Lit Imperial rank insignia - what do you think each element should represent?

My bad. It was actually from the Tarkin novel.

 

LelalMekha wrote

The insignia blooper has been mentioned several times by officials. It's a well-documented fact.

Can you please cite your souce? Just because an Alliance colonel wears the same number of dots like an Alliance general, I wouldn't remotely consider this to be a blooper as it is the different color of the five dots that's there to differentiate the ranks, to distinguish an Imperial commander from an Imperial captain we have good visibility of the extra chest pocket cylinder.

darklordoftech wrote

Going by just the movies, I always figured that Motti was one of the Death Star's engineers and that Tarkin has given him a seat at the table because of that while Tagge is a Starfleet Commander who resents what he sees as an unfair promotion to Motti.

Anyway, what do some officers have olive shirts and others black shirts?

Yes, considering he sat right next to two staff engineers (I'm certain that was the original intention) that's a possibility. The way I see it he was a member of the Military Corps, had Tarkin's full confidence and was promoted to admiral to fill the vacancy of Director Krennic's chair.

In general, olive uniforms seemed to indicate affiliation to the Military or Administrative Corps (e.g. bureaucrats doing their tours in the Death Star) while black seemed to indicate affiliation to the Guard Corps, i.e. all personnel dressed in black was usually working in security sensitive areas except for the TIE (and Star Destroyer)pilots (black jumpsuits only and no samurai-helmets worn by security guards and/or controllers).

I just tried to answer a question in the CT thread, in case anyone is interested (and feels up to the challenge to answer the final question I brought up) here it is:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...cs-and-footage.50017733/page-24#post-54524992

 

We do see personnel with both "samurai helmets" and badges, in Rogue One - the Gate Officers who open and close the Scarif shield gate.

While black uniformed people do tend to be associated with sensitive places (Death Stars, Shield Generator Bunker, Interdictor Cruiser, Scarif Gate) there's one notable exception in Rebels - Captain Brunson, on the Arquitens Cruiser at Geonosis. Geonosis was a sensitive location as the Death Star Construction Facility for a while - but at the time the Rebels encounter her in Season 3, it's much less sensitive.

 

Lt. Hija From the top of my head, I can only remember Dan Wallace's article Jumpin' Jedi (a visual commentary to RotJ) in the Star Wars Insider 105. It says, next to a picture of Jerjerrod: "A costuming error left every Imperial officer in the movie with the same uniform insignia regardless of rank, including Moff Jerjerrod."

I'm sure it's been confirmed elsewhere, but I'll have to do some research.

 

Part of the reason I think yellow on rank badges is at least associated with "science officers" is that most of Galen Erso's badge is yellow in the flashback scene, and Saw calls him "an Imperial science officer".

 

LelalMekha quoted

"A costuming error left every Imperial officer in the movie with the same uniform insignia regardless of rank, including Moff Jerjerrod."

Thanks. The part that says "same uniform insignia" is correct, but the part claiming "regardless of rank" is incorrect as the amount of chest-pocket cylinders makes a visual distinction between the two "commanders" in the film and all the other "captains".

Admittedly there is a clear discontinuity between Piett's rank in the screenplay ("Admiral") compared to the (captain's) plaque he's wearing aboard the Super Star Destroyer.

 

I'm pretty sure there's at least one "lieutenant" insignia in the background of the hangar bay - been a while since I looked closely at the Endor scenes either...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I just saw this on twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilSzostak/status/935893573727219712

 

Now this is very interesting! So, the army technically has three badge systems: one for operations, one for the stormtrooper corps, and one for er... "regular" officers (for lack of a better term). Shouldn't navy operations have their own system too?

 

The Galen Erso "ops colonel" badge is wrong - should be 4 yellow, 1 red, not 5 yellow 1 red.

I see it as less "army operations" and more "generic special operations" - presumably, navy officers assigned to special ops, would have yellow and blue badges (except for the 6-yellow) - blue to indicate their original service.

I notice that Commanders rank below Captains here. Some sources portray them as higher.

 

I finally completed a long-held goal of mine: making a chart of (most of) the Imperial rank insignia in all three series of the Legacy comics.

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/BXqPoHQ.png

In making this chart I encountered several important issues:
-The art was fairly inconsistent. Between panels an Imperial's insignia may change slightly; collar insignia may vanish, or rank square numbers may fluctuate. Between individual issues, characters will have vastly different insignia.
-Some characters hold multiple ranks (Morlish Veed was a High Moff, Grand Moff and Grand Admiral at the same time). In these instances you won't necessarily know what their insignia corresponds to.
-Often times we don't know a characters specific rank. Oron Jaeger and Geist are both generals, but are almost certainly of different grades.
-For the majority of Legacy, the Empire is in a state of civil war. The warring sides may have different rank systems. Indeed, officers of the same rank on different sides sometimes exhibit different insignia within the same issue. This may be a case of a difference in rank grade, though.

I tried to include just about every instance I could find. I only excluded individuals whose art was too vague. If a character's rank fluctuates within a specific scene I would default to whichever configuration appears the most, or appears in the most detail. Additionally, I decided to assign insignia to military titles over Moff titles for various reasons. To preserve the variety included in the comic, I've kept instances of characters wearing different insignia between issues. Perhaps the biggest challenge is to decide which insignia is "correct".

 

Nice work there.

Have to be honest: I think it is something of an inside joke with the creative units to throw curves at us where is comes to the insignia boards. If they really wanted to codify the things, it would be easy. But they don't, because then they have to pay someone to check for it.

For my sanity, I gave up on the idea of the insignia boards being a unified rank indicating structure long ago. Instead, I see them mostly as service medals, similar to most formal military uniforms in our world. Each color could represent a service commendation or battle service recognition, perhaps differentiated by sector, over-sector, fleet action, special forces action, etc.

The Imperial twist comes from the starkness...instead of the rainbow of colors and range of designs on earth uniforms, the imperial uniform presents the ornamentation based on clean and simple "service to the Empire", rather then each block individually representing a story in that officer's life...that is unnecessary hubris for an officer of the Empire. Just having a board of blocks is enough to show any other officer your service record is sufficient.

Now if you need verify a service record, or perhaps standing orders (command status, etc), that is where the code cylinders play a crucial part.

If you want to go nuts, even the insignia board could be RFID ready...just scan a block and get a datapad full of details about the service record of the officer for that particular event.

So how is rank actually determined? Well...as the Empire was about appearance of power...the nature the insignia board showing off a significant service record of older officers could infer to juniors the superiority of the veteran of so many battles. So while not formally the badge of rank, it is the informal nod to authority by experience.

How did they formally show ranks? To be honest...I am having a hard recalling an instance where someone "unknown" to the soldiers and officers around them approached a group and was identified by rank alone...maybe the Empire doesn't actually have a formal badge of rank (except the Grand Admirals Uniform). Instead, the officer must present his/her credentials by code cylinder or computer terminal recognition. The officer's uniform was enough to project authority until a computer could authenticate identity and establish chain of command.

It is a soup that people have tried to determine the patterns of forever. It shall continue as such...

 

I like that theory! I thought Motti the top guy of the Armada stationed in the Death Star, and Tagge was the Army's, but I don't know if that's Legends, Canon or just me haha. About the uniforms, since I seem to remember that the Stormtrooper Corps was independent from the Army, I imagined the ones in black were Stormtrooper Officers to separate them from the other branches. At least they are the ones that seem to report directly to Vader during the search for the DS plans...

 

To name a few groups: Stotrmtroopers, certain members of the Starfighter Corps, and Naval troopers (essentially marines and guards). A lot of pilots have black uniforms, yet others wear olive. I have no clue as to why.

 

If Motti is notionally Head of the Navy and Tagge is Head of the Army, for Motti to refer to "your starfleet" to Tagge, my assumption is that he's been bumped up to Naval commander for the Death Star, which, being its own huge force with massive crew numbers and armaments, is classed as separate from the rank and file Navy - and so Tagge has had to pick up the slack, and so is de facto commander of both Army and Navy already when the Death Star is destroyed. This would mean that his subsequent promotion to Grand General (in the Vader comic series) is just a formality. Motti being an ambitious, power-hungry political animal was quite happy to dump the workload of overseeing the Navy for a more prestigious position as what he sees as Tarkin's number two.

 

The idea was Legends originally, but Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need To Know imported Motti and Tagge's positions into the newcanon.

 

That's very interesting. If that's the case, Tagge´s promotion to Grand General would mean that he went from having authority over Army and Armada in the Death Star, to having that authority in the Empire as a whole. Without neither Tarkin nor Motti around, I imagine it does make sense. In that case, though, would Motti be Tarkin´s second in command, with Bast (and Romodi, for what we see in Rogue One) being aids to the Grand Moff?

 

Tagge is already Chief of the Army galaxy-wide and Motti the equivalent for the Navy - but it would seem in character for Motti to ditch this when a greater potential for power (i.e. the completed Death Star) came along. So post Yavin, Tagge just takes the Navy into his portfolio officially.

Generals Bast and Romodi (and Cass?) certainly seem to be Tarkin's chief aides.

 

This is not exactly about insignias, but I thought I could seize the opportunity and ask about it right here... I was wondering about the ISB uniforms. I was wondering if there is an official explanation (or interesting personal theory) about why people like Harus Ison, Yularen, Jordo, Uddra and Krennic had the characteristic white uniform of the ISB, but people like Gideon and Kallus wore black ones.
There are many explanations, from simply being assigned to different departments, to the fact that Krennic was also associated with Intelligence, or that Gideon was a Moff and former ISB (so perhaps he could have changed his uniform, I guess?), but I was still wondering about it. I think to remember Ysanne Isard in a white uniform too (along with Jahan Cross) in Legends as members of Intelligence, so it all seems mixed up a little. Perhaps the dark uniforms represent more of a field assignment?