Tailkinker

Answer: According to the novelisation of Return of the Jedi, the transports were loaded with large quantities of explosives, with the intent of using them in a kamikaze role. Given that role, it makes sense to target them as a priority, before they could be used to destroy a major Imperial ship, plus the premature detonation of the explosives could damage or potentially even destroy surrounding Rebel ships, weakening their fleet.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: The impact of the energy shot on Artoo's data-access arm has caused a short in his systems, so he's just going through an overload.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's never stated anywhere in the films whether Leia knows that she's adopted or not. Given her apparent lack of surprise at Luke's reference to her "real mother", it seems more than likely that her adoptive parents have told her at some point.

Tailkinker ★

Chosen answer: Palpatine's trying to turn Luke to the dark side, to make him his new apprentice in Vader's place - he wants Luke to strike the now defenceless Vader down in anger and hate and thus open himself to the Sith way. By throwing his lightsabre aside, Luke's telling the Emperor that, no matter how much the Emperor goads him, he will not raise his weapon against Vader again and that he utterly rejects the Sith way.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Vader's alone; for twenty years, he's had only the Emperor, a man who he hates for what he's become, but also the only person truly remaining in his life, having killed or otherwise burned his bridges with everybody else. He has nowhere else to go but to the side of the Emperor. He may well be angry at the Emperor for telling Luke to kill him, but it's exactly the same deal that he tried to make - it's the way of the Sith that the strong replace the weak. The Emperor needs an apprentice; with Luke dead, the Emperor may well punish Vader, but won't kill him, because he doesn't have a replacement. So he initially returns to his master's side, resigning himself to going on as he is, a bitter twisted half-machine in the thrall of a more powerful master. It's only when Luke reaches out to him through the pain that he decides that his son's life is worth more than his own and finally acts directly against the Emperor.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: According to the Star Wars Databank, the pair are Sim Aloo and Janus Greejatus, two members of the Imperial Ruling Council, a large group numbering several hundred who act as advisors to Emperor Palpatine and are also sent on missions across the galaxy as his personal representatives. Both are Force-sensitive with some training in the Dark Side directly from Palpatine himself and, as their presence during the Emperor's discussion with Vader shows, are among his more trusted acolytes.

Tailkinker ★

Chosen answer: The Battle of Taanab occured about five months after the destruction of the first Death Star when a group of pirates attacked the relatively undefended agricultural world of Taanab. With the planet's small defence fleet massively outnumbered, Calrissian, who was on-planet visiting a casino, bet his fellow patrons that he could defeat the pirates and took his freighter into the fight. Hiding his ship in an ice ring surrounding Taanab's moon, he waited until the pirate fleet was in range, then ejected his cargo, a large number of Conner nets, large electrified nets designed by the military to immobilise ships. With much of the pirate fleet incapacitated, Lando rallied the Taanab defence fleet and eliminated the remaining pirate ships with very few losses. The impressed Taanab government offered him a commission in their armed forces, which he turned down, but he became a hero to the population, a reputation which apparently led to his commission as a General by the Rebel Alliance.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: The Jedi are shown to have something of a blind spot in regards to matters of the heart. Note that when Luke confronts Obi-Wan over lying to him about his father's fate, Obi-Wan's response is haughty and defensive, and gives Luke nothing in terms of regret or apology. They're focused on their mission, not on how Luke feels. Why waste time, in their eyes, telling Luke about his mother? If they had their way, he wouldn't even know about his father. The prequels would make this more explicit, showing that the Jedi are conditioned from the beginning to let go of all "passions" because they could so easily be corrupted, and their inability to understand Anakin's emotions just contributes to his downfall.

TonyPH

Answer: Why can we assume that she was discussed off-screen? Luke's got more important things to talk about than who his mother was. Yoda dies shortly afterwards and Luke's understandably more interested in how Darth Vader, given that he's got to go up against him, can be his father when talking to Obi-wan's ghost shortly after. Not a lot of time for general chit-chat. Behind the scenes, at that point, very little would have been decided about their mother, as it would be irrelevant to the plot of the trilogy and to discuss her on-screen would have wasted time and slowed everything down.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: No. As, being the hero of the piece, there was no chance of it actually happening, it's highly unlikely that the subject was ever considered. Even when Luke temporarily joined the Dark Side in the EU comics, no Sith name was ever given.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: According to Expanded Universe materials, Luke constructed his new lightsabre using instructions and materials that he found hidden in Obi-Wan Kenobi's abandoned dwelling on Tatooine.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: The force ghosts could've talked him through it.

Answer: The precise mechanism is somewhat unclear at this point, leaving us with no particularly good answer, but there are undoubtedly possibilities. Even in the first film, Luke has had a small amount of training with Obi-Wan; it's not much, but it could be enough to allow him to see them. Leia's had nothing at all, so possibly she's simply not capable of it. Alternatively, the 'ghosts' may simply have chosen to appear only to Luke for reasons of their own; two of them wouldn't be recognised by Leia anyway, making it a bit pointless to appear to her.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: She doesn't see them. Her focus is on Luke staring off and daydreaming during a massive celebration.

Answer: Try to imagine what your reaction would be if you suddenly came upon three ghosts out of nowhere. Ghosts, mind you - glowing apparitions of dead people beyond the grave right there before your eyes! Regardless if you find such things scary or not, it would probably be quite a shock, require lots of explaining, and certainly kill the celebratory mood for the time being.

TonyPH

Answer: Coincidentally, in the time since this question was first posted, Carrie Fisher revealed that she and Harrison Ford were having an affair. While this may not necessarily have anything to do with the incident asked in the question, it adds the possibility that mentioning it would have been too close to an uncomfortable subject she hadn't yet admitted.

TonyPH

Answer: I've never seen anything on the subject. Seriously, though, why would either of them comment on the incident? It was an on-set slip-up that made it into the film, nothing more than that and, to be blunt, hardly unusual. In all likelihood, neither really remembers the incident among the many slip-ups that both have undoubtedly experienced in their lengthy careers.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: For one very simple reason - Triclops was a pacifist.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Because, when the film was originally made, the character of Qui-Gon Jinn hadn't been created. It was a relatively easy task to remove Sebastian Shaw in favour of Hayden Christensen - to add a new figure in would have required them to change the framing of the shot, shuffle the figures about, plus get Liam Neeson in to film it and so forth. It just wasn't worth doing. From the story point of view, it's established in the books that those who do merge with the Force in that manner do have to "move on" eventually - a series set some years after Jedi features Luke's final conversation with Kenobi before the latter goes on to whatever awaits him. Jinn would undoubtedly have moved on long before the events of Jedi.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Luke and Qui-Gon have never met and Luke has never even been made aware of Qui-Gon's existence in his entire life. I mean, I'm sure Luke would've been gracious about it and just been like, "Well hello Mr. Random Ghost Jedi, thanks for the well wishes!" but seeing as the spirits' appearance looks to be a private gesture from loved ones it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for Qui-Gon to be there.

TonyPH

Answer: In a nutshell, she's not in there, so you can stop looking. When Mara became a pivotal character in the book series that cover the time after the films, a number of images were created for, among other things, the Star Wars collectable card game, using a model named Shannon McRandle (a.k.a. Shannon Baksa) to portray her. There were rumours that Shannon would cameo in the revamped Special Edition of Jedi using newly shot footage, but this did not occur.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: He has a galaxy-wide intelligence network, plus the insights gained through the Force. He's aware that the Rebels have obtained information about the new Death Star - he claimed to have leaked it himself as part of a trap, but it's possible that he was lying. Either way, he knows that the Rebellion can hardly pass up a chance to destroy the Death Star before it's completed, particularly as they believe that it's not yet operational. As for Endor, it's stated quite clearly that the Death Star is protected by a powerful force field projected from a shield generator on Endor. As no ships can get through the field, that generator has to be the initial target for the Rebels - unless it's taken out, the attack on the Death Star itself cannot proceed.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Mara Jade only appears in the books dealing with the time period after Return of the Jedi, although, according to those books, she was undercover at Jabba's palace during the events of ROTJ - a particular woman seen in those scenes has been picked out by the fans as being her, although there's nothing from Lucasfilm on the subject. According to those, she was a Force Sensitive who worked as one of a number of special covert agents for the Emperor (known as the Emperor's Hands). She was able to hear his orders over galactic distances, and passed those orders on to others. After the fall of the Emperor, she hooked up with a smuggling ring, where she eventually came into contact with Luke Skywalker. Initially, she wanted to kill him, in accord with the final instruction embedded into her psyche by the Emperor, but never went through with it (generally because she found herself in situations where she needed him alive, but partly because, despite her service to the Empire, she was not a fundamentally evil person). Eventually, through a complex set of circumstances, she was able to eliminate the last command from her head. For the next few years she came into sporadic contact with Luke, who gave her Jedi training and the two became firm, if somewhat wary allies. Ultimately, they married and now have a son, Ben.

Tailkinker ★

Chosen answer: It's explained in the film, although not terribly clearly. Luke's hand takes a direct blast during the fight on Jabba's sailbarge, putting a rather unsightly charred hole in it. As they leave Tatooine, Luke is seen pulling on a glove to cover the hole - he then wears it, I believe, for the remainder of the film. Presumably, with visiting Yoda and all the preparation for the assault on the Death Star, he hasn't had time to go and get it fixed.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Additionally, from a story standpoint, when Luke cuts off Vader's hand to reveal it to be completely mechanical, he looks at his own gloved hand and is reminded what lays ahead if he turns to the Dark Side. That shot would not have worked as well if he just stared at what appears to be his normal hand, thus they found a reason to put a glove on it early on.

Answer: It's most likely to do with the fact that the ships in the films enter the atmosphere in a highly controlled manner, unlike our ships, which, to all intents and purposes, simply fall through the atmosphere, using atmospheric friction to slow themselves down, causing the intense heat buildup - Star Wars ships don't need to do that. The other factor is that the majority of ships in the Star Wars universe have shields of one sort or another - these may have some effect in dispersing any possible heat buildup.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: I don't think we ever see a ship in the actual moment it penetrates a planet's atmosphere, it's always shortly before or after.

TonyPH