'Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization' book review

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(C) 1994 Ballantine/Del Rey Books
Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization

Radio Play by Brian Daley

Based on characters and situations created by George Lucas



Star Wars: If you missed the thirteen-part radio series, you haven’t heard the whole story. – Brian Daley

A long time ago (35 years ago, actually) in an efficiency apartment on the West Coast, a young novelist named Brian Daley undertook a mission worthy of a Jedi Knight – to adapt George Lucas’s original Star Wars movie into a thirteen-part radio drama for National Public Radio.

Daley was chosen to translate Lucas’s cinematic work into an audio-only dramatization by Carol Titleman, the Lucasfilm executive who oversaw the Radio Drama, because she’d liked what the author had done with Star Wars material in Han Solo at Star’s End. Daley spent three months working on the scripts for the Radio Drama, which premiered in the spring of 1981 as part of NPR Playhouse

Star Wars: The Radio Drama was a spectacular success: 750,000 listeners heard the show when it originally aired, and the network’s drama listenership grew by 135%. The series’ ratings were so good, in fact, that two follow-up series based on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were produced and broadcast (in 1983 and 1996, respectively).

Thirteen years later, Ballantine Books’ Del Rey imprint published Star Wars: The National Public Radio, a 352 page paperback with Daley’s complete scripts in their original form.

What you now hold in your hands are the thirteen original, uncut scripts, just as they were when we took them into the studio. Astute listeners will notice discrepancies between these and the final recordings. – Brian Daley

Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization consists of an introduction by the late science fiction writer, who died of cancer in 1996, and a chapter for each of the Radio Drama’s thirteen parts:

  1. A Wind to Shake the Stars
  2. Points of Origin
  3. Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns
  4. While Giants Mark Time
  5. Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be
  6. The Millennium Falcon Deal
  7. The Han Solo Solution
  8. Death Star's Transit
  9. Rogues, Rebels and Robots
  10. The Luke Skywalker Initiative
  11. The Jedi Nexus
  12. The Case for Rebellion
  13. Force and Counter Force



My Take

Brian Daley’s Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization is one of my favorite Star Wars resource books, even though it’s now out of print and available only from used book sellers, mostly online ones. It not only presents the radio scripts in their pre-broadcast form, but its foreword also sheds some light into the creative process involved in translating Star Wars (aka Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope) from screen to radio.

Taping was a learn-as-you-go experience for all of us. It had been thought that the stormtroopers’ helmeted voices could be emulated by having the actors wear plastic and foam-filter painter’s masks, but the results didn’t “read” properly for the microphones. In the end the actor-troopers were isolated, as Tony Daniels was, and their voices were processed later.

Daley also explains some of the reasons why the episodes that aired on NPR differ slightly from the scripts in the book:

Between the first broadcast of the series and the second, some lines were cut to allow for a full credit roll at the end of each episode. That’s why, for example, part of Leia’s conversation with her father in Chapter 2 was trimmed. For those who’ve been wondering what they missed, the script shows the scene in its entirety.

Brian Daley’s style is clean, elegant, and witty. He not only gives reader’s an insider’s perspective into the creative process involved in making the series, but he is also generous in his praise for the Star Wars Radio Drama team. In his foreword, he explains how George Lucas sold the radio licensing rights for Star Wars to KUSC-FM in Los Angeles. The asking price? $1.00. “It was a striking act of philanthropy,” Daley writes, “but he wanted the show to be unprecedented, as his movie was something unprecedented.”

Canon Issues

When Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization was published in 1994, Lucasfilm Limited considered Daley’s expansions, such as Leia’s covert mission on the planet Raltiir and some of Luke Skywalker’s backstory, to be Star Wars canon just like the films. However, since Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, only the material derived directly from the film and its 1976 novelization are considered canon. Everything else is now considered to be part of the Star Wars Legends non-canon mythology.









Book Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Del Rey; First edition (September 20, 1994)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345391098
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345391094


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