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By Root 5277 0

farmstead on Tatooine, dreaming of future glory as a space-pilot. When the two androids arrive at the farm, Artoo lights up with a hologram of the Princess. Luke is at once smitten by her beauty. She utters the baffling message `Obi-wan Kenobi, you're my only remaining hope', which Luke vaguely connects with a mysterious bearded hermit, `a kind of sorcerer, who lives in an even more remote part of the desert. He and the androids set off to find him and, after Kenobi has miraculously intervened to save them from death at the hands of desert-dwelling monsters, they find themselves in the `wizard's' cave. The old man reveals he is one of the last surviving Knights of the Jedi, with supernatural powers, and that Luke's lost father had been another, one of the bravest of all. Interpreting the Princess's cry for help, Kenobi asks Luke to accompany him on a hazardous mission to rescue her.

This marks the end of the 'Anticipation Stage'. The hero has received the `Call, giving him and the story a focus. We can see now what the story is centrally to be about; and the hero's sense of being impelled towards this mysterious new destiny is reinforced when they return to the farmstead to find that the uncle and aunt who have brought him up have been vapourised by Imperial troops. There is nothing left to keep him at home.

Despite further threats, fought off with Kenobi's supernatural aid, Luke gradually assembles a team to make the journey; and in the nick of time, pursued by Imperial soldiers, they make a `thrilling escape' in a deceptively battered old spacecraft, piloted, solely for the money, by a reckless mercenary Han Solo. This enables them to throw off their pursuers as they head off faster than light to their mystery destination. On the journey Kenobi imparts some of the ancient Jedi secrets to Luke, not least the importance of the mysterious `force' with which the Knights learn to ally themselves, giving them supernatural powers. As the wise old man explains, this is `an energy field, and something more. An aura that at once controls and obeys, a nothingness that can accomplish miracles. During this phase of the story, the hero and his companions seem to enjoy a magical immunity to danger: the `Dream Stage'. But we are reminded of the dark reality prevailing elsewhere, as we glimpse the Princess being subjected by Vader to horrific tortures, trying to force her into giving up the secret whereabouts of the rebel headquarters, the distant planet Alderaan.

Then suddenly, as they near their destination, they see the horrifying sight of a vast, mysterious man-made structure floating in space ahead of them. It is the Empire's own secret weapon, the Death Star, a spaceship so powerful it can destroy a whole planet. This is where the Dark Lord Vader is holding the Princess prisoner. Even as they approach, this monstrous engine of death pulverises Alderaan, including the Princess's father, to atoms. At the same time, the hero and his companions feel their own small spacecraft itself being sucked inexorably down a powerful beam into the heart of the Death Star. As their ship comes to rest it seems they are the monster's prisoners. Like Bond, when he penetrates the lair of one of his monstrous opponents and falls into his clutches, they have reached the `Frustration Stage'.

Now begins the terrible ordeal of the `Nightmare Stage' as, pursued all the way, threatened by one horror after another, they wander through the endless, dark, metallic labyrinth of this huge structure, first to track down and release the Princess from her prison cell; then to thread their way back to their own spacecraft, having first immobilised the gravity beam which had taken it prisoner. Finally, thanks to old Kenobi sacrificing his life in a hand-to-hand struggle with his one-time pupil, the Dark Lord, they make their miraculous escape, with the freed Princess on board - hurtling through space to another unknown planet where, hidden beneath ancient ruins in a jungle, is the true secret command headquarters of the rebel Alliance.

Here indeed begins the true