By George & Josh Bate
2025’s first issue of Star Wars Insider will take fans on a multitude of exciting journeys through a galaxy far, far away. From a piece about C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels’ thoughts on John Williams music to a behind the scenes interview with Joonas Suotamo about The Acolyte to a brand new High Republic short story, there is something for every fan of the Star Wars franchise in this latest issue.
Below is a breakdown of all the pieces included in Star Wars Insider #230!
ARMATURE CREW
Inside the creation of the stop-motion animated behemoth that Tippett Studios christened “Mamma Crab!”
___________________________________________________________________________
A MUSICAL JOURNEY
Anthony Daniels celebrates the music of John Williams with a look back at the Star Wars: In Concert tour.
___________________________________________________________________________
WHAT A PIECE OF JUNK
Star Wars: A New Hope set decorator Roger Christian tells the story of iconic props and sets from the movie – and the ingenuity that created them!
___________________________________________________________________________
TALES OF THE JEDI COMPANION
Every episode of the animated Star Wars shorts revisited, with input from stars Ashley Eckstein and Corey Burton.
___________________________________________________________________________
PIP: THE MAKING OF THE STAR WARS MULTI TOOL
Creature concept designer Nick Tyrell and puppeteer Jack Parker reveal how The Acolyte’s droid multitool was made.
___________________________________________________________________________
KELNACCA KAOS
Actor Joonas Suotamo takes Star Wars Insider behind the scenes of the Wookiee’s mighty clash with his fellow Jedi in Star Wars: The Acolyte.
___________________________________________________________________________
PLAYING BY THE BOOK
A look at how tie-in novels have expanded on the stories of videogames, including Battlefront II and Jedi: Fallen Order.
The HoloFiles and Star Wars Holocron are happy to present an EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW of Star Wars Insider #230 below!
With little money to work with and a whole galaxy to bring to life, Star Wars: A New Hope set decorator Roger Christian had to rely on boundless imagination, ingenuity, and more than a little serendipity to get the job done.
Words: Christopher Cooper
The Millennium Falcon
“The first set that we ever did was the Millennium Falcon cockpit,” Christian discloses. “I was driving around London thinking, ‘How on earth am I going to make this look like a real spaceship?’ I’d been on a submarine and seen what they look like, and they’re crammed full of stuff, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to make it like that!’
“Then it came to me one day – I was using scrap pieces to put on Artoo-Detoo, so why not use airplane junk to make the spaceships look real? It was just an instinctive idea to me. I didn’t know how much existed at that time,” he says. After phoning around various airfields, Christian found he’d stumbled upon a scrap goldmine.
“Well, there were mountains, I can’t tell you. The first place I went to there were Derwent jet engines, there were halves of airplanes, all just sitting there. Nobody wanted them. So, I was going round saying, ‘I’ll have this,’ and ‘I’ll have that.’ I mean, we had low loaders filled with this stuff. I think I bought about six or eight jet engines that we stripped down and used, and undercarriages. I bought tons of those heating cabinets they still use on planes for inflight meals. They’re all over Star Wars, if you look closely.”
John Barry had hired Harry Lange, a designer who had worked on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), to build the Millennium Falcon sets, which Christian then dressed to look the part. “Harry built this beautiful cockpit with all kinds of switches laid out properly and everything, and I kept going down and saying to him, ‘You know, I’m going to come in and screw this up,” he laughs. “When it was finally ready for me, I took his seats out and put in a couple of old jet fighter seats, which I thought looked more appropriate, and I started sticking things in to make it look more real. It worked, you know. I took George down and he just smiled.”
The big test for Christian was the Falcon’s hold, where Luke trained with his lightsaber and Chewbacca beat the droids at dejarik. “I knew it was going to be such an important set, and that’s when I really started playing with layering scrap,” he says. “Obviously, it looked terrible, but I just kept adding props. I was buying more scrap because I always needed more, until one day when this hold suddenly emerged, and I remember seeing people coming onto the set with their eyes wide open, wondering on earth we’d found a spaceship that was so old.”
Read the full feature in Star Wars Insider #230 and discover the origins of other iconic props and sets including lightsabers, stormtrooper blasters and R2-D2! Plus, Anthony Daniels reflects on the iconic music of John Williams; Tippetts Studio shows Insider how Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew’s “Mamma Crab” was created; all-new and exclusive The High Republic fiction, and much, much more!
Star Wars Insider #230 is on sale February 25, 2025 in the U.S. and Canada and March 27, 2025 in the U.K.
For U.S. and Canada subscriptions to Star Wars Insider, click here.
For U.K. subscriptions to Star Wars Insider, click here.
For subscriptions to Star Wars Insider throughout the rest of the world, click here.
For digital subscriptions to Star Wars Insider, click here.
