The R2-D2 Detail Catalogue Part B: the Body
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Body: basic materials
ANH: Six or seven of the ANH droids were handcrafted from aluminium alloy sheet. Notably, since they were built in the UK, they didn't use the American spelling for the metal!
An in-progress R2-D2 next to a studio gate, 1976. The droid was nearly complete in terms of its external features, but lighting and some details, and paintwork obviously, have yet to be added.
It's known that wrought sheet aluminium was used, but not the specific alloy – and there are over 400 varieties of the material. The droid bodies were expertly welded together, which is no simple feat given the thinness of the metal sheets.
Some droids had fibreglass (ie: mostly plastic) feet and other components. At least one had a lightweight fibreglass body instead of aluminium.
ESB: The Empire droid bodies and feet were all fibreglass, from a custom-made pattern. Some legs were aluminium, and some fibreglass. The domes on the hero droids were spun aluminium.
Prequels: The prequel droids were a mix of materials. Many were rebuilt Original Trilogy droids. However the "monster truck" newly built droid was built by the UK team from fibreglass, and the Uber droid built at ILM in California was carbon fibre with an earlier metal dome.
Sequels: Mostly aluminium.
Body: detail component materials
ANH: The detail components, with the exception of the dome's holoprojectors, were handcrafted from aluminium. Most parts were assembled from sheet metal. A few others, notably the coin slots and the arms, appear to have been machined from metal blocks or possibly castings.
The original ANH coin slots were not found objects, as is often claimed. There is no evidence for this, and nobody has ever found any found item that I'm aware of that resembles the slots. British payphones certainly didn’t have such slots. The parts were custom-machined for the film from aluminium.
Incidentally, the coin slots were also machined from two separate pieces that were then joined firmly together. This is how they were able to machine the internal rectangular slots with perfect 90° corners. Otherwise you'd have a slot with rounded corners – unless you spent forever manually filing the corners.
ESB: Some of the ESB metal details were made from aluminium, but many were actually resin, cast from moulds made for the film. The details below are clearly resin. They have slightly soft edges compared to cut sheet metal, and over time they have cracked in ways that aluminium never would. There are also subtle differences of proportion and shape from the metal ANH details.
Two unknown points regarding the resin details. First, were they all painted silver, or were some or all parts vacuum-metallized? Second, were any metal details recycled on the ESB droids, or did they all have new resin parts? The former definitely seems likely, at least in part, as some of the ESB hero droids have moveable holoprojectors.
Body: visible fasteners
ANH: The RC R2, when seen during the opening Tantive IV sequence and the Death Valley pickup sequences, has visible fasteners spaced across its body. These appear to be sunken Phillips screws, and some rivets. The feet are also covered with numerous pop rivets.
No other droid has such obvious visible fasteners on its body barrel. And it does look odd, since all the other metal droids were welded seamlessly together. I don’t know the specifics as to why the RC R2 looks like this at this point, since the same droid appears, relatively unblemished, in other sequences in the film. One of the Kenny R2s features a couple rivets above a door, but not rows of fasteners all over the place like this. Now, there are photos of one of the droids being built which has obvious holes for assembly purposes, and it seems likely that the screws visible here align to the previous holes used under constructions.
Conjecture: the screws may have been installed late in production owing to heavy damage to the frame that occurred during earlier filming. This lines up with the fasteners' appearance in the film – the Tantive IV sequence was the last to be shot in England, and the pickup sequences were filmed after that. Why the holes weren’t patched with filler before repainting, I have no idea! Perhaps they simply ran out of time.
ESB: The ESB droids were fibreglass and don't have these fasteners on the body barrel. However, at least one of the ESB droids has two recessed fastener holes on the outer leg surfaces; front and back. Most, however, don't. I don't know if these holes signify that the legs were made of aluminium rather than fibreglass, for example.
The body barrel
The bulk of the droid's body is a tall vertical cylinder, covered with panels. Here are the detail components of the body.
Body: front panels
The ANH barrels were very precisely made and mostly quite similar to each other, though the handcut dome panels had some variation. As noted in chapter II, a punch machine was used to cut the holes in the metal sheets used to create the body barrels.
Incidentally, one interesting detail about the panels involves the narrow tall compartments on either side of the body, front and back. All four of these compartments have lower edges that are actually lower than the other panels at the same height. The distance is 1/8" (about 3mm). This is consistent across all the droids - ANH and ESB. It’s a detail that most commercial models or toys of R2 don’t implement.
Finally, there is also a subtle difference in body panel arrangements in the lower left front between droid generations. While minor, it's the key tell in determining if a droid body is ANH or ESB and later.
ANH: The group of small recessed rectangles, and the front octagon port, are both offset slightly towards the left leg. (note: the octagon disc detail is missing in the photo below) The three rectangles to the left of the octagon are evenly spaced.
ESB: The rectangles and port are moved over such that the top of the octagon port lines up with the recess above it. The two narrow rectangles (the “pause button”) are more tightly spaced than the larger left-hand panel. As described in the previous chapter, this mysterious discrepancy stemmed from an issue of certain revisions of the original ANH blueprints used to create the buck.
Prequels: The droids built for the prequels seem to have had an ESB-style panel arrangement. However, since some ANH bodies were also used in filming, particularly Episode I, you occasionally see the ANH arrangement in these films.
Sequels: The droids built for the sequel trilogy had an ANH-style panel arrangement.
Body: panel lines
Each panel is defined by a shallow recess. These lines are usually fairly dark because of the weathering applied to the props, but they were constructed differently.
ANH: Most of the original droids were sheet metal, and made of two concentric cylinders. The alloy body barrels had precisely punched panel openings, revealing the inner barrel behind it. Curved pieces of flat metal, the panel doors themselves, were then installed.
But were the body panel lines bare metal, or painted white? Photos taken in the Tunisian desert, during the setup of the homestead sequence, do suggest that shiny silver lines were present before the dark weathering was applied to the droids. Other making-of photos seem to show unpainted metal around the rear panel opening, but there are no closeup photos of droids in this condition which would let us know for certain. Deliberately unpainted panel lines would have required significant extra work in terms of masking the inner panel openings prior to painting, but also would have resulted in some very sharp details.
Front: the fibreglass body. Notice that it has been painted a uniform white. Back: one of the metal droids being prepared to play the two-legged walking R5 in the droid auction scene. Notice the reflective lines, suggesting bare metal, visible between the panels on the metal body.
However the ANH droids as seen today do not have bare metal visible in the body panel lines. They've all been painted and repainted multiple times over the years, and so no longer represent their factory-issue condition.
I haven't got any photos of the R2 droids being weathered, but this shot from the homestead set in Tunisia is amazing. Producer Gary Kurtz supervises a pair of art department members as they weather Anthony Daniels' C-3PO costume for the first time. The gleaming gold finish is being sullied by dark material, applied with brushes and rags. The buckets look like paint, but Daniels described the weathering as using shoe polish and wax. Notably they don't look like paint cans, so it's likely that the compounds were mixed with solvents in these plastic tubs.
The young man in the middle looks like he might be a Tunisian local, and he's demonstrating a certain skepticism, or indeed bafflement, as to the proceedings. Which is pretty fair - why would you want to ruin this beautiful gold sculpture with all that messy crap?
ESB: The ESB droids were fibreglass, and each body barrel had shallow recesses moulded in, for every panel or compartment. The panels, some fibreglass but most made of vacuum-formed styrene, were then individually glued into the recesses. The gap around the smaller panel surfaces resulted in the panel lines.
The body barrel panel lines never seem to have been painted silver (except for the two wider lines on the shoulders/horseshoes), but were simply painted white with the whole body.
Sequels: The metal bodies had white-painted panel lines.
Neck rings
R2-D2's basic design includes two stacked neck rings - one bare metal, and one coloured blue. Both turn together with the dome, but the actual construction of the neck varies from film to film.
ANH: As described in detail earlier, the bare metal ring was generally attached to the body barrel, but free to rotate. The blue ring was part of the dome. Thus when the dome turned, both metal and blue rings turned with it.
Most of the droids had milled aluminium rings with a hollow internal section. However, the fibreglass bodied droid which portrayed R5, R2 and some background droids in Tunisia appears to have had a shiny strip of metal wrapped around a support ring. This is why some Tunisian droids have shiny metal necks, where most robots in the film have dull aluminium necks.
Finally, one droid appears to have a rather unusual metal neck ring - the "Identities" robot. And there are two mysteries surrounding this droid's neck ring. First, the ring is very slightly undersized, and has a number of small holes drilled into it. These holes are visible in Blockade Runner scenes filmed at Elstree, and also pickup shots filmed in California.
And second, the Identities droid on public exhibition is actually missing its metal neck ring outright! Where has it gone?
Poor neckless R2! This is the Identities droid, as displayed in London in 2017.
Intriguingly in 2018 a plywood neck ring went under the hammer, with the auction house claiming that it was an actual Star Wars R2-D2 neck ring. This object seems to have holes matching those visible in the film. Was this item, in fact, the errant "Identities" neck ring? Who can say?
ESB: All the R2 droids had solid aluminium neck rings. However, they were mounted differently from ANH. Both metal and blue rings were part of the dome, and the whole assembly was lowered onto a circular rail that protruded from the top of the body barrel.
Prequels: Various ESB and even ANH droids were used in the film. However, the Uber droid built for the film had a somewhat different neck design, though similar to the ESB design in that the two rings stayed with the dome.
Here Grant Imahara is seen working on the Uber droid - note that its interior is black, owing to carbon fibre construction. It has a low ring with a few raised nubs, and a convenient hinged crossbar which holds the heavy-duty Tonegawa-Seiko servomotor used for dome rotation.
Large data port
The wide slot or recess, just above the utility arms, is commonly referred to by hobbyists as the large data port, though it's never used for anything in any film.
ANH: The port appears to be a machined metal part, and is aligned to the top of the body barrel. There's a thin white curved metal plate behind it, which is the top structural ring that makes up the barrel itself. The topmost part of the data port sits in front of it, so nothing is normally visible between the data port and the lower dome ring.
However, because of topple damage to the RC body, you can see a number of scenes in the film where the data port is really badly bent downwards, revealing the white or bare metal inner frame. Check out the RC R2 below. This is a screenshot during one of the Death Valley pickup sequences. Not only is the data port all bent downwards, but the whole manipulator arm area is bent and crushed! One of the dome panels is even falling off. Poor R2.
This damage appears to have occurred quite early - possibly the well-documented faceplant that the RC R2 did during filming of the droid auction sequence. You can see that the RC R2's large data port is bent on the escape pod landing footage and the sequence when the Jawas launch their ambush. These scenes were filmed relatively early on, but after the droid auction.
The back of the port is solid blue-coloured metal - there's no opening or slot or anything there. Note that the droid below is a Kenny droid. It doesn't have faceplant damage, and so its data port is correctly aligned as it should be and you can't see a strip of white body barrel behind it.
ESB: The data port is either a machined metal part or a resin casting.
Utility or manipulator arms
The top front of the robot boasts a couple of strange zig-zaggy narrow panels. These are actually flip-out utility arms. They’re obviously kind of limited in actual function, but supposedly permit R2 to push buttons and panels, etc. The basic arm design appears in some of the earliest drawings of the robot, so it's obvious Lucas considered it a key concept. Kenny Baker said that, "the two arms operated from inside couldn't do much, but they looked effective."
ANH: You only ever see these arms in use once - at the very start of the film when a Kenny R2 flips one out to open the escape pod door. This shot reveals that the backside of the “arms” also have kind of coarse serrations to them. An unfinished metal arm sold at auction a few years ago shows that the arms were cast aluminium. They were then subsequently machined down by C&L for sharp, crisp, edges. Closer examination of the image below also shows the dried drips of blue dye on the metal arms!
The inner surfaces of the arms are raw metal and not dyed blue as in the movie shot. The interior of the arm sockets is also raw metal.
There's no direct evidence that the Kenny droids had these rotating "hands" or "claws", but one photo suggests a possible angled in claw during the auction scene. It's not definitive, and the Kenny button-pressing shot above does not show separate claws to the arms.
ESB and ROTJ: The other two films in the Original Trilogy also boast brief arms-open scenes; one each. In ESB we briefly see R2 repairing 3PO aboard the Falcon. And in ROTJ there's a comedy moment when R2 sprouts all his tools and manipulators, having been shot. Both reveal white interior sockets for the arms.
Note that the Special Edition of ROTJ made numerous alterations to this latter scene. If you've got the version of the film where R2 starts inexplicably spouting steam or something from a holoprojector then you have the CGI-altered release. This modified scene adds and moves the various arms and manipulators in odd ways.
Sequels: The final sequel film, the Rise of Skywalker, features a new look to the manipulator arms. Specifically a data port and LED data transfer meter are shown in the sockets behind one of the arms.
Utility arm surrounds
ANH: At least one of the ANH droids (the three-legger in this case) has the two utility arms more or less centred vertically within their respective front panel lines.
ESB: The lower arms are visibly misaligned, at least in terms of vertical spacing, within the panel lines.
Front body vents
There are two prominent vents on the front of the R2 body design. At first glance they look identical, but the internal grilles are actually quite different in design. I think it's that kind of attention to detail that made so many Star Wars props seem real and authentic.
The vents are also a kind of litmus test for accuracy when it comes to replicas and models. For some reason they're something that so many commercial products get wrong – especially the radiusing of the outer curves, the angles and proportions of the internal details, and the fact that no edge is soft or rounded.
Another interesting point is that the lower of the two vents has an unexpected difference. The interior of the vent appears to be tilted inward and back, relative to both the vent's outer frame and the surface of the body barrel, by approximately 4°. (ie: the top edge of the vent interior is further into the body than the bottom edge) It's not clear if this tilt was intentional from the start, or if it occurred accidentally later for certain droids. One of the droids being set up in Tunisia for the first day of shooting seems to have the internal vent tilt, so it's possible it was intentional.
The vent on the right shows the internal tilt relative to the body surface and the vent frame.
ANH: The ANH vents (photo above left) were made of bent and folded sheet aluminium, with a rounded-rectangular frame. All parts are sharp and crisp, and the milled aluminium frame also has sharply defined edges.
ESB: Some ESB droids (photo above right) appear to have metal vents, whereas others appear to have cast resin. The resin castings are pretty well done and replicate most aspects of the vents, but the interior parts seem to be triangular wedges and not thin sheets, in order to make them extractable from the moulds.
Note how the ESB droids have a slightly wider gap between the top and bottom vents than its ANH counterpart.
Power ports/power couplings
The square detail at the bottom front of each droid, and also bottom back, is often referred to by builders as a "power coupling". However, it's never shown doing anything in any movie, and in fact in the sole movie where R2 is seen being recharged (ESB), Luke is shown plugging a cord into the small panel next to the top vent. Oh well. It's a greebly.
ANH: The bare metal front frame of this detail is curved to match the curvature of the body barrel. This is clearly indicated in blueprint 56, and you can see it in photos of the RC R2 and Identities droids.
The RC R2 also seems to have a slightly protruding central ring relative to the nearly flat outer section.
A minor obscure detail: the awards ceremony droid has a power coupling with an unpainted front ring. Looks like they just forgot!
ESB: This detail might be flat on the front, at least on some droids. It's really difficult to tell from the photos I've seen.
Prequels, sequels: Unknown.
Octagon ports: interiors
The octagonal ports had three notable details. First, the walls of the octagonal box were blue all the way to the edge of the white outer "skin". Second, the back of the box, which was bare metal, had a series of vent-like lines in a kind of spiderweb pattern. (this is presumably why some sources call these the "exhaust ports") And third, the middle had a circular post-like detail consisting of stacked discs.
ANH: The spiderweb of black lines inside the octagon ports is closer to the centre than the edge. At least on the R2 bodies.
The R5 body below seems to have had a line arrangement that's closer to the ESB design - the lines are closer to the edge of the box, and seem narrower than on the R2 boxes.
ESB: The lines are closer to the edge like the R5 body, but the lines are slightly wider. Perhaps they were patterned after the R5 design.
Prequels: The Uber R2 seems to have lines which are similar to the ANH lines, but which are wider between the inner and outer set.
Sequels: ESB-style lines.
Octagon ports: grooves? Or lines?
So. Were the lines internal grooves or slots, that were actually cut into the metal? Or were they just painted on/stuck on lines? Wars have been fought over lesser questions. But there seem to be four reasonable possibilities in the case of the OT droids.
Possibility 1:
The back of each octagon port had a series of narrow lines cut or punched into them.
ANH: This theory seems unlikely. The photo below is a crop of the landspeeder/falling over when Jawa-zapped droid, which is believed to have been one of the aluminium no-Kenny shell droids. You'll see that the octagon port has no lines at all - just a post or bolt to which the stack of discs would be fastened.
This isn't the clearest view, but it shows the interior of one of the ANH Kenny R2 units under construction. It seems to be a simple folded and welded metal box, and there are no lines punched into the back of the port.
The fibreglass body droid, seen being painted up as R5 in the photo below, also lacks any holes.
As a side note, it seems improbable that they would have cut out slots into the port once it was built into the droid. The time to punch out the holes would be when the octagonal piece is flat on a workbench and accessible. Also, the blueprints do not show where any holes would be punched out.
ESB: This is an interior view of one of the Kenny fibreglass droids built for ESB. Note how the back of an octagon box is visible. There are no slots there, but there is a nut used for fastening the stack of discs centre detail.
Possibility 2:
A thin secondary octagonal plate was installed at the back of each port, and holes were cut or punched into that first. Such a plate would have been installed between the recessed octagonal box and the stacked discs.
ANH and ESB: There is photographic evidence suggesting that some R2 droids may have had octagonal metal plates at the back of the port. However, I haven't seen any unequivocal evidence of cut-out notches on the OT droids.
Photos of ANH droids seem to show black lines without any reflective edges. It seems probable that if there'd been a back plate with holes, we'd see faint lines at the edges of each line, indicating the cut or punched edge.
That said, I like this possibility, and one person who has seen various original ANH droids reports this is the technique that was used. But thus far I haven't seen any photographic evidence supporting the idea.
Prequels: One droid which definitely had cut-out holes is the Uber R2 built for the prequels. This had a painted silver disc stack, plus what definitely appears to be an octagonal plate with cut lines. You can see the shadows of the cut edges. However, this droid was built for Episode I, and post-dates the OT droids by some 20 years!
The ruler shows that the Uber droid’s port was 1 1/8" deep, whereas the OT ports were 1 1/4" deep. Conjecture: perhaps the silver octagon is 1/8" or 3mm thick, and inserted into the box?
Sequels: The sequel droids had recessed details.
Possibility 3:
The lines were painted on, or used dry transfers.
ANH: This theory seems very likely for at least one droid - the "Identities" prop shown below. The lines all seem very flat, and as noted above, there's no photographic evidence for edges of punched holes. It looks like they may have been painted or used dry transfers, given how bits seem scratched off on the left side. I don't see thick adhesive tape falling apart, leaving holes in the middle of a line, the way paint or a transfer can scratch off.
Striping tape for graphic design, such as Letraset's Letraline, was commonly used on Star Wars props and sets.
Possibility 4:
The lines were just pieces of black PVC pinstriping tape, carefully cut and stuck on.
ESB: This theory is quite likely for at least one ESB-era droid: the Smithsonian one. Its octagon port has extremely flat-surfaced smooth black lines like black PVC tape. There's also a kind of orange-brown halo around each line, suggesting that the tape may have shrunk over the years, leaving a sticky dirt-attracting mark where the tape's glue was once located. The detail view shows what appear to be knife marks around the edges, suggesting the tape was laid down and then cut in place.
Finally, if you look at the bottom of the octagon you'll see a corner has been torn off one of the lines, revealing bare metal beneath. Note also how it appears that the tape is peeling up in the corner.
Groove or Line Conclusion:
The only physical evidence I've seen indicates that the ANH and ESB octagon ports' lines were either dry transfers, or were lines of black tape, depending on the droid. This is a bummer, since I think the boxes look way cooler with actual holes cut into them, but unless we find photographic evidence of a more three-dimensional approach (eg: possibility 2) that's the only thing we can say with certainty.
By contrast the prequel and sequel droids had shallow recesses for these lines using separate octagonal back plates.
Octagon ports: inner discs
The interior detail of the octagon port consists of a stack of three discs, separated by smaller-diameter spacers.
ANH: The outer two discs are fairly thin, but according to the blueprints the bottom disc is much thicker than the other two. This isn't obvious in most photographs, but can clearly be seen in this shot of the R5 body used for R2 pickup shots (shadows brightened for emphasis) I haven't found any photos of the other ANH R2 bodies which show this area in enough detail.
In all the photos the OT droid discs have concentric marks in the metal, and bright highlights running the diameter of the disc, indicating they were "faced" on a lathe, not simply punched out of metal sheets.
It's not known with certainty whether the discs were turned and made for the production, or if they were a repurposed "found" item. Some droid researchers believe they were found, much like the record turntable components used as shoulder button details. But it is of note that the blueprints contain detailed drawings of the discs, suggesting they may have been custom turned for the film. But conversely the blueprints do not have dimensions for the discs, so it's hard to say. Until any exact parts turn up, we may never know.
All the screen-used props I’ve seen show octagon ports with evenly-spaced concentric ring/central posts. (ie: the distance between the edge of the outer/bottom disc and the edge of the middle disc is the same as the distance between the edges of the middle disc and the inner/top disc.) This also corresponds to the original blueprints.
Left: this is an incorrect arrangement of the octagon port's stack of discs, as seen on the CSR Astromech club blueprints. Right: how the three discs were sized in the actual movie props.
Left, middle: these are two incorrect depictions of the disc thicknesses.
Right: how the discs actually looked.
ESB: The hero droids had turned metal details, modelled after the ANH ones. Some of the other droids appear to have cast resin replica details.
Prequels: The Uber R2 had a resin central detail.
Sequels: Resin central detail.
Side “pocket” vents
ANH: The lower "pocket" vents on the RC R2 appear to have slightly recessed vertical bars, relative to the outer frame. The horizontal crossbar, however, appears to be flush with the outer frame.
There also seems to be a little unevenness – the vertical bars appear to have slight gaps or notches between them and the outer frame. These are more pronounced on the "Identities" droid, which has a lot of rough silver paintwork.
The other vent is similar on the RC R2 - the vertical bars are not flush, and there appears to be a slight gap, as marked with arrows below. Note the area circled. A lot of hobbyists' droids, and commercial kits, have gaps in these two sections, because it's where the front and rear skins join. The original droids did not have gaps in these areas. In fact, the vertical bars were folded from a piece of sheet metal - they weren’t solid cross-section bars. The piece is thus a kind of zig-zag shape, and each vertical bar isn’t a rectangle, but has slightly tapered sides, getting narrower at the top. Most hobbyist renditions of R2 have rectangular vertical bars.
Another interesting detail is that the RC R2 had, at some point, cutouts in the recessed pocket on the port/left side of the droid - see just below the lower arrow. These cutouts, apparently for a slide switch and possibly status lights, don't exist on any other droid that I know of. While they don't appear to be in use when this photo was taken, during the filming of the pickups, John Stears' typed manual for the droid indicate that a switch for powering down the radio was located here.
However, the only time that part of the droid is visible in the actual film is the scene shot in the Tunisian canyon where R2 rolls down a slope, shortly before being zapped by the Jawas. And the switches or lights can’t be seen at that time. So when these were added, and for what, remain a mystery!
ESB: The Smithsonian R2 has vertical bars that are flush with the outer frame. Note the crack in the horizontal crossbar, showing that this particular detail was probably cast resin and not machined metal.
Sequels: These droids have one-piece metal vents where the vertical bars are flush with the outer frame.
Framed charging door detail
ANH: Most R2s had a flat door, sometimes called the "charging door" after its function in ESB or the "zapper door" after the ROTJ feature, just above the coin slots. This door, unlike most of the others, lacks a recessed or framed outline (first photo).
However, a couple of droids had a framed outline (second photo).
So why this inconsistency? It's not known. The original studio blueprints show a framed door here, suggesting it was the designers' original intent. But somewhere along the line either the decision was made to omit the framing, or else a mistake was made during construction. As a result most of the aluminium Peteric droids have unframed charging doors.
However, one metal droid was made with a framed door. That was the body barrel without a skirt that was used for pickup shots in California, sometimes known today as the Identities droid, as shown in the blueprint above. It was also used as an R5 droid body for the Sandcrawler interior scene shot in England, and an all-fibreglass droid seems to have been cast from this body shell. Thus, some R5 and R2 droids in ANH have the framed door, yielding continuity errors.
ESB: All R2s have the flat door without framing.
Wacky footnote, post ESB: In one of the weirder moments in Star Wars history, there was an anti-smoking PSA (public service announcement) TV commercial broadcast in 1983 that features our droids. Bizarrely and hilariously, R2-D2 is shown smoking a cigarette, and C-3PO reprimands him before breaking the fourth wall and telling children out there not to smoke.
Even more strangely the charging door is split in two in this commercial, and one of the ESB-era manipulator arms sticks out of it. So if you want to do something oddball like this, you can definitely claim it’s screen-accurate! Just don't specify which screen.
Prequels and sequels: All flat and unframed.
Charging door interior
ANH: The small door above the coin slots (above) is never shown open. I know of no photos or drawings showing if anything was intended to be inside it. It seems reasonable to assume that nothing was ever made for the interior, since it probably wasn't meant to be shown.
ESB: The charging door is shown open in ESB. It's in shadow, so we only see some flashing red and green lights while R2 charges up in the Dagobah swamp.
Interestingly, the charger that Luke plugs into the droid has a very strange plug. The photo above shows a fairly long and narrow metal plug that's sticking a long way out of the charge bay socket, but the 4K scan of the movie shows that the tip of the plug has two separate metal prongs attached to a black section, like a double banana plug. How is this possible?
Well, close examination of the "fusion generator" prop shortly before Luke turns on the light reveals what must have been going on. Here's a crop of a 4K scan of the film.
It's a pretty grainy photo since it was in shadow, but it clearly shows that the plug assembly at the end of the spiral cord was, in fact, made up of multiple pieces stuck together! The photo is too low-rez to tell for sure, but it seems reasonable that a double banana plug to BNC adapter, a BNC to XLR or PL-259 adapter, and an XLR or PL-259 plug could all be assembled to make something that resembles what we see in the photo. The shot below definitely looks like PL-259 components might have been involved, and it's worth noting that the medical droid in ESB has a PL-259 connector under its chin.
ROTJ: The interior is only seen in shadow, but bizarrely the zapper tool emerges from here. Which is odd, given that it's a charging port in ESB. Oh well.
Computer interface arm
ANH: The computer interface arm seems to have a lot of coloured tape stripes and dots on it. It's presumably hand-turned from aluminium.
ESB: Looks basically like the same arm, with fewer coloured bits of tape. It's known that the arm was covered in sprays of black paint to simulate blast damage for the Yavin hangar scene at the end of ANH. Conjecture: Perhaps when the paint was removed all the bits of tape came off too. And they never got around to replacing it, since the arm's original tape positions were never recorded.
Prequels: The prequel films feature a new look to the computer interface arm. It has a machined aluminum head, with grooves with rounded ends. The grooves are coloured with transparent paint.
Removable back
ANH: The entire back was removable on many of the ANH metal droids, providing full access to the interior as required. The droids with back panels are quite obvious, since the seams don't correspond to any of the compartment doors or anything like that.
The removable section doesn't quite go all the way to the top of the body barrel, leaving a strip of white. It's not clear how the back was attached. It seems there were four flat rectangular rotating toggles, but I don't know how you would turn the toggles to hold the panel in place. It's possible the small holes in the back could accommodate a tiny flathead screwdriver.
However, as the film progresses you can see a growing number of screw heads and so on appearing around the edges of the openable area! By the time the Holiday Special and Making of Star Wars TV shows come out, the RC R2 has visible Phillips head screws in the back.
Photo by Chris Casady. Taken in California after principal photography in England was complete.
ESB: The fibreglass ESB R2s don't have removable back panels. They have smooth and featureless backs, aside from the cosmetic compartment doors. Because they lack the gap created by the removable panel, the wide horizontal panel at the top of the body does not line up with the narrow vertical panels on either side of the back.
Interestingly, a brief scene in ROTJ (when R2 is cut loose by the Ewoks: above) features an R2 with a very dented metal back panel. It appears to have been a recycled ANH droid body with ESB legs and feet, oddly enough. (the front view seems to show a droid with an ANH-era octagon port arrangement).
Prequels: The Uber R2 did not have a removable back.
Rear panel door in grey; aka the Silver Door
ANH: Many scenes in ANH show the rear right-hand vertical compartment door in a medium grey or silver colour; most likely unpainted bare aluminium. Both three-legged and two-legged droids are seen with this silver door in different scenes. The photo below shows the RC R2 being carried in Tunisia, early on in the shoot.
However, it's a continuity issue - there are also scenes where all back panels are white.
Here's a shot of John Stears (left) and another technician examining what appears to be a near-complete three-legged metal R2 in the shop. Stears is holding a holoprojector in his hand. Both the silver door, and the narrow door outline next to it, are clearly visible. This image is from 16mm documentary film footage, probably taken on 18 March 1976.
Because this workshop photo and the earliest scenes to be filmed (not the earliest to appear narratively in the film) feature droids with silver doors, it seems clear that this was the intended original look. The silver door shows up throughout the Tunisian shoot, and occasionally in Elstree. The RC R2 as it appeared in the California pickups, however, did not have the silver door.
Conjecture: it appears likely that more than one droid had a silver panel. That said, since many of the metal droids had removable backs, it is possible that the same silver-doored back was used on different droids. However it seems probable that some droids lack the silver door because individual back panels were repainted for various scenes, and someone accidentally painted the whole thing white, not realizing that one of the doors was meant to be different.
Much like C-3PO has a silver lower right leg, and the Millennium Falcon has different coloured hull shielding panels, the silver door was presumably meant to show how R2 was sort of cobbled together from other bits. However somewhere along the line a back from a different droid was used, or some panels got repainted, and the silver door was mostly lost.
The outlined right-hand back compartment door, however, shows up only on the RC R2 in scenes shot in Tunisia and Elstree. Was this intentional? (as the photo of Stears above suggests it might have been) Or was it that the outer frame of the compartment fell off at some point prior to filming, and they only realized it when the droid arrived in Tunisia and it was too late. This latter theory suggests that the outline was the unpainted metal of the inner body that was exposed by the missing frame.
ESB, prequels, sequels: The back door panels are all uniformly white.
Skirts
ANH: The tapered section at the bottom of the body barrel is known as the "skirt" to fans, or "bottom ring assembly" on the blueprints. Most ANH skirts were round at the front and back, and straight on the sides to clear the battery boxes (first photo below).
However it seems that at least two ANH droids had round skirts (second photo below, which was taken during the production of the Holiday Special), particularly the R5-based robots.
Note that the raised ridges are not evenly spaced around the skirt, but are grouped in pairs. This paired ridge pattern was present on the earliest Ralph McQuarrie sketches, and even the first prototype wooden R2.
One interesting change that occurred partway through filming involves the foot hole at the bottom of the RC R2's skirt. It was designed to be rectangular, and was built that way as shown in the first photo above. Basically it was the same size and shape as the middle foot itself.
However, by the end of the film the hole maintained its straight sides, but the front and back of the hole were curved to match the curvature of the skirt. The photo below, taken during a TV appearance in 1977, shows the modified hole type. The best reason I've heard to explain this change comes from Mark Kiger, who theorizes that the hole was enlarged because of third-foot deployment failures. This is discussed further in the R5 section.
Finally, most of the photos we've seen indicate most skirts were either featureless and flat on the underside, or were simply hollow. However, one droid in particular looks quite interesting! This fascinating photo, courtesy "Hellboy" screenwriter Peter Briggs, shows the ANH prop used for the ILM studio pickups in 1977, often referred today as the "Star Wars: Identities" exhibition droid. The photo was taken at the London Barbican exhibition in 2000.
Notice how there's a selection of interesting-looking greeblies glued under there! The frontmost one is the droid strip/top deck casting from an X-wing, so these modifications were most likely made at ILM and not Elstree. Notice also the underside of the foot and the wooden wheel. Why was there a big circular hole? Was there a caster there at some point? Who knows! And note that this was a round skirt - the straight-sided skirts wouldn't have as much flat underside space on either side.
ESB: The ESB skirts were all straight-sided and most look the same as the ANH droids. There's one exception, however. At least one RC R2 droid had a row of objects along the port/left side of the skirt - two switches or pushbuttons, and five lights. You can't see these in most of the film, except for a brief appearance as R2 approaches the portcullis door that slams down in Bespin. In this scene you can see the row of lights, and one goes on red as the droid nears the door.
An unused shot of R2 at Echo Base shows the row of LEDs and buttons more clearly.
Not every droid has these lights. The Kenny droids don't seem to, and at least one RC R2 seen on Bespin also doesn't. So I don't know if just one RC droid had them or more than one. A droid used for public appearances in 1979 and 1980 definitely had them. Here's an ESB RC R2 on the British children's show Blue Peter in 1980. Incidentally, and quite bizarrely, R2 rolls around with his dome on backwards throughout this entire show! He also rolls up and collides with one of the Blue Peter dogs. Bad, R2, bad!
A video of a 1980 concert by the Boston Pops Orchestra shows a bit more detail. In this show Anthony Daniels as C-3PO pretends to conduct a performance of the Star Wars theme, with R2-D2 by his side; a story described in his biography. The R2 is an ESB unit, and although the WGBH Boston video isn't as clear as the BBC video, R2 does spin around a few times. When he does so you can see stage lights casting shadows on the row of lights on the left side of the skirt. The operator also drives R2 audaciously close to the edge of the stage.
These shadows suggest that the first two objects were protruding switches or pushbuttons, and the remaining five objects were lights. Only the left-hand light is lit, and it's red. It's not clear if just one remote R2 built for ESB had these buttons and/or lights, or if they all did. The droid used on the Muppet Show and Sesame Street TV appearances also had the lights. The photo below is a detail of a promo shot taken during the Muppet Show.
Prequels: The Uber R2 built for the prequels had a slide switch and red LED, in a chromed LED holder, on the right/starboard flat side of the skirt. This was used to power the droid on. However, the most notable aspect to the Uber R2 design was a small hole in the middle of the skirt, centre-front. This was to accommodate a wide-angle video camera so that the operator could see R2's point of view via a remote radio transmitter, but it was never actually used in production. Some other droids in the movie seem to have had rounded skirts, though not the same as the ANH round skirts.
Sequels: Straight sided skirts; no evidence of switches or lights.
On to the R2-D2 Detail Catalogue Part C: Legs, Shoulders, and Feet
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