Droid World: The capture of a severely damaged Imperial Warbot could deliver vital intelligence into the hands of the Rebel Alliance…if they can only repair their prize catch. Artoo and Threepio are assigned to take the Warbot to Droid World, a space station populated entirely by droids and by the half-man, half-cybernetic Kligson. Little do Luke’s droids or Kligson know, his world has already been infiltrated by the Empire.
Planet Of The Hoojibs: Seeking a new base of operations after abandoning Hoth, the Rebels explore a jungle planet, finding only indigenous animal life there. But their initial assessment of the local fauna as unintelligent may require a rethink when their camp’s power cells – from heavy equipment to sidearms – suffer a major breakdown.
cast/crew info unknown
Droid World based on a comic written by Archie Goodwin
Review: I’m getting reacquainted with these two pieces of Star Wars audio for kids for the first time in over two decades. If it seems absurd to be reviewing chilren’s read-along records here, it shouldn’t be. The beauty of Star Wars was that it did stir the imagination, and kids were able to fill in the ILM-sized blanks when playing with their action figures or, indeed, listening to Star Wars for the ears.
Droid World in particular has an interesting pedigree; it’s a slightly watered down adaptation of an issue of Marvel’s original between-movie comics. This may well be my favorite comic-to-audio Star Wars story, however, simply because it does get most of the details in, cuts/simplifies only a few corners, and gets the job done without heaps of “signposting” (feeding the listener visual cues through improbable, stilted dialogue). This brief (~13 minutes) tale wind up being more faithful to its source material than, say, Tales Of The Jedi on audio. Even the artwork in the read-along book is faithful to the characters as depicted in the comic.
Planet Of The Hoojibs is more what I’d expect from a children’s record, and almost seems like a Star Trek story with Star Wars characters jammed in. It hits the more typical pre-requisite beats of what you’d expect from a children’s book-and-record set – cute critters, a scary monster, and a Valuable Lesson (TM, pat. pend.) about not judging others by their appearances. And yet even this, if only for its brevity, is a better listen than the Tales Of The Jedi: Dark Lords Of The Sith audio adaptation.
I distinctly remember another book-and-record aimed at kids, except rather than creating or adapting a non-movie story for audio, it was simply a shortened and vastly simplified retelling of Return Of The Jedi from the Ewoks’ perspective, which I haven’t covered here.