Star Wars, As Re-Imagined by Ronald D Moore
UPDATE: Already been done? I'd forgotten this 1999 gem. It even has a scene in a movie theatre, just without Xinna saying "Ut trilly uz a murukul frim Gawd."
Had someone told me in 1979 that by 2007, not only Cylons but also Imperial troopers would have Nizzillind ekksents, I would have howled "Noooooooooo!" to the sky, head cradled in hands, or else retorted "Th'umpurriyil Sinnit wull nutt sutt stull for thuss, eh filler."
SCENE 1:
Interior. The cafe of a university student union, walls covered with various posters. A few dozen students of varying ages are sitting around, talking, eating from meal trays, drinking coffee.
ALLAN VADER walks in. He is a tall Asian man in his 40s who is wearing a black T-shirt with a barely-legible slogan, stove-pipe jeans, motorcycle boots, and a long black leather trenchcoat. He has a shaved head and an eyepatch over one eye, and is smoking a cigarette.
VADER looks around the cafeteria. Camera jerks about dizzyingly.
Eventually camera settles on BELINDA "LUKE" SMITH-WALKER, a young woman aged 20-25, of African appearance, wearing a dark navy pantsuit and jacket. She is sitting alone at a table with her briefcase (and no meal tray) in front of her.
VADER pauses, throws down his cigarette, stamps it out, then walks over to LUKE and stands towering over her. LUKE looks up angrily. Camera jerks about before eventually settling - sort of - on LUKE's face.
LUKE:
You tracked me... to Coruscant? [She pronounces it "Koruskant"]
VADER:
Luke! Join me and rule the galaxy together! It is as foretold in the ancient Scrolls of the Prophet Cassius!
LUKE:
Frak you, Vader. You killed my frakkin' father, you bastard!
VADER:
DON'T -- frakkin' -- well -- frakk with me, Luke. I'm reaching out to you here, do you understand?
Camera cuts back to LUKE. Now JERRY "OBI-WAN" KENOBI is standing behind Luke, but is visible to LUKE only. OBI-WAN is a well-preserved Latino man in his 50s wearing a tuxedo, white gloves, and a red rose in his buttonhole. His hair is neatly brillcreemed in a duck's tail. OBI-WAN bends behind LUKE's head and whispers in her ear:
OBI-WAN:
Oh, come on now, Luke, surely he can do better than that, can't he? Don't let him fool you again. Show him what you're made of.
LUKE:
You're damn right! Frak him!
Camera returns to VADER's point of view, ie we see LUKE but not OBI-WAN.
VADER:
Who the frak you talking to?
LUKE:
None of your frakkin' business, you frakkin frakker! Frak you!
VADER reaches under his trenchcoat and brandishes a samurai sword.
VADER:
It is obvious that this cannot be settled by our knowledge of the Scrolls, but only by our skill with the sabre.
LUKE:
I'm ready for you!
LUKE jumps up and produces a fencing epee from her briefcase. Other students, squealing in alarm, scramble out of their way. VADER snaps his fingers and a dozen IMPERIAL STORMTROOPERS (wearing white T-shirts, white cargo-pants and white go-go boots, with white plastic bike-helmets on their heads) march into the cafeteria, pointing Uzis at LUKE...
* * * * *
SCENE 2: The same cafeteria, two hours later.
GREG GREEDO points a Glock at SOLO.
GREEDO:
Captain Solo?
SOLO:
That is my call-sign, yes.
GREEDO:
Please state your full legal name for the record before I pop three rusty caps in yo'ass.
SOLO:
Han Albert Wentworth Massingham.
GREEDO:
Thank you.
(Begins pulling trigger but then CHEWTOBACCO thrashes him across the neck with a clock of 2 by 4 wood).
SOLO:
Just in time there, Chewie.
CHEWTOBACCO:
Honorable Wookiee take great pleasure in rescue most esteemed Captain.
TO BE CONTINUED [BUT NOT NEXT WEEK BECAUSE CHANNEL TEN IN ITS INFINITE WISDOM HAS FILLED THIS COVETED TIME-SLOT WITH ITS SMASH HIT NEW SPECIAL 'CELEBRITIES FEEDING MILK TO BABY GOATS"]
Further scripting suggestions are invited. Any that amount to no more than thinly-disguised parodies of the Reformation, however, shall be disallowed.
PS: Ouch!
"Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty has clinched a public vote to win "Celebrity Big Brother" after her treatment on the British television show sparked an international row amid fears of racist bullying... US singer Jermaine Jackson, older brother of Michael Jackson, came second followed by actor Dirk Benedict, who starred in the 1980s television series The A-Team..."
-- "Indian star wins UK Big Brother show," NineMSN News (Monday 29 January 2007)
That's KnifeThePope's main claim to televisatory fame?
8 comments:
STAR WARS: BY ISAAC ASIMOV
Luke Skywalker, an earnest young student at the Tatooine Science Academy, has his studies interrupted by the arrival of 2 mysterious robots, R Daneel Olivaw and Giskard, who tell him that his Uncle and Aunt were not killed last year by marauding Sand People, but by Imperial Troops under the command of the cruel Imperial vizier, Darth Vader.
They take him to the Academy Library, where his Mathematics professor Ben Kenobi, is revealed to be none other than the famed psycho-historian, Hari Seldon, whose calculations show the Empire to be in a state of decay. Within a century at most, civilization throughout the great spiral of the galaxy will lie in ruins.
The only solution is to establish a scientific foundation on the remote forest world of Endor, to preserve the knowledge of humanity against the collapse of the Galactic Empire.
But first, they must travel to Coruscant, the famed Imperial Centre, where they must secure funding in the form of the famed Yoda Endowment and an Imperial Charter from the reclusive Emperor Palpatine, last of the Etun Dynasty. Our heroes are opposed by the Evil Darth Vader, who seeks to use the Yoda Endowment for his own sinister ends: A planet-smashing Space Station called the Death Star....
In Asimov's version, instead of a high-speed space battle to destroy the Death Star, the Rebel characters would sit around Leia's living room debating different theories of the weaknesses in the DS, until eventually someone would trump everyone else's theories by proving mathematically that the Death Star had already destroyed itself through its own internal structural flaws. Then cut to the medals-award ceremony scene.
I believe there was a "Hari Seldona" character in one of the "Mills & Boonta" SW spin-offs (an Alderaanian poetess who survived the Destruction), as well as a "Captain Han" in Foundation and Medical Board or one of the other Asimovian sequels.
Captain Han Pritcher, from "The Mule" (Part 2 of Foundation and Empire) and "The Search by the Mule" (Part 1 of Second Foundation).
Ah, the Mule. Now there's a man (if it be lawful to call him a man) to whom all debates over rival contraceptive methods are moot. - AND he had bright orange hair, too.
Still waiting for:
CYLON SKIN-JOB (to LUKE): I have had the death sentence on all 12 colonies, but each time I was resurrected. How about we discuss it over a drink?
LUKE: Keep your drink. Just give me the money. It's you and your hand tonight, you frakkin' Cylon!
No you've got it all wrong. Darth Vader would be recalled after corralling the Rebel Alliance on Endor, to be executed for treason by an insanely jealous Emperor Palpatine, who has been listening to his Visier, Obi-Wan Kenobi, sprout calumny about the ambitious Sith Lord. The Death Star would then be taken over by the Priesthood of the Galactic Spirit and quietly mothballed in their care.
Meanwhile the Second Alliance...
The difference is that to Asimov the word before "Galactica" is "Encyclopaedia" - not "Battlestar".
I think Ron Moore's Star Wars should also include a reference to the planet "Alder". "You don't pronounce the -on on the end any more. That's too disco."
And instead of Jabba being an alien space-slug, MooreRon would make him a human, albeit a really fat one.
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