There’s a Star Wars channel on Youtube called Generation Tech, and I like them. But a video of theirs a while back stuck in my craw. It was about how imperial Star Destroyers aren’t actually destroyers but rather, battleships. What ensues is a 15-minute discussion of naval fleet tactics and how modern naval destroyers (i.e., convoy escorts) are not at all the same thing as battleships.
It was a fine discussion and they didn’t get anything wrong, per se, except that...
Imperial Star Destroyers were never classed in-universe the way we class our own destroyers.
The word ‘destroyer’ in the title doesn’t indicate a class of vessel, it indicates a level of terror. The empire wants their ship to give the impression it could destroy stars. ‘Star Destroyer’ isn’t a classification of ship, it’s an epithet.
In Battlestar Galactica, nobody thinks battlestars are stars that battle. The colonial fleet likes to add the word ‘star’ to the end of its military ship classes to distinguish them as warships. The Cylons follow this trend, calling their own bases ‘basestars’.
Back in Palpatine’s empire, there’s also the Death Star — which is neither a death, nor a star. It is, however, something that brings death even though it’s barely the size of a small moon. ‘Death Star’ is another terror epithet.
The grandiose empire does everything in the name of terror and intimidation. It uses ‘star’ as an adjective for flavor and ‘destroyer’ as an epithet to instill fear. Palpatine likes the sound of a ship that can destroy anything it encounters, because that aligns with his sith business model.
Just sayin’.
-Orr out
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