In summary...

I must say, this has been an enlightening experience for me, at first I really struggled but I feel that come the end I had progressed leaps and bounds. The actual animating itself proved very frustrating, but over time, learning the boundries with what you can/cant achieve made the process much easier.
I also found myelf making alot of work arounds (for example with the lazer beam appearing) which may not be as time effective as a professional still achieved my overall goal.
I would also like to share some of my reflections on techniques I used, firstly lets start with spline paths. These can be fantastic when getting a fluid object such as ship or plane to move, as the banking tool adds to some extra realism, but it is also very restrictive. Once an object is set to the plane, you cant remove part of it (again the lazer) mid flow. It is also true that you cant animate starting part the way along the path.
The graph editor i felt was a fantastic tool. Rather than keyframing the out of control Xwing by doing a series of rotations, in the graph editor I was actually able to set it to go over 360 degree spins, which is how I got the ship to tumble over itself. I actually had the ship rotate to 800 degrees over the period of 10 frames, allowing for over 2 full rotations. This allowed for a really dynamic, out of control look that I was really pleased with.
Overall I feel I grasped this assignemnt well. I did feel my lighting techniques and texturing could be better, but the Modelling and Aninmation I am pleased with (I fell these aspects will be of most use to me as a games designer) But now I will start to turn my attention to the finer details, such as shading maps and adding shine to polygons.

Break down of camera angles

So I just felt like I should break down the camera angles I chose and what I am trying to convey with them.
The first angle is a wide shot that pans following the xwing. I used this to set the space scene (the space debris can be seen in the background) following the Xwing, making it the main focus to convey that this is the protagonist.
The second angle is the worms eye whilst zooming in on the tie fighter appearing. This was to make it look more imposing and menacing creating the antagonist role.
The next scene was quite dynamic so i wanted something to represent this. I had the camera focus on the xwing being chased by the tie, then pan roud so you can see it getting shot.
For the next shot, with the xwing falling uncontrolably to the planet, I wanted to portray the impending, so I had the camera follow the xwing, with just a portion of the massive planet conveying how insignificant the ship is. I wanted to back this up with the pilots perspective (POV) trying to add some emotional attachment to him.
Finally, I felt it best to set the camera watching the xwing crash to its inevitable demise, static and unmoving, almost mournful.