5D6-RA-7

 

5D6-RA7 was an imperial aide to the staff of Admiral Conan Antino. Like many RA7’s he served as a spy for the Imperial Security Bureau aboard the first death star and is seen on screen in A New Hope (above). 5D6 was known for having a particularly vindictive personality, he routinely investigated the stations officers and the other station droids rightfully feared him. He was brought to an abrupt end alongside a large number of his model when the Death Star was destroyed by Luke Skywalker in ‘A New Hope’.

Arakyd Industries RA-7 Protocol Driod

Arakyd Industries RA-7 Protocol Driod

The Arakyd Industries RA-7 was designed to rival and the Cybot Galactica 3PO protocol Droid. Unlike the fussy, polite 3PO’s RA-7 was given a blunt officious personality which bordered on rudeness, this coupled with the fact that the Droid could barely perform its basic function meant that the RA-7 was a massive flop. A year before the battle of Yavin the Imperial Security Bureau purchased a large batch of RA-7’s and had them fitted with secret surveillance equipment. These Droids were then given away as free gifts to officials and dignitaries across the empire and became a common sight in imperial offices and stations such as the Death Star.
The recipients of the Droids were suspicious of the Empire’s gifts and the RA-7 was examined and soon recognised universally as a spy.

Desperate to be free of the Droids but not wanting to offend or arouse suspicion from the Imperials people found inventive ways of ensuring that the RA-7’s got lost or met with regular accidents. These Droids became as common a sight in dumps and scrap yards (such as the Jawa’s Sand Crawler in A New Hope) as they were in Imperial offices.

Roshe J9 Worker Drone

The Roche Hive Mechanical Apparatus Design and Construction Activity for Those Who Need the Hive’s Machines J9 Worker Drone

The J9 was created by the Verpine, a race of technologically gifted bipedal Insectiods that originated in the Roshe asteroids. The Verpine were among the most renowned starship engineers in the galaxy. Like many verpine creations J9 was brilliantly engineered, the Droid was fitted with a Arjan II Logic Computer, a processor that rivalled the 3-PO’s AAA-2-Vertobrain for sophistication. The J-9 used a TranLang II Communications Module, the predecessor to the 3PO’s TranLang III module. Tranlang II held one million languages as opposed to the six million held by the later model but for it’s time this was state of the art technology.

The J9 had incredibly sensitive photoreceptors based on their creators eyes which could see in microscopic detail , these predominantly operated on the UV spectrum. The J9 was also fitted with a Torplex microwave sensor as well as a state of the art olfactory sensor that allowed the droid a sense of smell. The big problem with this model was the Verpines grasp of other cultures.

First off the J9 ‘worker drone’ was in fact a protocol Droid. The generic name ‘worker’ applied to the low class, unintelligent clones that the Verpine used to service their hive as opposed to the hermaphroditic, intelligent ruling class. ‘Worker drone’ was roughly equivalent to ‘Droid’ from a verpine perspective and did not describe the J9’s function. This led to massive confusion for buyers who bought the Droids to work in manual factory and manufacturing jobs. Imagine C3-PO working in a smelter…..As you can guess the outcome was not good for either the Droid or it’s master. As well as it’s confusing name the Droid had what the verpine considered an endearing, flat, buzzy voice which irritated mammalian buyers. It’s sentence structure was based on the verpine’s perception of basic which as you may tell from the company name was very descriptive, literal and long winded.

When all of this was coupled with the Droids insectoid appearance which the largely mammalian, xenophobic upper classes found distasteful (and in some cases terrifying) it meant that the Droid was not appealing as a translator, host or negotiator for it’s target clientèle. Sales were awful and the Sophisticated, state of the art J9 became the most intelligent road sweeper, dishwasher, furnace stoker (you get the idea!) ever made.

BG-J38 at Jabbas palace in ‘Return Of The Jedi

The J9 in the images above is BG-J38 a J9 who led a rather fortunate existence compared to some of it’s fellows. J38 was given the task of providing entertainment To Jabba the Hutt at his palace on Tatooine. The droid excelled at dejaric and hologames and was an excellent gambler. The droid was generally unbeatable apart from when it played Jabba himself, the clever worker drone had seen what happened to other gamblers that beat its master and wisely decided to lose every game. When Jabba met his end BG-J38 made good his escape and was not seen at the palace again.

EV-9D9

EV-9D9 in Jabba’s Palace in ‘The Return Of The Jedi’

EV-9D9 was an EV Droid originally assigned to work for Barron Lando Calrissian as a chief of security at Cloud city on Bespin. Unfortunately for Lando she was driven by sadistic tendencies inspired by her MDF motivator.

EV-9D9 loved witnessing the agony of other Droids, while working at cloud city she secretly created a new type of photoreceptor that allowed her to see jumbled, incoherent signals, the Droid equivalent of pain, being transmitted through the circuits of her victims. She installed this device to the right of her existing left eye. 9D9 tortured a large number of traffic control droids (along with a quarter of cloud city’s Droid pool) before being exposed by her subordinate Sarl Random.

9D9 made good her escape by damaging the generators that kept the city afloat and diverting attention with a ship on autopilot while she stole a mining guild ship named the Lopene Princess. EV-9D9 would eventually end up on Tattoine working as an interrogator and Droid supervisor for Jabba the Hutt.

During her time on Tatooine 9D9 modified herself further to gain a greater sense of pleasure from a wider variety of tortures and humiliations, her favourite experience was watching coolant drain slowly from a dismembered victim. She also upgraded her programming to extend to torturing organics. The supervisor had a number of captive Droids that she created herself from spare parts. she made the bodies as frustrating and useless for the Droids as possible and enhanced their ability to feel pain, fear and distress. These twisted abominations existed purely as victims for her pleasures.

9D9 had a shock when she recognised her former master Lando Calrission disguised as Tamtel Skreej at her masters palace. She wrongfully assumed Lando had come for her and was using R2-D2 and C-3PO to get to her. She decided to deal with the situation herself and alerted no one. She later realised her error when her master was destroyed by Lando and his friends. 9D9 eventually met her end at the hands of a former traffic control Droid from cloud city who had tracked her seeking revenge for it’s fellows. The traffic droid turned her own tortured creations lose on her but first removed her 3rd photoreceptor and upgrades so she could not derive pleasure from her own torturous destruction.

MerenData EV Series Supervisor Droid

An EV Supervisor Droid in Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine in ‘The Return Of The Jedi’

The EV Supervisor was a Droid designed to manage Droids. Droid pools were common in the workplace and the EV was designed to organise, observe, question and motivate its fellow Droids and ensure operations ran smoothly.

The Droid was fitted with a logic circuit, a high frequency binary comlink, human range photoreceptors and a broadband receiver/antenna.

Toward the end of the republic era the prototypes were ready and EV Droids looked set to become a success. Alongside the EV MerenData was working on slightly more sinister project. On behalf of the House of Tagge,  a powerful noble family from Tepasi that supported emperor Palpatine,  the company was developing a series of illegal torture Droids. The Droids used an MDF motivator to simulate pleasure when they saw pain distress and discomfort in others.

A short while after pre-release sales of the EV were completed the company noticed a number of irregularities with the model and it came to light that they had installed the MDF motivator in the wrong Droid model. On testing the EV, the motivator did not seem to have drastically affected the Droids behaviour. They were performing their tasks normally and if anything showed an improved rate of efficiency.

The sales went ahead and the customers were pleased with the new product. Unfortunately that changed within the first few months when horror stories began to flow back to MerenData.  Droids had been torched in their oil baths, human workers had been herded through factories with electroprods and an entire Droid pool had been welded to the floor. The company offered compensation and tried to recall the line but many of the Droids escaped.

U-3PO

U-3PO Aboard the ‘Tantive IV’ in ‘A New Hope’

U-3PO was a member of the diplomatic core of Alderaan, this droid however, had a deadly secret. Alderaan, a key player in the rebellion was watched closely by the empire. During the Galactic Civil War many protocol driods such as the RA-7’s were reprogrammed, fitted with covert surveillance devices and inserted in to important households, companies, industries and branches of the military to act as spies. A few weeks short of the battle of Yavin princess Leia, aboard the Tantive IV, used her diplomatic status to cross an imperial blockade and deliver ‘medical supplies’ to the subjugated planet Ralltiir. In reality her mission was to deliver military grade equipment to alliance sympathisers and intercept a rebel spy named Basso who carried hypnotically implanted information regarding the Death Star.

During her time on Ralltiir, Leia encountered Darth Vader who was present to unofficially oversee the planets occupation. Vader who already suspected the princess on the basis that she was often seen at known rebel locations, tried to search her vessel at this time but was thwarted by the imperial task force leader Lord Tion who refused the request in the hope of gaining Leia’s affections. Unknown to Leia U-3PO had been captured and reprogrammed as a sleeper agent by imperial spies and was inserted in to the Tantive IV’s droid pool before she was able to flee the system.

Once the Tantive IV reached Toprawa where Liea would receive the final death star plans U-3PO became ‘active’ and sent an S-wave carrier signal to the Star Destroyer ‘Devastator’ which Vader had commandeered as his flag ship from the late lord Tion (who was killed in a struggle with Leia after he learned of her involvement with the rebellion). Following U-3PO’s signal Vader and 501’st legion chased the Tantive IV to Tatooine where The ship was boarded leading to the events in ‘A New Hope’ so despite his brief appearance in the film U-3PO is a pretty pivotal character.

 

R-3PO

R-3PO at the evacuation of Echo Base in The Battle of Hoth in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’

R-3PO became a member of the alliance and a resident of Echo base when he was ‘accidentally’ left behind by a smuggler named Chaz. After a short while it became apparent why. R-3PO had a moody and irritating temperament. He had all the usual skills of a 3PO protocol driod, primarily the ability to translate between different lifeforms, droids and computers and so he was put to work around the station. His distasteful colour and moody personality made organics and droids treat him with a degree of contempt. This inspired Major Palo Torshan to have R-3PO programmed for spying and espionage. No-one suspected the ridiculous protocol droid and R-3PO caught many imperial spies among the alliance droids before meeting his end at the battle of Hoth when Echo base was destroyed by the Empire.

 

K-3PO

K-3PO in the control room of Echo Base on Hoth

K-3PO belonged to the rebel pilot Arhul Narra. Narra who had served the republic during the Clone Wars became the leader of Red Squadron for a time following the battle of Yavin but was killed escorting supplies to Echo base just prior to the battle of Hoth.

K-3PO is an older series of Cybot Galactica protocol droid than either C-3PO or R-3PO. During his service with Narra K-3PO was used to store personal files and thousands top secret files detailing battle plans and navel tactics for the republic. On absorbing and combining the information from these files with his existing knowledge of species, cultures, planetary systems and bureaucracy K-3PO became a master tactician, from that point on Narra refused to wipe his memory. After Narra joined the rebellion k-3PO would go on to become one of the alliances most valued military advisers.

He was eventually promoted to ‘recognised’ status and was branded with red insignia on his breast plate, a very rare honour for droids. He outranked both R2-D2 and C3-PO with whom he had somewhat of a rivalry. K-3PO served as the controller for all droids in high command at Massassi Station then Yavin 4, Thila outpost and finally at Hoth. K-3PO meets his doom when he is first damaged by a Tauntaun (I think this is during a deleted scene where Wampas attack Echo Base) then shot and later blown to pieces during the empires attack on the command centre.

 

K-3PO Damaged by a panicked Tauntaun

K-3PO Destroyed in the Battle of Hoth

Welcome!! :D

Hi and welcome to my new blog Star Wars at a glance I am Steve a 35 year old archaeology student from the U.K.

Anyone who knows me well will know that Star Wars has been a passion of mine since early childhood, Why? Because of the sheer amount of imagination and creativity that went in to the original movies and was then carried forward by fans to create the extended universe. I believe Star Wars is among the greatest epics of the modern day on a par with J.R. Tolkien’s Middle earth and Homer’s Iliad.

The thing that makes Star Wars special is that everyone can be a part of it, from short stories to writers of novels, from cosplayers to gamers, from friends taking on the sofa to children playing in the playground or someone seeing the movies for the first time, it is the fans that pour energy in to the Star Wars Universe and create a community and the universe keeps growing and changing with each generation.

I am making this blog site for myself so I can learn more about blogging and about Star Wars, so I can engage with a subject I love, I am making it for fans who like small details and hoping to inspire some new fans so they can get as excited as I am in the run up to episode seven. As most fans will be aware,  there are many thorough websites already covering every subject in Star Wars such as Wookieepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) where I shamelessly lifted most of the information (Thank you to all the contributers) and sites such as http://www.angelfire.com/droid/astromechs/ where I lifted some of the imiges,  many images were lifted from google searches before I decided to make a blog so if you see one of your images here, thank you and let me know if you want it credited I will be more than happy to do so, if you can proove it’s yours. This site is not designed to create revenue of any form and I claim no credit for the content only the style and presentation (when it’s finished and actually has some!) 🙂

One of the main reasons I decided to create this site was that information can be hard to find unless you know what you are looking for, there are vast amounts of it so this site focusses entiely on characters from ‘A New Hope’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘The Return of the Jedi’ to narrow things down for people who want to start at a grassroots level. My plan is that it will eventually include links to all the deleted scenes and rare shots and any obscure info I can find but for the moment it is what is is. The main characters will be the last subject covered as there are already plenty of other sites that do that. My plan is that when you watch the movie and think ‘what’s that strange droid in the background, I wonder what their story is?’ you can come here and find the answer.

I am not a great writer and sometimes struggle a little with grammar, spelling etc. If something is really bugging you or you have constructive criticism please feel free to make it. To add to that I am an average fan and don’t consider myself any kind of Star Wars Guru, I am aiming not to make the descriptions to complex but keep them interesting at the same time, if you haven’t seen the films you may find aspects hard to follow, there will by necessity be some spoilers too but thats pretty hard to avoid with the original trilogy.

If there are facts or details you feel should be included or are just plain wrong, feel free to tell me and I will consider adding it  but remember wookieepedia is the site for fine detail.

I have only just set this blog up so for now there is little content, I have more written that will be uploaded soon and the rest will follow as soon as I can write it 🙂 it is not yet properly styled and it looks naff but I hope to change that very soon 🙂 MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU ALL! 

Cybot Galactica WED Treadwell

Luke Skywalker tending a Moisture Vaporator with WED-15-77 in a deleted scene from ‘A New Hope’

A WED-15 ‘Septoid’ outside Nebit’s Sandcrawler in ‘A New Hope’

The WED Treadwell was an effective repair Droid marketed to both the military and civilians. Treadwells were in common use everywhere, from workshops and moisture farms to capital ships and battle stations, this versatile droid was an asset.
The Droid could be fitted with anything up to eight (model dependant) manipulator arms, each tipped with interchangeable tools which were marketed separately by Cybot Galactica. It was propelled on wheeled treads and fitted with a pair of photoreceptors on a long stalk. Despite their primitive appearance WED’s could hold a lot of data, the WED-1016 for example could repair up to 5000 starship systems, presumably treadwells were highly reprogrammable due to the variety of tasks they performed.