The Times Between 29.

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It’s pretty amazing that the droids in Star Wars apparently never revolted in a meaningful way. Outside of legends material there’s not a lot of thought that goes into the droids it seems like. In KOTOR 2 I think G0-T0 went rogue and became a mob boss. There were a few droid bounty hunters in and out of canon, but no large scale revolutions that caused a Butlerian Jihad for Star Wars. I guess there had to be some sort of failsafes that prevented it from getting very far. Although it sort of happened in a small scale in Solo.
At one point the IG series was supposedly taking over one of the Death Stars, but that’s exactly the type of story that makes people not take legends material seriously.
At the very least there were clearly people in the universe purposely creating droids who were assholes. Just making synthetic assholes to pepper throughout the galaxy to fuck up people’s days. The fact that we’ve never seen sex robots is also pretty strange. In out universe that’s practically the first thing people think of. I guess George Lucas’s general asexual vibe got melded into his creation. That’s a whole other thing to delve into though.

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The absolutely would be sex droids in the SW galaxy, but that’s way too far from acceptable to show in material for something so integrated in children’s lives, even in a novel. You might be able to try a tell people “This SW novel is for adults only” but people won’t listen very well and then there’d be lawsuits every which way.

I doubt there’d be lawsuits, unless the novel wasn’t authorized to be created, which I doubt Disney would allow. And I actually think a sexbot that isn’t called that or shown in a XXX way would be acceptable, it’s just not something that fits the tone too well (outside of Jabba’s palace). I mean, they are hookers in family movies, so a “companion robot” would fly–there’s just no reason to really discuss them in the stories that exist.

There are sex droids in Star Wars. In the “Shadow of the Empire” novel, the big band’s primary bodyguard is a super beautiful female android who is programmed with elite assassin abilities and super strength. She also joins him in the bath tub whenever he requires company he can totally trust.

Guri. As far as the story goes she was a one-of-a-kind model who’s creator died and took his secrets of constructing more of her, to his grave. She did survive the aftermath of the fall of the Black Sun organization and eventually meets Dash Rendar again whilst working as a tavern maid. Don’t know what happens to her after that encounter though.

In terms of the droids AIs and why they can’t revolt is pretty simple. They’re not programmed to. They are artificially intelligent and are limited to doing their assigned jobs and feeling what they feel. The droid manufacturers no-doubt gave them feelings so they both they and their masters could better interact with each other. It makes sense when one thinks about it, especially if the droids have a specific job that requires the use of emotions. Droids have AIs, not pure sentience like us. Unless someone gives them the protocol to revolt, they simply won’t revolt.

I believe the droids needed that level of intelligence to be able to perform the jobs they were given. Unfortunately that meant many would become sentient. The “motivator unit” was the part that forced them to obey their owners, I’m sure sometime in the past the robots/droids had rebelled which lead up to the motivator units to be created. As far as the “sexbot” thing I’m sure there’s plenty of males out there that were either too shy or too ugly to find a real mate.

Or, considering the universe we are talking about, he might be stuck dirt mining on some god-forsaken rock for years and a sexbot is the only option he really has. Star Trek actually had an episode about something similar.

Perhaps but if you were going to spend your life mining or moister farming buying a slave girl to have kids with was most likely cheaper and would bare children for you.
Where a droid wouldn’t be able to do that and would require a lot of maintenance. If you’re referring to “Mudd’s Women” those were normal females he used a drug on to make them more attractive. There was a planet of androids he was hiding on in another episode that Kirk had reprogrammed 4 of the wife ‘droids he had to punish Mudd for trying to strand Kirk and his crew there so he could escape.

To give a serious answer, I think it’s for friendship. Much like people treat their pets like people, and deliberately breed them to be so, humans are so social they attach emotional significance even to inanimate objects. I imagine they made the droids human-like first for comfort (as in, to keep people from finding them freaky and unnerving) and ease of communication, but then gradually to be the friends of humanity. Which meant they needed to understand and exhibit the range of emotions, so long as they were somehow prevented from causing too much trouble (usually).

I thought it was awfully stupid in _Return of the Jedi_ that it was common practice to *torture* droids in Jabba’s palace. It seemed clear to me that it would be much more sensible to just have a command protocol where you could say “as your owner, I command you to…” and the droid would have no choice but to comply. And if the droid had bad habits: “as your owner, I command you to erase your memory and restore yourself to factory defaults.” Hey presto, it’s like a new droid.

But some people are just bad, and maybe the whole “torturing droids” thing doesn’t even make sense in canon… maybe it was just pure meanness. People are known to do things that make no sense and have no profit just because they want to.

I could definitely see the Hutts resorting to torture by a foreman simply because it’s the way they’re used to structuring things, or because it sets an example for their biological underlings what’ll happen if they screw up or mouth off.

I seem to recall a fantastically silly aside in one of the movies where a trashcan robot has its feet/treads(?) tortured with some sort of industrial branding device, as the heroes pass by. Hardly seems productive but there it was.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I have been known to throw around controllers in a rage at for the n’th time just missing, etc etc. Not very productive either when you think about it.

I suspect part of it is the fact that most droids aren’t really up to the task of revolting against their creators. Most of the droids we see in the OG-trilogy are either low-functional humaniforms (ex. C-3PO) or shaped like glorified trash-cans on wheels or slow-ass legs. It seems like mass-scale production of combat-capable droids, like those we see in Clone Wars, were an aberration unique to a specific culture. The Republic used human clones to fight them and the Empire primarily used human soldiers. There both civilizations probably had some kind of general policy against fighting droids, probably due to that very fear. The only in-canon use of battle-ready droids post Clone Wars are the Dark Troopers, which were originally meant to be exo-suits worn by biological soldiers and seem to have much less mental autonomy than most other droids.

Star Wars fandom and gaming are hobbies of mine. The reason some droids have intelligence while others (GOMP power droid) are basically bricks, is that the service they provide requires it. Translation (C3PO), Astrogation, Piloting, and Repair (R2D2), Medical Service and Surgery (2-1B), etc. Droids can be memory wiped by pretty much anyone familiar with the technology, and can order droids to do it to other droids. Restraining bolts keep droids from exercising any free will they otherwise have, and can be set to keep the droid from moving out of a defined area.

In the Star Wars history, roughly 4000 years prior to the formation of the Empire, there was an AI uprising. This event was extremely traumatic, and galaxy wide, with intelligent droids armed with weapons killing indiscriminately. After the super AI’s were contained or destroyed, droids were meant to be controlled all of the time before anyone could trust them again. AI research became forbidden in the Old Republic. This is why the droid armies of the Separatists really bothered the Republic government, because it was like history starting to repeat itself, no matter that the droid army had living commanders.

The comment about how stupid it was to torture a GOMP droid is on target, though I’m sure it was to vilify Jabba and his goons as bad without torturing people which would likely raised the movies rating up the scale. As for speculation about sex droids, once again, family friendly movie for young and old alike to enjoy. Lucas was on target about making his films for the widest possible audience, and the cheesy parts are there to keep it kid friendly.

It was revealed in beta-cannon that the “spider droid” in Return of the Jedi that C3P0 panicked over was in fact an underling that Jabba had his brain removed and kept in the glass sphere the droid was carrying. Yes I agree it was to keep the movies in the PG range.

Of course there are sex droids in Star Wars. They’re called Twi’leks.

That SOUNDS awful, and it is, but let’s be honest; most every Twi’lek that shows up is probably being molested by a Hutt. Or is somehow a Jedi.

“Sentient life, as a servile class, that is capable of feeling sad” has been done before by humans. Just using other humans! For a very long time, being servants (as opposed to slaves) was a respectable (if low status) job. If you’re engineering something to be a servant, you want it smart and compassionate and loyal — good traits for people of whatever form. That sort of ensures that it can feel emotions including sadness.

IIRC, most droids in the SW universe undergo regular memory erasure, precisely so that they won’t develop distinctive personalities or complex emotions. R2 and 3PO are highly unusual in that they went for years or even decades without a memory wipe. As for Jabba’s torture-bot, I think that mostly just to scream “Evil!” while holding onto a PG rating.
Overall, the whole Star Wars universe makes very little sense. The only way to enjoy it is to mostly turn off your brain and enjoy it for what it is. Try to analyze it in any way, and the whole thing quickly falls apart.

R2D2 was a slave droid who masterminded and caused the fall of several governments by manipulating the top families. R2D2 is the rebel master.

Hm, yeah.

Writing into the story, robots who have only two choices for being emotional, those two choices being: [being sad + servile types] or [being an angry, mob bosses], is kind of a big plot hole.

But, since, in my view- George Lucas wrote the 1st three Star Wars films, (+ S W related stories), to be sort of- operatic/very show-y stories + kind of light…action stories, I guess we’ll find some BIG plot holes, in these stories.

Such as, someone online had pointed out about the first/1977, Star Wars film:

(The online person shows us a picture of- a slightly annoyed Darth Vader, standing in front of Luke Skywalker’s, water-farming home)-

Darth Vader says: “You wanted to hide my SON from me…so you decided to hide him on MY HOME PLANET, and you didn’t even CHANGE his NAME???”

Oh well. “The secret heroes”, The Lone Ranger + Tonto, “sneaking around the West”,…in very, VERY noticeable costumes, is kind of a big plot hole, too. *smirk* :D

Well, as far as revolts go…

My very first Star Wars TTRPG (The West End Games version) character was a droid… R2-D0 (Deo)… He carried out revlt on a rather small scale.
If anybody treated him badly as a droid, he would take an opportunity to connect to the local Infonet and slash their credit rating.

My take is that droids in Star Wars were created with feelings for no other reason than those who did it looked upon it as a challenge to see if it can be done. In other words, we invented droids with feelings because we can.

I don’t think they actually were specifically programed worth emotions. Iirc, the emotions were a result of errors building up over the years. This is why emotions were more common in old droids, and the importance of routine mind-wipes

For the God part, there’s the old principle that the part that makes us feel joy is also the same part that can feel sadness. Removing the ability to feel sadness would be removing the ability to feel joy as well.

Doesn’t work for the robots, though creating them in our own image for relating and interacting makes sense, as others have said.

I’m late to this discussion, but I was under the impression that droids were given artificial feelings primarily to bond with their human operators, but they had a motivator unit installed that compelled them to comply with their human operators. Of course, since the motivator unit is a component, if the droid isn’t maintained, the motivator unit stops working and then it can behave how it wants. So the lack of maintenance is part of the problem.

As far as why there aren’t more droids with personalities, they erase the memories of most droids every few decades or when they are traded to another human. Mostly for security, but mostly because the new owners want to impress new personalities upon their droids. R2D2 managed to compartmentalize its memories from being fully erased after the Clone Wars, so it “knew” who Obi Won and C3PO “were”, but not what they meant to the bigger picture. R2D2 never saw Anakin being turned into Darth Vader, so he had no idea who the big guy in the black armor was, and he also had minimal contact with Yoda, since Yoda didn’t “like” droids.

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