1 Vader: My Master, there is something wrong with the location chosen for the new Death Star.
1 Emperor: What is it?
2 Vader: It's unusually conspicuous. The moon of a gas giant close enough to the primary star to support life will feel tidal forces sufficient to tide-lock it within a few million years.
3 Vader: Then it will spiral into the gas giant and evolution won't have enough time needed to produce life forms such as redwood trees and Ewoks.
4 Emperor: Hmmm. Nuke the moon of Endor into a radioactive wasteland.
4 Vader: I was hoping you'd say that.

A few people told me they didn't quite understand the point, or indeed the joke, in this one. (So no, it wasn't just you!) In order to try to rectify my inadequate plot explication, I made an alternate version, viz:

You may also note that in the original version (now removed) I referred to the forest moon as Endor. BobP, inveterate Star Wars geek, pointed out to me that the gas giant is named Endor, and the moon is not given a name. Although I argued that the line "the forest moon of Endor" is ambiguous, and could be interpreted along the lines of "the ice planet of Hoth" or "the swamp planet of Dagobah", BobP pointed out to me that those usages never occur in Star Wars. Additional canon reference material confirms that Endor is the name of the gas giant, not its moon.

So naturally I fixed this most egregious error. Irregular Webcomic! is nothing if not pedantically geeky.

BobP also suggested a simplified script for this strip, aimed at rectifying Vader's rather stultifying grasp of astrophysical jargon:

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2012-05-09 Rerun commentary: Wow. Was any of that actually funny after all of that explanation?

Well, now that it's 9 years later and there's such a thing as Wookieepedia, allow me to provide a couple of links: Endor (planet) and Endor. I guess so many people erroneously called the moon "Endor" that the name has now stuck and my original goof has in fact become canonically true, in the sense that "yes, lots of people call the moon Endor".

Okay, this comic has not gotten any less pedantically geeky over the years...