Wheelie Bin Droid WB-5

So I was watching Return of the Jedi, doing some research on the R2-D2s they used. And I noticed this brief glimpse of a background droid in the opening sequence.

In the back of the hangar set can be seen a surprisingly large black Imperial droid. It just rolls by behind the serried ranks of Imperial officers, like a massive mouse droid with eyes on stalks. But no attention is ever really drawn to it, much like Star Wars always does. And I thought it looked rather interesting.

I did a bit of looking around, but couldn't find any information on the thing. No post-production made-up name with silly backstory, no photos of the original prop, no other appearance that I know of. So I thought it might be fun to try and figure out what it might have looked like.

Problem is you never see the whole thing except in a low-rez long shot. So I had to take a bunch of screenshots, layer them, and erase all the actors. That wasn't tedious at all. I then built up a crude 3D model of the thing. No photogrammetry or anything, so it's probably rather inaccurate, but gives the gist.

The front end and the top definitely aren't all correct – the front side looks different when seen from the two camera angles (no idea why), and the binocular post is too far forward. And, if it's the same bin reused by the Ewoks (see below) my model definitely has got mistakes. But at this point I think I've put enough time into it.

Treadwells

It looks like the filmmakers took the binocular top off an episode IV Treadwell droid, put some lights behind the lenses, grabbed an upside-down plastic garbage wagon or something similar, and plunked the whole thing on top of the wheels and tracks from the base of the same Treadwell. So in my image above I should probably shift the binocular pole back to be inline with the third pair of wheels.

Incidentally, there were two Treadwell-type droids in that first film - a "binocular" droid seen briefly inside the sandcrawler and the deleted Luke/vaporator scene, and an "umbrella" droid seen in the auction sequence. The binocular droid was used as a basis for this one. (thanks to Oliver Steeples for pointing out how the tracks were reused!) Notice, incidentally, how the upper arm on this droid is the same arm in R2-D2 for the holochess scene. The arm with a pickle grabber tip.

The Ewok Connection

Eagle-eyed Brandon Alinger has pointed out a prop in the 1985 TV special, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, that looks similar if not identical. At least in terms of being a wheelie bin - the Treadwell parts do not appear to be present. The car-shaped icon on the side is also present, and the pipe thingies wrapped around the bottom do look very similar to the ROTJ droid. In the TV show the Ewoks repurpose the bin as a kind of catapult.

It seems odd that said droid would make such an appearance. After all, the Death Star II sequences from ROTJ were filmed in England. The Ewok TV show was filmed 3-4 years later in California. Maybe they thought it would provide some sort of narrative continuity or something. Or maybe it just ended up being shipped back to Marin County, and someone thought it'd be fun to recycle it. Who knows?

Conjecture: perhaps this could explain why Lucasfilm appears to have no records for this prop. Let's assume it was constructed in England for the Death Star II scene, and then shipped back to LFL with all the other Star Wars stuff once production was complete. It sat there for a couple years, until the production team for the Ewok show decided to see what ROTJ stuff they could reuse. They came across this bin, decided to use it, and it got thrown out at the end of shooting, This would explain why there's no trace of it today. The only weak point to this theory is that, aside from the Ewok costumes, there's almost nothing obviously Star Warsy in Battle for Endor, in terms of props. (though I did notice a couple pieces of Death Star foam blocks on the spaceship set!)

To save you the pain of watching the Ewok show (main highlight: an Ewok saying "shit!"), I sat through it myself just so I could screenshot the very brief scene in which this possible wheelie bin droid makes its appearance. You're welcome.

Naming the droid

Since the ROTJ droid didn't have a name that I know of, I thought "wheelie bin droid" would be good. And WB-5? Why not!