'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama' Series Overview

Return of the Jedi CD set cover art. (C) 1997 HighBridge Audio and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

In late 1983, after the box office success of director Richard Marquand's Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and the equally positive reception to National Public Radio's Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, writer Brian Daley, director John Madden, and the creative team that had brought two thirds of the Star Wars Trilogy to the airwaves started thinking about adapting Jedi for NPR. 

After all, both of the previous Star Wars radio adaptations had done well in the ratings and had given the nearly-extinct genre of radio dramas a huge jump start. And with Star Wars at the height of its popularity, it would not be very long until Madden, Daley, and the rest of the crew led by producer Mel Sahr began work on Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama.

Unfortunately, it would be a long time till the Star Wars Radio Drama trilogy could be completed. 

As Anthony Daniels, the British actor who has played See-Threepio (C-3PO) in all the Star Wars films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and the radio dramas, writes in his introduction to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization: 

"Mel (Sahr) explained that NPR's financing problems* had held back the completion of the project with the intended production of Return of the Jedi. Now Sallie Neall, producer for HighBridge Audio, had managed to create a budget once more. A major huddle had been flattened. Hitherto unpublished passages of John Williams's outstanding music would be available. Three hours of radio employ more staves of music than a two-hour movie, unless you want to hear the same notes over and over again. Mel told me that a production was now viable. Would I care to be involved? Was Brian Daley writing the scripts? Yes, he was. Yes, I would."

HighBridge Audio is the Minnesota-based company that produces and records home media editions of NPR's shows like Prairie Home Companion, NPR Lord of the Rings, Car Talk, and NPR American Chronicles. Although it is now owned by Recorded Books, it was founded by Minnesota Public Radio back in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, HighBridge had successfully released NPR's Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back radio dramas on cassette and compact discs; the earnings from those sales now made it possible for the company to complete the task that NPR (through KUSC-FM Los Angeles) had begun nearly 15 years before with a 13-part adaptation of Star Wars. 

Although HighBridge was able to secure the licensing rights necessary for veteran sound mixer/audio engineer Tom Voegeli to use Williams's symphonic score and Ben Burtt's library of sound effects, the budget limited Return of the Jedi's run to six episodes, or around three hours' worth of air time. This was one hour longer than the film directed by the late Richard Marquand, but it was far shorter than the Star Wars (13 episodes) and Empire (10 episodes) radio dramas that had come before.

And, as Daniels relates in his foreword to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization, there was another complication:

"Months later I was sitting in a boardroom in Los Angeles with Lucasfilm's Director of Publishing, Lucy Autrey Wilson, Mel, Tom, and John Madden, who had so happily directed our two previous efforts. A problem had arisen. Brian was sick and could not join us. He had been fighting cancer for some time. He was very sorry not to be with us at the script conference."

Brian Daley (1947-1996), writer of the Star Wars radio drama trilogy.(Photo by Beauregard Simmons)

Although Daley turned in six complete scripts - one for each episode - for the Return of the Jedi series, his illness prevented him from doing all the revisions and on-the-spot rewrites that are part and parcel of the film and radio drama creative process. And, as Daniels points out, "there were all sorts of tangential continuity restrictions effected by the future prequels and projects in Lucasfilm's plans. So John Whitman had come along, not only with his writing skills but with his depth of knowledge about the trilogy. We each had lists of comments and suggestions. Many vanished as John Madden and I hammed up the lines between us and made Brian's writing come alive, just the way he'd written them. Perhaps, because we both had jet lag, we were hammier than usual, but the room constantly sounded with raucous laughter at Brian's humorous inventions. I won't preempt them here, but do look out for Leia's throw-away about her skimpy costume - and, too, watch out for the inflammatory 'luggage' insult."

Although most of the original radio dramas' cast veterans - Ann Sachs, Bernard Behrens, Brock Peters, John Lithgow, Paul Hecht, and narrator Ken Hiller - returned, Anthony Daniels was the only actor who would "appear" both onscreen and over the airwaves in the Star Wars trilogy. Mark Hamill, who had reprised his iconic film role of Luke Skywalker in the previous Star Wars radio dramas, was not available.  And neither was Billy Dee Williams, the suave, debonair actor who had breathed life into Lando Calrissian, Han Solo's old friend (and sometime rival) and former owner of the Millennium Falcon.

In their place, casting coordinator/producer Mel Sahr cast Joshua Fardon, a voice actor, playwright, and composer to step into the role of Luke Skywalker. She also hired actor Arye Gross  (Ellen, Minority Report, Castle) to give Lando his voice for the Jedi radio adaptation.

The series' voice acting sessions took place in Los Angeles at L.A. Theater Works early in 1996; they ended on the afternoon of February 11, a few hours before Brian Daley's death from pancreatic cancer at his home in Arnold, Maryland. (The cast and crew, unaware that Daley had passed away, wrote and recorded a get-well message, which Tom Voegeli later finished during the post-production stage in his Minnesota studio. The script is available in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization; it can also be heard in the extra features compact disc of the Star Wars Trilogy: The Complete Radio Drama - Limited Collector's Edition sets.)

The series consists of the following episodes:

1. Tatooine Haunts
2. Fast Friends
3. Prophecies and Destinies
4. Pattern and Web
5. So Turns a Galaxy, So Turns a Wheel
6. Blood of a Jedi

A photo featured in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization. (C) 1996 National Public Radio and Del Rey Books

The main cast consists of:

• Anthony Daniels (See-Threepio)
• Perry King (Han Solo)
• Ann Sachs (Princess Leia Organa)
• Joshua Fardon (Luke Skywalker)
• Brock Peters (Lord Darth Vader)
• Bernard "Bunny" Behrens (Obi-Wan Kenobi)
• Edward Asner (Jabba the Hutt)
• Ed Begley, Jr. (Boba Fett)
• John Lithgow (Yoda)
• Yeardley Smith (Ninedeenine)
• Paul Hecht (Emperor Palpatine)
• Samantha Bennett (Arica/Mara Jade)

Although Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - the Radio Drama is mostly based on the screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas, Daley and John Whitman also borrowed a few characters and situations from what was then known as the Expanded Universe. Timothy Zahn's fan favorite Mara Jade (aka the Emperor's Hand) makes a cameo appearance, and there are allusions to Steve Perry's Shadows of the Empire novel, which is set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. At the time, these tips of the hat to the Expanded Universe did not affect the radio drama's canonical status. 

However, after the Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm and its intellectual property, this changed. In early 2014, Lucasfilm announced that the Expanded Universe was going to be relabeled Star Wars Legends and not part of the established canon. Thus, the Radio Dramas are only canon when the material is directly derived from the original films. Everything else, including Arica's cameo, is relegated to Legends status. 

Although the series' shorter running time sometimes gives Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama a somewhat rushed feel, it's still an enjoyable audio adventure set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." It has its shortcomings as well as its virtues, but I'll not preempt them here. As they say in the radio business, "Stay tuned....there's more to come in this channel."

So, until next time, clear skies, and may the Force be with you.

* National Public Radio's financing problems were caused in no small part by Republican-mandated cutbacks to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the privately owned but federally financed company that promotes and provides assistance to public broadcasting. During the Reagan Presidency and since, conservatives have called for cuts or outright elimination of federal funds for the CPB, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and NPR. The usual excuse is that if viewers want PBS or NPR, they can donate more money so that Congress doesn't have to use taxpayers' money. The real reason, though, is the right wing's belief that PBS, through series such as Frontline and POV, as well as documentaries such Vietnam: A Television History and Baseball, has a liberal bias in its programming. 

Source: 

Daley, Brian, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization, New York: Del Rey, 1996