Medium Wars: Adapting the Film Narrative of Star Wars for Radio

Although an increasing amount of attention is paid to the concept of transmedia storytelling, i.e. the spreading of one, all-encompassing narrative across various platforms, the process of adapting a single narrative for a different medium also offers the potential to complement the original text while enriching understandings of it. George Lucas’s Star Wars universe is a case in point. When Brian Daley was tasked with adapting the 1977 film as a thirteen-part serial on National Public Radio in 1981, he took advantage of the extended format to provide fresh perspectives on familiar characters. Not only were deleted scenes reinstated, but new material was written positioning the character of Luke Skywalker more firmly as the central protagonist. This article examines the medium-specific challenges of re-imagining a 116-minute film as a serial over three times that length, applying frameworks usually employed to examine film narrative to argue that, in several key respects, the radio version provides a more classically complete storytelling model than its predecessor, revolving around a fully realised hero character in the form of Luke. By examining the radio serial in relation to the original film text, it facilitates a richer understanding of that long ago galaxy far, far away.