Ahsoka - streaming on Disney+

[Tuxedo Prime]

I'm not even sure how to respond to this. The ring was completely new technology. Huyang commented on its immensity. They weren't just traveling to some uncharted star, but to an entirely different galaxy. Several orders of magnitude farther away. None of the stuff you said is relevant.

No, this Sad Bastard can attest that it is relevant, but the issues you bring up do complicate matters by no small degree.

Even within the GFFA, there is a tangled knot of hyperspatial anomalies spinward of Coruscant, which is why the following map shows that most exploration went into what was popularly known as "The Slice" and moved spinward and trailing from the major hyperlanes (Perlemian Route and Corellian Run) that bounded said area.

We knew from Episode V and Episode II that the GFFA has satellite galaxies. From Wookieepedia:

The galaxy was orbited by seven dwarf satellite galaxies, some of which contained twenty billion stars. They were ranked in order of distance. The closest was Companion Aurek, also known as the Rishi Maze, a complex tangle of stars high above the galactic plane. Companion Besh, also known as Firefist, was some 150,000 light-years away from the galaxy and had only ever been surveyed by probots. The other satellite galaxies, Companions Cresh through Grek, were much further out. Most of the Companions were described as having ancient, metal-poor remnants of stars and not much life.

Hyperspace travel is affected by mass -- planetary masses and stellar masses. As far as I know, very few studies have been done as to how galactic scale masses affect matters, but if my memory is accurate, trans-galactic travel is technically a thing during the movie saga period.

(I recall that Leland Chee had said that the Haven rendezvous point for the Alliance forces fleeing Hoth at the end of Episode V is within view of the Rishi Maze, and I believe the Essential Atlas placed Kamino within said satellite galaxy as well. Companion Besh will be known to Marvel SW readers as the home of the Nagai and Tof species.)

So, this ring may be something that the Celestials (or perhaps another outfit) were using to link the systems together more easily, perhaps overcome the galactic-scale tangles and gravitic eddies that make such travel several orders of magnitude harder than even the Deep Core region (which usually required either S-thread boosters to keep routes stable or monthly navicomputer updates.

Of course, it could be even further. No-one's really infodumped the astrogation data, so we have no real way of knowing where an unknown technology put them.
But if we are dealing with one of the dwarf satellite galaxies, a telescope and sextant will be of some use, and a Class 1 hyperdrive will (eventually, and with likely a lot of small jumps in case the Intergalactic Void isn't quite empty.... ) get them back.... though it won't be anything like flying a crop-dusting airspeeder.

 

[Axaday]

I noticed on the first watch and was reminded on the second watch of the last scene. In my head Ahsoka is tallish and Sabine is shortish. But there they are standing next to each other in the last scene and Sabine is considerably taller than Ahsoka.

 

[Cybersnark]

They could easily get around Ray Stevenson's loss by doing that particular follow-up in animation. There is precedence to have different actors between voice and live-action, as this very series demonstrates.

 

[Axaday]

Ray Stevenson did his work well, but his physical features are pretty plain and he didn't have an AWFUL lot of screen time. Facebook has shown me several actors that look the part just fine. I'm sure they can find one that can also act it. I am, in general, always uncomfortable with recasting, but I don't think they can finish the story they have already planned with a side story. If they decide not to recast, they're going to have to find him dead in a cave next to a mystical object or something.

 

[The Predaking]

I'm not even sure how to respond to this. The ring was completely new technology. Huyang commented on its immensity. They weren't just traveling to some uncharted star, but to an entirely different galaxy. Several orders of magnitude farther away. None of the stuff you said is relevant.

The Ring ship wasn't new technology, it was just an upscaled version of the rings that the Jedi used in the prequels. It also used existing hyperdrives from Super Star Destroyers that were being decommissioned. Those were Class 2 Hyperdrives, so they aren't very fast in hyperspace. They just needed to be huge in order to be a ring for an Imperial Star Destroyer(Not sure if the Chimera is a class 1 or class 2 ISD). With the map, they simply obtained the directions to get to the other galaxy, so if the Jedi starship was able to plot a course inside the Purgil, then they can get home, maybe even could have beat Thrawn back there since the Ring ship used a slower class 2 hyperdrive.

 

[Dake]

Precisely. Though we can be pretty confident Ahsoka and Sabine did not beat Thrawn back considering Ezra arriving in a stolen shuttle was a complete surprise to Hera.

 

[Axaday]

Morgan went to an awful lot of trouble to make that ring. If she could have taken any ship, she already had any ship. She could've docked it in his ship and flown his ship back. They need the Eye of Sion to make the trip.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

The Ring ship wasn't new technology, it was just an upscaled version of the rings that the Jedi used in the prequels. It also used existing hyperdrives from Super Star Destroyers that were being decommissioned. Those were Class 2 Hyperdrives, so they aren't very fast in hyperspace. They just needed to be huge in order to be a ring for an Imperial Star Destroyer(Not sure if the Chimera is a class 1 or class 2 ISD). With the map, they simply obtained the directions to get to the other galaxy, so if the Jedi starship was able to plot a course inside the Purgil, then they can get home, maybe even could have beat Thrawn back there since the Ring ship used a slower class 2 hyperdrive.

I can only repeat that Huyang pointed out that the use of those hyperdrives together created something new. The ability to go to another galaxy is not a feature of unadjusted hyperdrives.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

I can only repeat that Huyang pointed out that the used of those hyperdrives together created something new. The ability to go to another galaxy is not a feature of unadjusted hyperdrives.

Well yes to the first sentence, but actually not quite to the second: because the Zareca String (a hyperlane connecting the Rishi system in the GFFA to the Companion Aurek satellite galaxy) does exist, and we see Kenobi go to Kamino in Episode II.

Getting to "wherever our cast ended up" is not a feature of unadjusted hyperdrives, but that isn't quite the same thing as "no extragalactic travel ever".

But as I pointed out above, they only have to be further out than Firefist (Companion Besh) for all we've seen so far to be consistent with all the established lore both pre- and post-2014 acquisition, so while I'm happy to provide slightly pedantic infodumps (pedantry in fandom? Surely not!), I'm also happy to wait and see what unfolds. I'm not one who thinks Filoni can do no wrong, but he at least does the research before striking out his own way....

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

Well yes to the first sentence, but actually not quite to the second: because the Zareca String (a hyperlane connecting the Rishi system in the GFFA to the Companion Aurek satellite galaxy) does exist, and we see Kenobi go to Kamino in Episode II.

Obviously I'm not as well-versed in the mythos... the idea that Kamino is in another galaxy is decidedly news to me. Even Wookiepedia merely places it "in a remote star system in Wild Space of the galaxy". While I'll concede it goes on to say that it "was considered extragalactic due to its position on the galactic disk," to make a point of that can only be nit-picking in the context of a discussion of what's going on in Ahsoka.


(EDIT: I'll also admit to missing the bit about Zareca String and Rishi at first, and only checking that after making this post, but the data there... even if pedantically correct... which you admit to being... strikes me as on such an entirely different scale as to, again, be irrelevant to this discussion. It IS an interesting way of explaining the clear view of a galaxy seen at the end of Empire Strikes Back)

 

[Axaday]

I don't have much patience for the webs of technical details made up to explain plot points and visuals that weren't expansively thought through.

The point I have to hammer down is that if Ahsoka can fly her ship back with telemetry it recorded while inside an animal's mouth, Morgan never needed to build the Eye of Sion, which looks very expensive. She already had a spaceship.

 

[ZacWilliam1]

Yeah, the very clear implication of Ashoka is that the Eye absolutely necessary for true trans-Galactic warp.

Nothing else really justifies the immense effort of it's invention, construction, and use.

-ZacWilliam, not that subsiquent ancillary media might not make something up, but judging by what's on screen in the show that's clearly what they're intending right now.

 

[Cybersnark]

Yeah, whatever the reason, it was clearly presented as "this is the only way (other than Purgills) to travel between these points." It's safe to assume that Ahsoka's group (and the Dark Jedi) are trapped on Peridea.

Which means Filoni could easily just sidebar them and have his movie (or whatever the next chronological entry is) ignore them while they deal with the larger-scale Republic/Empire(/Mandalorians) conflict.

 

[Axaday]

I figure Mandalorian season 4 will come first and continue to treat Thrawn and Ezra. I think they went through Ahsoka's story and out the other side.

But it has been variously pointed out that Ezra got to the World Between Worlds by looking where the Father pointed and that's what Baylan was doing last we saw. They could get home in a jiffy if they find that.

 

[The Predaking]

I just want to respond to the whole she already had a ship comment. The Eye, or whatever it's called, was built to bring back the Chimera. Yes, she could have brought back Thrawn in a Lambda class shuttle, but they needed the Eye to bring back his ISD with him. Apparently, she was summoned there by the Mothers, who obviously wanted themselves and their massive amount of cargo brought back, thus the need for the large ship. The Chimera itself doesn't look lightspeed capable anymore, so she made a ring ship.

There is nothing special about the Eye, other than its size. It uses Super Star Destroyer hyperdrives, so unless we are going to go into the whole, running out of fuel for the trip thing that we had in the sequel trilogy, I don't know what to say.

 

[Axaday]

It "doesn't look lightspeed capable" is pretty speculative.

It would still have been much easier to have taken a freighter with a hyperdrive in it.

 

[Dake]

I just want to respond to the whole she already had a ship comment. The Eye, or whatever it's called, was built to bring back the Chimera. Yes, she could have brought back Thrawn in a Lambda class shuttle, but they needed the Eye to bring back his ISD with him. Apparently, she was summoned there by the Mothers, who obviously wanted themselves and their massive amount of cargo brought back, thus the need for the large ship. The Chimera itself doesn't look lightspeed capable anymore, so she made a ring ship.

There is nothing special about the Eye, other than its size. It uses Super Star Destroyer hyperdrives, so unless we are going to go into the whole, running out of fuel for the trip thing that we had in the sequel trilogy, I don't know what to say.

It "doesn't look lightspeed capable" is pretty speculative.

It would still have been much easier to have taken a freighter with a hyperdrive in it.

It's ALL speculative at this point. That being said, there is support for what Pred is saying (with whom I also agree). The ring was very clearly built to the specs necessary to jump a Star Destroyer, period. There was no reason to build that shape regardless of anything else unless part of the mission profile was to return with the Chimera.

Secondly, they took great pains to show all the damage to the Chimera over the course of the series, including multiple shots in the final episode showing significant damage to the drive section.

Before you type it: no, that's still not conclusive evidence that the hyperdrive itself was inoperable. But again, sometimes the simplest answers are the right ones. It's simpler to imagine they upscaled existing technology (hyperspace rings) in order to haul an SD, then it is for them to have invented something completely and utterly new. When Huyang says it's "new", it can just as easily mean - there's never been a ring that size before/one designed to haul a capital ship. There never needed to be anything of this sort because large ships are able to have their own drives - rings were reserved for small craft. Rings themselves never needed to be self-contained or directed, because they are linked to a small ship with its own astromech (or something). So it's new in that it's the first hyperspace ring that is also a ship in and of itself.

As for a potential return-trip: as has been mentioned previously, Star Wars has always used hyperspace "lanes". It's not enough to know where something sits in the inter or extra galactic plane, there need to be charted courses for safe passage. It's not far-fetched to imagine Star Wars wiz-bangery can make use of some sort of hyper-inertial-navigation system that tracks the ship's movement through space and time. Meaning if a route has been traveled once, it can be repeated. Heck, if they want to make it really easy they just say since Ahsoka's ship is an old Jedi shuttle, it can do it. Iow: A space-wizard-ship did it.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

But there's nothing (known?) that's special about the Chimera. As was stated before, if all that was needed was to get the cargo (whatever that happens to be), another ship could have been used.

 

[Dake]

Right. But again - why shape the Eye like a hyperspace ring that is specifically designed to carry an ISD? Whatever the reason (that we will likely learn later), the Chimera needed to come back. It could be as simple as ego: Thrawn would not be satisfied to return in the hold of a freighter.

 

[Axaday]

why shape the Eye like a hyperspace ring that is specifically designed to carry an ISD?

They wanted to bring the Chimera back and the Chimera could not make the trip. I acknowledge that. But if the problem was just that its hyperdrives were broken, don't build the Eye of Sion at fantastic expense. Fix them.

Thrawn would not be satisfied to return in the hold of a freighter.

Maybe what I said before wasn't clear. The freighter that brought the hyperdrive from Corellia to Morgan can bring that hyperdrive to Thrawn. Or a bigger one if it needs to be inside. Unless it can't.

-=-=-

How many hyperdrives does an Imperial Star Destroyer have? Everything that I see indicates SW ships have 1 hyperdrive and a backup if they are smart. So if the Chimera's hyperdrive and backup are broken, it needs 1 hyperdrive to go to lightspeed again.

Does a Super Star Destroyer need a bigger hyperdrive than an X-Wing? Bigger than a Star Destroyer? Because the Eye of Sion is not bigger than a Star Destroyer, unless width is really important. It is a little wider. For some reason it needs 7 Super Star Destroyer hyperdrives. Why would that be?

-=-=-

I went looking to see if Dave Filoni might have said anything about this and wound up finding out he didn't need to. Just watch the show.

Part 3:
Huyang - The good news is the enemy vessel is still under construction and not yet complete. There are 6 hyperdrive engines in place with the final one being set into position.
Ahsoka - So it's a hyperspace ring.
Huyang - Yes, but I have never seen one built on this scale before. A craft with these power levels and configuration would be capable of a hyperspace jump of astonishing speed and distance.
Ahsoka - Can a ring like that make a jump to a neighboring galaxy?
Huyang - Theoretically, if one knew the coordinates and navigation, yes I believe it could.