The Droid Factor: Did the Empire Underestimate Rebel Droids' Help In The Rebel Cause

When we think of C3PO and R2D2 we sometimes think of nice robot friends who helped the Rebel Alliance in meaningful ways. If not just with moral support, the droids clearly provided technical abilities and such. How meaningful was their help, really, though?

In the beginning of Episode IV, did Lord Vader make a good decision in focusing on apprehending Princess Leia? I mean, he could have done away with or interrogated the very droids that eventually helped Luke pilot his X-Wing in the assault on the original Death Star. They got away in that escape pod and the Empire was like, "Oh, there's no life forms aboard. Disregard." Maybe the Empire was correct in disregarding the droids, but this was important if they were not correct in caring more about the very droids that helped blow up two Death Stars.

How did the Empire really view Rebel droids? Did the Empire see them as mere tools of the Rebel humans or see them as quite intelligent and helpful things capable of actually shifting the entire momentum of the rebellion?

Feel free to mention C3PO, R2D2, that rebel medical droid that appears in the scenes with Luke's fake hand, or any other rebel droids that helped the rebellion.

 

I'm positive the droids were just special effects.

 

I don't think the underestimated them. They simply did not know they had the battle plans, and they did not know they were in the escape pod. Apparently several pods launched empty. Once the Empire realized what the droids contained, it was an all out search for them.

 

All of the things that you say are true. Lowly stormtroopers are, however, susceptible to Jedi mind tricks. Thus, to let the Falcon slip away with all parties on board due to Jedi mind tricks reveals somewhat of a problem. The combination of droids and Jedis with mind tricks provided an awful combination for the Empire.

 

A better question might be, did the Emperor place overestimate the ability of Stormtroopers. The entire rebellion could have been crushed a 100 different times if the Stormtroopers could have finished off the rebels.

 

Michael Kaminski did all the research and actually uncovered the plot details in The Secret History of Star Wars. (This is not a flippant answer -- he actually did dig pretty deep into all the various drafts of the scripts.)

 

The issue of how we view Stormtroopers is ultimately key to how we view Droids. The reason is that we can easily view Stormtroopers as a type of anti-Rebel Droid just based upon the appearance of the average Stormtrooper. Ironically, the Stormtrooper is actually infinitely more human than C-3PO. Yet, due to the Stormtrooper masks and bulky armor and C-3PO's geeky voice that actually contains an obvious dialect (a dialect that also matches Obi Wan Kenobi's), C-3PO often seems more human. Add the pro-Rebel support from Lucas being more sympathetic to the Rebel cause and, at Cloud City, a Stormtrooper actually blasting our friend, C-3PO, into many pieces, and we see that Rebel support of this nature interferes with us appreciating the very humanity of the Stormtroopers.

Stormtroopers had to deal with confusing situations like Jedis using mind tricks against them while searching for droids who eventually helped to blow up two Death Stars. We see through the glass clearly that Stormtroopers had extremely difficult jobs to do. Stormtroopers are human. If we don't see them as human or appreciate their humanity we don't appreciate what the Rebels accomplished either.

Instead of sending Stormtroopers to Tatooine, Lord Vader could have sent bounty hunters on the trail of the droids. One of the very bounty hunters that Vader later sent to track down the Falcon, IG-88, was actually a droid itself. Thus, Vader had at his disposal at various times non-human options to search for Rebels and Rebel Droids. Would a droid searching for a droid be a better option than Stormtroopers searching for a droid? Possibly it would. I am not an expert on IG-88 and other droids of this nature, but have read that, in the Star Wars Universe, IG-88 and droids of this nature can become "self aware". So, another question is, "To what extent do I want to involve assassin droids and these types of droids that roam the universe with matters of Death Star security when the horrible consequences of self aware droids with schematics of the Death Star are very real and present dangers."

These aren't easy questions to grapple with. Vader went with the Stormtrooper option and lost two Death Stars in the process. He could have gone with bounty hunters such as IG-88, or even a veritable army of IG-88 types if such Imperial or commercial droids were available. These non-Stormtrooper options come with different risks, for sure. One with wisdom will do a quick risk assessment and make the best decision available. Still, the Jedi mind trick is a doozy at times. Would an IG-88 ever fall for a Jedi mind trick? I don't know the answer to that question.

 

Factor in the Empire's racism. There are no non-humanoids in the Imperial forces. They certainly use droids and other mecs, and you are correct Vader uses IG-88 to find Solo. Does the Emperor think more of droids than Wookies for instance?

 

"Robot" and "droid" are not races.

 

There is a lot of anti-droid bias in that universe. Don't forget that 3PO and R2 weren't allowed in the cantina.

Chad

 

They didn't underestimate C-3PO that much. They shot him in Cloud City before he could alert the other's to their presence, and then tried to incinerate him.

 

Droids are just useful tools. I doubt anyone gave them more than a second thought.

 

Hey, the Jedi Mind Tricks wouldn't work on Jabba the Hut, so I tend to think no. (And I'm embarrassed I'm even participating in this silly discussion.)

The book I cited above shows there's a lot of illogic and a lack of continuity in the Star Wars universe, simply because George invented it over a 40-year period. I think it's fair to say that the 6-episode story we wound up with was not what he was thinking of in 1973-1974, when his notes began. (The first Star Wars script was dated May 1974.) The biggest revelation of the book was that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were two different characters all the way through the end of 1977, and then George changed his mind. I'm not even sure that Princess Leia was Luke's sister until they started writing Empire. As Indiana Jones later said, "I'm just making this up as I go along..."

 

We know that C-3PO and R2D2 have enough combined bubbly personality and robotic gusto to match the enthusiasm of Rebels Princess Leia, Luke, random Rebel pilots that die fighting TIE fighters, Nien Numb, Chewbacca, and Rebel helper Yoda (probably technically not a part of the Rebel Alliance nor a traitor). Take away these two droids from the Rebel Alliance and their moral support, shots in the arm, and technical support takes a severe nosedive.

Could another droid perform C-3PO's interpreting role with the Ewoks? Sure. Could another droid tell as vivid a tale of the Rebel Alliance story as C-3PO? I'm not so sure. C-3PO made those Ewoks veritable Rebel Ewoks.

Take a look at the other droids that the Jawas had for sale on Tattoine. They were basically crap droids with little gusto. Take a look at the average Imperial droid, from the needle torture or truth serum droid with Leia or the squirrelly mini Jawa van that runs around Death Star 1. You don't feel the Rebel spirit from those droids. C-3PO and R2D2, however: those are the types of droids that inspire one to blow up a Death Star.

No one gave the droids a second thought? If Lord Vader or the Emperor neglected the droids' contributions, he did so at his own peril.

 

Are they? The Empire hardly treated them as if they were. The only time one is addressed it is as "TK421."

Still, one has to wonder why the Empire budgeted for all that worthless white armor.

 

Many are clones, but human nonetheless.

 

They had a style consultant who insisted on it as part of the "look."

 

There are no clone troopers in Episodes IV-VI.... all the Stormtroopers in the original trilogy are "regular" humans.

 

According to what? This is news to me. Lucas has said he got away with "killing" hundreds of Stormtroopers in 1977 by telling the MPAA, "oh, those were just robots." Killing robots on-screen is OK; killing humans (or I guess cloned humans), not so much.

I miss the battle droids from the second movie:


"Roger, Roger!"

SO stupid.

 

Yeah I would assume Droids were treated the same way I treat the automated voice menu when I call customer service.

 

He probably just said that to get the MPAA off his back. I'm pretty sure it's considered official/canon that the Stormtroopers in the original trilogy are not clones. (And they're definitely not robots). It's possible that there may have been a few clone troopers still left by the time of Episode IV, but by that point, the Empire had, for the most part, returned to the process of recruiting "regular" humans.

 

At the time the original movies came out, nothing indicated that the stormtroopers were anything but humans in armour. How else could have Luke and Han just put on the uniforms on the Death Star? And there was never any talk of clones being inside that uniforms. We just accepted that the soldiers of the evil empire are evil themselves (as in any war movie made for entertainment). Didn't Luke say at some point "I don't want to wait until I get drafted by the Empire"? I always found that quote troubling, because it made me aware that all those stormtroopers on the exploding Death Stars could have been guys like Luke, only with a bit less of luck.

But of course the helmets were supposed to make them appear less human.

 

I think Lucas overestimated my interest in the serious side of Star Wars.

 

It's as if Lucas was making up the plot as he went along!

I think anybody who looks for continuity and a common thread of logic throughout the Star Wars films will be disappointed, because the movies are all over the place. The reality is they weren't planned very well, though I think Lucas did the best he could, and he was a different person by the time he made Jedi compared to the young filmmaker who made Star Wars in 1976-1977. And a vastly different person by the late 1990s.