Very good, entertaining, and fun! The droids acted as
themselves throughout most of it! This was one storyline, instead
of many, like the previous volume.
The story picks up immediately after The
Kalarba Adventures end. The droids and the sheriff droid from
Kalarba have tracked Greck's ship to Nar Shadda. Both Greck's and
the droids ships are fired upon, and both crash spectacularly into a spaceport.
The sheriff droid is damaged, and the security droid for the spaceport
is also heavily damaged.
C3PO and R2D2 catch up with Greck in the streets of Nar Shadda,
and try to arrest him. He resists, but is finally squished unconscious
when the sheriff appears and frightens a very heavy alien, who rolls over
onto Greck. So ends their duties for Kalarba.
The sheriff is destroyed immediately, however, when Greck's companion
from "old times", Captain Forno, appears, and shoots him. He also
shoots C3PO's leg off.
R2 fixes it with a handy replacement, but the droids are tricked
into getting onto a barge full of other droids at the same time as Greck
escapes his cell. R2 discovers that they are being loaded onto a
suicide barge, and escapes. He steals a skiff and chases the barge
still holding 3PO.
Meanwhile, C3PO gets into a fight with another, much larger droid. Forno and the security droid catch up to R2, and go off to "rescue" 3PO,
after the security droid stuns Forno.
They arrive on the barge just in time to see 3PO inciting a droid
rebellion. Something has taken over his programming, and caused him
to unite the droids. They land the barge near the palace of Boonda
the Hutt, who 3PO says has been cannibalizing droid parts. They disembark
on a landing field full of scrap droid parts!
They infiltrate the palace at the same time as Greck is trying
to convince Boonda to hire him. But the security droid hatches his
daring plan to take control of the galaxy. He has installed explosives
in all the droids who came on that barge, and plans to distribute them
everywhere.
But the security droid has made a mistake in allying itself with
R2D2. R2 takes over his ship, and knocks the droid off balance.
The ship crashes into Boonda's palace. Forno then appears on a swoop,
and destroys the droid.
R2 replaces 3PO's booby-trapped leg with a new one, and 3PO wakes
up from his rebellious programming. They make their way back to Nar
Shadda, and offer their services to a group of Ithorians. I have
a feeling that their next adventure is just about to begin!
While not as good as the previous stories, there were many complications
involved. I think that's always good in a story. Lots of it
took rereading to make sense of it, though, and that's not very good.
When C3PO got a new leg colour, I thought that would be the reason
for his leg change in the movies, until I realized that the leg changed
colour after Star Wars, only.
There is actually not much more to say about these adventures.
They were fun, but for half of it, 3PO wasn't acting under his own programming.
That sort of takes some of the fun out of it.
by Warren Dunn, all rights reserved.
