Looking at the Total Saga
I found an essay about the Star Wars saga written by Keith Martin about looking at the original trilogy in light of the prequels. I found it to be a very enjoyable read and, regardless of your views of the prequels, it adds a few more shades of interest and illumination to scenes from A New Hope, which is to me one of the few redeeming qualities of the new trilogy - giving us a deeper understanding into the characters of the original trilogy by knowing where they've come from, how they all know each other and what their motives truly are. I've reproduced the essay here entirely.
A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III
If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO's memory wiped but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.
For the next 20 years, as far as 3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathisers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits - both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.
Yoda is out of the picture by this stage, using the Force-infused swamps of Dagobah to hide himself from Vader and the Emperor. Or something. He is meditating on the future and keeping in touch with Obi-Wan via the ghost of Qui-Gon Jin, which as comm systems go has the virtue of being untappable. Obi-Wan, on Tattoine, keeps in touch with Bail Organa and the other Rebel leaders by courier, of which more later.
As Star Wars opens, R2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. R2, not Leia. The plans are always in R2. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia's own mission, as she says in the holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan - or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There's a reason for that.
Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:
A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi. Now.
But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then
C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.
Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.
To be fair to all concerned, Leia has shown no overt signs of a link to the Force. Luke on the other hand has. In his home-built hotrod aircraft, with no formal fighter pilot training and no decent instrumentation, Luke can regularly score centre-hits on 2-metre targets in complicated zero-altitude maneouvres. Until he attends the briefing on Yavin, Luke has no way of knowing that hardened combat pilots would consider that nearly impossible. To him it's easy. Obi-Wan, who saw Anakin's performance in the Pod Race, is nervous.
Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. (Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.)
Now, with the existence of the rebellion at stake, Bail Organa has finally told Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has sent her along with R2. The original plan would then be for Obi-Wan (with optional Luke and/or Leia in tow) to leave his exile and take the Death Star plans to Yavin, where they can be put to use. R2 (with Leia if Ben doesn't want to take her) would then carry on to Alderaan to maintain the cover story. The original plan does not survive contact with a large Imperial Star Destroyer.
R2 and 3PO bail out in an escape pod, landing in vaguely the right area of Tattoine, where R2's first priority is transport. He arranges to be captured by a group of Jawas and, once on board their transport, he makes a deal with them (possibly using emergency funds stored about his person) to take him where he wants to go. The Jawas refuse to go directly to Kenobi for fear of marauding Sandpeople but they agree to R2's second request : transport to the Skywalker farm. They even get to keep the purchase price if they can sell R2 and 3PO there. The Jawas shake on it and go through with the plan.
Seeing 3PO fail to recognise the farm where he worked for 10 years gives r2 a moment's amusement but, as soon as possible, he gets away and heads for Kenobi. Luke and 3PO follow, which may or may not have been part of the plan.
On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth.
Although the Death Star plans need to get to Yavin as soon as possible, Obi-Wan needs to make one more diversion first. If the Empire knows that Leia is a Rebel leader, then they also know about her father and the whole Organa family may need immediate evacuation. Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley, under the command of the Rebellion's other chief field agent and espionage asset. Chewbacca.
20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He's there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda's. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it's his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion's best ship.
The Millenium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneouvre a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It's a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? He only thinks he does, actually it's Chewie's. Half-way through RotS, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. If it's the same ship (which of course it is) then it was the personal transport of one of the senatorial delegations - a much more likely source to commission its design. That delegatino must have later joined the Rebellion and given it the use of the Falcon. In fact, if the delegation is the one from Kashykk, then the ship may have belonged to Chewbacca as early as RotS.
Han is Chewie's front man. It's much better, and safer for him, if he doesn't know what's really going on. Chewie used to work with Lando Calrissian in a similar way but Lando wanted to settle down, so Chewie arranged for him to lose the Falcon in a card game to Han Solo, an even better choice as partner. Han and Chewie's working method is pretty much what we see in the cantina scene: Chewie make the contacts and sets up the deals, then turns them over to Han who haggles over the price and gives the final yea or nay. This lets Chewie wander the seamy underside of the galaxy pretty much at will, making contacts, gathering and passing information with no-one was the wiser, especially not Han.
Chewie persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt so he could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa. When R2's urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the "mistake" that forced Han to dump his cargo to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo's getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about the need for that but figured they weren't going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.
En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games they've played over the year in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they've done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.
Then it all goes wrong again. Alderaan is gone and the Falcon is caught and brought aboard the Death Star. Only Han, Luke and 3PO don't know just how much trouble they're in but Obi-Wan has a plan and seems confident (but Jedi always do). Soon afterwards, R2 finds Leia in the detention cells and shouts that they have to rescue her, to which Chewie can only agree. If Vader learns he has a daughter, then they're all in deep trouble, so Chewie does his bit to persuade Han to go along with Luke's plan.
Then, on the verge of escape, Vader himself turns up only yards from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force all over the place. Obi-Wan stages a distraction by letting himself die and go into the Force while the others escape. At this point, Chewie suddenly realises that he's been left in charge, not only of the Death Star Plans and the survival of the Rebellion but of the secret son and daughter of Darth Vader. With the Organas and Kenobi all dead, only Chewie, R2 and Yoda know who Luke and Leia are. And only Ob-Wan knew where Yoda has been hiding. Chewie is stressed out by the responsibility and R2 (who keeps making crude jokes about the whole affair) is being no help at all.
Chewie's first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but don't understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with a sparky intensity that Chewie gradually recognises as Romantic Tension. He's no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that's Wrong, so he does the only thing he can under the circumstances - he throws Han at her. Han is at first not interested but after a while starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.
When they reach Yavin, Han decides to take the money and run and Chewie decides to go with him. Looked at in cold light, it's for the good of the Rebellion. Even if Yavin is destroyed, there'll be one agent who knows what's going on who can try and put something back together, but he doesn't feel good about it. When Han decides to turn around and join the attack, Chewie is all for it.
Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago, but there's no way he can tell her that.
As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and Obi-Wan's ghost can only talk to other Jedi. (So that would be Yoda then.) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie is really hoping that someone with an official rank greater than hers will get here real soon before he has to think really seriously about option C.
© Keith Martin 2005
January 24th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Hello Chris and guys,
you’ve got a nice compilation and otehr works going on here! Impressive.
I’m not much a fan of sci-fi, but I like Star Wars for example.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Hey Szélső Fa. How’s it going?
Just so everyone is aware, Szélső Fa is a highly recommended Hungarian sharpshooter and assassin, an ex-saboteur for the Yugoslav resistance forces, and a national folk hero to the Congolese for her instrumental role in bringing down the Bantu insurrectionists.
Her name is Szélső Fa, which loses its meaning when you drop the ‘Fa’, so don’t shorten it. She will kill you without hesitation or mercy. I made that mistake once and it very nearly cost me my life. Sometimes at night, after the screaming in my dreams has stopped, I lie awake and still feel the itch in the place where my eye used to be…
January 26th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
But before I get in to what will undoubtedly become a lengthy rebuttal of his work, I'd like to start off by saying in no uncertain terms that Keith Martin has done an amazingly thorough job of assigning off-screen motives to major players in the conspiracy to hide Luke and Leia and keep the Jedi order alive. I don’t agree with all of them, but he's done a fantastic job, and he's given me some things to think about. Hats off, Keith. Now let's get down to it:
And if this swamp was so good at masking the Force, why didn’t they just hide one or both of the twins there? This seems to me like a perfect waste of a great resource.
Another brilliant move by Organa. Eventually, someone with the Force would sense her whether or not he had her tested. He's willing to jeopardize the whole galaxy by choosing to remain blissfully ignorant of whether or not he's sitting on a huge neon sign that says "Yo, Palpatine, we're right over HERE." You know, with guys like Organa on your team, there's really no need for the Sith.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Chris
That shit about Szélső Fa is hilarious! Thanks for the laugh!
January 27th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Glad I could help, Adam. Thanks for stopping by.
Adam, as some of you well know, is an expatriated Zulu albino who now makes his home in the northernmost reaches of Nepal. Forced into exile by his fellow tribesmen who mistook his unusual skin tone as a sign that he was a witch, Adam now works as a sherpa in the Himalayas, and is well known by the locals as Himavant, after the Hindu god of snow.
Adam and I first met on a trans-Atlantic steamer headed from the Massachusetts coast to a Finnish whaling station secreted in a little traveled fjord. Pursued and eventually overtaken by pirates, Adam and I made our escape by using the hollowed corpse of a sperm whale as a makeshift raft. Having only a bottle of Moët & Chandon Brut ’71 and an incomplete deck of pinochle cards between us, we passed the time until our rescue by inventing card games. One of Adam’s inventions, now popularly known as ‘Uno’, is still widely played to this day.
January 27th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Man you are taking me way back now. I am no longer in Nepal. The altitude was causing severe sunburns. I am back in the states now working as a pool boy at a subsidized housing complex near the Big Sandy River in West Virginia. They charge me cheaper rent and the neighbor girls are hot and promiscuous. Had a scare about a month ago because we thought one of em’ was starting to show. Thought we were going to be needen your preachin’ services. She acquired the dysentary and died so that is a load off. I tried to care but her sister and momma are mourning and you gotta strike while the iron is hot. My sherpa days are not over, so if you ever need me to “show you around” or introduce you to some of the fairer sex down here, you can find me at Grassy Green Acres off Old County Road 14 near the river. Just follow the ducks and the smell of Stetson for Her.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
You know, in addition to preaching I’m also a fairly skilled abortionist. You could just go that route if the whole marriage thing isn’t right for you. Or you could just kill the next girl that has the audacity to get pregnant without your permission. I can do that, too.
I mean, is there anything I won’t do? I think it’s pretty obvious — not. I’m shameless. I don’t care. What, you want me to tie a monkey around my waist and run around? I’ll do it… if the price is right. One time I ran naked through a bowling alley for three bucks and I earned it. Did you ever spit on animals at the zoo? Lose your keys down the toilet? Hey, I can be bought. Ever given a midget a massage? I have. $23.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
January 30th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“Shitpiece”! You know what that is? That’s the best fucking nickname ever.
February 1st, 2007 at 8:16 pm
February 1st, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Just wanted to see if the above would work… and it does!
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:17 pm
…or at least it did. What the hell?
And now its working again, but I didn’t change anything. WHAT THE FUCK?? This is pissing me off. I need to know if this is my system’s problem, the site, or whatever. Anybody out there able to watch the Tiki Bar TV episode I posted above?
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:38 pm
The Tiki Bar TV episode works for me.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Yeah, it seems to be good to go now.