So, clearly by the time of Ep. 4, no droid armies (like those in eps. 1-3) appear to be in active use. And we know from hints in eps. 4-6 as well as from extended universe stuff that not all Imperial troops are clones of Jango Fett (if nothing else, we know that a good hunk of the Rebel pilots–like Biggs–first went to the Imperial Academy and then turned to the other side, and that all of the Imperial Officers, “Death Star Commanders”–those guys with the gray uniforms and big black helmets–, etc. are boring old humans).
But questions remain:
Are many/most/all of the fully-suited stormtroopers Jango clones?
What’s up with IG-88, the bounty hunter? I expected to see a model like him in eps 1-3, but didn’t catch any.
I guess when Palpatine shut down his former Separatist pawns, he permanently scrapped their droid armies, too.
No, I don’t remember seeing IG-88 anywhere around, other than in TESB. Maybe it was a prototype?
Stormtroopers in Ep IV-VI are clearly of different heights and, to a lesser extent, different builds. Different voices, too, I think. Maybe the Empire found other good clone templates to use, and didn’t want to have all its eggs in the same genetic basket (er…sorry) by having all stormtroopers come from the same individual. Might have been at greater risk of Rebel biowarfare that way.
In Episode…II, I think, Obi Wan says “If droids could think, we’d all be out of a job” or something like that. This makes me think IG-88 is must have a biological brain of some sort. Otherwise he wouldn’t be an effective bounty hunter, because he couldn’t think.
Or, Obi Wan is sadly deluded.
Or whoever wrote Episode II did a bad job. … Well I guess that’s a given.
Honestly, I think IG-88 is such a minor bit of background in TESB that there was no reason to show him in any of the other movies.
And in Tales of the Bounty Hunters, IG-88’s story said that there were only 5 of his model created before they turned on their makers and killed them.
That was one of my favorite EU stories. IG-88 basically became the most powerful hunter in the galaxy when it uploaded its conciousness into the Death Star II. Of course that didn’t end so well for the 'bot.
IG-88 was first seen behind the bar at the cantina, in the original Star Wars.
His disembodied head was sitting there, hooked up through glass tubing, to a bunch of bottles of coloured spirits. (Presumably as a stealthy way of getting past the dive’s “no droid” policy.)