I Just Learned a Thing:  Wedge Antilles

A couple of years ago, we did a five part deep dive into the Battle of Yavin. We explored in great detail the differences between the original ("Legends") Alliance pilots and ships that participated in the battle, and compared it to the changes made in the new Disney Canon (including those that flew at Scarif). We also explored the figures and toys that have been produced along the way.

With the arrivals of new TVC items such as Luke Skywalker and his X-Wing, as well as Antoc Merrick, R2-SHW, and Antoc's X-Wing, I decided it would be a good time to update the imagery. (Links at bottom of this article)

In the process of doing so, I stumbled across some interesting information that I had previously never been aware of regarding Wedge Antilles. Red Squadron was missing some pilot names on the roster for the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, that we know were at Yavin; most notably, Wedge and Biggs. I had not found any sources that could confirm they were present, until just stumbling on something new about Wedge.

Biggs, as we know from an Episode IV cutscene, had arrived on Tatooine right at the time Leia was being captured by Darth Vader in orbit above, after escaping from Scarif. He told Luke he was defecting to from the Empire to join the Alliance. So he seems to have just missed Scarif. Biggs then left Tatooine for Yavin. Then, and I'm not joking about this, Biggs and Porkins went on a 12 day vacation on some weird planet, hijinks ensued, yadda yadda yadda, they returned to work in time for the Battle of Yavin. So the takeaway here is that Episode IV would seem to have spanned about 12 days. It always felt more like just 2-3 days to me, but I guess there you go.

As for Wedge, I found this much more interesting. It turns out that Wedge is the voice over the PA system at Yavin in Rogue One, when he tells all the pilots to report to their squadron leaders. How do we know that? Because the voice is credited to David Ankrum, the man who (uncredited) dubbed over lines spoken by Denis Lawson in A New Hope. Apparently Denis's American accent was terrible in 1977, before he improved it enough to speak his own lines in later films. Ankrum actually dubbed the lines for both Lawson as Wedge, as well as Colin Higgins, who played "Fake Wedge", now known canonically as Col Takbright, in the pilot briefing scene. David Ankrum may best be known for playing Tabitha's brother, in a Bewitched spinoff. If you're under 40, you probably don't know what most of those words are.



So Ankrum was re-cast in 2016 to make some announcements over the intercom at Yavin for Rogue One. The in-canon reason for Wedge being in the control room, and not flying, during Scarif, was because of his line "Look at the size of that thing," in reference to presumably seeing the Death Star for the first time. Due to this line, it would not have made sense for Wedge to have been able to see the Death Star at Scarif, so he was therefore grounded for the purposes of continuity. For the record, Red Two has not yet been identified at Scarif.

Anyway, it's a decent segue to revisit the newly updated 5-part series for the Battle of Yavin. Enjoy!

PART I: Alliance Forces at Yavin 6/18/2018
PART II: Red Squadron Pilots 6/19/2018 (Updated 11/11/2022)
PART III: Figures and Toys of Red Squadron 6/20/2018 (Updated 10/26/2022)
PART IV: Gold Squadron 6/21/2018
PART V: Blue and Green Squadrons 6/27/2018 (Updated 10/26/2022)

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