Insane Fan Theories: Star Wars, the Droid Escape

Hey… you remember that scene in Star Wars… the first one… the real first one, where R2-D2 and C-3PO are being jettisoned into deep space and the two imperial deck officers are there and one is about to destroy the pod and thus mark the end of the entire trilogy and franchise before it began.

Let me show you how that dialogue goes:

CHIEF PILOT

There goes another one.

CAPTAIN

Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have been short-circuited.

I found more pictures of this scene in Lego then I did the actual bloody scene.

Now, from this scene we can derive two facts. I’ll cover them individually and in exhaustive detail to pad this article. First of all, we know that several escape pods have made their escape and that the Imperial soldiers are shooting them down like its cans on my Uncle’s porch that one summer I accidentally killed a squirrel and cried for three weeks about it. So why, in a movie where it’s not like we have a budget on blaster charges, does the Captain tell him not to shoot?

My friends, I have cracked this Thirty-Eight, Jesus Christ Thirty-Eight years ago this movie came out? Thirty-Eight year mystery!

That man referred to only as an Imperial Captain and then, only in the script, is the unnamed hero of the entire trilogy.

For the only logical explanation is thus: HE IS A REBEL SPY!

I’d do a dramatic reveal here but I literally cannot find a picture of that man’s face. Can… can I get a zoom in on the back of his head?

Good enough.

Think about it. What other explanation makes sense? In the entire trilogy the Rebels spy network is something only referred to and not really seen… which makes sense in terms of a spy network. But, if we follow the trilogy we learn things about the spy network used by the rebels. First, they use Bothans, which we don’t learn much about in the context of the films, and that the Empire is skilled at rooting out spies and murdering them. Eventually we learn from the Emperor that he’s aware of the leaks in his Empire’s information network that reach the Rebels and that he exploits them. Imagine, just imagine, the kind of spy that you would be to be able to evade detection?

Think about it. The Emperor is a force user and a powerful one at that if he can make force lightning. Normal human minds must be like peeling an apple to him. And I mean a rotten apple where the peel is slipping off. His hatchet man is Darth Vader a man we know has equally powerful force sensitivity. Could you imagine being a spy and trying your damnedest not to be sensed by Vader as he comes on your ship? Hiding all of your feelings and emotions as you hunt down Princess Leia, someone you know is on your side but you can do nothing? Watching as your own allies are brutally shot out of deep space and needing to kill all your emotion on the off chance, the slightest off chance, Vader who has a licence to kill anyone he sees fit, might sense it?

Now imagine that you see one pod escaping and you notice it has no life forms. You know rebel cruisers and you suspect that this one didn’t jettison by chance. You hope, against all hope that there might be something on it, maybe droids, or something more crucial. So you react and come up with the best excuse you have, hoping that you slip through the cracks.

“Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have been short-circuited.”

We never know what becomes of this man, if he is rewarded and awarded by the rebellion or if he was caught by the Empire. Despite what might be the truth we do know one thing from this pivotal scene: it takes only the smallest acts to write history. Even if it comes from a guy we only ever see the back of his head.