Rogue One, Kyle Katarn, and the Death Star Plans
Or: How History Affects Fiction, Take 2!
I liked Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Although it wasn’t great, it also wasn’t that bad. At the very least, it felt and looked like Star Wars.
Over the years, others have pointed out that Rogue One is essentially a retelling of the Dark Forces video game series. In these games the lead is a Force-sensitive character named Kyle Katarn, a Stormtrooper who defects to the Rebellion. He chooses to defect after discovering that his father was murdered not by Rebels, but by the Empire he served. Partnered with Alderaanian rebel Jan Ors (played by Angela Harry in Dark Forces II), Kyle is affectionately known as the Chuck Norris of Star Wars among fans of the franchise.
It is not hard to see why people say Rogue One was a rip-off of Kyle’s story. The only difference is that they switched his and Jan Ors’ position; Jyn Erso is the lead in the movie, and her father is killed early in the film. She is also reluctant to join the Rebels, who have Cassian Andor watching her in case she betrays them.
In Kyle’s story, Jan was told to watch him for this very reason. It was implied Mon Mothma assigned her to the role specifically to eliminate Kyle if he was a plant, a spy, or if he got cold feet and decided to return to the Empire. Kyle and Jan would eventually form a strong rapport that deepened into love, though Jan always refused his offers of marriage. With the chaos that enveloped their lives more often than not, she didn’t think they would survive long enough to make it worthwhile.
Having this pointed out does not spoil Rogue One too much for me. There are several reasons for this: first, Rogue One was a largely enjoyable film. It was not perfect and I will never say that it is, but I would not mind watching it again at some point. To date I have had no wish to rewatch The Force Awakens for the sole reason that it simply does not strike me as a movie worth more than a single view. If pushed to decide between TFA and RO, I would choose Rogue One every time.
Second, since Disney’s mishandling of the franchise I have largely restricted my Star Wars fandom to the original Expanded Universe. This is a fictional universe large enough for one to get lost in and remain happily disengaged from the present abuse and misuse of Lucas’ landmark series. I may find something from the Disney canon to add to the original Star Wars lore, but that is not required and it has become more difficult for me to do as time passes.
Third, and this is most important, in the original canon there was no single story where the Death Star plans were stolen from the Empire. There were, in fact, several stories about operatives that stole copies of the plans for the Rebellion. Kyle Katarn’s was one tale, but so was Bria Tharen’s in A.C. Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy. Bria actually died along with her crew after they pilfered the plans for the Death Star from the Empire. She in turn passed her copy of the plans to the Tantive IV – the corvette carrying Princess Leia, which Vader’s Star Destroyer captures above Tattooine in A New Hope.
Other novels and short tales in the Expanded Universe followed these patterns. Sometimes the Rebels lived, sometimes they died. Whichever was true, the fact was that they were all pursuing copies of the same plans so they could bring down the “technological terror” constructed at Moff Tarkin’s behest.
Why were there so many stories about stealing the Death Star plans? Did Lucasfilm have no one managing the continuity of the Expanded Universe? How could he let this happen to his franchise? Isn’t Disney at least keeping everything unified?
Lucas did have people managing the continuity of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Though some things slipped through the cracks, the majority of those errors happened before ESB and after the prequels were released. Prior to the prequels’ debut, the game makers, authors, and comic book artists were largely kept on a straight track. Authors were apprised of things they could and could not do in order to maintain as much continuity between novels as possible, and though it wasn’t a perfect system, it was better guided than others.
Another reason for the multitude of tales about the Death Star plans’ retrieval goes back to real life. Something I have found increasingly disturbing about Disney’s Star Wars stories is the lack of care put into the tales they tell. I covered one such incident in the fourth season of Star Wars Rebels in a post on tactics on my website, but the Death Star plans are another hole in the tapestry the House of Mouse has attempted to reweave.
In the EU, there were several operations put into effect to find the Death Star plans prior to A New Hope. This was done for two reasons: one, the Empire kept the data about the Death Star split up to ensure that anyone stealing it wouldn’t know what they were looking at. This is fairly typical of large-scale military operations: the Manhattan Project, which was the codename for the operation to build the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was not kept in one place. There were multiple locations used for the research and development of these weapons, and the people in one lab didn’t usually have contact with the other labs. So only a few people knew the true scope and breadth of the Project.
This is what the military refers to as “compartmentalization.” In the words of Nick Fury, “Nobody spills the secrets because nobody knows them all.” With the exception of the man or men at the top, the grunts and scientists cannot betray their superiors because they only have disconnected parts of the whole picture with which to work and draw conclusions.
So, as in World War II, the Rebels had to find and assemble as much information as they could piece together to form a complete picture of the Death Star. Since this moon-sized super weapon would be able to destroy entire planets, they had to make sure the schematics were as accurate as possible. This led to the second reason why there was more than one mission to steal the Death Star plans: the Rebels had to find copies of the information they had already acquired to verify their initial findings.
If the Rebellion simply took one copy of the plans from the Empire, they could be lured into a trap. This is what happens in Return of the Jedi. The Bothans who stole the plans for that super weapon were deceived, spending their lives to deliver falsified plans to the Rebel leadership in order to convince the entire fleet to go to Endor, where the Rebels could be slaughtered at leisure. Having defeated the first Death Star and knowing this one was incomplete (not knowing it was operational despite that), and that Palpatine would be visiting the station, the Rebel leaders couldn’t resist the bait. They did not check their information as thoroughly as they did in A New Hope, and it cost them many lives.
If I had to cite one grave flaw in Rogue One as it is presented to audiences, it is that Disney did not make it clear there were other operations in progress to steal the Death Star plans. As a matter of fact, they more or less insist that this is the only chance to find and steal the schematics from the Empire. They even refuse to send a team to fetch the plans. Jyn Erso has to lead a group of near-despairing Rebel fighters on a suicide mission to secure a copy of the plans and then transmit it to the Tantive IV.
…A responsible author would, in the course of worldbuilding for a story of this scale, do his utmost to make it as realistic as possible. Lucas did not have to imply or say in A New Hope how many people stole how many copies of the schematics for the Death Star. It was not imperative to the narrative he was writing.
Nevertheless, in the briefing the X-wing pilots receive before heading out to battle, General Dodonna mentions that they assembled the information with the help of Princess Leia. In other words, Leia had the complete plans not because someone beamed them directly to her, whole and entire. She had bits and pieces that she put together to make the schematic that is eventually shown on the projector in the room. This implies, at the same time, that her mission was to collect the final piece of the Death Star puzzle – not the whole thing.
That is why Vader spares no expense hunting her down, capturing her publicly above Tattooine. He knows the Rebellion has been working to build a picture of the Death Star and that the Alderaanian princess was given the last bit necessary to complete the illustration. The Rebellion finally has the information they desperately need, and Vader cannot afford to let them get away with it. Likewise, Leia cannot afford to let him have it. That is what fuels and drives the tension of A New Hope; the Rebels finally have everything they need, but will they be able to use it in time to save the galaxy? Or are they doomed to failure, slavery, and eventual death?
The original EU writers, recognizing the significance of these minor bits of dialogue in the film, drew their own conclusions about the world of Star Wars and wrote accordingly. They built the Star Wars universe as audiences knew it for decades based on these principles of military and spycraft doctrine. They recognized that while the galaxy might be a long time ago and far, far away, it still had to make some degree of sense.
No responsible general would risk troops, ships, and fighters he could ill-afford to lose on a plan built around a single copy of the enemy’s battle plans or secret weapons. And so the Rebellion, fighting from a position of weakness, could not take the chance that a single copy of the Death Star plans was accurate. They had to employ multiple agents, mercenaries, and even pirate crews to find information that would verify what they already had, as well as reveal the fatal flaw in the Empire’s doomsday device.
I can, therefore, enjoy Rogue One by considering it just another mission to confirm that the Death Star schematics are accurate. Relying on and staying in the Expanded Universe means I do not have to narrow myself to Disney’s ill-conceived storyline. I have room to play in this sandbox, adding and subtracting whatever I choose.
For others, however, doing this may be a touch more difficult to accomplish. Certainly, those who only accept the Disney canon for the franchise will be bereft of this particular reflection of reality. That is a failure on the company’s part which may yet lead to its downfall in the long run.
I hope you enjoyed this article, readers. Please be sure to visit my website, www.carolinefurlong.wordpress.com, for more pieces like this one. Also, visit my if you want to see my own fiction. I make an effort to practice what I preach. 😉
Stay tuned for more, readers. You do not want to miss what comes next!