The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot

The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot

Author: Eleanor Ehrhardt

Illustrator: Mark Corcoran
Medium: Picture book
Publication Date: March 1979
Timeline Placement: 0 ABY

 

Han, Chewie, and the droids are delivering a shipment of supplies to Tatooine, where the Rebellion is doing relief work to help the population during a planet-wide drought. When R2-D2 stops working, Han oils up his joints, causing the little robot to go berserk and hijack the Falcon. Unable to regain control of his ship, Han calls for help from Rey Luke, who's waiting on Tatooine for the delivery of the parts so the Rebellion can build a super-vaporator. Luke hops in his X-wing and is able to use the Force to bring the Falcon under control and guide it in for a landing. It isn't explained exactly how he does this, but presumably he didn't use telekinesis on the whole ship as this is still a few years before he'll fail to levitate his starfighter out of a swamp.

The leaders and technicians of the super-vaporator project meet to discuss all the setbacks they've been experiencing, from sabotaged droids to missing equipment, when suddenly the conference room explodes! Fortunately, C-3PO is the only one injured, and he's taken to the droid maintenance bay to be repaired. This scene feels oddly prescient, as Han Solo and Princess Leia will later be present for the bombing of the Senate in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's The New Rebellion, published 17 years later. Although poor Threepio is an innocent bystander here, exploding droids will also be involved in that future terrorist attack.

C-3PO is given an oil bath, but this just makes him feel worse. Even more distressing, it causes him to lose his voice! Some random R5 droid working in the repair bay becomes the hero of this book when it deduces that Artoo and Threepio have both been treated with contaminated oil. The droid flushes their systems and they're fully healed. The three robots go to report their discovery to the project leader, Captain Egoreg, whose name is clearly a tuckerization of Capetian Gorge, when they accidentally burst in on a group of Jawas engaged in thievery. 

 

Of course, those subhuman Jawas were behind everything! They've been sabotaging the relief effort's efforts to bring relief for their own profit. As junk traders, the Jawas realized what American manufacturers did long ago: the lower quality product you sell, the faster it will wear out, forcing the consumer to spend more money on a replacement. To that end, they've been secretly damaging the Rebellion's equipment and droids so they throw them out and the Jawas can resell them to the locals, I guess. You know, it's not completely clear, but that doesn't matter right now because the droids and the Jawas tussle and the heroic nameless maintenance droid is knocked over, allowing Artoo to claim all the glory for himself when he sounds the alarm.

Han and Chewie come running, with Chewbacca bellowing a mighty Wookiee roar that causes all the Jawas to simultaneously freeze in their tracks and shit their robes. The Jawas are taken to be punished in some undisclosed way and Princess Leia awards Chewbacca a medal for his heroism. This is the second medal she's given him within the last few months, probably because she's still trying to live down getting canceled on Twitter for passing him over at the Yavin awards ceremony.

Chalk up another win for Eleanor Ehrhardt, who is fast becoming one of the most underrated EU authors in my eyes. More so than the story, however, what really shines about The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot is the wonderfully weird illustrations of Mark Corcoran. His whimsical, exaggerated art style and almost psychedelic watercolors are completely unique in the EU, and do a lot to make this book an absolute must-read.