From NPR to Anchorhead: A Wild Space Journey into Star Wars - The Original Radio Drama (1981) | 050

Join Branwen and Seah as they deep dive into all things Star Wars. Follow along as we fly off exploring all the wonders and geekery of a Galaxy Far, Far Away, chatting worlds, lore, sound, music, story, behind the scenes, nostalgia, and much more with each other and some very special guests.

IT'S OUR 50th EPISODE! To celebrate, we're going on another Journey into Wild Space, this time to explore the world of Star Wars The Original Radio Drama, produced for NPR and first broadcast in 1981. Branwen brings her distant memories of listening to the BBC Radio 1 airing of it way back then, while Seah brings expertise and extensive work producing audio drama. Together we delve into the history of radio drama, and of course more specifically this incredible production, the team that made it happen, and the lasting impact it has had on sonic storytelling and Star Wars lore. And of course we journey through the 13 episodes, picking out our favourite moments, Brian Daley's handling of the expanded story, the stellar performances (no pun intended), Tom Voegeli's outstanding work on the audio, and much more.

EDIT: Branwen mistakenly implies that Brian Daley confirm swoops in Solo: A Star Wars Story - sadly Brian Daley was no longer with us when Solo was being made :( However we're still fully convinced Enfys Nest's gang do ride swoops!

We'd like to give a huge shout out to the brilliant book "The Star Wars Radio Dramas" by Maria Jose Tenuto and John Tenuto. It's a fascinating read if you're interested in going deeper, and we owe a lot of the historical information in this episode to their work.

If you've not listened to the Star Wars radio drama before, you can find it on YouTube in several places, including: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIVcEX0uAz0

You can find the half hour 'making of' audio documentary "A Fable for the Mind's Eye" on archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/a-fable-for-the-minds-eye

To listen to the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio drama we mention, check it out on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g

The infamous dialogue-free BBC radio play "The Revenge" we discuss can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/radiopossivel/revenge-bbc-1978

Seah's recs for other fantastic radio dramas, both produced here in Wales, can be listened to via the following:

"Tracks" (we could only find Season 3): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xr9/episodes/player

"Spores": https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001sqrt

If you've been listening to us since the beginning, thanks for sticking with us for 50 episodes and nearly a whole year! We're not going anywhere and are so excited for our future plans for the pod. Join us next week with special guest Mary as we get back into The Clone Wars with the kick-off of Season 3!

Sisters of the Force is a weekly, UK-based, Star Wars podcast, produced with joy and love by Seah and Branwen. Sisters of the Force theme by Seah and Branwen.

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