VII:  Other Astro-droids

From the very beginning of the movie, Lucas wanted the audience to know that C-3PO and R2-D2 weren't particularly special or unusual - they were simply working droids in a universe where robots are commonplace and everyday.

Accordingly background droids of various types crop up throughout the entire 1977 movie, though none are particularly important characters. Some are specific and unique droids, such as the “Treadwell” droids - basically poles on tracks. Many others, however, were simple R2 repaints, or R2 bodies with different heads.

R5-D4

The droid auction was the first scene to be filmed in Tunisia, and indeed the whole movie, and by all accounts was seriously challenging for the production team. The robots didn't cooperate, and all kinds of shortcuts ended up being taken just to get footage in the can.

Here John Stears and a colleague desperately try to get ill-fated and red-striped astro-droid R5-D4 to work on location in Tunisia. R5 was the robot that blows his top during the auction scene. However, the photo below shows that the radio-controlled R2-D2 body, with added red utility arms and stripes, was being set up for this shot at this point.

And here you can see another view of the team struggling to get the third leg to extend down as required by the scene. Various details, such as the R2 middle foot, clearly indicate that this was indeed the radio-controlled R2-D2 serving as R5. The finished film, however, never shows this particular droid prop ever playing R5.

And this is why. The shot below, taken from the "Making of Star Wars" documentary, shows the radio-controlled R2, sporting R5 red stripes and equipped with an R5 head, faceplanting ignominiously after the middle leg had extended but failed to lock in place. Ouch. Anyone who's spent ages building a droid has to wince in sympathy at the pain the builders must have gone through when this happened.

Conjecture: R2 researcher Mark Kiger has suggested that the leg drop design failed in Tunisia because of the size of the opening in the skirt beneath R2's body barrel. It appears that the descending middle foot may have got its front edge caught on the edge of the skirt. Evidence for this theory comes in the form of later photos of the RC R2, which show a foot hole with an enlarged foot hole front and back. Contrast that to the rectangular opening seen during the droid auction shoot.

The Death Star leg drop sequences clearly show the RC R2 with the enlarged foot opening. The photo below shows the RC R2 in a public appearance after filming was complete. Another point supporting this theory is the fact that the width of the hole doesn't appear to have been enlarged, but the front and back were. The middle foot was on a pivot that would swing when not resting on the ground, and thus would be likely to catch on either the front or back edge of the hole, but not the sides.

Another factor is damage. C&L's Neil Anderson has mentioned that the RC R2 was damaged when the cargo plane carrying it to Tunisia landed roughly, and that the middle leg's operation was affected. One of the catch mechanisms failed to work. John Stears makes passing reference to this in a 1970s article.

In the end R5 switched from 2 to 3 leg mode off-camera. Only R2-D2 was shown switching leg modes in the finished movie.

The R5-D4 Frankendroid

And here's a shot from the actual movie: R5-D4 trundling along, after they gave up using the three-legged R2 unit. Note how it has really raised wheels that frankly look kind of phoney. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing this scene the first time I saw the movie way back when, and immediately thinking, "wow - that robot looks really rinky-dink!"

This R5's legs have single wheels, whereas the R2 droids all had double wheels at each foot. It also has a much longer middle foot ankle, and the middle foot looks quite different from R2's: smaller, with no half-moon decorations. Since its feet look quite different from both R2's and the robot being worked on in the previous shot, it seems likely that this wasn't intended to be used as a hero shot like this.

So in short, this was a bit of a Frankendroid, hastily pieced together on-set. Photo evidence suggests it was a two-legged fibreglass body with the R5 head – but an R2 right leg instead of a true middle leg!

The middle foot and ankle, and the obvious shape of the head, are the primary differences between R2 and R5, aside from the red stripes and red utility arms. There is one other subtle difference – the small horizontal door above the coin slots (often called the "charging bay" by fans after its use in ESB) has a recess, whereas R2's door is flat.

Incidentally there's a story regarding the R5 pyro droid related by producer Gary Kurtz in the book The Making of Star Wars, and that is that the droid builders constructed an R5 head that could contain an explosive charge and a spring-loaded detail to represent the "bad motivator" required by the scene. But they forgot that the controllers for the RC droid was in the equipment-laden frame that sits inside the body but protrudes into the head. So when they got to Tunisia they suddenly realized that the pyro head couldn't fit onto the RC body.

...the red one is supposed to roll out there and its head is supposed to blow up. Well the radio-controlled robot had all the all the controls in the head, so we couldn't put the exploding head on it. So we all stood around for a few minutes looking at each other and saying, ‘Wait a second. The script says the robot is rolling along and the head blows off. Now, you guys are supposed to know better than this. You're the ones that designed this stuff.’

– Gary Kurtz, 2010

The solution was to stick the pyro head on a dummy fibreglass body, then pull the dummy along with fishing line or wire.

Gary Kurtz told us to try our (secret fibreglass) R2-D2 unit. We placed it in front of the camera for the shot required and, positioned correctly, the fishing line did not show up at all, especially against the sandy-coloured desert floor. That ended up being how many of the R2-D2 scenes were filmed that day, and from then on in Tunisia

– Roger Christian, Cinema Alchemist

This behind the scenes shot of the bad motivator scene shows two operators to the left. One is holding a large wooden box which presumably is used to trigger the pyrotechnic explosion. The other is John Stears, mostly cut off here, who's holding a radio control unit. He must be setting off the servo-controlled mechanical effect that causes the dome panel and "motivator" prop to pop out, since this droid is not the RC droid and thus not self-propelled.

The R2-D2 Frankendroid

And here's a particularly fun photo: a promo shot taken very early during location photography in 1976 - quite possibly on the first day of shooting on the Chott el Jerid salt flat in Tunisia. It features C-3PO hanging out with R2-D2 outside Luke's farmstead. And the astromech is famously cobbled together, despite the shot being widely used in promotional material back in the 1970s. In fact, I think I even had a T-shirt with this photo, or one of its several similars, printed on it.

C-3PO basically looks fine, but R2 is actually the aforementioned Frankendroid R5 body with an R2 dome slapped on top. The extra right leg instead of a proper middle leg is extremely clear in this photo. Incidentally, this right leg is in keeping with the view that only right legs were cast in fibreglass during the production of ANH, as described in the "shoulder orientation" section earlier in this article.

Anything else weird? Why yes! The utility arms and front vent surrounds that should be blue on an R2 are white or metallic. Panels that would be red on R5 are relatively clean. A black nylon ziptie is visible on the right battery hoses. One of the front vents is pushed in and falling back (which actually gives us useful information as to how the metal parts for the vents were machined!). The front octagon port is missing its disc detail. The left outer and right inner battery harnesses are missing. Angle irons have been bolted on to keep the body and outer legs at the right angle. The ankle L-shaped details don't have their blue bits painted. The front power socket lacks its blue ring. The middle foot is the undersized one that's missing its half-moon details. The front PSI is switched off.

And a cigarette butt is lying on the Tatooine ground behind them. The Lars are such slobs. Either that, or R2 has been sneaking off behind the bike racks again.

In short, this is simply the fibreglass droid body that was hastily modified to be the "Frankendroid" in the droid auction scene, through the addition of the right leg and small middle foot. However, the body was then used for this promo shoot. The frame around the central vents was left unpainted: the hero R5 unit was red here, but the emergency droid in Tunisia was silver) But the manipulator arms and the two tall compartment doors had already been stripped of their temporary red colour. Then an R2 dome was slapped on the top, Anthony Daniels was called over before the camera, and a bizarre minor footnote in Star Wars history was made.

Conjecture: I wonder if they used self-adhesive vinyl sheet to add the red to R5. Because this fibreglass droid has fairly cleanly defined outlines where the red was. If they'd used paint you'd think that there'd be a lot more smudging around the edges, had they wiped it off with paint thinner. The droid assembly photos taken in Tunisia do suggest a certain flatness to the red areas, in keeping with the properties of adhesive vinyl.

“No paint” is just a theory, but not an unreasonable one. After all, self-adhesive vinyl sheet was widely available in Britain by the 1970s, sold under the Fablon brand. The stuff was immortalized on the BBC kids’ show Blue Peter, where they referred to it as “sticky-backed plastic” to avoid advertising a specific commercial product.

The Frankendroid even played R2-D2 in the actual film. The fibreglass droid was shipped out to the dunes for the escape pod sequence filmed a day or two after the auction scene. They used a fibreglass droid because it was much lighter in weight than the metal ones. R2 couldn't roll over the soft sand, so for this scene he's actually on little skids and being hauled along on a very very long wire, just like in the other dunes scene mentioned in the previous chapter. 

Here one of the crew demonstrates a huge advantage of the fibreglass droid - it's easy to pick up and carry around single-handedly, even on the shifting sands of a dune!

However, at least they had the time to paint in the blue arms and blue frame around the vents, unlike the famous photo above. Notice how the lower neck ring and the coin slot are much too shiny - they weren't made from aluminium like the main droids. Also, it's the same dome used in the shot above - there's blue missing from the blue neck ring just below the front holoprojector.

I stood deep amongst the sand dunes, near the apparently crashed vessel – the escape pod. Props had shovelled my “footsteps” down, away from the pod into the depression below. Maxi and Co had dressed me up as usual. Then they abandoned me, brushing out their footprints as they backed away to the very distant camera. At my side, Props had placed an empty Artoo shell on skis, attached to a long piano wire which disappeared into the haze, towards the crew. I was alone.

– Anthony Daniels

Background droids

Throughout the film, droid extras appear. These were mostly repaints of the R2 and R5 bodies. Here a red and white domed droid is seen being carried through a Tunisian street. It's the RC R2 with a red fibreglass dome on top.

A repainted R5 trundles by during the famous “these aren’t the droids” scene. Since it lacked motors, it was simply pulled along on a line.

Another head was made - a conical dome seen only briefly in a couple of scenes. These conehead droids were later named R4 type droids. The cone is actually quite interesting and surprisingly complex, since it goes from a circular shape to a hexagonal shape from bottom to top.

The Landspeeder sale scene. This scene is kind of hilarious - if you look at Alec Guinness’ face through this and the next scene he just looks like, “what the hell am I doing in this film?”

The right-hand droid has a lit-up holoprojector during the Yavin briefing for some reason. No idea what that was about. Unless maybe it was meant to be where the image on the briefing screen was coming from, perhaps. Though its holo isn't lit up at the start of the scene, so that theory has its problems also.

Note the flat undersides to the feet. Instead of prosaic wheels, in the Star Wars universe droids apparently run on magic flat treads or something.

Another mix 'n' match repaint droid that combines a fibreglass dome with the Frankendroid body and its weird middle leg.

This light blue droid aboard the Death Star is interesting. Since it seems to have a clear and slightly flattened (ie: a half sphere, not ovoid like R2) dome - it's hard to tell. Incidentally, the same droid appears twice in two separate scenes. These were actually one take of the same scene used twice, but the second time (the one below) the scene was flipped horizontally.

Here's a dark blue astromech that hit the cutting room floor in this Death Star outtake.

Think of this poor droid sometime. You know, he told everybody about this amazing moment when he finally put his amateur dramatics training to good use and appeared in this incredible space fantasy movie. He got to roll right past Sir Alec Guinness! What an amazing moment.

The Death Star droid in happier times.

Yet when he took all his friends and family to the cinema to see his first on-screen appearance, he could barely be seen at all. In fact, he can only be glimpsed rolling by in the background of the Rebel hangar. Blink and you miss him.

Tragic. The depression and humiliation that poor droid experienced. I don't think he ever got over it.

Painted domes

Note this background droid has some rather wonky scribed lines, and a dent to the pie plate area above the radar eye.

The makers of Star Wars were nothing if not thrifty. In fact, a fibreglass casting from the plaster dome was also used to make the evil floating black sphere used by Darth Vader to torture his hapless daughter aboard the Death Star. The upper half of the torture robot is an R2 dome; the lower half is an acrylic half-sphere.

Background extra droids lining up for a Mos Eisley scene in Tunisia. Interestingly the droid on the left, which is the redecorated RC R2 with a temporary white dome, has green stripes on its shoulders - perhaps paint, but perhaps strips of green gaffer tape. A side view of the same droid shows V shaped patterns on the sides of the horseshoes. The droid on the right is the cobbled-together two-legged droid with the improvised middle leg used as R5 earlier, and it was hauled along the plywood. There's a faint line on the ground that looks like it's the string used to pull it. Another behind the scenes photo shows a spool of string on the opposite side of the plywood.

This photo is from the Ann Skinner continuity Polaroid collection.

This shot below was taken in Elstree by ILM's Richard Edlund on a visit in 1976. My initial thought was it might be a bunch of props being boxed up for shipment, but the red R5 head was used in shooting the Death Star attack sequence. Also, the guy on the right is carrying a Death Star mouse droid, and the green-striped droid on the left was used aboard the Blockade Runner. So it appears it was taken towards the end of live action production in England.

More droid bits. It seems at least 4 turned metal domes are visible; as yet unpainted. The double cone was the head of a background droid briefly seen in Mos Eisley. It had spindly arms with the sort of lobster-claw manipulators seen to the front left. This droid reused the Treadwell base.

On to part VIII: References

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