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Imperial Andor Rank Plaques & Tile Colors Explained
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- čas přidán 24. 10. 2022
- Imperial Andor Rank Plaques are explained from David Crossman's ranks chart from Star Wars Rogue One. Explains imperial officer tile color meanings. Includes Andor ISB and Army rank plaques from the series. Also includes Navy rank plaques and explains what the rank plaque yellow, red, and blue tile colors mean.
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Palpatine was well-known for sowing uncertainty among his officers as to who outranked whom and who was in charge of what. This was done to keep them struggling against each other instead of plotting against him. The confusion about rank plaques fits perfectly with this doctrine.
You're absolutely right. The Empire was a mirror for the Third Reich. In Nazi Germany, there was always some higher level you could advance to, if you distinguished yourself in battle, or if you were a truly devoted sycophant.
Nice thinking there.
No offense, but this is incoherent.
Remember, the goal of an authoritarian is control. Palpatine was no different. Military rank is a means of control, to establish a hierarchy so that every member in the chain is aware of who controls who. The benefit of this control is that Palpatine (or any other authority) only has to control the top few officers directly instead of hundreds of them.
In the real world, authoritarian states were super strict with rank hierarchy. The means they used to ensure loyalty were to add a political officer outside the military command who watched the commanding officers and his subordinates for insurrection. This is why, during the Hunt For The Red October, Remius starts his defection by killing Ivan Putin.
To muddle the rank structure means to make the men loyal to the leader, rather than the rank. What you get is what Republican Rome got; the men were loyal to their leader, not the civilian government. Military ranks are intended to create loyalty to the rank structure from the top down to the enlisted. In effect, to Palpatine as head of state. Insurrection against him was insurrection to the nation, to the military itself. Men may hate the leader and rebel, but to rebel against his fellows is unforgivable.
That's pretty smart. Devious, but smart.
That's just authors trying to make sense out of the incoherence of the movies, and, as stated above me, it doesn't make sense
I always joked that Vader couldn't understand the ranking so he either promoted or demoted people just by saying their names. No one ever argued with the demotion as it was better than being force choked to death.
Robot Chicken reveled that Vader couldn't really force choke people, but he believed he could so they played along and pretended to die (or he would just stab them with his lightsaber) then they changed their uniform and came back a little later as a more junior rank and awaited promotion as he "force choked" the other senior officers.
Thus did they all survive constant execution for failure.
I really hope Robot Chicken isn't canon, if only for Gary the Stormtrooper's sake.
Maybe Vader didn't know the ranking, but he knew the ranks:
"General Veers, prepare your men."
"Apology accepted, Captain Needa."
@@bighominid Possibly also the first to promote someone in mid-sentence: "Captain Piett! Make ready to land our troops beyond their energy field, and deploy the fleet, so that nothing gets off the system. You are in command now, Admiral Piett"
I accept this as canon.
I have always felt that the number of tiles of each color might also indicate how much training one had in a navy vs army vs engineering so one Colonel might have more red or yellow tiles than another
Likely less about training and more about position within the military structure overall. A sergeant, a first sergeant and a sergeant major are all technically "sergeant" ranks but each one implies a vastly different set of responsibilities.
Some officer ranks irl are separated by paygrade and responsibility too, such as Lieutenant and 2nd Lieutenant, colonel and lieutenant colonel, or the various general ranks like Lieutenant General, Major General, Field Marshall, etc.
That all implies you're using a western American/British ranking system, some countries have much simpler, or sometimes more complex rank structures.
But it's important to note in every military regardless of the amount of ranks or the complexity of their categorization, one thing is universally true:
The chain of command is _absolute_
So at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if Joe Kebab is a colonel but John Butter is a major general of mustard redistribution, if Joe has more bars on his uniform, he's the boss.
It's not experience, it's not training, it's barely even title. It's just where your superiors decide to place you on the totem pole.
@@trainknut It gets complicated when Major General Butter is not directly in Colonel Kebeb's chain of command.
@@ekij133 yeah, that’s where things really get complicated.
I took it to mean years of service. And each color code represented a branch. It does stand to reason that at some point you might get bounced around one branch to another in your years of service. Especially in the Empire.
But I also didn't think people put a lot of thought into this and it got to the point where bars and colors were assigned willy nilly. The higher up the totem pole you were, the more likely you would have more bars and rows to designate your time in service.
to be honest, rank is more designated by uniform. The higher the rank of the clone trooper, the more colorful the armor for easy identification. And anybody not in armor likely outranked you considerably. And the higher up in the food chain the more visually appealing the uniform. And if you ran into somebody who was in a non-standard uniform, you either already knew who it was or you simply said, "Yes sir" regardless.
You could argue this was one of the Empire's biggest weaknesses. They simply didn't push for verifying the average officer's identification unless that officer was being out of order with a senior. Then the chest beating with name, rank, and position in the military would occur.
@@superdave8248 I thought it could mean what units types they were commanding.
you know we're back to REAL star wars when this is the topic of discussion
A possible explanation for Krennic, as well as others discrepancies;
The tiles may reference the experience and training an individual has, rather than only their specific branch authority.
Krennic may, for example, be trained as a capable army and naval commander, but not an engineer or logistician.
Generals universally need to be experienced with logistics to be able to perform their leadership roles effectively (As we routinely see in the rank pips of other high-level officers). Krennic, meanwhile, was in a managerial position over a large number of skilled engineers and other specialty personnel and could well have delegated these tasks.
Thus, he's not suitable as a large-scale commander, but he is fit to oversee a project as a liaison from the Imperial officer corps.
It's also possible that his rank may have been artificially inflated by Palpatine or others in high positions to prevent meddling in his special project by other lower-to-mid-level commanders, given that he was a special project commander, and not a field commander.
We do see some character evidence for this. He's shown to be not intimately involved with the engineering staff, callously executing them and seeming to not personally know much of their inner workings, posing himself as an outsider. He also appears quite insecure about his level of credit in project stardust - possible because he lacks the skills to actually do it, and ordered other people to do so... Which is exactly what Moff Tarkin did to him. He fears what he knows.
Rather than being a lead designer, his task is more-so talent hunting and oversight, but he's based his ego on it's success, ignoring the fact he's just a glorified handler for a team of engineers and scientists.
I like this explanation. It covers why he's so adamant in taking credit, even talking back to Vader at one point, and learned the hard way not to. Also the fact that he's specifically chosen for this special "secret" project covers why his title of Director is never heard before. But why do you think that they couldn't just put 3 yellow pips on his suit just for show?
@@MM-vs2et Probably, I think, because it was easier to inflate the qualifications he already had.
If he really was unskilled in engineering, giving him authority over such matters directly probably would have led to him bungling things with too much personal interest.
He was certainly overly-proud enough to try.
An inflated rank could also explain how he doesn't seem to garner much respect from any of the Imperial higher officers / leaders he meets. Tarkin and Vader both outright dismiss and abuse him, even.
"Deploy the garrison!" Isn't much of a command, either. It's tantamount to "Do something!" so I don't see evidence of a lot of personal experience.
Also, Krennic displays instinctive leadership when in combat situations, like the attack on Scarif “are you blind!? Call out the garrison!!!”.
And the fact he doesn’t hesitate to kill the engineering team would suggest that he’s use to death. Something an engineering/logistics officer wouldn’t necessarily be exposed/hardened to.
Also Krennic could have been a nobleman especially since he wore a cloak/cape which generally is associated with the old European Nobility and Gentry, indeed if you look at the German Empire of the Hohenzollerns, you will see a lot of high officers dressed in their dress uniforms with a cape or other similar type of garment
Could always be explained as Disney not doing their due diligence, as usual.
No matter how hard you try, there will always be discrepancies with Imperial Officer ranks. I also think it’s weird that basically 16 ISB lieutenants are overseeing the entire security of the Galaxy, headed by a major. Star Wars is great, but it doesn’t get ranks.
I agree and would attribute it to narrative necessity. The creators of Andor clearly wanted that rivalry you get between junior commisioned officers, but needed them to act on a galactic scale. Blevin and Meero should have been colonels at least given their jurisdictions, but then their rivalry would have a different angle.
The justification for junior officer, I think is probably because they mostly do intelligence analysis. They don't run all the intelligence activities of their sector, just a specific part of them. Then you couple that with an over centralized and compartimented services that all answer separatly to the directorate, which is fairly plausible for that kind of organisation.
Like, the ISB has an intel analysis service in which Dedra and the other works, under the supervision of Partagas, who answer to Yularen who answer to someone else above. But Partagas don't do everything like clandestine action, etc...
Or you can consider ISB rank to be something above the ranks of the normal military. We see Dedra's rival bossing around an army or storm trooper captain on Ferrix.
They are from an Inteligence and data searching agency, totally diferent form the military. It make sense more sense that having generals, they are like specalists at the end of many sources. A part from that we don't know what it is in the upper levels, it may be just one of the sections of the ISB and one of the organizations, that usually the case in dictatorships, and there is always the military inteligence and counterespionage organizations.
When is it implied that they are the only ones overseeing the galaxy? They’re probably only a fraction of a larger body of ISB personnel
Try to think of them as less of a military rank system and more like an police rank system where a lieutenant is a fairly high rank and a Captain is near the highest levels. Yularen’s rank may be called Colonel, but his military equivalent is probably Admiral in terms of authority.
This is one of those areas that I wish was more consistent and also a bit more intuitive. A grand Moff and a Grand Admiral have the same number and colors (6 blue, 3 red, 3 yellow) just in a different order.
I think Tarkin can be excluded from any of these explanation videos because, as far as i know, he's the only one to hold the title of "grand moff" and it's not really clear what that even is. I like to think he was exceedingly ambitious so palpatine made up a rank for him to take.
A number of things here, double rank bars existed long before ESB and can be seen on characters in Rebels. It is a concurrent system with the single rank bars.
4 blue was called lieutenant by the decipher card game in 1995. It arbitrarily assigned rank names to officers and is why none of that fits to Crossman’s chart.
The color on the left determines if it is a navy or army rank. Red leading off is army. Blue leading off is navy.
Except for the security services in black and ISB where it is reversed with blue representing army ranks.
The grey uniformed ISB attendants are 2 blue 2nd lieutenants.
A single cube is a cadet from one of the academies.
The Ferrix security services captain is wearing the wrong rank.
Number of cubes determine rank. Color determines job, except the transition of the first flag rank (commodore to admiral) or (colonel to general).
That most ranks became double stacked is likely because of the direct control the emperor had of the forces after disposing of the senate and the battle of yavin. This being the case the single rank bars are likely sector ranks and the double rank bars are the federal army under direct control of Coruscant.
i quite like your reasoning of using the double stacked ranks oof being under the direct control of the emperor or fedral ranks.
However, the Star wars rebels and star wars comics completely throws this out of the window with its double stacked rank plaques. (But that might just be a terrible inconsistency between live action and animated content)
One thing i would like to point out is that the Ferrix security captain had two code cylinders on his righthand side, which is different from the security captains we have seen so far with one cylinder on each side. Code cylinders can also determine rank other than just the rank plaque,.
Furthermore, the confusion with Krennic's rank not containing any yellow squares is interesting as it could suggest that he is an Admiral within the ISB already and is just holding the title of directior of advanced weapons research.
We've seen admirals of the ISB before, such as in Admiral Versio in battlefront II. (who has the exact same uniform, same rank plaque, code cylinders etc. Hes just missing the stupid cape.
Also Krennic was seen with a single row of six red squares in the prologue to rogue one. Which might suggest that ISB/sercurity officers can wear both blue and red rank plaques, either that or he was a general or a new rank within the ISB that we are not aware of.
I don't think the double rank plaques meaning federal positions makes any sense. The Empire was a unitary government, the senate had lost all practical power and as we see in the Bad Batch, former Republic Army units (Republic fighters that were not part of the GAR/Clone Army) were dissolved and replaced by the Imperial military. All military forces with the exception of corporate security would be federal in the Empire. I doubt Palpatine allowed sectors/planets to run their own militaries (non-federal forces like irl National Guards).
I think my mistake here my content for this part was true for Legends where only for very ranking officers in the Empire had double row plaques.
Don't forget those code cylinders just to make things even more confusing.
@@absboodoo Aren't code cylinders basically just security badges to get into certain rooms?
The Orange tiles might indicate technical knowledge, so the person who was surveying the dam for a new base was an actual engineer while Krennic despite overseeing the Death Star project wasnt himself an engineer (his bio indicates he was studying architecture in the Republic Academy but was transferred to a leadership track). Thrawn had technical knowledge and oversaw weapons programs like the Tie Defender and the cloaking devices. The Grand General might have had specialist knowledge about fortifications while Grand Moff Tarkin was previously a lawyer and so may have had specialist knowledge of the law and civil governance.
Alright, it seems that i am having a hard time commenting on this comment, which is a little annoying since i want to reply.
Tarkin was a pilot, tactician, and strategist, but he also was heavily involved in the Death Star’s primary weapon so earned the yellow rank pins
The Rogue One visual dictionary states that due to sector-specific regulations, the rank plaques can differ a lot - A rather lazy yet logical explanation, given how much power the sector commanders each had.
Even though it is not included in the chart, we can collectively agree that two tiles represent the junior most officer in the branch after graduation or promotion (two red for army second /or junior/ lieutenant, two blue for navy ensign, two yellow for operations second lieutenant and two blue for security/stormtrooper 2nd LT).
Also I like that they used the gray top/black pants officer uniform, since it was first seen in the background of A New Hope and then never seen again, I believe. Now we know these are ISB staff officers.
2 is ensign or 2nd lieutenant. Cadets are just one cube.
This is the first show to acknowledge the rank of ensign.
@@bobbarker31 Yes, I was going to mention the cadet rank as well, but remembered that in the new canon cadets wear white/gray uniforms and have grey tiles that indicate what year they are in their training before graduation. Perhaps the single tile can be included for when cadets dress for official occasions and don't wear their everyday white/grey uniforms, but have the official service uniform instead.
I always just assumed ranking was the number of tiles combined, and the colors signified their specialization in Navy (blue), army(red) and engineering (yellow) or perhaps governing as well.
It's ingeniously a variable system where you can simply determine your rank or even social standing compared to another person in the empire just based on number of tiles, but your actual job and what you do within the empire is determined by the distribution of colors. You don't need to determine if a Admiral supercedes a governor or a general, those are the job titles given based on the specialization.
That would mean the people with real authority and ones you'd tread carefully around are those with a even number of each color.
So far this is the most in-depth and consistent video explaining the plaques so thank you. Star wars has been VERY inconsistent with ranks and plaques until David Crossman Chart and Andor.
Honestly, i always considered those planks as pill pack blisters. The higher you climb the more you need.
I prefer to use the Imperial tank structure made by Himser. There are few ranks that don’t match perfectly, but it is the best I’ve found.
rank*
Commandant Aresko from Rebels had a different rank insignia than Commandant Beehaz, they are both commandants but their rank insignias are a little different. That might be because on of the commandants is higher than other. I personally thought Aresko and Beehaz were equals.
I think Commandant is just a title and not the rank. Kinda like how that Ferrix Captain Tigo wanted the title of Prefect (even though he had 3 blue squares and should've been a lieutenant - it was probably a costuming error).
Red: Army
Blue: Navy
White: Unknown, only seen on Kallus's plaque so far AFAIK
Yellow: Support Services (engineering, medical, etc)
Yellow: operations
@@bobbarker31 doesn't really track with the fact Galen and Petigar, neither of whom are operations level staff officers but are blatantly support personnel, both have predominantly gold plaques.
@@hyperiongm330 Erso and Petigar are both scientists and engineers with the empire. They have commissions in the imperial military. The name operations comes from the heading under Crossman's own chart. I is a broad definition, including that court reporter with a gold plaque at Andor's trial.
@@bobbarker31 Then... Wouldn't 'specialist' be a better designation for the color since it represents specialty (and not necessarily even military given the court reporter) knowledge, training, and posting?
@@hyperiongm330 The definition of an army is that it has engineers and specialists. This has been the case since before Napoleon's time. His major innovation was to put those specialists into smaller units called Corps. So engineers being in the traditional green is a norm.
The ISB, stormtroopers and the security services are NOT the military. They are ideologically indoctrinated while the military is not. They are quickly encroaching on the military and their duties.
have been trying to make sense of these imperial insignias decades ago based on the OT. It was a lost cause.
The truth is for ANH there was probably some well thought out rationale to it with the variety of insignia on display to show the vastness and complexity of the Empire. Tarkin was shown to be the head honcho as the only officer with 2 rows. Everyone else had 1 row, the more tiles an officer had the more senior they were with uniform and tile colours representing different branches.
ESB decided to give two rows to all officers and was consistent within the film, the more columns the more senior they were.
ROTJ didn't care anymore and gave every officer the same 3 rows, 3 columns insignia spaced out on the plaque as if they run out of tiles during filming.
This is one of the most frustrating exercises in cat-wrangling. Retroactively trying to make sense of something that was created before continuity was oh-so important to fans. The reality is that back in the day the costume dept. had a limited number of tiles to play with when filming. More often than not, "How about this?" became the guide to what colors and how many. More tiles = more power; more colors = more pretty. The unfortunate hoops we have to jump though to make it work now is exhausting.
I don't agree, l think the reality is George Lucas instigated a system during the original films. However, the application of the system hasn't been consistent across SW productions, hence the confusion it causes for fans. Not everyone is interested in details like this stuff and that is fine, but loads of people are interested too. Each to their own.
@@ImperialsExplainedStarWars "Pablo Hidalgo [LucasFilm exec] claims that the Imperial Officer rank badges lacked meaning in A New Hope. Indeed, the plaques seen in the film are not aligned with what would end up being their established canon and Legends designations. Moreover, all Imperial Officers seen in Return of the Jedi wear badges indicating the rank of Commander, due to a mistake by the film’s costuming department." - ScreenRant
One factor that may complicate things - event the real military ranking system can be changing over time.
I think the variable single row badges could also reflect a specific division or even "tribal" colors like a family coat of arms, remember under the Republic despite the veil idea of democracy there was lot monarchist and noblity trappings involved and indeed a great number of characters from the pre empire days were aristocrats and generally represented the officer class similar to that of Europe prior to the end of WWI in that officers during the early empire represented that concept of nobilty and most of those officers ended up being stationed on the first Death Star, and with the destruction of such, most of the officer nobilty died with it, to fill the void, the Empire had to promote a large percentage of NCOs who in the real world prior to WWI were commoners, hence in ESB, you have a new line of CO officers without any heradlic colors to represent their rank and hence the more standardized double row badges were used,
Interesting take.
Please do a video on isb ranks so going more deeper on this i geuss
Or an update of all inperial ranks from the navy, to army to isb and other units
Another glorious day in the Empire
Small correction: I noticed a second ISB captain (4 blue tiles like Lagret) in Andor, the unnamed black officer who sits to Partagaz's left at the table. Ep. 9 shows a clear view of his rank
Yes, l noticed that, too 👍
I have an 8 page Thematic essay due tomorrow and I’m watching this
Good video.
You just answered a question I've always had.
Glad to hear it!
I really get the impression that the higher up the ranks an officer is the more squares they get, and when they were making the films they didn't bother very much about what the colours actually meant. Therefore trying to work out what the system is when there basically isn't one is a bold but doomed venture.
Great video!
The discrepancies with Imperial rank insignia are very much prevalent.
From the Star Wars Technical Commentaries to your video, it has never subsided in relevance.
I'm reading all manner of reference material and Rogue One's Ultimate Visual Guide asserts that rank insignia differs across sectors and is not standardised. Just an interesting find, I stumbled upon.
IMPERIALS EXPLAINED?!
"This is the channel you're looking for"
Thankyou for explaining this I was wondering about this alot
This makes Cosplay so easy, all you need is a pack of gum for your rank.
And here I thought it was a battery charge indicator.
Amazing as always, I personally prefer the esb rank structure. Long live the empire.
Long live to the democracy, the republic
@@patatebanine4278 Democracy died long before the empire rose to power. LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!
agreed, ESB rank structure double plague structure is my fav
I was going to look up a video like this and there it was on my home page !! Thank you !!!
The 'tube-like' items seen in the shirt pockets, were actually code cylinders, and could be plugged into a computer terminal (similar to what 'droids would use) for verification of that rank. This is seen in Star Wars rebels, when Kallus takes the code cylinder from Lt Lyste, and gives it to Ezra, in order to access Thrawn's room.
Tigo wore a black Imperial officer's uniform with a black Imperial kepi, two code cylinders in the right pocket and a rank insignia plaque with three blue tiles. However, he later wore a rank insignia with four blue tiles while wearing a waterproof cover over his uniform.
Hence my follow on video on Captain Tigo.
I always respect trying to make sense out of New Hope's 1970s sci-fi rank systems. It's a lost cause, but I respect it nonetheless.
With the Andor episode in mind, I figured he held a rank akin to "Warrant Officer" in the US Army's rank structure. In my mind it makes sense considering how Warrants are usually highly specialized individuals, and a sort of high ranking Engineer seems to fit the bill in that regard.
But in reality it seems that every series has it's own rank structure, sometimes seemingly random, with Rogue One/Andor seemingly having the most "standardized" version of it.
The simple answer is that there was never a uniform rank signifier, just several named characters were given ranks that map onto our understanding (Ie Admiral Motti) to give the character more weight, in Motti’s case, Grand Moff Tarkin, who apparently can give direct orders to Vader. It’s really amusing in the Rebellion, as it was not a formal military at all, so the rank of General was meaningless, but meant to give Han and Lando legitimacy.
It also flies in the face of the Empire’s character. A top-down, highly authoritarian hierarchy that has no standard rank structure? Please. Militaries had formal rank not just to show who is in charge, but to eliminate in-fighting for control of the hierarchy. For example, a group led by a Captain would see the First Lieutenant take command if the Captain was killed. In the real world, there are very clear seniority hierarchies in the military. Even within the same rank, there is time in rank, time in service, and even age to consider. (For example, two Captains were promoted to captain the same day, they joined the military the same day, but one captain is a day older than the other, therefore, he outranks the other captain)
You don’t want 4 other indistinguishable ranks all claiming command when the mission is the goal. It strikes me as ridiculous to imagine the Imperial forces had no standard rank system.
The video we've all been waiting for!
Commandant as far as I can tell in Star Wars Canon was a title not a rank during the Imperial era. In the real world Military the rank of commandant correlates to the rank of major. Taking the following into account my interpretation of how to read Commandant Jayhold Beehaz placement in the scheme of things as far as ranking and authority goes. 6 squares across could be interpreted as a Colonel / General /Admiral. Sticking to my interpretation in a previous post I believe that 4 blue squares is the commandant's true rank of captain and that the two red squares on the outer left of his placard represent a company level authority. This Would fit with Lieutenant Gorn two red squares as well the Commandant commands a Garrison of 40 I have a hard time seeing high command placing a Colonel in such a small command and judging by the conversation he had with his wife they've been there for years.
I think that krennic's lack of yellow markings it's because he was n charge of the security and supervision of the construction of the death star, but not the actual design of it. That was Galen Erso's job
I like United Federation of Planets rank pips better. Even the more complicated TWOK era pips are nicer than just gluing lego blocks to a plate and pinning it to a uniform, but I like that Lucas had a definite system.
I think we can easily say that these plaques were mostly done for cosmetic, and sometimes for notifying audience, but in general, there wasn't any real standard to it...
There is a system as l have shown in a separate video, and there was a story narrative to support the system.
The colors were distinctive, and arrangements were distinctive to their imperial military branch. It just takes some studying of the ranks to really. There is some sense to the subject. It's just not very clear.
Some years ago (in a different life, you could say!), just as it was getting started, I designed an Imperial ranking system for my old SWTOR guild, the Imperial Marine Corps, based on what we saw in Empire Strikes Back. I used grey and blue squares to denote Enlisted and NCO ranks, blue and red for Field Officers, and red and gold ones (iirc) for Flag Officers... good times.
To make them a distinct-feeling subset of the (Sith) Imperial Military, I used Army/Marine ranks for NCMs, NCOs, and the General Staff, and Naval ranks for Platoon, Company, Battalion, and Regimental Officers.
I didn't stick around long, however (I wasn't too keen on the SWTOR concept), so I can only hope they're still using it.
I've been really impressed with Andor so far, especially with the showrunners' attention to detail in aspects such as this. Thanks for the upload!
Very interesting!
I thought a lot about imperial ranks.
I think the ranks of the navy are not always right in the movie itselfs. So I created a own command structure how it should be (in my mind).
So my own version isn‘t canon but I like it and it‘s mostly comparable with the movies and series and it is big inspired of the royal navy in the 1800s.
Officers:
🟦Esign
--
🟦🟦Midshipman
--
🟦🟥Junior Lieutenant
🟦🟦🟦Second/ Sub-Lieutenant
🟦🟦🟥Lieutenant
🟦🟥🟥Senior Lieutenant
--
🟦🟦🟦🟦Lieutenant Commander
🟦🟦🟦🟥Commander
🟦🟦🟥🟥Senior Commander
--
🟦🟥🟥🟥Junior Captain
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦Capitan
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟥Senior Captain
--
🟦🟦🟦🟥🟥Junior Commodore/ second class
🟦🟦🟥🟥🟥Commodore/ first class
🟦🟥🟥🟥🟥Senior Commodore
--
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦Rear Admiral
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🟥Vize Admiral
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟥🟥Admiral
🟦🟦🟦🟥🟥🟥Fleet Admiral
🟦🟦🟥🟥🟥🟥Admiral of the (entire) Fleet
🟦🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥Chief of the imp. Navy
For explanation:
There weren‘t some ranks in real life like senior commodore ore junior/senior captain but in this big galaxy and the fact that now it fits perfect it‘s ok i hink.
Comodore first class means that there is a captain beneath the commodore
For more videos covering the Andor series, check out my playlist via this link to my channel, enjoy: czcams.com/play/PLagwqgVrWjQX0DbY1egXAXV81c3SKR1vA.html
Love It! Awesome Video As Always.
Long Live The Empire! 💪✊👍
4:50 coincidentally imperial intelligence directors Ysanne and Armand Isard had exact same plaque as Krennic. It also sort of makes sense as to why ISB plaques mix between red and blue in the lower ranks. One can assume the ISB Director will have the same exact plaque as Krennic and Isard
Boy, that Imperial rank looks more appetizing than Tide Pods.
From what I have researched the Commandant possibly holds the rank of Major General.
I always wanted to learn about this
This was a reply to a reply asking how one can be both in army and navy, i feel like this can go here and help clear things up, this is just my interpritation anyway
This is in a universe where galaxy crossing space ships are treated like cars. There is no "Air Force" it is just Navy. Like how Navies and Armies fly their own aircraft IRL even though there is a dedicated Air Force. Instead of trucks and cars they have ships and because of the nature of ships and how intergrated into both branches they are it makes sense for the army to have ships and pilots directly incorperated into its own branch. On the other end, Navies have Infantry e.g Navy SEALs.
Because of how spread out everything is and how the logistics of things need to work out, the Army and Navy need to work very closely. So even though they have separate command structures, they still have authority over eachother for logistical purposes.
This being said this doesnt mean someone in the Army can just go command a fleet battle and somoene from the Navy cant go command ground battles, They still have their own distinct theatres, the intermingleing would just be for logistical purposes.
4:56 That is incorrect. Double row rank plaques were not introduced after Yavin but way before. They can be seen as early as the Clone Wars as Admiral Tarkin can be seen wearing double rank plaques in the first episode of Bad Batch.
There was also black tiles, they where mostly used by ISB/Imperial Security but they have not appeared in live action as of yet
Gideon has them on his shoulders
@@cobaltgreen1138 No those are just uniform epaulettes, Not the Black Tiles I'm talking about, Gideon's uniform in Mando does not actually seem to have an official rank plaque, he just has Armour and a cape
@@lordthompson3868 The star wars character encyclopedia confirms that the red and grey squares on his shoulders indicate his rank
@@cobaltgreen1138 Well that does not make any sense at all… The Rank off imperial Moff or Governor should have Red Blue and Yellow tiles on a chest worn rank plaque, not grey and red stripes on the shoulder, that’s quite odd, however I digress, I was talking about black Tiles in my original comment not grey stripes, black tiles where used for lower ISB ranks, like how Agent Kallus has in the earlier seasons of Rebels
@@lordthompson3868 it's very weird indeed
One would think, that for as extensive as star wars lore is, Lucas Arts / Disney would have just released official pay-grade / rank chart so they could stop putting random ass boxes on peoples chests.
0:55 it's actually admiral, colonel is just opposite direction
I thought those things were cough drops. What do 4 Sucrets and 2 Halls mean? Grand Moff Pneumonia?
Awesome breakdown !
Bothers me how much Lucasfilm just doesn’t care about rank plaques
Nice video I suspect the productions of Rogue One and Andor series are applying David Grossman's rank chart with respect but in a liberal way as to give themselves enough creative liberty & freedom. Reble Cinta where's an imperial officer's uniform with rank placard and two code cylinders if we correlate her rank placard with that of Lieutenant Gorn who is an officer in the Imperial military what we can extrapolate is Cinta's one blue square on her far right of her placard represents a rank of the lowest level Lieutenant and that her two red squares on the left represents a company level authority where Lieutenant Gorn's one blue square his placard left represents the rank of a senior Lieutenant and his two red squares on the right side of the placard represent company level authority. What side the colors are on is important to determining true rank and organizational authority
Every time I try to figure out if there's any logic to the rank plaques it makes my head spin. It's a total clusterfuck lol
It does make sense but it does need to be studied as they changed along the Star Wars timeline. However, I do know what you mean though lol
Very well put together video
I'll have to add that the episode "Narkina 5" fixed Captain Tigo's rank insignia (at least on the coat).
Absolutely 💯 👍
Maybe he was a recently promoted captain?
@@alberto2141 That crossed my mind later, as well. There is a possibility that the Empire had to stretch some military personnel for their newly acquired sector and this lieutenant was deemed competent enough to be promoted to captain and dispatched immediately. He touched down on the planet and later (after the scene with the ISB lieutenant, who already knew Tigo had just been promoted, therefore calling him captain) his new rank insignia got delivered alongside other logistics for their new garrison.
@@akotarakz similarly Vice Admiral Rampart was promoted to Admiral by Governor Tarkin and he still use his Vice Admiral rank insignia.
Seems odd that a lieutenant supervisor would be assigned an entire sector of space. A modern day lieutenant would manage 30 people maximum.
I suppose the show runners want the characters to be younger though, hence the more junior ranks.
They are dealing with intelligence reporting for the Sector rather responsible for all imperial resources. A Moff would have control over all military forces.
The base commander is a Lieutenant Colonel
I see food in everything, and the tiles look like bars of chocolate to me. In a galaxy with blue and green milk, there are surely blue, red, and yellow chocolate bars.
If you have five gold stars it means you’ve worked at MacDonalds for five days.
Woah!
Woah!
1:05
That's the guy that plays the first doctor!
Cant remember the actor's name though.
I'd have highest rank if I had a full card of Strepsils pinned on my shirt
Its funny that people put such stock and faith that costume props in movies are actually thought out and have significant meaning. They are props and just stuck on to look like rank patches. They have no coherent meaning like real life uniforms.
I will have to disagree with you l'm afraid. John Mollo designed the first costumes and ranks plaque system in 1975 for George Lucas.. John too received a costumes award for that year. It's definately not random as there is a system but there have been mistakes made by designers and costume artists over the years which do make it seem like there is no coherent meaning.
Awesome video!
Imagine being an Admiral 0-7 (at least) paygrade during the Clone Wars only to get dropped back to Captain 0-6 while joining the ISB.
Poor Wulf. Even while switching branches one should retain appropriate rank, especially at the flag level.
The rest seem to follow the paygrade structure of the USN. 0-3 being Lieutenant matching the appropriate 3 tiles.
Interesting stuff - I find they need to stay consistent to be believable.
Agreed, they are some consistent elements to this but some costume inconsistencies didn't help keep the narrative intact.
Hmmmm "Stormtrooper officer" cool
I think the number of plates is your rank. And the color in which branch of the military u served in. So u get blue for navy, Red for army and yellow for engineering?
oOoOO pretty tiles
In the 'real' military, you can possess a higher rank position temporarily (due to regular officer on leave) and be called that higher position but not possess the rank on your uniform. Very common in NCO ranks, for eg, many Canadian army SGTs fill WO class positions in temp/operational capacity, which could explain some of the captains as lieutenants. 'captains' of the operation, but LT in stature....and unfortunately pay.
Finally!! Thank you
You're welcome 👍
That was Yularen omg I'm stupid. Since I didn't hear them say his name. Figured it was someone else. Man really went full on Imperial after the war sad
Yup he was in a new hope as well
So Red - military ops, Blue - millitary navy, gold - engineer and the more the better
Sheesh, what a confusing system! Thanks for the info.
But what do the things in their top pockets do? Are they pens? Laser pointers? Ear cleaners?
Creating a video on code cylinders
A Commandant is evidently a position between navy Captain and Commodore.
BBBRR = Captain (Navy)
BBBBRR = Commandant
BBBRRR = Commodore
Okay that guy in the beginning is Yularen? Tbh the guy they depicted in Ep. 4 as Yularen looked better and I think he had a higher rank
I disagree, l'm afraid. As his rank was actually the same if you check
I have two questions. First one, do you have a community discord server? And second, after Andor, could you maybe make some videos about the Dark Empire? I think it is a very cool topic and I sadly never had found any comic of the series.
I don't currently have discord server but I will consider the Dark Empire after Andor though
@@ImperialsExplainedStarWars okay, thanks. I found you today but I like your videos and watched some now. Also looked at the list of all your videos if you have coverd this topic.
I always figured they were just the same meaning Star Trek uses for its uniform colors. Red = military and security, Yellow = engineering and R&D and Blue = medical and biological science
very informative 😊
I'll take overly complicated rank insignia for 1000, Alex.
The Imperial Military: where the ranks are made up and the insignia didn't matter!
It's more of a symptom of the original creators/costume designers of Star Wars not having enough knowledge on irl military doctrine, opting for the "whatever sounds/looks cool" approach to military worldbuilding. It's one of the reasons why we never see small unit tactics in Star Wars and instead just get hundreds of dudes running across a battlefield in suicidal charges.
Long live the Empire
Ok so 4 pieces of nicotine gum and 2 ballpoint pens mean your a grand Tungus?
In case of the Rank at 2:10 (Behace?). Wouldn't he actually be part of the Navy, because the blue Tales are coming first ( BBBBRR ) while the members of the army would starting with Red Tiles?
Could you try your hand at a version of this? Also do you have a reddit or twitter or somthn?
I never understood why Pryce had a grand moff plaque instead of a Moff one.
She must of had a lot of authority.
I have thought that too. She should have 5 blue over 3 red and 2 yellow.
Pryce even had 2 less code Cylinders, one per pocket, meaning she didn't have the same access to restrictive information as Grand Moff Tarkin or Grand Admiral Thrawn. Since he's a Moff/Governor, she shouldn't hold the same rank plaque as the former mentioned Grand Moff Tarkin.
And here I thought those were generic medals for bravery or whatever.
The rank plaques have never been fully formalized across the entire franchise or maintained.
My Theory is those plaques are meaningless and are in fact just chewing gum holder. Tarkin is an avid fan so he always keep a full 12 pack on himself.
thank you now i knew more.
but whats about there uniforms black,white grey and navy? i still don't understand. would that mean Thrawn has the higest rank as Grand Admrial?
After the Battle of Yavin and Tarkin's as a Grand Moff. The rank of Grand Admiral was favored politically and militarily over the Grand Moff's to become part of the Emperor's inner circle. A Grand General would also held a very close position too. Thrawn is obviously the Grand Admiral example to use both in Legends and Canon material.
@@ImperialsExplainedStarWars
thank you so much for you time to explain this to me :)