'Star Wars: The Radio Drama' Episode Review: 'Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be'
 |
| (C) 1993 HighBridge Audio and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) |
To be sure, Daley used creative license in Episodes One ("A Wind to Shake the Stars"),Two ("Points of Origin"), and part of Three ("Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns") to establish the characters of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Darth Vader, and tell the untold story of how the Rebel Alliance acquired the Death Star plans. However, he based much of the balance of the scripts on Lucas's revised fourth draft of the Star Wars screenplay in his expanded version of Luke's first steps on his hero's journey.
 |
| (C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation |
Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be
Cast:
- Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)
- See Threepio (Anthony Daniels)
- Artoo Detoo (Ben Burtt - audio effects)
- Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi (Bernard Behrens)
- Holo Image of Princess Leia (Ann Sachs)
- Narrator (Ken Hiller)
Music: Opening theme.
NARRATOR: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there came a time of revolution, when Rebels united to challenge a tyrannical Empire. In the Rebellion's most desperate crisis, the fate of the entire Rebel Alliance rested with the simple astrodroid Artoo Detoo, whose memory banks held secret plans and a message critical to the struggle against the Empire.
Sound: Winds of Tatooine up in the background.
NARRATOR: At the edge of the Western Dune Sea, on the desert planet of Tatooine, is the moisture farm of Owen Lars; here Artoo Detoo and his interpreter-counterpart See-Threepio have come, following their purchase by Owen and his young nephew, Luke Skywalker. Free again, Artoo has escaped to deliver his message to the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ignorant of his mission, Luke and See Threepio intend to recover him before he comes to harm in the hostile wastelands scorched by Tatooine's binary suns.
"Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be" begins with an all-new scene with Luke and Threepio in the Lars homestead's tech dome. It's dawn, and Luke plans to sneak off with the protocol droid aboard his antiquated X-34 landspeeder to search for the runaway astromech, Artoo Detoo. Here, Threepio demonstrates his versatility to Luke when he volunteers to take the landspeeder controls:
THREEPIO: Master Luke, if I may suggest...piloting ground-effect vehicles like your landspeeder is one of the secondary functions for which I have been programmed. I could take the controls, leaving you free to scan the terrain for tracks.
LUKE: Good idea. Let's go.
Sound: They climb into the landspeeder. The engine revs, the speeder accelerates, a whoosh as it veers sharply, then the steady hum of the engine under:
LUKE: Careful, Threepio! You have to use a light touch on her.
THREEPIO: Yes, sir, so I see. This vehicle's steering response is excellent. I presume you maintain it yourself.
LUKE: Uh huh. I like to make sure things work right. Look. the night winds've probably carried away the marks of Artoo's treads, but I figure he's headed toward whatever he was looking for when you two got captured by those Jawas.
THREEPIO: Our escape pod landed somewhere over that way. Artoo seemed obsessed with the area beyond those mesas.
LUKE: Maybe we can pick him up on the scanner.
As in the original film, Luke and Threepio do pick Artoo on the landspeeder's scanner, not realizing that they, too, are being watched. The two searchers catch up to the little droid, and they both get out of the landspeeder to confront the little runaway.
LUKE: Artoo! Hey, whoa, where d'you think you're going?
ARTOO: BURBLES DEFENSIVELY.
THREEPIO: Master Luke is your rightful owner owner now, Artoo. Let's have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi gibberish!
ARTOO: TWEEDLES ANGRILY.
THREEPIO: And don't talk to me about your mission, either! You're fortunate that Master Luke doesn't give you back to those Jawas!
LUKE: No, Threepio, it's all right. But I've got to get you two out to the south ridge to work on those vaporators before Uncle Owen checks up on us.
THREEPIO: If you don't mind my saying so, I think you should deactivate this little fugitive --
ARTOO: INTERRUPTS, HOOTING FRANTICALLY.
LUKE: What's wrong with him now?
THREEPIO: Oh, my! Sir, he says that there are several creatures of an unknown type approaching from the southeast.
LUKE: Sand People! Tusken Raiders! There've been sightings all around the area lately. We'd better have a look...I'll get my rifle. Threepio, hand me the macrobinoculars.
 |
| (C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation |
Sure enough, Luke spots a Tusken Raider and two Banthas from his perch in one of the canyon rock formations, but before he and Threepio can get back to their landspeeder and hustle Artoo off to safety, another Raider ambushes them. Luke gets knocked out as a result, and Threepio falls down the ravine and his left arm breaks off. Artoo, meanwhile, finds shelter in a nearby cave while the Sand People ransack the landspeeder. Only a seemingly-providential intervention by the old hermit Luke knows only as Ben Kenobi saves our motley group of travelers from mortal peril.
My Take:
"Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be" is a more detailed account of Luke's fateful encounter with Obi-Wan Kenobi, a former Jedi Knight and veteran of the Clone Wars who lives "beyond the Dune Sea." In a revealing scene, Luke tells Threepio that he had met "old Ben" several years earlier when he and his friend Windy got lost in the nearby canyons while riding their dewback mounts. This is the only major tidbit of "new information" that Daley tossed in to establish the fact that Obi-Wan has been discreetly watching over Luke. We also learn that Luke sensed that "Ben" wanted to tell him something important at the time,but that a frightened Uncle Owen had not allowed it at the time.
 |
| (C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation |
Most of the Radio Drama's fifth episode is derived from George Lucas's 1977 version of Star Wars, which had not yet been re-released in theaters with its official subtitle of Episode IV: A New Hope. As the title implies,"Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be" also revisits such scenes as:
- Obi-Wan's revelation to Luke that he was a Jedi Knight who'd served in the Clone Wars with Luke's father (whose name had not been yet established when the series aired in 1981), and that the elder Skywalker had also been a Jedi
- Obi-Wan's handover to Luke of a lightsaber that belonged to his father and, reluctantly, tells the boy about how a young Jedi named Darth Vader betrayed and murdered his dad
- Artoo's delivery of Princess Leia's holographic message in its entirety to its intended recipient
- Obi-Wan's plea to Luke to help him get to Alderaan
- Luke's fateful discovery that Imperial troops have executed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and his decision to become a Jedi like his father
 |
| (C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation |
This is evident in the way that Obi-Wan delivers a crucial bit of exposition to Luke after he gives the boy his father's lightsaber:
LUKE: How did my father die?
BEN: It's not a story to be told simply, or briefly. Suffice it to say that there was a young Jedi who was a pupil of mine, perhaps my most brilliant one, until he was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He betrayed your father and, and murdered him. His name was Darth Vader, and he helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. It's the sort of tragedy that occurs when even the finest of people are seduced by the dark side of the Force.
If you read between the lines of Ben's account, you can tell that Daley is referring to "the big reveal" in Empire where Vader shocks Luke (and the audience) with his "No,I am your father" claim in Bespin's Cloud City. Of course, the writer has to be careful with the wording because we know that Luke doesn't know anything about his dad at this point of the story, yet the 1981 audience was aware of Vader's claim of paternity. It worked well then, and it still works well now that we have seen Lucas's Prequel Trilogy.
So, yes. The writing is damn good, and Daley's account of an earlier encounter between Ben and Luke is also kind of cool. It might not be canon, but it fits into Lucas's notion that Kenobi was tasked by Yoda and the disembodied Qui-Gon to watch over Luke until the time was right for the Jedi to rise again.
The acting is also excellent, which is not surprising when you consider that Anthony Daniels was a veteran of several BBC Radio dramas before he got the role of See Threepio, and that his Star Wars cast mate Mark Hamill is also a highly sought-after voice actor. The two actors reprise their iconic film roles so well that you can imagine Luke in his familiar Tatooine farm boy's garb and "see" the reflection of Tatooine's twin suns on Threepio's gold plating as you listen to the episode.
And although Sir Alec Guinness did not participate in the making of the radio dramatization, British actor Bernard "Bunny" Behrens steps into the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi and makes it his own. His voice doesn't sound exactly like that of his celluloid counterpart, but it has the same dignified accent and warm paternal qualities that made Kenobi such a likable and wise mentor for Hamill's Luke.
 |
| Bernard "Bunny" Behrens (1926-2012) Photo courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes |
John Madden would later be better known as the director of 1998's Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love, but he, too, is a well-regarded director of radio dramas in his home country, Great Britain. Star Wars: The Radio Drama is his best-known work in this medium, and he would return to the recording studios with sound mixer/post-production supervisor Tom Voegeli to helm the radio versions of The Empire Strikes Back ( which aired in early 1983) and Return of the Jedi (which was produced for HighBridge Audio and aired on National Public Radio in 1996).
As in all the Radio Drama episodes, "Jedi That Was, Jedi to Be" also features the sound effects from the original movie by Ben Burtt, and the score by composer John Williams.
Comments
Post a Comment