R4-P17

R4-P17 was an Astromech Droid belonging to Obi-Wan Kenobi. She accompanied him on many missions from Geonosis to Tatooine to the Battle of Coruscant, and was his loyal companion for many years. Despite having a generally bleak view of technology in general, Obi-Wan did eventually begin to see the use of an Astromech Droid and became quite attatched to his little companion.

Sadly, their friendship came to an abrupt end when R4-P17 was attacked whilst manning the Astromech Droid socket of Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighter by a complement of Buzz Droids, who used their Buzz Saws to tear off her dome and fling it into space. Obi-Wan showed little concern at this, commenting little more than simply 'Oh dear' on the matter, as the Droid itself would probably be salvagable. However, hope of a resurrection for R4 were lost when the rest of her body was disintergrated in the destruction of Obi-Wan's starfighter.

It is odd really. R4 was attacked and swarmed by nearly 20 Buzz Droids, and despite attempting to fend them off she was killed and no-one seemed to care. However, as soon as one droid went anywhere near R2-D2, Obi-Wan immidietly knew where to hit the Buzz Droid in order to kill it. No-one knows why he didn't tell R4 about the weakness of the Buzz Droid's center eye, or why everyone celebrates when R2 does finally kill this one Buzz Droid. Whatever their thought process, it did nothing to help poor R4. Despite probably having a cooler colour scheme, voice and gadget complement than R2-D2, since she was a war robot and R2 was just a manual labour droid gone mental, R4 was swept aside and forgotten, replaced soon afterwards with R4-G9.