- Appeared in:
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
CW
- Size:
2.4 meters tall
- Vehicle:
Specialized repulsorlift holding arm
- Affiliation:
Boonta Eve Classic
- Type:
Salvage droid
- Manufacturer:
Serv-O-Droid
-
While a crashed Podracer can please an audience sstarved for entertainment, the resulting debris makes for an even more hazardous course. To clean up the wreckage, race organizers employ these hovering salvage droids. They are carried to wreck sites in hovering holding arms that deposit them through ventral chutes. The cap-shaped droids then pick up the wreckage with articulated limbs.
The salvage droid was designed by Doug Chiang for inclusion in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999), and while it appeared in concept art and in animatics, it was ultimately cut from the finished film. Newly completed effects footage for the DVD release of Episode I (2001) included a brief scene showcasing the salvage droid.
Inside the Worlds of Star Wars: Episode I (2000, DK Books), was the first source to elaborate on this simple droid. According to this source, written by Kristin Lund and illustrated by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore, it is a P-100 Salvage Droid. Omnidirectional homing mechanics housed in the holding arm help the P-100 Salvage Droids locate distress beacons carried by downed Podracers. Each holding arm carries three P-100s that pick the wreckage clean of salvageable parts. The arm can carry up to 500 kilograms of scrap back to the Podrace hangar. Pilots have two hours to claim their junked vehicles before they are auctioned off or sold to Jawas.
The New Essential Guide to Droids (2006, Del Rey Books) adds to this information, establishing the droid's manufacturer as Servo-O-Droid, giving it a manufacturer in common with the similarly bell-headed pit droids. The book also describes how these droids have been pressed into other duties, such as pest control in the underlevels of Coruscant.
In
Star Wars: Episode III
Revenge of the Sith (2005), the animation model of the salvage droid was re-used as a sort of valet droid seen on the Senate Landing Platform. Given the scale of the luggage in the scene, it is evident that this particular model was of a different size than the ones seen carrying debris off of the Episode I Podrace course.
