Star Wars: The Script (1980)

So I recently ran across Star Wars Age 9. And it reminded me of my own very early forays into Star Wars fan fiction, specifically of a script that I wrote with my friend Cathy the summer after The Empire Strikes Back came out. We were 13, and we worked really hard on it all summer. We thought it was awesome. It’s … not.

What you see here is the final draft, though it doesn’t even have a title. I suppose we thought we’d think of one later. When school started again, we even managed to involve a group of friends in acting it out, borrowed the music room to practise in and everything. I think we actually intended to perform it for people at some point! Fortunately, everybody lost interest and it came to nothing.

It’s about Han Solo’s sister, Tania, who comes to the Rebellion asking for help after her home planet is taken over by the Empire. The rest of the plot … well, even I can’t follow it and I wrote most of it.

Update: I’ve now done a transcript, which you can find here, and the full-size pictures are here.

So without further ado, on to the good stuff!

You see here that we were trying to be authentic and adopt the American vernacular – “Go find Han!” I suppose we meant well, but it’s kind of ignoring that Ben Kenobi is played by an English actor and speaks with an English accent!

I’d forgotten that Tania Solo was Force-sensitive. Not sure where that came from. Maybe we were thinking of Yoda’s “the other”? But that doesn’t explain how Ben, a Force ghost, was able to give Tania a lightsaber. I assume it’s Ben’s own lightsaber, or maybe he went home and got another one after visiting Luke on Hoth and Dagobah. Maybe that trunk he had is just full of lightsabers he keeps to give to unsuspecting juveniles he wants to tempt to join him on “damn fool idealistic crusades”?

PL stands for Patrol Leader. This must be set after ESB, as Han and Lando both appear, but there’s no information on how Han was rescued. Remember ROTJ hadn’t happened yet.

Wait: Han’s home planet is Nebulen? What happened to Corellia? And I called myself a Star Wars fan.

Princess Leia is pretty angry, isn’t she? In fact, everyone’s pretty angry, through this whole story. I think we were trying to capture the bantering style of ESB. We didn’t pull it off.

I love how Luke and Leia are gone for all of 30 seconds, but have been fully briefed and are ready to leave on their missions.

Uh oh, Leia’s getting really angry now!

So, we should have taken off five minutes ago? Like, four and a half minutes before we actually got our orders?

There’s also the tricky question of the actual mission. What are they meant to do when they get to their respective planets? Obviously, we had no idea. I guess we were just expecting the audience to not notice such trivial details!

Oh, there we go, Han gets his first slap. I’m baffled by Han’s line suggesting Leia give Luke a kiss. After all, this is post-ESB. Han and Leia love each other, remember? Then again, it kind of foreshadows that whole storyline of Han being jealous over Luke in ROTJ, so maybe we were on to something …

And Han gets his second slap. But, hang on … when did we take off? Leia just this second said her goodbyes and we’re almost at our destination? I know the Millennium Falcon’s a fast ship, but that’s just ridiculous!

Also: [Landing noise]. I love it. And then: we leave Lando and Chewie, who might actually be useful, on the ship, and take the angry girl with us to survey the planet? Yeah, that makes sense. Not.

Okay, that makes even less sense. There’s no intelligent life on the planet, so how the building got there is a fair question. But … there’s a bleeding dead body, right there! Surely that would be your first clue??

And … um … how does running away prove your intelligence? Okay, we were only thirteen, but our characters act more like eight year olds!

Oh, Vader’s here! Cool. Lightsaber fight! Double cool. Oh, wait, I just figured out why Ben gave Tania a lightsaber to give to Luke – because he lost his on Bespin! Wow, something in this plot makes sense.

This, however, doesn’t: Vader is about to kill Luke. His son? Who he was so desperate to have join him on the dark side? But then …

Vader is prevented from killing Luke by Tania knocking his saber out of his hand. I’m not even going to bother thinking about how unlikely that is.

Off-stage torture. Wow.

Ah, Vader has a plan. To put Tania in a ship and send her off on her own. Sith genius!

My favourite exchange in the whole script:

• Lando: They’ve been gone a long time.
• Chewie: (Growl)
• Lando: I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying.

So, Lord Vader, you send the girl off in a ship on her own and don’t jam her communications? Sith genius(2)!

I like Tania’s “What about me?” That’s almost character development!

But why on earth (or any other planet!) would Lando go off to rescue Luke and Han and leave Chewie on the ship? You’re off to break into an Imperial base, maybe a rip-people’s-arms-out-of-their-sockets Wookiee might come in handy?

Oh, another favourite! No, the guards wouldn’t possibly fall for that obvious plan, whatever it was, but they’re bound to fall for the old “my friend is sick, help!” trick!

More logical plot developments! Vader gives Luke his lightsaber back so they can fight, awesome. But then lets them escape to go with plan B. What’s plan B? Honestly, I’m not sure we even find out.

The galaxy is awfully small, isn’t it? It takes all of 30 seconds to get from one planet to another. Every time. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of examples in canon of travel through hyperspace actually taking time. But then, how do you show that without special effects?

Hard sci-fi here – you lose your life support, you could die! Who knew?

And I love how, even though Leia explained it to her on the previous page, Tania doesn’t know why they shot at their ship.

“Oh, my goodness, I completely forgot that I totally betrayed the rebellion to Vader. How did that slip my mind?”

I love this argument. It actually kind of works. Shame about how it ends though …

So, let me get this straight … the rebel base on Megos has been attacked by Vader’s forces. Was that plan B then? I guess it must have been. So the rebels who escaped would have gone to Theos or Akrela … Why? Beats me. Theos is more dangerous because Vader is there … so someone has to go and see if the rebels are there, and then rescue them? Hmm … wouldn’t Vader and his pals be more likely to just kill them all as soon as they arrived rather than take them prisoner? After all, they’ve already routed their base …

On the plus side, I like Han’s dialogue in the second half of the page. It’s … almost in character.

Threepio quotes the odds!

How cold is Lando? “Vader’s not going to kill them off straight away. He’ll try to get information from them first.” Oh well, that’s all right then!

Leia gets the last line! And a really cool one about the rebellion carrying on no matter what. That would have been all me, for sure. I was, of course, going to play Leia in the production, and Cathy was going to play Tania. That probably explains why Tania gets such a big part too. Though it doesn’t explain why I let her push Leia offstage so much.

“THE END. Or is it the beginning…?” The ability to be original is insignificant next to the power of the cliche.

Tags: back in the day, fanfiction, Star Wars