII, because it is the site of the required denouement in which we see lovers embrace, siblings reunite, and the ghosts of the dead provide their blessing. This denouement is an essential requirement for the function of the Star Wars universe. In fact, it is quite possible that the electroweak force doesn't exist in the Star Wars universe, and violations of the NCF would result in the disintegration of character and setting as we know them. Vader (and the empire) was doomed the moment he appeared on screen in black armor.

Therefore, we must assume that the NCF acted in mysterious ways to eliminate or redirect the wreckage of DSII in order for the movie to say, "happily ever after (until the next commercial sequel.)"

And in addition, the extreme power that Narrative Cliches have over the Star Wars universe makes it highly probable that its inhabitants are descended from residents of the Diskworld who fell off the edge.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:17 PM on September 5, 2006 [2 favorites]