CT The lost pilots and scenes from the Endor space battle in Return of the Jedi

Recent postings being digested. Meanwhile,

Spoiler

I had to derive the following when I was researching the bridge crew on Home One and how they compared to other sightings of Mon Cals in ROTJ (~5 sightings):

The standard B-17 crew maps slightly to the Enterprise cast.
-pilot (rank between 2nd Lieutenant up to Captain or higher) to ... Captain (naval rank) (Kirk).
-co-pilot (2nd to 1st Lieutenant) to... Lieutenant Commander (naval rank) (Spock) (Second in Command) OR Lieutenant (naval rank) Sulu (helmsman)
-navigator (2nd to 1st lieutenant) to... Ensign (naval rank) (Chekov)
-engineer (Technical Sergeant) to... Lieutenant Commander (naval rank) (Scotty)
-radio operator (Sergeant) to... Lieutenant (naval rank) (Uhura)
-ball turret gunner, right and left waist gunners, and tail gunners (Sergeants) to... Redshirts
-(B-17 bombardier has no good analog on Enterprise)

The naval rank of engineer did not exist until the steam engine began to replace wind. http://www.gunplot.net/main/content/history-naval-engineers
Masts stopped carrying sail but remained critical for lookouts and spotting, and eventually carried radio antenna. ~1900 https://ethw.org/The_Sea_and_Early_Electrical_Technology

The B-17 Pilot Training Manual puts a lot of responsibility on the flight engineer:

http://www.303rdbg.com/crew-duties.html

 

That was still the way it was on the C-130. A good FE usually was a mechanic for a while before cross training to engineer. The best ones maintained the same planes that they eventually flew. I worked on the 130 for 14 years before I finally decided to step up and wear flight suits.

 

I take the hangar preparations in SW77 as partly a peon to the unsung crew chiefs and flight technicians. There were a lot of lingering takes on regular guys doing regular things like fueling, running around, check this check that, pat the cockpit to say ready to go. And then the air marshallers with wands. I imagine that these Rebel crew chiefs took much greater personal interest and ownership in their respective ship than the equivalent TIE crew chiefs.

Ok, things that are rabbit holes that defy capture in polynomial time...

Lucas gets to assert the rules of his universe. Lucas says in the Gerald Home script that the Star Destroyers are too much for fighters to handle, and Ackbar orders his capital ships to soften them up so that fighters may stand a chance. First off, this puts a hurdle before any EU game where a single X-Wing takes out an entire Star Destroyer. Second, it puts a hurdle before the prior conception in the argument between Tagge and Motti that the Rebels were dangerous to the Imperial Star Fleet. Lucas also has in the Lost Rebels reel the mention that the main communications ship has batteries that create a heavy fire zone dangerous to fighters. These batteries are not the main guns of that ship. Is it too soon to say that the main communications ship has a competent anti-aircraft analogue? No. It is not. Lucas is saying that the Star Destroyers, exampled by the heavy fire zone put up by the communications ship, have been upgraded or had their anti-aircraft capabilities enhanced since Battle of Yavin. Granted - I am speaking from the perspective of the perfect, "Platonic Solid" Space Battle of Endor as envisioned by the Lucas of January, February and March of 1982, where all was possible, and where actors were being filmed in costume on set with pyrotechnics and motion. The works. This perfect, "Platonic Solid" Space Battle of Endor as envisioned early by Lucas is the thing that leaves echoes in the final "canon" film release. Understanding it makes the "canon" film version bloom and blossom.

Another thing. Lucas' scripts given to Khan would suggest that the SSD at the end started its fall towards the Death Star II NOT from an A-Wing hitting the bridge. No. That is "canon". It is the source of all derision, dismissal, and defense of dumb content coming out of Disney. *Assuming Khan was faithfully translating Lucas script and not inserting his own invention, the SSD had power stations along its hull. These were destroyed and exploded, imparting lateral momentum and spin. That's how it started its collision course. How is that not dumb? It's not dumb in the way that the USS Arizona was bombed and the bomb went through the ship to the magazine. The magazine went off and the ship was lifted up out of the water - if that was a micro-gravity context the 'object' would have continued moving along the vector of its imparted moment, plus some spin. So the perfect, "Platonic Solid" Space Battle of Endor as envisioned by Lucas can put a strong asterix on one's experience of "an A-Wing taking out a super star destroyer OMG isn't that stupid Lucas knows nothing about anything".

Another thing. When Lando says, "Han old buddy, don't let me down," WHY is he saying that. A careful analysis of the timing of this scene with the script and with the novel and with the Lost Rebels scene where they attack the main communications ship raises an interesting possibility. I think, without trying to demonstrate, because it grew to several pages, because it is a monstrously tedious point to demonstrate, that this is a vestige of script, in "canon" form, from the attack on the communications ship. Lando is saying, 'We just did our part to make it such that our fleet ships and fighters can now even approach the Death Star, let alone get into the tunnels, so, Han, do not let this effort be for nought. Do not let me down. I did my part.'

Another thing. The selection of story boards I can acquire in the area of the attack on the main communications ship is very few. I have enough that I can bracket scene to scene. The scene in the final film that takes the space of where the main communications ship would have been is only about 4 or 5 individual story boards. There is no excellent and generous image hosting (RIP) so don't believe me. The single scene from the "canon" film that unambiguously ties into the communications ship script scene is the clip of the broadside exchange between a Nebulon B and the ILM studio model of the ESB Executor trench (AKA SSD) that the film recommends we not know about and perceive to be a regular Star Destroyer trench. The Story Board corresponding to that scene is a Mon Cal vs ISD trench, and it leaves an impression of a more equal footing between combatants. It is more consistent with the delivered impression from the opening of the main communications ship sequence that opponents of roughly equal might are pairing off at point blank range. The film's version of events renders a more David and Goliath impression. But it definitely looks like it belongs to whatever sequence of images would have framed any action around the main communications ship.

Another thing. In the film sequence in which Lando says, 'don't let me down', we have the persistently mysterious five-bridge Star Destroyer. It is the opener of that sequence. It is easy to fall off one's critical analysis and assume, 'oh, that simply must be a legacy VFX shot of what must have been the main communications ship'. It is definitely a hero model. It definitely looks different from the Avenger studio model. It definitely is at a different scale than the SSD "conning tower" with the tiny little bay window bridge. The wiki entry for Pride of Tarlandia uncritically claims that the size can be determined by the Falcon and prior size comparisons of the Falcon on the back of the Avenger. It would require a @Lt. Hija level graphical analysis of the sequence with the 5-bridge "conning tower" to grapple with any real range of values for the Falcon's size. Anything by eye is simply error prone and subjective. Even using the X-Wing which flies in a straight line towards it as a scale reference is probably error prone.

Another thing. I'll cut to the hunch. IF the main communications ship was doing the jamming, and IF jamming an entire Rebel Alliance fleet from seeing an entire Death Star II shield takes "a lot" of power, and IF this ship was never designed to play this role and was jury rigged to set this elaborate once-in-a-life-time trap, and IF the analyst can conceive that the domes are not power sources, reactors, shield generators, THEN it may be fruitful to think of that hangar bay with the reactor as a temporary ad hoc location that was close enough to the emitter of the jamming, which in my head would be the domes of the communication ship. Following on, IF the VFX footage of the dome exploding on the SSD makes people think, 'oh obviously that cannot be anything other than absolute evidence that that dome is a shield generator', I ask them to wonder if that exploding dome can have been the dome that was producing the jamming signal, which had to be a verry powerful signal, that was drawing its great amount of power from very close, in a hangar bay from an ad hoc installation of a reactor inside the "conning tower". It was just an idea that occurred to me while reading all sources simultaneously for the nth time.

There's something else and I forget it. Oh - the Call Sheet for the MF scenes with soldiers inside actually says "Nien Nunb". So Nien Nunb is officially able to wear two costumes at the same time while he is carrying out his duties as co-pilot on the MF. Here I thought it was just another Sullustan who I had called Oct Nunb. I also got Call Sheets for the Y-Wing pilots and the A-Wing pilots, but these names had already been discovered.

 

I concur, that's why I suggested a longer time ago - https://boards.theforce.net/threads...urn-of-the-jedi.50041047/page-2#post-53639124 - that the enigmatic "other" command bridge scene (that was edited together with Piett's command bridge scene) belonged to the main communications ship, commanded by "Star Destroyer Captain # 2" (Tom Mannion), who is credited but never seen in the final film.

I guess I'd be much happier if they had listed "We're not going to attack?" Pip Miller as "Super Star Destroyer Captain # 1". Following logic they would have made Tom Mannion either "Super Star Destroyer Captain # 2" or just "Star Destroyer Captain # 2", but we'd be knowing a lot more.

 

I. I am afraid the color timing is off between Tydirum approach 00:54:57 (more truly green and faithful to the olive drab of the uniforms) and 'attack position' 01:41:12 (the green is very muted and only obvious on the taller figure, more brightly lit, standing before the windows). Meaning, the color timing in 01:41:12 is not true. The standard for comparison is the uniform of foreground Controller Adam Bareham in both scenes. (Bring up two viewers and max them on your largest monitor.) I would think that the officer in green at the very front in Hija's pic on the other page, the tall one, the one with arms held to the side in a pretty peculiar fashion, is only Pip Miller. His shape, size, and carriage are basically identical between the mystery scene and the next scene where he is obviously acting next to Ken Colley. Now, I'd have to throw in the DVD to look for even more subtle color differences to find who is in a black uniform like a security officer. It's certainly not obvious from the blued-over Blu-Ray. But the person standing next to who I think is unmistakably Pip Miller in the mystery scene Does have the comparative size of Ken Colley. And Ken Colley does have dark hair. That being said, I can see some ambiguity that the shorter fellow standing next to Pip Miller in 01:41:12 "may not" be Ken Colley. The posture is slightly forward while Ken Colley's posture is very straight. The cap is riding low on the forehead while Ken Colley's cap is riding high. The face is lit differently so it is hard to tell objective differences there. Also, the mystery figure has hands folded behind, and Ken Folley ends the scene by folding hands behind.

II. "Adam Bareham...Stardestroyer Controller #1
Jonathan Oliver...Stardestroyer Controller #2
Pip Miller...Stardestroyer Captain #1
Tom Mannion...Stardestroyer Captain #2" - ROTJ GOUT credits

Call Sheet 21, Monday February 8, 1982, Stage 1, Int Bridge Vader's Stardestroyer:
David Prowse - Darth Vader
Adam Bareham - Controller
Pip Miller - 1st Captain
Ken Colley - Admiral Piett

I have no 22, 23 or 24.

Call Sheet 24a (Second Unit) Thursday 11th February 1982, Stage 1, Int Bridge Vader's Stardestroyer:
Director - Roger Christian
Crowd - "One Controller"

It's possible that one of the intervening Call Sheets mentions Mannion by name. That would be additional hard evidence. I figure 24a is a pick up shot with a random stand-in. This Controller in 24a cannot be Adam Bareham or Jonathan Oliver. (Jonathan Oliver 00:02:37 "Security deflector shield will be deactivated when we have confirmation of your code transmission. Stand by. ... You are cleared to proceed." This scene is set on the Death Star 2, so he should not have been called a "Stardestroyer Controller #2". Adam Bareham 00:54:57 when Tydirium on approach to SSD. "Shuttle Tydirium, transmit the clearance code for shield passage." He is the lone officer that is allowed to sit at his post while on the upper bridge deck. A communications officer like Uhura.)

More waiting game while these movie memorabilia places meter out their authentic unobtainium like OPEC...

 

It's a bit OT but since I seem to recall that we talked a lot about the deflector shield power generator domes on top of Star Destroyers in this thread (and since I didn't know where to safeguard the image) I wanted to add this little gem from SOLO:


Revealing the whole structure of the basic contraption, I think it's now easier to see the resemblance to a "power tree". Also interesting is the "revolver array" at the base which resembles quite a lot the (tibanna gas) tank facilities Ralph McQuarrie designed for Bespin post-ESB:



Frankly, I didn't like the close-to-ground manufacturing of Star Destroyers suggested in SOLO, but the top image seems to propose orbital platforms that seem to act as "space elevators" so that heavyweight ship components can be uplifted and assembled close to zero gravity if necessary.

 

I blame JJ Abrams' Star Trek for that particular bit of strangeness. Give me spaceships constructed in orbital drydocks, thank you.

 

That image is a good line of evidence that Disney is doubling down on the domes being shield generators. I do not possess an in-universe, vetted, sourced answer for the violence of the explosion of the SSD dome - it was not the weapons of the A-Wings.

Abrams was brought in to Star Trek without much depth, and had free reign. His mark is also obvious in how hyperspace is depicted in ST as hyperactive attention deficit disorder OMG are we there yet. With Lucas it was set your cruise control on a back highway. I predict that future Disney under Abrams will feature ships underwater like it's nothing, like Roddenberry used to have ships underwater All The Time prior to Abrams gracing the franchise with his redemptive presence.

That being said, the rules I apply to suspension of disbelief have to go in one direction. The scene where Chris Pine looks up and sees welding sparks falling softly to earth, i.e., cuing nautical and naval heritage, is well done enough that I get it how uncritical consumers of Star Trek simply take the scene as the new paradigm - ships the size of Abrams' digital enhancement is how things have Always been done. Of Course you construct and assemble a top heavy fragile CGI object in 1g! Why wouldn't you?

So future Star Wars is going to have ships underwater, ships having a duel in hyperspace. It shall be defended by defenders of Disney as expanding the Star Wars universe, etc. Franchise homogenization guided by revenue. There's really no need to have unnecessary distinction between products....

 

It's also evidence that, as with Rogue One, they're actually putting effort into showing Imperial I domes rather than Imperial II domes.

 

Do Imperial IIs exist in the timeline as of SOLO? I would imagine Avenger required "some" time to put together, and it appears three years later than Devastator's appearance. So my guestimate for construction speed would have Imperial IIs existing in some form as of RO.

Just mentioning, my persistent interest in B-Wings got to *an assertion by *some content providers that the 1983 production photography of the three B-Wings escaping the explosion they just implicitly caused on a Star Destroyer represents the Devastator.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...ISD2-ST.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151109015327

Maximum zoom comparison with the Avenger model, not just in how the dome panels reflect (up and down, now outward), but the engines and markings on the 'neck', should lead to a different conclusion...
http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=19630

 

Which is why I remain confident that we were looking at laser fusion domes where compromising the containment led to the violent explosion.

While I'd concur that it's very likely that in 1976 the Star Destroyer top domes were originally considered to be radar domes, that's a premise that had somewhat changed by 1982. I have a serious book about energy from 1978 and already then, the concept of laser fusion (multiple lasers converging on a central point within a sphere to ignite pellets on reactants to create fusion energy) did exist, nowadays better known as L.I.F.E. (Laser Inertial Fusion Energy) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy


source: https://www.nap.edu/read/18289/chapter/5#109

Good catch, but I'd guess that the Devastator-Class domes should look identical to those of the Avenger-Class. BUT look at the size of these things in the SOLO screencap!

The diameter of the Avenger-Class domes equal the width of the Millennium Falcon but those on Corellia look much, much bigger (IMHO). Devastator-Class domes would be approx. 50 meters / 164 feet in diameter and it seems to me that's what we are looking at.
(well done, SOLO production designers, well done! )

Remember that we are just looking at a composite photograph (Lucasfilm made a lot of these for ROJ) featuring the large SD model built for ESB (e.g. Avenger) and not at an actual film image. The composite photograph mimics a pre-production painting by Ralph McQuarrie (indicated by the Death Star's appearance), therefore I find it sadly inconclusive.

 

I. Rhetorical question regarding domes: What is the >in-universe< reason for Ackbar to have said, "We have to give those fighters more time"? What could the SSD have been doing that hindered the fighters? The only way this line makes sense and has purpose is if that SSD was hindering the Rebel fighters by coordinating the Imperial fighters. And that means transmitting. Or transmitting and receiving in real time. "Command Ship".

II. I don't keep numbers on sizes. I get it that the Avenger dome is roughly one Falcon in diameter. These domes on Corellia look larger, per their great distance using perspective, than the Falcon looks when it is resting in some landing spot at some distance. I wouldn't know how to put a number on it. 3? 4? Falcon diameters? Without a very good reference, the perspective makes me think they may as well be intended for a SW77 era SSD. What numbers do you have for the dome sizes of each class?

Another thing: I did not focus on the beefyness of the coils prior to you mentioning it. Using analogies with naval ships, this new property of having beefy root makes them reminiscent of a turret that goes down 4 decks into the hull and is surrounded by an armored barbette, and the whole thing rotates on bearings. Which is to acknowledge that radar and radio systems of any era did not require so much power as to require roots going down through a few decks. They were rather lighter in comparison and positioned as high as could be.

That being said, while Disney is showing they have done due diligence to recapture the first domes presented in SW77 (points), but they are also injecting what they feel is a suitable interpolation that the SW77 era domes have the small vanes spaced around the circumference Like the domes of the Avenger class. Disney may have performed due diligence or information search and come across the alternate newer theory in some authorized publications that the small vanes are the shield generators for the protection of those domes, themselves. Or, Disney is only copying what they have seen in ESB and ROTJ, without any other research. In either case, this dome in SOLO is a new animal. The Devastator did not have those vanes. (I do not own Rogue One. Perhaps someone can look and see if RO Devastator is given vanes.)

Due to their apparent size, until I hear some persuasive comparisons, I can think of them as intended for a SW77 era SSD ("Command Ship"), that is required to transmit and receive, command and coordinate scores of other destroyers and hundreds of fighters. And have little vanes that put up a nominal debris shield, like the one authorized work says. Granted, SOLO shows no SSD being assembled above Corellia.

 

In conceptual terms, the domes seem to echo the spherical pairs of secondary SL-8 fire-control directors on the capital-ships and heavy cruisers of the Nazi Kreigsmarine - indeed, the additional domes on the Executor studio-model are simply the relevant parts from model-kit ships.

These were primarily for anti-aircraft defence, hence their multiplicity, allowing them to track multiple opposing aircraft formations at once, though if memory serves they could take over for the big guns if the main positions were knocked out. In functional terms, the dome was simply a weatherproof housing for some men and an optical rangefinder, but if we take the visual reference as a significant cue, we would be led to conclude that the "bridge domes" are some sort of sensor emplacement, probably designed primarily for an anti-fighter role.

This might suggest that the wide central array is the sensor equivalent of the primary big-gun rangefinder at the top of a capital ship superstructure, not least as this object vaguely references both the horizontal "arms" of an optical rangefinder and the strutted rectangular structure of an associated radar such as the German FuMo system (or for a less problematic reference, the structurally complicated "crosstrees" on an Iowa) - considering that this structure on the Star Destroyer can apparently "fold down", based on the difference in position between R1/ANH and ESB/RotJ, we might infer that the entire array is perhaps fully steerable and designed to rotate/elevate in order to focus on a target. The only long-range combat against capital-ship targets is at Scarif and Tatooine, hence the big array is held in "inactive" position throughout Hoth and Endor. Like an optical rangefinder, this device would normally be "led onto" targets by some other detection system - perhaps a set of unobtrusive arrays located around the hull to provide an omnindirectional sensor picture (compare the distributed and relatively discreet "hull panels" of the Aegis arrays on a Ticonderoga).

On the other hand, considering what an Imperial deflector shield generator looks like in movie canon, there's no reason why a "dish in a dome" device shouldn't be a shield generator...



A couple of other random notes...

As to the Falcon, she's primarily the "fastest ship in the fleet" at running away into hyperspace, which is pointed subtext. Lando might have taken commandos on board to pick Han up from Endor if required, though this is one place where I want to nod to my fondness for the pre-reboot off-screen canon, which identifies them as General Airen Cracken, the head of Alliance Intelligence, and his personal commando squad of old friends from his home planet. They have no business being there, but they're presumably just as sanguine about the trap as Han is.

Even more wildly off-topic - I'm pretty sure that as originally conceived by Matt Jeffries, the Enterprise nacelles are only engines - "power nacelles"; the actual "warp drive" is the engineroom unit at the back of the saucer section, where the energy is [piped in through the glowing conduits we see in the movies and] focused (through the "dilithium" assembly) to power those two big aft-facing doohickeys that actually manipulate the rules of physics. While the visual reference is a twin-engined propellor plane with some of the height and structure of a square-rigger, the conceptual reference is the turbine, shaft and propellor on a ship. The idea that the nacelles produce the "warp field" only really comes in clearly in TNG....

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Judging by the cockpit shapes we see paired with flight suit types in in the film, X-Wing pilots wear orange flight suits with "standard" Battle of Yavin helmets; A-Wing pilots wear green flight suits with a cloth helmet; Y-Wing pilots now wear gray flight suits with a new type of sturdy helmet; and, to judge from the background plates in Han & Lando's goodbye scene, B-Wing fighter pilots apparently wear dark red flight suits, and X-Wing style flight helmets painted red.

So, in alphabetical order:
A-Wing = Green flight suit
B-Wing = dark Red flight suit
X-Wing = Orange flight suit
Y-Wing = Gray flight suit

Which spells "GROG".
Is this a crew of rebels or a crew of pirates? Brings to mind the "rebels-convict" from Sabatini's Captain Blood.

Also, this may have already been suggested, but I have a question: is it possible the shot of a Star Destroyer "power tree" exploding right after a dark-skinned X-Wing pilot says "She's gonna blow" was originally part of the destruction of the "communications ship" ?

EDIT: Just remembered the "lost Rebels" footage has B-Wing cockpit footage with aliens in green flight suits. We know there were both humans & aliens wearing the dark-red flight suits in the briefing room scene. Is there any known footage of human pilots in B-Wing cockpits?

 

No human pilots were filmed in a B-Wing. The B-Wing was conceived in concept art as an "Alien Fighter". The micro narrative that Mon Calamari, or Ackbar, had anything to do with B-Wings arose in the WEG as early as 1987, I believe (I no longer own any WEG).

"background plates in Han & Lando's goodbye scene, B-Wing fighter pilots apparently wear dark red flight suits, and X-Wing style flight helmets painted red."

I just want to thank you and commend you for having the attention to catch such a detail. That is an outlier. If you do frame by frame you'll be rewarded with one of the worst kind of blue screen compositing errors.

The standard B-Wing helmet for humans is to be seen in the briefing room scene where four (human) B-Wing pilots stand behind the rail. They have dark red jump suits. The Call Sheet for this scene explicitly associates B-Wing costumes with red. Those wearing the costumes are of course only casting call stand-ins to fill out the scene. They are not actors who get lines. In complementary fashion, the professional actors who DID get lines when sitting in the fighter cockpit sets are not present for the shooting of the briefing room scene.

Using the hint of "Alien Fighter", the Mon Cal and Sullstan that were filmed in the cockpits were the intended 'representation' of the B-Wing. Nein Nunb, actual, wore a B-Wing jumpsuit during the briefing, but of course not the helmet. The Nein Nunb mask was worn for pre-production photography with a white B-Wing jumpsuit. The Nein Nunb animatronic head, that was used in the Falcon with Lando, was also used for the B-Wing scenes. The helmet on that head is to all appearances the same design and configuration as the human B-Wing helmet, but large enough for a Sullustan head. One can imagine a scenario in the planning stages where, for continuity with the idea of an alien pilot, the designers needed a helmet that could wrap around this large animatronic Sullustan head, and so that led to a design that is adjustable in width because it has no actual scalp, and so the human stand-ins have this helmet with inexplicable lack of scalp protection, but it is very distinctive in fantastical Star Wars idiom.

The fact that the B-Wing pilot Lost Rebel footage has green jumpsuits does not have any official explanation. The B-Wing Lost Rebels footage was filmed at least four weeks after the Briefing Room scene, in which the dark red jumpsuits were certainly available. An economic interpretation is that the Lost Rebels footage was test footage, where they did not need proper uniform. That is in no way satisfying because Chris Newmann the assistant director responsible for reading lines to the cockpit set actors was performing his role at the same intensity / intent as with the A-Wing and X-Wing pilots (that we have BTS or Lost Rebel reels for). Someone dropped the ball, probably. Someone dropped the ball, definitely, when they labelled a B-Wing cockpit set blueprint as "A-Wing". So, these matters were quite peripheral to the main effort.

"She's gonna blow!" by Ronny Cush / Grizz Frix can be interpreted to be an adaptation of the original line during the Empire Main Communications Ship scene where the original script line from Lucas to Khan would have been "There she goes!". Compare "I'm Hit" / Timothy Sinclair / Ekelarc Yong which occurs immediately after - that line was pulled from the scene in the novel (original Lucas sequence) where the first wave of TIEs attack. So Lucas was pulling notes or beats that he needed from the fuller feast novel version and sticking them where the space battle needed to move along and get back to main effort, Luke.

Additionally, the large ILM studio model of a star destroyer bridge system was used for three scenes - that one with a dome exploding, anything with the SSD, and one shot where it has five unique bridges on the face. The use with five bridges is placed in the film where the script stage direction says, "The Falcon and several fighters attack on the the larger Imperial ships". This corresponds in sequence with the scene in the novel where the leading paragraph says "Lando, Wedge, Blue Leader, and Green Wing went in to take out one of the larger destroyers". It is futile to say that Lucas and Kasdan, main script writers, were unaware that this precisely echoed the novel's Main Empire Communications Ship scene. One can on the basis of evidence entertain that the two uses of the large studio scale model of a Star Destroyer bridge, that were not designated for the SSD, could have been all that remains of the footage that would have been shot with the intention of including, and representing, the Main Empire Communications Ship in the film.

As with anything ROTJ, and particularly ROTJ latter half 1982, (and for this consideration during the VFX compositing process,) it is useful to read about Lucas' personal life and events of latter half 1982. A great deal becomes clear how he became supremely economical to deliver product, on time, at various costs, with heavy losses on cutting room floor. It's illuminating about a lot, and not just about film making or story craft.

 

Is it possible that the green flight suits being used for the B-Wing cockpit footage instead of the dark-red flight suits was an unintentional error that contributed to the B-Wing footage being left on the cutting room floor? If so, I wonder if it was related to the blueprint flub you mentioned.

 

That's fresh thinking. The orthodoxy is that B-Wings presented problems when filming on blue screen, and that is why they were dropped on the cutting room floor. I can't stress how supremely unconvincing this orthodoxy is when we have lateral shots of B-Wings crossing screen left to right, following the Falcon under an artificially supersize Corellian Corvette, in a composited scene with multiple elements, and then also the scene where B-Wings are trucking from foreground, along with X-Wings, when Wedge says "S-foils in attack position," and then also the scene where B-Wings are in the background going right to left along with A,X,Y Wings. "That blue screen shot with the B-Wings came out terribly!", says no one, ever.

Side note. Lucas has a number of conspicuous applications of screen left to right versus screen right to left. The scene where the B-Wings follow the Falcon left to right is a scene of power and advancing prospect or optimism. The scene where B-Wings are among all the fighters that are streaming right to left towards the unseen but probable Death Star shield, immediately following "All craft, pull up!", is a scene of weakness, retreating prospect, confusion. An obvious example of left to right is the sweeping motion with which Han walks up into the Shuttle Tydirium and he is immediately -as if on directorial cue- -because it was- followed up the ramp by Prune Face and company. A very powerful shot.

 

The same sort of left-to-right > advancing/right-to-left > retreating idea that Hergé uses in the ligne claire style of Tintin comics.

 

Perhaps another reason for cutting the B-Wings is the cockpit design is relatively "uncharismatic" for pilot shots? With the other Rebel fighters, and to a lesser extent the TIE fighters, there are side, rear, and/or overhead windows such that we can see the "outside" during pilot scenes (note that TIE pilots are usually shot at an angle so that the overhead cockpit slits are visible). Being able to see other parts of the fighter, or the starfield, or other ships, laser blasts, explosions, etc., is more visually appealing and helps reinforce the illusion of reality, but with a B-Wing the standard Star Wars camera angle for a Rebel pilot scene gets you someone sitting in front of a wall. Maybe they should have designed the back cone of the cockpit pod as another crew station.

 

It probably cannot be stressed too much how subtle might have been the reason that all B-Wing footage was rejected. It could have been for extremely small thresholds of je ne sais quios, utterly unaccountable or invisible to an outside observer. Lucas' interaction with Ken Ralston shows that Lucas did not regard the VFX as a main effort. And, not even, 'not the main effort'. To Lucas it was not even the auxiliary effort. Main effort was Luke. Luke S. ports "Lucas". Scenes with Luke cannot be improved. Auxiliary effort was Ewoks. Lucas wanted to make this film something that his daughter would find comforting. Scenes with Ewoks could not have had more Ewoks. They were presented in cross section of life and culture and being that is seductive to the suspended disbelief of a particular sliver or transition stage of gen x. I am young enough to have been in that late stage of gen x where Ewoks were vital and valid contributions to the project, and they fully contributed to the total suspension of disbelief and interior world that was crudely but oh so sufficiently ported to our world through Kenner toys, and I did not reach peak Ewok with clearer eyes until Lucas revisited the whole affair starting in 1997. Others farther back in gen x had clearer eyes going in, and they reached peak Ewok relatively quickly, right during the tenure or post hype of the films themselves. There is some xkcd-type chart that demonstrates this threshold.

As much as I hate to temper my criticism of TFA with its Rathtars, the total run time of the Ewok footage easily dominates by orders of magnitude the space / ship / battle VFX shots that Ralston had faithfully slaved over. And for what, the student of space battle of endor asks. Well, Lucas was motivated for ineffable reasons to concentrate on an immediate, visceral interface between people actors and different lifeforms. So, that is the strength ROTJ is left with from the auxiliary effort. It is more full of life than it is full of plastic. In that CGI is the modern du jour version of plastic, there is a lesson to be learned, here.

What remains, the space battle, is another piece of evidence that Lucas in his prime, in his striving for totality of experience, left more on the cutting room floor, or on the negotiating table, than has been put into the entirety of the effort with the ST that actually made it to screen. The space battle is really a narrative glue that holds together the main and auxiliary effort. Luke is the dissertation on the better angels of our nature. Han and Leia and droids are kept busy in a mild statement about unilateral extra-legal unpopular "imperial" reach under an unaccountable figure in whom power has been too concentrated, which might be boiled down to a swelling emotional (recommended) observation that the oppressed or the underdog in an asymmetric situation may not be in the wrong. Lando and Wedge are merely a Greek chorus that sign off on the first two statements, by closing out the affair with some torpedoes and some fast flying. It is the sci-fi portion of a buffet whose main course is greek tragedy with a side of Apocalypse Now for young children.

Feel free to strike back at opinionated opinions.

 

From a storytelling standpoint, the simplest explanation for the trimming of the space battle is it was one subplot too many for a two-hour movie focused on the Skywalkers. Aside from the time and resources needed to create the battle as it was described in the novelization, including all of the elements that were discarded could have risked drawing the audience from the key Luke/Vader interactions. In the end, for the service of the story all that was needed was essentially everything that was included: the Rebel fleet arrives, is trapped (and serves as a further spur to Luke), and through courage and daring holds out long enough for the Ewok subplot to free them up to attack and destroy the Death Star. Rather than give the pilots and admirals their own detailed plot, we just check in with them from time to time to confirm that yes, they're still there.

So, from a storytelling standpoint I can understand what happened. Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see the battle as it had been described in the novelization!

 

A question that occurs to me: since the "communications ship" was apparently such a major part of the battle, why would ILM give it the same body type as other Star Destroyers? Or maybe, was there a separate model or something else like an alternate paint scheme, that we've just never seen?

 

Given unlimited time and money, I bet they would have done something different. But both were running out.

 

Maybe so, but having it be the exact same design as other Star Destroyers is a nonsensical design choice. That's just going to confuse the audience. Even if ILM couldn't afford to build a new model, they could at least slap a coat of paint on a standard Star Destroyer hull to differentiate it. Which is why I wonder how much stuff related to this "communications ship" we haven't seen.

 

There's that iconic scene where the Falcon is flying low over the surface of a SD. People that require for a Tector to exist in their lives treat that scene as the basis for their belief. It's just possible that that scene is an optimization. If ILM wanted to make a longer hull and did the makeover of the Avenger model, with the intention that a scene like what we see would be used for a larger intermediate size main communications ship, and then that fell through, they could still have used that model re-work to advantage by shooting the Falcon against it. Of the storyboards that exist, the unfinished but numbered story board that follows that scene is of an upright star destroyer. So that ship the Falcon is flying over was never dreamt of as being "upside down". It was conceived of as being a Star Destroyer, upright, that the Falcon is going towards. One can imagine, however, that there is a limit to the camera angles one can achieve with the Avenger model if one wants that specific shot, because it is track backwards. The concept art of the shot, which would require Joe Johnston visualizing how to not knock the camera into the expensive superstructure of the Avenger model, combined with the following shot that shows an upright SD, conspires to paint a picture that Joe Johnston conceived / imagined "a" Star Destroyer that was larger than the standard ones, whose dorsal hull was as long as a normal SD's ventral hull, while *not being the scene in question that would putatively feature the main communications ship. And so no cameraman needed to worry about knocking the camera into the Avenger's superstructure, because they got the tracking shot they needed from the underside, and that re-work of the studio model could have been the last vestiges of an abortive idea to attempt to optimize existing ILM assets to get an intermediate size SD on screen.

They reused the ESB Executor trench model in compositions that forced the eye to imagine that the trench belonged to a SD, not the SSD.

Between the long dorsal hull (that looks like the flattened and paneled up ventral hull of a normal SD), and the 5-bridge superstructure model, they could have depicted an intermediate size SD that was larger than Avenger.

This brings to mind a ILM publicity shot where Lucas and other principles stand among a lot of ILM models. There is one SD globe tower model that *could be the globe that was filmed destructively for the climactic scene. But that means that publicity shot took place at exactly some perfect moment where every model that ever existed was assembled, and then they go destroy that dome tower model. It is possible, and I don't have any means to demonstrate it, that there is a second dome tower model that is rather largish. I've seen it in some BTS and in that publicity shot. Even if there was no second model of a large dome tower, what occurs to me is that ILM might have been economic with the dome tower that was destroyed. In Cinefex 13 Ken Ralston talks about a complicated shot of a Rebel fighter and TIE dogfighting around a SD dome. This would logically be that model. There's no particular reason that that shot would have had to concern the communications ship. We just know that there was a ton of completed VFX shots that Lucas declined to use. It is only sensible that, since the communications ship is the part missing, and communications ship dialogue was certain filmed in the lost rebels reel, that, the declined completed VFX footage had more than a little to do with a communications ship scene.