Empire Strikes Back timeline.

[Spaceghost]

I've been idly pondering this for some years and it just occured to me that I have a pool of massive, gobby nerds at my fingertips who might be interested in going on and on and on about it.

Here goes; for how long is Luke training with Yoda on Dagobah? It seems like, at most, a few days judging by parallel events occuring on the Millenium Falcon, and yet he virtually turns into super-jedi after this short period of training.

Luke's time on Dagobah takes place in the time it takes Han Solo and friends to escape from Hoth, hide in an asteroid for an unspecified but apparently not very long time, fly to Bespin without using Hyperspace and get captured, with Luke arriving just after Han has been frozen in carbonite.

This, I generously estimate, can't have taken more than a week, and yet Luke seems to progress very, very quickly after a couple of days jumping around in a jungle.

Also, considering that we discover in Return of the Jedi that Luke spends no further time training with Yoda before the little green sod kicks the bucket, how does Luke improve between Empire and Jedi?

[Dandontdare]

flying between any systems without hyperspace is likely to take years, but unless Vader & co were just twiddling their thumbs during this time, that doesn't make sense either.

[NapalmKev]

Lukes training, and the others hiding in the Asteroid field could easily have covered a few months of real time I reckon. What we got was edited Highlights.

Between Empire and Jedi, I understand there to be around a two year gap. With the odd visit from Obi-Wan he could have continued his training.

Or; Luke was really the 'Chosen One' and it all came naturally to him. Like Jesus.


Cheers

[JamesC]

Great thread!

I've always assumed it was a few days.

Luke is naturally highly force sensitive. I think his time with Yoda is more about learning acceptance of the Force, gaining faith in its abilities, getting the right attitude and being wary of his own personal demons. Once he accepts that 'size matters not' and 'do or do not, there is no try' his natural ability shines through.

Its a bit like learning to ride a bike - it doesn't take much longer than an afternoon to get the basic principal and then you just practice (mastering the steering, doing wheelies etc).

[Colin YNWA]

This has always confused me. That was until work sent me on a days training in a moderate hotel just off the Sheffield Park Way and expect me to come back as some sort management Jedi. I reckon Luke and Yodi would be expected to achieve what they did over a coffee at break in some work places.

[I, Cosh]

I've always taken it to be a week or two but I never thought of him as a "super-Jedi" after that, just someone who has been shown the path he can take. The big change comes between Luke running wild at the end of Empire and the control and command he shows at Jabba's palace.

[shaolin_monkey]

Ha!  It always bugged me too.

Eventually, after years of debating this internally, I decided Luke had taken on the Jedi mindset between A New Hope and Empire, so really Yoda was painting onto an already prepared canvas.  As such, a week's worth of training may have had a significant effect.  Plus, it was 1 to 1 with Yoda - that's concentrated learning, right there!

Then between Empire and Jedi, Luke expanded upon what he had learnt, including greater control of the Force, self-discipline, maturity etc etc.

[JamesC]

Yep. Before he even meets Yoda he's already force-focused a torpedo down an exhaust port and force-pulled his lightsaber out of the ice (and by this point he's presumably carrying a lightsaber around as a matter of course).

[Bubba Zebill]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but since you are fans of Star Wars I thought this might be of interest... Darth Vader (in what appears to be arch political satire...I think) is attempting to run for the presidency in Ukraine, although his bid seemed to be rejected, and he is now, it seems, planning to run in Russia.

This is his campaign video...I shit you not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxnXGxF-PBk

and more...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26882664

[Spaceghost]

I've always taken it to be a week or two but I never thought of him as a "super-Jedi" after that, just someone who has been shown the path he can take. The big change comes between Luke running wild at the end of Empire and the control and command he shows at Jabba's palace.

But he had no contact with Yoda during the period between the two films (or Ben, judging by Luke's surprise at Ben's appearance after Yoda's death), and he was no doubt pre-occupied with the search for Han.

All the theories are fairly plausible. The thing that made me wonder was Yoda saying that Anakin was too old to begin the training at the age of 9 in The Phantom Menace, and seeing the years and years of training that jedi of that time had to go through before they were fully qualified.

An interesting hypothesis I heard once was that Ben and Yoda are basically only training Luke to be an assassin to kill Darth Vader and, hopefully, The Emperor, and are therefore only teaching him the bare minimum to enable him to do that.

[Goaty]

Well it's a plot hole

You maybe like this;

50 movie plot holes and paradoxes

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/plot-holes/26881/50-movie-plot-holes-and-paradoxes

[TordelBack]

From a certain point of view (mine), it all depends on three factors:

1. Whether the Falcon has an FTL propulsion system other than its main, inactive, hyperdrive. 

2.  Whether Hoth, Anoat and Bespin are in the same solar system.

3.  Whether you want to judge on the basis of Only What You See and Hear On Screen, or subscribe to the rambling justifications of novels, comics, RPGs, panels, discussion boards etc.

I assume that the answer of any sane person to No. 3 is Just The Movie, Man, and thus we will turn away from other, darker paths.

So, for the Point 1: we know the Falcon can make Point Five past lightspeed.  What if this is her top non-Hyperspace speed?  Maybe Hyperspatial speeds are much greater, allowing one to travel from Tatooine (the arse-end of the galaxy) to Alderaan (sufficiently close to  the centre of galactic civilisation that its destruction will make an 'effective demonstration'), but a more limited form of superluminal propulsion allows for fast journeys within systems, and even between neighbouring solar systems. 

However, Han boasts that he has outrun Imperial cruisers, and he's talking about the big Corellian ships now, and yet he is blatantly unable to do so in TESB without a functional hyperdrive.  He also specifically refers to his inferior speed but superior manoeuvring abilities at 'sub-light' speeds.  On that basis, I'd say there is no evidence that the Falcon has even a limited FTL capacity other than its main hyperdrive (the EU refers to a short-range backup hyperdrive - I say balls to that).  Thus the time Luke is in training and Princess Leia goes between changes of knickers should be years, if that is, Hoth and Bespin are separate star systems...

Segue to Point 2:  we see the Falcon escape the ice world Hoth, a planet beset by frequent meteors that can mask an incoming ship.  They flee, at sub-light speeds, to an unbelievably dense asteroid field, presumably the result of a very recent planetoid collision (although the size of the resident space-willy ('exogorth', EU fans!) may contradict this).   On exiting this field and attaching themselves to a Star Destoryer's conning tower, still explicitly at sublight, they find themselves in the the Anoat system ('not much there'), which is 'pretty far' from a gas giant called Bespin.  My contention would be that Hoth and its numerous moons are the Hoth Planetary System, enduring a nuclear winter caused by a relatively recent bombardment following the destruction of the neighbouring dwarf planet Anoat, with its moons constituting the Anoat Planetary System, beyond which lies the gas giant planetary system of Bespin System, with its presumably vast number of moons. 

On this basis Luke is on Dagobah for several weeks, and probably months, as the Falcon limps from an inner-system rocky world out to a gas giant in the outer system.

If you think this is dumb, remember that Revenge of the Sith canonically takes place over less than three days.

This interpretation rests on a liberal interpretation of how the word 'system' is used in Star Wars, which is pretty bizarre anyway. 

[Pyroxian]

The West-End Star Wars RPG YT-1300's have a backup hyperdrive, which is vastly slower than a normal one. I think it was supposed to take them several months to get from the Hoth System to Bespin.

[Spaceghost]

THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT!!! Thanks Tordelback for your extremely thorough answer. Even if all you say is true and fact, it's still not technically long enough for Luke to even approach the status of Jedi Knight. A status which Yoda claims he will achieve only after 'facing' Vader for a final time.

It seems to me that what Yoda is really saying is 'me and Ben have taught you how to lift things up with the Force a bit, how to wave a lightsabre around a bit and how to jump really high. A bit. Now, if you go and knack Darth Vader, you'll be a Jedi. Honest'.

[shaolin_monkey]

Well, if Yoda can teach me all I need to know about life in one sentence, I'm sure he could have crammed his Jedi/Force teachings into Luke over a relatively short period of time.