Why Slave I Is The Best Ship In 'Star Wars'
The Star Wars universe has brought forth many iconic ships and ship designs: the Empire’s fast and agile TIE-fighters with their striking engine sounds, or the mighty star destroyers with their massive firepower. The versatile X-wing fighters or the big Mon Calamari cruisers of the Rebel Alliance. And of course, the Millennium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.
But there is one ship that bests them all:
Slave I
The heavily modified Firespray-31 patrol and attack craft, was manufactured by Kuat Systems Engineering, a subsidiary company of Kuat Drive Yard. The Firesprays were originally intended to be patrol ships for police forces on the prison moon of Oovo IV. As such it had no heavy armor and only light blaster cannons at the tail end of the ship.
Although this doesn’t sound very impressive, Jango Fett obviously saw the potential in this ship - which real world form was inspired by a lampshade - and stole it from Oovo IV. He immediately began to modify it, adding additional weapons, stronger shields and 6 cages, so he could transport his captured bounty. In the former Expanded Universe the ship was even equipped with a cell that could hold a Jedi. After Jango’s death Boba took over Slave I and customized the ship further, making it even more suitable for his job as a bounty hunter.
The Firespray class was ultimately a business failure for Kuat and not many ships were built and with all its modifications Slave I was not only a truly unique, but also the best ship in the Star Wars universe.
And here is why:
Versatile In All Directions
Slave I is landing and taking of in a horizontal position with the engines and the repulsor grills inside the two wings facing downwards. But after taking off the ship is basically “standing up,” turning 90 degrees until the cockpit is facing up. Season 2 of The Mandalorian showed for the first time how this maneuver looks from inside the ship: the interior is not moving, while the hull is rotating around it – a truly impressive sight! And with its giant cockpit window the pilot and the co-pilot have a perfect view of everything around them.
Barely Visible
Although Slave I isn’t capable of actually becoming invisible like Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator, Boba installed a stealth module in the forward part of the ship, that he somehow acquired from an Imperial research facility. When activated, this device allowed the ship to be nearly undetectable by the sensor grids of other ships. So, Boba could follow the Millennium Falcon to Bespin without Han Solo taking note of it and he could approach Moff Gideon’s frigate without the Imperial vessel or the Dark Troopers attacking him.
A Flying Fortress
The two rotatable laser cannons on the tail end of the ship seem to be the only visible weaponry of the Slave I and they are one of the few things that remained from the original patrol ship. But even there Jango made some modifications, giving them a finer aim and variable power. All other weapons of Slave I are concealed within the hull and are only activated when needed, making the ship look like an easy target, only until an opponent gets too close and then quickly regrets it: rapid fire laser guns, that deliver kiloton-scale energy bolts, frontal double-rack torpedo tubes, projectile launchers, shooting out homing beacons, an ion cannon and concussion missile launchers, giving the small ship a firepower that could take on much larger vessels. And then of course there is one more thing that we will talk about later.
Even More Gimmicks
But Jango’s and Boba’s modifications didn’t end with making their ship a flying arsenal. They also added heavy duty shield generators, auxiliary sensor systems and even its own tractor beam projector, allowing the bounty hunters to pull in other ships, after they had crippled them with Slave I’s ion cannon.
The Ultimate Sound
If all this hasn’t convinced you that Slave I is the best ship in the Star Wars universe, there is one more thing, that will surely win you over: The vessel carried a whole lot of seismic charges, weapons that drew sound from their vicinity and then exploded in waves of blue light, obliterating everything around them and all this accompanied by one of the best sounds in all of Star Wars, something that can only be described as an eargasm:
Slave I may be an old ship, and it may not look much from the outside, but the combination of speed, maneuverability and both its defensive and offensive weaponry definitely makes her the best starship in the Star Wars galaxy.
Source(s): Bill Smith: The Essential Guide to Vehicles And Vessels, Curtis Saxon: Incredible Cross-sections - Episode II