Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Saturn's moon Mimas, the Death Star was the super-weapon of the evil Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films: A planet-sized ship that could boil oceans, vaporize continents and explode small suns. An unassailable force of oppression, capable of terrorizing political opponents into complete submission -- there's a reason Emperor Palpatine opted to dissolve the Galactic Senate at the precise moment of the Death Star's completion: Why bother giving face time to a bunch of milksop representatives' grievances when you can just nuke their homeworld? United Nations, take note.

Of course, the Death Star didn't last, thanks to Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance's triumphant victory over the Empire at the end of A New Hope. But before it was blown into space dust, it was a hell of a weapon. The Death Star was 120km in diameter, but thanks to its mass, the ship possessed the gravity of a planetoid 10 times as large... a neat little in-universe explanation for the Death Star's Earth-like gravity in a franchise known for cavalierly flipping off scientific plausibility. Linked banks of 123 hyperdrives meant the Death Star was no where near as sluggish and non-maneuverable as it appeared: It could zip across the galaxy, blow up the planet, and then zip back into Coruscant's orbit before the sudden reconfiguration of orbiting gravitational mass caused the first tidal waves. The Death Star was one bitchin' ride. But what about its weaponry?

In A New Hope, Vader cautions the Death Star's commander, Grand Moff Tarkin, from getting too cocky about his new weapon. "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." Mere braggadocio from a melted old man whose own force powers tapped out at sensing the presence of old men. Calculations of the amount of power it would take to blow up a planet like Alderaan suggest that the Death Star was capable of emitting a million times more energy in a single, 10-second blast than our sun produces in a week.

So where did it all go wrong? How did a bunch of hicks, fatties and farmboys manage to destroy a weapon more powerful than a million suns? Imperial arrogance. A small child could point out the obvious flaw in any weapon design where the only unarmored point is a torpedo-sized exhaust port that pass directly to the engine room, but that's not such a big deal as long as your shields keep out X-Wings. If no X-Wings get through, there's no problem, right? Except that the Death Star's shields only worked in keeping out ships larger than an X-Wing. Only a contractor being funded by the unlimited budget of a stupidly arrogant bureaucracy could make a mistake like that. In fact, the Death Star entry on Wokieepedia wryly notes, "This fatal design flaw resulted in protracted litigation between the Empire and numerous military contractors."

There was, of course, a second Death Star, but the less said about Return of the Jedi, the better. Ultimately, George Lucas' creation of a planet destroying supership influenced many other scifi planet killers, like the Borg Cube from Star Trek -- the Death Star gone square -- and the planet-eating Transformer with the voice of Orson Welles, Unicron. In fact, Unicron is so influenced by the Death Star that the Star Wars franchise made their own little nod to him by way of this Star Wars / Transformers Death Star toy.

And who does the Death Star Transformers toy transform into? Who else but another famous Star Wars 'D?' "D is also for Darth Vader, wheezing in his shell." as every Yavin schoolboy learns.