Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Time to indulge a bit of Star Wars geekness. "Attack of the Geeks", you could say….(stop groaning.)

Anyway, I've seen some complaints regarding Darth Vader, R2-D2, and C-3PO lodged on various message boards, newsgroups, blogs, newspaper articles, and smoke-signals since Attack of the Clones came out, and I'm now going to address them. The complaints are:

1. Why doesn't Vader recognize Artoo and Threepio in the original trilogy, especially if he built Threepio?

2. Why don't Artoo and Threepio recognize Vader as their former master?

3. Why does Threepio claim, in A New Hope, that he's not very good at telling stories, when he manages to captivate those Ewoks in Return of the Jedi when he sums up the story for them?

4. Since when the hell can Artoo fly with those little rockets of his?

OK. Since I was good enough to list the questions and number them, I shall now tackle them out of the order in which I posed them. Deal with it.

First off, Number Three. This one's easily explained. Look at the Ewoks: these guys would probably be entranced by Ben Stein reading Goodnight Moon. Threepio's not exactly working to a sophisticated audience here, and if Han and Leia look entranced, well, it's because they're hearing their own lives being told here. Basically, Joe Blow can probably entrance his kids with stories, but that doesn't make him Stephen King.

Allrightie-then, on to Number Four: Artoo's rocket-jets. Yeah, that was a bit of a shock; but then, I'm drawing a blank in the original trilogy and in The Phantom Menace as to an instance of when his rocket-jets would have been especially handy. I've seen it suggested that he could use them to get up and down stairs, but those rockets are pretty small. That would probably be a waste of his fuel. I expect he's got them for emergencies only, and besides, given the decade or so that passes between Episode III and ANH, those rockets may well have been removed. Easy enough. I really didn't have a problem with the rockets.

Which brings us to Numbers One and Two: why don't the droids and Vader recognize each other?

First of all, the Star Wars films pretty well establish that these droids aren't particularly unique. Consider: just about every small ship flies with an astromech droid implanted within it; the Queen's ship in TPM comes equipped with something like six of the little guys; et cetera. They are common enough that the Jawas are carrying a few around with them in their peddling ventures, and Uncle Owen isn't particularly impressed with what he sees.

As for Threepio, he's run-of-the-mill too: droids of his type lurk in the background all over the Star Wars universe, so he's fairly unremarkable, too. So, when Vader sees them, is there really any reason to suppose that he would immediately recognize them? Even since Threepio doesn't even look the same in the original trilogy as he does in the prequel trilogy? (Of course, Episode III could well contradict this point.)

And that point is probably academic, because when you really think about it, Vader never gets an opportunity to recognize the droids. In the original trilogy, he is never on screen with them, except for one time: he and Threepio are both present for Han Solo's carbon-freezing. But even then, Threepio is in pieces and strapped to Chewbacca's back. Vader, in all likelihood, doesn't get a good look at Threepio, seeing as he's got a lot of other things on his mind. After Han is frozen and turned over to Boba Fett, Vader instructs Lando Calrissian to "take the Princess and the Wookiee to my ship". No mention at all of the droid, who is likely not even a blip on Darth Vader's radar.

About the only other time, in the original trilogy, that Vader could possibly recognize the droids would be in ANH, if he happened to spot them making their way for the Millennium Falcon in the Death Star landing bay. But seeing as how Vader, at this time, is fighting his old teacher with a lightsaber, I'm inclined to think he doesn't see them. (Of course, what a funny scene that would make:

BEN: You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

VADER: Sure, I…hey! Those are my droids! You old bastard, you stole my droids! Man, that's just like you -- always a goofy lecture, and then you steal my droids! You ever build a droid with your bare hands? Huh? Hey, you dumb-ass stormtroopers, instead of watching me kill this old guy, how about you go get those damn droids before they get on the ship!

And so on….)

Finally, as to the droids not recognizing Vader, well, it's pretty obvious their memories are erased between the trilogies. But then, I seriously doubt that Vader's actual identity is a matter of common knowledge in the Star Wars galaxy. If it was, I'd expect Princess Leia to know it before I'd expect these two droids to know it.. (She is a Senator and all.) Then, of course, when Luke shows up to rescue her, she'd say something like, "Your name is Luke Skywalker? Wait a minute -- that's Vader's last name! Get away from me!"

OK, I think I got that bit of geekiness out of my system.

(But wait: are dia-nogi standard issue for the sewage systems on Imperial starships and space-stations?)