Skip to main content

star wars - Toilets in the Galaxy Far, Far Away


For many years now, I've been curious about what bathrooms - and especially toilets - look like in the Galaxy Far, Far Away1. I'm quite sure we never see one in the original trilogy, even in settings in which we can reasonably expect to find them - for example, Leia's detention cell aboard the Death Star:


enter image description here


I am also reasonably confident that there aren't any in the prequels either, although I have only seen the prequels two or three times (as compared to having seen the each installment of the original trilogy scores of times). I haven't seen The Force Awakens yet, but I have asked around, and no one seems to recall seeing a bathroom there, either.



If we assume that the anatomical differences between the various sentient species aren't merely cosmetic and skin-deep, then the sheer logistics of providing facilities for all the different species that inhabit the Star Wars universe - or even just the most common and widespread species, like humans, Twi'leks, Rodians, Bothans, Transdoshans, and Wookiees - would be staggering.


Of course, there is no need to have facilities designed to accommodate a species that will probably never use them. Therefore, the typical Wookiee home on Kashyyk would probably have facilities designed specifically for Wookiees (because they wouldn't anticipate a Hutt needing to use their bathroom), and Owen and Beru Lars presumably had a bathroom not that different from our own (because they didn't expect an Aqualish to use their toilet). And in some cases, a sentient species might not have toilets of any kind - I would assume that Ewoks do their business in crude pit latrines, or even just out in the woods somewhere.


But there are plenty of places in the galaxy where many species came together, like the Mos Eisley Cantina, or the Jedi Temple, or the Galactic Senate building. In these cases, the public bathrooms would have to accommodate all manner of different species, and the anatomical differences between the species would necessitate drastically different types of toilets.


Have we ever seen a bathroom/toilet in the Star Wars universe, or seen a description of one? And how did plumbers in the Galaxy Far, Far Away accommodate for a reasonable number of the most common species in the finite space available to them?




1 Full Disclosure: This curiosity was born out of a question my friend once asked me:



"If you had the choice of being best friends with Chewbacca, and hanging out with him all the time, so your relationship was just like the Chewbacca/Han Solo partnership, or being best friends with R2-D2, and hanging out with him all the time, just like the Luke/R2-D2 partnership (minus C-3PO), and assuming you could perfectly understand everything that was said by whichever best friend you chose, who would you pick?"



I gave the question more thought than I would like to admit, and eventually, I started pondering the logistics of sharing my apartment with a Wookiee. I figured my food expenses would drastically increase, but that didn't bother me as much as the next problem that occurred to me: Could I handle sharing a bathroom with Chewbacca? That is to say, can a toilet designed for use by humans handle the kind of punishment a Wookiee is likely to dish out? How long does it take for a bathroom to become habitable again after a Wookiee uses it? Would I have to leave the apartment for a few hours so it could air out after Chewbacca does his business? The other problems that would likely arise from having a Wookiee roommate - shedding; fleas; having to clean enormous hairballs out of the shower drain every morning; angry neighbors complaining and calling the cops because Chewie keeps eating their pets; etc - would probably pale in comparison to the horror of modern plumbing's inability to cope with the digestive processes of a seven foot tall carnivorous space-ape with a penchant for eating raw Endor-monkey meat.



Peter Mayhew, AKA Chewbacca, has commented on this issue on Reddit, but he would only say this:



Let's just say, even toilets let Wookiees win.
Cheers,
Peter Mayhew




Answer



Update:


In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, we see a sign labeled "LATRINE" in a bar, with symbols representing various races. From that, we can assume that bathrooms provided options for at least a few different physiques.


enter image description here



Old Answer:


In the Legends continuity, it seems human toilets were essentially the same as our own.


Star Wars toilet 1


Star Wars toilet 2


I can find no reference to the toilets of other species or instances of other species using human toilets. However, given that many species could breed with humans, I would assume that many species had similar enough bodies to use human toilets just fine.


I did find this non-canon Star Wars-themed MAD comic, though:


MAD Star Wars comic


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...