Addenda and Corrigenda
In retrospect, it seems more likely that GL would’ve intended Cora Sunrider to have red hair and green eyes, and wanted blond hair and blue eyes (to match Prince Luke) for Zena/Leia. Leia would also lose her hair permanently to Col. Shan’s torture; in the epilogue she’d wear a wig made from stones of blue crystal (like Vivien Leigh in Caesar and Cleopatra).
Bastila Shan herself was probably meant to have brown hair and blue-gray eyes. She might even have shown up earlier in the film, during the opening sequence set on Yavin – perhaps losing an arm in a duel with Mace Windy, and replacing it with a bulky droid prosthesis in later scenes?
Owen Lars, the Imperial general who leads the invasion of Aquilae, would have had shining silver mechanical eyes, like those of Gary Mitchell in the second Star Trek pilot. These would have given him enhanced vision… but also allowed his superiors to spy on his work (rather like the bionic camera-eye of Steve Austin in Cyborg, the literary version of The Six Million Dollar Man). Gen. Lars would also likely have been missing a couple of fingers on his right hand, akin to Claus von Stauffenberg’s similar real life injury in WWII.
While pleading for Kane Highsinger’s assistance in their cause, Mace Windy would have struck a table in the briefing room, and cracked open the synthetic-skin shell covering his mechanical left arm – a scene that recurs in the three first script drafts of The Star Wars. This would have emphasized Mace Windy’s increasing age and frailty, and foreshadowed his eventual death.
The doctor in King Kane’s service–let’s call him Mir Nash–would, I imagine, be played by a Middle Eastern or Indian actor.
Rethinking this particular bit: Mir Nash, the doctor formerly in the service of Crispin Sunrider, would most likely not have been the one who kidnapped Zena/Leia from the sickbay on Norton II. Instead this would most likely have been Dr. Nash’s assistant & nurse, a white-skinned alien woman of the same race as Jaina Vao – let’s call her something like Aetra Vaan. While Jaina Vao would’ve had pale blue eyes (with tiny pupils and no whites) Aetra’s eyes would have been golden.
Though Doctor Nash would once have been employed on Alderaan (before being poached by King Kane for higher wages), Aetra Vaan would have been a spy working directly for the Empire of Decarte. It would be Aetra who murdered Nash in order to kidnap Leia, and Aetra who was in turn murdered by Colonel Shan as a “reward” for her treachery to her master. (This whole bit is an inversion of Dr. Wellington Yueh’s betrayal in Dune, which the Harkonnens concealed by diverting suspicion onto Paul Atreides’ mother, Lady Jessica.)
Additionally, Mara Windom’s squad of fighter pilots from the big space battle would very possibly have been composed entirely of women, in the spirit of Richard Wagner’s Valkyries. One pair of female pilots in particular would likely have received special focus, as a counterpart to the bickering duo of C-3PO and R2-D2. In my own head they’re a woman of color named Zeeta, and a golden-haired, brown eyed pilot named Halla.
(Speaking of the two not-yet-droids: C-3PO was probably meant as a tall, hairless alien, and R2-D2 as a short, hairy being, a combination reminiscent of Tolkien’s Legolas and Gimli. Let’s say for the sake of conjecture that Threepio was a Sith from the planet Lundee, and Artoo was a Boma from the world of Bestine.)
The film’s epilogue would probably have shown us the capital world of the Alliance – perhaps this was the same planet as Kissel, Chuiee Two Thorpe’s home planet. The Alliance capital was probably a world of snow-capped mountains and grassy plains, rather like the Alderaan of the PT many years later.
The Imperial capital world, by contrast, would have been like Isaac Asimov’s Trantor in Foundation, or the Moon base from Stanley Kubrick’s film version of 2001: a world of sprawling subterranean cities buried beneath a dry, dusty planetary exterior of gray sand and rock. This planet would have been known officially as Anchorhead, but sarcastically called Utapau by the inhabitants. (In the 1975 third draft, Luke’s home planet, Utapau, is known to off-worlders as Sullust.)
Anchorhead would also have had a volcanic moon, Starbuck or the “Blood Moon,” where the Emperor had a private residence at the imposing Castle Gromas, situated amidst a desolate land of vast lava plains and fiery volcanoes. This idea appears again and again in concepts for Darth Vader’s private castle from the making of SW 1977 and ESB, and would resurface into the concept of the Emperor’s underground lair in early drafts of ROTJ. From time to time, the Emperor himself (elderly with a white moustache, like description of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel) would have been shown during cut-away scenes, meeting here privately with other actors in this whole affair.