The fake Wedge

The Fake Wedge:



and Flambards

I am a huge fan of the mini series: "Flambards." I first saw it in 1989 on A & E when A & E was still cool and showed actual art and entertainment. The series was filmed in 1978 in Yorkshire, England and was based on three novels by KM Peyton, Flambards, The Edge of the Cloud and Flambards in Summer. It's the story of a young girl sent to live at her uncle estate in pre WWI England. Again, let me say, I love this series, A LOT.


My mom, being one to cater to my wants and whims, the way a mom does, bought me the DVD's last year for my birthday. But I was in the middle of my discovery of the wonderful world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so the DVD's sat until last week. When I watched them, all 13 hours, and was so glad to see that I still loved it.

I loved it enough to try and force my husband to watch some, in that vain hope that he might enjoy some it. Ha, I should have known better... But Ben being Ben, noticed that the actor playing the teacher in one scene, is Wedge Antilles from Star Wars. Now Ben loves Star Wars like I love the Beatles, or like the Pope loves God. Not kidding here. So if Ben says it's true and it's about the Star Wars saga, it'd be a safe bet to say it's true. But being Ben, he runs up to our loft,(his man room) and digs out his DVD's to prove it to me since IMDB is saying otherwise. So we watch the scene in Star Wars (AKA New Hope) where the battle plans against the Death Star are being explained. Luke is sitting next to Wedge (so noted by scripts), they discuss womprats and his T-16 ( and lest you think I'm cooler than I am: I had to verify this with Ben just now). And lo and behold it is the same actor as the teacher in Flambards... Ben was right. God love him... But in the following scene, when they are in their ships, Wedge just doesn't look the same, maybe it was the helmet... But then again, I could tell that Luke was Luke and this guy did not look the same as the Wedge from a few minutes before.

So back downstairs to the computer we go. And this is what we find:

"Portrayal
Denis Lawson portrayed Wedge throughout all three films, except in one scene in A New Hope. During the pre-battle briefing on Yavin IV, Luke briefly chats with a character seated next to him who scoffs at the idea of successfully hitting such a small target as the Death Star exhaust port. In the shooting script and novelization of the film, this character is identified as Wedge. However, given his skeptical attitude and the fact that he was not played by Denis Lawson in this scene, many assume that he was one of the other anonymous Rebel pilots. Fans sometimes refer to this character as "Fake Wedge". While many fans believed that the actor delivering this line was Jack Klaff, who played John D, Pablo Hidalgo recently revealed on his weblog that the actor in question was Colin Higgins. "

quoted from http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wedge_Antilles

a quick search on IMDB shows that Colin Higgins was indeed in Flambards.
For me, this was interesting factoid but not mind blowing, so yeah! back to watching my show.

For my husband (the man who first decided he liked me because I had gotten him an autographed picture of Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) when I was on vacation), he was both happy to be proved right and freaked out that he never caught that before.

This, my friends, is the life of the married geeks. This would be why Ben knows that they don't teach unspoken spells until the 6th year at Hogwarts, and why I know that Zuckuss breathes ammonia. And brownie points to you if you ACTUALLY know who Zuckuss is!!!