Starkiller Base

"This fierce machine which you have built, to which you have dedicated your lives and labor and upon which we now stand, will bring a final end to the worthless Senate and its dithering members. To their cherished fleet. When this day is done, all the remaining systems in their hundreds will bow to the dictates of the First Order. And all will remember this as the last day of the last Republic!"

- General Hux

Starkiller Base was an ice planet that was located in the Starkiller Base system of the Unknown Regions that served as the headquarters of the First Order three decades after the Battle of Endor. The base was commanded by General Hux and was armed with a superweapon capable of destroying entire star systems, which the First Order viewed as an evolution of the planet-destroying capabilities of the Galactic Empire's Death Star designs. It was destroyed by a Resistance attack, due to a weak point which was damaged by pilot Poe Dameron, causing the explosion of the whole planet.

Description
Starkiller Base was an ice planet located in the Unknown Regions. The First Order, a junta that believed themselves to be the successors to the ideals of the Galactic Empire, converted the planet into a base of operations and armed it with a superweapon capable of destroying entire star systems. The base had a sanitation section where once-stormtrooper Finn worked.

History


The ice planet known as Starkiller Base was converted into a stronghold of the First Order, which operated it as their headquarters three decades after the Battle of Endor. The superweapon housed in the base bore some similarities to the Death Star and the Death Star II, the two planet-destroying battle stations built by the Galactic Empire, but it possessed far more power than its predecessors and was more than twice the size, as it was built into a planet. Starkiller Base represented a technological step forward in power, as the First Order believed that they needed to become more powerful than the fallen Galactic Empire if they were to succeed in enacting their goals. Starkiller Base gets its power from the energy of nearby stars, which could be a reason it is called the "Starkiller Base".

Starkiller Base is the culmination of the Galactic Empire's research into dark energy translations and hyperspace tunnelling. Enormous arrays of specially designed collectors use the power of a sun to attract and send dark energy to a containment unit at the core of the planet, where it is held and built up inside that containment unit until the weapon is ready to fire. Its ability to concentrate dark energy in this manner gave Starkiller Base access to an enormous source of energy.

The first test of the of the base's weaponry happened right before the Battle on Takodana. After gaining Supreme Leader Snoke's approval, General Hux ordered the base to fire on the capital of the New Republic, Hosnian Prime, and four other planets in the Hosnian system, utterly destroying the planets and the New Republic's fleet.

During the Battle on Takodana, the scavenger and Resistance ally Rey was captured by Kylo Ren and taken to Starkiller Base, where he attempted to interrogate her. She was able to resist and he realized she was Force-sensitive.

Destruction
As Starkiller Base prepared to wipe out the world of D'Qar, the site of the Resistance's headquarters, the Resistance planned an attack of their own. Finn, a defecting Stormtrooper, had given them the Base's blueprints, which revealed a critical weak point -a thermal oscillator- that, if destroyed, would eliminate the Base.

Squadrons of X-wings engaged TIE fighters defending the Base, while the Millennium Falcon bypassed its shields and deployed a ground team to disable the shield generators. When the X-wings tried to take down the thermal oscillator, but failed, Han Solo and his team delved deeper into the Base's subterranean complex, with the aim of reaching the weak point themselves. Along the way they re-encountered Rey, who had freed herself. Chewbacca detonated explosives on columns supporting an access tunnel that led into the thermal oscillator's conduit. With the tunnel open, Poe Dameron, leader of the Resistance starfighter Corps, entered it and destroyed the conduit, causing a chain reaction that ultimately destroyed Starkiller Base. As it was destroyed, the stored material from the sun it drained expanded to create a new star in the planet's place.

Behind the scenes
"It is very much — and it's acknowledged as such in the movie — apparently another Death Star. But what it's capable of, how it works, and what the threat is, is far greater than what the Death Star could have done. Starkiller Base is another step forward, technologically speaking, in terms of power."

- J.J. Abrams, on the similarities and differences between the Death Stars and Starkiller Base

Starkiller Base was created for the 2015 film Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens. The film's director, J.J. Abrams, stated that the superweapon's similarities to the two Death Stars from the original trilogy were intentional, as the new generation of Imperials within the First Order would want to prove that they were stronger and more advanced than their predecessors in the Galactic Empire. The base's name harkens back to the original name of Luke Skywalker, who George Lucas originally called Luke Starkiller.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens
 * Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens novelization
 * Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens junior novelization