Cruise the Internet today and you can find the complete technical specifications of several different variants of Y-Wing (“The Y-wing’s weapons are controlled by a Fabritech ANc-2.7 tracking computer with a SI 5g7 “Quickscan” vector imaging system”), despite the fact that no-one actually says the words “Y-Wing” in any of the films.

With fans feverishly mining the films for more information, the giant that is Lucasfilm and all of its many licensees have been quick to give the people what they wanted over the years. For starters, they had to have names to put on all those obscure action figures; you’ll sell a lot of Han Solos, of course, but there’s extra money to be made targeting the completionist collector who can’t rest until he’s got his mitts on a (pristine, unopened) Ree-Yees or Bib Fortuna.

Then as the Star wars Expanded Universe (EU) grew larger and larger, a host of licensed content authors and creators (most huge Star Wars fanboys themselves) took what opportunities they could to authenticise their own works by somehow connecting them directly with the Holy Grail that was the films themselves, no matter how tenuously; their brief might tell them that they weren’t allowed to write about Luke Skywalker in this particular short story or comic, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t allowed to create the entire life story of alien guy X in the background of the cantina scene in A New Hope who appeared for 12 frames and, thus, was once in the same room with Luke Skywalker. Ahh, the reflected glory.

With these twin forces of demand and willing supply at work, there are not just few characters but few things that appear onscreen at anytime in the Star Wars films that do not have an officially approved name / explanation / biography recorded somewhere. It is within these vast swathes of data that true Star Wars geekery lurks, loading up on truly superfluous information and arguing the merits of the Blastech DL-44 (Han Solo’s gun; illegal throughout the Empire) versus the Bryar pistol (Kyle Katarn’s starter gun in the Dark Forces game; a late Old Republic weapon highly valued by blaster aficionados. Apparently.)

As something of a toe-dipping exercise into these murky waters, we look now at 10 non-speaking characters that pop up (briefly) in the films of the Original Trilogy – they may have no lines, but as we’ll see, that doesn’t stop them from often having a whole encyclopaedia’s worth of past (and sometimes future) history assigned to their blink-and-you’ll-miss-them selves. After reading this you too will be able to put names to the faces (or appendages) and might stand a chance of impressing the next true Star Wars geek you meet at a party. Well probably not a party; but somewhere, anyway.

1. Max Rebo