Shut Him Up!

Last updated: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:01:00 GMT

Or shut him down.

I'm sitting on the living room floor, eating a packet of chocolate buttons, drinking a coffee and watching the revisionist DVD release of The Empire Strikes Back.

My favourite Star Wars film.

I have the house to myself for the day, and in a few minutes I'll have finished my coffee and it'll be time for me to go upstairs and start tearing down stud walls, so that I can lay in the plumbing for our shower.

I like this film for a number of reasons. There's the obvious nostalgia, the beautiful Carrie Fisher, the bitter but hopeful ending, and the repeated failure of technology to come to the rescue.

But every time I watch this film there's one thing that puzzles me. Early on in the film, just after everyone important has escaped the planet Hoth, Luke decides to follow the instructions he received in his hypothermic vision and make his way to the swampy planet that is home to the last Jedi master, Yoda.

R2D2 bleeps a query and Luke, his hands resting on the controls of his X-Wing replies "no, thanks, I'd like to keep the controls on manual for a while."

Maybe he thinks he'll do a better job of describing a curve than his robot? Or perhaps he fancies the challenge of holding the craft straight and level -- whatever that might mean in the absence of a horizon -- for the next few hundred thousand miles?

25 years on, I'm still none the wiser.