Escape from Aaron

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!