Originally posted by: auraloffalwaffle
I think that Threepio and Artoo must remain our guides throughout the saga. It's just one more thing that Luca$h got right in '77 that he's now decided he won't maintain. The droids are ageless and their characters are unchanging - the perfect companions through a saga spanning generations of humans.
Memory wipes seem to me to be a perfectly acceptable way of maintaining the integrity of how they behave in ANH. Uncle Owen tells Luke to have it done after he reveals that they have mentioned Obi-Wan. This tells us:
(a) the procedure is standard practice.
(b) it is provided as a service, like for any other kind of machinery.
This allows us to have a little fun with the droids at their expense because, unlike your classic immortals, they are almost entirely at the mercy of their organic masters.
They could have their memories erased at the beginning of Episode I and then again when they are given to Captain Antilles. This means that the droids don't know what we know at the beginning of ANH. I don't think that this would in any way impair their role as companions for us. If we establish that the procedure is standard for droids when changing hands, then Threepio and Artoo would be quite used to it. It gives us a nice mystery as to how many owners the droids have had since being built and leaves us unsure as to just how old they really are. It might be fun to have the droids allude to their most recent owner and their experiences with him or her before their memories are erased in Episode I.
After all, what is the SW experience without Threepio and Artoo?!
I think that Threepio and Artoo must remain our guides throughout the saga. It's just one more thing that Luca$h got right in '77 that he's now decided he won't maintain. The droids are ageless and their characters are unchanging - the perfect companions through a saga spanning generations of humans.
Memory wipes seem to me to be a perfectly acceptable way of maintaining the integrity of how they behave in ANH. Uncle Owen tells Luke to have it done after he reveals that they have mentioned Obi-Wan. This tells us:
(a) the procedure is standard practice.
(b) it is provided as a service, like for any other kind of machinery.
This allows us to have a little fun with the droids at their expense because, unlike your classic immortals, they are almost entirely at the mercy of their organic masters.
They could have their memories erased at the beginning of Episode I and then again when they are given to Captain Antilles. This means that the droids don't know what we know at the beginning of ANH. I don't think that this would in any way impair their role as companions for us. If we establish that the procedure is standard for droids when changing hands, then Threepio and Artoo would be quite used to it. It gives us a nice mystery as to how many owners the droids have had since being built and leaves us unsure as to just how old they really are. It might be fun to have the droids allude to their most recent owner and their experiences with him or her before their memories are erased in Episode I.
After all, what is the SW experience without Threepio and Artoo?!
Except that only Threepio had his memory wiped. Sure, R2 speaks in beeps and whistles, but there's no reason to believe the Empire doesn't have protocol droids and other means of dumping his memory. I can honestly think of no reason why they'd wipe threepio's memory and not R2's. I do agree that it seems to be standard practice whenever droids change hands. For the longest time though, there were rumors floating around the internet that Threepio and Artoo were the only droids known to have never had a memory wipe, which is why they had such interesting personalities. I still think it was just GL's way of working himself out of a hole. Threepio never remembered Tattooine even though he was activated there, so something had to be done to rectify that. In the same context, R2 either really didn't know who the Princess was (which is what I think) or he's trying to keep the secret from Luke (why?). At that point, Luke is Artoo's best hope of getting to Obi-Wan, yet he goes off on his own.
Of course, I think I just missed the entire point of your post. Are you saying the PT would have been better if both droids had their memory wiped? Now that I think I can agree with
