This line from A New Hope isn’t all that
significant on face value -- a quick bit from the bartender Wuher that adds to the
atmosphere of the Mos Eisley Cantina. But with the Clone Wars in context, it merits
further consideration. In the Prequel era, droids are ubiquitous - especially combat droids,
for obvious reasons. But in the Original Trilogy, they’re much less common, and again, this
is especially true for combat models, which only appear as bounty hunters
in those films. Not unreasonably, many fans might idly speculate about whether
or not there’s a connection between the two. In this video, we’re gonna be discussing droids in
the post-Clone Wars era, especially battle droids. First, let’s cut to the chase - yes, the Clone
Wars had a serious impact on droid use across the galaxy. The Confederacy of Independent
Systems made extensive use of battle droids, to the point where the Republic ended up pulling
all of its battle droids from active duty at the start of the conflict. Droids, in general, came
to be associated with Separatism, and vice-versa, leading many Loyalists to develop a distrust
of droids even before the rise of the Empire. The Confederacy’s frequent use
of reprogrammed spy droids like R3-S6 certainly didn’t help matters either. Following the end of the Clone Wars, the
fledgling Galactic Empire incited anti-droid sentiments even further, largely for political
reasons. The Empire inspired nationalism among former Loyalists by playing on memories of the
Clone Wars, and this always involved comparing enemies of the Empire to Separatists, even after
the Empire’s enemies became rebel groups instead of Separatist holdouts. This, in turn, usually
involved plastering the Imperial HoloVision, billboards, and the very streets with
propaganda posters featuring one of two things: the death mask of General Grievous or
the faceplate of a B1 Battle Droid. In the day-to-day, the Empire stripped droids of
certain rights they had gained under the Republic and encouraged anti-droid movements. This was
largely to give the many poor and dispossessed Imperial citizens a target they could direct
their anger at other than the government; state-sponsored anti-alien discrimination was
part of a similar program. Problems that many beings would rightly blame the Empire for --
including but not limited to poverty, failure to rebuild from the Clone Wars, and disappearing
jobs -- were instead blamed on droids. As many disgruntled beings reasoned, droids had
destroyed their homes during the Clone Wars, and took their jobs. Thus, droids received much of
the blame for some of the Empire’s many failings. This wasn’t the first time in history
that something like this had happened, mind you. Over the course of Republic
history, droid rebellions had always led to periods of similar backlash, and
in the last decades of the Republic, there were active anti-droid groups even
before the CIS Droid Army came into being. In the lead-up to the Clone Wars, there were
several clashes between droid rights groups, like the Coalition of Automaton Rights
Activists and the Mechanical Liberation Front, and anti-droid groups, like the Organization for
Organic Purity. The debate between the two sides got louder as battle droids became more common
in the last years of the Republic, but after the Empire’s victory, it was largely the anti-droid
groups that Palpatine continued to platform. By the time of the Galactic Civil War, droids
were shunned in many parts of the galaxy, especially poor, human-dominated Outer Rim worlds.
Establishments like Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina in Mos Eisley, which forbade droids from even
entering the building, were pretty commonplace. Indeed, there were many planets, like
Bakura, where droids were either banned or legally required to wear restraining
bolts and follow some rather harsh laws. Anti-droid sentiments were a lot less
extreme in the Core Worlds due to how ingrained worker droids had become in many
Core societies, but they were still present. As you might expect, combat droids, in particular,
were absolutely detested after the end of the Clone Wars. Trillions of people all over the
galaxy had bad memories of the Separatists’ battle droids, and any droid that as much as
carried a blaster was viewed with suspicion, if not open loathing, on your average
Imperial planet. The Republic had had laws regulating private use and ownership
of non-military fourth-degree droids, but the Imperials dramatically ramped up
these regulations, all but banning combat droids altogether. Only two kinds of combat droid
were still relatively commonplace by the time of the Galactic Civil War - assassin droids, like
IG-88, and non-combat models that had gone rogue, like 4-LOM. Battle droids all but disappeared,
at least from the civilian galaxy. Of course, the Empire being the Empire,
it continued to use combat droids itself, albeit not as extensively as the Republic
had. Many Imperial officers genuinely shared the anti-droid sentiments that
Imperial propagandists were propagating, and they often went out of their way to
minimize droid use in their commands. Military higher-ups largely tolerated
assassin droids as a matter of necessity, but battle droids were still met with resentment
even at the highest levels of command. The Empire did attempt to make its own battle
droids, but these projects always faced an uphill battle within the bureaucracy. While droid-makers
like the Tagge Company were eager to start churning out Imperial battle droids, the chilly
attitude towards battle droids in the Imperial Military made sure that dozens of Imperial
battle droid projects never saw the light of day. One of the first of these canned projects,
the TaggeCo Z-X3 Droid Trooper, surpassed the Imperial Military’s combat standards for
Stormtrooper recruits, only for the droids to be rejected anyway due to prejudices within
the bureaucracy. Only one Imperial battle droid project got off the ground, the Dark Trooper
Project, and that only happened because Darth Vader threw his personal support behind it,
as we discussed in another video recently. However, the Imperial Military didn’t have
nearly as much of a problem with repossessing existing battle droids. Under the Empire, battle
droids were largely restricted to military use, and illegal battle droids that Imperial officials
seized were often put to work in the military. This is, of course, assuming those droids
weren’t destroyed beforehand in unfortunate “accidents.” In general, “accidents” were a
common fate for droids in the Imperial Military; to quote one Imperial officer concerning the
RA-7 Protocol Droid the Emperor had gifted him: “I regret to inform your lordship
that your gift has been stolen. By a swoop gang, most likely.
Or Rebels. Or an alien.” Such “thefts,” of course, were rarely looked into. But what became of the Confederacy’s droids, you
might ask? Well, at the end of the Clone Wars, all droid units were given a shutdown command from
the Separatist Council’s fortress on Mustafar, and, with a few exceptions, the
droids then proceeded to be shut down. Most of them were unceremoniously scrapped,
either by angry locals or the Imperials, but quite a few survived, largely those that
had been kept in reserve. The various Separatist Holdouts had a nasty habit of reactivating old
droid factories and reserve fleets, which the Imperial Military usually saw destroyed. But some
warehouses were reached first by scavengers and opportunists, while others were seized by the
Imperials before other groups could get to them. Over the course of the Imperial era, old
Separatist war droids were used as guards by certain unsavory types. These were almost
exclusively B1s or, in rare cases, B2s, as the more powerful droid units were much
harder to come by due to Imperial restrictions. The Empire scrapped most of the B1s it
got ahold of, but it did keep using a few for training exercises, as the droids’ combat
skills proved a worthy challenge for Stormtrooper recruits. Other Separatist models saw more
extensive use by the Imperial Military, however. Several droid models that had proven
effective during the Clone Wars saw active use in the Imperial Stormtrooper
Corps, typically in support roles. The Droideka and the DSD1 Dwarf Spider Droid
were the most well-known examples of this; the Empire used both droids extensively in
the early Galactic Civil War, as both fit well into the Stormtrooper Corps’ typical approach to
ground battles. These droids were introduced into the Imperial Military just after the Reconquest
of the Rim, when most of the Stormtrooper Corps was still composed of veteran clone troopers.
As you’d expect, the clones resented having to fight alongside clankers, but none of them could
deny that the Droideka and DSD1 were effective; after all, many had seen firsthand
what killers they could be. Interestingly, anti-droid sentiments persisted
well past the fall of the Empire, too. The generation that grew up under Imperial rule and
formed the foundation of the New Republic knew of battle droids only from dim, frightening childhood
memories or the war stories their parents told. As a result, the New Republic didn’t really
see battle droids in a favorable light either. Battle droids didn’t see a resurgence until 25
ABY, when the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the galaxy. The Vong were absolutely fanatical in their hatred
of droids; in the early years of their species, two extremely powerful droid races had carved
a bloody swath across the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy in a war against each other, enslaving the
Vong in the process. The Vong eschewed all non-organic technology in memory of that ancient
war, and when they came to the Star Wars galaxy, they were disgusted to see how prevalent droids
were. They made a habit of destroying droids en masse in immolation pits after capturing planets,
and their hatred was plain whenever they faced droids in combat. In response to this and a
manpower shortage, the New Republic brought battle droids back into fashion, deploying both
new and old models in a bid to slow down the Vong. Among these droids were the Orange Panthacs
- a platoon of old B2 Super Battle Droids. So, that’s what happened to battle
droids after the Clone Wars. But what do you think? Are there other
topics in this vein that you’d like to see us cover? Feel free to post
your thoughts in the comments below.
