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Star Cruiser

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This article is about a general term for larger warships. You may be looking for a specific type of cruiser.
"Were you on a star-cruiser or a...?"
―Luke Skywalker[src]

Star Cruiser was a widely-used designation for spaceships.[1]

Contents

History

The term was sometimes used to describe spacecraft in general, and in this context, it was sometimes written lowercase as star cruiser,[2][3] but it could also be used to specify large military capital ships,[4] and was used as designation for certain Mon Calamari warships.[5]

The famous Mon Calamari Star Cruisers were the main capital ships of the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic. Many of these Star Cruisers were around 1200m, such as the iconic Liberty-type MC80 Star Cruiser,[5] but the term could also apply to the 500m Kuari Princess, and to larger Mon Cal ships, like the Home One.[6]

The lowercase term "star cruiser" was also applied to Imperial Navy warships, where it was used as an alternate designation for Star Destroyers.[7] It was apparently used as a synonym for the standard cruiser designation, which referred to all combat warships above approximately 400m in length, as the Strike-class medium cruiser was also referred to in this manner.[6]

Some ships described with the upper-case Star Cruiser were bigger than standard Star Destroyer designs, and were large enough to be thought of as Super Star Destroyers. They were treated as a separate Imperial warship class from both Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnoughts.[8][9]

Behind the scenes

The term "star cruiser" first appeared in dialogue in Star Wars, written as "star-cruiser" and "starcruiser" in various versions of the script. Early Expanded Universe material such as Marvel's Star Wars comics uses the term quite loosely, including for the Executor. In the script for The Empire Strikes back, the EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate is called a "Star Cruiser", with the words now capitalized. Since Return of the Jedi, however, the term has been most widely used to describe Mon Calamari Star Cruisers.

Known Star Cruiser classes

Appearances

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
  2. ↑ Star Wars (Marvel)
  3. ↑ Star Wars comic strip
  4. ↑ Star Wars: Complete Locations
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Rebel Alliance Sourcebook
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
  7. ↑ Starships of the Galaxy (2007)
  8. ↑ Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy refers to Rebel personnel using the term Star Cruiser for an Imperial warship type in-between Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnoughts in size and power.
  9. ↑ In Starship Battles Preview 1, the Super Star Destroyer term itself is described as a colloquial outgrowth from the word Star Destroyer, which described the large dagger-shaped warships used by the Galactic Republic in the Clone Wars. The same article states that Super Star Destroyer was a term applied to several different dagger-shaped Imperial warship classes, making no mention of any Rebel ships being called this.
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