Your ideas for 'shocks' and a 'hypnotic ray' sound quite neat too Bingowings, and it's just a pity we never got a better 'angle' of the Probe's red light underneath, as per the 2 uppermost pics in my previous post.

As far as the 'needle' being in an awkward place to jab her properly....I like to imagine that adywan's 'electro-needle' is capable of actually shooting out short, rapid bursts of 'electrical discharges' towards the Princess...so the 'Probe' doesn't need to be up close to her... (Not enough to damage her too much, but just enough to make her 'more 'responsive to questioning'. Not that it worked anyway, as unknown to us at the point when Star Wars originally came out...she was to prove to be pretty strong with the 'Force' in her own right eventually)