Season Two of The Mandalorian came with many
unexpected treats, perhaps the most surprising of which being the reintroduction of the Imperial
Dark Trooper. Dark Troopers, which first appeared in the
1995 game Star Wars: Dark Forces, were a staple of the old Expanded Universe, and it was great
to see them finally get some screen time. The Mandalorian’s series finale made Dark
Troopers into the terror that anyone who’s played Dark Forces knows them to be, at least
until a certain someone showed up. This depiction becomes all the more striking
when you put the Dark Troopers into context as battle droids. We’re used to thinking of battle droids
as frail and useless, though these Dark Troopers were anything but. So, what gives? In this video, we’ll be answering that question,
and talking about what made the Dark Troopers the nightmarish battle droids the Separatists
were afraid to make. Dark Troopers as a concept are quite similar
between Legends and Canon, but there are enough discrepancies between the two that we’re
going to address Legends and Canon Dark Troopers separately. Most of what we know of the Dark Troopers
in Canon comes from The Mandalorian, which establishes them as incredibly resilient,
unrelenting, and virtually unstoppable for anyone who doesn’t have a lightsaber. It also provides a little bit of insight on
the Dark Trooper program; the ones we see in The Mandalorian are Phase III Dark Troopers,
the first of the line to be full battle droids. Previous units were likely cyborgs or exo-suits. In Legends, the Dark Trooper Project was first
conceptualized in the early years of the Empire, but it was kept in limbo for most of the Dark
Times. Its goal was to create supersoldiers for the
Empire using droid technology, opponents that no rebel could stand against. The first Dark Troopers - the Phase Zero Dark
Troopers - were aging clone veterans who had volunteered for cybernetic enhancement. Using technology similar to what had saved
Darth Vader’s life, they were reshaped into half-machine supersoldiers, equipped with
jetpacks, ARC Casters, and their trademark black armor and sent into battle alongside
other Stormtroopers. They weren’t much better than the other
Stormtroopers, however, so for years, the Dark Trooper Project went dormant. Most of the Imperial Military forgot about
the Dark Trooper Project for a time - most, but not all. A young Imperial officer named Rom Mohc, who
had worked on the project, remained committed to the idea of Imperial supersoldiers. By the time of the Battle of Yavin, he had
become a general, and as the Rebel Alliance became increasingly dangerous, his bid to
revive the Dark Trooper project was finally greenlit. He took command of a massive science vessel
called the Arc Hammer and got to work on the first true Dark Troopers. The Phase I Dark Troopers, the first products
of Mohc’s project, were rather skeletal, and were intended to test the basic concept
of the Dark Trooper design. But while they appeared frail, this was far
from the truth - their skeletons were made of phrik, a lightsaber-resistant alloy previously
used in MagnaGuard electrostaffs. They were also equipped with incredibly advanced
artificial intelligences, and while they didn’t have hands capable of carrying blasters, they
did feature shields and vibroswords, which were grafted onto their frames. Phase I Dark Troopers proved effective in
tests despite their limited nature, and so Mohc moved on to the next stage of his project
- Phase II Dark Troopers. Phase IIs were much larger and bulkier than
Phase Is, and this time around, they featured full phrik armor and built-in jetpacks. Special handheld assault cannons were designed
for use by the Phase II Dark Troopers; these fired high-powered plasma bolts and small
missiles. Between their armor and their weapons, Phase
II Dark Troopers were tanks on the battlefield. In their first field test on Talay, a single
platoon cleared out an entire Rebel base in a matter of hours, earning the personal approval
of Darth Vader. After learning of what had happened on Talay,
Alliance High Command determined it was imperative that the Dark Trooper Project be shut down. They deployed Kyle Katarn, otherwise known
as the biggest chad in the universe, to do the job. Katarn, a former Stormtrooper turned Rebel
agent, was eventually able to track the Dark Troopers back to the Arc Hammer, battling
many of them along the way. Katarn was one of the Rebellion’s best fighters,
but even he struggled to defeat these formidable battle droids. By the time Katarn had located the Arc Hammer,
General Mohc was working on the final step of the project - the Phase III Dark Trooper. This behemoth of a battle droid was nearly
three meters tall, designed to be able to function either as an independent droid or
as an exo-suit for an organic. It was stronger, faster, and more heavily-armed,
equipped with a pair of integrated blaster cannons, six built-in rocket launchers, and
improved versions of the assault cannon. If they had gotten past the prototype stage,
they would have been the perfect infantry soldiers, capable of going one-on-one with
tanks. Fortunately for the Rebel Alliance, Kyle Katarn
made sure that very few Phase III Dark Troopers ever saw the light of day. Rom Mohc himself integrated himself into the
first prototype to battle Katarn aboard the Arc Hammer, and though he ended up losing
the battle, it was a close call for Katarn. Katarn successfully destroyed the Arc Hammer,
and with it, virtually all the equipment that had been used in the Dark Trooper Project,
leading to the project’s termination. Across both Legends and Canon, the Dark Troopers
share a number of common traits. Their armor can shrug off blasterfire like
it’s rain, they’re tremendously strong and utterly unrelenting, and they come equipped
with jetpacks and heavy-duty rifles. These battle droids were something to fear,
even for Mandalorians and hardened veterans. Only the almighty Kyle Katarn, praise be upon
him, had nothing to fear from these walking nightmares. So, why didn’t the Confederacy make its
battle droids more like the Dark Troopers? They were definitely capable of doing so,
at least to some degree. IG-100 MagnaGuards had comparably sophisticated
droid brains, many existing droid models could match the physical strength of the Dark Troopers,
and the Confederacy even owned Gromas 16, the moon where the Arc Hammer mined all its
phrik. The Techno Union surely could’ve designed
a droid of that caliber, and the mechworods had the resources to mass-produce them on
a scale similar to that of the droideka. So what gives? Well, firstly, the Dark Troopers clashed quite
heavily with the combat philosophy of the Confederacy, so that was probably an obstacle. The CIS primarily employed swarm tactics,
which worked quite well for much of the Clone Wars. Their tactical approach was to overwhelm the
Republic; they poured their resources into obtaining a number advantage at every level
of warfare, from having greater numbers of basic infantry to having more warships and
more warfleets. They didn’t want to conquer the Republic,
remember - they just wanted the Republic to let them secede, and they planned to force
them to do so via a war of attrition. A weapon like the Dark Troopers wouldn’t
have suited for such a war. There was also the fact that they still probably
wouldn’t have been able to stand up to a Jedi. In The Mandalorian’s season finale, Luke
Skywalker made mincemeat of those clankers, and most Jedi would surely have been able
to put on similar shows. Imperial Dark Troopers wouldn’t have been
anywhere near as much of a threat, Legends or Canon, if the Jedi were still around to
fight them. Seeing as the army the Confederacy was up
against was led by a few thousand Jedi, something like the Dark Trooper project probably would
have ultimately been futile. But there was another reason the CIS didn’t
make something like the Dark Troopers - a reason that terrified the CIS leadership. Highly-advanced droids in small numbers are
one thing, but a full army of Dark Troopers is another, and such a force would have come
with extreme risks. Every droid army in the history of the Star
Wars universe came with failsafes in case the droids went rogue, but such failsafes
were harder to implement and guarantee the more advanced droids became. In the right conditions, droids could override
their own programming and disable any failsafe hardware before their masters became aware
of their rebellion, and then the meatbags would really be in trouble. This is part of why the Confederacy’s battle
droids were seemingly so dumb, and why the rank-and-files featured very obvious flaws. The CIS wanted insurance against the threat
of droid rebellion, so they deliberately nerfed their own armies. If Sith hit the fan, the flaws in the Confederacy's
battle droids ensured it would at least have a chance of survival. But an army of Dark Trooper-grade droids would
have no such guarantees. If the Confederacy did have an army of Dark
Troopers, and they went rogue, only Count Dooku, General Grievous, and a handful of
Dark Acolytes would have been able to stand against them. All the other meatbags would have been screwed. With the Separatist Council being the pack
of gibbering cowards that it was, you can see why such a scenario didn’t appeal to
them. They were quite content with regular old battle
droids, which they could make in such vast numbers that their quality made no difference. So, that’s what made the Dark Troopers the
battle droids the Seppies were too scared to make. But what do you think? Did you enjoy seeing Dark Troopers on-screen
at long last? Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments
below.
