Return of the Jedi Radio Drama (1996!) and The Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell (1983)
Return of the Jedi Radio Drama
The Return of The Jedi adaptation has an interesting backstory. After Reagan cut NPR's funding, they weren't able to produce a Return of The Jedi adaptation in the 80s. Highbridge Audio, the company that did the home releases for the first two dramas, eventually got most of the cast (minus Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams) and crew signed back on in 1996 so they could sell my dad a Return of The Jedi cd to put in my Christmas stocking. They did still get an NPR premiere. I'm kind of surprised we didn't listen to them live. My dad was an PBS/NPR fan who loved radio dramas, and I obviously loved Star Wars. Seems like something we'd have gone for. It's the last thing Brian Daley worked on. He died a few hours after recording wrapped.
Because it wasn't produced until the mid 90s, it contains a few references to the expanded universe. Mara Jade gets a cameo to narrate Oola's execution to C-3PO, and Han mentions 3PO flying the Falcon in Shadows of The Empire.
Again, there's a new/deleted scene before the events of the movie. This time its Luke building his lightsaber. It's a cool scene, but not strictly necessary.
There's the usual fun of seeing which famous lines made it, got modified, or were cut altogether. Daley still can't write 3PO for anything. "Now witness the firepower..." doesn't make it, but is almost made up for by the beautiful, "Darth Vader's master, but not Anakin Skywalker's!" that Daley invents. Much better than NOOOOOO.
All in all, A New Hope still takes the cake, but I'd put Jedi above Empire. I think a lot of this comes down to how fast it moves. Even with credits, intros, etc., it's still not much more than three hours. Getting in and out of Jabba's palace and minimizing Ewok shenanigans does a lot for it.
The Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell
Besides the radio dramas, Daley tried his hand at an original production, "The Rebel Misson to Ord Mantell"
It's fine. Not a must listen, but an acceptable 30 minute time killer on the drive into work or whatever. The cast is different (and not as good) and it suffers from the same problem a lot of early EU stuff has where nothing really happens since Han, Luke, and Leia can't die, but this random one off adventure also can't meaningfully harm the Empire either. There's a lot here that'll be familiar to anyone whose listened to the radio dramas. An exciting (if somewhat detached) beginning, with Han and Luke BOTH flying X-Wings, and having R2 do some techno-babble shield combining to escape a Star Destroyer. There's a double cross, but the setup to pay off takes about five minutes, and is painfully predictable. Daley repeats his earlier "Leia flirting her way past the Imperials" bit for ANH but it's kind of awkward here, as opposed to kind of funny like it was before.
At this point, I think I've covered everything pre-Thrawn EU adjacent of any note. There's a couple kids books and the newspaper comics (even more detached than the old Marvel ones). I'm actually way ahead on reading (done the whole Thrawn trilogy, and started on Dark Empire), but I'm going to take a big swing next week and do one more non-book trilogy before I jump into the EU proper...
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