It's been sometime but here it is: part 6 of my exploration of Star Wars in it's infancy. Now, since it's been over 3 months since the last entry, I have been forced to refresh my memory through reading parts of the script and some of my entries. The style of narrative might have changed due to this, so bear with me.

PART 6: FASTER! MORE INTENSE!

Scene 80-Scene 96

We left our heroes and Han Solo last time just after they had saved Lukes brother, Deak Starkiller. Now they're faced with the prospect of getting back to the ship and they enter a dark hallway followed by the sound of marching stormtroopers. They go so far that eventually they shake off the stormtroopers but they meet something much worse.

A loud, horrible, inhuman moan works its way up from the far end of the passageway and stops the group dead in its tracks. They exchange rather worried looks.

Yep, they've run into a Dai Noga. And it's...well...Han can explain:

They are not natural creatures. They are very large; but it could be anywhere. There is no hope for us back there, so I guess we should push ahead.

The thing that annoys me with this and which we find out later is that this creature cannot be damaged in any way it just passes right through it. But, thankfully, Han says:

Guns are no good. Only a Jedi, strong with the FORCE, can stop it.

This must be the single most cheesiest bit in the whole draft. Don't get me wrong, Star Wars in the form we know and love is cheesy too, but this is just to cheesy. It's one of those "oh no, we won't make it unless we have [insert thing here]. Oh wait, I've got [insert thing here]!" They need a Jedi strong in the Force and lo and behold, they've got Luke Starkiller who happens to be strong in the Force. It's all to convenient.

Anyhoo, Luke decided to draw this ghost creature away whilst Han tries to get a cowering Chewie with Deak out of there. It goes so far that Chewie must be blindfolded to get him out of there. A cowering Chewie I can accept but a Chewie that must be blindfolded just because he is scared? No, that isn't the brave Wookiee we know at all.

Somehow all of the manage to get out and even defeat the Dai Noga by squashing it under some rubble, which can be vaguely connected to the Rancors death, that Han shot loose from the roof. I don't know about you but I see this as a continuity error, kind of. I mean, the creature couldn't even be harmed by laser, so how come it gets squashed by debris?

There's some dialogue between 3PO and R2 inbetween but it isn't really important to the plot but there is one thing 3PO says that I find interesting.

We'll all be atomized.

To the casual reader this seems like nothing special. But for me it shows again how much inspiration Lucas got for the earlier Star Wars from Isaac Asimovs Foundation trilogy where being atomized is what happened when you got shot.

Luke and the rest manage to get back to the docking bay, looking over the ship as they do in the movie but here they are taken by surprise by a small group of stormtroopers and Han starts after them as he also does in the movie. Luke lets Chewie go on into the docking bay whilst he follows after Han who takes on 10 lightsaber weilding stormtroopers. Luke and Han get out of the fray but this time they're followed by two Sith Knights. Luke and Han managed to get a whole blast door between them and the Sith but it doesn't really help.

The mighty blast-shield door bulges under the pressure of the Sith para-force.

The Sith have made some kind of a force field which I don't think we've ever seen in the movies but has been a Force power in various Star Wars games.

The Bogan Force turns out to be too much for Han but Luke manages to get down a garbage chute. This means of course that we're in the classic garbage compactor scene and no, the Dai Noga doesn't appear here. It all plays out as it does in the movies and Han and Luke manage to get out thanks to R2.

In the next scene R2 and 3PO are almost caught by some Imperials but Luke and Han get there in time and cut them down whilst taking an Admiral and Officer as hostages. The troops are unwilling to shoot, showing an Empire that isn't that ruthless, again.

The whole things ends with our heroes and Han entering the ship and blasting off from the Imperial City.

For me, this part was hard to swallow. There's not much dialogue which is mostly replaced by non-stop action and it just keeps coming and coming. There's running and screaming and shooting and monsters and for me it all just turns out ot be quite a mix that is hard to follow. I'm glad that Lucas moved the Dai Noga sequence and put together with the garbage compactor scene. Good thinking there.