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Assuming Stormtroopers are clones, why aren't the officers?


Nairb Notneb

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How many nights has this question kept you up late? I believe I have the answer. I feel it is safe to say that our beloved stormtroopers are in fact clones. Why then are the Imperial Officers then your regular Joes Imperial Citizens? Easy, they have not been altered, therefore they can lead. Also, with the clones/troopers the Kaminos have sped up their growth rate. This must have some physiological side effects since the troops cannot have a regular childhood. They spend the first 20 some years of their lives in half of the time. Can you imagine being twenty years old, but only being 10? Confused? Try being a clone bred only for combat. They are emotionless, physiologically drained drones, that is why you need "real" beings to lead them. That's my story. What's yours?

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Yeah, since Palpatine knew he couldnt recruit enough people to start an entire empire, he decided to use the clones to begin it. After he got his army of clones and his Empire in power, more people wanted in and the recruiting started. But that theory you have does explain a lot and I have wondered that too! Thanks!

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No, thank you. I'm glad I could help. I'm sure old Palpy recruited from the ranks of the Imperial worlds and into the army. What better way than to indoctrinate the worlds than to make them a part of the Empire. All dictatorships do it. Plus the people you conquer are expendable (from the dictator's point of view).

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The Empire probably has some kinds of regulations on the size and build of recruits. You don't see any fat Stormtroopers after all. :p

 

Yeah, the Stormtroopers are both clones (from many sources, not just one person) and are recruited. Star Wars Insider has an article confirming this. I believe there was a draft as well.

 

The story about officers is not certain. I've heard a rumor that officers are always regular humans and never clones. Clones were always at the bottom of the pile as cannon fodder and were never promoted due to mental limitations. My personal theory is that the hosts who were selected to be cloned were placed as low-ranking officers. Kind of like how Jango Fett supervised the training of the Clone Troopers. Then those officers were promoted, and as more hosts were selected, they would take the old officer's place.

 

Maybe we'll discover the origins of Imperial Officers in Episode III.

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So, there could be clones of Tarkin out there, or Piet, etc. I'll bye that for a dollar. The Kaminos also told Obi that the clones had been "modified" so that they were more docile than the original host to make them more docile and loyal. Now, you want generals that are loyal to you but you also want them to be mentally stable and these clones could possibly be unstable. If one or two or even a hundred come up as a "bad batch" you could simply dispose of them or use them as a "military distraction" in some campaign somewhere because here they are considered disposable and not "real" just better than battle droids.

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An obscure Star Wars magazine article in 1980 or '81 says that Stormtroopers are clones. This was completely ignored by everyone, including the EU authors until AOTC was made.

 

In the DVD commentary for AOTC, Lucas says that he intended for us to make the connection with the Stormtroopers having come from Jango and the Clonetroopers (it's during the "head bumping" scene where Slave 1 escapes from Obi-Wan on Kamino).

 

In ANH (I haven't checked the DVD to see if anything was done about this but so far nobody has mentioned it, so I doubt it has been changed) we can clearly see Stormtroopers that are different heights and have different sounding voices (and they don't all sound like the actor who played Jango or even Boba, though I find the idea of dubbing Boba's voice to match Jango's idiotic, since Boba didn't have his father's accent when his dad died, so why would he suddenly have it 20+ years later? and accents aren't genetic!).

 

The official retcon for the Stormtroopers (assuming Episode III doesn't spell it out for us of course) is that yes, the Stormtroopers are clones, but they may have introduced other clone "Sources" (besides Jango or Boba) after AOTC, and this explains the different heights and voices. OR, that at some period after AOTC they added recruites or conscripts to the Imperial army.

 

In the EU they clearly didn't know about the Stormtroopers being clones (Lucas changed his mind) because we see former stormtroopers that look nothing alike, and nobody goes "hey, it's Boba/Jango Fett!" when they see them. Likewise they aren't aging rapidly (as far as we know) and when the Rebels/New Republic DO encounter "clones" they are shocked as if this was something never before seen in the Galaxy, and they just got done beating down the Empire, so you'd think they would have figured it out by now if clones were in widespread use during Palpy's reign.

 

As to the officers, well they aren't clones, as far as we know.

 

 

I think before AOTC, we all had the impression that the Stormtroopers were the "regular army" of the Empire. The rank & file, the main troops, etc. The officers and naval troops were the minority.

 

Now, in AOTC we're given the idea that the Clone/Stormtroopers are actually an ELITE FORCE, and actually don't number that many (1.2 million soldiers for a GALACTIC ARMY?!). Granted, they may up production in the rest of the movies, but if it's just Kamino producing them, at their current rate of production they're only going to triple the number of troops by the time of the OT (1.2 million troops every 10 years, so 3.6 million by the time of ANH and they won't have any ready by the end of ROTJ, plus the original troops may be too old to fight, being aged 40 years in the 20 years between trilogies since they age doubly fast, making them equivalent to 60 year old veterans... so we're talking an Elite Force of about two and a half million Stormtroopers for the Empire, if it's just Kamino).

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Well....clones would make stupid commanders....they are pretty much robots...lol...The Kamino peoples made them less independent...which isnt good for a commander because if your a leader and you tell your commander to go kick @$$...he will go and kick the enemies butt instead of shooting them....

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All good points that I agree with and had hoped others would bring along for the ride, thanks. If you are the emperor, then you need as many storm troopers as possible in order to maintain control with fear. I'm sure many "factories" were constructed on other planets and other "originals templates" for soldiers were used and then mixed with the army, it only makes since. We also know that you can't possibly control the entire galaxy with an iron fist nor garrison every planet with these troops, you can't make enough of them fast enough, thus the need for the Death Star and the Imperial Navy. Space travel was so important to trade for the systems so the Imperials controlled interstellar space travel as much as possible with their Star Destroyers as well and they needed competent officers to do it and the Kamino clones can't do that because they are "less independent" as stated above. You need "real" beings to make an officer, not a copy.

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Originally posted by Nairb Notneb

How many nights has this question kept you up late? I believe I have the answer. I feel it is safe to say that our beloved stormtroopers are in fact clones. Why then are the Imperial Officers then your regular Joes Imperial Citizens? Easy, they have not been altered, therefore they can lead. Also, with the clones/troopers the Kaminos have sped up their growth rate. This must have some physiological side effects since the troops cannot have a regular childhood. They spend the first 20 some years of their lives in half of the time. Can you imagine being twenty years old, but only being 10? Confused? Try being a clone bred only for combat. They are emotionless, physiologically drained drones, that is why you need "real" beings to lead them. That's my story. What's yours?

A lot of clones died in the clone wars. The Emperor recruited new soldiers.
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Originally posted by Revan Solo

A lot of clones died in the clone wars. The Emperor recruited new soldiers.

Yes many clone troopers did die in the Clone War, and during that war the Officers were the Jedi with a few clones trained as nco's and field officers only (hence the color markings on the battle armor). The officers of the Empire were not Jedi for some reason (go figure). The Empire had a void to fill (at its birth) and needed military minds for Admirals and Generals, etc so Palpatine invented the governing system of the New Order and out governors, or Moff's in charge of sectors, like Grand Moff Tarkin.

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