Audiobook Box Set Review: 'The Complete Star Wars Trilogy: The National Public Radio Dramas - Limited Collector's Edition'

Photo Credit: Nathan Patrick Butler. © 2012 Nathan Patrick Butler. Star Wars logos and content © 1977 Lucasfilm Ltd. 

Pros: Contains all three of NPR's Star Wars radio dramas; impressive presentation and nice extras

Cons: None

A long time ago, in a bedrooom not very far away, I was a bored and somewhat restless teenager in one of those I've done all my chores and my homework assignments for my high school classes, there's nothing good on TV, and I really don't have anything to do moods that 18-year-olds without much of a social life often get into.

At the time, I had a small black-and-white TV set and a radio in my room; VCRs were still very expensive and the only one I'd seen was at a friend's house, so watching a video was not an option. I also didn't yet have an Atari 2600 console...nor cable TV...and my friends didn't yet have cars, so my options for getting out of that feeling of "mindless tedium" were to read, listen to some records, or turn on the radio and go through the FM dial and find a classical radio station.

I ended up choosing that last one, so I turned on the radio component of my then still-new Grand Prix stereo system and started turning the dial at random, vaguely aware that there was a classical music station on the FM frequencies but not really sure on what channel.

It was during this hit and miss process of trial by error that I caught the tail end of some classical music sounding commercial when I hit 91.3 FM. Thinking that I had hit the right spot, I carefully adjusted the tuner so it didn't have any static and waited.

Then, after a rather pregnant pause, I heard a male announcer's voice say, "From National Public Radio, this is NPR Playhouse."

Oh, God, I thought, a soap opera on radio....Ugh! I reached out with my hand to turn the dial...and stopped when I heard this:

"Star Wars, by Brian Daley. Based on characters and situations created by George Lucas. Episode Two, Points of Origin."

I was stunned. I'd heard of radio adaptations of such things as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries and whatnot, but that was during the Golden Age of Radio (1929 to the mid-1950s), before TV became the dominant medium in the American home. But Star Wars? On the radio? Surely I must have been delirious with boredom.

But no. John Williams' "Main Title" theme was playing as underscore to announcer Ken Hiller's brief introduction - the aural equivalent of the film's 1930s-style crawl - setting up the episode that introduces listeners to Princess Leia's ill-fated mission to Ralltiir, a Core World being subjugated by Imperial forces under the command of Lord Tion...a mission that sets up Leia's active participation in the Rebel Alliance's attempt to find and destroy the Galactic Empire's planet-killing Death Star battle station.

I was both surprised and somewhat chagrined. The former because I never figured Star Wars could ever be anything but a visual experience, and the latter because, Sithspawn! I had missed the first episode!

What I forgot, of course, is that Star Wars - for all its little flaws and foibles - works well because it has a story and set of characters with universal themes taken from old legends and myths and told in a way that appeals to young and old alike.

The late Brian Daley, who was hired by Lucasfilm's Carol Titleman because his Han Solo trilogy of novels had been well-written and sold well, was keenly aware of the power of Star Wars' narrative, and he adapted Lucas' final version of the screenplay by "restoring" scenes that were cut from the finished film (a reunion between Luke Skywalker and his best friend Biggs at Toschi Station, a face-off between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt's enforcers in Mos Eisley's Docking Bay 94) pretty faithfully.

He also expanded the story of the film now known as Episode IV: A New Hope a bit, adding two episodes that gave listeners glimpses of Luke's life on Tatooine shortly before the destiny-changing purchase of R2-D2 and C-3PO by his Uncle Owen. Daley's A Wind to Shake the Stars shows us how much of an outsider Luke is among his peers in Anchorhead, and how good (and reckless) a skyhopper pilot he is.

Although only two actors from the film (Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels) were available to participate in Star Wars: The Radio Drama, the cast is made up of incredibly good actors who get into the roles we know so well from the Classic Trilogy - Bernard Behrens (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Perry King (Han Solo), Brock Peters (Darth Vader), and Ann Sachs (Princess Leia Organa) use their voices so well under the direction of John Madden that the listener forgets about Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, and the other original actors and simply gets into the story.

For both Lucasfilm - which provided access to Ben Burtt's sound effects and John Williams' original score - and NPR, the 13-part series was a big hit:

When this series was first broadcast on National Public Radio in 1981, it generated the largest response in the network's history: 50,000 letters and phone calls in a single week, an audience of 750,000 per episode, and a subsequent 40-percent jump in NPR listenership. - HighBridge Audio's official website.

Two years later, shortly before the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi, NPR began airing a 10-part adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, which had somewhat less exposition than the original radio series but still expanded the film's story with an additional three hours of story and character development. Most of the original radio cast - Hamill, Daniels, Sachs, King, Behrens, and Peters were joined by Billy Dee Williams (reprising his film role as Lando Calrissian), Paul Hecht (the Emperor), John Lithgow (Yoda), and David Alan Grier (various characters), just to name a few.

Once again, thousands of listeners tuned in and responded favorably, but 1983 was a year in which Republican President Ronald Reagan and many in Congress weren't willing to fund National Public Radio as generously as in years past, so it wasn't until 1996 that Return of the Jedi would complete the radio adaptation of the Trilogy, and that was because HighBridge Audio - which produced and sold the CD and audiocassette releases of the two NPR series, stepped in and reunited most of the cast and crew from 1981 and '83, with the exception of Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams; Joshua Fardon and Arye Gross took over their roles as Luke and Lando, and amazingly well, too.

Though all three radio dramas are available in separate sets and a less expensive Complete Star Wars Trilogy collection, this Collector's Limited Edition is a nice keepsake or gift for any Star Wars devotee. Only 7,500 sets were made by HighBridge Audio, and each 15-CD set includes an attractive foil-stamped, individually-numbered collector's slipcase.

Also worth noting are some bonus tracks not available on any of the less expensive versions, including Star Wars-themed become-a-member commercials for NPR, comments from director John Madden, Perry King, Anthony Daniels, and Joshua Fardon, and two versions of the Speeder Bike sequence from Return of the Jedi.

There's also a very human and sad touch - an audio "Get Well Brian" card recorded to cheer up an ailing Brian Daley, who was dying of pancreatic cancer. He never heard it, having passed away a few hours after the recording sessions for the series ended.

Additionally, the CDs and the jewel boxes that store them are presented differently. The first CD of each series features the same cover artwork/behind the scenes booklets from the original HighBridge Audio sets, but the others have no front cover insert. Instead, each disk bears on its label side artwork from an appropriate scene in each movie that relates to the episodes within. For instance, the CD for Episodes Three and Four of Star Wars shows Darth Vader aboard Princess Leia's blockade runner, while the last disc, which has Episodes Five and Six of Return of the Jedi, features the final duel between Luke Skywalker and Vader aboard the second Death Star.