I’m with Guin. Calling that style a “Jedi outfit” is akin to calling Han’s clothing in ANH a “smuggler outfit”.
…except that no one other than Han wears it, so it’s not an apt comparison. Can you name any non Jedi characters who wear the brown robe thing in Episode I or II? Any (good) Jedi who don’t wear it? It seems pretty clear that it’s intended to signify a member of the Jedi order.
What’s interesting is that the Tuskan Raiders and the, uh, little guys in the big land rover that collected robots also wore brown robes.
I chalk it up to spending a lot of time in desert locations.
Y’know, I always wondered how successful a business venture wouldit be, to drive around the desert in a huge tank, waiting for droids to drop out of the sky. The Jawas seemed to do incredibly well out of it considering…
With regard to C3PO’s origins, I don’t think he came as a kit. Annakin built him from scratch. The reason I think this is his coverings can be seen amongst the junk in Watto’s shop. It seems likely that Anni earmarked this outfit for 3PO. Either that or he was incredibly lucky that it fit.
This could explain the other ‘3PO’ on Bespin. Maybe it was a completely different type of robot, just shared the same sort of coverings.
It doesn’t explain how 9D9, the robot in jabba’s spots him, he says “you are a protocol droid are you not?”
With regard to DV not recognising the droids, neither does Obiwan. In ANH, Obiwan says something like “I don’t remember owning a droid”. Not just this droid, but any droid. You’d think he’d remember R2, seeing as R2 saved his live when they were fleeing naboo in TPM.
A more general point, how come R2 units are so damn useful? I mean, they can hack death stars for christs sake. Surely the empire would have had better network security than that. After all, Microsoft do, and they’re the closest modern day equivalent of the empire. In addition, they can fix anything, fly, put out fires, electrocute Jabbas pet thing, walk on the outside of ships, display holograms, drive over desert, swamp etc. And nobody though of putting a speech unit on them?
I think it’s more ambiguous than that, especially in Ep. IV. Yes, the Senate is dissolved, but there’s no way of knowing (within the movie) how long the Senate existed as a rubberstamp body. Remember, in RL, Rome had a Senate for its entire existance, even after it became an empire and the senate lost any power it had.
The novelization of the first movie seems to support that, at least for a while, Lucas supported the “Old Empire” theory. At one point, Ben is explaining something to Luke, and he tells him, “This was before the bad emperors”, with the plural definately there. Even the prologue to the novelization starts, “The Old Republic was the Republic of legend”. There’s the definate sense that the Empire existed in some stronger, better form than it is now, and that it’s lately become corrupt and oppressive. (Which, of course, sets up a similarity with the Old Republic)
Bakhesh, my impression was that Anakin was building a standard 3PO protocol droid out of spare parts. He wasn’t designing Threepio from scratch, even if he did have to scavenge all the parts on his own. Of course, why he would bother building a protocol droid instead of one of the astonishingly useful R2 units is beyond me.
My guess would be that the 3PO “model” is a generic protocol droid model found throughout the galaxy, just as R2 and R5 units are generic astromech droids. As a result, when Threepio arrives EV-9D9’s workshop in ROTJ, she instantly recognizes him for the annoyingly verbose protocol droid that he is. She wouldn’t be the first- Uncle Owen could also tell that Threepio was a protocol unit just by looking at him.
I don’t think the novelizations are really considered canon (or if they are, it’s a very low level of canon that can be contradicted at any time). Remember that Obi-wan was originally written as a Tatooine native who was the brother of Owen Lars, two things that are strictly untrue in the prequel trilogy.
I’ve wondered about something too, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Anakin thinks that 3PO would be helpful to Shmi. However, her stepson Owen says, “I’ve no use for a protocol droid.” “Certainly not in an environment such as this one.”
So, what is a protocol droid for, anyway? He always struck me as very Kryten-esque. Like a butler.
Which supports what I said, not refutes it. The case of Rome is an illustration of the fact that there’s no point in dissolving a rubber-stamp Senate. A senate has a lot of advantages to an autocratic empire. It makes for great propaganda, and it gives you a place to put annoying politicos that you don’t want to kill yet. The only reason to dissolve it is if it still has some real power, and is starting to be a threat to your iron-fisted rule.
My thoughts on Owen not recognizing C3PO in IV: Perhaps he does recognize him and just keeps his mouth shut. It’s obvious that great measures are being taken to shield Luke from the truth about what happened to his father. The last thing he wants is two droids literally falling out of the sky with stories from the old days. It seems equally obvious to me that the droids have had their memories wiped sometime between III and IV, and Owen’s little interrogation of C3PO is his way of confirming this.
Ben is probably lying too when he claims not to have ever owned the R2D2. He was, after all, lying to Luke about his father, and acknowleging the droids would have led to questions that he was not willing to answer.
Star Wars: Special Edition: Special Edition ?
Is Lucas also planning to digitally replace all the blaster pistols with walkie-talkies, like a certain other infamous “Special Edition” movie did?
I have to say that reminiscing (sp?) about EP IV, I got the impression that,
- The Empire was quite old, and predated DV. Somewhere I got the impression that DV was handpicked by the powers that be in order to be apprenticed to be an evil dictator, and that those powers had been around for awhile.
- The use of The Force was something that could be learned and honed, not genetic.
I think we are all in agreement that EP I was less than satisfactory. Either the movie didn’t start early enough in the history of the saga, or the Empire started too late to make much sense. The Empire should have been up and running by the time Annikan was born.
But about the C3 and R2 droids, I think that they were common models of droids, say, like a Honda Accord is today. Where you could go to the equivalent of Walmart or Radio Shack and buy it preassembled, or off the shelf in a box.
If I remember correctly, from my youth, there was an actual action figure for the silver version of the C3 unit. It had a similar, but not same, designation - like C4 “Executive Droid”.
R2 was VERY useful. I frankly don’t know why he didn’t have a voicebox. I guess a good comparison between R2 and C3 would be a Leatherman Tool versus a finely honed cutlery knife. They are both useful in their designated environments.
Also, the short scene where we see both C units walking down the hall, I distinctly remember the C4 unit uttering something, and it sounded exactly like C3PO voice. So, unless the previous owners had memorized the serial numbers (as if I have the serial number of my VCR memorized) it is completely understandable that the different characters did not recognize the droids. I routinely walk to the wrong Honda Accord in the parking lot. And I still don’t have my license plate memorized.
It sounds to me like you’re blaming Episode I for being inconsistent with Episode IV because of those two points. I don’t think that’s very fair. Both of those ideas had been shattered by Episodes V and VI long before The Phantom Menace came along.
If I remember correctly, after they buy the droids, Owen tells Luke to wipe both their memories in the morning. This might be just an extra precaution, just in case they still have stories.
“Tomorrow I want you to take that R2 unit to Anchorhead to have its memory erased. It belongs to us now.”
He only wanted R2D2 to have its memory erased b/c he didn’t like Luke asking about old Ben. C3PO wouldn’t do much Bocce speaking with his memory erased. 
It also gave the impression that the Force was about sensing and communication (and maybe just a tad of mind control), not about telekinesis or similar parlor tricks.
They went and wrecked that impression in Episode V.
I don’t remember. What in EP V wrecked the nature versus nurture attitude of how The Force works?
It was more in Episode VI with “The force is strong in my family.” But of course that all started in Episode V with “No. I am your father.”
Right, and I’m not saying that the “Old Empire” theory is canon now…just that the first movie left open both the “Old Empire” and “New Empire” possibilities (and so did the entire first trilogy, for that matter), and I don’t think that Lucas was committed to the “New Empire” storyline until after the first movie was done.
And Chronos I agree with you, but it’s also possible that the Senate was obedient for most of the Empire, but then, when the current, bad Emperor, took charge, there was a revival of Republicanism that took form in the Senate.
I forget, in episodes 4,5, and 6, do they give us an indication as to how long the Jedi have been defunct?
Since Luke was told that his father was a powerful Jedi, did he just assume that he had been trained in secret by Ben or something?
Threepio definitely needs a memory wipe, but I can see Artoo still having all his memories. It always did seem like he knew more than he let on, and he can clearly keep a secret (he kept Luke’s new sabre, even while employed by Jabba, for instance). As to why he can’t talk, remember that we’re dealing with a technology unrelated to our own. Maybe they have a hard time making voice units for droids, and they’re expensive. In a protocol droid like Threepio, voice is essential, so you spring for the extra cost. But astromech droids mostly just talk to other astromechs and ships’ computers, so there’s no justification for a voice box in them. Artoo doesn’t have a voice for the same reason that Threepio doesn’t have magnetic feet or a soldering iron (which do make sense for an astromech).
While we’re at it, Obi-Wan never did own Artoo, so far as we’ve seen. He was part of Amidala’s entourage. And while Obi-Wan did use an astromech droid in his starfighter, and might have owned it (more likely, it was owned by the Jedi Order and just assigned to him), it didn’t look like that droid was an R2 model.
And I suppose that old empire or new empire is either one possible from the original movies, but I don’t think there’s really enough evidence one way or the other to debate it. Or at least, there’s not eough for me to debate it. I’ll let the rabid fanboys have fun with it, if you’uns want.