As alarm lights blaze and sirens fill the air within the corridors of the Death Star, elite TIE fighter pilots rush to their ships, ready to engage the attacking Rebel X and Y-wing ships, in this deleted scene from STAR WARS, filmed by Gary Kurtz's second unit at some point in July 1976 at ELSTREE. A partial clip from the deleted footage would later be used in RETURN OF THE JEDI.
I'd have love to have seen a sequence where we see the pilots actually get into their TIE ships and take off. In the film we see Vader and his wing men depart the docking bay, but there's a great moment in the MARVEL comic strip adaptation of the time (above image) where we see Vader actually getting into his ship.
I wonder if that was just writer Roy Thomas/artist Howard Chaykin's visual idea, or whether there was a scripted scene that was possibly filmed? Or perhaps the scene was planned for but unfilmed due to time and money pressures- Script Continuity Supervisor Ann Skinner has the scene in her shooting script (currently held in the British Film Institute), so it looks likely. Perhaps the Blu-ray will solve the many mysteries once and for all...
Would you believe I remember seeing a scene with Vader getting into his TIE Fighter the first time I saw Star Wars in 1977? It was the only time I ever saw it... along with a scene of Luke missing with the grappling hook the first time and Vader proclaiming that he would return in his final scene. And I have to say some of those images from Insider #41 looked very familiar.
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