At time of writing it's little more than a week away. By the time you read this it may have already happened. You might have got yours, perhaps you have it clutched tightly to your bosom, or to the bosom of your loved one, or just sat on your shelf enlivening your sitting-room in a way no amount of Feng Shui could ever hope to achieve. I refer of course to the fact that the Holy Grail of DVD releases, the original Star Wars trilogy, arrives on 20th September. After what seems an eternity of waiting, and quite a long period of pre-ordering, the time is nigh. Star Wars chapters IV, V, and VI are being released on lovely, digital, shiny, versatile, super cool, disc.

Well, sort of...

Once the announcement had been made that the long sought after (indeed, 'long-lusted after' would not be an inappropriate phrase on this occasion, were I but brave enough to use it) set of three films was to be made available, speculation very quickly turned to the question of exactly which versions of the films we would be getting. I haven't conducted any sort of comprehensive research on this (an approach you're probably all-too familiar with by now, loyal reader) but even an idle lurk through the Internet world shows that there were two major opinions on the subject - firstly, everybody wanted the original, 1977, 1980, and 1983 versions of, respectively "A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", and "Return of the Jedi" rather than the 'Special Edition' re-releases of 1997; and secondly, everybody felt sure that we would in fact get the 1997 re-releases, boo hoo hoo, not fair, life's a bitch, etc, etc.

How ironic then that after several months during which Star Wars fans across the known universe reconciled themselves to the fact that it would be the 1997 versions of their favourite films on DVD, it should have recently come to light that in fact the versions to be released on DVD are another new set entirely. Yet more changes have been made to the 'Special Editions' - whether we need to start referring to them as the 'Really Special Editions', 'Extra Special Editions' or (fearing the worst, since they are originating from America) 'Specialer Editions' has yet to be resolved.

I'm not going to elaborate here on all the tweaks and changes and adjustments that have been made this time around to the trilogy - if you're that interested there are plenty of websites out there that will not only tell you but probably show you as well (Haydn Christian instead of Sebastian Shaw? What are they on??!!). For that matter, you could just extract the set from the warm and inviting bosom of your loved one, and watch the damn discs, and thus discover all the differences yourself during a long evening of "Oh no" and "For goodness sake" sort of comments.

The thinking behind altering the films yet again for their DVD release is difficult to fathom, but there are I suppose several possibilities. The goal for the 1997 cinematic 'Special Editions' was press-released at the time as being George Lucas' opportunity to make the films the way he would have made them at the time, if the technology of those dark and ancient times (ie, the 1970s and 1980s) had been up to it. There is a sense, on paper at least, in which that sounds perfectly reasonable, although I can't quite see how a song & dance routine early in "Return of the Jedi" fits this description - the technology for such a thing was certainly in existence back then (unless I imagined the whole MGM Musical era). Quite what that particular routine would have added to the film in 1983 is uncertain; I suppose it might have taken some of the flak off those darned Ewoks.

Another reason for the Special Editions in 1997, and therefore I suppose for the revised versions this time around as well, is the idea that George Lucas is trying to polish the old films so that once the prequel trilogy is completed (with next year's "Revenge of the Sith") one could in theory watch all six films, from "The Phantom Menace" to "The Return of the Jedi", without, as it were, being able to see the join. Again, I suppose this is a laudable aim in principal, but it is unfortunately such a laughable aim in practice. The original film is (pardon the gushing) a thing of absolute wonder, and regardless of the relative merits of the other films they all to a very large degree succeed because of the success and popularity of that first film. But despite that, despite the fact that it is a film that virtually everybody I know loves (I like it, my Mum likes it, even educated bees like it) there are parts of it which by today's standards look very old. That's not a criticism, but anyone who has seen the new 'entrance to Mos Eisley' sequence in the 1997 'Special Edition' will know that the added CGI elements jar (jar jar binks in fact) with the original footage to the extent that not only do they not add to the film, they actually weaken it. I saw the 1997 version of the first film in the cinema, and despite the wealth of new stuff on display - walking dewbacks, Jabba the Hutt, Ben Kenobi's house suddenly being on top of a giant termite nest for no obvious reason - there was only one shot that I felt improved the film. (In case anyone is interested, it is the Millennium Falcon taking off from docking bay 94 - that shot actually works because it looks convincing, whereas a lot of the other CGI doesn't, and because it actually does improve what was a shortcoming in the original film.)

Of course the irony is that while spending such time trying to visually merge all six films seamlessly together, the plotting of the two prequels to date suggests that the time would have been far better spent working on the storyline. By the end of "Attack of the Clones" (chapter II) we have learnt that C-3P0 was created by the boy who will be Darth Vader, that he lived on the planet Tatooine, and that he worked for Owen and Beru Lars. Somehow by the start of "A New Hope" (the original film, now chapter IV) not only will C-3P0 have to have forgotten his life on Tatooine, but 'Uncle Owen' will similarly have to have forgotten the rather camp golden droid he used to own. This isn't the only instance where the join between the two trilogies of films is unlikely to be smooth, unless in the DVD Special Edition of "A New Hope" Alec Guiness' line, regarding R2-D2 ("Don't recall ever owning a droid before") has been augmented by "but of course I remember you from those adventures we had when I was a young man, how the devil are you, and whatever happened to that rather camp golden droid you used to hang around with?"

The chances are that by the end of "Revenge of the Sith" the six films will not look like one continuing story at all, but will instead have a large number of fundamental inconsistencies which in all honesty will probably bug the hell out of me for years to come. Which is a shame - by my reckoning the 2005 final film will show Anakin finally becoming Darth Vader, and Amidala giving birth to twins who she must then liberate and hide from her husband. It could be a horrifyingly dark film, with the attempt to get away from the growing Empire being akin to trying to escape from Nazi Germany. And although I don't really think it will be anything like that, I still have just a faint glimmer of hope that this final film will be a triumph in tone and emotion, if not in narrative continuity. We can't entirely dismiss the possibility that it might be powerful in that way; don't forget that, for all its familiarity to us now, "The Empire Strikes Back" was, and in fact still is, a very dark film, which ends on what was I think the first ever feature-film cliffhanger, namely Han Solo frozen in Carbonite.

I suppose it's also fair to say that Lucas' tweaking his films is nothing new. Almost before the first tumultuous applause had died down over the original standalone film "Star Wars" it was being re-released to cinemas relabelled as "Chapter IV - A New Hope". It may have been a shrewd marketing ploy, it may have been something he had always wanted to do, but which the studios vetoed on its first release on the grounds that it was silly, but either way even back then he had at least one eye on a continuing narrative.

There is, by the way, a third possibility regarding why the DVDs are being released with yet another version of the three films. Maybe, just maybe, it's a genuine attempt by Mr Lucas to give us all value for money - maybe his reasoning is that we've all seen the original and 'Special Editions' of these films before, and quite possibly forked out money on the VHS releases of them (my wife by the way, and prepare to be jealous now my young apprentices, had widescreen editions of the original versions of all three films when I first met her - we still have them of course, although I probably ought to add that was in no sense the (only) reason that I married her). Maybe benevolent Uncle George is thinking that if we're going to fork out money on the DVDs then he ought to be giving us something new, something special (or specialer). After all, they could have just as easily slapped the films straight onto DVD without any work on them at all, and still have been sure of huge sales (just look at Paramount's recent release of the first series of the original "Star Trek" where they did that very thing) so clearly it isn't something being done because of the lure of the profit motive. If the notion of giving us something we haven't seen before, as value for money, really is the reason, and I should in many ways like to think that it is something as benevolent as that, then not only is George Lucas a true gentleman amongst film-makers... but he has also, I think, entirely missed the appeal of the DVD market.

But I've gone on long enough, so I shall leave it there for this week. This discussion on DVDs will be continued - you won't however have to wait three years for its resolution you'll be pleased to know. And of course by the time the next column is up you'll probably be busy watching your DVDs (or maybe just watching the bosom of your loved one if you can't afford the DVDs). So until then, Live Long and Prosper.

Oops, wrong catchphrase, I should of course have said:

Nanoo Nanoo.

TO BE (SORT OF) CONTINUED...