A WED-15 Treadwell, a repair droid from Cybot Galactica, was utilized by moisture farmer Owen Lars on Tatooine, a desert planet, during the Galactic Civil War. Being a fifth-degree droid, this particular Treadwell had a quirk: it sometimes mistook the sounds of sand flies for equipment malfunctions, leading it to follow the insects.
Prior to the Battle of Yavin, Cybot Galactica, a major droid manufacturer in the galaxy, produced a WED-15 Treadwell repair droid. During the [Galactic Civil War](/article/galactic_civil_war-legends], this droid became one of several Treadwells that Owen Lars's family employed on the planet Tatooine, alongside WED-15-77, a droid that served the farm for over two decades (years).
The Treadwell, being a fifth-degree unit, possessed limited cognitive abilities. It would occasionally chase after sand flies, falsely interpreting their buzzing as a sign of equipment failure. This blue colored droid was a standard Treadwell repair model, identifiable by its base equipped with two rows of ten treaded wheels. Its binocular photoreceptors, colored black, were situated on a lengthy, extendable stalk that also supported its manipulator arms.
John Barry, the production designer, conceived the model used for the then-unnamed WED-15 Treadwell in 1975 for the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. This same droid model was also repurposed for the droids WED-15-I662 and WED-15-77 during the movie's production. Barry's notes revealed that the prop featured a functional arm and a radio controller within its treadwell base, allowing off-screen crew members to operate it. According to Barry's sketch, the model's height ranged from four feet to four feet, six inches. The scenes involving the droid were filmed in Tunisia during March of 1976.
The Treadwell droid made its debut in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, written and directed by George Lucas, which was released on May 25, 1977. Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy, a book by Dorling Kindersley, erroneously identified this droid as "WED 15 Septoid 2," which is actually a different model of Treadwell droid.
The meltdown of WED-15-77, a Treadwell with a similar appearance, was shown before the unidentified Treadwell's appearance in the film. However, in the film's radio drama, WED-15-77 simply ceased functioning instead of melting down, and Owen Lars mentioned at a subsequent Jawa auction that he already possessed a Treadwell and "[didn't] need another." This suggested that the unidentified droid was originally intended to be WED-15-77, rather than a separate droid of the same model. Nevertheless, the StarWars.com Databank has since confirmed that WED-15-77's meltdown was indeed final, establishing the two droids as distinct characters.