What's the deal with R2-D2?
- Thread starter Christopher
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OT: I never knew this until recently but Stubby's colors were chosen because they're the team colors of the Pittsburgh Steelers (at least according to the online material).
I'm going with: George Lucas is a moron.
But again, why hasn't he had such wipes? The question I'm asking is, what is the root cause of his difference from other droids? SeerSGB said that Anakin and Luke don't wipe his memory because of sentiment, but what about all his other owners, particularly in the lengthy period between trilogies (where, according to the Droids cartoon and Lucasfilm's rather indiscriminate approach to canon, he went through over a dozen different owners)?
And most droids aren't sentient? That's news to me. A lot of them act like they are. Separatist droids act self-aware and emotional, albeit fairly stupid. And are you saying that C3PO isn't sentient? That's extremely hard to credit. He seemed sentient even before he had his gold skin put on.
Don't confuse "acting sentient" with "being sentient."
IIRC, the SW universe supposes that droids and machienry aren't sentient/alive because they're not force sensitive, or have the ability to become force sensitive. They're just machines.
IIRC, the SW universe supposes that droids and machienry aren't sentient/alive because they're not force sensitive, or have the ability to become force sensitive. They're just machines.
Okay, so is C3PO sentient? Quite frankly, I always got the impression that he was the smartest guy in the room.
There seem to be far more lifeforms that are not directly sensitive to the Force than those who are, so I can't see why that sensitivity would be a criterion for sentience. It would be like the Betazoids declaring that non-telepaths weren't sentient.
However, in the EU, there were issues between the old Jedi Order and Iron Knights. An Iron Knight is a droid body housing a species called the Sharn, who are silicon based and resemble crystals, and thus needed the droid bodies to explore the galaxy. Some of them became Force-sensitive, but since they needed to inhabit mechanical bodies, it was argued that they were not truly alive and thus ineligible to become Jedi.
However, in the EU, there were issues between the old Jedi Order and Iron Knights. An Iron Knight is a droid body housing a species called the Sharn, who are silicon based and resemble crystals, and thus needed the droid bodies to explore the galaxy. Some of them became Force-sensitive, but since they needed to inhabit mechanical bodies, it was argued that they were not truly alive and thus ineligible to become Jedi.
I think he always found a way to escape them.
Gets screwier when one of the novels implies that Luke's X-wing is reaching counterpart-droid level intelligence due to the fact that it's been interfacing with R2 for so many years.
As for Droids...I tend to forget about it, to be honest. LucasFilm's canon system makes sense on paper, only in practice do you see it's just a log of BS that all this stuff is meant to work together.
Ah yes, the wonderful "kill the droid, tell the woman he's still alive" approach.
Maybe R2 has a safeguard against his memory ever being erased. Redundant memory drives? Not sure what the right term would be. So while his new owners believed they had wiped his old memories they never really had.
Why?
While seemingly just another Astromech Droid he was used to carry highly sensitive intelligence data during the Clone Wars. Anakin created this "dummy memory core" to protect that data if R2 was ever captured by the enemy. It could be erased or programmed to contained seemingly innocuous, standard Droid programming.
The side effect being that R2's core programming, his "personality" was preserved over the decades. Knowing Anakin's affection for R2 this very well may have been an intended side effect.
Why?
While seemingly just another Astromech Droid he was used to carry highly sensitive intelligence data during the Clone Wars. Anakin created this "dummy memory core" to protect that data if R2 was ever captured by the enemy. It could be erased or programmed to contained seemingly innocuous, standard Droid programming.
The side effect being that R2's core programming, his "personality" was preserved over the decades. Knowing Anakin's affection for R2 this very well may have been an intended side effect.
I think the reason why Artoo has never had a memory wipe is because he's always proven his ability to show initiative as being a good thing to his owners--he's usually saved their lives on more than one occasion, and don't reward that by wiping his memory. And with a few exceptions, the only time Artoo has ever demonstrated truly bad behavior was around Threepio.
It was Bail Organa who ordered Threepio's memory to be wiped towards the end of Episode III because he knew protocol droids had a tendency to talk and he wanted to keep the existence of the Skywalker twins a secret. Astromech droids like Artoo, however, just gurgle in beeps and whistles that comes across as electronic gibberish to Organa and Artoo wisely knew when to play the part of the "dumb astromech" at that point, IMO.
Ironically, I bought one of those 14-inch voice-activated R2-D2s a few years ago. I swear he acts more and more like the onscreen Artoo by frequently shaking his head "no", ignoring my commands, and going off and exploring my kitchen on his own...
It was Bail Organa who ordered Threepio's memory to be wiped towards the end of Episode III because he knew protocol droids had a tendency to talk and he wanted to keep the existence of the Skywalker twins a secret. Astromech droids like Artoo, however, just gurgle in beeps and whistles that comes across as electronic gibberish to Organa and Artoo wisely knew when to play the part of the "dumb astromech" at that point, IMO.
Ironically, I bought one of those 14-inch voice-activated R2-D2s a few years ago. I swear he acts more and more like the onscreen Artoo by frequently shaking his head "no", ignoring my commands, and going off and exploring my kitchen on his own...
R2-D2 is the real Chosen One. Anakin was just a decoy.
This is the theory I'm going to run with.
R2-D2 was originally Chuck Norris' astromech.
Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex has a great arc on AIs developing independent thought and personalities.
Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex has a great arc on AIs developing independent thought and personalities.
But those both lead to a chicken-and-egg paradox. He would've already had to be special beforehand in order for those to be the case, so they don't explain the root cause of what made him special to begin with.
I like this one, except it still has a bit of chicken-and-egg to it. Artoo originated in the service of the Royal Court of Naboo, and was Padme's droid from TPM through AotC. She didn't place Artoo in Anakin's care (or vice-versa) until the Clone Wars.
I suppose it's possible that Padme could've grown attached to Artoo and refused to let him be wiped, so that he'd developed a considerable personality by the time he came into Anakin's service. That could've made Anakin fond enough of him to create that redundant core. Or maybe Padme had her own techs create Artoo's redundant core in the first place so that he could serve as a repository for the classified information that she dealt with as the queen of Naboo. Sort of a "they'll never think to look for it in a lowly astromech!" sort of thing.
Still, from my vague memories of TPM, the impression I got was that Padme didn't have much prior acquaintance with Artoo -- that he just kind of "came with the ship" and happened to get embroiled in the situation along with her and the others.
