AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: BACTA TANK REPAIRS!

With severe frostbite and facial injuries that need urgent attention, a delirious Luke Skywalker, talking about his late mentor in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and mysterious words like 'Yoda' and 'Dagobah', is installed in a Bacta tank for physical repairs, in a scene ultimately truncated in The Empire Strikes Back.

The Medical Centre set built on Elstree Stage 1 contained a treatment room (housing a 7’6” high and 3’8” in diameter tank for Bacta tissue (filled with 400 gallons of chlorinated water) and a recovery area (a bed was originally planned for the set, as in the McQuarrie painting where Han, relaxing on it, with Leia next to him, looks towards the window where Luke is in the Bacta tank). The area also houses two UK built medical droid props-2-1B and FX-7.

Early concept sketches for 2-1B, which had limited upper body movement when created on set, suggest that the droid’s design came about from rejected masks that human surgeons would wear. Early notes described the droid as having a “human brain.”

2-1B is brought to life at the Elstree workshops via sculptor Roy Rodgers.

Prior to filming in the Bacta tank at ELSTREE, Mark Hamill wore scruba gear and tested safety equipment for the upcoming scenes apparently at a nearby girl’s school swimming pool (the only place in the time provided where it could be done). Hamill remembers all the giggly school kids present at the pool that day, watching him in his swimming briefs as he was lowered in and out of the make shift tank erected in the water for filming.

Later in the studio, with Hamill in the water (though a wet suited Colin Skeaping was lowered into the tank to check its safety before filming), a different way of lighting and photographing the scene has to be accomplished. Peter Suschitzky enhances the sequence with careful lighting, formulating a method of illuminating the important moment of Luke’s healing by making it the focal point, and brightest part, of the scene, creating the almost purity of his recovery in the tank by suspending a mirror from the studio ceiling and positioning a massive search light below the tank. The light would bounce off the mirror with the end result successfully showing Luke immersed in the eerily “glowing” Bacta fluid (the aqualung Hamill wears also incorporates a light emitting diode that pulses green, red and yellow). Skywalker’s friends, carefully silhouetted in the foreground, frame Luke in the shot and draw the audience’s focus towards him. Luke’s delirious crying out in the tank about Ben, Yoda and Dagobah were never dubbed on, the mentions of all three being used instead for a new audience plot clarification scene shot later in post production, and appearing earlier in the film, with Luke by his injured Tauntaun, being rescued by Han Solo and deliriously imparting the words.

Set reference diorama created by Elstree Production Design department.

Medical droid FX-7

Colin Skeaping tests the water tank which will be coloured red but appear blue with the set lighting of filming.

Graham Freeborn applies some make-up adjustments to Mark Hamill prior to filming.

Hamill is hoisted out of the tank after completing his scene.