Talk:Dankayo/Legends

BDZ or not?
Give quotes if possible, refrain from personal attacks and excessive speculation, and go ask another admin for the unprotection, I'm not online again until at least late Monday evening. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 05:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The relevant quotes describing the attack, from SWTC.


 * "... to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag. Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a through search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface." - Scavenger Hunt, p.3


 * "As instructed, I have remained behind until the last of our transports departed safely into hyperspace. Imperial Star Destroyers have so thoroughly blasted Dankayo that I fear for my safety, even in this deep-planet survival shelter." - Scavenger Hunt, p.20


 * The atmosphere was completely blown off and the surface was reduced to molten slag. The description is identical to a BDZ. The datapacks recovered by the Imperials were most likely in deep underground bunkers similar to the one ZNT-8 was in. McEwok's claim that "the last of its atmosphere drifted away" refers to air inside the Rebel base is completely insane. --Vermilion 05:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There was also some discussion of this on TFN in this thread. McEwok made the same claims there and was smacked down. --Vermilion 07:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Vermilion, I take it you don't atcually have access to Scavenger Hunt, just what SWTC says about it?

The key point of my position is this: there's no canon evidence that Dankayo was subject to a "Base Delta Zero", or that the planet's crust was reduced to a "molten" state; accordingly, such statements have no place on Wookieepedia. There may be something happening with the atmosphere that might suggest comparable levels of firepower, but it's by no means clear what's happening here, or what it implies.

There are, I think, two issues here:

1.) "Slagging" of the surface. A complete reduction of a planet's face to a molten state is generally taken to be indicative of a Base Delta Zero bombardment.

Whether that idea is accurate is another issue, but the question to hand is is what actual evidence is there for the melting of Dankayo's surface?.

Well, I can find no canon evidence in support of Vermilion's claim that "the surface was reduced to molten slag", let alone any direct reference to this as a "Base Delta Zero".

Firstly, there's no evidence that the bombardment was aimed anywhere except at the base itself, which is clearly a specific location on Dankayo. The three Star Destroyers are ordered "to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag", while the back-cover text says "The Imperials have destroyed the Rebel base on Dankayo, reducing the facility to slag". No mention is made of any wider bombardment, nor is any rationale for one suggested.

We're told of "dense clouds of atomized topsoil" and the planet's "now evenly-cratered surface", but neither of these specifies the extent of the bombardment&mdash;nor, in fact, do these descriptions of cratered ground and dust flung up into the air provide any evidence that the "slagging" involved the actual melting of the crust, rather than simply surface impacts.

We also have a description of the base in the aftermath of the attack, which Vermillion seems unaware of: the first-person narrative of ZNT-8's log describes how he "crawled up the accessway to the surface -- or what is left of it. If nothing else, the Empire is generous with its overkill"...

Since ZNT-8 is located at the base, this again can't be taken as indicating the planet-wide situation. Moreover, as he watches through his macrobinoculars, here, at the very target of the attack, we get a further description of the situation: "Imperial stormtroopers sifting through the rubble of our defensive installations, others loading salvaged equipment into barges for transport", and then, to his shock, the Imperials "blasting open the doors to an intact chamber in the main base".

Clearly, the base's defences were reduced to "rubble" rather than simply a melted smear, rubble from which "salvaged equipment" could be recovered; and through his macrobinocs, an observer could see that part of the main base remained intact. This was where the datapacks were recovered from, and given that ZNT-8 has a line-of-sight view through his macrobinocs, it must have been on the surface. This disproves Vermillion's suggestion that the datapacks "most likely in deep underground bunkers".

Moreover, the reason that the computer chamber survived wasn't some special defensive capability of the construction. The self-destruct charges designed to destroy the "central base computer" failed when the bombardment took out the "power supply to the central computer center".

In short, the Dankayo assault was aimed at a specific target, the "tiny" Rebel base. Structures on the surface remained partially intact in the heart of the base. Nor is there any rationale for a planet-slagging bombardment. The bombardment was followed up by a surface operation designed to recover useful material from the debris, and the Imperials were disappointed that "Not a single being, living or dead, was discovered on the planet", due to the base's earlier evacuation: these elements of the operation are inconsistent with the claim that the previous bombardment was a Base Delta Zero or even a localized "crust-melting" attack.

2.) The "atmosphere" drifting away. This is nowhere else mentioned in connection with a Base Delta Zero.

True, in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, we see Milagro a couple of months after the Empire's planetary bombardment there, which is described as having "a thin atmosphere"; but there's no indication that this was a result of the bombardment, rather than a preexisting feature of the planet, and in any event it's clear that there was a breathable atmosphere after the bombardment.

On Caamas, soot and smoke ejected into the atmosphere during the bombardment rendered the air "toxic to most aliens" according to Coruscant and the Core Worlds, requiring "a breathing mask for any sustained activity", but the planet did not lose its atmosphere.

I've been told that the energies that would be required to burn off a normal planetary atmosphere are commesurate with planet-melting firepower, and I acknowledge as much on my version of the page ("The reference to the loss of "atmosphere" could still indicate planet-slagging firepower levels"); but there are several problems with this interpretation.

In general terms, a catastrophic loss of atmosphere is never mentioned anywhere else in connection with a BDZ&mdash;quite apart from the fact that there's no other evidence that the Dankayo attack was a BDZ in the first place.

More specifically, there's a logical problem here: the line that describes how "the last of its atmosphere drifted away" is coupled directly with a description of "the dense clouds of atomized topsoil" still in Dankayo's sky, which will soon settle back on the surface, and this seems paradoxical&mdash;don't these "dense clouds" represent an atmosphere?

I made an alternative suggestion that the description could relate to an enclosed internal atmosphere in the base, which Vermilion dismisses with the rather subjective term "insane".

Let's look at this more closely, though. The meaning of the phrase "the last of its atmosphere drifted away" hinges on the noun that the pronoun "its" refers to&mdash;known gramatically as the "precedent". Normally, we'd expect this to be the immediately previous noun&mdash;which in this case is "the tiny base", at the end of the previous sentence: the last of [the tiny base's] atmosphere drifted away...?

There is an ambiguity here, inasmuch as the two sentences are seperated by a section header, Recent Events, and the noun that occurs later in the sentence is "Dankayo". It's certainly possible that a reference to Dankayo's atmosphere was intended, but the grammar is unclear, as is the meaning: atmosphere loss due to orbital bombardment is never described anywhere else, and the energies required don't fit well with the level of destruction actually described on the surface.

This leads on to the final question:

3.) How should the page be written?

I'm sure my version could be improved, as always, but I'm not sure what's wrong with my basic two-stage approach: (a.) rewriting the text to make the question of the bombardment's extent and intensity oblique, and (b.) adding a behind the scenes section, summarising the uncertainties:


 * The bombardment of Dankayo is widely regarded in fandom as a "Base Delta Zero" involving the melting of the planet's entire surface.
 * There's no direct canon evidence for a "Base Delta Zero" or planet-wide bombardment; in fact, the target is specified as a "tiny" Rebel base, and even here, surface structures remain semi-intact.
 * There is a reference to a loss of "atmosphere", which could indicate BDZ-level firepower, but there are problems with interpreting and understanding this, and it's not impossible that this is meant as a reference to the base's internal atmosphere.

And, whewh, that was far too long and detailed! --McEwok 14:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)