If he does have a name, it’s either Frank or The Senate.
Richard Marquand’s 1983 holocron and George Lucas’s 2005 holocron agree that his first name is “The”, but they disagree on whether his last name is “Emperor” or “Senate”.
Ludo Kressh seems to be a road not taken for the Sith. I wonder what would have hapoened if the Republic discovered a Kressh-ruled Sith Empire.
Darths before Bane. Whomever created Darth Rivan should be bludgeoned with a sturgeon, and so should Drew Karpyshyn and the others who perpetuated that nonsense.
Ironically, George Lucas likely meant for Bane to be first Darth. Statements from Lucas and the wording of the TPM novelization suggest that the pre-Bane Sith were short-lived and didn’t pose a serious threat to the Jedi. I believe that Lucas meant for the Sith Order started by Darth Bane to be the one that ruled the galaxy 1000 years before the movies.
Yeah Vader was supposed to be one of many Dark Lords. As per the Lucas/Foster story conference on Splinter, and in the novelization of Star Wars. That part was never edited out of the book itself but the audio tape abridgement changed it to just Vader being the Dark Lord. in the 1990s. John Whitman did the edited abridgement.
In the rough draft, there’s a bunch of “Sith Knights”, with “Prince Valorum” being the only one to be named and “Darth Vader” is just a general. In the 2nd draft, “Darth Vader” is now a Sith Knight and is a “Lord” (but none of the other Sith Knights are) and his master is “Prince Espaa Valorum”. In the 3rd draft, all the Sith are “Dark Lords” instead of “Knights” and Vader now serves the Emperor directly. In the 4th draft and revised 4th draft, Vader is the only “Sith”.
Zahn used the term Dark Jedi to refer to Palpatine and Vader. I guess he had no idea what a Sith was?
I mean other than wanting The Noghri to be the Sith race, and Vader Lord of the Sith.
Correct. Lucy Autrey Wilson, who was the President of the EU, was Lucas’s secretary when the Original Trilogy was written, so she knew about the early drafts in which Vader is one of many “Sith” and rejected Zahn’s Noghri-as-Sith idea.
The OT gave me the impression that Anakin hadn’t completed his Jedi training yet when he became Darth Vader. Obi-Wan says Vader was “a pupil of mine before he turned to evil” and Yoda warns Luke that if he doesn’t complete his training he’ll end up like Vader.
I don’t think Anakin was supposed to be Sebastian Shaw’s age. Between the makeup on dying Anakin and the blurry ghost, you can’t tell Shaw’s age from watching the movie.
Jake Lloyd would say, “I’m a person and my name’s Darth.”
Wasn’t Naboo originally Aquilae the world annexed by the Galactic Emperor, not the Trade Federation. And the purge of the Jedi was the end of the Jedi rebellion. Valorum the Knight of the Sith, right hand man of the Emperor was involved in both. No order 66, no Space taxes.
Aquilae is the planet that Leia is Princess of in “The Star Wars”, the rough draft script for what would become A New Hope. It gets annexed by the Empire instead of getting destroyed.
Battlefront: Renegade Squadron is a historically-inaccurate holodrama.
I do think Palpatine was intended to be a Sith, though. Once the Sith and the concept of Sith Lords existed, I’m fairly certain that Vader and Palpatine were integrated into it.
Little doubt this is what Lucas intended, but it’s a factoid he apparently kept close to his chest, because Palpatine wasn’t characterized as a Sith in the pre-1999 EU. Darth Vader was characterized as THE Dark Lord of the Sith during the time of the Empire, and as per Tales of the Jedi, only the reigning Sith lord held the “Dark Lord” title. And Empire’s End excluded Palpatine from the Sith hierarchy.
The Sith spirits were gracious enough to make Palpatine an honorary Dark Lord in lieu of Vader, but that Vader had a throne set up for him in their mausoleum while Palpatine didn’t speaks volumes.
Furthermore, the Sith spirits say “Emperor of numberless worlds” and “Palpatine”, not “Lord Sidious”. Lucas forbade the EU from identifying anyone alive within the lifetime of the movie characters aside from Vader as a “(Dark Lord of the) Sith”.
I remember people on this very forum complaining that midichlorians imply that some people can’t use The Force and now I see people complaining that Ahsoka implies that anyone can use The Force.
What does everyone here think of the 2019 color grading?
I wish he’d made the sequels so that all this current hubbub was consistent instead of being full of retroactive appreciation.
Seeing a great number of Prequel fans having “The Chosen One” or “The Prophecy” be retconned to now being Leia, and not Anakin, would be something to see too!
I am surprised there isn’t an AI/ChatGPT version of George’s Sequel Trilogy already out there.
I wonder if George would have been able to go through with that idea after Carrie Fisher died.
Whew! Lots of good stuff brought up here. There’s a lot I’d like to add/respond to, but foremost:
I think Michael Kaminski’s hypothesis is incorrect. He made a decent guess but I don’t believe that’s what actually what happened, mostly because there’s evidence that Lucas was considering the twist before he’d written the second draft.
The April 1978 issue of Future Life magazine has a news item explaining that Leigh Brackett had been hired to write the script, and moreover that the production was considering a possible storyline in which Darth Vader turns out to be Luke Skywalker’s father.
Curiously, Kaminski actually does bring this up in his book, but he surmises that both the first and second drafts must have been leaked. I don’t believe this is the case, because:
- The second draft would not have been written yet - it’s dated April 1, 1978, while the April issue of this magazine would have already been on sale by March.
- Lucas wrote the 2nd draft himself in the first place because Leigh Brackett had died mere weeks (March 18) after submitting hers (Feb 17), and surely the magazine would have mentioned this if it’d happened before press time.
- The magazine clearly has no clue what a scoop they’ve landed, or that they’ve even uncovered a plot twist.
- The copy goes into details of Vader’s past that aren’t covered by the movie at all, in script or film form.
- The twist was not included in the official typed version of the second draft. It was only in Lucas’s personal handwritten copy that not even 20th Century Fox got to see (scans at bottom).
The magazine would’ve had to have gotten this info from someone behind the scenes who’d gotten wind of what ol’ George was planning (Future Life was a spinoff of Starlog, who indeed had genuine sources), and as we see now with Marcia’s anecdote she confirms he’d been discussing the storyline with colleagues. This supports that the idea of making Darth Vader Luke’s father was being considered at least before the first draft was complete.
In the 2nd draft, is Yoda still called “Minch”, is he called “Minch Yoda”, or is he called “Yoda”?
If you feel conflicted or don’t care, you can say that too.
I find it interesting that in the Leigh Brackett ESB script, Vader isn’t Luke’s father and Luke’s sister isn’t Leia, but The Emperor as we know him is there rather than him being the figurehead described in the novelization of ANH.
When you point out a contradiction in the Legends EU, you’ll be told to swallow an absurd “explanation”, yet much smaller things in the prequels and sequels are declared “plot holes”.
Many fans only separate the novels and comic books into “Canon and Legends” from the old EU when Disney announced their thing in 2014. For me, my own head canon, there is also separation of the Jedi before/after 1999. The retcons of them after 1999 of no longer having family attachments, the interpretations of ‘compassion’, ‘love’, ‘fear’ (not a problem for Yoda in Empire), possessions, being separated from their parents, even uniforms (as Emre posted above). As well as the general disconnects between the two trilogies that George chose to introduce, all means it is a major obstacle to cohere the two.
The interregnum between TPM & AOTC was an interesting period for the EU, at least where the Jedi are concerned. In spite of the “no attachments” rule established in TPM, EU writers still assumed Jedi could be in romantic relationships, the most explicit example being Ki-Adi-Mundi, who has shown having multiple wives and children. In hindsight, you can see the tension between the pre-1999 & post-1999 lore. It was Schrödinger’s Star Wars.
The “no attachments” rule wasn’t introduced until AOTC. The only Jedi rules TPM established are that 9 is too old to join and that you can’t have multiple Padawans at once.
Now I wasn’t alive at this time, but from talking to people who were, it’s my understanding that even though the “A New Hope” title was on the movie since 1981, no one actually called it that until the late 90s at THE VERY EARLIEST. Seems like it was more when maybe the 2000 VHS came out.
The sides of 1995 VHS packaging for the movie we now know as ANH has a logo that says “Star Wars” and says “A New Hope” in small letters while ESB and ROTJ say “Star Wars” in small letters and have logos that say “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”. Otherwise, ANH was marketed as just “Star Wars” until the 2000 VHS release.
In his TPM review, Plinkett said, “I don’t care if it’s explained in a book because I can’t read”, yet when Episode VII was announced, some EU fans were hoping that it would begin where the EU timeline ended and argued that if anyone was confused by all the EU characters and Chewie being dead, they should read the EU books, and I was thinking, “but Plinkett can’t read”.
I also doubt George would allow a comic to spoil his Sequel Trilogy plans.
George had Sequel plans back then? Huh.
I meant, “If he had sequel Sequel plans, there’s no wy he would allow a comic to spoil them”.
Did George plan on brining Palpatine back in any of his many Sequel Trilogy ideas?
No
Ah, thank you. I think I was confused with George/Lucasfilm giving Tom Veitch permission to bring Palpatine back via cloning for the Dark Empire stories.
A far superior story, and executed so much than TROS, despite Dark Empire’s own issues and problems with getting a finale at all
George wasn’t the one who gave Tom Veitch permission.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/comments/vso18w/lucy_autrey_wilson_creator_director_of_the/
That is why I posted George/Lucasfilm. I’m aware of that recent claim in the interview by Lucy Wilson. It is just that to me it seems a little strange that this anecdote surfaced after Tom Veitch had recently passed away. And that the anecdote also falls in line with and follows attempts in recent years by Lucasfilm and the publishing “arm” to downplay George’s involvement in the EU (and the Holiday Special, for that matter).
With the long history of lies, retcons, and rewriting of history by George and Lucasfilm, including downplaying and omitting various talents and contributors from Star Wars history, I think I choose to believe Tom Veitch when he says George gave the “okay” to do that in bringing back the Emperor via clones. Maybe more so given the acrimony of what happened with Tom and Lucasfilm’s abrupt parting of ways. With Tom only being given a 2-part story to quickly wrap up Dark Empire, instead of the anticipated 6-part finale.
Whether that “okay” for Tom to use the Emperor came directly from George, through Lucy Wilson, or through other people, or a mixture of people along the chain at Lucasfilm, I don’t know.
Veitch did say he wanted to originally bring back Vader’s mask and costume for Dark Empire, before using the Emperor, but was told “no” by Lucas. So who at Lucasfilm made that “no” decision, that Vader was “off limits”? And why? Because according to Lucy Wilson in that recent interview “We were kinda letting people do what they wanted [back] then”, and it wasn’t George? That in itself raises more questions.
The story by Tom saying George gave him “the okay” to use the Emperor also stood unchallenged by George, Lucasfilm, the publishers, whoever gave the “final okay” before Dark Empire went to print, and anyone “in the know”, for some 30+ years?
But I think I may have already veered off topic in this thread, it has probably been covered elsewhere by people far more informed and knowledgeable than me, and I am also rambling on with it too!
Shortly after Dark Empire was published, Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine (as Star Wars Insider was called at the time) quoted as saying that Lucy Wilson rejected the Vader imposter idea and then approved the clone Emperor idea.
I also doubt George would allow a comic to spoil his Sequel Trilogy plans.
I don’t know what changed?: us all getting older, or Lucasfilm getting lazier or more profit driven? Maybe some cynicism (or experience) on our part a little too?
Lucas viewed merchandise as the main way to make money from Star Wars while Disney views the movies themselves as the main way to make money from Star Wars and thinks Mickey Mouse is the only thing worth making merchandise of.
Did George plan on brining Palpatine back in any of his many Sequel Trilogy ideas?
No
Ah, thank you. I think I was confused with George/Lucasfilm giving Tom Veitch permission to bring Palpatine back via cloning for the Dark Empire stories.
A far superior story, and executed so much than TROS, despite Dark Empire’s own issues and problems with getting a finale at all
George wasn’t the one who gave Tom Veitch permission.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/comments/vso18w/lucy_autrey_wilson_creator_director_of_the/
Did George plan on brining Palpatine back in any of his many Sequel Trilogy ideas?
No
