One Forgotten Star Wars Character Changed The Empire Forever
Do we think it's a good idea to question the Emperor?
The actor Michael Pennington has passed away at the age of 82. Known for his impressive stage work and films like The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987) and The Iron Lady (2011), Star Wars fans know him best as Moff Jerjerrod, the guy who tells Darth Vader that he “needs more men” at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, and, in a nearly forgotten deleted scene, questioned the Emperor in a way that wouldn’t seem remotely possible in the two previous films. Pennington’s legacy is, of course, bigger than Star Wars, but, in terms of deep-cut lore, Jerjerrod is a crucial, underrated turning point in the story of Star Wars, and helps to humanize the most relentless villains in the Star Wars canon.
In A New Hope, a lackey named Chief Bast (Leslie Schofield) warned Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) that they should maybe think about evacuating the Death Star. Tarkin, the guy in charge of the Death Star, said no way. “Evacuate in our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.” Technically, just four years later, the guy in Tarkin’s exact position is Moff Jerjerrod. And, in a really great deleted scene — found on the 2011 Star Wars Blu-ray box set — Jejerrod pushes back against the Emperor in a way that Tarkin never would have.
In this one deleted scene, when the Emperor tells Jejerrod to destroy the Endor moon if necessary, Jejerrod says: “But we have several battalions stationed on the moon.” Further deleted scenes also prove that because Jejerrod did not carry out this order, nobody on the moon of Endor was destroyed. Basically, the Empire could have blown up the Endor moon at any point after the shield generator was taken down by Han Solo, but they didn’t, and the deleted scenes are pretty convincing that Jejerrod’s semi-moral internal conflict was the reason.
Yet another Return of the Jedi deleted scene shows that Jejerrod talked back to Darth Vader about going and seeing the Emperor unannounced, only to be briefly Force-choked. Taken together, these deleted scenes all tell us a few things: First, that Jejerrod had conflicting feelings about his superiors, and seemingly disliked and distrusted Vader and the Emperor equally. Second, this streak of individualism and skepticism means that everyone on Endor wasn’t murdered by the Death Star’s superlaser. In fact, one convincing fan-recut on YouTube puts the deleted footage of Jejerrod hesitating to fire on Endor, alongside Lando and Wedge blowing up the main generator at the last second.
Zoomed out, there’s no good reason for the Death Star not to fire on Endor after the shield generator goes down. And had Tarkin or someone from the A New Hope era been in command of the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, they almost certainly would have. Most of Pennington’s subtle and nuanced performance in this role ended up on the cutting room floor. But the impact on the larger Star Wars canon remains. The Empire may have been striking back in the years following the destruction of the first Death Star, but not everyone in the Empire was a complete fool.
