I was just watching a bit of an ASCII animated version of Star Wars*, and when I saw a certain bit of dialog go by it struck me as odd.
It’s the bit after Threepio and Artoo have blasted away in the escape pod after their ship was boarded by Darth Vader and the stormtroopers. There’s the bit where an Imperial gunner says, “There goes another one!” and an officer says, “Hold your fire, there are no life forms aboard.” Then, as the escape pod is zooming away, we hear C3PO say something like “The damage doesn’t look so bad from out here.”
Threepio’s line is sort of a throwaway, but it just struck me as a bit odd. At the speed the pod was moving they had probably traveled some distance by the time Threepio said that. And considering that the rebel ship had been pulled inside the star destroyer’s docking bay, all Threepio would have seen was the star destroyer (never mind that the escape pod didn’t actually seem to have windows).
So that left me wondering: Is it possible that C3PO actually didn’t know what his ship looked like, and mistook the star destroyer for the ship they had just escaped from? I can sort of see this if he had been deactivated when he was brought on board the rebel ship, and had never left the ship after being reactivated. We’re told at the end of Episode III that C3PO and R2D2 were going to have their memories wiped, and I seem to recall that Bail Organa took possession of them at the end of Ep. III. The Tantive IV was apparently his ship, so I suppose it makes a bit of sense that the droids were brought on board, and C3PO’s memory was wiped (as was, ostensibly but probably not really, R2D2’s). And then, possibly, C3PO never left the ship over the course of the next 18 years. After all, droids don’t need vacations or time off.
The rebel ship was pulled against the destroyer, but was not enclosed by it (else the escape pod wouldn’t have gone anywhere at all) so it conceivably might still be visible.
That, or the ship really looked like crap but since Threepio’s a protocol droid, he was being diplomatic about it.
The point of the line is, I think, that while he was on board he thought his entire world as he knew it was being destroyed in a firefight, when really it was barely a superficial skirmish.
Well the escape pods were arranged along the bottom of the ship, and the star destroyer (at least in the part we in the movie) was consistently shooting from above. So it’s possible c3po simply never saw any damage and made his comment.
Are the Droids cartoons considered canon? Because those took place before the original movie and thus if canon would serve as proof that 3PO didn’t spend 18 years on the ship.
Anyway, as for the line, I took it to mean the Empire took the ship in a bit of a surgical strike, because they wanted the crew (or most of it) alive for questioning.
And of course, Artoo does know extensively about ships and damage to them.
Incidentally, the end of Episode III only calls for C-3PO to be wiped, not R2-D2. Which fits in nicely: I’d always had the impression in the original trilogy that Artoo knew more than he let on, and just had the sense to keep his piezoelectric buzzer shut.
While the troopers are stomping about, and R2 and 3PO are headed for the escape pod, there are explosions and stuff. 3PO says something about “the main reactor” (being shut down?). Apparently, all the action was directed violence, because the main hull doesn’t show much damage from outside. That was how I interpreted it all.
Incidently, Vader even tells a toady to inform the Senate that the ship crashed (accidently), and all aboard where killed. I presume that the Imperials wanted the occupants alive (for know), and may explain why the ship lasted as long as it did against a Star Destroyer. (And why a lot of shots during the battle seem to miss. Just trying to “wing” 'em.)
Why do you assume that when Threepio says it, he’s referring to the current view out the porthole? I think he probably looked just as the pod launched, got a good glance at the underside of his ship, and then commented a couple of seconds later (when he’d have been much farther away).
Well, knowing Threepio, I picture him more flailing around and berating R2 as the door’s closing and they’re blasting away, rather than taking the time to look out the window. Also, going by these pictures of the escape pod type used on the Tantive IV, you can see the viewports are on the sides of the pod, and thus would not afford a view of the ship itself as the pod is blasting in a straight line away from the ship for the first few seconds. Only after there was some distance between the pod and the ship and R2 or the ship’s autopilot had corrected the course to something other than perpendicular would the ships have been within the field of view when looking out through a viewport.
That’s always been my impression, he didn’t even know what the ship he was on looked like.
It’s a good and quite subtle line, it helps establish threepio as a character with a small world-view. This is consistant with his reaction to R2’s “mission”, and summed up in the line “I’m just a simple protocol droid.”. Threepio just wants to find a safe spot by a warm fire.
The acting in Star Wars may be a bit ropey, but the characters were well concieved and react in a believeable manner. The snippet above is a far better bit of character development and storytelling than anything in the prequels.