ISB officer / agent and the specific ranks in Andor
- Thread starter TK41434
- Start date
Vagabond Elf
Well-Known Member
Are you saying there's no Lieutenant Colonel in the show? If so, that would presumably be why there's no 501st approved rank bar for an ISB Lt. Col. I'm speculating here, but my understanding is they only approve things that have appeared in official publications. We can conjecture that there are Lt. Colonels somewhere off screen, but we don't know that. Heck, perhaps the ISB doesn't have the rank! A Lt. Col is an "assistant Colonel," an officer there to help the commander of a Regiment keep control of a couple thousand soldiers. Maybe the ISB jumps from "Majors are in charge of major detachments" to "Col. Wularan is in charge of everything."
For a real-world parallel, in Canada the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's rank insignia are based on the British Army's, but skip over Second Lieutenant, Lieutenant, and Captain, and go straight to using a Major's Crown for a Superintendent. They then count up as normal until they get to using the Brigadier's insigna for an Assistant Commissioner, but then jump over the Major General's insignia to the Lieutenant General's for the Deputy Commissioner.
So, perhaps, just as there is no RCMP uniform with either a Captain's rank insignia nor a Major General's, perhaps there is no ISB uniform with a Lieutenant Colonel's rank bar. The ISB isn't actually a military force, after all. (Actually, now I'm really sad that the Major is addressed as such on screen, because it would have been awesome if the ISB used British Imperial police titles instead...)
Or are you saying there is a Lt Col in the show but you can't find the 501st's official specification for the rank bar? If so, I'll have to leave that for people with more ties to the 501st to anser.
Vagabond Elf
Well-Known Member
Sure, but remember that chart was made up by a fan, or an RPG writer (who is a fan that's getting paid) or a computer game writer (who is also a fan that's getting paid) or, or, or. You see my point.
In other words, that chart is someone's attempt to fill in the blanks but if the information in it never appeared on-screen in a movie or TV show, it can be ignored by any new movie or TV show. I don't care that Disney says "oh, the official books/games/postcards/toilet rolls are all canon," we've already seen that film productions will ignore that stuff if it gets in the way of their story.
And as much as I'd like those ranks to be "real," Andor has already used military ranks on-screen, so clearly the ISB uses military ranks.
kman
Well-Known Member
Older thread, I know, but y'all's 501st IOC rank information is out of date. For at least 3 or 4 years, we've been using a new rank chart that incorporates pretty much every possible variation known within the current rank structure.
This is a 2021 version, which is the latest I have on hand... you'd need to check in at the IOC forums for a more recent one (although updates since this have been pretty minor)
This is a 2021 version, which is the latest I have on hand... you'd need to check in at the IOC forums for a more recent one (although updates since this have been pretty minor)
