As we move beyond the first season of Star Wars: Andor, now’s a great moment to look at the world in which it sits, one occupied by Rogue One and A New Hope. You could argue that the bridge between those two missions – Scarif and Yavin – lies in the form of a slim metal card, first seen in the 1977 original from a distance and again in 2016’s Rogue One, and Lucasfilm take a closer look at the design and creation of the Death Star plans datacard that shook a galaxy.
“The datacard was manufactured by the Rogue One prop department to match as closely as possible the card we see at a distance in A New Hope,” says Lucasfilm manager of physical assets Portia Fontes. “It’s etched metal with a brass inlay, and is one of several designs for the datacard that we have in the Archives.”
The reason there were several designs made for the Rogue One datacard is because the Death Star plans were potentially going to be carried on multiple devices in the film, according to concept artist Matthew Savage. “At one point in the script there were many different datacards doing different things in different scenes so we designed some chunky cards,” he explains. “[Director] Gareth [Edwards] really wanted our film to run seamlessly into A New Hope, so the final version had to be in line with the slim card you see Leia holding in that film.”
In addition to the slim shape of the card, the actual surface design was influenced by the aesthetics of A New Hope. “The pattern was inspired by early ‘70s circuit boards,” continues Savage. “The temptation with Star Wars is to always go super-complicated, but A New Hope is actually a very sparse-looking movie with analog technology, and we really want to sit in that universe.”
