
2/21

droids know that Yoda and Obi-

Wan

are alive and are plotting

sedition with the Senator from

Alderaan. They know that

Amidala survived long enough to

have twins and could easily

deduce where they

went. However, R2 must make animpassioned speech to the

effect that he is far

more use to them with his mind

intact: he has observed

Palpatine and Anakin at

close quarters for many years,

knows much that is useful and

is one of the

galaxy's top experts at hacking

into other people's systems.

Also he can liethrough his teeth with a

straight face. Organa, in

immediate need of espionage


3/21

resources, agrees.

For the next 20 years, as far

as 3PO knows, he is theproperty of Captain

Antilles, doing protocol duties

on a diplomatic transport. He

is vaguely aware of

the existence of the princess

but doesn't know much about

her. Wherever 3PO goes,

being as loud and obvious as he

always is, his unobtrusive

little counterpart goes

with him. 3PO is R2's frontman. Wherever they land, R2 is

passing messages

between rebel sympathisers and

sizing up governments as

potential rebel recruits -

both by personal contact and byhacking into their networks. He

passes his

recommendations on to Organa.


4/21

Yoda is out of the picture by

this stage, using the Force-

infused swamps ofDagobah to hide himself from

Vader and the Emperor. Or

something. He is meditating

on the future and keeping in

touch with Obi-Wan via the

ghost of Qui-Gon Jin,

which as comm systems go has

the virtue of being untappable.

Obi-Wan, on Tattoine,

keeps in touch with Bail Organa

and the other Rebel leaders bycourier, of which

more later.

As Star Wars opens, R2 is

rushing the Death Star plans to

the Rebellion. R2, notLeia. The plans are always in

R2. What Leia puts into him in

the early scene is


5/21

only her own holographic

message to Kenobi. Leia's own

mission, as she says in the

holographic message, is to pick

up Obi-Wan and take him to

Alderaan - or so she

thinks. Actually, her father

just wants her to meet Kenobi,

which up to this pointshe never has. There's a reason

for that.

Obi-Wan has spent the last 20

years in the Tattoine desert,

keeping watch overLuke Skywalker and trying to

decide on one of the three

available options:

A) If Luke shows no significant

access to the Force, then leavehim alone in

obscurity

B) If Luke shows real Force


6/21

ability, then consider

recruiting him as a Jedi. The

rebellion needs Jedi. Now.

But, if Luke shows any signs of

turning out like his father,

then C) sneak into

his house one fine night and

chop his head off. With great

regret but it'll save a

lot of trouble later on.

Knowing this to be the case,

Bail Organa (perhaps at the

insistence of his wife)

has found excuses not to send

Leia to Ben for assessment of

Jedi potential,

largely for fear of option C.

To be fair to all concerned,

Leia has shown no overt signsof a link to the Force.

Luke on the other hand has. In

his home-built hotrod aircraft,


7/21

with no formal

fighter pilot training and no

decent instrumentation, Luke

can regularly score

centre-hits on 2-metre targets

in complicated zero-altitude

maneouvres. Until he

attends the briefing on Yavin,

Luke has no way of knowing thathardened combat

pilots would consider that

nearly impossible. To him it's

easy. Obi-Wan, who saw

Anakin's performance in the Pod

Race, is nervous.

Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in

this film, and Yoda's in the

next, can best be

understood if they are frankly

scared to death of what Lukemight become. (Ben is

also scared that he himself

will make all the same mistakes


8/21

he made with Anakin.)

Now, with the existence of the

rebellion at stake, Bail Organahas finally told

Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has

sent her along with R2. The

original plan would

then be for Obi-Wan (with

optional Luke and/or Leia in

tow) to leave his exile and

take the Death Star plans to

Yavin, where they can be put to

use. R2 (with Leia if

Ben doesn't want to take her)would then carry on to Alderaan

to maintain the

cover story. The original plan

does not survive contact with a

large Imperial Star

Destroyer.

R2 and 3PO bail out in an

escape pod, landing in vaguely


9/21

the right area of

Tattoine, where R2's first

priority is transport. He

arranges to be captured by a

group of Jawas and, once on

board their transport, he makes

a deal with them

(possibly using emergency funds

stored about his person) totake him where he

wants to go. The Jawas refuse

to go directly to Kenobi for

fear of marauding

Sandpeople but they agree to

R2's second request : transport

to the Skywalker

farm. They even get to keep the

purchase price if they can sell

R2 and 3PO there.

The Jawas shake on it and gothrough with the plan.

Seeing 3PO fail to recognise

the farm where he worked for 10


10/21

years gives r2 a

moment's amusement but, as soon

as possible, he gets away and

heads for Kenobi.

Luke and 3PO follow, which may

or may not have been part of

the plan.

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has

a twinkle in his eye and calls

him "my little

friend". Well, he is. However,

when Luke wakes up and says

that R2 claimed to be

owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, heblandly says "I don't seem to

remember ever owning

a droid." Ben has in fact owned

several but the remark is aimed

at R2 and

translates as "You keep quiet.I'm not about to tell him

everything just yet."

Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells


11/21

Luke a version of his past that

does not involve a

father who became a dark lord

of the Sith. He wants to

examine Luke a lot more

closely before he risks telling

him the real truth.

Although the Death Star plans

need to get to Yavin as soon as

possible, Obi-Wan

needs to make one more

diversion first. If the Empire

knows that Leia is a Rebel

leader, then they also knowabout her father and the whole

Organa family may need

immediate evacuation.

Fortunately, before coming to

Tattoine, R2 had already

arranged transport, which iswaiting at Mos Eisley, under

the command of the

Rebellion's other chief field


12/21

agent and espionage asset.

Chewbacca.

20 years earlier, Chewbacca wassecond in command of the

defence of his planet.

He's there in the tactical

conferences and there on the

front lines and is a

personal friend of Yoda's. When

he needed reliable people to

join the embryonic

Alliance, who else would Yoda

turn to but his old friend from

Kashykk? Given hisbackground, there is no way

that Chewie would spend the

crucial years of the

rebellion as the second-in-

command to (sorry Han) a low-

level smuggler. Unlessit's his cover. In fact, Chewie

is a top-line spy and flies

what is in many ways


13/21

the Rebellion's best ship.

The Millenium Falcon may look

like a beat-up old freighterbut it can outrun any

Imperial ship in normal space

or hyperspace, hang in a

firefight with a Star

Destroyer or outmaneouvre a

dozen top-of-the-line TIE

fighters. It's a remarkable

feat of engineering and must

have cost a colossal fortune to

build. How does Han

come to own a ship like that?He only thinks he does,

actually it's Chewie's.

Half-way through RotS, we see

the Falcon landing at the

Senate building on

Coruscant. If it's the sameship (which of course it is)

then it was the personal

transport of one of the


14/21

senatorial delegations - a much

more likely source to

commission its design. That

delegatino must have later

joined the Rebellion and

given it the use of the Falcon.

In fact, if the delegation is

the one from

Kashykk, then the ship may havebelonged to Chewbacca as early

as RotS.

Han is Chewie's front man. It's

much better, and safer for him,

if he doesn't knowwhat's really going on. Chewie

used to work with Lando

Calrissian in a similar way

but Lando wanted to settle

down, so Chewie arranged for

him to lose the Falcon ina card game to Han Solo, an

even better choice as partner.

Han and Chewie's


15/21

working method is pretty much

what we see in the cantina

scene: Chewie make the

contacts and sets up the deals,

then turns them over to Han who

haggles over the

price and gives the final yea

or nay. This lets Chewie wander

the seamy undersideof the galaxy pretty much at

will, making contacts,

gathering and passing

information with no-one was the

wiser, especially not Han.

Chewie persuaded Han to do

business with Jabba the Hutt so

he could make regular

runs to Tattoine, where Chewie

could pass messages between

Kenobi and Organa. WhenR2's urgent message came

through only days before, the

only way for Chewie to get


16/21

back to Tattoine in time was to

make the "mistake" that forced

Han to dump his

cargo to avoid capture. As a

down side, this led to Solo's

getting a death mark

out on him from Jabba the Hutt.

Chewie was a bit upset about

the need for that butfigured they weren't going to

be dealing with Tattoine for

much longer.

En route to Alderaan, R2 and

Chewie play stop-motion chess.This is the latest in

a series of games they've

played over the year in the

back rooms of space stations

and cantinas across the galaxy,

but this is the first timethey've done it in

front of their respective

straight men, so they put on a


17/21

big show.

Then it all goes wrong again.

Alderaan is gone and the Falconis caught and

brought aboard the Death Star.

Only Han, Luke and 3PO don't

know just how much

trouble they're in but Obi-Wan

has a plan and seems confident

(but Jedi always

do). Soon afterwards, R2 finds

Leia in the detention cells and

shouts that they

have to rescue her, to whichChewie can only agree. If Vader

learns he has a

daughter, then they're all in

deep trouble, so Chewie does

his bit to persuade Han

to go along with Luke's plan.

Then, on the verge of escape,

Vader himself turns up only


18/21

yards from both of his

children, one of whom is

leaking Force all over the

place. Obi-Wan stages a

distraction by letting himself

die and go into the Force while

the others escape.

At this point, Chewie suddenly

realises that he's been left incharge, not only of

the Death Star Plans and the

survival of the Rebellion but

of the secret son and

daughter of Darth Vader. With

the Organas and Kenobi all

dead, only Chewie, R2 and

Yoda know who Luke and Leia

are. And only Ob-Wan knew where

Yoda has been hiding.

Chewie is stressed out by theresponsibility and R2 (who

keeps making crude jokes

about the whole affair) is


19/21

being no help at all.

Chewie's first problem is what

is happening between Luke andLeia. With a psychic

link they can feel but don't

understand, thrown together in

a life-or-death

escape, they are looking at

each other with a sparky

intensity that Chewie

gradually recognises as

Romantic Tension. He's no

expert on human relationships

but Chewie is fairly sure thatthat's Wrong, so he does the

only thing he can

under the circumstances - he

throws Han at her. Han is at

first not interested but

after a while starts to warm tothe idea with an intensity that

gives Chewie new

worries.


20/21

When they reach Yavin, Han

decides to take the money and

run and Chewie decides togo with him. Looked at in cold

light, it's for the good of the

Rebellion. Even if

Yavin is destroyed, there'll be

one agent who knows what's

going on who can try

and put something back

together, but he doesn't feel

good about it. When Han

decides to turn around and join

the attack, Chewie is all forit.

Han and Luke get medals but

Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia

offers him one but

Chewie turns it down. He gotone of those things from Yoda

about 20 years ago, but

there's no way he can tell her


21/21

that.

As the film ends, the three

founders of the Rebellion areall gone. Bail Organa is

dead, Yoda is out of contact

and Obi-Wan's ghost can only

talk to other Jedi. (So

that would be Yoda then.) Thus,

the field leadership of the

rebellion has just

been turned over to the

daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie

is really hoping that

someone with an official rankgreater than hers will get here

real soon before he

has to think really seriously

about option C.

Keith Martin 2005Orginal link:

http://www.morningstar.nildram.

co.uk/A_New_Sith.htm

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