Why are star destroyers medium-sized warships?
• Because that’s what the term “destroyer” implies. They have always been destroyers, even in early versions of the A New Hope screenplay. During the escape from Tatooine, Solo seemed to name one of the pursuers as a “cruiser”, but Harrison Ford is well-known for his ad-libs. Alternatively, the two destroyers in the background might really have been accompanying a larger, genuine cruiser. • The common mile-long star destroyer is much smaller than the command ship Executor, which presumably is the supreme warship class. In realistic terms, the size relationship between a destroyer and a battleship is much closer than between Imperator and Executor. If anything, calling the Imperator a destroyer is over-generous. • Comics, including Dark Empire and the Marvel series, show an abundance of Imperial warship designs, and they fill out a spectrum with some smaller and some larger than the basic star destroyer. This distribution justifies the movie destroyer’s designation as a middle-sized cla
