As hard as it is to imagine the Star Wars Universe without them, both R2-D2 and C-3PO were absent from George Lucas' original 1973 fourteen-page synopsis for what he was then calling The Star Wars. It wasn't until the following year when Lucas was working on his first real draft of the script that he introduced two construction robot characters who worked in an Imperial Space Fortress named Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio. Lucas described the first incarnation of Artoo as a short, old and battered claw-armed tripod whose face is a mass of computer lights surrounding a radar eye. Sounds more or less how he turned out, right? Well, the original R2-D2 had an ability that was eventually written out - the power of speech. Yup, there were no beeps and boops to be had, just straight up English. The talking R2's first line in the May 1974 draft was:
"The external bombardment does appear to be concentrated in this area. The structure has exceeded the normal stress quotient by point four, although there appears to be no immediate danger."
Complicated much? By the 1975 draft the story was starting to sound a lot more familiar, beginning with two droids aboard a Rebel Spacefighter, followed by their evacuation, landing on the planet known as Utapau, and capture by Jawas. And, by this point, only one of them could talk.
