This project has been in hibernation for a while as I figure out how it should continue, but here's a small update:
I've done a shot-by-shot correction of the Death Star explosion rather slavishly from the video of the Senator screening:
Password: DS
Apparently the Death Star is quite blue in that shot. I suspect that the desaturation of the explosion for the DVD stems from a decision to make the Death Star a neutral gray, which then carried over to the explosion itself.
Comparison of the final shot:
Sorry about the lack of updates recently, there's been a lot of school and a lot of education happening.