“Then he went to the planet of Coonee, where he used to herd large animals called coldppedas, which have fifteen feet. They look something like a giraffe, about twenty-three feet tall, only with scales and a lizard head. Some of them are known to get as high as forty feet. They have huge hooves, which are round and soft. Their meat has an aphrodisiac quality, so they ship it all around the universe. He did that for three years.
“Han then worked as a mechanic in a factory that built spaceships on a planet called Saberhing. He was on an assembly line. He fell into smuggling when he was about twenty. Smuggling was really the result of the Empire, which has such stringent rules about tariffs, and the trade companies, which are so strong, so monopolistic. Most legitimate operators were squeezed out of the business. So Han could be described as a smuggler, but in reality he’s a free-enterprise small businessman who is trading between systems without benefit of a proper license from the trade unions.
“He smuggled everything under the sun. He smuggled spice along with everything else: various foodstuffs and precious gems and mechanical parts—whatever happened to be available. He would take material from one planet to another planet, and so on, taking his profit out along the way. Han outwitted the Empire on numerous occasions and he’s made some very fast deals. One of the problems is that he gambles quite heavily and loses most of his money. He’s tough and sharp, only he somehow never manages to scrape together enough money to get any power. As a matter of fact, I think he enjoys this: He’s slightly self-destructive and enjoys being on the brink of disaster. So he’s constantly putting everything he’s got into some high-risk venture, and sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses. You might meet him and he may be worth ten billion credits one day and the next time you meet him, he’s in debt up to his ears.
“The Empire actually destroyed one of his ships, a bigger ship, not as fast as the Millennium Falcon. They blasted him and he had to drop a whole shipment in order to keep from getting caught. The Empire is really the Big Brother who watches over him and causes him trouble. He doesn’t really think of it as a political thing so much as somebody who is getting in his way, although he frequently works with, and for, bounty hunters, gangsters, Rebels, and the Empire if the price is right.
“He has a girlfriend in every port.”
THE MILLENNIUM FALCON
“It’s of Corellian design, from Crell, and is used primarily by the Corellian spice shippers. They transport their goods to the center of the Empire. The Corellian ship is a very easy ship to know. It’s a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive—mostly to the navigation system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (par-sects).
“Crell is a rather grim planet, mostly gaseous. There’s no surface to it. The cities are large satellites and they float inside the planet, like in the fog, or in the gas. The inhabitants have wings and can fly. They are like porpoises with wings, but they also have claw-like hands.”
C-3PO: BACKGROUND
“I’m about 112 years old and have had about forty-three masters. I was made in a robotic factory on the planet Affa, which is in one of the Outland Regions in the third sector of the Galactic Empire. Most of my information storage can be found in the heart and chest area. The logic system is in the head. The logic system can be replaced but the storage systems can’t. All of my information—everything that I store—is transferred periodically into a main computer located on Alderaan.
“Most droids, especially in the diplomatic corps, transfer all their information eventually. Sometimes it’s once a year, twice, three times a year, depending upon our availability. Sometimes it’s a great relief when I go back to the Alderaan main computer and get my memory purged. To be renewed is everything—what more could one ask for than to have one’s youth back again?
“Before I was assigned to the court of Alderaan, roughly twenty years ago, I was in one of the sub-embassies in the Granicus system. I was working in the embassy for one of the third liaison officers at that time. That’s where I really started out. It was a good thirty-seven years before I was actually transferred into protocol. When I started in the embassy, I was one of twelve hundred interpreter droids. I was in the Outland areas and there were a lot of strange planets being amassed into the Republic. There was actually a very high attrition rate out there, too, because of the strange climates. Many of the droids would fall apart very rapidly. I was lucky to be totally reassembled by a young boy working for a junk dealer. After several years I gained new coverings and became as good as new.
“Then I went on to become attached to the court of Alderaan, eventually working myself up to become the special assistant translator to the captain of a diplomatic starship, Captain Antilles.”
PRINCESS LEIA: BACKGROUND
“Alderaan is very Earth-like. High snowcapped mountains, green pastures, very modern. There are all kinds of animals and creatures on Alderaan. You could go on forever describing them. Our planet is about four or five million years old. I was brought up in a rather well-to-do family. I have two brothers, much younger than I am: One is four and one is seven. My parents are in their fifties. My father was one of the Senators from the Alderaan system. He was very kind. He was strict in his own way, but he was very fair; he had a very gentle heart and I loved him a great deal. My mother was well educated, the head of several relief organizations, beautiful and warm.
“The Alderaan system actually consists of seven planets. Alderaan was the capital planet of that system. There was a Senate and my father was the president of that Senate. I’ve been in school since I was two years old and I’ve been trained by the finest minds in the Alderaan system. Most people on the planet get a good education, but mine was not really typical because I was exceptionally bright and I was sent to the advanced schools. If you are gifted, you go on to the gifted schools. So I’m used to taking charge of situations. I’ve overseen several kinds of operations, governmental and mercy mission types of things, ever since I was seven years old. I have an ability for organization and command. Now I am a Senator.”
LEIA ON THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE
“In the Old Republic, all the systems sent their representatives to the Senate. It wasn’t an Imperial Senate; it was a Republican Senate, which made the decisions that controlled the Republic. There were 24,372 systems in the Galactic Senate. The Senate would vote in a Chancellor or an overseer who would work for four years as the leader of the executive branch of the Republic. You were only supposed to be able to run for one four-year term—you were only eligible for one term.
“What happened was one of the Chancellors began subverting the Senate and buying off the Senators with the help of some of the large intergalactic trade companies and mining companies and intergalactic power companies. Through their power and money, he bought off enough of the Senate to get himself elected to a second term, because of a crisis. By the time the third term came along, he had corrupted so much of the Senate that they made him Emperor for the rest of his life.
“Giving the Emperor that title for life and doing away with the elective process was all done with a lot of rationalizing. Many in the Senate felt that having elections and changing leaders in the time of an emergency disrupted the bureaucratic system. And the bureaucracy was getting to be so big that changing leaders made it impossible to have any effect on the system and make it work—moreover, the bureaucracy was running amok and not paying attention to the rulers. So they reasoned that the Emperor could bring the bureaucracy back in line. So the Emperor took control of the bureaucracy. The Galactic Senate would meet for a period that was similar to a year, but after it became the Imperial Senate, the meetings were less and less frequent until finally the meetings were only once a year, and they were very short.
“With the bureaucracy behind the Emperor, it was impossible and too late for the Senate to do anything. He had slowly manipulated things; in fact, it was he who had let the bureaucracy run amok and ther
efore had blackmailed the Senate into doing things because he was the only one who really had any power over the bureaucracy. It was so large there was no way to get things done, but he knew the right people; the key people in the bureaucracy were working for him and were paid by the companies.
“When he became Emperor, a little over half the Senate as it turned out was not involved, was not corrupted—and they reacted strongly against this whole thing. There was a rebellion in terms of the Senate against the Emperor; they tried to oust him legally and have him impeached. But many of the Senators who were fighting the Emperor at that time mysteriously died. The Jedi Knights were alerted immediately and they rallied to the Senate’s side. But there was a plot afoot and when the Jedi finally rallied and tried to restore order, they were betrayed and eventually killed by Darth Vader.”
C-3PO ON DARTH VADER AND THE EMPEROR
“The Death Star had readouts about everyone on board, except Darth Vader. Darth Vader is really attached to the Emperor himself, and he was not really a part of the Death Star personnel or any of that system. Lord Vader worked directly for the Emperor and was the Emperor’s emissary. I’m sure people have seen the Emperor. There are no images of him [in Episode IV], but he’s there.”
PRINCESS LEIA’s HISTORY OF DARTH VADER
“When the Jedi tried to restore order, Darth Vader was still one of the Jedi. What he would do is catch the Jedi off guard and, using his knowledge of the Force, he would kill the Jedi without them realizing what was happening. They trusted him and they didn’t realize he was the murderer who was decimating their ranks. At the height of the Jedi, there were several hundred thousand. At the time of the Rebellion, most of them were killed. The Emperor had some strong forces rally behind him, as well, in terms of the army and the Imperial forces that he’d been building up secretly. The Jedi were so outnumbered that they fled and were tracked down. They tried to regroup, but they were eventually massacred by one of the special elite forces led by Darth Vader. Eventually only a few, including Ben and Luke’s father, were left. Luke’s father is named Annikin.”
PRINCESS LEIA AND THE REBEL ALLIANCE
“The Rebellion has been going on since before I was born, for about twenty years. My father was about forty at the time of the Rebellion, at the point when the revolution went through the Senate. But since Alderaan is a nonviolent system, we didn’t take up arms against the Empire. But most of those planets harbored a great resentment to the Empire, and the Rebellion was born then. It was born in many, many systems at the same time and several of the systems that had similar feelings began to have meetings together and joined together. Some of the more militant systems started training military forces. The more peaceful systems, like ours, became gatherers of information.
“Though Alderaan is not armed, its government ships are usually armed, because they venture into areas that are rather dangerous. They go to the far reaches of the galaxy and explore; they would otherwise be easy prey for pirate smugglers. The people on the ships are the royal guard, more like guards than troops. All the men on my ship were essentially part of the Rebellion. They were handpicked because of their antipathy toward the Empire. So we were all Rebels, but that wasn’t really generally known.
“I knew of the militant side of the Rebellion, so, in a big disagreement with my father, I became more involved in that side, but I’m not a warrior. I’m more of a political leader, mostly doing mercy missions and ambassadorial work. I was actually on my way back from the Senate to Alderaan when we intercepted some spies that had been working on the Death Star, and there was a battle between the Rebel forces and the Imperial forces in which a lot of the star fleet was destroyed. During the process of that battle, we flew near the station that we were supposed to fly near and intercepted a message from our spies. We flew on and then were chased, but we didn’t really take part in the battle.”
C-3PO ABOARD THE TANTIVE IV
“There are literally hundreds of ambassadors, to many systems, including several ambassadors from Alderaan. We would take ambassadors and important government people from Alderaan to all over. Mainly I’m an interpreter robot. If we found alien life-forms or if we were on a planet where they did not speak the universal galactic language, I would have to translate. So I wasn’t really in on what was going on. I was programmed not to mention having knowledge of the Princess—that she was aboard the ship. That’s why I always seemed ignorant when she was brought up. I knew who she was, but I was programmed not to say who she was.”
C-3PO TALKS ABOUT R2-D2
“I believe Artoo had his memory erased several times, but I’m sure that horrible fate never befell me. Actually, I met Artoo just recently. I didn’t meet him until we were on the Tantive IV. He was attached to that vessel for, I believe, a dozen years before I got there. Actually he was quite a nuisance, though I wouldn’t say that we have any feelings for each other. I certainly don’t have any feelings for him. He might possibly have feelings for me because, obviously, I’m a great help to him. I’m sure that he’s very grateful for my companionship. I mean, it is nice to have him around, I have to admit. He has his place. But I wouldn’t say I’m fond of him. Under times of stress, some of my circuitry has a tendency to go a little funny. I have been programmed for emotion and it has a tendency to override. But it’s just my program.
“Artoo-Detoo’s function is to be a repair robot. He is sent to the outside of the ship to fix various systems. He is really a standard repair robot for spaceships. Information retrieval is not his main function. There are other robots that carry information. He is primarily a repair robot. Essentially, he is just a plumber, and his primary function is to maintain the plumbing system of the ship. But he had experience on other ships, so he knew everything about most ships in service. He could do anything on any ship, but most of the information that he contained had to do with plumbing.”
COIN OF THE GALACTIC REALM
“There’s the galactic coin of the realm and there are also galactic credit units in the more civilized systems. Most of the commerce takes place with these credit units, but there is also a coin made of a crystal-like mineral. It is flat and square and is used primarily as soon as you are in a system that is not using credit units. These crystals are only manufactured by the Empire and they are foolproof.
“In the Outland systems, like Tatooine, most commerce takes the form of barter. You could use the coin of the realm, the Imperial coin, but most of the farmers wouldn’t use it. They would just trade things, though there was also local money. There are lots of local currencies that aren’t good anywhere else.”
TATOOINE
“Tatooine is mostly a trading planet and a stopping-off point in the middle of nowhere. They do mine certain power sources there, which are used in some of the intergalactic ships, and a lot of farmers just farm water for everyone else. It’s a very hard planet. There are only a few women, wives of the settlers, but generally not that many. Because Mos Eisley is a spaceport, mostly men go there. It’s just a watering hole in the middle of nowhere. The planet is on the edge of the galaxy, so it’s a natural place to stop while going to and from the center of the galaxy.”
LEIA ON THE DESTRUCTION OF ALDERAAN
“I would assume that my brothers were killed on the planet, along with my parents. But since I haven’t had contact with my parents in quite a while, I don’t know whether they were on the planet or not. When I got back to the Rebel base, they didn’t know, either, because they hadn’t had any contact.”
THE FORCE
“The Force really doesn’t have anything to do with the lightsaber. Anybody can have a lightsaber. It’s just a weapon like a pistol, and Leia could use the lightsaber as well as anyone else. But she really hasn’t had any training with a lightsaber because she doesn’t really like them; she prefers pistols. The Force is really a way of feeling; it’s a way of being with life. It really has nothing to do with weapons. The Force gives you the power to have extrasensory perception and to be ab
le to see things and hear things, read minds and levitate things. It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different; they have more midi-chlorians in their cells.
“The Force is a perception of the reality that exists around us. You have to come to learn it. It’s not something you just get. It takes many, many years. Luke is on the road to knowing the Force, but it will be another twenty years before he actually begins to cope with it on a real level. He’s still an amateur. As far as Luke knows, Ben is the last of the Jedi Knights. But there could be more. Obviously Darth Vader knows the Force, but as far as we know at this point, Luke is one of the last surviving apprentices of the Force. The Force is always there, however. Anyone who studied and worked hard could learn it. But you would have to do it on your own.”
STORMTROOPERS
“Some of the stormtroopers are women, but there weren’t that many women assigned to the Death Star. We can assume that there are quite a few elsewhere.”
C-3PO EXPLAINS AWARDS AND WOOKIEES
“Now I’m attached to Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker as their personal interpreter and servant. As a reward after the events leading to the destruction of the Death Star, my entire system was refurbished, cleaned, and updated; I was given a new XB21 memory system, which is about the greatest honor a droid can have. Plus, my new outer shell was recoated and polished. Actually, I was done up quite beautifully. It was the same thing for Artoo who, obviously, was in much worse shape than I was. But he got cleaned up.
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 53
