I had a thought the other night. And I may have come up with a reason for why there would be Imperial Navy Commandos. There seems to be that there is some friction between some of the branches of the military. And it's very likely that the Navy is a bit salty on having to rely on the Stormtrooper Corp, for their fighting force. So they want their troops that they can use is military operations or in boarding operations.
I can sort of get behind that... Sort of. The thing is -- Stormtroopers
are the Navy's embarked fighting force. There are likely instances when there are embarked Starfleet infantry troops, but also good chances of times there aren't (left behind to maintain a military presence, etc.). The rivalry in ANH was between General Motti, who seemed to be very infantry/installation/fortification in his training and/or thinking... and General Tagge, who probably had just arrived with Vader on the
Devastator. He was sitting next to Bast, who reported directly to Tarkin. We know Bast oversaw the gunnery crews and those guys are Stormtroopers. The later Prequels showed us Clone Troopers could attain the broad rank of Commander, but they were still subordinate to non-Clone Generals. Veers in ESB follows that same pattern. So it retroactively makes sense to me that Tagge and Bast are Stormtrooper Generals like Veers was, and that, Stormtroopers being more naval in feel, being Marine analogues, that fits Motti sneering at "Tagge's" Starfleet.
Granted, more recently, I've come to feel the Snowtroopers were Infantry, rather than Stormtroopers, but that there were still Stormtroopers on the ground under Veers' command. But I'll get back to that below.
There just seems like a lot of overlap. There is a bunch of special elite Stormtrooper units that kinda do the same thing. I mean there's two kinds of Shadow Stormtroopers. The ones in TFU with gray armor. Then your "classic" black armored guys. Who are under the command of Agent Blackhole, who also commandos Nova Stormtroopers. Another black armored unit, but with gold markings.
The first Shadow Stormtroopers showed up in the Archie Goodwin newspaper comics and were, yes, under the command of the Imperial agent codenamed "Blackhole". They were also called Blackhole Troopers, because of that. The concept later expanded to be that Shadow Stormtroopers existed elsewhere, too, and not just under his command. The Nova Troopers are another level higher even than Shadow. They were introduced in Galaxies as VIP bodyguards. Basically, if Stormtroopers are Marines, Shadow Troopers are Marine Raiders, and Nova Troopers are the President's Own.
Thanks to Shadow Scouts and Shadow Guards, it makes sense to me to have that appellation refer to those who have survived at the basic level long enough and/or received advanced training to transition from white to black. The Royal/Shadow Guard distinction is a different one, and the higher position above them both fuses both colors into a red and black uniform.
I can't explain the gray TFU Shadow Trooper, beyond that it always looked like they lightened them so they wouldn't be invisible in those dim environments. *shrug* The official merch has them in black armor (with random blue trim).
While the movie doesn't clarify who they are. The Art of The Empire Strikes Back, and the comic adaptation both call them Stormtroopers.
Yep. Kenner also got their info direct from Lucasfilm. We have all the Lucasfilm nicknames for ships and aliens permanently memorialized as their toy releases. The "X ship" and the "Y ship", the "tie ship"... Later for ROTJ, the two new Rebel fighters, the "A ship" and the "B ship"... "Hammerhead", "Snaggletooth", "Walrus Man", "Three-Eyed Yak-Face", and so on. So them calling that action figure "Stormtrooper (Hoth Battle Gear)" would have been what they were told it was by someone working there. Between that and Joe Johnston's sketchbook commentary, I know they settled on them being Stormtroopers.
It just makes more sense that they're not, and since they weren't explicitly called such in the film, I feel free to let the visual storytelling do its thing. Also note the Snowtrooper officer Veers informs "all troops will disembark" has the red-over-blue rank insignia on his breastplate. We never see that on any Stormtroopers. Another indicator, to me, that they're Infantry. I'm willing to bet that, if I sat Joe down and persuaded him to care anywhere near as much about this as we do, that he'd see my reasoning as sound.
Of course, as the years have gone along we've gotten endless very specific variants (perhaps to sell toys)
DUH. Star Wars. Twelve action figures in the first wave. Eight more in the second. Total of twenty for that film. All re-released for the second film, along with a total of
thirty new ones. Then Jedi gave us figures for
all of the aliens in Jabba's palace, even if they were on screen for half a second in the background. And all the Ewoks. And the Emperor's advisors. There weren't really tie-in toys like that prior to Star Wars. There's a reason Geoge was -- perhaps enviously -- referred to as "Toy-Boy". There's a reason Mel Brooks riffed on it in Spaceballs ("MERCHANDIZING! Where the
real money from the movie is made!").
So of
course by the time we got to the Clone Wars, we were going to have eighteen thousand variants to have to buy.
and, especially under Disney, stormtrooper armor seems to serve no practical function. They are a far cry from what I thought a stormtrooper was originally meant to be.
I noticed that in TFA, where Finn said the helmets filter out smoke, but not toxins. And I flashed back to the two Stormtroopers standing guard outside on the
Death Star in hard vacuum and kinda went, "Ummmmmm... No?" I guess the First Order got some
really cut-rate gear. At least they were effective in subduing that village? I was a little afraid they'd buy into the whole "can't hit the broad side of a barn" BS about Stormtrooper marksmanship. They've been dragged enough over the years. I want to see them be as imposing and scary as they were in the first couple minutes of Star Wars.
