There was the dianoga trashman on the Death Star. Sure, some of the real racists call him a monster, but that job was putting his 657 kids through school.

Quote from: jhkim on June 02, 2021, 04:52:00 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 02, 2021, 03:54:28 PM
That's an argument that there should have been few aliens in general. But that's not true. There *were* a bunch of aliens in the first movie as well as in the two sequels. But they weren't evenly spread around. In the first movie, he chose to have lots of aliens in Mos Eisley, and none on the Death Star. That remained a consistent pattern in the movies after that.

Quote from: oggsmash on June 02, 2021, 03:57:48 PM
   There were not "alot" of aliens,  they were very concentrated in specific sets, sets that were by comparison, quite small, quite dark, and quite tight.  Compared with numbers of storm troopers and empire "employees" there are a TINY fraction of the people on screen.  I also suspect Storm troopers got recycled a whole lot.   There are few aliens in general in the first movie.  By comparison.  The budget was 10 million dollars.   I did not mention the other two movies, for a reason, he had a much bigger budget due to success.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 02, 2021, 04:36:23 PM
In a smoky, dark environment where any zippers or puppeteers could be easily concealed.

Compare to having aliens in the harsh lit Empire ships, and making alien Stormtrooper suits .

Sounds like budgetary concerns to me.

The Death Star had a number of dimly lit control rooms, and it also had a wider space in many points - making it easy to have some aliens in the distant background and/or partially obstructed by control panels or other equipment. It would be easy to put an alien with a puppeteer behind one of the control panels or in one of the bays. Also, Imperial aliens could reasonably be wearing helmets, requiring just a bit of hand prosthetics and/or neck paint. In any case, the dim lighting was a choice -- he could easily have chosen for more of the Death Star to have dim lighting like the control rooms, and/or chosen for more of Mos Eisley to have bright lighting.

He instead concentrated all his aliens into the bar scene as well as a number of outdoor scenes on Tatooine.

I suspect he felt it fit more with the aesthetic of the Empire for them to be less diverse and more regimented and uniform. That is a deliberate choice, and it has consequences for the fictional world.

The Empire asthetic being regimented and uniform I can agree with. I felt that was the intent behind the Stormtroopers being clones, and in my head cannon they were never non-clone recruits for that reason. But I also think that bugetary reasons played into it. If GL had come out of the gate with a gozillion Lucasbucks, maybe another alien species could have served as the template for the Stormtrooper clones. But as I type that out, I don't think so. In the end, Star Wars is a drama about human characters. And so they're at the center of things. I just don't want to dismiss budget concerns, especially for the first film where Lucas still had to answer to somebody for the bucks he was spending.

I'm sure I read that Lucas originally did want alien Stormtroopers, but the budget for them wouldn't stretch (among other logistical issues) so they all ended up in human-sized uniforms.

The Empire being xenophobic was pushed a lot more in the EU (along with, apparently, being sexist but I think that only ever came up with Daala?) but it fit with the Evil Empire being Evil. Nu!Canon it's definitely written as outright xenophobic, but not sexist.

The Fel Empire down the line did allow aliens to enlist, but obviously that's well beyond Galactic Civil War as a timeframe.

Late to this.

But depending on sources. Yes there were alien stormtroopers. They featured in one of the conics for example. Though have no clue where that fits.

The idea that Chewbacca didnt get a medal because the rebellion is racist is yet another woke cult hallucination.

The Empire was not xenophobic in the normal sense. Sith just tend to push anything that breeds hatred and distrust that they can feed off of or get more recruits from. So they populate the empires upper echelons and soldiers primarily with humans and then sit back and watch the fun. While likely on the sly feeding the hatred aliens have for humans. Because of course. That and Sith tend to be nucleus' that attract evil and weak willed people. You can pretty much bet that any non-human sith were doing the same in reverse wherever they had a foothold and control.

Way back one idea for why the empire has so few aliens in its staff is that aliens tend to more force/dark side resistant more often than humans.

Quote from: Omega on June 03, 2021, 07:31:45 AM
Late to this.

But depending on sources. Yes there were alien stormtroopers. They featured in one of the conics for example. Though have no clue where that fits.

The idea that Chewbacca didnt get a medal because the rebellion is racist is yet another woke cult hallucination.

The Empire was not xenophobic in the normal sense. Sith just tend to push anything that breeds hatred and distrust that they can feed off of or get more recruits from. So they populate the empires upper echelons and soldiers primarily with humans and then sit back and watch the fun. While likely on the sly feeding the hatred aliens have for humans. Because of course. That and Sith tend to be nucleus' that attract evil and weak willed people. You can pretty much bet that any non-human sith were doing the same in reverse wherever they had a foothold and control.

Way back one idea for why the empire has so few aliens in its staff is that aliens tend to more force/dark side resistant more often than humans.

This sums up my view on it perfectly. Thank you. 

Quote from: Premier on June 01, 2021, 06:40:35 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on June 01, 2021, 05:33:49 PMIt was earlier than that.  I remember reading from authoritative sources back in the 80s that the reason Chewbacca didn't get a medals with the others was that even the Alliance had racism against non-humans, and they're a lot more tolerant than the Empire.

I don't know what you consider "authoritative sources", but the official in-universe explanation actually is (and AFAIK always has been) that Wookiee culture just doesn't care about awards, medals and decorations, and there was a separate Wookiee-appropriate ceremony later on. In terms of movie-making decisions, it's probably because the size difference between Carrie Fisher and Peter Mayhew would have made any solution look a bit ridiculous and would have harmed the emotional impact of the scene. Bathos was not yet the cinematographic cancer it is today back in '77.

I don't actually remember the source - that was a few decades ago.  I though it might be the caption on one of my McQuarrie prints, but no, the odd thing there was that it showed that the original plan was for Obi-Wan to live.  Maybe Splinter of the Mind's Eye?  It was unequivocally stated in the Zahn books, but those were quite a bit later.

Its been said, but the old EU canon, no there would not be non-human stormtroopers, while the empire had non-human agents and operatives, they were rare in the military and were often hidden from public view. In the EU Period, however, your idea wouldn't work for stormtroopers anyway; imperial intelligence of the imperial navy would be better fits.

The New Disney Canon--couldn't tell you. I think the new trilogy is generally inferior to the EU--Mara Jade was far more cool than Rey, the changes in the force (I prefer Lucas's gnostic model, which views the darkside's existence as imbalance to the dragonlance idea), changes in lightspeed, etc, so I didn't pay much attention to the novels until the Mandalorian sort of revived my interest in the series, but I don't know what they have done with this aspect the EU's presentation of the Empire.

Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:21:34 AMI think the new trilogy is generally inferior to the EU--Mara Jade was far more cool than Rey, the changes in the force (I prefer Lucas's gnostic model, which views the darkside's existence as imbalance to the dragonlance idea), changes in lightspeed, etc, so I didn't pay much attention to the novels until the Mandalorian sort of revived my interest in the series, but I don't know what they have done with this aspect the EU's presentation of the Empire.

Oh yeah.  I was vastly disappointed that episodes 7-9 were not just adaptations of the Zahn books.  They're so much better than anything Disney has come up with.  I hope someday to see such an adaptation.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 07, 2021, 09:36:36 PM

Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:21:34 AMI think the new trilogy is generally inferior to the EU--Mara Jade was far more cool than Rey, the changes in the force (I prefer Lucas's gnostic model, which views the darkside's existence as imbalance to the dragonlance idea), changes in lightspeed, etc, so I didn't pay much attention to the novels until the Mandalorian sort of revived my interest in the series, but I don't know what they have done with this aspect the EU's presentation of the Empire.

Oh yeah.  I was vastly disappointed that episodes 7-9 were not just adaptations of the Zahn books.  They're so much better than anything Disney has come up with.  I hope someday to see such an adaptation.

If that raging cunt Kennedy gets her inflated ego out of the fucking way then Thrawn is what Filoni and Favreau are working towards.  Filoni's treatment of Thrawn in Star Wars Rebels was very well done and what seems to be happening in Bad Batch and the end point of a cloned Palpatine suggests that C'Baoth could be on tap for the TV shows.  I actually vastly prefer 20+ hours of TV building up to that Trilogy than just a standalone 3 movies that deal with it.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 07, 2021, 09:36:36 PM

Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:21:34 AMI think the new trilogy is generally inferior to the EU--Mara Jade was far more cool than Rey, the changes in the force (I prefer Lucas's gnostic model, which views the darkside's existence as imbalance to the dragonlance idea), changes in lightspeed, etc, so I didn't pay much attention to the novels until the Mandalorian sort of revived my interest in the series, but I don't know what they have done with this aspect the EU's presentation of the Empire.

Oh yeah.  I was vastly disappointed that episodes 7-9 were not just adaptations of the Zahn books.  They're so much better than anything Disney has come up with.  I hope someday to see such an adaptation.

I would have just cut off the EU to a pre-Vong invasion state, myself, that ead my original expectation. If I ever run a new campaign it may be Mashup of the two in certain respects, maintaining Lucas's view of the force, but also the events of the Mandalorian. Rebels it seems tovme has opened up the doors to a star wars multiverse, which gives me ideas.

Star Wars Rebels had an episode where Ezra Bridger infiltrated the Imperial cadet training course on Lothal. All of the cadets there were human. There was also an episode where Sabine Wren infiltrated the tie fighter pilot corps to help Wedge Antilles defect, but I don't think we saw any nonhumans there either. I bring it up just because Star Wars Rebels is officially canon. 

If you want nonhuman Stormtroopers, though, I can suggest a way to handle it. Simply say that the Empire doesn't typically station troops on their own homeworlds, lest their hometown sympathies make them susceptible to bribes and looking the other way. Thus, the species makeup of the Stormtroopers doesn't tend to match the locals. That would explain why we only see human troopers on worlds where humans are a minority: these guys are from somewhere else.

If you go to a world where humans are the majority population, you might well see a troop of nonhuman stormtroopers stationed there. I would suggest that nonhuman stormtroopers would be organized into segregated brigades, in order to simplify logistics and improve morale. Much easier to have units where every member can wear the same uniforms, and eat the same food.

I'd go the other way and keep it like Clones but without clones just as Tarkin wanted.  If you have to make 15 different body shapes of Stormtrooper armor you increase your costs.  Note that isn't functional like the difference between Storm/Desert/Forest/Snow etc.  This is just that an alien species doesn't fit.  You're 2 inches too short or 2 inches too tall (but not tall enough for Death Trooper)?  Sorry you're assigned to standard army.  It's just a logistics thing.

If you are a species that fits the narrow specifications of Stormtrooper body shape then congrats you're a Stormtrooper!