it just occurred to me that darth vader, master engineer, probably looked at the death star plans at some point and noticed the flaw, but didnโt bother to tell anyone about it because he despised everyone who was involved in the project
#krennic and tarkin: [die as a (indirect and direct, respectively) result of the death starโs flaw]ย #vader, who knew about that flaw and did nothing: unfortunate
โUnfortunateโ
Meanwhile Vader, expert ace pilot, acts well below rank to supposedly fight off the attackers. Attackers who, as far as anyone else knows, canโt hope to do shit to the Death Star.
Convenient.
Convenientโฆ
Lol there are some ppl on here all โoh he was feeling a little Light so he knew he had to destroy it to do the Right Thing!!!โ like nah. I love my boy but heโs a bag of stinky garbagรฉ at this point and still totally evil.
He just despised the Death Star cuz everyone was all โnyeh heh this thing can do ur job for u u LOSERโ and he actively loathed every single person who was on board it. Of course he was petty enough to ignore its self-destruct button. Heโs just that bitch.
this seems entirely reasonable sidebar: apparently thrawn treason is, like, mostly Krennic and Tarkin hating each other and i have never read a thrawn book but i might just read that one
Vader is high-key insulted by the existence of the Death Star, the effort and expense thrown into making it, and the way everybodyโs praising it as the new ultimate power in the universe, and probably the worst part of the whole affair?
ย He has no one to bitch to about it.ย
Even the Emperorโs jumped on the superweapon hype train. Even the tolerably-competent officers like Tarkin are all #TeamDeathStar, and then thereโs smug assholes like Admiral Motti who just wonโt shut up about it, and honestly?
Vaderโs probably been on the email CC list for the design since the project started. Yearsย of enduring shitty design and interdepartmental bickering and watching some smarmy asshole in an inferior cloak prance about bloviating about his special superweapon like somebody who has an anime body pillow of the superlaser housing.
And then thereโs this one scientist who keeps going on and on about this thermal exhaust problem.
Just. Huge amounts of emails on the subject, going on and on and onย about it.
Vader is totally the only person who actually reads these after the first, like, five of them. Everybody else just skims through them with a side ofย โSeriously, Galen? Another one? Force-dammit, Krennic, couldnโt you have left him on that mudball with his family?โ But Vader is bored out of his skull with 90% of his job anyway, and itโs not like he has anything better to do. Besides, viciously judging other peopleโs design abilities is the closest thing to pass for fun when there arenโt any Rebels to slaughter or armies to curbstomp, and thereโs plenty of shit design for the judging.
He spots the flaw in the reactor the first time it appears in the plans.
Heโd have shit himself if it wasnโt for the suit.
He promptly makes a bet with himself on whether anybody is going to spot it.
Nobody does.
Theyโre a pack of idiots. Every last one of them.
Maybe he contemplates telling them for like two-thirds of a second. It would be fun to lord his actualย mechanical expertise over that little shit, Krennic.
But then he considers that he can only tell them once, and what if it were afterย the thing blew itself right the fuck up, what if that? He can still point out the flaw, and he can throw everyoneโs stupidity right in their stupid faces, but also thereโll be no more Death Star.
So when Galen Erso sends out Thermal Exhaust Problem Analysis Report #6,109 and buried in paragraph 37 is a suggestion of an extra exhaust port, and Krennic responds withย โSHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN THERMAL EXHAUST PORT, GALEN, I DONโT GIVE A SHIT!โ and Erso goes,ย โSo you approve the solution?โ and Krennic goesย โS***** F*** LKJDGJFKL!!!!LJF$%#$DJF! YES!โ Vader saves the email exchange for posterity and is downright cheerful the rest of the week.
True, he acts in its defense, chasing down Rebels when the plans are stolen. Of course he does. Theyโre Rebels, and hunting them down is his job and one of the very few pleasures of his existence. But itโs not for the Death Star. In fact, if one of them were to escape with its plans, and hide them successfully, and keep their location secret through torture and worse, and if another of them were to fly a starfighter well enough to keep from being destroyed long enough to drop a torpedo through that vulnerable exhaust port and touch off that reactor instability and turn the whole massive, ridiculous, wasteful, absurd, and vaguely insulting contraption into so much spacedust โฆ
โฆ well โฆ
โฆ oops.
Vaderโs only regret about the whole affair is that Krennic predeceased it and is therefore unavailable for gloating to.
It doesnโt stop him from snagging a copy of the Rebelsโ footage of the Death Star blowing up and posting it anonymously to the holonet with the added captionย โPlay stupid games, win stupid prizes.โ
What makes this whole thing better is that the comics ( Darth Vader Annual 2 to be precise) backs this theory up
The Annual literally starts with Tarkin arriving on Scarif, only to find Vader had broken into the archive and was just casually studying the Death Star plans
Then later on, he literally says THIS to Tarkin
Vader is the pettiest fucker who hates EVERYTHING to do with his coworkers and the Death Star and I LOVE it
You know, I usually hate these exhaust port conversations, but I think it actually works here.
Because the entire point of the exhaust port is how absurd a long shot it is. If you can survive flying through a narrow trench lined with turrets while in an active dogfight long enough, then you might get close enough to attempt a shot your computers are literally incapable of making.
No matter how many times it gets brought up, no one is going to put time and energy into addressing this, because no reasonable person would consider this an actual vulnerability.
But weโre not talking about a reasonable person.
Weโre talking about Anakin โI destroyed a droid control ship from the inside piloting a fighter I had never seen before when I was ten years oldโ Skywalker.
He sees those plans, and immediately knows how he would take down the Death Star.
Who cares that a computer couldnโt make that shot? Itโd be easy, if you use the Force.
You know, the Force? That thing all you Imperial officers are calling superstitious nonsense?
Yes, wellโฆ I guess weโll just see how this plays out.
