Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.

Today we're going to be listening to 1m2 The Imperial Probe, the first completely original cue written for the film.

This is a fascinating piece of music, and a large amount of it went totally unused in the final cut. It's also by far the longest piece of music we've analyzed for this series so far.

The cue is 195 bars long and was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.

For this cue, as with most cues for this score, I actually have scans of the sketch as well as the conductor's score. Here's what the tops of both look like:

A note before listening - thanks to having the sketches, I'm happy to be able to provide Williams' original sync notes for this cue (you can see a couple of them in the preview image above). These have been added as subtitles throughout the video, and were invaluable in figuring out what edits were made between recording and the final cut. I plan to include these for every cue I'm able to.

Now let's listen to the cue together:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AUuhAVDwr4MvDDrHD3mJkYdLUPElrTav/preview

At 0:00 the cue begins with some mysterious woodwinds as the camera pans down. I think it's interesting that this section is totally different from the woodwinds after the crawl from the original film - Williams could've chosen to reuse that as a sort of "starry night" stinger, but he didn't.

At 0:07 the camera finishes panning onto a Star Destroyer and we get our first ever statement of the Imperial March, played on woodwinds over ascending brass.

At 0:12, some sudden sharp brass for the emergence of the probe droid pods, which leads into the first big statement of the Imperial March at 0:21.

The music swells for the flyby at 0:27, followed by loud brass crashes beginning when we first see Hoth at 0:30. These repeat four times, ending with a final brass crash at 0:38 when the pod crashes into the snow.

At 0:43 we get an interesting tuba solo for the probe droid as it rises out of the wreckage. Then at 0:50, some final brass as the droid turns and flies away.

At 0:58 the brass fades away to some quiet woodwinds for the helicopter shot of the ice plains. As the camera zooms in and we see Luke's tauntaun run across the screen we get some brass accompaniment at 1:05.

At 1:11, we hear some happy sounding celeste as the tauntaun stops at the edge of the cliff. This leads into a happy statement of Luke's theme at 1:16 as he pulls off his facemask and looks off into the distance.

Mysterious woodwinds return at 1:23 as Luke witnesses the probe crash.

A small note here: this is not actually a second crash nor is Luke a time traveler; in the shooting script this was actually meant to be the first scene of the film, the intro with the probe droid pod didn't exist - when it was added this was intended as a slight flashback. The film doesn't really address it so most people probably didn't even notice.

At 1:33 we get another statement of Luke's theme as he pulls out his communicator to talk to Han.

At 1:46, another new theme as we hear Han and Leia's love theme for the first time. Obviously these scenes have nothing to do with Leia or love but it does set up the melody as a theme for Han.

At 2:00 the music builds suspense as the tauntaun starts to panic. Suddenly at 2:05, loud aggressive brass for the attack of the wampa. This ends quickly with one final climax at 2:13, followed by some ascending harp as Luke is dragged off.

At 2:21 we switch perspectives as Han returns to Echo Base. Some pulsing brass as Han rides in, ending with some beautiful ascending strings at 2:32 as Han takes his hood and mask off.

The pulsing brass returns at 2:36 as he begins to walk through the busy hangar, only slowing down at 2:49 with some more ascending strings for the closeup of Chewie.

At 2:54, we get a nice rendition of the rarely heard B section of Luke's theme as Han says he has something to do and walks off.

This flows directly into Leia's theme (returning from the original film) at 3:10, as we get our first shot of her in the control room. This continues as Han says he has to leave, developing into a bridge at 3:27, and leading directly into the new Han and Leia love theme at 3:49.

We get a nice rendition of it for their short discussion, followed by ascending strings at 4:07 as Leia storms after Han into the hallway. This leads directly into more of the love theme at 4:16. This continues through the rest of their conversation.

At 4:56 the music changes again, switching to a short staccato brass rhythm followed quickly by the third new theme introduced by this cue: we get our first appearance of the Droid Motif as C-3PO and R2-D2 argue while walking down the hallway.

This continues through 5:20 until the music is taken over by concerned strings as 3PO explains how Luke hasn't come back yet.

At 5:31, a low brass statement of Luke's theme as Han seeks the deck officer to inquire further. At 5:39, a second statement of the rare B section as Han walks off to go find him.

At 5:54, some development of the A section as Han speaks with the search party, and shoves his way past.

Finally, at 6:14 we get one last statement of the Han/Leia love theme as Han mounts his tauntaun and takes off. This leads into a percussion and harp transition as we see some empty snow plains. Thus, the cue ends....

As you can probably tell from some of the more obvious edits near the beginning of my upload, the scenes this cue scored were edited after the cue was recorded. Most of the changes are concentrated in the first minute, only one change occurs after that.

I was able to largely reconstruct the intended edit using the sync notes as well as via the storyboards, although there was missing footage in a few places so I just left those as black screens.

Here's a complete list of footage changes I believe occurred between the scored cut and the final cut:

- The opening shot of the star destroyer was extended in the final cut by 2.5 seconds

- The 4-second shot at 0:25 of the scored cut was removed entirely from the final cut

- The shot of the probe droid rising from the wreckage at 0:43 in the scored cut appears to have been extended in the final cut by around a second

- The following shot of the probe droid "turning" and moving away appears to have been shortened to excise the "turning" part.

- There seems to have been a wipe transition between the probe droid flying off and the opening snow shot that was removed in the final cut.

- The order of the Luke and Han on tauntaun shots seems to have been different, the long shot of Han on his tauntaun was earlier in their conversation.

Most of these picture changes didn't directly impact this cue because the entire opening of this cue was replaced in the final cut with an insert (1m2 New Start) which we'll talk about more next week. In the final cut, the music for the above scenes plays out as follows:

0:00-0:56 = 1m2 New Start

0:56-2:21 = 1m2 The Imperial Probe

2:21-2:29 = 5m1 Crash Landing

2:29-3:50 = silence

3:50-5:12 = 1m2 The Imperial Probe

5:12-end = silence

As a result, 0:00-0:56, 2:21-3:50 and 5:12-end of this cue are all completely unused in the final film. You'll notice that the latter two sections didn't even undergo any visual edits between scoring and release.

This will be a common trend in this score, large swathes of music went completely unused even when they fit the scene - it seems this film was over-spotted, that is Irvin Kershner didn't object to music when he didn't want it at the spotting sessions, but waited until the editing stage to remove it where he felt it wasn't necessary.

For this cue specifically, some of the silence appears to have been planned as early as the recording stage - another insert written for this cue was 1m2 Insert Bar 80, the entire purpose of which was to provide an early ending for Han's arrival at Echo Base at 2:21. This insert went completely unused, we'll talk about it more in two weeks.

One last thing to talk about with the film edits is that this cue is actually looped in the final cut around the transition from 1m2 New Start. I'm not quite sure why this was done, there should have been enough material to cover the transition without a loop. Regardless, it's there, the most obvious loop being the little brass statement I called out at 1:05, which appears twice in the film.

Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers written in the sketch it had to have been recorded on either December 28 or December 29, 1979. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 61 and 62.

This cue has been officially released on four different albums:

1) In 1980 on RSO Records' OST album

2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set

3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set

4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)

More specifically, 1m2 The Imperial Probe can be heard:

From 1:30-3:30 of track 1 "Star Wars (Main Theme)" on the 1980/2018 albums

From 1:30-end of disc 1 track 1 "Main Title/The Imperial Probe (Extended Version)" on the 1993 album

From 1:30-end of disc 1 track 2 "Main Title/The Ice Planet Hoth" on the 1997 album.

The 1993 and 1997 releases both have clean endings, but no release has a clean opening. The 1980, 1997 and 2018 releases are all remixed, and the 1993 and 1997 releases have minor dynamic range compression. Additionally, every set except for the 1997 is microedited:

Additionally, all releases of this cue play at the wrong pitch/speed, although this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:

• 1980 set has to be sped up by 0.480 to match film

• 1993 set has to be sped up by 0.248 to match film

• 1997 set has to be sped up by 0.248 to match film

• 2018 set has to be slowed down by -0.271 to match film

As a result, I can't recommend any set as a good out-of-the-box listening experience for this cue. The 1993 set comes the closest, but it's missing 15 seconds of the cue.

For my edit above, I used the 1993 for most of the cue, but I filled in the missing 15 seconds using a film rip. Unfortunately, due to the looping in the film in this section, the 1 second transition into the celeste material was missing. I had to restore this section using a mix of an AI-cleaned up radio drama rip and some looping of my own from similar sounding clean sections. I think I did a fairly good job, hopefully it's not terribly noticeable.

I hope that one day Disney releases a proper Empire Strikes Back expansion so that we can hear this cue unedited in its proper mix.

That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.

Next week we'll be listening to 1m2 New Start. See you then!