An idea that’s been buzzing around my head:

I’m currently watching ROTJ (and loving it) and I genuinely think eliminating the lazy second Death Star is possible. Not by awkwardly cutting it out of frame, but by re-purposing it. Done in a few easy(ish) steps.

1.) Cut references to the station by name. Fairly straight foward, should be possible with a gental touch.

2.) Introduce the station in the opening crawl as the Empire’s armory. It’s where ships/weapons are built, troops are held etc. Say the rebellion are pushed to the brink but discover the location of this vital stronghold.

3.) Visual enhancements. Not essential, but would be a great touch. If you extended/accentuate the incomplete sections of the structure, you could do a lot to make it a unique location. It’s only partially visible in many shots so they wouldn’t need tweaking, and the wide shots are normally pretty static so they’d be easier to modify.

4.) Finally, tweak dialogue so that any references to the Death Star’s completion are in fact about an upcoming military upgrade. You could potentialy preserve the Rebel’s shock over the station’s firepower as simply something they didn’t expect to encounter.

I’ve gone mad with the potential of this idea, but maybe it’s actually rubbish. I dunno. I thought it’d be worth sharing though.