Minor typo on Rot Lop Fan's description: "...and his uniform bears the insignia of a ball."
Should read 'bell' instead of 'ball.'
 

The plot sounds kind of like "The Road" set further in the future. Agree with Shasta, maybe the Smiths are just the ticket to get MNS back on track.

krathwardroid, I had the same "this kind of reminds me of E.T." thought. Seems like it might turn out to be pretty entertaining.

Not a plot hole, just an observation about BTTF.

Remember that three times are displayed on the time circuits? Current time/location, destination, and previous location? Since Biff stole the machine and then returned to 2015 from 1955, the display should show 1955 as the previous location. However, Doc and Marty arrived in 2015 from 1985. Wonder what would have happened had Doc or Marty noticed that before leaving 2015?

And why did old Biff bother to return to 2015 at all? He could have gone anywhere else and left Doc and Marty stranded in 2015 with no way of undoing what he had just done. I know Biff isn't the brightest bulb but he seemed to have wisened up a bit in his old age. I know the story had to go that way to make the movie work, just questioning character motive is all.

I'm going to nerd out a bit on the SW plot hole debate. In the SW universe, hyperspace travel has become commonplace but is still pretty dangerous. It requires intense calculations to navigate through/past star systems to avoid gravitational wells that would prematurely end ones journey. As such, safe hyperspace travel routes have been mapped out and are commonly used by all navigating craft to travel between star systems. Since the gas giant Yavin would most certainly cast a larger gravity well than the small moon harboring the Alliance base, the Death Star would be forced to exit hyperspace farther out and travel in at sub-light speeds. Additionally, their point of origin might have only given them one arrival vector, again forcing them to orbit the planet to get at the moon.

I have to agree though with the previous argument about why they didn't just blow up the gas giant? The explosion would most likely have wiped out the small moon and everything on it. Maybe they weren't sure the laser was powerful enough to take out something that big?

In any case, it wouldn't have been very dramatic if the Death Star just flew in and wiped everything out and no one stood a fighting chance against it.

Makabriel, Episode 4 of Season 5, titled "The Little Prince", contains the outrigger scene in question. While Cuse and Lindelof have said they know who the shooters in the other outrigger are they are not going to explore their identities because they were already working towards the finale and it's not important to the overall narrative.