YMMV / Star Wars Radio Dramas

• Complete Monster:
  • Emperor Palpatine is the despotic ruler of the Galactic Empire and the person behind the destruction of the Jedi Order. He turned Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side, turning him into Darth Vader and Palpatine's main enforcer. Palpatine sanctions Lord Tion's bloody invasion of Raaltiir while planning to cement his rule using the planet-killing Death Star. After the Death Star is destroyed, Palpatine has Vader hunt down rebels across the galaxy and orders him to turn Luke Skywalker—Anakin's son—to the Dark Side. Palpatine plans to build a second Death Star and leaks information to the Rebel Alliance to lure them into a trap and destroy them. Facing Luke Skywalker, Palpatine tries to force the boy to watch the destruction of Rebel alliance and manipulate him into killing his own father. Whe Luke resists his temptations, Palpatine tries to use Force lightning to torture him to death.
  • A New Hope:
    • Grand Moff Tarkin is the Imperial officer in charge of the first Death Star. When Princess Leia is captured by Darth Vader, Tarkin orders her tortured. He threatens to destroy Leia's homeworld of Alderaan unless she gives up the location of the rebel base, only to have Alderaan destroyed anyway. Finding out that the rebel base is on Yavin IV, Tarkin plans to destroy it, along with any other planet that rebels against the Empire. A cruel and ambitious man, Tarkin even starts to consider using the Death Star to overthrow the Emperor.
    • Lord Tion, a character original to the radio drama, is the Imperial nobleman placed in charge of the Ralltiir invasion. Tion is a smug sadist who blockades Ralltiir and begins a planetwide crackdown, where he abuses the citizens—rebels or not—with impunity. He establishes torture chambers all across the planet, press-gangs citizens into forced labor, holds executions without proper trial, and happily reminisces on the time he burned alive a group of surrendering rebel leaders who thought they were being invited to a peace talk. Tion intends to involve himself with the Death Star and then wed Princess Leia—on whom he has a crush—to fully assert his power, knowingly abetting the creation of a galaxy-wide regime of fear and terror for the sake of his own advancement.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Go here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Magnificent Bastard: Darth Vader was once the heroic Jedi Anakin Skywalker, until he turned to the Dark Side and became the feared fist of the Empire. Helping the Emperor institute a galaxy-wide tyranny, Vader uses his power of the Force and his intimidating physique to travel the galaxy and ensure that many worlds remain under Imperial control. When the Death Star plans are stolen, Vader deduces Princess Leia as the thief, and captures her for interrogation while ordering her droids be found for the plans they hide. Though the Rebels and Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star, Vader strikes back with a vengeance as he hunts down Luke's friends and uses them as hostages to lure Luke into a trap. Revealing he is Luke's father, Vader offers him an alliance to destroy the Emperor and rule together. When Luke spares Vader during a duel and risks himself to face down the Emperor, Vader is so inspired by his son's heroism that he turns on and kills the Emperor at the cost of his own life, using his last words to tell Luke how proud he is.
• Moral Event Horizon: Go here.
• Narm:
  • Unlike the Vader bit mentioned below, Mark Hamill's recreation of Luke's Big "NO!" from the film version of Empire Strikes Back is neither as believable nor as good—part of the problem is that you can hear him take a deep breath before doing it.
  • Some scenes which are otherwise directly lifted from the movie basically can't be taken seriously anymore because, by virtue of being an audio-only adaptation, characters are talking and narrating over parts which were originally very quiet. The stand-out examples are the award ceremony after the Death Star is destroyed, with Han basically acting like a grade-schooler throughout, and Han's release from the carbonite in Return of the Jedi because C-3PO is describing the whole thing and has to be told to be quiet several times as well as ruining the surprise that Jabba and his goons were secretly watching it happen. (It does still preserve the reveal that Boushh is actually Leia in disguise, though.)
• Narm Charm: The line is unbelievably hammy, but Brock Peters as Darth Vader manages to make it awesome anyhow, as he hurls the Emperor down the reactor shaft, while the Emperor tries in vain to command him to stop, reminding Vader that he's the master:
  Darth Vader: Darth Vader's master, BUT NOT ANAKIN SKYWALKER'S!!
• Squick: Jabba having Leia brought to him and attempting to lick her was repulsive enough in the movie, but the radio drama makes it even worse. Threepio is forced to translate Jabba's comment about Leia looking "good enough to eat," which is immediately followed by Jabba slobbering Leia's face while she groans in disgust, accompanied by suitably grotesque sound effects.

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