[hlqtcvan] Parrying the Death Star

While Luke, on board the Millennium Falcon, struggles against the combat remote under the tutelage of Obi-wan Kenobi, Darth Vader puts the Death Star through its paces by having it fire directly at himself, which he parries or tanks (absorbs) with the utmost of ease: the Death Star's power is insignificant next to the power of the Force.  (Do cinematic juxtaposition: both are spherical devices that shoot beams.)

While parrying, Vader takes engineering notes on the Death Star's beam, which is the point of the exercise: observe the beam first hand.  Anakin is a skillful engineer (he has been an engineer since a very young age when he was a slave to Watto) and is in fact one of the main forces (pun) behind the Death Star's construction.  It would have been nice if there were foreshadowing through the prequels that Anakin would become the engineering brains behind the construction of the Death Star.  (He would have been an awesome role model for young movie-watchers choosing to pursue a career in engineering.)  Maybe along the way, designs the combat droid that Luke later practices against.

The exercise allows testing the Death Star at full power against a target, while avoiding the attention that the explosion of a planet might attract.  Or, beyond full power as any engineer would likely try: let's keep cranking this baby up to see what its limits are: there's only one way to find out!

This testing is why the Empire did not fire on the gas giant planet Yavin, because they knew that the Death Star would have problems taking it out.  (On the other side of planet Yavin circled its moon Yavin IV, on which the Rebel base was constructed.  The Empire was forced to wait until the Death Star had a line of sight to Yavin IV.  This delay gave the Rebels just enough time to mount its attack against the Death Star's exhaust port.)