'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama' Episode Review: 'Prophesies and Destinies'

(C) 1996 HighBridge Audio and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) 

Prophesies and Destinies

Cast:

• Jabba the Hutt (Edward Asner)
• See-Threepio (Anthony Daniels
• Princess Leia Organa (Ann Sachs)
• Luke Skywalker (Joshua Fardon)
• Lando Calrissian (Arye Gross)
• Imperial Officer
• Moff Jerjerrrod (Peter Dennis)
• Lord Darth Vader (Brock Peters)
• Yoda (John Lithgow)
• Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi (Bernard "Bunny" Behrens)
• Emperor Palpatine (Paul Hecht)
• Sail Guard
• Last Guard
• Narrator (Ken Hiller)

Sound/FX Roles

• Artoo-Detoo 
• Salacious Crumb (Ian Gomez)

Reviewer's Note:

All quoted material is from the 1996 book Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization.  This edition contains Brian Daley's complete radio play, which differs slightly from the version of the Radio Drama which aired on National Public Radio in 1996 and the original 1990s HighBridge Audio cassette and compact disc editions. The version in Daley's script was recorded, but as with the original 1981 Star Wars Radio Drama and its 1983 sequel, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – The Radio Drama, edits were made at the request of NPR due to the needs of the radio format. The longer version of this episode is available in HighBridge Audio's more expensive Limited Edition CD collection of Star Wars: The Complete Radio Drama Trilogy.

Announcer: OPENING CREDITS

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. Now an ultimate confrontation looms near, as the threads of the Emperor Palpatine's master plan draw the Rebel Alliance toward a last, apocalyptic battle. 

Sound: Background battle around the Sarlacc pit as per the end of Episode Two, but heard from POV of Jabba's sail barge.

Narrator: But above the pit of the monstrous Sarlacc, on the desert planet Tatooine, one small group of freedom fighters is facing its own day of reckoning. There, Luke Skywalker and a band of allies have risked all to free Han Solo from the clutches of the evil gangster Jabba the Hutt.

Sound: More combat, including Luke's lightsaber, Jabba's bellow, chaos among Jabba's hangers-on, etc. 

Narrator: Han, Lando Calrissian, and Chewbacca are battling guards to liberate a sand skiff. Nearby, on Jabba's great sail barge, all is chaos and carnage. Luke Skywalker is on the attack, lightsaber in hand - to free his other companions, and end Jabba's reign of terror.

SCENE 3-1    INTERIOR JABBA'S SAIL BARGE

Sound: Battle furor up, off

Jabba: (SLIGHTLY OFF) <Oohlah loobah cogh!>

Sound: Under preceding, Boba Fett's rocket pack has made a belching approach to near off, ending in a loud bonk signifying the bounty hunter's impact with the ironclad hull by Jabba's banquet cabin.

Crowd: JABBERS, REACTS, IN ASSORTED LINGOES.

Leia: (SURREPITIOUSLY) Threepio, what was that?

Threepio: (MATCHING HER TONE) If I understand correctly, Your Highness, Boba Fett just ricocheted off the hull plates and went plummeting down into the Sarlacc.

Leia: Everybody's busy watching, pass me that statuette.

Threepio: Certainly, Your Highness. (INDICATES EFFORT OF PASSING IT) But I don't understand why you want it.

Leia: (INDICATES TAKING THE HEAVY LITTLE OBJECT) You will in a second. Stand back.

Threepio: But Princess Leia, that instrument panel controls all the power circuits on the barge.

Leia: Not for long.....

Salacious Crumb: GIVES ONE OF HIS MANIACAL LAUGHS, OFF, THEN GIBBERS ACCUSATIONS AT THEM.

Threepio: Salacious Crumb - get away, you heinous little imp! (TO LEIA) What a torment he's made of my life!

Leia: Threepio, go find Artoo. I need him to get this chain off me.

Threepio: But what about Jabba?

Leia: I'll deal with him. (INDICATING EFFORT OF SWINGING THE STATUETTE, OVER NEXT) Now...stand...back....

Concept art by Ralph McQuarrie. (C) 1983 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Prophesies and Destinies is the third episode of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, a 1996 radio adaptation of the eponymous 1983 film. Produced by HighBridge Audio for broadcast on National Public Radio, it was written by novelist Brian Daley (with additional material by John Whitman) and directed by John Madden. 

In the tradition of radio's Golden Age of dramas, Prophesies and Destinies begins where the series' second episode, Fast Friends, ended: at the climax of the Battle of the Great Pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of a lethal creature called the Sarlacc. 

As the episode begins, the fate of Luke Skywalker (Joshua Fardon), Princess Leia (Ann Sachs), Han Solo (Perry King),  Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian (Arye Gross), See-Threepio (Anthony Daniels), and Artoo-Detoo literally hangs on a very slender thread of hope. In a daring rescue, Luke has freed liberated a nearly-blind Han and the others from Jabba the Hutt's minions at the Pit of Carkoon. But even though the bounty hunter Boba Fett (Ed Begley, Jr.) and many of Jabba's crew of killers are either dead or incapacitated, the fight is not over yet.  Leia and the droids are still aboard Jabba's giant sail barge, and the crime lord himself (Edward Asner) still believes he has a chance to kill the galaxy's last Jedi Knight. 

That changes when Princess Leia, still chained to the slug-like gangster, takes a small but heavy  statuette and smashes an instrument panel that controls the sail barge's power circuits. In the darkness and confusion that follows, the captive Rebel from Alderaan finally turns the tables on her gross, overbearing, and evil captor.

 Jabba: <Aarrgh! Poosak tawa ch'upa, Leia!> 

Leia: That's right, Jabba. You forgot one thing.

Sound: She gathers the slack of the heavy chain, to use it as a weapon of revenge.

Leia: (INDICATING THE EFFORT OF ATTACKING HIM, TO GARROTE HIM WITH THE HEAVY CHAIN) When you put a slave on a leash...the other end is attached to you!

Jabba: TRUMPETS IN DISMAY AND OUTRAGE AS SHE LEAPS BEHIND HIM, THROWING THE LOOP OF CHAIN AROUND HIS (WELL, KIND OF NONEXISTENT) NECK AND TIGHTENING IT.

Leia: (THROUGH GRITTED TEETH, AS SHE SLOWLY CHOKES THE LIFE OUT OF HIM) Now you know how it feels to have cold iron around your throat, Jabba!

Jabba: GASPS AND GURGLES, TRIES SUMMONING ASSISTANCE.

Leia: Call for help all you want. (GRUNTS WITH EFFORT; SHE'S GOT HER KNEE IN HIS BACK, HAULING BACK ON THE CHAIN GARROTE)  Your fine pack of cutthroats are too busy saving their own necks.

Jabba: WHEEZING AND STRANGLING.

Jabba's court jester, the demented Kowakian monkey-lizard called Salacious Crumb (Ian Gomez), attempts to save his dying master by bombarding Leia with dishes and anything at hand he can throw at the Princess and Threepio. But it is to no avail.

Leia: (INDICATES SHE'S EXERTING ALL HER STRENGTH AND LEVERAGE TO FINISH HIM OFF) Here's your...final payment...Jabba....

Jabba: MASSIVE DEATH RATTLES.

Sound: Deck-shaking thud as Jabba collapses dead.

Leia: (OUT OF BREATH FROM THE EPIC CONTEST) You're out of business.

As in the film, Artoo arrives on scene just in time to save Leia and Threepio from the frantic Salacious Crumb's attempts to avenge his now-dead master and cut the Princess free from her iron chain. 

Meanwhile, on the deck of Jabba's sail barge, Luke, Han, a wounded Chewbacca, and Lando fight off wave after wave of Jabba's desperate minions. Soon, only a few of the crime lord's goons are left, and Leia, Artoo, and a somewhat harried Threepio rejoin their friends on the top deck. Lando, Han, and Chewie get on the sand skiff by the sail barge's side as Luke improvises a way to destroy Jabba's barge and prevent the surviving criminals from pursuing the victorious Rebel freedom fighters.

Prophesies and Destinies not only chronicles our heroes' escape from Tatooine (and the Imperial blockade in orbit), but it also depicts:

• The arrival of Darth Vader (Brock Peters) aboard the second Death Star, now under construction above the Sanctuary Moon of Endor, and his meeting with Moff Jerjerrod (Peter Dennis)
• Luke's return to Dagobah and his final conversation with his Jedi instructor, Yoda (John Lithgow)
• A conversation between Luke and the Force ghost of his first Jedi mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Bernard "Bunny" Behrens), in which the young Skywalker is told an abridged account of his father's fall from grace and his kinship to Leia Organa
• The arrival of the Emperor (Paul Hecht) aboard Death Star II and his own chat with Vader about prophecies and destinies

My Take:

With a running time of just over three hours, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is the briefest of the three Radio Dramas that aired on National Public Radio between 1981 and 1996. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that producer Tom Voegeli, director John Madden, and the production team  had a smaller budget to work  with to make the series. Originally, the Jedi radio adaptation was slated for production in late 1983 or early 1984, but Reagan era Congressional cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which runs the Public Broadcasting System television network as well as National Public Radio) put those plans on hold...for 13 years! 

Chances are that if HighBridge Audio (which is now a division of Recorded Books), a Minnesota recording company which manufactured and sold tapes and compact discs of various NPR shows, including the first two Star Wars radio dramas, had not decided to fund the Jedi series, it would not have been made at all. 

Another reason, I think, for the brevity of Return of the Jedi in comparison to its two precursors was Brian Daley's poor health. In 1996, the 47-year-old novelist was sick; he had been fighting cancer for some time and the news from his doctors was not good; the disease was terminal. He turned in the six scripts in the nick of time; Brian Daley died on the same day that the actors completed the recording sessions at LA Theater Works in California. 

Even knowing that a second writer, John Whitman, was brought in to make some adjustments to add a few details from such Legends works as Steve Perry's Shadows of the Empire and Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, it is not an exaggeration to say that Prophesies and Destinies shows what good storytelling and fine writing can accomplish Daley cleverly found a way to take an already familiar tale told in another, more visual medium and still make it interesting and suspenseful.

Of course, Daley did not do this on his own. Director Madden, who returned for a third Star Wars radio drama, got outstanding performances from Radio Drama veterans Ann Sachs, Brock Peters, Paul Hecht, Perry King, and, of course, Anthony Daniels, who reprised his iconic role of the always-nervous protocol droid See-Threepio from the Star Wars films. In addition, Madden was able to get Joshua Fardon to step into the role of Luke Skywalker as a replacement for Mark Hamill, who was unavailable for a third go-around as the Radio Dramas' Jedi hero. 

Surprisingly, Arye Gross is also a good stand-in for Billy Dee Williams, who wasn't able to participate in the Return of the Jedi radio drama because of the show's limited budget. Gross captures the essence of the roguish, charming, and flirtatious Lando Calrissian with his witty and lively vocal performance.

As in the previous NPR-produced Star Wars radio adaptations, Lucasfilm Ltd. collaborated in the creation of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama. The company not only granted the producers at HighBridge and Tom Voegeli Productions the license rights, but it provided Ben Burtt's library of sound effects and John Williams' 1983 score from Episode VI. This would mark the final appearance of Williams' original "Ewok Celebration and End Titles" track in a Lucasfilm-sanctioned work; in 1997, the Special Edition re-release of Return of the Jedi would feature a new track titled "Victory Celebration and End Titles" composed by Maestro Williams for the "definitive" version of the Classic Trilogy's final chapter. 

As the publicist for HighBridge Audio writes in the booklet that comes with each Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The Radio Drama CD set: 

Like its radio predecessors, Return of the Jedi is a remarkable fable for the mind's eye - a spellbinding story of heroes and villains, good and evil, temptation and redemption, all played out in a shimmering, almost palpable, universe of sound.