"Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns" is the third episode of the Star Wars radio drama. It first aired on National Public Radio on Monday, March 16, 1981.[1] The episode's action begins shortly before the events of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and encompasses the events of its opening act, including the firefight aboard the Tantive IV, Darth Vader's capture of Princess Leia Organa, and the escape of C-3PO and R2-D2. The two droids, the "Pawns" in the episode title, are the main protagonists.
Opening crawl[]
| Episode Three BLACK KNIGHT, WHITE PRINCESS, AND PAWNS |
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Plot summary[]
Threepio longs to leave Artoo and return to work in protocol.
A Labor Pool Overseer aboard the starship Tantive IV activates the ship's droids, including See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo. The pair are told to report to Captain Antilles. Threepio is excited: he longs to return to work as an interpreter and aide to humans and hates the drudgery of starship work. When the droids report for duty, Antilles issues them a Command Control Instruction, ordering them to conceal the presence of the Princess Leia Organa at all costs. Furthermore, Leia is designated a command control voice: the droids will now obey her every order. Leia immediately orders Artoo to go onto the ship's hull to the navicomputer sensors and report to Threepio: both are to pretend to be performing a repair on the ship's systems, to provide an alibi for the ship's presence in the Toprawa system.
As the droids get into position, the Tantive receives an encrypted transmission from rebels on the surface of the planet Toprawa. They begin to send up the data containing the Death Star plans - the real objective of the Tantive's mission. While the transmission is underway, the Imperial Cruiser Devastator approaches. An Imperial officer orders the Tantive to submit to a search. Antilles attempts to stall them until the transmission is complete. Then he orders the ship to engage its hyperdrive. R2-D2 re-enters the airlock just before the ship makes the jump. But instead of returning home, Leia orders the Tantive to go to Tatooine, where she is to find the old Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and solicit his help.
Leia announces their detour to Tatooine; Antilles is incredulous.
But Devastator pursues the ship through hyperspace to Tatooine. Antilles speculates that someone on board must have smuggled in a homing device. Before Leia can locate General Kenobi, the Tantive IV is attacked and badly damaged and its communications are jammed. With no other way to get the data tapes off the ship, Leia resorts to loading the data into Artoo-Detoo's own memory banks. She gives the droid another command control instruction to take an escape pod down to Tatooine and bring the Death Star plans to General Kenobi at all costs. The ship launches other pods so that the one carrying the droids attracts less attention. Imperial troops board the Tantive. They quickly overwhelm the crew, and Antilles surrenders. When Darth Vader comes aboard and demands to know where the plans are, Antilles allows himself to be killed rather than tell Vader anything.
Meanwhile Leia records a holographic message, transfers the plans into Artoo, and gives him instructions to find Kenobi. Artoo boards an escape pod with Threepio, launches it, and steers toward the planet's surface. Imperial troops capture Leia and bring her to Darth Vader; when she, like Antilles, refuses to tell Vader anything, he has her taken away for further interrogation. An officer informs Vader that an escape pod had been jettisoned. He infers that the stolen plans were aboard and orders an intensive search of the planet.
Continuity[]
Like the first two episodes of the Star Wars radio drama, "Black Knight" begins with scenes that take place before the start of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. These include a conversation that the droids have with their labor pool overseer, the flight of the Tantive IV to Toprawa to receive the stolen Death Star Plans, and a chase through hyperspace to outrun Darth Vader in the Devastator. Midway through the episode, the drama catches up with the film and depicts the same events as its opening sequence: the boarding of the Tantive by imperial Stormtroopers and the droids' escape to the surface of Tatooine.
The cover of Jedi Dawn illustrates events from the Battle of Toprawa.
Along with the previous episode, "Points of Origin," "Black Knight" gives a detailed account of how the Rebellion captured the Death Star plans and transmitted them to Princess Leia aboard her starship. The battle at Toprawa would later be shown in more detail in the the books Jedi Dawn (1993) and Rebel Dawn (1998), and in 2000 Lucasfilm identified the battle as the starting point of the Rebellion era. The Lost Jedi Adventure Game Book (1995) identified Jedi Dawn character Havet Storm as the voice of the Toprawa rebel heard in the radio episode.
Other works in Star Wars Legends would tell versions of this story that were contradictory in places, so much so that Pablo Hidalgo commented that "...if you had to throw a dinner party and invite everyone who had ever stolen the Death Star plans, you'd be surprised at how many place settings you'd have to worry about."[2] The canonical version of this story was shown in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This version is mostly different from that depicted in the radio drama. While the Rebels still get a transmission through to the starship at the last minute, the action is moved from Toprawa to Scarif. Leia's ship receives the plans in the heat of battle rather than after the fighting is over, as in this episode.[3]
Some promotions for the episode described its opening scene as the moment when Artoo and Threepio first met.[4] In fact, while the dialogue implies that their assignment as counterparts may be fairly recent, it is clear that they are not meeting for the first time. Brian Daley specified in a 1995 interview that he intentionally left the nature of the droids' prior relationship unclear and the promotional statements were an error.[5]
While Captain Antilles was both seen and mentioned in the Star Wars film and novelization, this radio episode was the first work to connect the name to the Rebel officer strangled by Darth Vader. Antilles mentions that someone in the Tantive's crew must have been working with the Empire to help them track the ship. The Star Wars Customizable Card Game would later identify this double agent as U-3PO, a storyline that would be confirmed in the 2021 canonical reference book The Rise of the Rebellion and the Battle of Yavin.[6]
Credits[]
| Cast | Uncredited cast | Crew | Uncredited crew | Special thanks |
Cast
Uncredited cast
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Crew
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Appearances[]
| Characters | Organisms | Droid models | Events | Locations |
| Organizations and titles | Sentient species | Vehicles and vessels | Weapons and technology | Miscellanea |
Characters
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Organisms
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Droid models
Events
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Locations
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Organizations and titles
Sentient species
Vehicles and vessels
Weapons and technology
|
Miscellanea
Sources[]
"S.W. on N.P.R." — Bantha Tracks 11- The Making of Star Wars For Radio: A Fable For the Mind's Eye
- Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 'Star Wars' to blast off as a radio series by Gerald B. Jordan on The Kansas City Star (March 2, 1981) (archived from the original on January 24, 2024)
- ↑ Checklist - 10 Star Wars Superweapons on the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- ↑
"S.W. on N.P.R." — Bantha Tracks 11
- ↑ A STAR WARS Fan Interviews Brian Daley on Star Wars Fanboy Association (October, 1995) (archived from the original on December 15, 2021)
- ↑ The Rise of the Rebellion and the Battle of Yavin
- ↑ Star Wars: The National Public Radio Dramatization