Yavin

Yavin (also known as "Yavin Prime", to distinguish it from its moons) is a fictional planet in the Star Wars galaxy. It first appeared in the 1977 film Star Wars and is depicted as a large red gas giant with an extensive satellite system of moons. The hidden military base of the Rebel Alliance is located on its fourth moon, Yavin 4. The climactic space battle at the end of the film, in which the Rebel Alliance destroys the Death Star, takes place in orbit around the planet Yavin. In Star Wars fandom and the Star Wars Expanded Universe, this event is especially significant as it is one method used to mark an epoch in the fictional Star Wars universe. Events in the Star Wars Legends continuity are typically dated in terms of years BBY ("Before the Battle of Yavin") or ABY ("After the Battle of Yavin"). In early drafts of the Star Wars story, author George Lucas began inventing names of characters and planets and assigning roles and characteristics. In The Star Wars (1973), Yavin is described as a jungle planet inhabited by eight-foot-tall Wookiees. (This concept was eventually altered, although the setting of a Wookiee home planet re-emerged later as the planet Kashyyyk, as seen in the 2005 film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.) In Lucas's 1975 second draft, The Adventures of the Starkiller Episode I: The Star Wars, the story's heroes land on Yavin in escape pods and are attacked by insect creatures. They find the Rebel Massassi Outpost and meet characters such as Bail Antilles and General Dodonna, and the Rebel commander is the Grand Moff Tarkin. It is here that Luke Skywalker ends his quest by being reunited with his aged father. In later revisions of the story, Tarkin becomes an Imperial officer and Luke's father is removed from the action—he later re-emerges in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as the hidden identity of the main antagonist, Darth Vader. In the fourth draft (1976), Lucas added a scene in which Luke is also reunited on Yavin with his childhood friend, Biggs Darklighter, a scene which was actually shot but subsequently deleted from the final cut of the original Star Wars film.