Star Words: Episode IV, Part 20

The disaster behind that mysterious disturbance Ben experienced is revealed all too horribly when they come out of hyperspace to find a mass of floating rubble in place of Alderaan. Both Han and Luke are tense and hyper-reactive, conjecturing wildly and lashing out at a stray TIE fighter without much thought for the implications. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, measures the situation with grave caution, counseling against pursuit of the TIE fighter. And when Luke points out the "small moon," Obi-Wan recognizes its true nature almost immediately.

"That's no moon. It's a space station."

What a wonderfully terse, ominous line. Just imagine the paradigm shift. You're looking at an apparently ordinary object, only to realize it's something far more sinister.

It takes an already urgent, fraught scene and turns it into total calamity They're already caught in the tractor beam; it's too late. The slow but unyielding inevitability of their capture is almost excruciating to watch. And yet Obi-Wan continues to counsel patience; alternatives to fighting. If they'd listened to him from the beginning, they would have let the TIE fighter go and avoided the Death Star entirely. On the other hand, Leia would have died, and with her the location of the secret base. Maybe sometimes dumb choices can lead to surprising solutions. The Force works in mysterious ways.

Next, more pithiness from Ben...