PT Anakin's Slave Transmitter

Yeah, the one that would blow him up- BOOM. Whatever happened to it? Did he eventually have it removed? Could Kenobi have used it during the duel? From a storytelling point-of-view, why introduce such a device and not use it?

You underestimate my powers!
Oh, I don't think so.... [waves hand] BOOM

 

it was an after dinner anecdote to tell their foreign guests of the harsh realities of living in a far away outer-rim land,

or he really did finish his scanner to locate it, preformed self surgery and removed it , being the clever one he is...

or

the most likely and obvious explanation:

watto removed it

 

I think in the TPM novel it actually says Watto deactivated it - and Qui-Gon plans to have the deactivated device surgically removed later.

 

It was probably only there to quell the "why don't they just run away" argument.

 

It was removed after he entered the Temple. The whole point of the explosive is to explain why Watto would allow the boy to wander around without someone watching him all the time, or keeping him chained up. You know, like it was in real life.

 

I wanna see one of those things in action!

 

I thought it was just a clever ruse to keep the slaves under control on Tattooine. After all, death by explosion can be a pretty powerful deterrent.

 

I recall reading an excerpt from a book called 'Anakin Skywalker's Journal' or some such around when TPM came out; where Qui-Gon took him back to Watto, and both of them waved this wand thing around the spot where the transmitter was, and it was deactivated. Nothing about actual surgery to get it out.

 

Shut it down first, surgery later, when it's convenient, was the approach I recall.

TPM novelization p192-193:

They went to Watto's shop first, where the Toydarian had completed the forms necessary to assure Anakin's freedom. The transmitter that bound Anakin to his life of slavery was deactivated permanently. It would be removed surgically at a later date. Watto was still grumbling about the unfairness of things as they left him and went back out into the street.

 

This kind of harken's back to GL's ear-tag concept from THX-1138

 

Picture the opening credits scenes in "The Running Man" and there you go.

 

It was probably removed/disabled. If Qui-Gon won him legitimately, then he would probably insure that it was completely disabled/removed.

 

When TPM came out, I thought for sure that the concept of Ani's transmitter would be the means by which Kenobi would take him out during 'the duel'. Oh well...

 

Funny enough - I remember during those days there were some fans who swore that by the time Obi-Wan and Anakin had their famous duel that the transmitter would come to play in defeating the latter.

 

Knowing Anakin and his wits in the movie, I feel like he was able to locate the transmitter in his body and perform the surgery that was necessary to remove it so that he didn't go "boom" if he had left the slave life.
If that theory isn't so, then I feel like it was Watto's duty to remove the transmitter when he lost Anakin as a slave and gave him away to Jinn.