Droid things

[gokuma]

I've been digging through Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide and here are some droid-related things I found interesting:

• you can program a droid to be loyal to you/your family/a certain class of people (for example high ranked officers),


• droids can be programmed to identify as male/female,


• droids with highly-developed sentience are better at more complicated tasks but are harder to work with,


• frequent memory wipes destroy a droid’s personality (or if they happen since its creation - do not let personality to form).


• sentient droids are aware of the quality/complexity of their own programming and can strive to change it (which is, IMHO, something very important) .Visual Guide mentions a Jedhan droid called L-1 K-OHN who saves money for a better processor, to be able to understand spirituality.


• Saw Gererra owns a medical droid who is switched on and off because Saw doesn’t want him to have scruples about giving him more and more pain relievers. If the droid was conscious all the time, its programming would cause it to have ethical doubts and dillemmas.

Crossposted from Tumblr. Also on LJ

Comments

[schneefink]

Interesting details about droids! Though they don't make reprogramming less creepy imo. Or programming in the first place. If they're sentient, what makes them not "people", and programming people is creepy.

[gokuma]

That's a dilemma, especially if the programmer/reprogrammer clearly benefits from molding the sentience according their own requirements.

But - BUT - what saves is a bit is the way "Visual Guide" describes what Cassian actually did: one of the core directives of Imperial droids is to recognize and listen to order of all the high-ranked officers.
Cassian did not simply changed it to "listen to the officers of the Rebellion right now" but REMOVED the part of the programming that dictated listening to authority. That's why K-2SO is able to act pretty unconventionally and decide for himself. That still doesn't remove all the controversies but IMHO makes it much better.

[schneefink]

That would make it better. Only that is not the impression I got from the movie: K2 clearly didn't have an obedience clause anymore, but the way I interpreted it was that he was reprogrammed to be loyal to the Rebellion. I don't think anything in the movie says otherwise, but it's not directly addressed either. The previous movies gave us examples of droids being loyal to people even beyond their programming, and K2 and Cassian could be something like that, but nothing we've seen of imperial droids so far gave the impression that they are capable of complex moral reasoning, and it is unsure why they would be created that way since we never see them being used that way by the Empire. (Also not fun: imagining all imperial droids as essentially brainwashed victims.) It's a nice headcanon for this particular case, but doesn't affect my overall unease with the treatment of droids in Star Wars.

[gokuma]

It's canon though (that's what "Visual Guide" says).

Also, you can extrapolate from the "droid who wanted spirituality" thing that the Empire simply doesn't give the droids the ability to think independently. So K-2SO must have been upgraded significantly to become who he is.

I agree with you though about the general "droid in Star Wars" thing. However, I also think it's been progressing in-universe: BB-8 is clearly portrayed differently from even R2-D2. He's an equal (even if functioning differently) being whose emotions are not just funny quirks and comic relief moments but as *valid* as the emotions other characters feel (sadness, grief, excitement, relief, joy).

Unfortunately for K-2SO and Rogue One, a HUGE part of this movie had been edited out from the final version (you can see it if you compare the trailers with the actual movie), so we might be missing some important backstory/character moments. And that's a real shame (I'd love if Rogue One had been a two-parter. There was so much more that could have been told about these characters!)