Why Stormtroopers are NOT Clonetroopers,

Go to Wikipedia.com and type in Stormtroopers. They even say that by the OT, the clones are heavily supplemented with traditional recruits. Read:

 

"What's on screen matters. Intentions do not.
Sow me on the screen where they're all identical.
I'll wait."

If what is on screen is all that matters:

-Luke's lightsaber in ANH actually is a color changing saber that goes from blue to white to green. Do not worry about that is is intended to be blue.

- ObiWan flipped his Padawan braid on purpose while on Tatooine in TPM. As was Fett's Antenna in ROTJ. Don't worry that the film was flipped or what was intended.

Lucas definitely intended Stormtroopers to be Clones-at least since 1999.

 

This again? Wow, it really never ends, does it?

Let's start with what Star Wars Insider has to say:

If the stormtroopers are supposed to be clone troopers, why do most of them have different sizes and voices in A New Hope?

The realities of filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s dictated the differences in stormtrooper voices and sizes in the original trilogy. Completely computer generated, exactly identical troopers were not possible until a few decades down the road.

However, there is also an in-universe explanation, provided by none other than George Lucas himself. During the production of Episode III, Lucas told crewmembers that the stormtroopers seen in Episode IV are--in the story world--made from multiple sources. That is, they're not all Jango clones. By that time in the saga, other clone hosts had been selected.

Lucas intimated that the selection process has become more politcal than stragic in some cases--a highly placed officer's cousin might be selected over a more capable specimen, for example. This politicalization results in less-than-ideal candidates, which could explain some of the embarassing marksmanship witnessed in the Original Trilogy.

In addition to multiple clone hosts, stormtrooper ranks also include conscripted soldiers and academy graduates, as has been chronicled in the Expanded Universe for many years now.

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A copy/paste of a post of mine from [link=http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/11366834/p20]here[/link] over a year ago:

There is no concluding evidence in the films for either side of this arguement. We can both look at the films for the inspiration of our arguement, though my side of the arguement turns to the Expanded Universe for our support, while the purists turn to George Lucas himself.

Who is right? Both of us, in our own minds. Of course each individual who has posted in this arguement thinks they are right, and therefore there is no determinable "correct" answer, especially since this entire debate is about a fictional universe, one in which there are six (five right now) movies and many novels, each with the events told from a point of view outside the universe (with a couple exceptions). The way that Star Wars should be viewed and read in order to debate this aspect is as a historical documentary in which all parts are assumed true, though it is not sure that it is accurate: Much like the tale of the Lost City of Atlantis, we must look at this assuming that all stories being told are accurate and unbiased.

Therefore, we dive into the the Star Wars history book. We only have pieces of the history, though at this point we have enough to know that during the year 22 BBY, it was discovered by Obi-Wan Kenobi on the plannet Kamino that an army had been cloned for use by the Republic. We know that at this time, there are .2 million clones combat ready, and 1 million "well on the way." "Well on the way," was apparently very soon after the first discovery of the clones, for they were ready a mere 6 months after the initial battle of the Clone Wars, the Battle of Geonosis.

We then fast forward twenty-two years to the time period directly before the Battle of Yavin. The "clonetroopers" are now called "stormtroopers." Why the name change? No one seems to know why the name was changed, or why the uniforms are different, either. The uniforms are much cheaper than the clonetrooper uniforms... the clonetroopers had metal, while the stormtroopers had plastic. Why the uniform change, you ask? The best bet is due to finances. The cost of keeping such a large army where each soldier has a full-body armor suit would obviously be very high.

Ah, that brings us right to the issue of cost. I will get back to the history lecture later in this post. I think it is quite obvious that producing clones, raising them from a young age, supplying them with food and clothing, and giving them strict military training would be very expensive. So, if you were the Supreme Chancellor, and had to figure out a way to pay for all of this, which

 

Ousley, as always, I bow down to your supreme geekiness.

 

Rise_of_Thawn, I am very impressed by the level of detail that you went through to break this down.

The unimaginable numbers of people needed by the Empire in order to maintain control, tend to make ME think that they must have addressed the man-power issue in the early stages of the Empire's rise to power. The sheer numbers needed to man all of the star destroyers, super star destroyers, death stars, space ships, and every other vehicle on every other planet in the known galaxy is absolutely ridiculous.

The 1.2 million clones produced from Jango seems to be a "test batch" of elite troopers. They were created to be great all-around soilders. To suggest that every storm trooper made after the original batch are all based on ONE person, is very short-sighted. The Empire needed troops that were well-adapted for fighting on ice planets, dessert planets, in space, underwater, etc., etc. So, they would go out to some guy who was the best swoop rider in the galaxy, pay him for some blood and DNA material, and in about 4 years, they have a huge army of fully trained speeder bike troopers that they can deploy to whichever ends of the Empire that they are needed.

Clearly CLONING is the best way to produce a large, intelligent army in the shortest amount of time. There are many more "cloners" than the just the crew on Kamino, and they've been pumping out clones ever since the end of Episode II.

 

I'm sure we've all read books in each SW series and they all talk about this stormtrooper or that one. Like in the Boba Fett Trilogy, one of his bounties was a rogue stormtrooper. Just a human that got a little crazy, NOT a clone though. The stormtroopers in the book Empire of the Hand aren't even human. Plus like Fett3 said in this post, weren't the clonetroopers were all but wiped out during the Clone Wars? So were the cloning devices except for the ones the Emporer kept hidden under the mountain. They (the Empire) recruited people (mainly humans) under the flag of "we don't like aliens and if you don't either, join us!" It was the new craze sweeping the galaxy. People were lining up for that reason, and others. Of course, that's just what I've come to make myself believe.

 

Just to point out. In Jedi Academy in one of the levels you overhear a mercenary talking with another. He says briefly he was once a stormtrooper!

Meaning stormtrooper ranks are definately filled in by non clones. But I believe clones do form part of the Empire. Otherwise it would be hard to have such a huge empire of humans. With an entire galaxy of species, it would be totally impossible to have such a MASSIVE amount of human soldiers without having clones.

I think recruited stormtroopers who prove their skill move on to being Imperial Navy Troopers or Imperial Officers. My FIRM theory. Not to be easily changed.

 

Well, yes, it makes sense that stormies would eventually become officers. This is an article that was published originally in some magazine (no idea which one, it's from the late 70s I think) and surfaced here on TFN back prior to AOTC.

Clonetroopers

 

Some stormtroopers are clones. Some are not. It's that simple.

 

But, Bib, if we all go with that simple explanation, what's the point of a discussion forum?

 

People, you're dancing around going, "Cloney, clones, clones, clooooones, oooooh... cloness!!" Why? 'Cause cloning is such a big issue NOW. How freakout would it be if clones were still being used in the OT?

Blergh. Clones are not really the issue. Old Palpy orchestrated a conflict in order to hitch up his pants and show who the boss man was. Ten bucks says he wasn't thinking to himself, "Alrighty, I needs me a big army. BIG! Now, I COULD quietly train a bunch of guys... Nah, cloning is more diabolical! Bwahahahah!"

Cloning makes sence. It's oh so quiet! Forgetting the EU, we have Kamino out in the nowhere of nowheres. Assuming they keep client confidentiality, no one will find out that way... they're not in the Yellow Pages and Funky-Syfoh-Diaz is dead! We have very few mobile people who knew about the army, thus securing vital secrecy. VITAL! Cloning was the means to an end, not the other way around.

Enter OT, Old Palpy is in charge. He wouldn't give a rat's pellet-hole who's in the army. A dash of clones here, a sprinkling of jobless Iraqis there... whatever!

I'm down for clone based, then come one come all!


Incidentally, when you die, your DNA breaks down mighty fast. If you want to clone your pet, you gotta get Fluffy's samples while he's still kickin'. Jango is not much good now.

 

Exactly. The only Jango clones in the OT are the ones that are still alive from the Clone Wars.

 

Don't think I am qualified enough to pass comment here, but going from the films so far:

It seems as though in ATOC the confederacy was taken somewhat by surprise. They were still plotting and getting people to join them at this point (can't remember if this was in the film or just the book)

So therefore, 1.2 million clones could have been enough. After all, Star Wars has never really worried about the scale of entire planets fighting. We only ever see a tiny part of naboo and coruscant for example.

It could be that the clone wars were only over certain key battlegrounds, not literally the entire galaxy. Why bother fighting about the galaxy's somewhat useless outer planets, there's plenty of time to bring them into line later on.

For the issue of needing a huge number of troops to supply each ship, at the end of ATOC, they clearly had a matching number of ships to troops. (btw, where the dickins did the Kamino guys learn to make hulking great battlecruisers?)

It would be something of a cop out if it were to turn up that there were suddenly loads more clone/droid factories everywhere else and we only saw a tiny part.

And if the problem with cloning was the lack of an original host, without growth acceleration etc., then surely Boba would suffice. Now at the moment you still get problems with direct clones, but who's to say what happens in SW?

 

Storm: The Kaminoans didn't build the heavy equipment (gunships, AT-TEs, SPHA-Ts, the cruisers). Rothana Heavy Engineering, a subsidiary of KDY, did.

 

And they were built in time for the Battle of Geonosis? Who ordered the ships?

 

Yeah, the Kaminoans contracted for the ships well before that. It's mentioned in the AOTC VisDic, IIRC.

As for how they paid for them, I'm guessing through whatever money they got for the clone army by whoever was masquerading as Sifo-Dyas.

 

Soooo, just playing devil's advocate here.

If sifo dyas bought an imperial navy to match the troopers he had, who's to say he can't find more cloners and Obi Wan just happened to find the kaminoans.

And something I was thinking about last night.

On the issue of clones being generally a bit hap hazard and bumbling, here's a theory.

During the battle of Geonosis, Mace meets a trooper who says something along the lines of "I have an elite troop of commandos at your disposal sir"

Now this bothered me even then. Why have special commando units? Why not just make them all special commando units, then you've got a better army.

So I figure there must be something about either cost or time that makes it impractical to have everyone a commando.

Therefore, if after the clone wars the empire needed stormtroopers quickly, they could have sacrificed quality to grow them much faster. That would explain why they were bumbling around all the time, they had rubbish training and were grown much faster, so were not as well proportioned.

Now obviously, when the troops attacked the Jawa sandcrawler in ANH, Obi Wan points out that only stormtroopers are so precise. 2 possible solutions

1. That he meant more precise than sand people, who, given their attack on Luke, are not the greatest warriors in the world.

2. Some stormtroopers are very precise, e.g. the ones carried around by Vader in ANH. And some are the idiots that man the death star, just looking to be cannon fodder. As they all look the same, people would be threatened by them all, as they could never tell which were proper troopers, and which were quick grow fools.

Oh, and in Mos Eisley, when Obi used the mind trick on them, I take that as evidence for them being clones. Clones are obviously weak minded, as they have been modified to be more docile etc.

and thanks for the ship info.

 

No prob.

As for why not make them all commandos...well, perhaps the GAR functions under the same ethos as the Marine Corps-they consider themselves to be an elite force to begin with, extra (Marine Recon) training or no.

Perhaps the GAR is like that as well-everyone is considered an elite, with Republic Commandos and such considered an even higher elite.

Plus, commando tactics generally differ from regular infantry tactics. We're designed to smash things like a wrecking ball; they're stilletos.

 

What's marginally interesting is the fact that the cloners decided that special commando units were a good idea, and didn't bother making a special pilot type.

By ROTJ, we have a whole range of useful troops, scout troops, snow troopers, TIE pilots etc.

Pilots were obviously a pretty key part of the battle of geonosis, so seems unfortunate they hadn't come up with a special type of trooper.

I am thinking maybe with a jango fett rocket pack, or some wide view helmet, so they can see better. They're not likely to get involved in standard combat, so why do they need all the armour and stuff?

 

Probably crash protection. Plus I reckon the helmet links to the gunship somehow, like the kind the Apache crews wear, only more sophisticated..

 

I'm with the idea that a lot of the stormies are clones, but also a large number comes from recruits.

And speaking of their voices, I would really like to see a character in RotS, maybe a drill sergeant etc., that is responsible for giving the clones their American-like accent, unlike Jango's.

 

Hmmmm...I don't think we will, but it's a cool idea.

 

They just got their accent by being assigned to different territories and not being around their host. Accents aren't hereditary, so it doesn't really require an explanation.

 

Well...uh....clonetroopers are clones of Jango Fett, so now Jango's dead. Just take samples drom the clones. But I'm certain thry'd have more templates of Jango than one.