Whilst working on a previous entry, I stumbled upon second draft of Star Wars. Some may say that this is fan fic, but I don't think so. The draft does hold elements I've heard of and when reading the scripts for A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back that is on the same site, I believe this to be real or as close to the real second draft as possible.

I am therefore going to make an analasys of The Adventure of the Starkiller and compare it with the movies we know and love today. It's too much to do at once so I will break it into several parts, starting with the opening scene. So here goes.

PART 1: BATTLE AND HISTORY
Opening scroll - Scene 19

The Adventure of the Star Killer starts of with this:

"...And in the time of greatest despair there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as: THE SON OF THE SUNS."

Journal of the Whills, 3:127

This would later be replaced with the now classic "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away". We can already see here that Lucas started out with letting the story happen in real time (if you can call it that) instead of it seeming like it's being retold as we're led to believe when seeing the text "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away". The concept of the Chosen One is also seen in the first lines of The Star Killer which was never made clear in the final script where Luke was instead referred to as a new hope instead. Lucas would return to the Chosen One concept when making the Prequel Trilogy and filling the backstory of Anakin Skywalker.

The familiar textscroll has also made the second draft but this one has more history and backstory then the final one. Here's an excerpt of it:

The REPUBLIC GALACTICA is dead. Ruthless trader barons, driven by greed and the lust for power, have replaced enlightenment with oppression, and "rule by the people" with the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE.
Until the tragic Holy Rebellion of "06", the respected JEDI BENDU OF ASHLA were the most powerful warriors in the Universe. For a hundred thousand years, generations of Jedi Bendu knights learned the ways of the mysterious FORCE OF OTHERS, and acted as the guardians of peace and justice in the REPUBLIC. Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed by a ferocious rival sect of mercenary warriors: THE BLACK KNIGHIS OF THE SITH.

Lucas is more or less giving the viewer the history behind this war. Notice that the story is very similar to the whole Prequel saga with the "ruthless trade baron driven by greed who destroyed the Republic". In the finished version of the Prequels however, it's the trade barons who indirectly destroy the Republic through greed and who are not the main culprits. The extinction of the Jedi is also something that has survived albeit that they did not fall by the hands of an overwhelming number of Sith but by the hand of one Sith. It is however a tempting thought that the Clone Wars could've been an all out war between loads of Jedi and Sith, similar to, perhaps, Knights of the Old Republic. The name of the Old Republic has sounds also very "Asimov-like" Republic Galactica

The text scroll then gives us an update on the current situation of the civil war:

It is a period of civil wars. The EMPIRE is crumbling into lawless barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy.
****
The Empire knows that one more such defeat will bring a thousand more solar systems into the rebellion, and Imperial control of the Outlands could be lost forever...

But unlike the final scroll, it gives us a picture of a much weaker Empire and a stronger Rebellion then we are led to believe when reading the scroll for A New Hope.

The opening scene the unveils as the one in A New Hope. Only this time, the Rebel ship is being chased by 4 Star Destroyers, not one and it actually manages to blow one up. The Rebel ship is described as small and silvery and later on in the draft, crome weapons are being mentioned. This, of course, didn't make the final film and instead we saw bulkier guns and a grittier Rebel ship but the concept of crome weapons and small silvery ships would be used later on by the Naboo in The Phantom Menace.

As small line of trivia for you all. The first lines of the movie, in this draft, isn't mentioned by C-3PO but a gunnery chief in one of the Rebel ships turrets and it goes as follows:

CHIEF
I don't know what you boys are so cheery about; there are still three more out there.

It's after that that we cut through to the familiar shot of 3PO and R2 making their way through the ships corridor. Although, both still have their familiar dimensions there are some different stuff about them. R2 has clawarms and 3PO is described as a gleaming bronze-like droid, not gold. Apart from that, the original personas of both characters are more or less the same as the end product.

An important character that was later replaced by Leia is Deak Starkiller. Deak Starkiller is the commander of the Rebel ship and also the son of the legendary Starkiller (whom I'll return to later). Of course, Deak is Force sensitive and he feels the enemy. However, in this draft, the Force is divided into the Good (Ashla) and the Bad (Bogan). Both have (if you excuse me) the slightly corny ability of enhancing/crushing the morale of those fighting for either. So if the Bogan is strong, the good guys feel weak and if the Ashla is strong, the bad guys get all panicky.

It's not really until scene 9 that everything unfolds on the Tantive IV like we are used to. The stormtroopers barge in but here, instead of using blasters, everyone uses lightsabers for closer quarter fighting (as seen here). Overall, the blasters seem more powerful then those in the final product. A single shot here blows up a section of the wall sucking men and equipment out. Before all this though, we're shown a scene when we see stormtroopers descending through space where some of the fighting takes place. I wouldn't have minded that in A New Hope, but it wouldn't have fitted in with the story.

It's first in scene 12 that we find out what Deaks mission is which is in contrast to A New Hope when we get to know in the opening scroll that the Tantive IV carries the Death Star plans. The Death Star plans are replaced here by the Kiber Crystal. Instead of going to Alderaan, the crystal is going to a planet that is called Ogana Major (Ogana, Organa?) and it isn't going to someone called Bail Organa, but to the Star Killer, Deaks father. Also, it should be mentioned that Deak doesn't have the Kiber Crystal but his mission was to go to Utupau to find Owen Lars that has the crystal.

It's when Deak realizes that all is lost that he calls out all R2 and gives them a certain code and the objective to find Owen Lars. So instead of one droid getting the instruction, several get it instead. But of these, it's only Artoo that gets away. He and 3PO escape in an escape pod like in A New Hope.

It's at the end of the battle that we meet Darth Vader, who here might I say, commendeers a greater feel of evil then then Darth Vader in A New Hope. He is referred to as the Bogan i.e. Evil himself and his own troops flee from him and into battle, a far cry from the tragic villain that would later emerge. Deak is the lone survivor of the whole battle and comes face to face with Vader who says this:

I am Lord Darth Vader, first Knight of the Sith, and righthand to His Eminence Prince Espaa Valorum, the Master of the Bogan. You will not mock me, or my Master; for the Ashla is weak, and the FORCE OF OTHERS cannot save you now...

One would assume that Prince Espaa Valorum, whose name doesn't sound really evil at all, is the Emperor but that is really never made clear in the whole draft. We do however know he's the Master of the Sith. If one is really nitpicky, I would say that the true evildoers are the Senate and not one person, but I will come to that later. The name Valorum would later be used for the weak chancellor in The Phantom Menace.

It's after this exchange that we're invitet to the only lightsaber duel in the movie which is between Deak and Vader. The duel is short and it ends up with the Deak being pinned to the wall. It is really here that everything takes a more violent turn. Deak gets stabbed in the chest twice with a pole by Vader and then is later punched. Overall, the violence in the Star Killer is quite different from that in Star Wars. Soldiers wounds are described like this "...holding shattered arms and faces.". This kind of violence was, obviously, taken away in later script revising even though we get our fair share of severed limbs and burning bodies. It is also interesting to note that in the battle on Tantive IV that several stormtroopers get sucked into space due to blaster holes in the ships wall and that in Revenge of the Sith, we see pilots being launched, squirming, into space when their ship explodes.

The whole battle on the ship ends Vader discovering the emblem of the Star Killer, which makes him believe that either the Star Killer is dead or that Deak was going to send word to an unknown brother of his (I'll come back to this whole brother thing). They decide to send a squadron of "Tuskens" to search around Utupau. Note that Tuskens are a stormtrooper squadron and not the creature that we know.

I want to finish off on an interesting note. The story is called:

THE ADVENTURES
--- ----------
OF
--
THE STARKILLER
--- ----------
(episode one)
"The Star Wars"

Note the episode one. So it's pretty clear that Lucas had no intentions to go back and explore the earlier story with the fall of the Republica Galactica, the Jedi Bendu and the rise of the Sith mercenarys. One of the things I've been wondering about is a line in the opening scroll which talks about the Holy Rebellion of '06 which lead to the fall of the Jedi Bendu of Ashla. Is this an early incarnation of Order 66? This is never mentioned again in the script and we can only speculate. I'm personally bit confounded that Lucas filled this movie with so much backstory but that he didn't leave the option open to further explain this backstory. Even though I'm a Star Wars fan, I found all this information that I got was just too much and I'm just talking about the first scroll and the battle on the ship. I'm just happy Lucas scaled down the historic backstory and just left some vague mentions (such as the Clone Wars) and that he left the option of exploring this backstory open.