CT Commander Praji Insignia color: red or orange/gold?

Captain Andor doesn't wear 2 red pips - he wears two green pips.

There are many levels of Admiral in the real world - there may be many levels of Admiral, and General, in Star Wars.

Veers is a "4x2" general - but there may be other Generals senior to him that wear 2x5 or 2x6 pips.

Conversely, there may be "4x2" Admirals (Rear Admiral?). The Kanan comic shows a 5x2 badge Admiral, called a Vice Admiral - Rae Sloane.

In the Vader comics, Tagge is promoted to Grand General, and wears the same badge as Thrawn does in Rebels - who is a Grand Admiral.

 

Blast it! From the pictures I had seen prior to the release of Rogue One the pips looked red to me and I felt relieved.

Who's the genius who felt the Alliance rank plaques needed an extra and new color?

In the Vader comics, Tagge is promoted to Grand General, and wears the same badge as Thrawn does in Rebels - who is a Grand Admiral.

So perhaps it's actually (Grand) General Willard, that could explain why he isn't wearing the same badge as Dodonna (and others) in ANH.

 

Saxton gives "Navy Commander" as outranked by "Navy Captain" (but outranking "Army Commander")

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/insignia/badges.html

For the Rebellion, his version (as opposed to the official version) also has something similar - Navy Captains outrank Navy Commanders - Navy Commanders outrank Army Captains.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/domino.html#plaques

I would guess though that, since it's overcomplicated, the newcanon has gone with something similar - at least based on the Rogue One movie Visual Guide.

If the Empire gets 3 colours on their plaques, why not the Rebels?


Regarding "Commander" General Willard - I would speculate that he's Commander of Massassi Base - so, he has authority over both ships and ground troopers, when they're on-base - hence the combo of blue with red.

We know from Rebels that Dodonna is the head of "Massassi Group" as a cell in the Rebellion, though - and that, despite his badge marking him as an Army General, he's quite capable of commanding space forces, even though that's not his speciality.

Sometimes (being a rather informal organization) the Rebellion bends traditional roles.

 

Iron_lord wrote

If the Empire gets 3 colours on their plaques, why not the Rebels?

Fair enough, but if something ain't broken don't try to fix it or make it more convoluted than it is. Add to this: Had green been an option during the original production both Motti and Willard would have probably displayed extra green (or else) on their plaques to avoid the assumptions we are discussing here.

Regarding "Commander" General Willard - I would speculate that he's Commander of Massassi Base - so, he has authority over both ships and ground troopers, when they're on-base - hence the combo of blue with red.

What's there to speculate? The screenplay (and a personal nod / thanks of George Lucas for the contributions of Willard Huyck) clearly identifies Willard as "the commander of the Rebel forces".

Further, he continued in this capacity in the first draft of ESB, calling the shots even though Dodonna was there with him in the same room, too. Of course, the final version of ESB deviates from that first script, but that was written at a time where there was a clear understanding who that character had been in ANH, the commander-in-chief of the Rebel forces.

Just because "Uncle EU" did lackluster research and/or because nuCanon rather follows Uncle EU than what George Lucas explicitly had in mind for certain characters, doesn't change the fact of what position he did have in ANH.

 

Rogue One, interestingly, doesn't show a recast Willard at all, unlike with Dodonna.

 

^ So? The reason for that (as many other EU things) is rather obvious. Whoever 'handled' that character accidentally or deliberately misread "the commander of the Rebel Forces" as "a commander of the Rebel Forces", this went unchecked and erroneously entered the database.

IMHO, the Rogue One filmmakers would have been well-advised to fine comb the ANH screenplay or at least double-check the function of characters in there. To base a prequel to ANH on characters depicted in ANH but to miss who's in command of the Rebel Forces has revealed an alarming lack of familiarity with aforementioned screenplay and the clear intentions of George Lucas.

 

Perhaps the Rebels cartoon will include him in Season 4? We know that some scenes will take place on Massassi Base, from the trailers.

 

^ One can only hope!

 

This thread reminds me of the Silver and Gold song from the old Christmas special.

I just wonder why Praji called Vader "sir." The behind-the-scenes explanation was that Vader wasn't depicted as being feared as he would be when TESB and ROTJ were made. In a way, those films reimagined the universe of ANH. Just a tad.

 

Official Imperial rank system from Rogue One:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcDdpV7BNP1/?taken-by=glyn__dillon

 

The Galen Erso one given, is wrong- Galen's badge (in flashback) is 4 yellow 1 red, not 5 yellow 1 red:

 

Is that actually an official chart? And if so, is that really what's being used in the films? If so, I'll actually join up over there and post some oversights/corrections. For example, there's no Yellow/Gold tab color in ANH, but rather an Orange color. Plus, they left out several Officer examples such as Cass, the Syd Wragg Officer, and several others. Additionally, they've ignored any role that uniform colors (black, gray, white, and light gray) and code cylinders miht serve as rank, service, and/or position differentiators. They also have the 6-Blue single row badge assigned to conflicting ranks.

Thank you for alerting us to this!

 

It's as close to official as we will get, it's from the costume designers.

 

Ah. Thank you for the clarification

If those same men will be doing future Imperial uniform insignias it wouldn't hurt to send a few corrections their way.

 

swcolts1277 wrote

It's as close to official as we will get, it's from the costume designers.

Thanks for the clarification, it's still only what the Rogue One costume designers "thought John Mollo was doing with the Imperial ranking."
I find it extremely convoluted and can't see a clear system or methodology, thus this is most likely not what Mr. Mollo ever had in mind. Don't take my research for it -

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ep-vii-spoilers.50024351/page-7#post-54079674 -

but take a look at the fragment in The Art of Star Wars. While all we can see there is "Captain", "Colonel" and "General" it's nevertheless obvious that even his original 3 x 3 bar rank plaque system the color of the vertical bars changed gradually and sequentially. Simple and easy to understand even for the occasional viewer.

 

There is some consistency - basically, if an olive-uniformed officer's leftmost square on their badge is blue, they are Navy, if it's red, they are Army, and if it's yellow, they're assigned to some kind of "Operations".

With other colours being available to define rank divisions.

So - Motti- Blue on the left, 6 squares, mostly red - Chief of the Navy - is an admiral senior to Admiral Gorin (6 squares, all blue) - but they're both Admirals.

I would guess that intermediate admirals between Motti and Gorin, would have intermediate amounts of red.

 

Not sure if this is correct or canon but on the imperial navy page on wookieepedia it says:
"While most high-ranking officers wore olive-green drab, lower ranking noncoms wore black uniforms, some however could rise up the ranks and keep their black uniform variant."
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy

Apparently Black Uniformed officers are either noncoms (low ranking officers) or stormtrooper officers or were officers who just wanted to keep their black uniforms...

 

Snafu55

While it is correct, that most black uniforms in ANH only wore rank plaques of four bars or less (e.g. Bay 327 controller who gets shot) and none in ESB and ROJ, I see a distinction between the Guard Corps (black uniforms with or without Samurai helmets) and the Military Corps (olive-green drab).

Commander Praji is apparently wearing a commissioned officer's rank badge (6 bars like the top brass during the Death Star conference) and a black uniform.

On the contrary, even though he's just wearing a lieutenant's rank plaque (according to my research), Vader's aide aboard the Tantive IV is very close to Insubordination (or worse), as he openly questions Vader's course of action:

• Holding her is dangerous. If word of
  this gets out, it could generate
  sympathy for the Rebellion in the
  senate.
• She'll die before she tells you
  anything. (i.e. you are wasting your time)

Either that character has suicidal tendencies or a Guard Corps' lieutenant has a somewhat higher status than the corresponding rank in the Military Corps.

I for one couldn't imagine a stormtrooper officer being that sassy in the presence of Darth Vader, I would have rather expected him to drop dead after the last (above) remark.

 

Or he's a "stormtrooper officer" but Vader gives stormtrooper officers, especially members of the 501st "Vader's Fist" a lot more leeway than regular officers.

A trusted subordinate can get away with open questioning, in a way an "ordinary" officer couldn't. Sometimes, "brutal honesty" pays off.

At least, that was the case for the Legends version of him:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Daine_Jir
Jir—part of a family that had donated a genetic template for the Imperial stormtrooper development program—started out as a combat stormtrooper in the 501st, but later proved himself to be a competent and ruthless officer. However, many suspected he would not last long under Vader's command after he called one of the Dark Lord's decisions into doubt. Vader was impressed with Jir's brutal honesty, and promoted him instead of killing him.

The newcanon version's history is much more vague:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jir

 

I can only emphasize again:

The job of the black uniformed characters throughout the OT (regardless whether they wear a regulation cap or a samurai helmet) is "security". They act as guards, security controllers and officers.

The control of Bay 327 in ANH is a security job, same as the approach control aboard DS II in ROJ and - of course - the deflector shield bunker on the Endor moon.

Besides, why should a "stormtrooper officer" tell Darth Vader

We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord
Vader. But they're so small they're
evading our turbo-lasers!
??

 

Security is very much a stormtrooper thing. Even back in the days when they were called shock troopers:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Clone_shock_trooper

Secretly bred apart from the other clones, they acted as security police for Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic, and also as bodyguards for Republic representatives. Some of them were trained specifically for riot control and served as urban peacekeepers. After the Republic was replaced by the Galactic Empire, they evolved into a new generation of shock troopers.

That doesn't mean every black-uniformed officer was a stormtrooper - but many are.

The guy who accosted Vader on the Death Star was a former TIE pilot - a "tactical officer" in Legends:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tanbris/Legends

Hence his "getting the crews to their fighters" made sense. TIE pilots are another group that wears black.

 

Iron_lord wrote

Security is very much a stormtrooper thing.

That's what "Uncle EU" obviously wants everybody to believe in.

Feel free to show me one single Imperial security sensitive area in the OT manned by stormtroopers.

 

The Death Star shield generator complex. An entire legion of (the Emperor's) best stormtroopers "mans" that security-sensitive area.

And on the first Death Star, the tractor beam control area. Two troopers are stationed there and ordered to "give me regular reports".

 

^ Sorry, but the Death Star shield generator control room in ROJ is entirely manned by security personnel in black with the stormtroopers merely patrolling the area.

And in ANH two stormtroopers are posted there during an alert situation, but they obviously don't "man" the tractor beam control area because it's not their regular post.