The Death Star

That’s no moon. It’s a space station full of deleted shots. Let’s examine some of the Death Star leftovers.

DARTH VADER & CHIEF BAST

Chief Bast (the guy with the sideburns known simply as “Commander Number One” in the credits) was originally included in a scene with Darth Vader. The two are conversing on the Death Star about the search for the stolen plans and their new captive, Princess Leia. This scene takes place right after the Jabba/Han Solo confrontation on Mos Eisley, according to the Star Wars novel and comic adaptation, where the scene is still intact. The dialogue in the novel is somewhat redundant, which may explain why it was eventually deleted.

In this short scene, Vader and Bast talk about the importance of finding the fugitive droids and breaking Leia’s will. There’s also some political tension, as Bast calls Tarkin’s plan to break Leia “foolish” and seems to be in Vader’s pocket. A wise move on his part. Almost the whole scene is intact in the Star Wars Holiday Special, but the dialogue was completely overdubbed to suit the plot of the TV special, so none of the original lines are there.

Here is the dialogue as it reads in the Revised Fourth Draft:

BA53. INT. DEATH STAR – CORRIDOR
Darth Vader and a stormtrooper commander stride down one of the long Death Star corridors, followed by several aides.

COMMANDER
We’ve started to search the spaceport
at Mos Eisley. It’s just a matter of time before
we’ve found the droids.

VADER
Send in more men if you have to.
It’s her hope of that data being used against
us that is the pillar of her
resistance to the mind probe.

COMMANDER
Until then we must waste our time with
Governor Tarkin’s foolish plan to break her.

Clip of Vader and Chief Bast from the Star Wars Holiday Special (with overdubbed dialogue)

“Bast is Best” is a fan-made recreation of this scene by JediSluggo which uses footage from the Holiday Special, but with dialogue that matches the original script.

CENSORED FOOTAGE?

DVDfile.com posted report with an accompanying download dealing with some of George Lucas’ more subtle changes to the Special Edition of Episode IV that most people might not have noticed. It appears that Lucas was interested in reducing the violent shots of people getting hit with laser bolts. I found this clip to be interesting because not only do we get a few milliseconds of cut footage restored, but it’s interesting to see the great lengths Lucas went to in order to change these very minute details.

 SNEAKY HEROES

In the Lost Cut of Star Wars, Luke, Chewbacca, Han, and Leia can be seen casually walking down a hallway right past some clueless Death Star employees. If I had seen this crew walking nonchalantly down the hallway (especially with one of them being a Wookiee), wearing stormtrooper belts and hiding weapons in their arms, I would be calling security pronto.

In the finished film, there’s a scene where the group is coming up on the docking bay window and Leia exclaims, “You came in that thing?” If you watch the beginning of that scene closely, you can see that they start out in these exact same poses. Han even looks back to make sure the officers are not looking anymore before rushing up to the window. Freeze-frame it.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones sneaking around the Death Star. Obi-Wan was busy looking for the tractor beam so everyone could escape.

Video clip from a “making of” documentary. This doesn’t look like actual cut footage to me, but more of a “behind the scenes” shot.

THE GARBAGE MASHER

The dianoga was just one of the pitfalls waiting for our endearing heroes aboard the Death Star. It thrived in one of the battle station’s trash compactors, or as Luke called them, “garbage mashers.” This creature went through some changes as different versions of the script progressed. Originally, we were supposed to see more of this aquatic nightmare, but due to time and money constraints, George Lucas had to make do with what he had. Ultimately, we only saw the dianoga’s slimy tentacle, along with a quick head shot, which made it elusive, and therefore more dangerous.

Here’s an excerpt from George Lucas talking about the original plan for the dianoga, taken from his 1977 interview with Rolling Stone magazine:

I felt one scene didn’t quite work: the one where they almost get crushed by the moving walls in the trash bin. That octopus creature was unsatisfying. I believe it was called a Dia-noga in the script.

The Dia-noga was originally supposed to be a giant, sort or filmy, clear, transparent jellyfish kind of thing that came shooting out of the water, with all these jellylike tentacles with little veins running through them. So first the special-effects people came up with this giant 8-foot-high, 12-foot-wide brown turd that was bigger than the set, and that just didn’t work. We finally got it down to where it was just one tentacle. That was all they could really accomplish.

And an eyeball.

Well, the eyeball we did later, we did that in California with the second unit; we did that in the backyard. I never really got a monster. They spent an enormous amount of money building these giant things with hydraulics and all kinds of stuff and they looked terrible. And I said, I only want something sort of ethereal. But they kept wanting to build these giant things and I said, you don’t need that, let’s just put a bunch of cellophane on a string and pull it up out of the water or something. It got so ridiculous, I finally just said look, give me one long tentacle. What I really would have liked to have had was a bunch of tentacles. I have always had a problem with that scene. There was one like it in THX which I had cut out. He fell into a trash masher, and there was a giant rat-like creature in there with him. I have never been able to accomplish it, and I don’t know why.

The creature is in there to eat the garbage?

Yes, he eats the garbage. The idea was the Dia-noga knows that the doors are going to close and the walls are going to close in and mash the garbage, and he sort of pushes himself against the floor and does whatever he does to survive, and he can’t eat the kid right then. It’s a slightly esoteric idea. I still want the sequence and someday I will get something on the screen.

PROJECTIONS AND MORE FROM THE DEATH STAR

While filming Episode IV, the crew wanted to cut corners as much as possible with effects. It is because of this, and ILM’s lack of progress at the time, that live projections were tried in place of bluescreen technology. It ultimately didn’t work out.

In the image below of Leia being led away by Vader after the destruction of Alderaan, it’s interesting to note that in the documentary Empire of Dreams there’s a quick shot of Leia being taken away after the destruction of her home planet and you can hear her say, “…and you call yourselves humans.” This was, of course, deleted from the final version of the film.

The picture of the Imperial guy with his eyes closed is actually one of the earliest images from the film I remember seeing. It was used as the card back for the Death Squad Commander action figure. The guy looks like he’s sleeping at the wheel to me. I remember saying to myself as a kid, “What’s that Tarkin guy doing with that helmet on?” The guy looked so much like Peter Cushing to me that I thought it was Tarkin in a helmet. It’s a weird picture, and while I’m sure this guy is in the background of a lot of shots, this particular image is not in the film.

 A SMALL VICTORY

In the Lost Cut of Star Wars, there is a scene directly after the TIE fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon where Han and Luke congratulate each other on their dogfighting. This is after they escape the Death Star. According to Dr. David West Reynolds’ article in the Star Wars Insider, Han and Luke also have a short conversation.