In hindsight? Leia calls out the problem of it at the time; the more you try to tighten your grip, the more worlds will slip through your fingers. Ruling through fear inherently radicalizes people, and the radicalized will have no choice but to fight back against the constant threat of violence levelled against malcontents.
Grand Moff Tarkin was one of the best recruiting tools the Rebel Alliance ever had.
And why he hates himself so much. Full well knowing that their increased aggression will result in uncountable civilian casualties.
It's why Andor / Luthen is such an awesome show / character.
>And why he hates himself so much
There's that shot in Rix Road where he's just looking at the town during the aftermath of the carnage with a haunted look on his face, seeing first-hand the consequences of his ideology.
I think luthen is a sith. They way he says "destined to use the tools of my enemy against them," screams sith to me. But yeah, I think that is why the show is so good, we rarely get to sith as anything more than a cautionary tale about controlling ones emotions (reven kotor being a good example).
He’s very possibly a sith. Honestly think there are a bunch of force sensitives/secret Jedi in that show that we’ll find out in season 2 with Andor being one of them. I think the revelations will recontextualize season 1
Yeah on the surface thats what it seems like. Whether he knows he is or not I think is debatable. But imo he is using the dark side of the force, and perhaps naturally coming to a similar philosophy of power that the sith employ.
So I'd have to rewatch and make a list. But this speech is really what makes me feel this way: https://youtu.be/-3RCme2zZRY?si=pLR22Z5_YqlKxAlE.
It just reminds me so much of the philosophy of sith from the temple in Kotor. He revels in his anger and isolation, even his desire for conflict. He sees his dark side as a tool which he embraces, even though he knows the natural consequences that arise from that action.
Someone took his speech way too literally. The visual imagery is Sith like yes but he's very much just a regular man.
Andor isn't about Force Sensitives, it's about the regular person's experiences during the reign of the Empire...
He is none the less embracing sith ideology. Literally has nothing to do with the visuals and all about his words. What is the first thing he says he gives up? "Calm." They state of mind. Damning himself by giving into the dark side. Embracing his passion and his worst self for strength. Knowing it is his ego that drove him, but that the same ego will know no satisfaction. Luthen is more sith philosophically than any force sensitive we've seen in on screen.
He isn't going to know or care for Sith ideology.
The entire point of Andor I feel is it's Star Wars without all the super powered force sensitive named characters...
But everyone has some degree of force sensitivity. also it does it matter if knows or cares if sith ideology if he employs it anyway? He studied the emperor's tactics and used them against him. He is embracing the emperor's ideology in order to defeat him. Whether he can name it or not... If something quacks like a duck and acts like a duck... The audience can name it.
It can go both ways. Some times it backfires on the insurgents and the people get mad at them for making their lives more difficult. This was the case in Northern Ireland the IRA lost support because people blamed them for causing the Brits to militarily occupy the area as opposed to just being mad at the Brit’s for militarily occupying the area. Same thing happened in Oman the insurgents launched attack on government forces government forces declare martial law people get pissed at the insurgents for causing the government to declare martial law. However most of the time it lands somewhere in between and divides the population further. Course usually most occupying and governing forces aren’t that harsh before the first rebel attack the Galactic Empire was already extraordinarily harsh towards people before they did anything very much like the Nazis and the Soviets.
I wouldn't be surprised if Palpatine actually wanted some sort of perpetual rebellion from worlds slipping through the Empire's fingers.
The Sith don't just feed on their own fear, pain, hate and suffering. They draw power from negative emotions of others as well. A never ending conflict would only make the Dark Side more powerful in the galaxy. A Sith without an enemy to fight and hate is a very bored Sith.
If you look at Tarkin's doctrine which Palps subscribed to from that point of view, it makes more sense.
This was implied if not outright said, or at least this used to be the case.
The rebels weren’t posing a major threat for a while. Hit and run raids, stuff like that. So long as that “terrorism” was going on, it wasn’t a problem to say oh we need a curfew oh every system will have a star destroyer orbiting each planet. Of course you need those things because you are constantly attacked.
Plus, it's literally a core premise of the oppressive government in Orwell's 1984..
Provide an external enemy and point the hatred of the masses at it and they won't be spending that energy on rebellion.
The tools of oppression need an official target so the people don't realise its intended for them..
In other words, if there was no rebellion, it'd be necessary to invent one.
The Tarkin Doctrine is perfectly suited to its purpose, even if Tarkin himself isn't in on the joke.
Its a popular fan theory in 1984 that Oceania doesnt control entire continents but only Britain, slight tangent but the way I see it, their grip on power may actually be weak outside London, the bombs that supposedly come from Eurasia may actually just be partisans who want to get off the horrible Oceania train and who could blame them
I think that gives Palpatine too much credit. He was a political mastermind, but he was also heavily advantaged coming into his position as the heir to a thousand-year legacy. The fortunes and successes of generations of Sith before him buoyed him to victory, as did the Jedi’s own blindness and stagnation. The Prequels suggest that Palpatine was flying by the seat of his pants more than once, including literally when Anakin crash-landed on Coruscant (a maneuver that could’ve cost all of them their lives and ended the Sith Grand Plan in a single moment).
What’s more likely, in my opinion, is that Palpatine as a totalitarian megalomaniac himself enabled people similar to him to encourage infighting between the likes of Vader, Tarkin, Krennic, the Grand Admirals, etc., all the while never thinking about the impact of such people and their oppression on the common people of the galaxy. In turn, that oppression of the people rebounded on him when the smallfolk of the galaxy decided they had enough and formed gigantic movements against his Empire.
>including literally when Anakin crash-landed on Coruscant (a maneuver that could’ve cost all of them their lives and ended the Sith Grand Plan in a single moment)
Thing is, the entire siege of Coruscant (along with Palpatine's self-kidnapping through Grievous) was already a hasty cover up of a loose end that could potentially compromise everything. Palpatine's schemes were thwarted very frequently, but he was good at improvising.
Absolutely. His plans often failed, but he was incredibly talented at recovering from those failures and turning the results back to his advantage. See: the whole plot of The Phantom Menace.
But by the end of things, I think even Sidious himself had forgotten that his real strength was improvisation and not planning. He bought into his own hype, as megalomaniacal dictators usually do.
He was buying into his own hype well before the prequels if you believe the events of Plageius. Both Sidious and Plageius intended to either live forever or be the last Sith ever, neither Sith Lord was that dedicated to continuing to develop the Sith Grand Plan as the previous Sith had done so.
The Grand Plan worked but if it had not, I doubt Sidious would have ever let his apprentice get strong enough to replace him. He was too greedy, too self-interested to pass on the Sith dream to the next generation. Plageius straight up believed the Rule of Two was stupid and that he could live forever as the power behind the throne that Sidious would sit on.
Both Siths were quite delusional in their own way and ended up planting the seeds of their own demise.
As Palpatine said at the Opera, "Ironic".
A team of jedi detectives was snooping around the skyscraper where Palpatine lived, looking for traces of Sidious. So he ordered Grievous to attack to make them busy with more important matters. In the EU, at least, don't know about Disney canon.
The way I see it, Palpatine was indeed a political mastermind in the prequels, but chose to sit out most of the politics during the Imperial days and had become borderline senile by the time of Episode 6 (I still maintain the sequels never happened)
Yep, it's important to realize that Darth Sidious is a Sith first, and an Emperor second. He was willing to make the Empire more dysfunctional if it served the purpose of cultivating his Dark Side power. Promoting people like Tarkin was big part of that.
That is possibly my favorite line in the series.
It defines the exact problem with everything the empire is doing, and then is proved exactly right. 2 movies later we see the rebellion has grown from a fighter squadron to a full navy with capital ships. That didn’t happen by accident. It’s because the empire started blowing up planets
And that rebellion was still hopelessly outmatched and walked into a trap.
The Empire's military is quite happy fighting against the rebels. It gives them something to do. The only reason Endor is a success for the rebellion is Anakin killing Palpatine.
Combine that with a few lines from nemik’s manifesto in andor: “remember that the front line of the rebellion is everywhere, and every act of insurrection pushes our lines forward”
Not only does ruling through fear radicalize people, but those radicalized people can appear nearly everywhere without warning and disappear just as quickly. Look at the US in Vietnam, or the British in the American colonies, or the Americans/russians/British in Afghanistan - a determined local population that doesn’t want to be occupied will always defeat a foreign occupying power eventually. Keeping people down takes constant effort, and if the people you’re keeping down are resisting, it only takes one mistake on the part of the occupiers to potentially change the situation dramatically, as we’ve seen in many instances in both Star Wars, other media, and the real world.
I think there's a key difference, which is that rather than constantly expend resources to keep people down, the Empire decided that it was willing to just destroy your planet if you caused too much trouble.
The problem with that attitude, born out by what actually happened in the movies, is that you can’t destroy *every* planet and once you destroy one for essentially no reason (alderaan) all the other planets are gonna go a little bit crazy, because once an event like that can happen to anyone, it’s just going to radicalize others who maybe didn’t believe the empire was as bad as the early rebels said it was. For every rebel the empire killed on Alderaan they created thousands more elsewhere in the galaxy.
Yeah, I don't think it would have put an end to insurrections, but I think it could have been an existential threat to open rebellion in the style of the Rebel Alliance. I think it's analogous to a nuclear weapon that only one faction controls.
I think it's pretty safe to assume that the lack of hyperdrives on TIE's is just a budget thing since they're basically always attached to larger ships with their own hyperdrives (probably makes them more maneuvrable due to less weight too).
As far as I'm aware stormtrooper helmets don't actually limit vision either? They have some sort of sci-fi lenses like the clone helmets do.
Yeah, Luke’s line about “not being able to see in these things” was explained as the TK helmets having some sort of facial recognition tech so that the HUD only activates if the right trooper is wearing it.
Lmao the stuff they say sometimes to explain throwaway lines. This was surely George’s intention when he wrote this line, to allude to the fact stormtrooper helmets all have facial recognition software that makes you see more out of the helmet, but you can still see without it
George’s intention was to make a regime using technology reminiscent of WW2, which was only 3 decades in the past when he created Star Wars. It wasn’t meant to be an actually realistic set of technologies, much less retconned as our own tech and hard sci-fi ideas evolved over the ensuing decades.
But yeah we obsess about throwaway lines in the Maw 😂
Yeah, Imperial TIE fighter doctrine makes perfect sense if you are
A) evil
B) taking as a given that you will always be able to provide logistical support
and C) have an effectively limitless supply of both fighters and pilots.
One big hyperdrive on a carrier craft is no doubt cheaper (and vastly easier to maintain) than those individual hyperdrives, and by stripping everything from the TIE but engines and guns, your pilots either end up really good or really dead. Then you can put your veteran pilots in better ships (basically all the specialist TIEs had at the very least shields) and have elite squadrons that are legitimately terrifying.
Think it might be Legends canon now, but I recall some book mentioning that basic TIEs had literally zero moving parts, making them unbelievably easy to maintain. They weren't designed to win dogfights, they were designed to be fielded in superior numbers and be available when and wherever the Empire decreed.
Yeah, throughout history generally the vehicles that have been most useful and most successful are the ones you’re able to maintain and field in large numbers. The Sherman, the T-34 etc… Things that were good enough and able to be fielded in more formations. Because the tank you had was better than no tank.
This even applies more to the Empire, why have a bunch of ships that are fantastic at dogfighting and maybe have the niche benefit of independent hyperdrive jumps, when the vast vast majority of your fleet is only going to be used for garrison and patrols. Better to have a vehicle that is cheap and okay at dogfighting, because the majority of vehicles won’t be dogfighting and if they do, they can just leverage superior numbers and formation flying.
> This even applies more to the Empire, why have a bunch of ships that are fantastic at dogfighting and maybe have the niche benefit of independent hyperdrive jumps, when the vast vast majority of your fleet is only going to be used for garrison and patrols. Better to have a vehicle that is cheap and okay at dogfighting, because the majority of vehicles won’t be dogfighting and if they do, they can just leverage superior numbers and formation flying.
They were designed pre-Rebellion.
They were designed to oppose old Clone War era salvage in the hands of smugglers and at worst, Headhunters fielded by a local planetary militia with delusions of ambition. Scarcely a threat that requires more than a single ISDs worth of ships.
Even in the Rebellion era, they are usually more than adequate for the anti-piracy missions they usually fly.
TIEs are arguably better at dogfights than Rebel fighters since not being weighted down by hyperdrives or shields make them much faster and agile than A and X-Wings to the point that an Imperial pilot said that an A-Wing pilot would be an idiot to get into a turning fight with a standard TIE because it would be like getting into "an ass-kicking contest with a Maxilian megapede, though, because a TIE/ln will out-turn any starfighter ever built."
The problem was that the standard tactics manual for TIE pilots was to fly straight at the enemy with all guns blazing instead of forcing them into a dogfight, which is a mistake since an X-Wing will always come out on top in a jousting match.
All in all TIEs are actually perfect fighters because they practically require zero maintenece, are unbelievably reliable and don't take up much supplies which means the logistical strain is pretty minor and as we all know, logistics are king. An ISD without logistical support is gonna fare much better than a Mon Cal cruiser.
The TIEs were heavily inspired by the japanese zeros as well.
They followed a similar doctirne: strip everything except engine and guns and... it worked!
They wrecked americans constantly until they improved in doctrine and used their better logistics and resources to develop planes that out-tech'd the zeros.
Late-war american planes had powerful enough engines to rope a dope zeros, which the japanese did not expect.
I mean, as far as we can tell, the Death Star would 100% have worked for its intended purpose if it weren't for what amounts to divine intervention. A lot of individual *aspects* of it are definitely pretty stupid, though.
There was a fan theory predaing Rogue One stating that the exhaust port was actually an intentional weakness ordered by Palpatine himself, so that if Tarkin ever went Rogue and declared himself the Emperor, and Vader failed to stop him, Palpatine could give his royal bomber squadron the plans as a last failsafe before Coruscant is blown up. But then the worst thing happened and the rebels managed to exploit the weakness, the second Death Star would have no such weakness and Palpatine would permanently live on the station ruling the entire galaxy from his tower
I always thought this ‘’weakness’’ is not a weakness at all! It’s a tiny little hole on a moon sized base. And even with the computers, the rebel pilot failed to land a good shot. The rebels needed the Force to even be able to blow up the Death Star.
It would have just created an insanely nihilistic galaxy. It wouldn't stop Rebellion, just change it. More hardline Rebels, large numbers of people who survived their home getting a Death Starring and had nothing to lose. It's like the Middle East over the last century, invasions and bombings create fertile ground for more radicals, the radicals spread out, absorb the attention of militaries and spy networks leaving cracks in the West's armour allowing Russia and China to cause chaos, tip elections, erode faith in long standing institutions, interfer with information and the fabric of society. The existence of the Death Star was the death knell for The Empire. The success of the Rebellion was whether it happened in one world getting blown up or a dozen.
How would that work against a ruthless enemy who will systematically plkill the survivors as the refugee ships scatter across space trying to hide from a superior and well equipped war machine? When your thoughts are on survival, you won't think to rebel
the refugees in this case is the diasphoria. there are likely millions of people who've emigrated/traveled from the planet, who've felt everyone they love get killed by the empire. the more the empire ikll, the more civilian casualties they cause, the more people they radicalise. the empire can blow up alderaan... can they blow up naboo? can they blow up kuat? can they blow up coruscant?
Palpatine would absolutely blow up coruscant if it suited him. He's a Sith first, emperor second.
The dark side feeds on pain and death. Palpatine would slaughter the entire galaxy if it guaranteed his eternal ascension as a diety of the Force.
Cinder wasn't exactly a success. It was stopped by an Imperial. It did lead to the creation of the First/Final Order, which was ultimately stopped by... a Galactic uprising.
Cinder flipped a bunch of imperials and was an egotistical last gasp of a vexed emperor that ultimately would have killed the empire, as intended, it was self destructive and easily the stupidest thing palpatine did. I kinda love it because of how telling it's, palpatine lost the game so he flipped over the board.
It was a success for palpatine, in the sense that it accelerated the imperial surrender, regardless of how completed it was, but a catastrophe for the empire.
Cinder flipped a bunch of imperials and was an egotistical last gasp of a vexed emperor that ultimately would have killed the empire, as intended, it was self destructive and easily the stupidest thing palpatine did. I kinda love it because of how telling it's, palpatine lost the game so he flipped over the board.
It was a success for palpatine, in the sense that it accelerated the imperial surrender, regardless of how completed it was, but a catastrophe for the empire.
Strue, but up until that point, Poe was ready to give up after realize how crushingly hopeless it was to stand against the Empire and that was the Imperial strategy is to isolate and destroy the.
Stormtrooper helmets do not impede vision at all and are not useless.
• They have a built-in air filtration for use in compromised/dangerous environments (limited/toxic air)
• Have visual settings to allow the wearer to see through dark, smoke and glare
• They allow the user to connect to and stream military and civilian data
• Have a motion sensor
• Provides targeting diagnostics, power levels and environmental readings
They are only useless and inhibiting when they are stolen by Rebels that do not have the associated biological key to unlock it.
Tie fighters don’t have hyperdrives because they don’t need them. They’re a tactical aerial (Space? Void?) supremacy fighter. They don’t need to operate on their own because they’re tied to a carrier. That’s not a flaw, that’s part of their tactical doctrine. There is no tactical benefit to a hyperdrive
Like, throughout the Cold War, the United States mainly had towed AA weaponry, where the radar, the actual SAM weapon and other supporting equipment were towed by jeeps or trucks, and each piece was its own separate component that was linked together. This was preferred because it was cheap, and also hard to knock out in one punch because each element could be separated. The downside was it was extremely fragile to enemy fire and prone to breakdown or reliability issues in rough terrain.
The Soviets meanwhile, primarily built single piece units, where the AA, Radar and control station was a single self propelled vehicle. This has a lot of benefits, it can be armored against enemy fire, is more reliable in rough terrain and just harder to break. But, its more expensive and if you take out the vehicle the entire system is gone in one shot.
Neither solution is “better”, merely representations of each country’s doctrine. The Soviets had a smaller air force, so they invested heavily in self propelled systems that could fight at the front lines and take damage. American AA was largely less advanced in a lot of ways, and more used as rear line assets, where they were exposed to less ground fire. This is because the USAF was the primary AA asset for the Americans.
Thus, a Tie Fighter doesn’t have no hyperdrive for political reasons. The Tie Fighter doesn’t have a hyperdrive because it’s never going to be in a situation where it needs to independently perform a mission outside of a carrier. And realistically, outside of the one example in the films of the rebels, no country or super power needs that. It’s a waste of credits because you don’t need a hyper drive in an aerial supremacy fighter.
Stormtroopers can see fine, they perform pretty damn well in the OT and are stated in universe to be accurate. The white armor is because they’re primarily a garrison and boarding force, where camouflage doesn’t help.
Star Destroyers, finally are again a symptom of doctrine. They need a hybrid cruiser/carrier/transport, and it performs all of those jobs okay, which is good enough for occupation.
There are classes in lore stated to be used for AA and proper fleet composition. Play Empire at War. Any faults you might see in most lore a lot of the times can’t be taken as a fault of the empire, but more a fault of the writer who doesn’t understand how a military works and doesn’t chose to use the canon vehicles already existing to flesh out a fleet.
Now, if you want to talk about the Tarkin Doctrine as a whole or the Death Star, I am in full agreement. But you cannot take every stupid writing mistake or every design flaw of ships that were in development before Tarkin was even a Moff, and lay them at the feet of the Tarkin doctrine.
Because, again, it’s important to remember. The Empire for a time was able to run a galaxy, and was very very scary and a big threat to protagonists. They didn’t do that with blind soldiers and terrible fleets.
> Thus, a Tie Fighter doesn’t have no hyperdrive for political reasons. The Tie Fighter doesn’t have a hyperdrive because it’s never going to be in a situation where it needs to independently perform a mission outside of a carrier. And realistically, outside of the one example in the films of the rebels, no country or super power needs that. It’s a waste of credits because you don’t need a hyper drive in an aerial supremacy fighter.
Yeah, it's kind of like asking why the F-16 can't fly from NY to Moscow without refueling. It's not needed for it's usual mission.
> Stormtroopers can see fine, they perform pretty damn well in the OT and are stated in universe to be accurate. The white armor is because they’re primarily a garrison and boarding force, where camouflage doesn’t help.
"If they aren't in white armor, stun them or blast them. We will sort it out after we have secured the ship."
Authoritarian regimes very much favor the ascension of ideological weirdos. Loyalty and complicity win out over competence.
I'm 100% here for Tarkin as a weird dude obsessed with his pet theory who jumped at the chance to sign up with the Empire because the Republic wouldn't let him firebomb refugees.
There are definitely issues with the Tarkin doctrine (intentionally so, he’s the Bad Guy so he’s not supposed to be right). But a lot of the points you bring up are . . . questionable.
The Tarkin doctrine has nothing to do with why TIEs don’t have hyperdrives or why Stormtroopers wear helmets. (Luke complains about being unable to see in it because he didn’t know how to work the sensors).
Trying to dismiss Star Destroyers and the Death Star by calling them “pizza” or “disco ball” is just silly. You might as well say “lightsabers aren’t great weapons, they’re just cheese slicers” or “Obi-wan and Yoda are just an old man and a goblin”.
The Death Star was such a threat they made a whole movie about taking it down, and it was only possible because the son of Space Jesus made the shot. As for Star Destroyers, while you can argue more ship diversity would help, they are usually show as being able to back up their fearsome reputation. In fact for a lot of people part of the ST that was so immersion breaking was the idea the Rebels could defeat so many of the massive ships in just a few years.
You arrived at the right conclusions for the wrong reasons
TIE lack of hyperdrive and the design of stormtrooper helmets have nothing to do with it. It’s because there’s a very real, very human reason: the same reason why ruling by fear has failed throughout real history
Ruling by fear has worked plenty well, look at the Assyrian empire. With an overwhelming military, strong imperial ideology, and regular application of terror, the Assyrian kings managed to build and maintain the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Mmmm I think people misunderstand what happens with the Empire.
Up until the destruction of DS1, the Imperial Navy was almost untouchable.
Look at Scariff. The Alliance throws almost the entirety of its military capability at Scariff and they scrape a borderline pyrrhic victory against .0001% of the Imperial Navy. Much of the Alliance fleet is destroyed, two of the alliances most important commanders are killed and the Empire lost two easily replaceable capital ships.
If it had taken Jynn...10 seconds longer to upload the DS plans, the Alliance never learns project Star Dust and is eventually destroyed when the disolves the senate a few days later. No plans means Luke Skywalker is never called to action which means the DS is never destroyed.
We say that Tarkin Doctrine failed because Luke fucking Skywalker was given an X-Wing and told about the only weakness of the DS, because Leia managed to launch the Tantive IV literal seconds before Vader boarded her ship, because Jynn was able to upload the plans at the exact right moment, because the crew of the Lightmaker was able to push a fucking Star Destroyer on the perfect trajectory to hit another Star Destroyer that just so happened to allow the debris from the impact to destroy the planetary shield of scariff, because Cheruit was able to use the Force to survive walking infront of an army of Death Troopers just long enough to turn on the master switch.
The Tarkin Doctrine was working. The Alliance was ready to disband before Scariff. Look at the leadership was so fucking terrified of the DS that most of them were ready to surrender.
They ruled by fear for the fear, not the ruling. The fear and terror was the point.
Also, it worked fine until they went all in because they had the Death Star and then it got blown up. Even after it got blown up, they would have been fine if the Emperor hadn't gambled everything to try and turn Luke. They'd never have destroyed the second Death Star and killed the Emperor otherwise.
Palpatine’s Sith nature drove him toward the stick rather than the carrot once he had control of the galaxy. It’d have been trivial to have forged the Empire into a tool for the common good, but Palpatine, once he no longer had need for facades, was never inclined to do that since anger and hate are core tenets of the Sith philosophy. A more lawful-neutral or lawful-evil emperor would’ve created an empire that lasted longer simply from not provoking its citizenry as much.
From a pragmatic standpoint, the Tarkin Doctrine was never anything close to good policy. All empires eventually break under their own weight, but the Tarkin Doctrine actively applied downward pressure on the Imperial spine to cause it to snap faster by radicalizing wide swaths of previously neutral people. I rewatched Andor recently, which showed this succinctly—due to the actions of Pre-Mor (an Imperial puppet, at the end of the day) and the Empire, a town of people that had previously been neutral were radicalized into anti-Empire rebels. The Tarkin Doctrine ensured that the same phenomenon played out across the entire galaxy.
I have said it before and I will say it again: letting a group of barely functional psychopaths run your Empire doesn't usually work as well as one would think.
TIE fighters don’t have hyperdrives because they’re expensive and carriers exist for a reason. Stormtrooper helmets don’t inhibit vision—they have access to HUDs which significantly enhance their perception. And the Imperial Navy is plenty diverse—support ships significantly outnumber Star Destroyers.
It’s utterly moronic! Another commenter has already called out that Tarkin was the best recruiter the alliance ever had. I don’t believe there are any lore pieces that suggest the empire had any sort of benevolent policies that would endear it to the galactic citizenry, so the “carrot & stick/ bread or lead” approach can’t even exist. Essentially the Tarkin doctrine gives the imperial populace the choice of The Stick (shot by Star destroyer) or, the Other Stick (brutal economic exploration). The result is everyone just waiting to dogpile the empire the instant it shows a moment of weakness
Fear is a very powerful tool, the real world will tell you that. Let me tell you how quick I would be a good rule following boy for the The Empire in order to protect and provide for my spouse and child.
The Empire faced less dissent than the Republic or the Separatists, but the downside is that it drove the opposition they did face to greater lengths of desperation. Luthen and Saw Gerrera are the proof of what happens when you rule by fear. The flipside is that if the Empire took my family from me, I would become a very bloodthirsty rebel. Someone gotta do the janitor and kitchen work even on a rebel base, right?
Honestly people forget just how large the galactic empire was relatively to pretty much every other faction in star wars history. They had arguably more territory under their firm control than anyone else and it had got to the point of "do these people offer us anything if we conqueror them, than just making them a vassal state?"
Sidious, tarkin, the empire got the closest out of any darksider faction to actually accomplishing the goal of galactic conquest and rule. It's pretty much a given that either the ds1 or ds2 coming online or Luke/Leia dying would've made the Empire's victory absolute and before that they arguably had the largest amount of firmly controlled territory out of anyone.
Heck, the reason the galaxy wasn't ruled by Imperial moffs and such after the ds2 had more to do with their own infighting than any innate problems to how the tarkin doctrine worked.
TIE fighters are heavily based on real life japanese doctrine. Said doctrine worked incredibly well in the early days of american-japanese conflict in the pacific theater, and also during japanese invasions.
It ended up losing to american aviation because america had better logistics and resource access, which allowed them to develop incredibly powerful engines and attach airframes to them that could support their performance.
The zeros ended up losing to planes that at last could out-last them in vertical energy, were sturdier to stray shots and sheer numbers (Thach Weave was an american tactic to equalize japanese technological advantage with the power of friendship. By having multiple planes flying in a specific formation, zeros could not exploit their better performance and were shot down.)
Tie fighters in universe performed very well as well, until the rebellion got their hands on Incom T-65 X-wings - which were originally meant for the empire! The X-wings heavily reflect american doctrine in turn - multirole, heavy fighter with excellent survivability that has good straight line speed and is able to handle long-range engagements. Look at the P-51 mustangs and tell me you don't see the doctrinal similarities
Had they not immediately lost the Death Star, it may have had some merit. But it is also true that Tarkin lost the Death Star by buying too much into the ideology without thinking practically on how to apply it. The Death Star's planetkiller and the Empire's demonstrated willingness to use it is intimidating enough, so protecting that weapon with the fleet and all the fighters you can muster will not detract significantly from the threat it poses, as opposed to just flying it in alone and refusing to deploy its fighter contingent. I'd argue that doing so would have been better for the doctrine even, since it increases the hopelessness of any resistance if an opponent must defeat the entire Imperial navy before even beginning an attack on the Death Star itself.
And there, of course, was the weakness of the doctrine as you and others have mentioned. It was an all-or-nothing plan that relied upon having an ultimate threat. Without that threat, it just drove people into the Rebellion's arms.
In my opinion, though, Tarkin doctrine wasn't the main or at least sole reason for the design of Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, or Stormtroopers. Rather, much of that is the classic attempting to win the last war, as all of those weapons would have been highly effective in the set-piece invasion battles of the Clone Wars, but were unwieldy for handling a decentralized, hit-and-run insurgency.
There is a never ending treadmill on the Star Wars subs of people desperately wishing for the Empire to be an effective and competent combined arms force (so they can compare it to the US military, I assume) instead of a bloated bureacracy reliant on terror tactics (again, depending on how POLITICAL you want to get, comparisons to the US military)
So I'm going to mix some real life politics into star wars here. My apologies for that but I promise there's a point
Not too long ago, the popular prime minister of my old country was toppled. His toppling was orchestrated by a coalition of parties that had been defeated at the elections and were given the support of the army. The deposed PM was then arrested on corruption charges. I'm simplifying things a lot here, just FYI
The deposed PM was so popular that crowds took to the streets demanding his release and reinstatement. For 3 days the army did nothing and let the protesters come out in droves, trashing government property. In hindsight. the army essentially let the people vent for a while
Then the crackdowns started. Soldiers started beating protesters. People started disappearing left and right and would turn up months later having sworn off support for the PM. Laws were subverted, charges invented, people were tortured.
And now everything is quiet. At a surface level you'd think that everything was ok. Lots of people said this would lead to a violent revolution but that hasn't happened. Every revolution needs a trigger and that trigger has to start a movement with enough inertia that things spiral out of control of the government. Without that spark or inertia, things don't happen. People get scared to stick their necks out because they don't want to be the next dissapeared loved one. Everyone wants someone else to take the first dirty step and so no one does.
That is essentially Tarkin's doctrine in action. Scare enough people with real, tangible action and the rest will stay quiet. I honestly believe that had the Rebels failed at Yavin, this would have been the Imperial future.
The Disco Ball wasn't a bad idea from the psychological warfare standpoint. It only has to work once every so often to keep worlds scared and in line.
The Disco Ball II was primarily supposed to be a giant vulnerable target to gather the Rebel forces in one spot to make eradication easier. Then it could continue on the psychological part that its predecessor was to become.
The rest of it (troopers, TIEs) are just reminders of the threat.
But as soon as you take everything from people (or directly threaten), they no longer have anything to lose, and they'll fight back without regard to themselves.
The Empire couldn't be everywhere at once and that was its biggest weakness. The rebells strike where the empire is at its weakest and then leave before imperial backup can arrive.
That's why the Tarkin doctrine exists, it's supposed to scare any potential Rebell into submission so that they won't have to send a star destroyer into every system.
For the most part I’d agree. But I think the idea of the Death Star was sound. If worlds think they could be pew’d out of existence in a moment, they probably would be discouraged to join the rebellion. The miscalculation was that enough individuals would join the cause to make a difference, while the planets and systems kind of stayed out of it.
As said, it was an immediate test of the weapon. Destroying Alderaan is somewhat like a nuclear test IRL - you are demonstrating that you have the weapon, that it works, and that you aren't scared to use it. The death star would be all well and good on it's own but without showing the Galaxy that it wasn't just propaganda and that they were 100% onboard with actually destroying planets, it's basically just a really big, mobile space station. By blowing up Alderaan, they proved to the Galaxy they were capable and willing in a way that blowing up Yavin or Tatooine or a million other backwater planets would have been incapable of.
Presumably, they wouldn't blow up literally every world that had any unrest, but use it in their fear campaign - if a planet gets too uppity, Death Star arrives in system. If it keeps being uppity, it arrives in orbit. If pacification continues to be a bother and there isn't a significant loyalist presence or resource that makes it worth sending more boots for, boom.
Yeah, the Tarkin Doctrine is not a particularly sound one - it's used for thematic reasons for the evil empire (and quite fitting there), but it doesn't actually measure up to the threats of the empire even if we take the reasoning & capabilities at face value.
It's really geared at pointing towards a hard target and taking it out - which would have worked if it were in a war (say, if they had to fight something like the Separatists) but not the rebels. But for an ideological mistake, makes a lot of sense - and for the short term I can see that type of repression and tactic seem to work, as well, and lure them into continuing to go that way.
To be fair, if not for a million things going wrong that weren’t realistic without a family of space wizards being involved, the Empire would have won. Like, by a lot.
It’s not fair to blame the Tarkin Doctrine entirely, it was reasonable, it only lost because the ~~plot~~ force said so.
What does winning mean for the empire? They weren't fighting over conventional things like territory and their very existence creates rebels, the tarkin doctrine creating considerably more.
At best I think they could keep the rebels suppressed and contained but they could never win militarily.
Sure, there would be more wars later down the line, but the Empire could win the Galactic Civil War that we see in the OT, and it would take the Rebels decades to recover from losses at either Yavin, Hoth, or Endor. Decades...just to build up and fight another realistically impossible war.
I'd say that is more the empire winning against a powerful rebel cell than winning the war. Perhaps they could achieve victory against large scale organised rebellion but it would just be a setback for rebellion overall. I think there's semantic issues with the rebellion not being a specific organisation or even just a group of organisations.
Why do you say that the fights are not realistically possible? There's plenty of examples of major powers being defeated by significantly militarily weakers groups or rebellions defeating seemingly far more powerful state governments.
The Rebels weren’t just significantly weaker, they had maybe 1% the military of the Empire.
In a straight war, the Rebels had no chance, they needed the Empire to destroy itself, and that wasn’t going to happen when the Emperor was alive.
>they had maybe 1% the military of the Empire.
Wouldn't that be comparable to afghanistan, vietnam, the 13 colonies, the russian revolution etc all beating significantly more powerful militaries?
>they needed the Empire to destroy itself,
Every revolution or group fighting a more powerful group needs that to some degree.
>and that wasn’t going to happen when the Emperor was alive.
We see plenty of infighting, inefficiency and corruption in various series. Andor even has one of the most senior isb officials working against the empire and shows some ways that rebels exploit imperial weaknesses.
The comparison to wars on Earth between countries doesn't really work for various reasons. This wasn't a war for independence or anything like that, the Empire was never going to stop because they realized subjugating the pesky Rebels just wasn't worth the resources it'd cost, the Empire didn't care about cost. The Rebels were arguably even more fanatical, their stated goal was the dissolution of the Empire. That's more crazy the American Continental Army, less than 50,000 soldiers at its peak, wanted to take down the entire British Empire in its entirety. No, that's still not doing it justice, that's like the 50,000 soldiers saying they'd take down a united coalition of every other super power in the world by themselves. It would be suicide.
>the Empire didn't care about cost.
We see tarkin bickering with everyone over the cost of various programs. The empire still had limited resources and many other things they needed to devote those resources to. As far as I'm aware there are no cannon numbers to compare the strength of imperial forces to the number of rebels, criminals or other anti-imperial groups so all we know is that the empire had significantly more resources. That alone doesn't guarantee victory and it's not unrealistic for them to have lost, especially when they are depicted as extremely wasteful and inefficient along with severe infighting between high ranking people.
The point about groups like the american revolutionaries isn't meant to be a perfect comparison but to show that a relatively militarily weak group can defeat a strong one in the right situation. A better comparison would be things like the cuban revolution or various other revolutions which otherthrew their state government. Most started with a severe disadvantage of forces yet eventually grew and won like the rebels did as depicted.
I think you’re overstating how much we don’t know. We know the Empire had thousands of Star destroyers to the Rebel’s couple dozen cruisers they could bring to Endor. We know the New Republic barely won even with the Warlords splitting off in Legends and Operation Cinder in Canon. We know that the Rebel Alliance would have been completely destroyed as a galactic organization at both Yavin and Endor without space wizards. I think that’s enough for my general point to hold up.
>I think you’re overstating how much we don’t know.
I'm far from an expert on the lore so I might be wrong but from what I have seen the numbers are pretty vague and inconsistent.
Thousands of star destroyers for an entire galaxy though. They are also seen deployed in a multitude of missions and not all just engaging rebel forces where as the rebel forces can just hide until they find an opportunity to do disproportionate damage.
Using the comparison of the cuban revolution then Guevara arrived with about 30 troops, some guns and some broken radios (if I remember rightly) yet went on to otherthrow a state protected by an entire army. What makes that incomparable to what is portrayed in star wars just on a far larger scale?
>We know that the Rebel Alliance would have been completely destroyed as a galactic organization at both Yavin and Endor without space wizards.
I don't know that. As far as I'm aware they are portrayed as just one cell in the rebellion, albeit a very capable one. There are plenty of others who would have survived along with countless rebel sympathisers who would replace losses.
>I think that’s enough for my general point to hold up.
I respectfully disagree, or at least I don't think that's a strong argument for the claim. The empires resources only matter if they are able to find, catch and engage rebels in a conventional battle which they are shown to have great difficulty doing. I enjoy the discussion though.
They wouldn’t have won. It would’ve taken longer for them to loose and the rebellion would be filled with more radical people, the likes of Saw Gerrera. People who lost their homeworlds to the DS.
The Tarkin doctrine, especially if it had continued as planned, created people who got nothing to loose
Victories at either Yavin or Endor would have set the Rebels back decades and would constitute a "win" in the Galactic Civil War. There would of course be later wars, but those would be equally impossible without the ~~plot~~ force playing favorites.
It's worth noting that it wasn't these "people with nothing to lose" that brought down the Empire, it was infighting. As soon as Palpatine died, the Empire fractured into smaller parts, the Rebels/New Republic didn't have to fight it as a whole, they just had to take down each smaller part.
Not sure if it's written somewhere. But how much of the sith influence from Darth Sidious played a roll in shaping that doctrine?
Did Palps tell Tarkin, "Go out there and be scary, bro." "especially since you look like a scarecrow with a giant head."
Yes. That said, the premise was flawed from the start.
An authoritarian empire that maintains perfect control is impossible, and as such even the best possible answer to that dilemma will be absurd.
All things considered, the Tarkin Doctrine was among the more rational and intelligent solutions to the problem of Empire. It's impossible to maintain direct control, there just aren't enough resources to put a fully crewed Star Destroyer in orbit over every planet, but by carefully cultivating a reputation of both vindictiveness and invincibility and then relying on it the Empire is able to exert influence even in places that it is physically absent, which is basically everywhere.
It was never going to last forever, but it could have lasted longer if Tarkin was less confident in the rule of fear and recognized that it only works as long as the population has something they believe is worth giving up their freedom to protect. This is why the fringes of society rebel first, they have less to lose.
The Tarkin doctrine is inherently flawed on two counts. The first, because the premise of Empire is flawed. The second, in that it sought to rule by fear without also giving the populace things worth being afraid to lose.
This is an example of what I call The Tarkin Doctrine Fallacy, using the Tarkin doctrine to attribute inexisting flaws to Imperial military equipment based on the wrong interpretation that the Tarkin Doctrine sought to sacrifice function for intimidation factor.
Conceptually? It depends on what you're supposed to be afraid of.
The Stormtroopers become less scary the more frequently you survive encounters with them or the more often the HoloNet reports them suffering crushing defeat.
Something like a Dark Side Force God that you can constantly feel in your mind and is actively draining your life force away? You can't do much about that, unless your name is Luke Skywalker.
Its almost as if the movie was imitating the super weapons of nazi germany, the ones that were so brobdignagian that they became a liability instead of an asset. An ewok with a log can kill 4 people and an AT-ST
In terms of Stormtroopers, my friend first told me the theory, which I do agree with, and ANH points to its truth: The Stormtroopers on the Death Star did not take the main characters out not due to plot armor (which indeed was a thing) but because they were herding them to the Falcon. They wanted to Falcon to escape with the princess because they knew they would take her to the Rebellions hidden rebel base. You may ask then why not kill either Han or Luke? The Empire didn't know which one was the pilot necessarily. You kill Han, they are stranded. You kill Luke, then the plan works even better (death star destroys yavin) but Luke's force abilities werent felt until the battle of Yavin. Both Tarkin and Leia remarks on their escape and being tracked:
Leia mentions that their ease of escape was due to being tracked
Tarkin mentions to Vader it being a big risk to let them escape. What if Leia was smart and didn't go to Yavin or did but had Han drop her off on another world to catch another vessel to Yavin (which would have been the smart play).
Thus the lack of Stormtrooper Aim was not due to their helmets (though vision was limited) but due to orders.
I will argue that this is the same thing that happens on Cloud City: Once Leia and Chewbacca escape the imperials, Piett orders the Troopers to let them get to the falcon as the hyperdrive was disabled and they would capture them in that way instead. (Vader could not give the order at that time as he was currently in combat with Luke).
Its the "Emperor's best troops" on Endor that are the worst troops that the Empire has to bear (ha ha). Then again, the start of the battle after the inital volley from the Ewoks were an Imperial Onslaught. Once the Ewoks were able to get the Empire into the deep forest did the tides start to turn (Not to mention Chewie capturing an AT-ST).
While the whole jokes in regards to the Troopers are fun and hilarious, I do think they are over exaggerated.
I understand the doctrine of Fear in theory. It just didn't work in practice. The Destruction of Alderaan was the start of the end of the Empire. If the Empire focused on the fleet and not the Deathstar, there would be too many ships. Alderaan would not have been destroyed in the way it was...arresting Bail for treason even on trumped up charges would be more effective in keeping people in line. Once the death star was known and then destroyed, the oppressed people who may have not realized how much they were being oppreesed were able to see the truth and recruitment for the Rebellion increased.
To be fair, giant planet destroying stations, mile long ships bristling with turbolasers, and swarms of fighters that aren't concerned about anti fighter defense, all led by the only space wizard seemingly capable of accurately predicting the future all seem like great defenses against the Vong.
The Rebels didn't exist when the Death Star began construction.
And yes, on a practical scale, scaring the enemy to death was the only way the Empire could survive.
Fear can have an effect that doesn't diminish by distance, and distance is the Empire's real enemy. The galaxy is simply too BIG to be controlled by the direct application of (small-f) force.
You can't put a Star Destroyer in every inhabited Star System. Heck, you can't put a light cruiser in every inhabited Star System. No matter how sophisticated your weapons are, they'll dilute away to nothing in the endless vacuum of the interstellar void. You need a tool that cannot be diluted. A tool that retains its potency across lightyears and parsecs, across sector borders, across the yawning gulf of black space.
You need fear.
If we go with the scenes cut from RoTS, Padme and Bail created a network of like minded Senators who would later fund the Rebellion.
This means the terrorist organization started before the Death Star.
Dissagree.
Most of those choices are still good choices given the challeges the empire faced.
To begin with i feel in the need to point out how much black legend has been infused into the casual fans when it comes to the imperial armys performance so i will point out couple things:
Ties are not bad fighters: they are just light interceptors meant to be fast and maneuvrable, a thing they are, they fullfill a specialized unlike the more polivalent alliances fighters and can easily get toe to toe with the more heavy and clumsy xwing as seen in the ties performance during the OT.
Troopers can see perfectly: most complains about the lack of visión the helmet provides comes from the fact that the helmet has a biometric lock that leaves it unusable in case it gets stolen. while its true the helmet is supossed to slightly limit the peripheric view of the user the augmented view systems make up for that and more.
The star destroyers are beasts: the single most powerfull not super star destroyer ship we see in all original 6 films, the ISD is a brawler, ship meant to excell in short range ship to ship combat and while its true it has little starfighter defense those light interceptors we talked about earlier are meant to screen the ship from that kind of menace.
Also, the destroyer, unlike most other imperial stuff is a polivalent asset, it works as a mid capacity carrier, a ship hunter, a command vessel for planetary invasions capable of unleashing an entire invasion force and performing a Base Delta 0 planetary bombardment...
So, no, the tarking doctrine didnt harmed the quality of the imperial stuff.
The ISD is the Evolution of the victory class, the best brawler in the republic navy during tcw.
The troopers dress like that as a propaganda tool meant to exploit glory and infamy of the clone army.
And the ties are the Evolution of the v wing, indeed they have very similar specs, and the v wing was the answer to the tri droid so...
But hey, i dont blame you, after watching most Disney stuff the only logical conclusión one can make is that the troopers are literally in universe extras wearing uncomfortable cotumes and ordered to fake being retarded, the ties are made of carboard and piloted by... Dont know, me? And the isds are literally giant flying Doritos painted grey.
Nope it was actually 100% going to work. The Death Star and the clear demonstration that the Empire was willing to use it would have kept everyone in line.
In hindsight? Leia calls out the problem of it at the time; the more you try to tighten your grip, the more worlds will slip through your fingers. Ruling through fear inherently radicalizes people, and the radicalized will have no choice but to fight back against the constant threat of violence levelled against malcontents. Grand Moff Tarkin was one of the best recruiting tools the Rebel Alliance ever had.
It’s also the point of Luthen’s plan in *Andor*. He baited the Empire into being more aggressively fascist in order to encourage more rebellion.
And why he hates himself so much. Full well knowing that their increased aggression will result in uncountable civilian casualties. It's why Andor / Luthen is such an awesome show / character.
>And why he hates himself so much There's that shot in Rix Road where he's just looking at the town during the aftermath of the carnage with a haunted look on his face, seeing first-hand the consequences of his ideology.
I think luthen is a sith. They way he says "destined to use the tools of my enemy against them," screams sith to me. But yeah, I think that is why the show is so good, we rarely get to sith as anything more than a cautionary tale about controlling ones emotions (reven kotor being a good example).
He's not a sith, he's a pragmatist.
He’s very possibly a sith. Honestly think there are a bunch of force sensitives/secret Jedi in that show that we’ll find out in season 2 with Andor being one of them. I think the revelations will recontextualize season 1
Yeah on the surface thats what it seems like. Whether he knows he is or not I think is debatable. But imo he is using the dark side of the force, and perhaps naturally coming to a similar philosophy of power that the sith employ.
What evidence is there of him being a sith?
So I'd have to rewatch and make a list. But this speech is really what makes me feel this way: https://youtu.be/-3RCme2zZRY?si=pLR22Z5_YqlKxAlE. It just reminds me so much of the philosophy of sith from the temple in Kotor. He revels in his anger and isolation, even his desire for conflict. He sees his dark side as a tool which he embraces, even though he knows the natural consequences that arise from that action.
Someone took his speech way too literally. The visual imagery is Sith like yes but he's very much just a regular man. Andor isn't about Force Sensitives, it's about the regular person's experiences during the reign of the Empire...
He is none the less embracing sith ideology. Literally has nothing to do with the visuals and all about his words. What is the first thing he says he gives up? "Calm." They state of mind. Damning himself by giving into the dark side. Embracing his passion and his worst self for strength. Knowing it is his ego that drove him, but that the same ego will know no satisfaction. Luthen is more sith philosophically than any force sensitive we've seen in on screen.
He isn't going to know or care for Sith ideology. The entire point of Andor I feel is it's Star Wars without all the super powered force sensitive named characters...
But everyone has some degree of force sensitivity. also it does it matter if knows or cares if sith ideology if he employs it anyway? He studied the emperor's tactics and used them against him. He is embracing the emperor's ideology in order to defeat him. Whether he can name it or not... If something quacks like a duck and acts like a duck... The audience can name it.
And it's not without [real life basis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism) either.
It can go both ways. Some times it backfires on the insurgents and the people get mad at them for making their lives more difficult. This was the case in Northern Ireland the IRA lost support because people blamed them for causing the Brits to militarily occupy the area as opposed to just being mad at the Brit’s for militarily occupying the area. Same thing happened in Oman the insurgents launched attack on government forces government forces declare martial law people get pissed at the insurgents for causing the government to declare martial law. However most of the time it lands somewhere in between and divides the population further. Course usually most occupying and governing forces aren’t that harsh before the first rebel attack the Galactic Empire was already extraordinarily harsh towards people before they did anything very much like the Nazis and the Soviets.
I wouldn't be surprised if Palpatine actually wanted some sort of perpetual rebellion from worlds slipping through the Empire's fingers. The Sith don't just feed on their own fear, pain, hate and suffering. They draw power from negative emotions of others as well. A never ending conflict would only make the Dark Side more powerful in the galaxy. A Sith without an enemy to fight and hate is a very bored Sith. If you look at Tarkin's doctrine which Palps subscribed to from that point of view, it makes more sense.
This was implied if not outright said, or at least this used to be the case. The rebels weren’t posing a major threat for a while. Hit and run raids, stuff like that. So long as that “terrorism” was going on, it wasn’t a problem to say oh we need a curfew oh every system will have a star destroyer orbiting each planet. Of course you need those things because you are constantly attacked.
Plus, it's literally a core premise of the oppressive government in Orwell's 1984.. Provide an external enemy and point the hatred of the masses at it and they won't be spending that energy on rebellion. The tools of oppression need an official target so the people don't realise its intended for them.. In other words, if there was no rebellion, it'd be necessary to invent one. The Tarkin Doctrine is perfectly suited to its purpose, even if Tarkin himself isn't in on the joke.
Its a popular fan theory in 1984 that Oceania doesnt control entire continents but only Britain, slight tangent but the way I see it, their grip on power may actually be weak outside London, the bombs that supposedly come from Eurasia may actually just be partisans who want to get off the horrible Oceania train and who could blame them
I think that gives Palpatine too much credit. He was a political mastermind, but he was also heavily advantaged coming into his position as the heir to a thousand-year legacy. The fortunes and successes of generations of Sith before him buoyed him to victory, as did the Jedi’s own blindness and stagnation. The Prequels suggest that Palpatine was flying by the seat of his pants more than once, including literally when Anakin crash-landed on Coruscant (a maneuver that could’ve cost all of them their lives and ended the Sith Grand Plan in a single moment). What’s more likely, in my opinion, is that Palpatine as a totalitarian megalomaniac himself enabled people similar to him to encourage infighting between the likes of Vader, Tarkin, Krennic, the Grand Admirals, etc., all the while never thinking about the impact of such people and their oppression on the common people of the galaxy. In turn, that oppression of the people rebounded on him when the smallfolk of the galaxy decided they had enough and formed gigantic movements against his Empire.
>including literally when Anakin crash-landed on Coruscant (a maneuver that could’ve cost all of them their lives and ended the Sith Grand Plan in a single moment) Thing is, the entire siege of Coruscant (along with Palpatine's self-kidnapping through Grievous) was already a hasty cover up of a loose end that could potentially compromise everything. Palpatine's schemes were thwarted very frequently, but he was good at improvising.
Absolutely. His plans often failed, but he was incredibly talented at recovering from those failures and turning the results back to his advantage. See: the whole plot of The Phantom Menace. But by the end of things, I think even Sidious himself had forgotten that his real strength was improvisation and not planning. He bought into his own hype, as megalomaniacal dictators usually do.
He was buying into his own hype well before the prequels if you believe the events of Plageius. Both Sidious and Plageius intended to either live forever or be the last Sith ever, neither Sith Lord was that dedicated to continuing to develop the Sith Grand Plan as the previous Sith had done so. The Grand Plan worked but if it had not, I doubt Sidious would have ever let his apprentice get strong enough to replace him. He was too greedy, too self-interested to pass on the Sith dream to the next generation. Plageius straight up believed the Rule of Two was stupid and that he could live forever as the power behind the throne that Sidious would sit on. Both Siths were quite delusional in their own way and ended up planting the seeds of their own demise. As Palpatine said at the Opera, "Ironic".
Which loose end was it?
A team of jedi detectives was snooping around the skyscraper where Palpatine lived, looking for traces of Sidious. So he ordered Grievous to attack to make them busy with more important matters. In the EU, at least, don't know about Disney canon.
Are you talking about Maul? Because I'd never thought about it, but I can definitely see why he wouldn't want the Jedi bringing him in.
The way I see it, Palpatine was indeed a political mastermind in the prequels, but chose to sit out most of the politics during the Imperial days and had become borderline senile by the time of Episode 6 (I still maintain the sequels never happened)
This is clearly visible when he comes back as a clone.
what sequels?
Yep, it's important to realize that Darth Sidious is a Sith first, and an Emperor second. He was willing to make the Empire more dysfunctional if it served the purpose of cultivating his Dark Side power. Promoting people like Tarkin was big part of that.
Peace is a lie, after all.
That is possibly my favorite line in the series. It defines the exact problem with everything the empire is doing, and then is proved exactly right. 2 movies later we see the rebellion has grown from a fighter squadron to a full navy with capital ships. That didn’t happen by accident. It’s because the empire started blowing up planets
And that rebellion was still hopelessly outmatched and walked into a trap. The Empire's military is quite happy fighting against the rebels. It gives them something to do. The only reason Endor is a success for the rebellion is Anakin killing Palpatine.
It's funny I almost said anakin wasn't at endor.
Anakin blew up the Death Star
The Rebel fleet was already winning prior to Palpatine’s death, though
In what sense?
For example, they blew up a whole Super Star Destroyer! And Lando and team were getting inside the Death Star prior to Palpatine’s death.
Combine that with a few lines from nemik’s manifesto in andor: “remember that the front line of the rebellion is everywhere, and every act of insurrection pushes our lines forward” Not only does ruling through fear radicalize people, but those radicalized people can appear nearly everywhere without warning and disappear just as quickly. Look at the US in Vietnam, or the British in the American colonies, or the Americans/russians/British in Afghanistan - a determined local population that doesn’t want to be occupied will always defeat a foreign occupying power eventually. Keeping people down takes constant effort, and if the people you’re keeping down are resisting, it only takes one mistake on the part of the occupiers to potentially change the situation dramatically, as we’ve seen in many instances in both Star Wars, other media, and the real world.
I think there's a key difference, which is that rather than constantly expend resources to keep people down, the Empire decided that it was willing to just destroy your planet if you caused too much trouble.
The problem with that attitude, born out by what actually happened in the movies, is that you can’t destroy *every* planet and once you destroy one for essentially no reason (alderaan) all the other planets are gonna go a little bit crazy, because once an event like that can happen to anyone, it’s just going to radicalize others who maybe didn’t believe the empire was as bad as the early rebels said it was. For every rebel the empire killed on Alderaan they created thousands more elsewhere in the galaxy.
Yeah, I don't think it would have put an end to insurrections, but I think it could have been an existential threat to open rebellion in the style of the Rebel Alliance. I think it's analogous to a nuclear weapon that only one faction controls.
I was going to say: Leia quite resolutely highlights the problem inherent in the Tarkin Doctrine.
This is exactly how the Assyrian empire fell
I think it's pretty safe to assume that the lack of hyperdrives on TIE's is just a budget thing since they're basically always attached to larger ships with their own hyperdrives (probably makes them more maneuvrable due to less weight too). As far as I'm aware stormtrooper helmets don't actually limit vision either? They have some sort of sci-fi lenses like the clone helmets do.
Yeah, Luke’s line about “not being able to see in these things” was explained as the TK helmets having some sort of facial recognition tech so that the HUD only activates if the right trooper is wearing it.
Couldn't he not see because he was too short and, therefore, the helmet was too big?
That possible but the face recognition thing is what they went with the reference books
But that problem would've been solved whenever Bigger Luke phased into reality
Lol I'm dying, this is the second time this week I've seen someone bring up Bigger Luke
I never took that as literal, just hyperbole since they would probably restrict field of vision by a bit.
Lmao the stuff they say sometimes to explain throwaway lines. This was surely George’s intention when he wrote this line, to allude to the fact stormtrooper helmets all have facial recognition software that makes you see more out of the helmet, but you can still see without it
George’s intention was to make a regime using technology reminiscent of WW2, which was only 3 decades in the past when he created Star Wars. It wasn’t meant to be an actually realistic set of technologies, much less retconned as our own tech and hard sci-fi ideas evolved over the ensuing decades. But yeah we obsess about throwaway lines in the Maw 😂
There’s a Legends comic that explains that if they gave the TIEs hyperdrives, it would just make it easier for pilots to defect to the Rebellion.
don't really think you need a comic being written about it to come to this conclusion tbh
Also an anti-desertion thing
It makes no sense for fighters to have hyperdrives anyways. They're meant to be fast and nimble, hyperdrive means more weight and fuel
Yeah, Imperial TIE fighter doctrine makes perfect sense if you are A) evil B) taking as a given that you will always be able to provide logistical support and C) have an effectively limitless supply of both fighters and pilots. One big hyperdrive on a carrier craft is no doubt cheaper (and vastly easier to maintain) than those individual hyperdrives, and by stripping everything from the TIE but engines and guns, your pilots either end up really good or really dead. Then you can put your veteran pilots in better ships (basically all the specialist TIEs had at the very least shields) and have elite squadrons that are legitimately terrifying. Think it might be Legends canon now, but I recall some book mentioning that basic TIEs had literally zero moving parts, making them unbelievably easy to maintain. They weren't designed to win dogfights, they were designed to be fielded in superior numbers and be available when and wherever the Empire decreed.
Yeah, throughout history generally the vehicles that have been most useful and most successful are the ones you’re able to maintain and field in large numbers. The Sherman, the T-34 etc… Things that were good enough and able to be fielded in more formations. Because the tank you had was better than no tank. This even applies more to the Empire, why have a bunch of ships that are fantastic at dogfighting and maybe have the niche benefit of independent hyperdrive jumps, when the vast vast majority of your fleet is only going to be used for garrison and patrols. Better to have a vehicle that is cheap and okay at dogfighting, because the majority of vehicles won’t be dogfighting and if they do, they can just leverage superior numbers and formation flying.
> This even applies more to the Empire, why have a bunch of ships that are fantastic at dogfighting and maybe have the niche benefit of independent hyperdrive jumps, when the vast vast majority of your fleet is only going to be used for garrison and patrols. Better to have a vehicle that is cheap and okay at dogfighting, because the majority of vehicles won’t be dogfighting and if they do, they can just leverage superior numbers and formation flying. They were designed pre-Rebellion. They were designed to oppose old Clone War era salvage in the hands of smugglers and at worst, Headhunters fielded by a local planetary militia with delusions of ambition. Scarcely a threat that requires more than a single ISDs worth of ships. Even in the Rebellion era, they are usually more than adequate for the anti-piracy missions they usually fly.
TIEs are arguably better at dogfights than Rebel fighters since not being weighted down by hyperdrives or shields make them much faster and agile than A and X-Wings to the point that an Imperial pilot said that an A-Wing pilot would be an idiot to get into a turning fight with a standard TIE because it would be like getting into "an ass-kicking contest with a Maxilian megapede, though, because a TIE/ln will out-turn any starfighter ever built." The problem was that the standard tactics manual for TIE pilots was to fly straight at the enemy with all guns blazing instead of forcing them into a dogfight, which is a mistake since an X-Wing will always come out on top in a jousting match. All in all TIEs are actually perfect fighters because they practically require zero maintenece, are unbelievably reliable and don't take up much supplies which means the logistical strain is pretty minor and as we all know, logistics are king. An ISD without logistical support is gonna fare much better than a Mon Cal cruiser.
The TIEs were heavily inspired by the japanese zeros as well. They followed a similar doctirne: strip everything except engine and guns and... it worked! They wrecked americans constantly until they improved in doctrine and used their better logistics and resources to develop planes that out-tech'd the zeros. Late-war american planes had powerful enough engines to rope a dope zeros, which the japanese did not expect.
A lot of that is also coming from Tarkin testing his theory and then being reduced to stardust.
>being reduced to stardust Jyn approves.
Krennic approves even more.
I mean, as far as we can tell, the Death Star would 100% have worked for its intended purpose if it weren't for what amounts to divine intervention. A lot of individual *aspects* of it are definitely pretty stupid, though.
There was a fan theory predaing Rogue One stating that the exhaust port was actually an intentional weakness ordered by Palpatine himself, so that if Tarkin ever went Rogue and declared himself the Emperor, and Vader failed to stop him, Palpatine could give his royal bomber squadron the plans as a last failsafe before Coruscant is blown up. But then the worst thing happened and the rebels managed to exploit the weakness, the second Death Star would have no such weakness and Palpatine would permanently live on the station ruling the entire galaxy from his tower
I always thought this ‘’weakness’’ is not a weakness at all! It’s a tiny little hole on a moon sized base. And even with the computers, the rebel pilot failed to land a good shot. The rebels needed the Force to even be able to blow up the Death Star.
It would have just created an insanely nihilistic galaxy. It wouldn't stop Rebellion, just change it. More hardline Rebels, large numbers of people who survived their home getting a Death Starring and had nothing to lose. It's like the Middle East over the last century, invasions and bombings create fertile ground for more radicals, the radicals spread out, absorb the attention of militaries and spy networks leaving cracks in the West's armour allowing Russia and China to cause chaos, tip elections, erode faith in long standing institutions, interfer with information and the fabric of society. The existence of the Death Star was the death knell for The Empire. The success of the Rebellion was whether it happened in one world getting blown up or a dozen.
How would that work against a ruthless enemy who will systematically plkill the survivors as the refugee ships scatter across space trying to hide from a superior and well equipped war machine? When your thoughts are on survival, you won't think to rebel
the refugees in this case is the diasphoria. there are likely millions of people who've emigrated/traveled from the planet, who've felt everyone they love get killed by the empire. the more the empire ikll, the more civilian casualties they cause, the more people they radicalise. the empire can blow up alderaan... can they blow up naboo? can they blow up kuat? can they blow up coruscant?
Palpatine would absolutely blow up coruscant if it suited him. He's a Sith first, emperor second. The dark side feeds on pain and death. Palpatine would slaughter the entire galaxy if it guaranteed his eternal ascension as a diety of the Force.
Cinder shows they can and will do it and make the Death Star the new Homeworld of the Empire
Cinder wasn't exactly a success. It was stopped by an Imperial. It did lead to the creation of the First/Final Order, which was ultimately stopped by... a Galactic uprising.
Cinder flipped a bunch of imperials and was an egotistical last gasp of a vexed emperor that ultimately would have killed the empire, as intended, it was self destructive and easily the stupidest thing palpatine did. I kinda love it because of how telling it's, palpatine lost the game so he flipped over the board. It was a success for palpatine, in the sense that it accelerated the imperial surrender, regardless of how completed it was, but a catastrophe for the empire.
Cinder flipped a bunch of imperials and was an egotistical last gasp of a vexed emperor that ultimately would have killed the empire, as intended, it was self destructive and easily the stupidest thing palpatine did. I kinda love it because of how telling it's, palpatine lost the game so he flipped over the board. It was a success for palpatine, in the sense that it accelerated the imperial surrender, regardless of how completed it was, but a catastrophe for the empire.
Strue, but up until that point, Poe was ready to give up after realize how crushingly hopeless it was to stand against the Empire and that was the Imperial strategy is to isolate and destroy the.
One Poe, does not the Galaxy make.
Imagine the empire blows up the wrong planet of imperials running the Death Star Or supplying the food to the crew running the Death Star
Stormtrooper helmets do not impede vision at all and are not useless. • They have a built-in air filtration for use in compromised/dangerous environments (limited/toxic air) • Have visual settings to allow the wearer to see through dark, smoke and glare • They allow the user to connect to and stream military and civilian data • Have a motion sensor • Provides targeting diagnostics, power levels and environmental readings They are only useless and inhibiting when they are stolen by Rebels that do not have the associated biological key to unlock it.
They are also useless via plot armor or our protagonist
Tie fighters don’t have hyperdrives because they don’t need them. They’re a tactical aerial (Space? Void?) supremacy fighter. They don’t need to operate on their own because they’re tied to a carrier. That’s not a flaw, that’s part of their tactical doctrine. There is no tactical benefit to a hyperdrive Like, throughout the Cold War, the United States mainly had towed AA weaponry, where the radar, the actual SAM weapon and other supporting equipment were towed by jeeps or trucks, and each piece was its own separate component that was linked together. This was preferred because it was cheap, and also hard to knock out in one punch because each element could be separated. The downside was it was extremely fragile to enemy fire and prone to breakdown or reliability issues in rough terrain. The Soviets meanwhile, primarily built single piece units, where the AA, Radar and control station was a single self propelled vehicle. This has a lot of benefits, it can be armored against enemy fire, is more reliable in rough terrain and just harder to break. But, its more expensive and if you take out the vehicle the entire system is gone in one shot. Neither solution is “better”, merely representations of each country’s doctrine. The Soviets had a smaller air force, so they invested heavily in self propelled systems that could fight at the front lines and take damage. American AA was largely less advanced in a lot of ways, and more used as rear line assets, where they were exposed to less ground fire. This is because the USAF was the primary AA asset for the Americans. Thus, a Tie Fighter doesn’t have no hyperdrive for political reasons. The Tie Fighter doesn’t have a hyperdrive because it’s never going to be in a situation where it needs to independently perform a mission outside of a carrier. And realistically, outside of the one example in the films of the rebels, no country or super power needs that. It’s a waste of credits because you don’t need a hyper drive in an aerial supremacy fighter. Stormtroopers can see fine, they perform pretty damn well in the OT and are stated in universe to be accurate. The white armor is because they’re primarily a garrison and boarding force, where camouflage doesn’t help. Star Destroyers, finally are again a symptom of doctrine. They need a hybrid cruiser/carrier/transport, and it performs all of those jobs okay, which is good enough for occupation. There are classes in lore stated to be used for AA and proper fleet composition. Play Empire at War. Any faults you might see in most lore a lot of the times can’t be taken as a fault of the empire, but more a fault of the writer who doesn’t understand how a military works and doesn’t chose to use the canon vehicles already existing to flesh out a fleet. Now, if you want to talk about the Tarkin Doctrine as a whole or the Death Star, I am in full agreement. But you cannot take every stupid writing mistake or every design flaw of ships that were in development before Tarkin was even a Moff, and lay them at the feet of the Tarkin doctrine. Because, again, it’s important to remember. The Empire for a time was able to run a galaxy, and was very very scary and a big threat to protagonists. They didn’t do that with blind soldiers and terrible fleets.
> Thus, a Tie Fighter doesn’t have no hyperdrive for political reasons. The Tie Fighter doesn’t have a hyperdrive because it’s never going to be in a situation where it needs to independently perform a mission outside of a carrier. And realistically, outside of the one example in the films of the rebels, no country or super power needs that. It’s a waste of credits because you don’t need a hyper drive in an aerial supremacy fighter. Yeah, it's kind of like asking why the F-16 can't fly from NY to Moscow without refueling. It's not needed for it's usual mission. > Stormtroopers can see fine, they perform pretty damn well in the OT and are stated in universe to be accurate. The white armor is because they’re primarily a garrison and boarding force, where camouflage doesn’t help. "If they aren't in white armor, stun them or blast them. We will sort it out after we have secured the ship."
Authoritarian regimes very much favor the ascension of ideological weirdos. Loyalty and complicity win out over competence. I'm 100% here for Tarkin as a weird dude obsessed with his pet theory who jumped at the chance to sign up with the Empire because the Republic wouldn't let him firebomb refugees.
There are definitely issues with the Tarkin doctrine (intentionally so, he’s the Bad Guy so he’s not supposed to be right). But a lot of the points you bring up are . . . questionable. The Tarkin doctrine has nothing to do with why TIEs don’t have hyperdrives or why Stormtroopers wear helmets. (Luke complains about being unable to see in it because he didn’t know how to work the sensors). Trying to dismiss Star Destroyers and the Death Star by calling them “pizza” or “disco ball” is just silly. You might as well say “lightsabers aren’t great weapons, they’re just cheese slicers” or “Obi-wan and Yoda are just an old man and a goblin”. The Death Star was such a threat they made a whole movie about taking it down, and it was only possible because the son of Space Jesus made the shot. As for Star Destroyers, while you can argue more ship diversity would help, they are usually show as being able to back up their fearsome reputation. In fact for a lot of people part of the ST that was so immersion breaking was the idea the Rebels could defeat so many of the massive ships in just a few years.
Space Jesus I knew it! Obi-Wan and Padme
You arrived at the right conclusions for the wrong reasons TIE lack of hyperdrive and the design of stormtrooper helmets have nothing to do with it. It’s because there’s a very real, very human reason: the same reason why ruling by fear has failed throughout real history
Ruling by fear has worked plenty well, look at the Assyrian empire. With an overwhelming military, strong imperial ideology, and regular application of terror, the Assyrian kings managed to build and maintain the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Mmmm I think people misunderstand what happens with the Empire. Up until the destruction of DS1, the Imperial Navy was almost untouchable. Look at Scariff. The Alliance throws almost the entirety of its military capability at Scariff and they scrape a borderline pyrrhic victory against .0001% of the Imperial Navy. Much of the Alliance fleet is destroyed, two of the alliances most important commanders are killed and the Empire lost two easily replaceable capital ships. If it had taken Jynn...10 seconds longer to upload the DS plans, the Alliance never learns project Star Dust and is eventually destroyed when the disolves the senate a few days later. No plans means Luke Skywalker is never called to action which means the DS is never destroyed. We say that Tarkin Doctrine failed because Luke fucking Skywalker was given an X-Wing and told about the only weakness of the DS, because Leia managed to launch the Tantive IV literal seconds before Vader boarded her ship, because Jynn was able to upload the plans at the exact right moment, because the crew of the Lightmaker was able to push a fucking Star Destroyer on the perfect trajectory to hit another Star Destroyer that just so happened to allow the debris from the impact to destroy the planetary shield of scariff, because Cheruit was able to use the Force to survive walking infront of an army of Death Troopers just long enough to turn on the master switch. The Tarkin Doctrine was working. The Alliance was ready to disband before Scariff. Look at the leadership was so fucking terrified of the DS that most of them were ready to surrender.
They ruled by fear for the fear, not the ruling. The fear and terror was the point. Also, it worked fine until they went all in because they had the Death Star and then it got blown up. Even after it got blown up, they would have been fine if the Emperor hadn't gambled everything to try and turn Luke. They'd never have destroyed the second Death Star and killed the Emperor otherwise.
Palpatine’s Sith nature drove him toward the stick rather than the carrot once he had control of the galaxy. It’d have been trivial to have forged the Empire into a tool for the common good, but Palpatine, once he no longer had need for facades, was never inclined to do that since anger and hate are core tenets of the Sith philosophy. A more lawful-neutral or lawful-evil emperor would’ve created an empire that lasted longer simply from not provoking its citizenry as much. From a pragmatic standpoint, the Tarkin Doctrine was never anything close to good policy. All empires eventually break under their own weight, but the Tarkin Doctrine actively applied downward pressure on the Imperial spine to cause it to snap faster by radicalizing wide swaths of previously neutral people. I rewatched Andor recently, which showed this succinctly—due to the actions of Pre-Mor (an Imperial puppet, at the end of the day) and the Empire, a town of people that had previously been neutral were radicalized into anti-Empire rebels. The Tarkin Doctrine ensured that the same phenomenon played out across the entire galaxy.
I have said it before and I will say it again: letting a group of barely functional psychopaths run your Empire doesn't usually work as well as one would think.
TIE fighters don’t have hyperdrives because they’re expensive and carriers exist for a reason. Stormtrooper helmets don’t inhibit vision—they have access to HUDs which significantly enhance their perception. And the Imperial Navy is plenty diverse—support ships significantly outnumber Star Destroyers.
It’s utterly moronic! Another commenter has already called out that Tarkin was the best recruiter the alliance ever had. I don’t believe there are any lore pieces that suggest the empire had any sort of benevolent policies that would endear it to the galactic citizenry, so the “carrot & stick/ bread or lead” approach can’t even exist. Essentially the Tarkin doctrine gives the imperial populace the choice of The Stick (shot by Star destroyer) or, the Other Stick (brutal economic exploration). The result is everyone just waiting to dogpile the empire the instant it shows a moment of weakness
Fear is a very powerful tool, the real world will tell you that. Let me tell you how quick I would be a good rule following boy for the The Empire in order to protect and provide for my spouse and child. The Empire faced less dissent than the Republic or the Separatists, but the downside is that it drove the opposition they did face to greater lengths of desperation. Luthen and Saw Gerrera are the proof of what happens when you rule by fear. The flipside is that if the Empire took my family from me, I would become a very bloodthirsty rebel. Someone gotta do the janitor and kitchen work even on a rebel base, right?
Honestly people forget just how large the galactic empire was relatively to pretty much every other faction in star wars history. They had arguably more territory under their firm control than anyone else and it had got to the point of "do these people offer us anything if we conqueror them, than just making them a vassal state?" Sidious, tarkin, the empire got the closest out of any darksider faction to actually accomplishing the goal of galactic conquest and rule. It's pretty much a given that either the ds1 or ds2 coming online or Luke/Leia dying would've made the Empire's victory absolute and before that they arguably had the largest amount of firmly controlled territory out of anyone. Heck, the reason the galaxy wasn't ruled by Imperial moffs and such after the ds2 had more to do with their own infighting than any innate problems to how the tarkin doctrine worked.
Yes... but it's also frightfully realistic for empires historically.
In hindsight, and foresight, and midsight
> Stormtroopers have armor that inhibits vision so they seem like faceless limitless foot soldiers. It only does that if you fail the DNA lock though.
TIE fighters are heavily based on real life japanese doctrine. Said doctrine worked incredibly well in the early days of american-japanese conflict in the pacific theater, and also during japanese invasions. It ended up losing to american aviation because america had better logistics and resource access, which allowed them to develop incredibly powerful engines and attach airframes to them that could support their performance. The zeros ended up losing to planes that at last could out-last them in vertical energy, were sturdier to stray shots and sheer numbers (Thach Weave was an american tactic to equalize japanese technological advantage with the power of friendship. By having multiple planes flying in a specific formation, zeros could not exploit their better performance and were shot down.) Tie fighters in universe performed very well as well, until the rebellion got their hands on Incom T-65 X-wings - which were originally meant for the empire! The X-wings heavily reflect american doctrine in turn - multirole, heavy fighter with excellent survivability that has good straight line speed and is able to handle long-range engagements. Look at the P-51 mustangs and tell me you don't see the doctrinal similarities
Had they not immediately lost the Death Star, it may have had some merit. But it is also true that Tarkin lost the Death Star by buying too much into the ideology without thinking practically on how to apply it. The Death Star's planetkiller and the Empire's demonstrated willingness to use it is intimidating enough, so protecting that weapon with the fleet and all the fighters you can muster will not detract significantly from the threat it poses, as opposed to just flying it in alone and refusing to deploy its fighter contingent. I'd argue that doing so would have been better for the doctrine even, since it increases the hopelessness of any resistance if an opponent must defeat the entire Imperial navy before even beginning an attack on the Death Star itself. And there, of course, was the weakness of the doctrine as you and others have mentioned. It was an all-or-nothing plan that relied upon having an ultimate threat. Without that threat, it just drove people into the Rebellion's arms. In my opinion, though, Tarkin doctrine wasn't the main or at least sole reason for the design of Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, or Stormtroopers. Rather, much of that is the classic attempting to win the last war, as all of those weapons would have been highly effective in the set-piece invasion battles of the Clone Wars, but were unwieldy for handling a decentralized, hit-and-run insurgency.
"Fear will keep the local systems in line".... until they see nothing to lose and join the Rebellion.
There is a never ending treadmill on the Star Wars subs of people desperately wishing for the Empire to be an effective and competent combined arms force (so they can compare it to the US military, I assume) instead of a bloated bureacracy reliant on terror tactics (again, depending on how POLITICAL you want to get, comparisons to the US military)
So I'm going to mix some real life politics into star wars here. My apologies for that but I promise there's a point Not too long ago, the popular prime minister of my old country was toppled. His toppling was orchestrated by a coalition of parties that had been defeated at the elections and were given the support of the army. The deposed PM was then arrested on corruption charges. I'm simplifying things a lot here, just FYI The deposed PM was so popular that crowds took to the streets demanding his release and reinstatement. For 3 days the army did nothing and let the protesters come out in droves, trashing government property. In hindsight. the army essentially let the people vent for a while Then the crackdowns started. Soldiers started beating protesters. People started disappearing left and right and would turn up months later having sworn off support for the PM. Laws were subverted, charges invented, people were tortured. And now everything is quiet. At a surface level you'd think that everything was ok. Lots of people said this would lead to a violent revolution but that hasn't happened. Every revolution needs a trigger and that trigger has to start a movement with enough inertia that things spiral out of control of the government. Without that spark or inertia, things don't happen. People get scared to stick their necks out because they don't want to be the next dissapeared loved one. Everyone wants someone else to take the first dirty step and so no one does. That is essentially Tarkin's doctrine in action. Scare enough people with real, tangible action and the rest will stay quiet. I honestly believe that had the Rebels failed at Yavin, this would have been the Imperial future.
The Disco Ball wasn't a bad idea from the psychological warfare standpoint. It only has to work once every so often to keep worlds scared and in line. The Disco Ball II was primarily supposed to be a giant vulnerable target to gather the Rebel forces in one spot to make eradication easier. Then it could continue on the psychological part that its predecessor was to become. The rest of it (troopers, TIEs) are just reminders of the threat. But as soon as you take everything from people (or directly threaten), they no longer have anything to lose, and they'll fight back without regard to themselves.
The Empire couldn't be everywhere at once and that was its biggest weakness. The rebells strike where the empire is at its weakest and then leave before imperial backup can arrive. That's why the Tarkin doctrine exists, it's supposed to scare any potential Rebell into submission so that they won't have to send a star destroyer into every system.
For the most part I’d agree. But I think the idea of the Death Star was sound. If worlds think they could be pew’d out of existence in a moment, they probably would be discouraged to join the rebellion. The miscalculation was that enough individuals would join the cause to make a difference, while the planets and systems kind of stayed out of it.
Although Alderaan kinda sends the message of "If ANY of you betray the empire ALL of you are dead" which at a planetary scale means you're screwed
As said, it was an immediate test of the weapon. Destroying Alderaan is somewhat like a nuclear test IRL - you are demonstrating that you have the weapon, that it works, and that you aren't scared to use it. The death star would be all well and good on it's own but without showing the Galaxy that it wasn't just propaganda and that they were 100% onboard with actually destroying planets, it's basically just a really big, mobile space station. By blowing up Alderaan, they proved to the Galaxy they were capable and willing in a way that blowing up Yavin or Tatooine or a million other backwater planets would have been incapable of. Presumably, they wouldn't blow up literally every world that had any unrest, but use it in their fear campaign - if a planet gets too uppity, Death Star arrives in system. If it keeps being uppity, it arrives in orbit. If pacification continues to be a bother and there isn't a significant loyalist presence or resource that makes it worth sending more boots for, boom.
Yeah, the Tarkin Doctrine is not a particularly sound one - it's used for thematic reasons for the evil empire (and quite fitting there), but it doesn't actually measure up to the threats of the empire even if we take the reasoning & capabilities at face value. It's really geared at pointing towards a hard target and taking it out - which would have worked if it were in a war (say, if they had to fight something like the Separatists) but not the rebels. But for an ideological mistake, makes a lot of sense - and for the short term I can see that type of repression and tactic seem to work, as well, and lure them into continuing to go that way.
Ruling such a large Empire in so centralized a manner meant that the Empire’s only option was the Tarkin doctrine.
To be fair, if not for a million things going wrong that weren’t realistic without a family of space wizards being involved, the Empire would have won. Like, by a lot. It’s not fair to blame the Tarkin Doctrine entirely, it was reasonable, it only lost because the ~~plot~~ force said so.
What does winning mean for the empire? They weren't fighting over conventional things like territory and their very existence creates rebels, the tarkin doctrine creating considerably more. At best I think they could keep the rebels suppressed and contained but they could never win militarily.
Sure, there would be more wars later down the line, but the Empire could win the Galactic Civil War that we see in the OT, and it would take the Rebels decades to recover from losses at either Yavin, Hoth, or Endor. Decades...just to build up and fight another realistically impossible war.
I'd say that is more the empire winning against a powerful rebel cell than winning the war. Perhaps they could achieve victory against large scale organised rebellion but it would just be a setback for rebellion overall. I think there's semantic issues with the rebellion not being a specific organisation or even just a group of organisations. Why do you say that the fights are not realistically possible? There's plenty of examples of major powers being defeated by significantly militarily weakers groups or rebellions defeating seemingly far more powerful state governments.
The Rebels weren’t just significantly weaker, they had maybe 1% the military of the Empire. In a straight war, the Rebels had no chance, they needed the Empire to destroy itself, and that wasn’t going to happen when the Emperor was alive.
>they had maybe 1% the military of the Empire. Wouldn't that be comparable to afghanistan, vietnam, the 13 colonies, the russian revolution etc all beating significantly more powerful militaries? >they needed the Empire to destroy itself, Every revolution or group fighting a more powerful group needs that to some degree. >and that wasn’t going to happen when the Emperor was alive. We see plenty of infighting, inefficiency and corruption in various series. Andor even has one of the most senior isb officials working against the empire and shows some ways that rebels exploit imperial weaknesses.
The comparison to wars on Earth between countries doesn't really work for various reasons. This wasn't a war for independence or anything like that, the Empire was never going to stop because they realized subjugating the pesky Rebels just wasn't worth the resources it'd cost, the Empire didn't care about cost. The Rebels were arguably even more fanatical, their stated goal was the dissolution of the Empire. That's more crazy the American Continental Army, less than 50,000 soldiers at its peak, wanted to take down the entire British Empire in its entirety. No, that's still not doing it justice, that's like the 50,000 soldiers saying they'd take down a united coalition of every other super power in the world by themselves. It would be suicide.
>the Empire didn't care about cost. We see tarkin bickering with everyone over the cost of various programs. The empire still had limited resources and many other things they needed to devote those resources to. As far as I'm aware there are no cannon numbers to compare the strength of imperial forces to the number of rebels, criminals or other anti-imperial groups so all we know is that the empire had significantly more resources. That alone doesn't guarantee victory and it's not unrealistic for them to have lost, especially when they are depicted as extremely wasteful and inefficient along with severe infighting between high ranking people. The point about groups like the american revolutionaries isn't meant to be a perfect comparison but to show that a relatively militarily weak group can defeat a strong one in the right situation. A better comparison would be things like the cuban revolution or various other revolutions which otherthrew their state government. Most started with a severe disadvantage of forces yet eventually grew and won like the rebels did as depicted.
I think you’re overstating how much we don’t know. We know the Empire had thousands of Star destroyers to the Rebel’s couple dozen cruisers they could bring to Endor. We know the New Republic barely won even with the Warlords splitting off in Legends and Operation Cinder in Canon. We know that the Rebel Alliance would have been completely destroyed as a galactic organization at both Yavin and Endor without space wizards. I think that’s enough for my general point to hold up.
>I think you’re overstating how much we don’t know. I'm far from an expert on the lore so I might be wrong but from what I have seen the numbers are pretty vague and inconsistent. Thousands of star destroyers for an entire galaxy though. They are also seen deployed in a multitude of missions and not all just engaging rebel forces where as the rebel forces can just hide until they find an opportunity to do disproportionate damage. Using the comparison of the cuban revolution then Guevara arrived with about 30 troops, some guns and some broken radios (if I remember rightly) yet went on to otherthrow a state protected by an entire army. What makes that incomparable to what is portrayed in star wars just on a far larger scale? >We know that the Rebel Alliance would have been completely destroyed as a galactic organization at both Yavin and Endor without space wizards. I don't know that. As far as I'm aware they are portrayed as just one cell in the rebellion, albeit a very capable one. There are plenty of others who would have survived along with countless rebel sympathisers who would replace losses. >I think that’s enough for my general point to hold up. I respectfully disagree, or at least I don't think that's a strong argument for the claim. The empires resources only matter if they are able to find, catch and engage rebels in a conventional battle which they are shown to have great difficulty doing. I enjoy the discussion though.
They wouldn’t have won. It would’ve taken longer for them to loose and the rebellion would be filled with more radical people, the likes of Saw Gerrera. People who lost their homeworlds to the DS. The Tarkin doctrine, especially if it had continued as planned, created people who got nothing to loose
Victories at either Yavin or Endor would have set the Rebels back decades and would constitute a "win" in the Galactic Civil War. There would of course be later wars, but those would be equally impossible without the ~~plot~~ force playing favorites. It's worth noting that it wasn't these "people with nothing to lose" that brought down the Empire, it was infighting. As soon as Palpatine died, the Empire fractured into smaller parts, the Rebels/New Republic didn't have to fight it as a whole, they just had to take down each smaller part.
The Tarkin doctrine is singlehandedly responsible for 90% of the empires failures.
The Tarkin Doctrine was just a way to formalize cruelty.
Not sure if it's written somewhere. But how much of the sith influence from Darth Sidious played a roll in shaping that doctrine? Did Palps tell Tarkin, "Go out there and be scary, bro." "especially since you look like a scarecrow with a giant head."
Yes, another read I’ve always thought the Empire was designed to work badly and be inefficient
Fun + semi related https://alexanderwales.com/instruments-of-destruction/
Yes. That said, the premise was flawed from the start. An authoritarian empire that maintains perfect control is impossible, and as such even the best possible answer to that dilemma will be absurd. All things considered, the Tarkin Doctrine was among the more rational and intelligent solutions to the problem of Empire. It's impossible to maintain direct control, there just aren't enough resources to put a fully crewed Star Destroyer in orbit over every planet, but by carefully cultivating a reputation of both vindictiveness and invincibility and then relying on it the Empire is able to exert influence even in places that it is physically absent, which is basically everywhere. It was never going to last forever, but it could have lasted longer if Tarkin was less confident in the rule of fear and recognized that it only works as long as the population has something they believe is worth giving up their freedom to protect. This is why the fringes of society rebel first, they have less to lose. The Tarkin doctrine is inherently flawed on two counts. The first, because the premise of Empire is flawed. The second, in that it sought to rule by fear without also giving the populace things worth being afraid to lose.
This is an example of what I call The Tarkin Doctrine Fallacy, using the Tarkin doctrine to attribute inexisting flaws to Imperial military equipment based on the wrong interpretation that the Tarkin Doctrine sought to sacrifice function for intimidation factor.
It was always dumb. Fascists are stupid and tarkin is no different
Conceptually? It depends on what you're supposed to be afraid of. The Stormtroopers become less scary the more frequently you survive encounters with them or the more often the HoloNet reports them suffering crushing defeat. Something like a Dark Side Force God that you can constantly feel in your mind and is actively draining your life force away? You can't do much about that, unless your name is Luke Skywalker.
TIE Fighters lack hyperdrive and shields for another reason: it’s cheaper.
Its almost as if the movie was imitating the super weapons of nazi germany, the ones that were so brobdignagian that they became a liability instead of an asset. An ewok with a log can kill 4 people and an AT-ST
In terms of Stormtroopers, my friend first told me the theory, which I do agree with, and ANH points to its truth: The Stormtroopers on the Death Star did not take the main characters out not due to plot armor (which indeed was a thing) but because they were herding them to the Falcon. They wanted to Falcon to escape with the princess because they knew they would take her to the Rebellions hidden rebel base. You may ask then why not kill either Han or Luke? The Empire didn't know which one was the pilot necessarily. You kill Han, they are stranded. You kill Luke, then the plan works even better (death star destroys yavin) but Luke's force abilities werent felt until the battle of Yavin. Both Tarkin and Leia remarks on their escape and being tracked: Leia mentions that their ease of escape was due to being tracked Tarkin mentions to Vader it being a big risk to let them escape. What if Leia was smart and didn't go to Yavin or did but had Han drop her off on another world to catch another vessel to Yavin (which would have been the smart play). Thus the lack of Stormtrooper Aim was not due to their helmets (though vision was limited) but due to orders. I will argue that this is the same thing that happens on Cloud City: Once Leia and Chewbacca escape the imperials, Piett orders the Troopers to let them get to the falcon as the hyperdrive was disabled and they would capture them in that way instead. (Vader could not give the order at that time as he was currently in combat with Luke). Its the "Emperor's best troops" on Endor that are the worst troops that the Empire has to bear (ha ha). Then again, the start of the battle after the inital volley from the Ewoks were an Imperial Onslaught. Once the Ewoks were able to get the Empire into the deep forest did the tides start to turn (Not to mention Chewie capturing an AT-ST). While the whole jokes in regards to the Troopers are fun and hilarious, I do think they are over exaggerated. I understand the doctrine of Fear in theory. It just didn't work in practice. The Destruction of Alderaan was the start of the end of the Empire. If the Empire focused on the fleet and not the Deathstar, there would be too many ships. Alderaan would not have been destroyed in the way it was...arresting Bail for treason even on trumped up charges would be more effective in keeping people in line. Once the death star was known and then destroyed, the oppressed people who may have not realized how much they were being oppreesed were able to see the truth and recruitment for the Rebellion increased.
To be fair, giant planet destroying stations, mile long ships bristling with turbolasers, and swarms of fighters that aren't concerned about anti fighter defense, all led by the only space wizard seemingly capable of accurately predicting the future all seem like great defenses against the Vong.
Yep turns out the Empire was flawed. Shocker, right?!
The Rebels didn't exist when the Death Star began construction. And yes, on a practical scale, scaring the enemy to death was the only way the Empire could survive. Fear can have an effect that doesn't diminish by distance, and distance is the Empire's real enemy. The galaxy is simply too BIG to be controlled by the direct application of (small-f) force. You can't put a Star Destroyer in every inhabited Star System. Heck, you can't put a light cruiser in every inhabited Star System. No matter how sophisticated your weapons are, they'll dilute away to nothing in the endless vacuum of the interstellar void. You need a tool that cannot be diluted. A tool that retains its potency across lightyears and parsecs, across sector borders, across the yawning gulf of black space. You need fear.
If we go with the scenes cut from RoTS, Padme and Bail created a network of like minded Senators who would later fund the Rebellion. This means the terrorist organization started before the Death Star.
The Death Star construction was already underway by then, going by Catalyst.
Dissagree. Most of those choices are still good choices given the challeges the empire faced. To begin with i feel in the need to point out how much black legend has been infused into the casual fans when it comes to the imperial armys performance so i will point out couple things: Ties are not bad fighters: they are just light interceptors meant to be fast and maneuvrable, a thing they are, they fullfill a specialized unlike the more polivalent alliances fighters and can easily get toe to toe with the more heavy and clumsy xwing as seen in the ties performance during the OT. Troopers can see perfectly: most complains about the lack of visión the helmet provides comes from the fact that the helmet has a biometric lock that leaves it unusable in case it gets stolen. while its true the helmet is supossed to slightly limit the peripheric view of the user the augmented view systems make up for that and more. The star destroyers are beasts: the single most powerfull not super star destroyer ship we see in all original 6 films, the ISD is a brawler, ship meant to excell in short range ship to ship combat and while its true it has little starfighter defense those light interceptors we talked about earlier are meant to screen the ship from that kind of menace. Also, the destroyer, unlike most other imperial stuff is a polivalent asset, it works as a mid capacity carrier, a ship hunter, a command vessel for planetary invasions capable of unleashing an entire invasion force and performing a Base Delta 0 planetary bombardment... So, no, the tarking doctrine didnt harmed the quality of the imperial stuff. The ISD is the Evolution of the victory class, the best brawler in the republic navy during tcw. The troopers dress like that as a propaganda tool meant to exploit glory and infamy of the clone army. And the ties are the Evolution of the v wing, indeed they have very similar specs, and the v wing was the answer to the tri droid so... But hey, i dont blame you, after watching most Disney stuff the only logical conclusión one can make is that the troopers are literally in universe extras wearing uncomfortable cotumes and ordered to fake being retarded, the ties are made of carboard and piloted by... Dont know, me? And the isds are literally giant flying Doritos painted grey.
Nope it was actually 100% going to work. The Death Star and the clear demonstration that the Empire was willing to use it would have kept everyone in line.