Return of the Jedi
EV-9D9 (or Eve-Ninedenine) was the masochistic and sadistic supervisor of Droid Operations for Jabba the Hutt. Her manic programming well-matched her in this role. During her time at Jabba's Palace, she supervised the appointment of C-3PO as Jabba's interpreter, and of R2-D2 as a drink attendant aboard Jabba's sail barge. The bronze-coloured droid had a third eye, skeletal physique and a discordant synthetic voice. She loved to torture droids when they messed up, as seen in Return of the Jedi, when her assistant tortures a Gonk droid, and to build grotesque droids from extra parts that existed only to feel pain.
Expanded Universe
As a droid, Eve was a freak- she had an extra scanner/eye, which made her different from the start, and she had a burning desire to experience like organic creatures did- pleasure, pain, emotions of all varieties.
Her quest drove her to break loose from her owners, to rewire herself, and to wander the galaxy carrying out her sadistic experiments. She usually would acquire a position of trust, and with cunning subterfuge, kidnap droids and install 'pain buttons', devices which allowed droids to experience sensations. She would then torture them until they were dysfunctional, in remarkably creative ways.
One of her workshops was on Bespin's Cloud City, where she usurped the real security chief, and engaged in her habitual recreations. So successful was she in hiding her depredations that a full quarter of Cloud City's droids (with losses concentrated in more sentient groups like Wuntoo traffic control droids) were tortured to death by her and her subordinate Sarl Random only found out by accident.
Even when discovered and imprisoned, Eve's diabolical intelligence allowed her to escape, by damaging the main repulsorlift generators, launching a decoy ship, and while Calrissian's forces attempted to capture the decoy, escaped in the Mining Guild's brand new, state-of-the-art ship, the Iopene Princess. From there, she vanished. She would later turn up in Jabba's palace.
Some years later, after supervising the disposal of C-3PO and R2-D2, her paranoia and security programs launched into action, eventually ferreting out of the Palace's computer that Baron Lando Calrissian was at the Palace, and was orchestrating the two droid's assignments. In fear that Calrissian had finally tracked her down (which he hadn't; he was there as part of the plot to rescue Han Solo), Eve began disposing of her experiments and tortures-in-progress and other traces of her presence within her secret workshop; but as she labored to obscure her presence, Calrissian apparently penetrated her ___domain, and shot her down.
At the last moment, Eve realized her mistakes- Calrissian was not there for her, he was there for some other reason, and her assailant was no human. Instead, it was the sole surviving Wuntoo unit of Cloud City, whose siblings Eve had slain. He then proceeded to dismember her. Wuntoo also released all the hideous monstrous hybrid droids Eve had created, unleashed them to take revenge- but first, he removed Eve's extra sensor... and her pain button, denying, in a final fitting revenge, the possibility of savoring the pleasure/the pain of being ripped apart.
17 years after A New Hope, Luke Skywalker's mechanic, Cole Fardreamer would encounter on the planet of Telti, in a droid manufactuary under the control of Brakiss, "Eve-Ninedenine", successor to the "prototype" of EV-9D9, manufactured after her sale to Jabba the Hutt; "I am said to be twice as ruthless as she." It is unknown whether that droid was destroyed after R2-D2 rallied the scrapped astromech droids to take over the factory.
Yeardley Smith provided the voice of 9D9 on the radio version.
Behind the Scenes
EV-9D9 materialized as near the beginning as the first rough copy of the Revenge of the Jedi script, where she was identified as U-8D8. In the reworked second version, she was renamed EV-8D8. In the third version, she received her name of EV-9D9 and her skull-faced minion as an alternative inherited the 8D8 mark. On set, director Richard Marquand supplied his voice to the droid marionette, which was later redubbed in the course of post-production.
References
- A Bad Feeling: The Tale of EV-9D9, from Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace, 1st edition, 1996. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, ISBN 0-553-56815-9
- The New Rebellion, 1st printing paperback, 1996. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, ISBN0-553-57414-0