Month: February 2009

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On a jet plane

Well, as you all are reading this (theoretically), The Daughter and I are on the first of a series of flights which will bring us back to Buffalo. I’ve enjoyed seeing The Wife’s family again, albeit under terribly sad circumstances, but I’m ready to be home. The Wife is staying behind for an additional week to assist her father with the continued adoption of a new life, so I’ll be lonely for a few days. Sigh.

Anyway, for the rest of today, remember Blogroll Amnesty Week and Ask Me Anything!.

(Something for Thursday will return next week.)

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Suiting up

John Cole on the “debate” surrounding the stimulus package:

No one is selling it. The Democrats are simply AWOL. All I see on my tv are Republicans talking about wasteful spending, as if they have any credibility on that topic. I would pay to see Barney Frank matched up against a Republican opposed to the stimulus bill, because every Democrat has an easy retort- “If you have so many good economic ideas, how come you never passed any of them along to the last President?”

It isn’t so much that Obama is losing control in the debate. The Democrats just aren’t participating, and this isn’t so much a debate as a Republican monologue. We all know, given our “liberal” media, how that is going to play out in the long run.

That’s exactly right, and I find it extremely disheartening. I don’t know if Democrats just don’t want to look the way the Republicans looked the last eight years — rubberstamping everything from the White House without giving it one whit of thought beforehand — or if they’re simply assuming that the natural rightness of their position will eventually win the day or if they’re simply stupid or gutless. It doesn’t matter: they need to quit trying to live up to this lunatic notion of “bipartisanship” and mix it up.

I’m reminded of something Toby Ziegler said in a first season episode of The West Wing, after they decide to not pursue a policy they all believe in but know would be politically difficult:

It’s not the ones we lose that bother me,
it’s the ones we don’t suit up for
.

Isn’t that the truth.

Look, folks: “bipartisanship” is, and ought to be, right now, a dead concept. Seriously: it should be as dead as old Marley. For one thing, the current definition of “bipartisan” in Washington is that whether they’re the majority or the smallest minority in a generation, the Republicans get what they want. I say, screw that. We’ve just come through a period in which Republicans got whatever they wanted just about all of the time, and the results are crap. Piss on what the Republicans want, for God’s sake.

But for another thing, really, what’s wrong with partisanship, anyway? What’s so bad about it? The reason we have parties is that people have different ideas as to what direction the country should take. That’s the way it works: people tend to group politically according to the kinds of policies they would like to pursue, and right now, we’ve just had an election where one party’s ideas were strongly endorsed (or, if you’d prefer, the other party’s policies strongly rejected). Democrats, and the national media, need to stop acting as though the Republicans still get to control the debate.

In other words, Democrats need to suit up. It’s too important now.

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Backing away slowly….

So I posted the conclusion of “The Balance in the Blood”, my horror novelette about a Nazi doctor who conducts horrific experiments regarding vampirism on concentration camp inmates, and then I proceeded to surf the Interweb for a while, during which I came across this item about one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camp doctors, who was recently found to have died fifteen years ago. No real comment here, but it was a bit spooky.

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Great Moments in Sequential Art

This panel from a recent installment of Pearls Before Swine made me laugh uproariously:

The storyline here was amusing — the trio of stupid crocodiles adopting superpowers, each relating to obscure office skills like doorstopping, stapling, and removing paper jams from printers — but what got me was “Curse you Hoolit Packurd!”

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“The Balance in the Blood” (conclusion)

Concluding a serialized novelette.

Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Old Willem Schliemann watches the sun drop beyond the Argentine hills. “It won’t be long now,” he says to no one at all, and it isn’t. The sky in the west is still violet when suddenly she is there before him. Her clothes are different, of course; fashion has advanced quite a lot in the fifty years since he’s seen her last. But she still looks the same: the gently curling hair, the unnaturally pale skin. In her right hand she holds a leather satchel that Willem has seen before, but not since that night when he last saw her. She does not smile. He wonders if she has ever smiled at all, through all the years since the Nazis came.

“I’ve brought you something,” she says in perfect German. She holds out the satchel, and he takes it. He does not look inside. “Should I call you ‘Father’? You gave me this life.”

“Life?” Willem chuckles at that. “Such as it is. You may call me that, if it pleases you. I always wanted a daughter.”

“Do you have sons?”

“I did, once. Maybe I still do.”

She sits down beside him. He hears something strange about her breath, and he realizes that she only breathes to talk. Do vampires respirate? he wonders, ever the scientist.

“What happened after the camp?” she asks.

“We went to Switzerland,” Willem says. “Doktor Muething’s brother – who controlled the money, being first-born and all that – had been quite the drunkard, which made it easy for the Doktor to steal enough of the family fortune to establish himself in Zurich when we got there. He told me then that he had no further use for me, and that I would be safer away from him in any case. So he paid my passage to Barcelona, and from there I was able to get passage on a steamer to Buenos Aires in exchange for my medical services on the journey. We were boarded twice by Allied patrols, but no one paid any heed to a German boy playing medic. I’ve been here ever since.”

“I know you have,” she says. “Except for your trips abroad. I’ve followed you everywhere. Except Cairo, of course. There is too much sun in Egypt.”

Willem only shrugs.

“I found him there, you know. In Zurich. He died there.”

Willem looks at her.

“Did you kill him?”

She shakes her head. “Heart attack. December 11, 1957. He took up smoking and became quite the drunkard as well after the war, you know. I did talk to him before the end, though. Did you know he was half-Jewish?”

Willem closes his eyes and nods, once. It is painful, even now. He still has that letter, the only one the Doktor ever wrote to him, despite the fact that it is evidence of his status as a war-criminal. “His father had a mistress, a young Jewish girl. She became pregnant at the same time as his mother – his father’s wife. The Jewish girl died in childbirth, and the wife miscarried. So they introduced the illegitimate child as both of theirs, and no one ever knew. Doktor Muething didn’t know until his father told him just before dying.” Willem shakes his head.

“He wanted to save us,” she says. “He believed that perhaps through vampirism the Jews could have power and freedom, which they had never had.”

Willem nods. The Reich is dead, and yet the hatred remains, Wolf Muething wrote in that letter. It will always remain.

“Am I to become one of your victims?” Willem asks.

“No. For something else.” She gestures to the satchel.

Willem opens the satchel and draws out a hammer and a wooden stake, one end of which is honed to a lethal point. He looks up at her.

“No balance lasts forever,” she says with a shrug. She stands and walks a few steps away from him. Her form is silhouetted against the deepening purple of the night sky. “They came for me in the dark of night. They came for us all, took us all away. They took away the world. You gave it back to me. For that I am ever grateful. But it must end.”

“I made you a vampire,” he says. “I gave you only the night.”

“It was the only way,” she replies. “There was no other. You could not give me Life after I was shot. But you could stay Death’s hand, at least for a time. I have walked the world for fifty-four years, and now I am tired. I want no more of night and dark. I want no more of blood, of corpses, of feasting upon death.” She turns to face him as a cool breeze stirs. “We are trapped in the cycle of death that they created. You can give me release. You can end the cycle.”

“That cycle never ends,” Willem says. He looks down at the implements in his hand, the hammer and the stake. Then he rises and walks over to her. She lies down on the ground in front of him, her hands at her side.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” she says.

He kneels down beside her and places the tip of the stake on her chest, directly over her heart. The palsy in his hands makes it shake. He lists the hammer, and then he hesitates. Tears form in his eyes, and one rolls down his cheek.

“Please,” she says.

He closes his eyes and is transported back to the night of her creation as clearly as if it were the night before. He and Doktor Muething had fled without the possibility of knowing what had become of their creation. He has known, since that very night of killing and creation, that she would someday come. And he has always been certain of why she would come, but this isn’t the reason. Not this. Never this.

“Our Father,” Willem says. “Our Father….who art….Our Father who art….” He searches for the words but they do not come. He wonders if Uncle Gunther would approve. He wonders what Uncle Gunther would say, what he could possibly say.

“Sometimes, Willem, all we can do is end the pain.”

And there, as he has done so often in his misbegotten life, Willem Schliemann finds the answer he needs in the words of his uncle. He lifts the hammer again and brings it down with all his strength. The stake drives through skin and bone, impaling the undead heart beneath. Blood, living and dead, erupts from the wound, gushing out in an impossible amount. She screams in agony and release, and when her scream ends her body ages again at last, accumulating fifty-four years in mere seconds. And then she is gone.

An hour passes as the sky darkens and Willem makes the preparations, and then he stands before the pyre as the flames consume his vampire. The words he recites are unheard by anyone, and yet he recites them just as he has practiced them for years. After all, the words are not for the living. They are for God.

A new century dawns as a Nazi says Kaddish for a Jew whose name he has never known.

Finis

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Blogroll Amnesty Day Week

According to Jon Swift, yesterday was the annual Blogroll Amnesty Day, which began as a day when big bloggers could give themselves permission to eliminate blogs at will from their blogrolls and feel no guilt over it, but ended up being a day when blogs should help out other blogs by adding them to their blogrolls. That’s what I’ll do, so if you have a blog you want blogrolled or know a blog I should blogroll, go ahead and suggest it here!

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A reminder

Don’t forget, gentle readers: being February, among this month’s festivities on Byzantium’s Shores is Ask Me Anything!

So, if there’s something you want to ask me, anything at all, go ahead and drop it in comments on the official Ask Me Anything! 2009 post. Or you can e-mail them, or do a Facebook message, or whatever. Anonymous questions are fine, just as long as they’re not insulting (i.e., “Why not stop blogging, you blowhard dumba$$?”).

So Ask Me Anything!

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Making Montages

UPDATE: Link fixed.

In comments to my “Men I admire” post, Roger asks how I made the photo montage of the men I cited. You can use this online tool to do the job (requires an account of some sort), but I just did it myself using Photofiltre. First I decided the size of the montage — in this case, four rows of five photos apiece. Then I figured on the size of each individual shot; I think I went with 250 px wide by 300 tall.

Figuring thusly, the montage in the end would be 1250 px wide by 1200 tall. I created a blank new image in Photofiltre with those dimensions and then I had to crop each individual image down to 250*300. Once I had a 250*300 headshot, I simply cut and paste it into the final montage and then moved it into position. Easy as pie! It takes a bit of time, but then, I enjoy creating montages.

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Evasive maneuvers

I’m seeing a bit of snarky commentary around the Interweb that since three of President Obama’s nominees to high positions have turned out to have problems with getting their taxes paid, maybe it’s a “party” thing. As in, Democrats don’t pay their taxes and Republicans do.

Sure.

Well, it doesn’t take much Googling to find a bunch of Republicans who have had their problems with tax evasion. One such name is the Idiot Who Won’t Go Away, Samuel Wurzelbacher, otherwise known as “Joe the Plumber”. When John McCain, whose campaign basically consisted of saying false things and elevating know-nothings from obscurity to prominence (see “Palin, Sarah”), thrust Wurzelbacher into the limelight, our plumber friend was having a bit of tax trouble in Ohio.

Of course, clearly the “We always pay our taxes, unlike those tax cheatin’ Democrats” Party, when learning of Joey Drano’s tax problems, promptly shunted off to Tax Evader Purgatory, never to be heard from again, right? Errrr…nope. But that’s OK, because Joe’s keen insight into the stimulus package clearly outweighs his little tax kerfuffle, right?

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Fixing the Prequels: Attack of the Clones (part four)

part one
part two
part three

Okeyday, wesa back!

Continuing with our script-doctoring of Attack of the Clones, Obi Wan and Anakin have just apprehended the assassin who was trying to kill Padme, only to have that assassin killed by the toxic dart possibly fired by someone wearing a rocket jet pack. After that sequence is done, we cut to the next morning, when Obi Wan and Anakin report to the Jedi Council on what’s been going on:

INTERIOR: JEDI TEMPLE, COUNCIL CHAMBER – DAY

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN stand in the center of the Council Chamber. The members of the Jedi Council are seated in a circle surrounding the two Jedi.

YODA: Track down this bounty hunter, you must, Obi-Wan.

MACE WINDU: Most importantly, find out who he’s working for.

OBI-WAN: What about Senator Amidala? She will still need protecting.

YODA: Handle that, your Padawan will.

MACE WINDU: Whoever hired the assassin you caught last night will certainly hire another and another until the job is done, so until Obi Wan can get to the bottom of this plot, you, Anakin, will escort the Senator back to her home planet of Naboo. She’ll be safer there. And don’t use registered transport. Travel as refugees.
Anakin tries to conceal his eagerness at this assignment.

ANAKIN: As the leader of the opposition, it will be very difficult to get Senator Amidala to leave the Capital.

YODA: Until caught this killer is, our judgment she must respect.

ANAKIN: She may need more convincing than the judgment of the Jedi Council.

MACE WINDU: Anakin, go to the Senate and ask Chancellor Palpatine to speak with her.

The two Jedi exit the Council Chamber.

Here’s where I’d make an addition. There was an exchange between Yoda and Mace Windu that happened earlier in the script, but didn’t happen in the film. I mentioned it in the last installment, and here’s where I’d put it. After Obi Wan and Anakin leave the Council Chamber:

MACE WINDU: Two attacks on the Senator, and we still cannot see who is behind this?

YODA: Masking the future, is this disturbance in the Force.

MACE WINDU: The prophecy is coming true, and the Dark Side is growing. It’s been ten years, and the Sith still have yet to show themselves.

YODA: …Out there, they are. A certainty that is.

This scene, and several that follow, are basically scene-setting talking scenes, without much to really address in terms of outright “fixes”. In the scene above, I only add a couple of lines to clear up the nature of the danger Padme still faces.

Next, Anakin goes to Palpatine to ask him to basically order Padme to go home incognito. I like this scene a great deal and wouldn’t change it at all. Here’s the scene:

INTERIOR: SENATE BUILDING, PALPATINE’S OFFICE – DAY

ANAKIN and PALPATINE stand at the window of PALPATINE’S office and look out over the vast city.

PALPATINE: I will talk to her. Senator Amidala will not refuse an executive order. I know her well enough to assure you of that.

ANAKIN: Thank you, your Excellency.

PALPATINE: And so, my young Padawan, they have finally given you an assignment. Your patience has paid off.

ANAKIN: Your guidance more that my patience.

PALPATINE: You don’t need guidance, Anakin. In time you will learn to trust your feelings. Then you will be invincible. I have said it many times, you are the most gifted Jedi I have ever met.

PALPATINE and ANAKIN turn away from the window and walk through PALPATINE’S office towards the door.

ANAKIN: Thank you, your Excellency.

PALPATINE: I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi, Anakin. Even more powerful than Master Yoda.

What’s good here is how much is established in a very brief conversation. Anakin has a relationship with Palpatine that has clearly been blossoming for some time; clearly Palpatine wasn’t just gilding the lily at the end of TPM when he told young Anakin that he’d be following Anakin’s career with “great interest”. This establishes that Palpatine has taken a hands-on approach with Anakin, even as Anakin has been learning of the Force.

Also, this exchange establishes that Anakin, the once fatherless boy, now has not one but two father figures in his life, Obi Wan and Palpatine, who are deeply divergent figures to begin with (even before it turns out that Palpatine is a Sith Lord). Anakin is constantly being pulled in two directions, which is what ultimately creates the conflict within him that first leads him to embrace the Dark Side and, much later, to reject it. There’s a lot of this kind of subtlety woven throughout the Prequel Trilogy; it’s too bad that Lucas never gets credit for it.

This exchange doesn’t just establish that Anakin has two father figures, but also establishes the different approaches those two father figures take in Anakin’s upbringing. Obi Wan is the stern taskmaster much of the time, constantly focusing on Anakin’s errors and his need for control, while Palpatine is all about enabling Anakin, praising him, feeding his ego. Palpatine knows what he’s doing, after all. He’s planting the seeds in Anakin’s eventual fall from grace.

After this scene, we cut back to the Jedi temple, where Obi Wan is conferring with Yoda and Mace Windu:

INTERIOR: JEDI TEMPLE, ATRIUM – DAY

MACE WINDU and OBI-WAN walk along the Temple corridors. YODA accompanies them, riding in a small floating chair.

OBI-WAN: I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.

YODA: The Council is confident in this decision, Obi-Wan.

MACE WINDU: The boy has exceptional skills.

OBI-WAN: But he still has much to learn, Master. His abilities have made him… well, arrogant.

YODA: Yes, yes. It’s a flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones.

MACE WINDU: Remember, Obi-Wan. If the prophecy is true, your apprentice is the only one who can bring the Force back into balance.

OBI-WAN: If he follows the right path.

While this scene is always cool to watch, what with the giant atrium of the Temple and Yoda hanging out on his floating chair, the scene doesn’t really accomplish anything. Obi Wan’s misgivings should be addressed, but not here, I don’t think. I would actually cut this entirely, and instead cut from Anakin’s meeting with Palpatine to his scene with Padme in the apartment. Here’s that scene, as written by Lucas and Hales, with a few notations of mine scattered within:

INTERIOR: APARTMENT BUILDING, AMIDALA’S APARTMENT – DAY

ANAKIN looks as PADMÉ and JAR JAR talk, standing near the door of the anteroom to PADMÉ’S bedroom. DORMÉ moves about packing luggage.

PADMÉ: I’m taking an extended leave of absence. It will be your responsibility to take my place in the Senate. Representative Binks, I know I can count on you.

JAR JAR: Mesa honored to be taken on dissa heavy burden. (pompously) Mesa accept this with muy muy humility and da…

PADMÉ: Jar Jar. I don’t wish to hold you up. I’m sure you have a great deal to do.

JAR JAR: Of course, M’Lady.

JAR JAR bows and goes out. PADMÉ walks briskly to ANAKIN. She is in a very bad mood.

ANAKIN: I’m sure that he’ll do fine–

PADMÉ: (cutting him off) I do not like this idea of hiding. Had I known it would have come to this, I would never have agreed to Jedi protection.

Anakin tries not to look stung by this.

ANAKIN: Don’t worry, now that the Council has ordered an investigation, it won’t take Master Obi-Wan long to find this bounty hunter.

PADMÉ: (frustrated) I haven’t worked for a year to defeat the Military Creation Act not to be here when its fate is decided!

ANAKIN: Sometimes we have to let go of our pride and do what is requested of us.

PADMÉ: Pride?!? Annie, you’re young, and you don’t have a very firm grip on politics. I suggest you reserve your opinions for some other time.

[NOTE: I like this reaction of Padme’s. It wasn’t in the movie, but I like that she’s willing to bite back at Anakin, and it further shows that she’s not seeing him as a grown-up yet.]

ANAKIN: Sorry, M’Lady. I was only trying to…

PADMÉ: (trying to shut him up) Annie, please–

ANAKIN: (suddenly angry) Don’t call me that.

PADMÉ: What?

ANAKIN: “Annie.”

PADMÉ: I’ve always called you that… it is your name, isn’t it?

ANAKIN: It’s Anakin. When you say Annie it’s like I’m still a little boy… and I’m not.

[NOTE: I like this bit, too. Padme does, over the course of the movie, stop calling Anakin “Annie”, and this gives that a bit of context. I like that he’s basically asking her to see him as more than the little boy from ten years before. That’s how it should be.]

PADMÉ: I’m sorry, Anakin. It’s impossible to deny you’ve…(looks him over) …that you’ve grown up.

PADMÉ smiles at ANAKIN. He becomes a little shy.

ANAKIN: Well…Master Obi-Wan manages not to see it…

PADMÉ: Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like. It’s the only way we grow.

ANAKIN: Don’t get me wrong… Obi-Wan is a great mentor, as wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu. I am truly thankful to be his apprentice. Only… although I’m a Padawan learner, in some ways… a lot of ways… I’m ahead of him. I’m ready for the trials. I know I am! He knows it too. But he feels I’m too unpredictable… Other Jedi my age have gone through the trials and made it… I know I
started my training late… but he won’t let me move on.

PADMÉ: That must be frustrating.

ANAKIN: It’s worse… he’s overly critical! He never listens! He just doesn’t understand. It’s not fair!

PADMÉ cannot suppress a laugh. She shakes her head.

PADMÉ: I’m sorry… You sounded exactly like that little boy I once knew, when he didn’t get his way.

ANAKIN: I’m not whining! I’m not.

[NOTE: I’d ditch this last line, just have him glare at her.]

PADMÉ just smiles at him. DORMÉ laughs in the background.

PADMÉ: I didn’t say it to hurt you.

ANAKIN: I know…

There is a brief silence, then PADMÉ comes over to ANAKIN.

PADMÉ: Anakin…

They look into each other’s eyes for the first time.

PADMÉ: Don’t try to grow up too fast.

ANAKIN: I am grown up. You said it yourself.

ANAKIN looks deep into PADMÉ’S eyes.

PADMÉ: Please don’t look at me like that.

ANAKIN: Why not?

PADMÉ: Because I can see what you’re thinking.

ANAKIN: (laughing) Ahh… So, you have Jedi powers too?

DORMÉ is watching with concern.

PADMÉ: It makes me feel uncomfortable.

ANAKIN: Sorry, M’Lady.

ANAKIN backs away as PADMÉ turns and goes back to her packing.

Once again I wonder if some stuff got edited out after filming, or if the scene was filmed the way it showed up in the film. Some stuff just isn’t in the movie, and reading this over, I think that the scene works better as written rather than as shot. For one thing, Anakin’s sudden complaint about Obi Wan’s tutelage has a bit better context, in terms of the scene; he’s confident at first, but the conversation quickly goes into areas he’s not nearly as confident about, so he blunders a bit. His defenses down and his feigned confidence shaken, he slips into complaining about his feelings about his lack of progress as a Jedi (or what he sees as a lack of progress), then he can’t help but tip his hand about his attraction to Padme, and that line of Anakin’s in which he tries to recover some control my making light of what’s happening (“So, you have Jedi powers too?”). It feels more like a conversation here.

But I like how she points out that he sounds like the boy she knew, and I like how the script has Dorme hanging in the background, hearing what’s going on. Basically, though, I’m finding as I proceed in detail through these movies that a lot of these scenes actually work better as written than they did as eventually filmed or edited in the final movie, which leads me again to wonder if George Lucas’s drive to bring each movie in under a certain time limit (as far as running time) was his undoing when the films aren’t quite as successful as they could be.

(By the way: I love the visual with which this scene opens: hovering worker droids replacing the window that Obi Wan had jumped through the night before.)

Next we cut to one of Coruscant’s spaceports, where Padme and Anakin are about to leave for Naboo:

EXTERIOR: CORUSCANT, SPACEPORT FREIGHTER DOCKS, TRANSPORT
BUS – DAY

A small bus speeds toward the massive freighter docks of Coruscant’s industrial area. The spaceport is bustling with activity. Transports of various sizes move supplies and passengers as giant floating cranes lift cargo out of the starships. The bus stops before a huge, intergalactic freighter starship. It parks in the shadows of an overhang.

INTERIOR: CORUSCANT, SPACEPORT FREIGHTER DOCKS, TRANSPORT
BUS – DAY

ANAKIN and PADMÉ, dressed in Outland peasant outfits, get up and head for the door where CAPTAIN TYPHO, DORMÉ and OBI-WAN are waiting to hand them their luggage.

CAPTAIN TYPHO: Be safe, M’Lady.

PADMÉ: Thank you, Captain. Take good care of Dormé… The threat’s on you two now.

DORMÉ: He’ll be safe with me.

They laugh, and PADMÉ embraces her faithful handmaiden. DORMÉ starts to weep.

PADMÉ: You’ll be fine.

DORMÉ: It’s not me, M’Lady. I worry about you. What if they realize you’ve left the Capital?

PADMÉ: (looks to Anakin) Then my Jedi protector will have to prove how good he is.

DORMÉ and PADMÉ smile. ANAKIN frowns as OBI-WAN pulls him aside.

[NOTE: I like this last line. It should have been in the movie. Also, I should note that I like the actress who plays Dorme. She’s pretty and in this brief scene she does some nice things with facial expressions.]

OBI-WAN: Anakin. Don’t do anything without first consulting either myself or the Council.

ANAKIN: Yes, Master.

OBI-WAN: (to Padmé) I will get to the bottom of this plot quickly, M’Lady. You’ll be back here in no time.

PADMÉ: I will be most grateful for your speed, Master Jedi.

ANAKIN: Time to go.

PADMÉ: I know.

PADMÉ gives DORMÉ a last hug. ANAKIN picks up the luggage, and the TWO PEASANTS exit the speeder bus, where ARTOO is waiting for them.

OBI-WAN: Anakin, may the Force be with you.

ANAKIN: May the Force be with you, Master.

They head off toward the giant Starfreighter.

PADMÉ: Suddenly, I’m afraid…

ANAKIN: This is my first assignment on my own. I am too. (looking at Artoo) But don’t worry. We’ve got Artoo with us.

They laugh. OBI-WAN and CAPTAIN TYPHO watch ANAKIN and PADMÉ disappear into the vastness of the spaceport with ARTOO trundling along behind them.

OBI-WAN: I hope he doesn’t try anything foolish.

CAPTAIN TYPHO: I’d be more concerned about her doing something, than him.

EXTERIOR: FREIGHTER DOCKS – CORUSCANT – DAY

The freighter slowly takes off from the huge docks area of Coruscant. It soon moves into the crowded skies.

Two final notes here: I’ve always liked Anakin’s line “Don’t worry, we’ve got Artoo with us.” That’s a good line; after all, nothing’s ever as bad if you’ve got R2-D2 with you, right? And visually, the freighter that Padme and Anakin take from Coruscant to Naboo is one of my favorite starships in the entire PT. I love its dull exterior and the fact that it looks exactly like what it is: a big ship that takes stuff from one place to another. And John Williams’s scoring of the departure is a wonderful little cue.

That’s where we’ll leave off for now. In the next installment, we’ll look at the arrival on Naboo, as well as the adventures of Obi Wan Kenobi, Private Eye!

Excelsior, Star Warriors!!

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