(Previiosuly titled "I don't recall ever owning a...ohhh yeah..." - this entry has been renamed on 2/10/2006 in memoriam of a piviotal role and a great actor - Phil Brown, aka "Uncle Owen Lars")


Another in a sporadic series of answers to perennial Star Wars questions, using the aforementioned multi-purpose, highly adaptable mental holographic computational model - yer melon. AKA figuring stuff out, DBA Your Imagination.

Folks continue to ask another reasonable question (gimme a sec, I'm still in preamble mode), or at least reasonable on the surface. Once you get into the shoes involved, however, it's not such a valid question for a pretty good reason, which we'll get to later...

I should stop and say that I'm cheating a bit, and Force knows that's just not done in Mooseville. This poodoo is slightly recycled from a reply I made on livejournal.com to this very question:

"Owen and Beru worked on the Tatooine Lars homestead for many years during the decade-long absence of Anakin Skywalker while he was away at Jedi Camp for Jerky Padawans. Anakin left his mom C3PO, whom he had built from scratch. So Threepio had, apparently, been on the homstead all this time, working alongside Owen.

So why doesn't Owen know C3PO, a custom-built droid who was part of the Homestead's history for so long, when he shows back up on the farm in ANH?"

Like I say, what appears to be a reasonable question. But let's break down what we know.

Before we get started, I should point out that I've heard the school of thought that Owen actually did remember him and was just keeping quiet, and that by itself would make sense. However - if he was keeping quiet because recognition could spell trouble, then he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him. Notice also that he completely passes on the chance to buy R2, until Red blows his top. Sure, this could be due to a pragmatic desire just to get his own property back and pass on any trouble R2 might represent, but then that's totally undone by the fact he ends up purchasing him anyway. Along with 3PO.

And if the flipside were true, namely that he wasn't concerned about trouble, then why keep quiet? He'd just say "Look, here, oompa loompas- you're trying to sell my old 'droid back to me. Wanna end up on the latest episode of T.R.O.O.P.S.?" No...Owen definitely didn't recognize C3PO when he was first brought out of the sandcrawler and put on sale.

So why, then, does he not recognize C3PO? Especially when...

Anakin built C3PO himself for Shmi, who in turn used him for the hometead. He practically "grew up" there...

Firstly, yes, Anakin did build C3PO. But he was built from spare parts, per the Databank entry:

"...C-3PO was cobbled together from discarded scrap and salvage by a nine-year old prodigy on the desert planet Tatooine. Young Anakin Skywalker had intended the homemade droid to help his mother, Shmi."

So even though Anakin built him from the ground up, he did not "design" him. Threepio is built to be a protocol droid, made from parts to be a protocol droid, just as one would build a PC from a motherboard, a hard drive, a graphics card, a processor, serial ports and USB connections, and a box to attach them all to so your PC doesn't rattle around a like a maraca. A PC is a PC, and a PD is a PD.

Doesn't matter if the parts came from different manufacturers, it's defined by purpose and function, not by builder or specific origin. So the idea that Anakin built him is sort of irrelevant - it doesn't mean that it makes Threepio any more "recognizable". I've seen plenty of Commodore 64's and TI-994a's since I had my first PC's, doesn't mean they're likely to be my first PC. Moreover, that's more an argument for Anakin recognizing his own creation, not Owen. Owen is a moisture farmer. He knows vaporators and how to pull water out of thin air. He's no engineer.

C3PO worked on the homestead for years, and Owen knew him...

You have to think "in-universe", as they say, to understand this. 'Droids have been around for thousands of years. They're as pervasive as the wheel is in our society. And to them, a fussy protocol droid is just like any other fussy protocol droid. We've seen at least 5 of them in the saga, all looking very 3PO. There's TC14, K3PO, the nameless panicked droid behind 3PO and Artoo in the opening moments of ANH, the foul-mouthed E3PO on Cloud City, so on and so on. These are not special beings, as much as 3PO is special to us. C3PO has just been mass-marketed to us for nearly 30 years. But let's face it - in-universe, he's a toaster. A standard PC, not even an Apple. A piece of equipment. Except for his silver leg and the fact that he knows who he is and who he belongs to, I bet he got lost in a crowd all the time.

Not to mention C3PO starts out life looking like an erector set. Years later, Shmi slapped some dull, pewter colored coverings on him basically to keep the dust out. This would be the 3PO Owen comes to know - grey, sullen, forgotten 3PO, who was one of many droids on the farm. It's not like they were pals.

But 20 years later, when 3PO shows up in front of the homestead again, he's gleaming gold and full to the brim of protocol and etiquette.

And C3PO had a name, and he's like a person...

But here's one more important thing - he has no idea who he himself is, especially in relation to Owen. C3PO's mind was wiped shortly after the events in Revenge. So he doesn't exactly do anything to foster the impression that he should be recognized by Owen.

Look at it this way. When I was younger, I had this smokin 69 Chevy Impala. 350 engine, booger green, big as a house, complete with bondo on the left rear fender. I drove that car for 4 years, knew everything about that car. I knew when it was about to stall, I knew it had this tweaky accelerator cable that, combined with a bad engine mount, would make it occasionally rocket forward, completely out of control, until I fought it into neutral. I knew that car. I knew it so well, I knew it sort of had its own agenda.

Everyone else knew that car, too. Everyone knew which car was being started in the parking lot. And it had a name, and a personality, of sorts. She was "The Boat". In fact, you could say my booger green 69 Impala was sort of like the cobbled together, mismatched, fussy protocol droid of automobiles. It'd merrily tell you the odds of making to work and back. It would refuse to start if you were rude to it. When you parked it and switched off the ignition, it would go on and on and on, sputtering and complaining and leaving you wishing it had another off-switch. Han and Leia had C3PO, I had 69CI. That car was special to me. I hated it, and I loved it.

Now, if 20 years later someone tried to sell me an old Impala, what would happen? Looks like a 69, but hey, I don't build cars, and I'm no expert. But I'm thinking "cool, it's kinda like my old car". Except this one's blue, not booger green. I get in it, test drive it, feels like old times. But its blue, not booger green. Not only that, but what are the odds it's my old bucket of crap? Last I saw of that old thing, it was being hauled away on the back of a tow truck.

I might even say "hey...it's got a crack in the dashbord just like mine did. Bet all of 'em do that. Factory defect." Thing is, it's got no tweaky accelerator cable anymore, and like I say, it's blue, not booger green, and hey - what are the odds? Guy even tells me its a 69 Impala. Cool - just like mine. But it's blue, not booger green. And what are the odds?

But I knew that car. It was my daily driver and fixer. But Chevy made 10's of thousands of them. And that was 20 years ago. And on top of that, the thing was almost 20 years old to begin with. It would have had to have been the luckiest draw in Vegas for me to have ended up with the exact same 69 Impala, now blue, not booger green, slightly different, 20 years later.

It would likewise have been the 2nd most luckiest draw in Vegas that I would even recognize it as my old 69 Impala. But I knew that car. I drove it every day.

Fact is, its far more implausible for Owen to immediately make the wild connection that this gold protocol droid, which looks and acts like nearly every bronze or silver or gold or white protocol droid, expecially to a farmer, is the exact same as the pewter colored protocol droid he had 20 years earlier, the last of which he knew of was hauled off by a Jedi and a former Naboo queen to a place lightyears away.

I mean, what are the odds? Especially when, even if he had a glimmer of recognition, the droid doesnt even recognize him. And droids are supposed to have a better memory than humans, to boot.

So why should we expect Owen, who is no expert on 'droids, who sees them as commonplace equipment, and who has likewise seen at least 20 plus other gold protocol droids in town and never once assumed they were 3PO, and moreover has no reason to think 3PO knows him back, to recognize what is essentially a very interactive, 20 year old toaster in their world?

Nah. If I was Owen, thinking that this was the very same booger green 69 Impala from 20 years ago, now painted blue and fixed up, would be just a little weird.

And lo and behold, it was a little weird, because it really was the same 69 Impala. Personally, I would have been a little freaked out. To Owen, 3P0 was a thing. Letter number, letter number. Blue, not booger green. How he showed up in his driveway again, I don't think he ever full got the chance to fathom.

So it's defnitely a combination of things:

1) It's been 20 years

2) It's a common model of protocol droid

3) C3P0, not remembering who he himself was, didn't do anything to foster the impression

4) C3P0 physically looks different than 20 years ago

All the other theories add up to something far more convoluted than it needs to be. Long and short of it, its been 20 years, he's got two mechanicals that look like hundreds of thousands, millions even, of others. They're 2nd class citizenry. They're not given a great deal of thought.

But..but...he still should have recognized him!...

That's just the thing. That's what makes the question invalid.

He did recognize C3PO, just not when you wanted him to.

The next day, Owen twists the last two neurons in place in his own farmer's melon, when Luke said that R2 claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi. You can see the "Oh Sith" look cross Owen's face. Owen has finally added C3 and PO and R2 and D2 together, and come up with "4". He quickly quells the curiosity, but he's made the connection. That's why he tells Luke to "take that R2 unit into Anchorhead and have its memory flushed. That'll be the end of it. It belongs to us now." Because its obvious 3PO isn't saying anything, most likely because he simply no longer knows. But he knew his mouthy little companion would have to be silenced. The connection between Artoo, 3PO, and Obi-Wan was now clear and undeniable. It places them all at the events of 20 years ago.

So it's really not a matter of Owen not recognizing them, it's a matter of him being slow to. Even Anakin took 20 seconds to recognize his own droid when he returned to Tatooine. Owen took 20 hours, and it was 20 years later, and 3PO had gone from pewter to gold, and doesn't even know who Owen is.

Actually, that old farmer did a pretty good job of putting the pieces together. Except for one thing.

Given their history, he should have figured some not too friendly faces might show up looking for them.

Whoops.

DM out





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PS-
Going back 8 months or so, we can find another excellent entry on this in Ghent's Series "Star Wars Exegesis".

I wrote my own entry here as a response to someone's question on livejournal.com, but having found Ghent's entry again, it might just be possible I read his way back then, and stored it subconsciously.

If you read mine, and then read his written back in June 2005, they mirror each other with creepy regularity. I mean, even the picture...

Funky. It's either an inadvertant tribute, universal logic, or the "12 monkeys in a room with a typewriter" syndrome. Funny how the mind works :0)

And thanks to those fans who corrected my quote from ANH regarding Anchorhead...

DM out