I actually haven't heard the tone poems. It isn't possible to use anything from the front or center channels? Dang.
As far as Threepio goes, as much as I hate the thought of not having him in addition to R2 (and I never really minded Anakin building him--don't hurt me!
), both Trooperman's idea for II and Yoda Is Your Father's idea for III (although this evidently isn't possible due to the Geonosis sequence) have their own charm. The only real bugger to me is the fact that if Anakin doesn't build Threepio, there is no scene of Anakin and Padme going to see him, leaving the ending of the scene as "Your son was kind enough to offer us shelter." PLOP. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't see any real problem--Trooperman's take sounds pretty feasible. Is there any extra footage of Shmi and/or Qui-Gon in the entry or something where a little extra dialogue could be inserted to smooth that out?