Every other pilot in the room except Biggs: “A what? What the fuck is this hick talking about?”
Biggs: “Luke, you used to bullseye womp rats back home. The rest of us considered it a win if we could get out of the canyon without scrapping the paint off our wings.”
In 1977, we didn’t even know that was “Biggs”, or what Biggs was. Omitting the scene with the bucket hat on Tatooine with Luke and his friends really confused the narrative.
Later when Luke goes “It’s just like Beggar’s Canyon back home!” I was all: “Kid I never flew Beggar’s Canyon, (with a nod to Die hard) dickhead.”
That wasn’t an actual scene from the movie, that was just me goofing around. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Oh it was, I was just riffing on what you started.
(waves hand) these aren’t the scenes you are looking for…
In terms of the old / new tech, it’s something that Andor brilliantly leaned into. It’s just a world where antigravity and FTL travel is trivial but radio and data transmission is far inferior to 21st century earth (heck, inferior to most of 20th century earth). They play it straight and, as far as I could tell while watching, consistently.
And why not? In a galaxy far, far away, why couldn’t things play out very differently from earth? It’s implausible, but not an inconsistency.
No, Luke clearly recognizes Biggs and names him when he arrives at the base. We don’t have the scenes of them on Tattooine, but it is established they already know each other from back home.
Well, you did if you had read the Marvel comic book, which came out slightly before the film. I think it might have been in the novelization by George Lucas (scratch that – Alan Dean Foster) that came out months before the film did.
That’s one of the scenes that was restored to the “special edition.” In the original cut from 1977, that scene is not included. Biggs, as far as we know, is just one more rebel pilot who gets blown away during the Death Star attack.
As CalMeacham says, the early scenes of Biggs on Tatooine and his reunion with Luke on Yavin were in the Marvel Comics adaptation, and in the novelization (I can confirm Cal’s memory on that). But they weren’t in the film itself.
Restoring that scene also restored the bit where Red Leader meets Luke, hears Biggs bragging on him, and mentions that he knew Luke’s father. That goes far to explaining why Red Leader gives new guy Luke command of the final attack run, rather than trusting it to the more experienced Wedge or Biggs. He’s been given reason to believe that Luke has the right stuff.
He also talks about him back in Tatooine with his aunt and uncle, before he meets Obi-Wan.
Mentions him, at least:
“That’s what you said when Biggs and Tank left.”
The scene with Luke and Biggs reuniting on Tatooine early in the movie was, IMO, rightfully not ever included in the various tweaks to the film; it’s too long and too exposition-y. It’s interesting to watch, from a lore standpoint, but I recognize that it didn’t move the plot along enough.
But, inclusion of the scene in the hangar bay before the attack on the Death Star does help to show the relationship between the two of them, and makes Luke’s reaction when Biggs is shot down more understandable.
It also makes more sense of Luke’s frustration when he had that Tie fighter on his tail. “Blast it, Biggs, where are you?!?” He counted on Biggs to have his back like always, but he wasn’t there when Luke needed him. That’s when Wedge steps up and saves Luke.
Ah. I forgot that.
Yes. The original lacked context for why rando who just showed up not even flying himself is added to the pilot list and given leadership during the run. Other than the player character rule.
Yes, it interrupts the narrative flow. When exactly was that supposed to happen? Before the droids showed up? Before Luke met Ben?
The Gilligan hat didn’t help.
Yes, it was was meant to be before we see the droids on Tatooine; at the start of the clip, Luke is watching the battle between Leia’s ship and Vader’s Star Destroyer through his macrobinoculars. He then heads to Tosche Station to tell his friends about it.
Apparently the Biggs sequences were something the Studio insisted on, because they didn’t like that the entire first half hour of the movie had barely any humans in it, so Lucas filmed it to appease them, but had no intention of including the scenes in the final edit.
As mentioned, the scenes were in the novelization and the comic book adaptation. Having read that novelization at least a dozen times when I was a kid (probably more), I remember the sequence. Sometime during the boarding of the Rebel ship, we cut down to Luke working on one of the moisture vaporators. He sees some flashes in the sky, looks at them with his binoculars, and sees that it’s a space battle. He hurries back to Anchorhead and tells his friends, who don’t believe him. While he there, he sees that Biggs is there.
The only remnant of this in the finished film is when 3PO starts talking about the rebellion, and Luke says, “So I did see a space battle!”
I read that book so many times than when I rewatched Star Wars a long time after seeing it for the first time I was confused because I distinctly remembered those scenes being in the movie.
In 1978, The Star Wars Storybook was published with “Full-color photographs.” Not only does it have two photos of Biggs and Luke on Tatooine, it also has a photo of Luke looking skyward through his binoculars. That one book probably caused a generation’s worth of Mandela Effect.
I don’t remember the Tatooine scenes with Biggs, but I could have sworn there was a very brief encounter at the Yavin base. Like two or three sentences (not the whole introduction with RedLeader).
I had that book, and it didn’t retroactively make me think I’d seen those scenes in the movie. What it did, was annoy me that I didn’t see those scenes in the movie!
I got annoyed all over again when I saw the new edited SW. They still didn’t have that scene! We got lots of stupid added in CGI bullshit, but not the one scene I’d spent decades waiting to see 
I know that there were some Topps trading cards in the day that had pictures (production stills, I imagine) of Luke with the floppy hat, too. Between those, the novelization, and the picture books and such, we all “thought” we’d seen some scenes that weren’t in the original cut.