The most important issue of the day is this:How long is Luke Skywalker on Dagobah?
This seems like a quick little trip, but alas, no - and my research on the interwebs has been spotty at best.
In fact, what is the timeline for the entire movie The Empire Strikes Back?
It seems, on the surface that it's a couple weeks, right?
But if you give a pause, and start to analyze the timeline, the possibility arises that it could be 6 months to a year.
Let's take a look:
Once Luke is brought back to Echo base, he's in the medical tank and recovery. There's not a lot of hints on how long that therapy lasted. That could have been a month from Wampa attack to twins kissing in the sick bay. It probably wasn't, but the Imperial Probe Droid had to cover an entire planet -- some people can't even get around in the city they live in without GPS...
From the battle of Hoth to Dagobah, even though Luke's X-wing has hyperdrive, still could have taken a while. That's assuming that Hoth is in the same galactic neighborhood, it's still going to take a while -- and while Luke is speeding along to his destination, the Falcon's hyperdrive is NOT working... and they go into the asteroid field that is in, I can only assume, the Hoth solar system.
So the Falcon is in the asteroid belt for quite some time. Vader's Super Star Destroyer and three or four Star Destroyers are constantly bombing and probing the asteroids for the Falcon. The Falcon is in the Worm for an undisclosed amount of time before they discover that the mynock are part of the worm's digestive system. Sure it looks like an hour, but by the time they come out, Vader's assembled and hired a crew of Bounty Hunters since his team isn't getting the job done.
He would have had to put out the contract, they would have had to get to his Super Star Destroyer... even with the bending of space and time - that's still a large amount of travel involved. And as everyone knows how long it takes for a government contract to go through, this alone should be a clue that Vader was looking for the Falcon for at least a month or possibly two.
Meanwhile, back on Dagobah, Luke's training - while short, doesn't give a true sense of how
long he was there. From dinner at Yoda's mud hut to the "Failure at the Cave" is an undisclosed amount of time. It's not a couple days, it could have been over a month of training.Now, of course, a month of training to be a Jedi seems just silly after watching Eps 1-3... Let's dismiss that for a second.
In my childhood imagination - Obi Wan spilled the beans that he personally trained Anakin, and failed... I always assumed that Anakin was about Luke's age and that Obi Wan did a crash course on a bunch of freighter pilots and that Anakin worked out against the clones. And because he hadn't had the proper training from Yoda, he turned to the dark side. Oh, and the Clones were all Boba Fetts and BAD GUYS in my version... there weren't any stupid Droid armies. I always figured that Luke is (at least) getting some one-on-one time with Yoda and having his education honed to use the Force. Enough to be a Jedi? Or just enough to take out his old man? It paints a darker image of Obi Wan and Yoda - which makes them deeper characters with an agenda... from a certain point of view.
Back to the Falcon. They sneak away and limp to Bespin "It's far, but I think we can make it" from the asteroid belt. That's no hyperspace. To get technical - that would be a couple hundred years... but let's pretend it's only a couple weeks to a month of traveling from Hoth to Bespin. That's still a couple more months.
Then they get there, "3p-O's been gone too long to be lost" they have dinner and are tortured by Vader - for how long? A day, a month? Long enough for their pain to reach Luke on a Force wave.
Vader's plan DOES cut into Luke's crash course in Force training, much to the horror of Yoda and Obi Wan... but they know that they've got Leia as backup in case the boy child in such a hurry to fall into a trap doesn't work out for them.
Remember, Luke isn't really holding his own in that first battle with his old man. And it's when Vader tells Luke that he's his daddy is when Luke's lack of training really fails him. Had he been able to control his feelings, he would have just shrugged and given old iron lung a Force blast - but instead his only escape is to jump off a tall whathave you into an air vent over a gas giant planet.But I still ask, how long is the timeline for Empire?
45 comments:
I was thinking that it was several thousand parsecs long.
But that depends on howmany Parsecs Bespin is from Hoth.
There was an old game that allowed you to play as the Empire or Rebels and take over the galaxy a la risk for the computer. I bet you could find both planets on there and get a general idea of how far away they were.
That would be Star Wars Rebellion. Unique, fun game that never caught on.
Let's ask the real question at hand here... Was George Lucas qualified? Did he do any research on space travel (where he would have discovered that a 'parsec' is a measurement of distance, not time.) Yes, I read the nonsense in one of those things die-hards refer to as star wars novels, that explained it as cutting distance off of the whole kessel run by having enough thrust to outpower a black hole cluster, or some such techno-drivel... but lets face it...
George can't write! You think he's creative? Oh hardly, he just took every single successful movie before him and jammed it all into one and then dared to claim that it had continuity!
Das Boot, Battle of Britain, Robin Hood, Excalibur...
Personally, I can't wait until he airs his TV show. It'll flop and I'll point and laugh.
Finally I know what Queen meant when they sang in Fat Bottomed Girls: 'I've seen and I don't like star wars!'
Amen, Freddy. Amen.
http://images.darkhorse.com/darkhorse/downloads/desktops/swgalaxymap/swgalaxymap_lg.jpg
I too have wondered that myself. I had assumed a week to a month but your account makes me rethink that. Oh and good call on the Clone Wars. I had always thought Anakin met Obi-Wan when he was Luke's age and that the clones were bad guys.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy
Will provide a nice map for you.
That's "Jaws was never my scene and I don't like Star Wars."
I'm totally feeling you on the Luke's Training thing, though. Especially after the Council's portrayal in the prequels, I have no problem viewing that generation of Jedi as willing to sacrifice one man in pursuit of a larger goal, like the elimination of Vader. Kenobi, in particular, is someone I've come to see as a sneaky bugger.
I believe the queen lyric was "Jaws was never my scene and I don't like Star Wars"
Don't forget Wagner's Ring Cycle...there are several comparisons out there, and even "Der Ring des Nibelungen" was based on previous literature. There is also a strong resemblance of Lord of the Rings to The Ring Cycle, but Tolkein always denied this.
According to the map I have (which is large and detailed, hit me up if you want a copy), Bespin and Hoth (and presumably, the asteroid belt in between) are both in the Yaris System, and both sit along the border of the Anoat System. In relative terms, they're right next door, both along the Corellian Trade Spine hyperspace route. Degobah, in the Sluice System, lies along the Rimma Trade hyperspace route, and is quite a bit of a ways away, easily 15-20 times the distance from Hoth to Bespin.
Luke made his trip with a hyperdrive, while Han, Leia and Chewie had none, making travel time nearly relative (best guess). As far as time passing...
Had to have been a couple of months at least. Force training took a lifetime for most Old Republic Jedi, and Luke had to get a crash course from both Obi-wan and Yoda (the former cut short by their visit to the Death Star/Obi-wan's death, the latter was cut short due to Luke feeling Han and Leia in Bespin).
While the trip in Ep. 4 from Tatooine to what was left of Alderaan seemed short, it was actually about 2-3 times the distance of Luke's journey from Hoth to Degobah: They had to travel from the Outer Rim Territories, through the Mid Rim, Expansion Region, Inner Rim and Colonies territories, and finally into the Core Worlds. That itself had to take a couple of months, even along the famous Corellia Run trade route (not the same as the Spine).
I dunno, I'm just babbling at this point. But the whole timeline of the film had to have covered at least several months, my guess being around 6...
Whatever length of time it was, Luke had to have smelled like ass by the time he got to Cloud City. Unless R2 or his x-wing have built-in wash facilities. That time he spent on Dagobah doing hard core training, plus he's in a stinky swamp, eating Yoda's nasty stew, plus the travel time in his x-wing, he had to have smelled worse than that cut open tauntaun that Han was whining about. If Darth Vader wasn't wearing a mask (which I assume has a filter), he could've killed his father simply from the B.O.
Note the Queen lyric discussed is from Bicycle Race, not Fat Bottomed Girls.
10 months, 11 days.
"... from a certain point of view"
Nicely done!
YOU GUYS ARE THE BIGGEST NERDS EVER
"I was thinking that it was several thousand parsecs long.
But that depends on howmany Parsecs Bespin is from Hoth."
Ummm isn't a parsec a measure of time?
I figured he was there a month to two months because his hair hadn't grown long enough for it to be longer and I just can't picture yoda giving Luke a haircut spouting "A better conditioned you need, yes". As far as that misunderstood kessel run in 12 parsecs line from Han it was explained in one of the books that it's was 12 parsecs because he took the most dangerous shortcut he could for the drug run by cutting through a huge asteroid field and surviving. That is why he said he made the kessel run in 12 parsecs because he survived the shortcut and delivered the cargo without having the travel more then 12 parsecs of distance.
Off topic, sorry.... Why didn't "Princess" (who made her a princess, wasn't Bail Organa just a Senator?) Leia give a medal to Chewie in Ep IV? He was the fracking co-pilot! I don't think Han could've done it solo.
Okay, I am intrigued by this question and I am still trying to figure all the totals, but here is what I have come up with so far. The times I am about to give come from the two Star Wars Roleplaying Games which have been released over the past 25 years and a map of the Star Wars Galaxy which is from and early issue of the Star Wars Gamer. Surprisingly, measuring the map and comparing the first and second editions of the game all the totals seem to work out. Note: this only covers travel time for Luke and Han and his crew; not time in Bacta or training.
For Luke to travel to Dagobah from Hoth is faster than you think. With a standard hyperdrive (moving at the speed of light) it would take Luke approx. 2days and 15 hrs. This is a long time compared to travel from Hoth to Bespin which only takes an average of 6 standard hrs. in hyperspace. Han and his crew would make this in one half the time considering the Falcon's hyperdrive can travel at .5 past lightspeed. So, Bespin being "Pretty far" according to Han must have to do with being able to get safely undercover and out of the eye of the Empire.
Next, according to the books it takes approx. 1 day and 3 hrs. to travel from Dagobah to Bespin. So, Lukes total time so far is (give or take an hour or two)2days and 15 hrs. in an X-wing. Leaves quite a bit of time for torture to Han and his crew doesn't it? If you figure from the time Han leaves Hoth to the time he lands on Bespin (we will assume Bespin has a Standard 24 hr. day)at around noon and is invited to dinner by Lando only to get caught by Vader and his minions, is only about 10 or so hours total. Luke still had 1 day and 2hrs left before he even reached Dagobah.
This is all I have for now. Everything beyond this is really theoretical, but I'll let everyone know as soon as I figure out more.
anonymous: YOU GUYS ARE THE BIGGEST NERDS EVER
Thank you! You have brought much honor upon my Nerdly home.
swgeek: who made her a princess, wasn't Bail Organa just a Senator?
Padme Amidalla was the elected "Queen" of the Naboo, though Naboo's parliment was the actual power on the planet. So, given that she was Leia's mother, the title of "Princess" can apply to her.
As far as the parsecs thing, a parsec is around 3.262 lightyears, or 19,176,075,967,324.937 miles (!). So, according to the map I have (who's scale measure line is divided in sections of 750 parsecs):
Hoth to Bespin: ~350 parsecs
Hoth to Degobah: ~3900 parsecs
Tatooine to Alderaan: ~11,900 parsecs
Ships equipped with Hyperdrive can move faster than light through Hyperspace, obviously, but my head hurts too much to even try to find the numbers.
If lightspeed is as it is in this galaxy (670,616,630 mph), and ships were limited to just lightspeed travel, then the trip from Hoth to Bespin would take roughly 1142.5 years. And that's at the speed of friggin' light.
To give you an idea of that kind of distance, according to all the sources I've found, the Star Wars galaxy is around 120,000 light years wide. Wow.
I could be screwing this all up, given how tired I am, but I guess I'm the first to try the math. Woo hoo, right? Yay for my geekness!
Myself I think the story line of the orginal 3 films covers a period of close to a decade. My reasoning behind this is largely based on observing rank in the Rebel army, The Rebel Army uses a system similar to that of the US Army and for Luke, or Han to have advanced in rank as they did quite possibly would take an extended period of time.
anonymous: Myself I think the story line of the orginal 3 films covers a period of close to a decade.
You're not that far off. Dates in the Star Wars universe are centered around the Battle of Yavin 4 (for the unwashed, the end of "A New Hope"), and given in terms of BBY and ABY (Before and After the Battle of Yavin).
The original trilogy takes place from 1 BBY (giving Luke a year before the battle to learn of the Force from Ben to 12ABY, when the Alliance wins the Battle of Endor (again for the unwashed, the end of Return of the Jedi).
In all, roughly 13 years.
Y4: Never Forget.
Thank you for posting this question. A friend and I had just been discussing this the other day. I'll buy 1-2 months of training.
As for Lucas stealing ideas/movies for Star Wars, he has freely admitted that the story came out of studying mythology. He boiled down all world religions to their core elements and transported the story to space.
Chewbacca didn't get a medal because wookies don't believe in them.
Me thinks that some people have too much free time on their hands. The pressing issue really should be, "Why do so many people have so much time on their hands to post this?" It is a movie and not real!
I always imagined that the clones were of anybody, including Jedis! I guess I also thought the clones were bad too, you fooled me George! Imagine the possibilities if it had been my way....
Come on, it's a weekend course at best. Sure, you *could* stretch it longer, but then there'd be sins of omission on the part of the filmmakers. For instance, if Lucas, Kirchner, Kasdan & co. wanted to suggest a longer timeframe, they should've used some movie conventions to suggest the passage of time. Luke could grow a beard, longer hair. Or hell, every other 80s movie would put a rock montage there to show his gradual progress. At the very least, they could've had a cheesy little sleeping-arrangements repartee between Han and Leia where they divide the Falcon's berth with a sheet hung over a clothesline. But no, there's not a single cue to suggest they didn't wake up on Hoth and go to sleep on the Medical Frigate. In fact, there are subtle suggestions that we're meant to read the events as a single day: Luke is discovered in the morning by Rogue Two, the battle of hoth takes a few morning hours, they sped the afternoon training and going throgh the astroid field, and then meet up at Cloud City for dinner with Dad. Luke understandably arrives late. They're out by sunrise.
If the glaring plot hole that Luke gets his full lifetime's worth of training bothers you, just chalk it up to Yoda's awesome force skills. Maybe he took a page from Bill and Ted's guitar lessons and did some force-based time dilation.
He didn't get the full training though, he left to fight his pops, and went back to training after Bespin while the others went after Boba and Han.
As regards Luke's rapid training, it seems to be that in the "old days" jedi training consisted of a full blown education from primary level all the way up to college/university level stuff, including philosophy, diplomacy, the sciences etc... not just force training and combat.
It would seem reasonable to assume, given the kick start Luke was given by Ben and work he appears to have done on his own, that a concentrated course in which he was the only student wouldn't be too unrealistic. A few months would be entirely believable. He was still a noob after it all, anyway.
For that matter, how long did Star Wars take? Did Luke really go from starting his day looking for his droid to finishing it by blowing up the Death Star? I know he got an early start, but that is still one busy day.
So this is how I always pictured things. Note that I do not think Lucas planned the whole thing out in the beginning, which is why the first movie does not necessarily flow perfectly into the second 2, and the later 3 are just Lucas trying to fill in the holes.
Leia is a princess because she was adopted by the royal family on Alderon. It has nothing to do with her mother, because if it did then Vader would have been able to figure out who she is. Her royal status had to be based on something other than her true birth parents. Note: in the first movie, Lucas probably did not even plan on her being Luke's sister, so maybe at that point she really was from Alderon?
The clones were probably always the good guys, based on in the 1st movie when the bartender told them the droids were not welcome there. They were not welcome because the droids were the bad guys, and people were still distrustful of them as a result. (When I was a kid, I thought the clone wars reference was Clone - like it was the name of a race or a planet they fought over lol)
Luke's training on Degoba was short and very incomplete; he was at best a noob based on his complete incompetence in the Vader battle...even given that Vader was the master jedi.
As far as distances and time, Lucas just made stuff up. Any attempt to make the time lines work and explain the space travel in real terms is giving Lucas too much credit. He did not intend nor attempt to make it realistic. It can be fun to try to come up with ways to make it all work though.
I am on the phone with the wapce while writing this so it may not really make sense.
Days, weeks, months, years, sunrise, sunset. These are all earthly constructs directly related to our specific solar system, and therefore meaningless when discussing interstellar travel and time passing on any other celestial body.
i sure there were alot of cracker barrels, stuckeys, and greasy truck stops for luke to stop at on the long trip from hoth to dagobah, and then to bespin.
Before Return and the on screen evidence that X-Wings could go to hyperspace the theory was that the whole of Empire takes place in the same system. What's that do to your timeline?
Or the bizarre theory that this stuff is science fiction. Looks like it, smells like it, glad I didn't step in it.
Good question; I like some of the explanation. But PLEASE, anonymous, don't misinterpret a song by almighty Queen- the line from "Bicycle Race" is "Jaws was never my SCENE and I don't like Star Wars."
too lazy to read it all, but look here.
http://www.starwars.idv.tw/starwarsgalaxy.jpg
Can't believe i am even commenting on this.
I remember hearing/reading this somewhere, but i do not know exactly how true this is.
On Dagobah the time moves slower there allowing for luke to have more traning while the rest of the gaxaly goes on. This is part due to the huge amount of the Dark Side of the force being there. Which is the reason Yoda hid there so he would be masked by the Dark Side and thus undectable.
Now we are forgetting a key part. By the time Luke shows up at Jabba's Place, He is a fully trained Jedi Knight. How does he get that when his training is only half complete at the end of Empire.
And then... here is the real kicker. Why did it take the Empire to build one Death Star 18-20 years. When they were almost done with the 2nd being only built after four years.
Which from my understand 0ABY-4ABY is the time frame for the first trilogy
That's simple Andrew. The first time around the Death Star was an unproven technology and thus all sorts of things had to be tested and it had to be invented by scratch (i.e. Manhattan Project). The second time around, the roadmap was already in place and all they had to do was follow the instruction manual. Another good reason is that by the building of the second one, the Emperor has a much firmer grasp of the Empire's economy and can requisite the necessary materials and personnel much more easily. There is no pesky Senate to pass Budget requests through as he had disbanded the council permanently as of the beginning of A New Hope. Without the oversight of such a bureaucracy, such a military armorment plan would take shape much more quickly than before especially as they were not reinventing the wheel but using an already proven technology. Add to this mix the "threat" of a rebellion and it moves that much more quickly.
Yes, I'm a dork.
Re: Probe droids on Hoth
Don't you know about the Star Wars acxiom about landing on planets?
It's very simple - in the Star Wars universe, whenever you land on a planet, you are already within walking distance of WHATEVER destination it is you seek, regardless of whether you know where it is on the surface of the planet or not. This is very much evidenced in the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic game, where everything you need is always within walking distance of whatever space port you land at.
Of course, this would apply to Probe Droids as well - whatever hidden base you are looking for is always within reasonable a Probe Droid search radius.
I'm not sure we have an answer yet?
I'm going to the FARK.com forum where there's 380 posts...
I've got a link on the main page.
[quote]
So, according to the map I have (who's scale measure line is divided in sections of 750 parsecs):
Hoth to Bespin: ~350 parsecs
Hoth to Degobah: ~3900 parsecs
Tatooine to Alderaan: ~11,900 parsecs
[/quote]
You have a 3D map?
Nope, it's not 3D, which is why I used the tilde (~) to show that it was just an approximation.
You know what, until some ubergeek does a navigable, full-3D simulation of the Star Wars galaxy, none of us are gonna be really happy with any answers...
The puerile answer: Luke was as long on Degobah as he was on Tatooine and Hoth, unless you consider what he was looking at or thinking about. I am sure he was longer thinking about Leia than Yoda.
I come up with twenty-four minutes & twenty three-seconds screen time, broken down as follows:
2:34 landing & fishing R2 out of the swamp
4:05 Meeting Yoda & fighting over the lamp
3:19 Eating Dinner
4:50 Beginning training & going into the cave
5:13 More training & Yoda frees the X-Wing
1:45 Sensing his friends in trouble
2:18 Saying goodby to Yoda & Obi-Wan
The clones were the bad guys. More accurately, they were the bad guys' army. They were violently preventing planets from freeing themselves from the Republic, and the Sith. The surprise was finding out that Obi-Wan fought for the bad guys.
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