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 didnβt 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 starβs flaw]Β #vader, who knew about that flaw and did nothing: unfortunate
βUnfortunateβ
Meanwhile Vader, expert ace pilot, acts well below rank to supposedly fight off the attackers. Attackers who, as far as anyone else knows, canβt hope to do shit to the Death Star.
Convenient.
Convenientβ¦
Lol there are some ppl on here all βoh he was feeling a little Light so he knew he had to destroy it to do the Right Thing!!!β like nah. I love my boy but heβs a bag of stinky garbagΓ© at this point and still totally evil.
He just despised the Death Star cuz everyone was all βnyeh heh this thing can do ur job for u u LOSERβ and he actively loathed every single person who was on board it. Of course he was petty enough to ignore its self-destruct button. Heβs 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 everybodyβs praising it as the new ultimate power in the universe, and probably the worst part of the whole affair?
Β He has no one to bitch to about it.Β
Even the Emperorβs jumped on the superweapon hype train. Even the tolerably-competent officers like Tarkin are all #TeamDeathStar, and then thereβs smug assholes like Admiral Motti who just wonβt shut up about it, and honestly?
Vaderβs probably been on the email CC list for the design since the project started. YearsΒ 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 thereβs 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 onΒ 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 ofΒ βSeriously, Galen? Another one? Force-dammit, Krennic, couldnβt you have left him on that mudball with his family?β But Vader is bored out of his skull with 90% of his job anyway, and itβs not like he has anything better to do. Besides, viciously judging other peopleβs design abilities is the closest thing to pass for fun when there arenβt any Rebels to slaughter or armies to curbstomp, and thereβs plenty of shit design for the judging.
He spots the flaw in the reactor the first time it appears in the plans.
Heβd have shit himself if it wasnβt for the suit.
He promptly makes a bet with himself on whether anybody is going to spot it.
Nobody does.
Theyβre 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 actualΒ mechanical expertise over that little shit, Krennic.
But then he considers that he can only tell them once, and what if it were afterΒ the thing blew itself right the fuck up, what if that? He can still point out the flaw, and he can throw everyoneβs stupidity right in their stupid faces, but also thereβll 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 withΒ βSHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN THERMAL EXHAUST PORT, GALEN, I DONβT GIVE A SHIT!β and Erso goes,Β βSo you approve the solution?β and Krennic goesΒ βS***** F*** LKJDGJFKL!!!!LJF$%#$DJF! YES!β 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. Theyβre Rebels, and hunting them down is his job and one of the very few pleasures of his existence. But itβs 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 β¦
β¦ well β¦
β¦ oops.
Vaderβs only regret about the whole affair is that Krennic predeceased it and is therefore unavailable for gloating to.
It doesnβt stop him from snagging a copy of the Rebelsβ footage of the Death Star blowing up and posting it anonymously to the holonet with the added captionΒ βPlay stupid games, win stupid prizes.β
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 weβre not talking about a reasonable person.
Weβre talking about Anakin βI destroyed a droid control ship from the inside piloting a fighter I had never seen before when I was ten years oldβ Skywalker.
He sees those plans, and immediately knows how he would take down the Death Star.
Who cares that a computer couldnβt make that shot? Itβd be easy, if you use the Force.
You know, the Force? That thing all you Imperial officers are calling superstitious nonsense?
Yes, wellβ¦ I guess weβll just see how this plays out.
