Lego Blog: Jabba’s Palace Part 3 – The Droid Dungeon

Oh-oh-o, we’re in a dungeon now

I’ve been cheerfully modding my Jabba’s Palace since I got it some time last year. It was an absurd bargain and totally validated trekking all the way across the city using three different modes of transport just so I could hold it and grin manically at the terrified lady in the shop. She had no idea, none at all. I’d been watering at the face for months begging for it to be reduced below the frankly insane and insulting £129.99 RRP. Fuck you Lego, it’s not that many bricks. Or should that be fuck you Lucasfilms? I don’t know but I imagine they slap a whole heap o’ merch costs on top of it. It’s worth noting when you buy Lego that Star Wars Lego is frequently more than twice the cost per brick of the Creator stuff.

Anyway, I digress into number babble. So I’ve previously extended the corridor section and altered the tower so it could fit on our shelves, but the part of Jabba’s Palace I always really loved was the droid dungeon where they take R2D2 and C-3PO. You know, the room where they have a Gonk droid being tortured by burning the soles of its feet. That struck me as so weird that it’s emblazoned on my memory. So that’s what I wanted to build.

I turned to the internet for source pictures and really isn’t much out there. I re-watched Jedi twice for research purposes (I forgot to pause the first time round) and concluded that the dungeon is a black box with no visible features. Blank slate…

Outside and Inside

I’ve been slightly obsessed with oddly shaped bases for a while, and despite my better judgement have begun by building the base. There was that and the spiral staircase, which I adore and simply had to fit it in. So I ended up with an odd corridor branching into a couple of rooms. It’s very clear that R2 could never have gotten into this room.

The ‘play features’ I remembered were the Gonk droid being tortured and the protocol droid on a rack (it’s a weird scene), so they had to go in. After that it was a matter of making judicious use of my ever-rare sand and dark-sand bricks and filling up the gaps with junk. I am pleased with the Gonk droid. I think he’s the one I got out of an advent calendar from a couple of years ago, with a few brick switches. I had to make the torturer droid and I’m quite pleased with the result, even if he is rather chunkier than a Star Wars droid should be.

Similarly, the droid on the rack got his own whole corner of the set, with light up flamey bits too (god I love them light bricks). I couldn’t figure out a way to splay a minifigure, so I used those weird robot arm bricks and the helmet from General Zod to get the droid headed vibe. The rest of the dungeon was a chance to cram in robot and tech-like bits and pieces.

At Least There Are No Ewoks, or Jar-Jar

The most important bit I totally forgot to mention is of course R2 and Threepio being confronted by the dungeon boss droid, EB-9D (? I think – I’ve got his name mixed up with ED-209 in my head.) I had him from the original Jabba’s Palace set in the early millenial years.

The nice thing about a corridor is that it has a roof and I couldn’t help randomly bunging bricks and minifigures on top for even more action packed fun. It makes no sense of course, as obviously the dungeon is far underground… But it meant I could get my now really odd looking yellow Leia out (also from the original set).

The whole things looks quite nice at the end of the corridor, though I couldn’t finesse a join to the rest of the palace. Maybe next time… The whole set up is now scheduled for demolition! I need the space man, the space. That said, I’d like to revisit the massive doorway into Jabba’s Palace as a separate appropriate-ish-ly scaled model. I still don’t have the shelf height to allow for the Rancor pit extension.