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Obi-Wan Kenobi's Missing Planets | Obi-Wan Kenobi's Bar-Side Manner | Tatooine Searches

Obi-Wan Kenobi is always many steps behind Palpatine's plans and when he comes close to a moment of discovery this is against the backdrop of missing planets in two key instances.

We first saw Obi-Wan Kenobi lose a planet in A New Hope Episode IV when the Millennium Falcon arrives at where Alderaan should be, only to find there is nothing there but what appear to be asteroids. 'Our position's right, just no planet', Han Solo says. Obi-Wan correctly intuits that Alderaan has been completely blown away but he is still, even now ignorant of the Emperor Palpatine's ultimate weapon which we first see mentioned in Episode II, The Attack of the Clones.

The theme has been continued in Episode II The Attack of the Clones, when Obi-Wan is in search of Kamino. The mild humour of Obi-Wan losing a planet and having to be told by a Padawan Learner that someone must have removed it from the Jedi archives is underpinned by the foreboding which this represents and the revelation that sinister forces are at work that can reach even into the Jedi temple.

The missing planet hides the development of a Clone Army, which is a major stage of Palpatine's plans for taking over the Galaxy. A major part of his plans for maintaining control once he has it is the construction of the ultimate weapon, the Death Star. The Death Star that turns out to be the reason that once more Obi-Wan struggles to find a planet, when he arrives at where Alderaan should be but isn't.

Between the two moments of mysteriously disappearing planets they tie together very well the overall arch of the Star Wars plot from the very first clue as to the emergence of Palpatine's grand army through to the pinnacle of his power over the Galaxy. It's a very subtly executed parallel between the two films and if you blink you miss it.

Note I: The theme of missing planets is continued (after a fashion) in Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens in which the search for Luke Skywalker involves putting together missing peices of planetary charts just as it had in Episode II, The Attack of the Clones.

In Episode II this theme is also turned on it's head by Jango Fett's leading Obi-Wan to the planet Geonosis (a planet he otherwise would not have found) as part of Palpatine's grand plan to precipitate the Clone Wars. Under Palpatine's influence, Obi-Wan not only loses whole planets, he finds them too! See my article on What Jango Fett knows.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, for all of his mild-mannered persona, seems to have a habit of chopping off someone's arm whenever he walks into licensed premises. In A New Hope in the Mos Eisley Cantina he takes his lightsaber to Ponda Baba's arm in order to prevent him from attacking the young Luke Skywalker. Then in Episode II in the Coruscant Outlander's Bar he lopps off Zam Wesell's forearm in order to a stop her from escaping.

You have to ask, whether, with all his Jedi skills, Obi-Wan couldn't have come up with a less drastic action? He could have even just tripped up Zam Wesell and captured her that way.

See my article on The Amputation Motif in the Star Wars Movies.

In The Attack of the Clones Anakin Skywalker stops to question the Jawas about the location of the Tusken Raiders outside their sandcrawlers when he's looking for his mother Shmi. This questioning prefigures the slaughter of the Jawas in A New Hope when the Imperial Stormtroopers / Sandtroopers (under Darth Vader's direction) interogate the Jawas in order to find out the location of the droids and the Lars Homestead. In one the direction of the search is from the Lars Homestead and in the other it's towards it. In one Jawas get massacred and in the other the Tusken Raiders get massacred. In both it is Anakin/Vader who is doing the searching and who is behind the massacre. In some ways it's like Anakin is crossing paths with his own future (and the future of his son) and the trajectory of the journeys are the direct inverse of one another:

In Episode II the trajectory is: 1) Lars Homestead 2) Jawa's Sandcrawler 3) Tusken Raiders (slaughtered).

In Episode IV the trajectory is 1) Tusken Raiders (the attack on Luke) 2) Jawa's Sandcrawler (slaughtered Jawas) 3) Lars Homestead (slaughtered Owen and Beru Lars).

Even the direction of the slaughter is inverted. It's almost like in the second journey Vader's orders are ensuring that he mops up everything that he hadn't slaughtered in his initial journey in The Attack of the Clones. This creates a very neat parallel between the movies indeed. Almost like the sweeping of a brush or the motion of a wrecking ball, Anakin/ Darth Vader's respective searches move backwards and forwards over the same ground like a pendulum laying waste to everything along its path.

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All Star Wars action figures, vehicles, collectibles and Star Wars toys shown on this website are the 3.75 inch scale and from my own private Star Wars collection unless otherwise stated. Where possible original vintage accessories have been used but in some instances I have placed Kenner Star Wars figures with either reproduction weapons and accessories or for Hasbro figures close approximations have been used. This is mostly the case for modern Star Wars lightsabers where the correct item can be very difficult to identify on some ocassions. Vintage Star Wars action figures are shown with their original weapon or accessory when I have them. When a vintage Kenner action figure is shown with an accessory which is not original I have tried to point this out where possible.

All of the Star Wars action figures shown were purchased second hand, usually incomplete, and in bulk. They have been reunited with their original weapons and accessories where we could get hold of them.

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