Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape What I find a bit far-fetched about that explanation is how the Emperor couldn't know? I mean, Vader has an entire fleet going after Luke. He speaks openly of it to his officers. Sure, he's probably hiding his true motives for looking for Luke, but there's no way this is news to the Emperor.
Someone give Gaffer Tape a cigar because he hit that one center-mass.
When I was a young hard-charging Sergeant I was responsible for everything from a simple MRE (Meat Ready to Eat) to over $193,000,000 worth of Intel gathering equipment and never once was I allowed to do something with government property unless I had authorization from my chain of command. Now I’m pretty sure an Imperial Fleet is worth more than $193 Million and I’m almost certain that The Emperor was a little less tolerant of misappropriations than the US Government. That being the case I’m certain that Palpatine had at least a little knowledge of what Vader was doing.
If they were going to change the dialog in light of the PT they should’ve done so without invalidating the purpose of ESB.