Michael Hanscom

In all my years of being a Star Trek fan, it’s often not been the weekly soap opera in space that interested me as much as the universe constructed around the stories. Quite a few of the various tech manuals grace my library, and I’m often fascinated by the ingenious (and often quite convoluted) explanations and rationalizations concocted to explain various inconsistencies among the shows and movies.

It’s no great surprise, then, that I’ve just managed to loose three hours of my evening immersed in the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, a site devoted to extrapolating rather amazing amounts of data out of the Star Wars universe (incorporating not just the films, but also the books and comics).

Three sections took up most of my reading time tonight:

1. Injuries of Darth Vader. Some slight spoilers for Episode III in here, unfortunately, but mostly information extracted from the other five films in determining just how much of Vader is human and how much is cybernetic.

   I’ve known for years that the majority of Vader’s injuries were sustained during a final climactic battle with Obi-Wan in or near a volcano that culminated in Vader falling into a lava pit (which has since been confirmed in shots from the trailer for Episode III). I’ve never known just where I picked up that information, though, and that’s always been a bit of a mystery for me. This section of the site contains two quotes that support that premise, dating from as far back as 1980.

   In an interview in Starlog in 1980, Mark Hamill recounts a background story which he had been told:

   “I remember very early on asking who my parents were and being told that my father and Obi Wan met Vader on the edge of a volcano and they had a duel. My father and Darth Vader fell into the crater and my father was instantly killed. Vader crawled out horribly scarred, and at that point the Emperor landed and Obi Wan ran into the forest, never to be seen again.”

   Aspects of the tale of the molten pit resurfaced more officially in 1983, in the novelisation of Return of the Jedi. The ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker:

   “We fought…your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever —- he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will….”

2. The Phantom Menace Continuity: Droids. One of the things that really bothered me about Episode I was the apparent error in C-3P0 and R2-D2 not being familiar with Tatooine and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode IV, when Episode I establishes that Annakin constructed Threepio and Obi-Wan met Artoo on Tatooine. The author of the site puts forward a rather convincing argument that not only is this not necessarily a mistake, but there’s no need to assume that the droids had their memories wiped at some point.
   

   C-3PO is a protocol droid, a sort of valet, and is programmed for keeping confidential information. In his early conversations with Luke Skywalker, he evaded discussion of Princess Leia until late after key facts were told in Kenobi’s presence. When Obi-Wan began to tell Luke a tale about Anakin and the Jedi, Threepio requested to be shut down, likely to avoid discussion and facing awkward memories about his Maker’s tragic fate. Nevertheless the supposedly inert droid was only pretending unconsciousness; as he eavesdropped on the conversation he swayed slightly but visibly. This evasive behaviour was prompted by Threepio’s recognition of Anakin’s lightsabre. [ITW:SWT, ANH]. At the time of the Battle of Hoth [TESB Radio Drama, p.103], Princess Leia observed that the droids regarded her and Luke protectively, but she did not guess the actual relationship. Ultimately on Endor [Return of the Jedi: Radio Drama, p.181-182], C-3PO joined Luke Skywalker at his father’s funeral pyre, and there he openly acknowledged Luke’s father.

   It should be unsurprising that neither of the droids recognised Kenobi when they met in A New Hope. C-3PO rarely met Kenobi before: never at all before Attack of the Clones; only (apparently) briefly during the Clone Wars [Labyrinth of Evil]. They probably didn’t meet again until Tatooine [ANH]. As a young man, Kenobi generally overlooked R2-D2, and they were only present together during a few brief scenes when other people or crises were the focus of attention. For their part, neither droid could be expected to recognise Kenobi (or Owen Lars) in the Tatooine desert after 19 years of aging. Kenobi may have eventually recognised Artoo, but astromech droids of every colour combination are common. His remark about never “owning a droid” could be wry misdirection, since his Order forbade knights from accumulating individual possessions*. Artoo’s recollection of the younger Kenobi may have added to his zeal to find the desert hermit, though this may never be provable.

   […]

   C-3PO is tactful and secretive, and a bit self-centred. R2-D2 is unintelligible to almost everyone except C-3PO. Both droids are common models, and the human characters they dealt with in the prequel era had been wounded or aged beyond recognition by the time Luke Skywalker’s adventures began. These two facts explain all of the would-be discontinuities. There is no need to suppose that either droid has ever suffered a memory-wipe anytime within the span of the movies, as some of the most naïve commentators suggested. Conversely, there is sufficient evidence that C-3PO (at least) retained his mental integrity since the Clone Wars. If any malicious faction (e.g. the threat by Alderaanians [ROTS novel p.415]) did attempt to mind-wipe Threepio — effectively murdering him as a continuous person — then the post-Endor evidence shows that this attempt failed or the droid escaped before the dirty deed.

3. Endor Holocaust, an exploration of the aftereffects of the Death Star’s destruction while in close proximity to the forest moon home of the Ewoks.
   

   The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

   Unless the rebel commandoes on Endor were executing a suicide mission, the rebel fleet was evidently able to intervene to protect their immediate vicinity: probably an area comparable to Luxembourg. Debris fragments amounting to the mass of the rebel fleet might conceivably have been diverted from that particular locality (by the exertion of the fleet’s tractor beams) and onto adjacent areas of the Endorian globe. However this is only a tiny fraction of the total mass incident on the moon during an event lasting mere minutes. The mass of the entire debris cloud and fireball is incomparably (inexorably) greater than the combined mass of both fleets over Endor.

   A general climatological catastrophe was unavoidable. Averting the disaster would have required physical action on a scale greater than the construction of a Death Star, within minutes of the battle station’s explosion.

And, of course, there’s a lot more on the site. Fascinating stuff, if you’re into this kind of thing. :)