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[Lord Shonus]

Keep in mind that Han set off just about every alarm on the station pretty early. Even without a deception plan, any semi-competent military organization would make the connection between "somebody's in our uniform shooting up the prison level!" and "we just brought an unknown ship aboard, and the scan team hasn't reported back yet."

[EnigmaticHat]

Anakin just wanted to fight Obi Wan in a perfectly flat environment where there's no high ground.

...in all seriousness as much as its a stereotype, the OT imperials' schtick of letting the heroes get away with shit so they can kill the rebellion as a whole is actually a pretty good strategy.  I don't think the empire was ever afraid of the rebellion as it was, even up to the point where it was literally blowing up the second death star.  They were always more afraid of the potential of the rebellion to get larger, and/or the massive cost of tracking down all those separate cells that could be hiding anywhere in the galaxy.  From Darth Vader's perspective he killed the only real threat to the Emperor (Obi-Wan); none of the other people who escaped on the Falcon really mattered and he almost got the Yavin base for his troubles.

On the other hand, this is assuming Vader got bad intel about the death star plans.  If he knew that the real death star plans were right in front of him and they could actually be used to blow up the death star, he has no excuse for letting the Falcon get away.

[Lord Shonus]

If you watch A New Hope carefully, it strongly suggests not only that the Empire is in the last stages of consolidation (which renders one common complaint about the prequels moot, but that's another story), but that the Rebel Alliance is just now transitioning from a legal and mostly-tolerated opposition party to an illegal armed insurgency. It also suggests that much of the Rebel leadership was on Alderaan when the Death Star came (not least because that was Leia's intended destination for the plans).

From there, we can easily assume that the Rebels on Yavin IV represent pretty much the entire surviving Alliance leaders and a large part of their armed forces - this is supported by dialogue. Even if Tarkin (not Vader, who wasn't in charge) knew about the possibility for a fighter to take out the Death Star (which would almost have to be a lucky Golden BB without Luke - the shot was supposed to be nearly impossible), taking the chance to crush them now and gain total victory would be fully justified.

Of course, simply launching all of the onboard fighters instead of arrogantly ignoring the attack would have make said victory certain. Only a few ships survived with only Vader's personal squadron engaging, after all.

[Trekkin]

Of course, simply launching all of the onboard fighters instead of arrogantly ignoring the attack would have make said victory certain. Only a few ships survived with only Vader's personal squadron engaging, after all.

The arrogance was the point, though; the Death Star, as the linchpin of the Tarkin Doctrine, needed to be unassailable if it was to fulfill its role as a threat so terrifying systems would fall in line rather than even risk its deployment. Reacting to an attack, particularly a paltry attack, leads people to speculate on how strongly it is defended and how those defenses might be circumvented and so forth -- and, as we know from the EU, the Death Star crew were fairly shaken post-Alderaan, so even if sounding the alarm stopped the attack cold there would still be people willing and able to talk about what made the Empire's ultimatum flinch.

Launching fighters would have saved the station but damaged the symbol, and that's not an exchange one wants to make when the risk to the station is so miniscule.

[Loud Whispers]

The arrogance was the point, though; the Death Star, as the linchpin of the Tarkin Doctrine, needed to be unassailable if it was to fulfill its role as a threat so terrifying systems would fall in line rather than even risk its deployment. Reacting to an attack, particularly a paltry attack, leads people to speculate on how strongly it is defended and how those defenses might be circumvented and so forth -- and, as we know from the EU, the Death Star crew were fairly shaken post-Alderaan, so even if sounding the alarm stopped the attack cold there would still be people willing and able to talk about what made the Empire's ultimatum flinch.

Launching fighters would have saved the station but damaged the symbol, and that's not an exchange one wants to make when the risk to the station is so miniscule.

Imagine a US Admiral explaining how their carrier didn't use any of their fighters when they started getting bombed because they didn't want to look vulnerable

[Reelya]

The Death Star wasn't built as a carrier however. An aircraft carrier's primary weaponry is the planes. The analogy doesn't really hold because the type of ship is entirely different.

The Death Star was meant to be a single impregnable planet-destroying superfortress. If they launched fighters to take out a small threat it would imply that the thing wasn't as impregnable as they were making out.

Tarkin's risk-taking was in fact plausible given the vast unlikeliness of the risk. Who knew that a magic-boy who came out of nowhere and was in his first fighter battle was going to be flying one of the enemy fighters?

[Ultimuh]

Who knew that a magic-boy who came out of nowhere and was in his first fighter battle was going to be flying one of the enemy fighters?

"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference... in the world."

Not exactly a Star Wars quote, but it still counts.

[Trekkin]

The Death Star wasn't built as a carrier however. An aircraft carrier's primary weaponry is the planes. The analogy doesn't really hold because the type of ship is entirely different.

The Death Star was meant to be a single impregnable planet-destroying superfortress. If they launched fighters to take out a small threat it would imply that the thing wasn't as impregnable as they were making out.

Tarkin's risk-taking was in fact plausible given the vast unlikeliness of the risk. Who knew that a magic-boy who came out of nowhere and was in his first fighter battle was going to be flying one of the enemy fighters?

Particularly since the nature of the aforesaid magic was, again per the Death Star book, suppressed by the Empire and not common knowledge outside the Jedi Order during the Old Republic. As far as Lemelisk knew when actually designing the thing, nobody could accurately shoot a torpedo down a two-meter-wide hole side-on -- and as far as Tarkin knew, everyone who theoretically could was either named Darth or dead.

[Yoink]

Star Wars, pfft. Y'all ever seen Space Raiders?

[hops]

I just wanna say that I personally feel Rogue One was decent enough that it can be considered canon.

In which case the reason the Death Star had said weakness was because it was by design, and the reason it wasn't fixed was because its schematics was destroyed and both its engineers killed, hence no one alive in the Empire knew of its weakness.

[Reelya]

Star Wars, pfft. Y'all ever seen Space Raiders?

Yeah I have actually. they re-used the special effects from Battle Beyond The Stars for that.

Although, if you want the creme de la creme of Star Wars knock-offs you really really need to see Starcrash. The big final space battle in that is really something unbelievable. Emphasis on "unbelievable" as in you won't believe it (i don't want to spoil any more, but it's the most b-movie sci-fi thing ever). If that doesn't sell you on it, how about a young David Hasselhoff with a lightsaber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Rh2pfdxPU

And that's not even the funny bit.

[wierd]

What was it about the late 70s that made everyone think that people of the future were going to be wearing translucent plastic bags with banana hammock thongs?  I mean-- that getup the female protag is wearing.  Really?  wtf. that's some buck rogers level drek right there.

[Reelya]

Here's the original trailer for Starcrash. It does a good job covering a lot of the stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfuNSpP0RA

It's like Star Wars meets Barbarella meets Ray Harryhausen. notice the clipping on the Big Space Writing^tm at the start. They couldn't even afford to do captions right. Also, the equivalent of the Death Star battle in this is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the baddie having a ship shaped like a giant hand (with fingers that can open and close, but the design of the ship is never explained) being attacked by human-sized gold bullets launched from the good guy ships, which crash through the plate glass windows of the ship, and gold-clad good guys pop out of the big bullets and start shooting. There are a whole stack of things wrong with this, clearly.

... don't read the spoiler if you'd prefer to be amazed by the most b-grade thing ever.

[wierd]

Goodness. I thought it was not possible to be lower budget than buck rogers.

I guess I was wrong.  Still, WTF about the "garbage bag" mylar suits.  Yes-- because shiny plastic breathes so well, and feels so great to wear!

(Similar wtf from buck rogers first episode, where they show him his room, and his sheets are LITERALLY bubblewrap)

[ChairmanPoo]