Endless Stormtroopers

George Lucas said on HYPERSPACE that the stormtroopers are all clones from different templates. He didn't say anything about recruits.

It's a good job that I don't really care what GL says in interviews.

 

George Lucas said on HYPERSPACE that the stormtroopers are all clones from different templates. He didn't say anything about recruits.

1. The EU says there were recruits, and GL didn't say there weren't recruits.
2. Then where the heck do you expect them to get the templates?

 

why didnt they just use Boba?

 

personally i think the clonetroopers are just turned into stormtroopers....i mean being 64 or so by the time of the OT would explain their ineffectivness in battle....plus im sure they made lots more clones during the clone wars, i mean 1.2 million arent going to cut it in a galxy with thousands of worlds......th clone wars would need hundreds of millions of soldiers on each side to protect and defend each world....

 

That's 1.2 million clones every five years, judging from the different stages we see in AOTC (fetuses, Boba's age, full-grown). With the first 1.2 million coming off the line during AOTC, and subsequent shipments every 5 years for the next 25 years, that's 6 million per cloning factory. Palpatine would logically have expanded the operation after becoming Emperor, so it's not too hard to believe that a big enough army of Stormtroopers could be made. Star Destroyers and Death Stars aren't manned by STs, but rather by general navy recruits (the guys in the sweeping helmets). The STs serve only as Palpatine's special troops (similar to Nazi Germany's stormtroopers), so clones could fill their ranks entirely. As to where they get the sources for the clones, probably from the top guys in the Imperial Navy. Or the not-so-top, but well-connected ones (GL's comment about the cousin who can't shoot being used as a template).

 

True, but one has to do some logical analysis

ok i'm doing logical analysis:

-theres no sound in space yet there is in SW.

-space is a vacum, but in SW you can walk around inside an astaroid with a lil breather mask on and live.

-tatooine has no vegetation but there's air?!?

-lightsabers?!?

-in SW you can send a holographic message thousands of light years but it will appear in real time....errrr

-they travel at the speed of light...

-people with special powers due to concentrations of microscopic lifeforms within their blood....

need i go on?
star wars is filled with illogic. why is it so hard to believe in 1.2 million clones winning the clone wars, but you accept tons of other illogical things like the rebellion in it's small size defeating the empire, which had all the resources in the known galaxy at it's disposal.. sheesh...

1. The EU says there were recruits, and GL didn't say there weren't recruits

speaking of logic and illogic, the old "GL didn't say" logic.

well shoot, Gl didn't say alot of things, does that make all things he didn't say a possibility? GL didn't say the clones don't wear pink tutu's under their armor. do you think they do? GL also didn't say they each have only 4 toes on their left foot. do you think it's a possibility?

with this line of logic you can say anything is possibly true because GL didn't say it wasn't.

it's amazing that even when he does say something, such as the stormtroopers are clones from different sources, you instaed concentrate on what he didn't say.

 

I'm preusming that they used other Clone Templates, as it would be the most efficent method. I don't think they kept all Jango clones since that would make them far too alike and give a lot of weaknesses that could be exploited, but I also don't think they would use that many recruits since recruits would have questionable loyalty, and most likely not as much training or natural skill. So the Stormtroopers are probably a mix of Jango clones and other clones.

Also, who said there were only 1.2 million Jango clones during the Clone Wars? I thought they kept using the Jango template to make clones throughout the war- it seems unlikely they would stop making soldiers right after the war started.

 

But only from the original cloning facility. The new facilities would be starting from scratch and their first batch wouldn't be ready for a decade.

Whoops. You're absolutely right there.

Now as to the numbers given: this is assuming that only two other facilities are built. And that (and I made this assumption as well) they stick to the every five years schedule. With more facilities, and a quicker schedule, they could get the requisite numbers easily.

As to the number of STs needed in the galaxy: they're not there to control planets. Local security forces and local governments can do that, much like they did in the Republic era. The STs are still Palpatine's special troops. Notice their uses in the OT:

ANH:
- Apprehending the DS plans
- Stationed on the DS
ESB:
- Part of Vader's personal task force
- Controlling Bespin under the command of Vader
ROTJ:
- "A legion of my best troops"
- Stationed on the DS2
- Controlling a revolution/riot outside the Imperial Palace (SE)

All of these are either assignments directly under the auspices of the Emperor or his right-hand man, Vader. They aren't local law enforcement, they aren't serving as crew on SDs, or any other thing of the sort. I already covered law enforcement, and Navy positions would be the jobs left to recruits, which we see in the movies as the guys in Imperial uniforms and wearing those helmets.

 

"Lucas specified to the author of the first Clone Wars novel that there would be no more.

I imagine this was done on purpose by Sidious- by giving the Republic insufficient troops to make a quick citory, it forced the war to take several years, thus granting him more power for longer and killing more Jedi."

Oh. Well that's rather interesting, although it doesn't explain why someone else in the Republic wouldn't at least question why they weren't making more troops.

 

Propaganda probably told the public that they couldn't produce clones any faster.

 

tatooine has no vegetation but there's air?!?

So does the Sahara desert

 

"Propaganda probably told the public that they couldn't produce clones any faster."

So Palpatine deliberatly extended the war beyond it's needed time in order to consolidate his power and get the galaxy 'used to' martial law so to speak? Brilliant. It seems Sidious' plans go deeper and deeper...

 

I have noticed that there seems to be and endless supply of stormtroopers. Where do they all come from?

Kamino keeps growing them.

 

Not during the Clone Wars. They had to stop production because of a Separatist attack.

 

Not during the Clone Wars. They had to stop production because of a Separatist attack.

Of course that's EU. But what's the EU explaination between the events of III-IV? Anyway there is obviously a lot of stormtroopers in the OT and they had to come from somewhere since Lucas said they are all clones.

 

He did not say they are ALL clones.

 

From the AOTC Audio Commentary

"Boba had a connection to stormtroopers. I sort of built him out of the stormtroopers, and I knew stormtroopers were clones. Exactly what that relationship was I hadn't really established yet. I knew Boba was a clone, but I didn't know how all of that fit together. I knew that the clones were made out of a bounty hunter, and when I got to this story, I thought "Well, gee, the best bounty hunter is Boba Fett. And rather than him maybe being a clone, he could be the originator of the clones." Most of the pieces were there, but I actually put them all together in this one."
--George Lucas

"It wasn't until I started working on this script that I decided to make Boba the son of the Original Clone. Before he was just another clone who was for whatever reason had sort of broken loose from the stormtroopers. I didn't really go into detail at that point, even in my mind or in the back story about any more of it other than that they were connected but early on the stormtroopers were meant to be clones."
--George Lucas

"Throughout as we go through the movie there's all little funny moments like Jango bumping his head because in Star Wars one of the stormtroopers bumps his head on the door as they leave the control room on the Death Star and I thought wouldn't it be funny if that's a trait that Jango has. When he puts his helmet on and everything he can't really see that well and so he's constantly bumping his head and that trait gets cloned into all the stormtroopers and that's why they keep bumping their heads."
--George Lucas

 

Imagine this;

You've got a cloning facility that makes soldiers. They are genetically modified, uniformly trained for the specific task of being a soldier literally from birth, and obey orders without question.

Why would you want to put recruits in with them?

Sure, you'd want recruits in your army, but why put them in with the cloned soldiers? What would be the point?

 

Well, you haven't got much choice if you start running out of clones...

 

"Well, you haven't got much choice if you start running out of clones..."

But why would they?

 

Think about it. 1.2 million clones will not last for they 25 odd years between AOTC and ROTJ, and IIRC, they don't get that many more off Kamino...

 

Take World War II, then mutliply it thousand-fold. You have the size of the clone wars. It's not like it's just one battle; which seems to be something that many people are having trouble understanding. The Clone Wars were huge, and you must realize that the amount of clones produced at the time of the Battle of Geonosis was far from sufficient for a galaxy-wide war.