The Death Star

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

DARTH VADER & CHIEF BAST

Chief Bast (the guy with those boss sideburns known simply as “Commander Number One” in the credits) shows up in a deleted scene where he has a conversation with Darth Vader on the Death Star. This scene takes place right after the Jabba/Han confrontation according to the Star Wars novel and comic adaptation, where the scene is still intact. The dialogue in the novel is almost redundant which may explain why it was cut. Vader and Bast talk about the importance of finding the fugitive droids and breaking Leia’s will. It seems there’s also some political tension as Bast calls Tarkin’s plan to break Leia “foolish” and seems to be in Vader’s pocket. Wise.

Almost the whole scene is intact in the Star Wars Holiday Special but the dialogue was completely overdubbed to suit the plot of the 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 (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?

The good folks over at DVDfile.com posted a great little report and 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 picked up on. They’ve given me permission to share the video file.

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

I’m including an interesting image from the Lost Cut of Luke, Chewbacca, Han and Leia sneaking down a hallway. All I can say is there must be some brainless employees on that Death Star because if I saw this crew walking nonchalantly down the hallway (one of them being a Wookiee) wearing stormtrooper belts and hiding weapons in their arms, I would be calling security pronto.

Actually, if you look at the scene in the film where the group is coming up on the docking bay window (when Leia exclaims, “You came in that thing?”) you can see that they start out in these exact same poses and Han even looks back to make sure the officers are not looking anymore before rushing up to the window. Freeze-frame it, it’s there.

They weren’t the only ones sneaking around. Turns out that old Obi-Wan originally had a little harder time finding the tractor beam.

Video clip from a “making of” documentary. It doesn’t look like actual cut footage to me (more of a “Behind the Scenes” shot) but nonetheless, here it is.  (courtesy of Dylan McDermond)

THE GARBAGE MASHER

The Death Star was loaded with its share of pitfalls for our endearing heroes. One of them inhabited a certain trash compactor on the detention level. Its name: the dianoga.

This creature went through some changes as different versions of the script progressed but ended up as a slimy tentacle plus one quick head shot making it both elusive and dangerous. Originally, we were supposed to see more of this aquatic nightmare, but due to time and money constraints, George Lucas got all he could with what he had.

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 all 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 ratlike 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.

In some meeting notes I’ve come across from the old Elstree Studio Props site, there’s some mention of the “Dia Nogu”. It says that the Special Effects department is progressing along the lines of the “seaweed” idea and building a fiberglass model. This probably ties in with what Lucas mentions in the above interview.

PROJECTIONS AND MORE FROM THE DEATH STAR

While filming Episode IV, the crew wanted to try cutting 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. The images included with stars are projected as is the Death Star Bridge background imagery.

In the image 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 Alderaan and you can hear her saying, “…and you call yourselves humans.” This was, of course, deleted from the final version.

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 being a little kid and saying to myself, “What’s that Tarkin guy doing with that helmet on?” The guy looks a lot like Peter Cushing. I used to think 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, there is a scene directly after the TIE attack on the Millenium Falcon where Han and Luke congratulate each other.

According to David West Reynolds in the Star Wars Insider, Han and Luke also have a short conversation. I’m including a picture from this scene scanned from the article.