From the Movies
Continuing a Naboo tradition of sleek, gleaming starships, Senator Padmé Amidala employed a striking boomerang-shaped star skiff in her final days as the Clone Wars drew to a close. Though elegant, it is somewhat more utilitarian than the rocket-shaped yacht or the enormous Naboo Royal Cruiser she used in previous years.
The silvery craft had a teardrop-shaped primary hull supported by a wide wing, with a top mounted cockpit and surprisingly spacious interior. The storage bay included roomy lockers, and inside was a small yet well-equipped medical suite.
Though Padmé Amidala was more than capable of flying the ship, she often left that duty to Captain Typho or C-3PO. The control systems were standard Naboo designs, offering familiarity to those already trained on similar vessels.
Amidala piloted the star skiff from Coruscant to Mustafar in a desperate yet failed bid to track down her husband who had succumbed to the dark side of the Force. Amidala never returned from that fateful voyage, though Obi-Wan Kenobi had stowed away aboard the star skiff, inside one of the storage lockers. After the shocking confrontation between Anakin Skywalker and Amidala on Mustafar, and the resulting duel between Kenobi and his former apprentice, Amidala's inert form was taken aboard the star skiff by the loyal droids, C-3PO and R2-D2. Inside, the skiff's medical suite was barely able to stabilize her condition long enough for Obi-Wan Kenobi to pilot the vessel to the asteroid refuge of Polis Massa.
From the Expanded Universe
A J-type Naboo starship, the star skiff is sheathed in gleaming chromium, a distinction normally reserved for the starships of Naboo's elected monarch. Queen Apailana continued the tradition of extending the planet's gratitude and admiration towards Amidala by letting the Senator use the trappings of royalty.
Perhaps the most unsettling addition to the Naboo star skiff -- and a definite indication of the troubled times of the Clone Wars -- was a pair of top-mounted laser cannons that marked this as the only one of Padmé Amidala's conveyances to be armed. The exposed access grills and discolored Sossen-7 sublight engines were other subtle indicators of turbulent times.
Behind the Scenes
Concept Design Supervisor Ryan Church sketched the skiff as having add-on and modified features, to suggest that it had been "supercharged" for combat.
During principal photography, very little of the ship was constructed -- only its boarding ramp was built full scale. The interior cockpit environment was digitally stitched together from background plates of the Naboo yacht interior from Episode II, with new footage of characters seated in the yacht's chairs against greenscreen. During pickup photography, new scenes set in the deeper interior of the ship necessitated the construction of a fully enclosed set that featured the ship's locker bay and medical suite.
