There is a story about Lucas not noticing the diversity thing until the editing was done - then when he (or someone around him) noticed, they had already rapped on shooting, so they only thing they could think to do was dub in James Earl Jones over David Prowse as token of representation.
Hm. That sounds like a bit of a myth… here is what Tor says about it:
It’s just that Prowse’s voice wasn’t deep enough for the role… And apparently in some Star Wars radio plays, Vader was voiced by Brock Peters! I didn’t even know there was a radio drama! TIL!
Also, see the Hooper X rant above!
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That and the idea of having a darth with a west country accent is all kinds of hilarious. Where that guy got scottish from i have no idea, how on earth does that sound scottish?!
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Indeed. And if that’s a West Country accent, it’s not a strong one by any means.
Of course, as soon as the conversation goes to Darth Vader and UK accents, there’s nothing so terrifying as Vader as a cockney gangster.
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There wouldn’t be any Muppets in Star Wars until 1980
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There wouldn’t be any Muppets in Star Wars until 1980
I guess that depends on your definition of “muppet”
If we go with puppet creation vs actor in suit, the diagona in the trash compacter qualifies. Probably some of the background droids as well.
MUPPET, MUPPETS, and the Muppet Characters are registered trademarks
The Jim Henson Legacy - Terms of Use
While Jim Henson and his company were not officially involved in the Star Wars films, the Yoda puppet was built with the help of veteran Henson designers, such as Wendy Froud, who later became the center of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
The Yoda puppet was originally designed and built by Stuart Freeborn for LucasFilm and Industrial Light & Magic. Frank Oz explained the character’s creation in further detail to IGN:
“…Jim came to me and said Gary Kurtz, who was co-producer of The Empire Strikes Back, had a character and I think they asked Jim first – but with running a company and everything he couldn’t do it, so he recommended me…. From then on, I was the one who kind of put all the elements of Yoda together, and although Jim didn’t make Yoda, George [Lucas] and he had an understanding that they would exchange technology information. George would give to Jim and Jim would give some of his people to George to help. Wendy Froud helped out a little bit with the character and two other people from Jim’s company worked the cables for me.”
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Did Delany also write an article about the preponderance of racial stereotypes, misogyny and rape in Science Fiction novels of the1960’s through the 70’s?
In 1977, it wasn’t a question of having such opinions so much as finding someone willing to publish them. This article was published, and we are lucky for that. The proper question should be-- what other insights were rejected by the likes of John W. Campbell?
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So glad you asked!
Start here, it’s fun:
This is a nice one too:
And don’t forget this one, real behind-the-scenes stuff:
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I think of this as a feature in SF, not a bug. SF and Fantasy give space (pardon the pun) to discuss difficult issues in a way that is palatable to the status quo people who need to hear it. Those people would shut out or resist more direct messages.
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And that commonly-given explanation is definitely not tortured fan post-hoc rationalization for a nonsensical bit of amateur writing. Definitely not.
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The early death of Tasha Yar was also unforgivable for this reason. They intentionally threw away the most interesting female role they had.
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If I’m remembering correctly, though, Denise Crosby left, because she didn’t think the show was going to go anywhere… of course she came back to play that Romulan…
But yeah, Tasha Yar was a great character.
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I’ve been rereading the Venus Equilateral stories. They were written circa WWII. An element of pulp in that some things are giant (really high voltage, high G travel, fast between the planets), but some level of reality to the technical stuff
I.
But the stories are really about the interaction of tge technical people. George O. Smith was in electronica cs, so he’s writing about technical people solving problems, the setting merely being in the future and in an manned relay station in space.
Despite Gernsback’s early stories where he wanted to show off inventions, science fiction was something to entertain readers. They wanted adventure, but unlike westerns, the adventure was in the future or around invented hardware. The best was well written, but some if it coukd be fairly mundane. I remember one Asimov story which existed just to tell a joke.
So some wrote about a different future, loading it with what they hoped for. Some invented strange aliens, because they wanted to explore that. Some wrote about tgeir world, but set it in the future or space. Heinlein seemed to write about Woody Guthrie, and one story set on Venus hints at chain gangs.
Some writers had lofty ideals, others just wanted to write.
Oooh interesting. I didn’t know she left by choice.
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Well, you know, that first season was really uneven. Plus, apparently, she was miserable filming it:
I remember being disappointed at the time, as I really loved Yar.
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Me too! And yah, hoo-golly that first season is a bit… spotty. Farpoint Station in particular is a train wreck of hammy acting, cheerleader costumes and hokey plot. Amazing they made it past the pilot. Sure glad they did though- it developed into one of my favorite shows of all time.
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