CT Why Imperial(?) Dewbacks?

As cool as the concept is - and as awesome as it looks, ive always kinda wondered what benefit riding a giant lizard would be to an advanced intergalactic military unit that a speeder or some other more practical form of transportation wouldn't do far more efficiently. Can the cool imagery it provided for ANH be rationalized at the (my) nit-picking fan level?

A related question is if Dewbacks are native to Tatooine (because they make a few appearances there throughout the Saga and EU claims they are), are the Dewbacks in ANH Imperial in origin or have they been requisitioned by from local sources? If they are Imperial, it means that they actually use them often (which I find difficult to grasp). Also it's a mindboggling huge coincidence to randomly happen to deploy Dewbacks on their planet of origin (unless of course star destroyers are galactic Noah's arcs).

Personally the idea of them being obtained locally puts my mind at ease, because the idea of the Imperial military raising dewbacks is a bit hard to rationalize (altho it still doesn't explain why they would even use them at all in ANH)

A similar thing is done in ROTS, where a clone is riding a giant local slug creature on Felucia.

thoughts?

 

Yes, dewbacks are native to Tatooine. Perhaps the stormtroopers didn't have enough ground transports and so they had to hire local dewbacks to help out with the search. Or maybe their speeder bikes wouldn't have worked so well in a desert environment (similar to the reason why the Rebels used tauntauns on Hoth).

 

Once dewbacks have lived their lives and served their purpose they are eaten.

 

Guess it was their only means of transportation in the sand.

 

Ya that's sort of what ive heard in the past. But Mos Eisley is packed full of all kinds of vehicles and speeders (not to mention other movies in the saga). Perhaps the dews possess some desert tracking or foraging abilities that would be useful.

 

This point makes perfect sense. Tatooine is an extreme environment, and local transports were probably specialized to work in those extreme conditions. Vader's contingent had not intended to go to Tatooine but just ended up chasing the droids there, so they were not equipped with the proper gear. The only option for them at that point was to work with what was closest. I guess there was a dewback farm nearby where they grabbed the opportunity.

 

Dewbacks are slower than land speeders and speeder bikes. It probably allows for following footprints and tire treads with far greater ease than using any of the Imperial walkers, both from the Clone Wars era and the modern era.

 

Going along with these responses, years ago I read (can't remember if it was a SW book or magazine) that Dewbacks were used instead of the Imperials' mechanical vehicles because the vehicles weren't reliable in the desert, i.e. they would break down due to sand getting in the machinery.

 

Blur makes a good point about that, and it is feasible, however to counter the "they work in Mos Eisley" claim by Big_Benn_Klingon keep in mind that Mos Eisley is a big city. You can probably just get your speeder or whatever repaired, however the stormtrooper search party is way out in the middle of the desert. They have no auto shops to go to if a speeder breaks down, and pulling it all the way to town would take quite a while.

 

in war you always use the resources of the land. this includes the local animals.

 

Not sure exactly why but maybe they just thought, "Aw nice....Dewbacks! I'm riding one while we're here. " and that was that!

 

There is one big flaw to the "they didn't have a vehicle that can drive in sand" argument... This is a unit of troopers that specifically specialize in desert conditions! Surely they would have figured out to put some dust filters on the speeder air intakes or whatever. Not to mention of all the planets and environments that the Imperial military has to deal with, a desert is a pretty conventional and predictable environment to prepare for (again, esp if you are actually specialized desert troopers!).

 

Altho Im not sure why they couldn't just drive slow in that specific case, this general line of thought is kinda where I think the most reasonable explanation is. Basically that the local dewbacks provide something very unique and useful to their mission (tracking, basic survival etc..) that is not immediately obvious on screen.

 

LMAO.

 

Where in the film is it shown/said that these are troopers meant to specialize in desert conditions? No one calls them desert troopers.

Riding slowly along a mounted animal makes sense as a tracker of the footprints of the droid. If you zoom around on a speeder it is possible to miss small details, it's also possible that the propulsion systems of the speeder could disturb any footprints or clues that the stormtroopers are looking for.

 

The stormtroopers on Tatooine are wearing different kind of armor with an orange shoulder pad. That's the only noticeable difference between them and the troopers we see elsewhere in the OT. So that orange shoulder pad must have some sort of significance to helping them survive in a desert environment.

 

good points

It's also an interesting point about them not actually being "sand" troops. They are never referred to as such in the movie, and to be honest, the idea of troops that only operate in deserts seems a little to specific to have kicking around on a star destroyer at all times (rather than say, a unit that specializes in general harsh environments like the "evo-troopers" of the Force Unleashed)

 

Maybe that shoulder pad just means certified dewback rider.

 

That and most of them have backpacks with some sort of gear. I like to think part of those backpacks are A/C for thier armor to keep them from overheating.

 

It also could be Stormtroopers keep different sets of harsh environment armor suits handy, like normal armor, snowtrooper armor, scout trooper armor, sandtrooper gear, etc. The sandtroopers are not that much different from normal Stormtroopers, just a shoulder pad and a packpack with some sort of gear.

 

Makes sense. The EU also introduces "spacetrooper armor" with jets and heavy weaponry, for vacuum operations.

And "jumptrooper armor" - with jetpacks.

 

Ya this fits into my personal EU. Altho I it seems totally likely that there would be troopers who do specialize in particular environments, the standard trooper would have equipment for a variety of planets (as well as I imagine that "vanilla" stormtrooper gear to be fairly versatile environmental protection itself).

A related clone example is the 41st Elite Corps that appears in ROTS. It can be seen on Coruscant wearing standard white and grey armor and later on Kashyyyk wearing (proto-scout trooper) camo armor.

 

Since there are other dewbacks on Tatooine (like the one right outside the Cantina), I too believe that the Stormtroopers acquired them locally. Maybe like how dogs are used for their sense of smell, dewbacks also had some kind of talent to offer. The troops weren't moving fast, just scouring the area for clues, so it didn't seem out of place at the time.

 

Still think this is the best reason.

 

Right. Anything else like for fun, means that they're really bad Stormtroopers.