The White Witch

 

The White Witch

Writer: Peter Sauder

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 7, 1985 

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

The first episode of the animated series Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO begins with our intrepid robotic heroes marooned on the salt flats of the planet Ingo, having been dumped by their most recent master along with his illicit cargo when he was arrested by the authorities. In a familiar turn of events, they wander the desolate wastes until they're come upon by two landspeeder racers, best friends Thall Joben and Jord Dusat. Threepio attempts to give his usual used-car salesman speech about how useful he is but the racers ignore him, showing much more interest in Artoo's astromech abilities to help them soup up their speeder.

 

On the way back to their repair shop, the gang accidentally strays into the territory of the notorious Fromm Gang. Tig Fromm, son of the feared gang boss Sise Fromm, has built a secret base out here in no man's land where he is constructing a massive weapons satellite called the Trigon One. Spherical seeker droids are dispatched to dispatch the interlopers, but a young girl wearing Rey's scavenger costume from The Force Awakens thirty years early helps them escape.

 

Later, the girl, one Kea Moll, visits Thall and Jord's shop seeking repairs for her ship, which she calls the Star Runner but was later retconned to be a Starrunner-class vessel called the The Sand Sloth, for... some reason. However, she only arrives in time to see Jord Dusat being abducted by "muscle droids" sent by the Fromm Gang to silence the trespassers, who saw and know nothing of Tig Fromm's evil plans. Kea meets up with Thall and the droids and they make a daring escape from more muscle droids, then set out to rescue Jord in Thall's hot rod landspeeder, the White Witch. 

The gang is able to infiltrate the Fromms' hideout using Artoo's technical skills and a lightsaber that a previous client of Thall's left behind. You would expect this to have been retconned at some point to be the lightsaber of some obscure Jedi character from the Star Wars RPG who no one has ever heard of but no, I don't think the identity of this mysterious lightsaber-owner was ever revealed. It hearkens back to the 1976 Star Wars novelization where Obi-Wan tells Luke that lightsabers are still used as tools in some parts of the galaxy; in this early era of the franchise, they weren't yet seen as belonging exclusively to the Jedi.

 

But maybe Thall Joben had a Jedi customer come into his shop and never knew it!

 

Artoo procures schematics of the base, then goes with Thall in the White Witch through the base's service tubes to reach the detention area where Jord is being held. Meanwhile, Threepio and Kea have to play an '80s arcade game to clear obstacles out of their path. Threepio is uncharacteristically useful and clever in this scene, as he quickly outwits a security droid that catches them in the act and causes it to violently explode by gently bumping into another droid.

 

Jord is in a random hallway in the custody of two security droids when the Witch comes blasting out of an elevator shaft. He climbs aboard and they make for the exit, stopping only to pick up Kea while Threepio chases frantically after them. They find their escape blocked by an army of droid cruisers, but Threepio again comes to the rescue by activating the Fromms' dormant Tower Droids, and the two groups of automata destroy one another.

 

The gang makes it to Kea's starship and blasts off for the planet Boonta, where Thall and Jord plan to enter the White Witch in the annual Boonta Speeder Race. Threepio tries to act like he's super cool for how he saved the day, then awkwardly falls over.

 

Very fun and charming if you're in the right mindset to watch a low-budget '80s children's cartoon. Anthony Daniels's voicework as C-3PO is on point and the opening theme slaps hard. Love everything about it except Thall Joben's Skrillex haircut.

 

The White Witch: A Droid Adventure

Author: Emily James

Illustrator: Bunny Carter

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: December 1986

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

This is an adaptation of the first episode of the 1985 animated series Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO. As such, it's not an original story, but I'm including it in this reading list anyway because it adapts EU-exclusive material.

Our story begins with R2-D2 and C-3PO already in the service of Thall Joben and his friend Jord Dusat. Thall and Jord are speeder racers whose landspeeder, the White Witch, may be the fastest ever built, or at least the fastest directly involved with this specific story. The only problem is, the duo have no way transporting the speeder from their homeworld of Ingo to the big speeder race on Boonta!

But while piloting the White Witch one day, the gang is attacked by a seeker drone. They manage to evade it, but don't evade the attention of a seventeen-year-old girl named Kea Moll. Later, after leaving Jord to work on the Witch, Thall and the droids are approached by Kea, who warns them that they blundered into the territory of the infamous Fromm Gang, and local gang boss Tig Fromm will be coming after them. They race back to the garage in time to see Jord being taken by Fromm thugs.

 

Thall wants to immediately give chase in the White Witch, but Kea suggests they wait until morning so they have better light. Thall rejects this idea, not because he's worried about Jord being tortured or killed in the intervening hours, but because the big race is tomorrow and he needs Jord ready to pilot the speeder by then.

They make their way to the Fromms' secret base and find Jord whining about being locked in a prison cell. Artoo cuts through the bars with his welding laser and they make their escape. Tig Fromm orders all his security droids deployed to stop the interlopers, but apparently the Fromm Tower Droids are programmed to attack anything they see. They open fire on the droid cruisers and all the Fromm droids destroy each other while the White Witch and her passengers get away.

Kea gives Thall and Jord a ride to Boonta on her spaceship, and all's well that ends well as Tig Fromm is taken into custody by the "space police." Threepio says something cowardly and everyone laughs at him, freeze frame, roll credits.

Cute book and very short, but I'd just watch the episode instead.

I ship them.

Droids: The White Witch

Author: Unknown

Illustrator: Unknown

Medium: Picture book

Publication date: 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY 

 

La Bruja Blanca is the first in a four-book series of Spanish children's storybooks consisting of a small booklet containing the story pages inset in a die-cut illustration. These books were published by Plaza Joven, an imprint of Spanish publishing company Plaza & Janés. Plaza Joven also released a Spanish storybook novelization of the Droids episode "The White Witch," titled simply Droids. So as far as the Droids cartoon storybook adaptations go, you have the Random House A Droid Adventure series (including a novelization of "The White Witch"), the Dragon Picture Books series (including a novelization of "The White Witch"), the Plaza Joven Droids book (a novelization of "The White Witch"), and now, finally, these original Plaza Joven Droids books (including The White Witch, which is not a novelization of "The White Witch").

 

One of these things is not like the others.

 

Like the Spanish MyComyc comics, the Plaza Joven stories don't fit perfectly into the continuity of the Droids cartoon. I'm not sure if Lucasfilm considers them properly licensed publications, or if they're even aware that they exist. La Bruja Blanca seems to fit best during the events of the first episode of the cartoon, between the final two scenes of Tig Fromm being defeated and the The Sand Sloth departing Ingo.

 

The story begins with R2-D2, C-3PO, and Thall Joben back in the speeder shop, along with Thall's speeder, the White Witch. Jord Dusat comes running in and announces that Kea Moll has been kidnapped, and our heroes set out in the White Witch to save her. 

 

It turns out that that dastardly Tig Fromm is holding Kea hostage to ransom her for the White Witch. Why he wants it, I don't know. He never shows any interest in it during the cartoon. Tig has Kea tied up in his space dune buggy and the White Witch chases them around until Tig crashes into a sand dune. The story ends with Kea rescued and Tig Fromm on his way to the space police.

 

This provides some weird, unintentional synergy with the end of The White Witch: A Droid Adventure, where Tig gets arrested despite that not happening in the actual episode. In any case he's out of jail by the next episode, so it doesn't matter anyway.

 

I give high marks to this one for being only 11 pages long and having barely any text except for comic-style speech bubbles. The illustrations are pretty good for a foreign-language, ambiguously legal tie-in to a cheap '80s cartoon. This book is the only one of the four that takes place during the Thall Joben arc, so I'm looking forward with blithe anticipation to the next one.

 

I ship them.

 

Droids

Developer: Binary Design, Ltd.

Medium: Video game

Release date: 1988

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

 

Released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, Droids (on-screen title) or Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO (box title) is a video game tie-in to the Droids sub-franchise with an "original" plot distinct from the stories told in the cartoon, comics, and picture books. I have no means of playing the game myself, but I wouldn't want to because it looks like a miserable experience. I was also unable to find a complete playthrough of it anywhere online, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because the game's story is impossible to discern simply by playing the game. The premise is described solely on the inside flap of the game's packaging:

 

 

Despite the setting of this adventure clearly being written out as "Auren," both on the packaging and on-screen in the game, this game somehow became known in the fandom as Droids: Escape From Aaron, like the plot involved the droids trying to escape from some guy. This spelling even made its way into official sources; from The Droids Re-Animated on StarWars.com: "After their adventures with speeder pilots Thall Joben and Jord Dusat, and surviving a harrowing escape from the planet Aaron..." Aaron Auren isn't even a planet, it's a moon! Where was the Lucasfilm Story Group on that blunder?

 

Most timelines just ignore this game completely, but when it does appear in fan chronologies, I've seen it placed either between the second and third or the third and fourth episodes of the cartoon. To me it doesn't make much sense in either location, however. The very first sentence of the plot description mentions "the Fromm gang" escaping from prison on Ingo. During the four episodes of the Droids cartoon featuring the Fromms, though, there's never a point where they're arrested and would need to escape. 

 

However, taking the tie-in storybooks into account, we have two references to Tig Fromm being imprisoned following the events of "The White Witch." Since he's already free by "Escape Into Terror," the subsequent episode, maybe the Fromm jailbreak referred to in the backstory of this game is Tig Fromm's escape from the "space police" who arrested him on Ingo. Escape From Aaron could then take place during the same scene gap in "The White Witch" as La Bruja Blanca, before the gang leaves Ingo in Kea Moll's ship.

 

Consider this 40-year-old continuity snarl solved!