Imperial Communications Ship
From the Encyclopedia of Speculative Fiction - http://encyclopedia.wizards.pro
Communications Ships served as communication and coordination units in Imperial fleet operations, as well as having extensive jamming capabilities.
One of these ships were present during the Battle of Endor, where it was found to be the source of the scanner-jamming that made the Rebel ships incapable of determining whether the Death Star II's shield was up or down.
After a rough battle with a Mon Calamari Star Cruiser, the Communications Ship´s shields were weakened enough to allow for an extensive starfighter-strike. The ship was destroyed, which greatly hampered the operations of the rest of the fleet.
Behind the Scenes
The Communications Ship appeared in the Return of the Jedi novelization (p. 191), and was described as "one of the larger Destroyers": this suggests that the ship was some sort of Star Destroyer, although it may indicate something larger than a standard Imperial-class design. However, given that Expanded Universe sources place at least one smaller Victory-class Star Destroyer off-camera at the Battle of Endor (the Dominator), the description of the Communications ship as a "larger Destroyer" need not indicate anything larger than an Imperial-class variant.
Some believe that the Communications Ship appeared in the film Return of the Jedi, where one scene shows a starfighter attack on an Imperial command tower with one main bridge and at least five other similar ranks of viewports. A larger blob visible in distant views of the battle is also believed by some to represent this vessel, though this could just show two ships overlapping.
Behind-the-scenes shots reveal that the bridge tower shown in this shot was a detailed stand-alone FX model of a command tower rather than part of a larger ship model. It has distinct differences from the bridge-towers of the two full-hull Star Destroyer FX models, which are equated with the "Mark I" and "Mark II" models of the Expanded Universe - but similar discrepancies exist between the close model of the Executor's command tower and the comparable part of the ship on the full-hull model.
Even so, no movie or Expanded Universe-source has ever connected a command tower that matches this to the Imperial-class destroyers, and all illustrations before and since, have shown Imperial-class designs with only one, single bridge. This leads us to assume that any such design would not be an Imperial-class destroyer, or, if it had been, would no longer serve the exact, same purpose of this class.
Sources
- Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, 20th Century Fox, 1983; novelization, James Kahn, Del Rey Books, 1983.
