The Galactic Wilderness Area Ranger Service, Standing By

A strangely unexplored Star Wars question I enjoy kicking around is this: in the original movies, where does the Rebel Alliance get all of its stuff? Obviously, the logictics side of the Rebel Alliance has been under-represented in Star Wars media, because “payroll” is a lot less interesting than “pew pew lasers”. But consider, for a moment.

The Alliance has a lot of stuff, and it’s really different from the Empire’s stuff. Not just ships, but things like guns, equipment, uniforms. They have completely different rank badges! This is a civil war, but clearly not in the Blue & the Grey sense, the Alliance don’t seem like they were the parts of the Republic Security Forces that picked a different side and took their guns with them.

Clearly, the intent is that the Alliance has older stuff. The ships are clearly supposed to be older models, souped-up and hotrodded to be competitive with the top-of-the-line military hardware the Empire is building. Back during the Old Days, there was a fan assumption that the Alliance had a bunch of surplus Republic stuff, and maybe there wasn’t a clean line from Republic to Empire. There was a wholly legitimate interpretation of what was on screen that the Rebel Alliance was what was left of the Old Republic Navy, and The Empire was another entity that invaded and took over.

Then the Prequels came out and made it clear that no, the Republic became the Empire directly, and there’s a really clean design lineage from the stuff the Republic has to the hardware the Empire is using. TIEs are clearly descended from the Jedi fighters, the Star Destroyers are upgraded versions of the ships the Republic was using, even the pilots of the ship at the very start of Episode I are wearing basically the same uniforms as the crew on Vader’s Star Destroyer. The Clone Wars cartoon danced around this a little; that show has Y-Wings in their original configuration, but you still don’t see anyone with an Alliance-style uniform.

The prequels actually made things even more mysterious, because given what we learned in those movies, who are are those rebel old guys with beards? Look at the mission briefing before the trench run. If the Republic side of the clone wars was all clone soldiers working for jedi generals, where did these 60-something dudes get their experience? Maybe the implication is that the core of the Alliance are Separatists, but we sure don’t see any droids, and nothing the Alliance uses looks like CIS gear either. While Andor implies that there are former Separatists in the early Rebellion, it seems thematically inappropriate for them to be a significant portion of the Alliance.

Somewhere, an entire parallel set of stuff grew up and was 20+ years old by the time of Star Wars without ever being visible during the Prequel era.

And look, I get it, there are obviously good cinematic reasons for the good guys and bad guys to look obviously different, and different but related cinematic reasons to make it clear that the Empire and Republic are related. More than usual, the answer to this is the MST3K mantra of “It’s just a show, you really should relax.”

To be clear, I think this is a fun thought exercise: there’s a whole huge chunk of Star Wars that’s just unexplored, which is rare for a franchise that’s tried to deep dive on every possible topic. Essentially every single costume in the Cantina has a complex backstory with multiple books, but we still don’t know where the food Luke unpacks on Dagobah came from.

So, how does Alliance Logistics work? Like, does the Alliance hold territory? Is this just a guerrilla war, or are there planets in open rebellion? Does the Alliance have the equivalent of a civilian government? Factories? Space Supply Lines? Farms? Are there planets outside the Empire that are technically neutral in the conflict selling the Alliance material under the table? Are the guys running around Yavin Base refueling X-wings getting paid? Is there anywhere they can spend it?

The one that really gets me are the uniforms. Where did those come from? Did they just make up a whole different rank scheme? Are there a bunch of ex-republic clone wars vets who have to squint and remember that five dots in a domino pattern is the same as two rows of five red and five blue squares from the old days? Just using American history as an example, both the Revolution and the Civil War both sides used basically the same stuff; same uniform design, same rank indicators, same equipment, same guys, so on and so forth. Nobody changes their rank pins in a civil war, do they?

Logically, all that Alliance stuff had to come from somewhere, and it had to make sense to keep using instead of using parallel versions of the Republic/Empire stuff. They must not be using captured TIE Interceptors for a reason. Maybe the rebels are former “security forces,” but it seems more likely that the cops would sign on to the new fascist government? (Again, see Andor.) Maybe they’re local planetary armed forces, rather than Republic? The guys on Leia’s blockade runner have very similar uniforms to the other rebels, but it seems like if the Alliance was also “the Alderaan Navy” that would have kind of given the game away.

Here’s my pitch: I think the backbone of the Alliance are the former Republic Park Rangers.

Long-standing, independent service, with a rank structure similar too, but separate from, the Republic Army/Navy. Unique, and more functional, uniforms. Not directly involved with the Clone Wars, no clone personnel. Not as susceptible to being ideologically captured by the new regime. Likely to object to any misuse of Republic territory. And they already have all their own stuff.

This is how they knew about the ruins on Yavin: it’s a nature preserve! This is how they had the gear to set up a base on a nearly inhospitable ice planet: they camp out in places like that all the time! Send some guys with guns down to the literal redwoods to make friends with the demi-yetis? Sure, no problem, business as usual.

Park rangers aren’t driving around in humvees or tanks, they’ve got jeeps and pickup trucks and ATVs. That’s what the X-Wings and landspeeders are, they’re suped-up crop dusters and fire spotters. Assume the Republic Park Rangers also have to do things like interdict burl poachers, and the gun mounts on the X-Wings make sense. They got hand-me-down Y-Wings after the Clone Wars ended to use for security; this is why their Y-Wings have ion cannon turrets, to disable smugglers or what have you!

This also gives you a cool way to light the fuse for the Rebellion proper. It’s pretty clear that in some corners of the galaxy, the conflict never really stopped between the Clone Wars and the Civil War, it just went from a boil to a simmer; lots of stochastic violence here are there over the two decades between them, but for most of the Galaxy nothing much is happening during the interregnum. Then something happens and snap: “It is a period of Civil War.” Rogue One wants to suggest that’s the Death Star, but, they already have a secret base full of people and gear. Rebels has a bunch of semi-independent groups coming together, but where all those other groups come from is undiscussed.

Maybe that something is the Park Rangers deciding enough is enough and revoting en masse? Would the Imperial Navy even know where all the Park Ranger Stations are? Why would they? I’m pretty sure the US Army doesn’t keep their own list of all the US Forest Service backwoods camps. Did the Rebels do the equivalent of fortifying Yellowstone park and then start fighting back? And, thematically, this really lines up cleanly with the “nature vs technology” subtext of the original movies.

This is where I mention that I do know that both the old and new EU have answers to these questions, and let me personally guarantee you that they’re extremely bland, various flavors of “defected from the Imperial Academy/INCOM corp”. There’s something much more fun about imagining those old guys in Red/Gold squadrons as grouchy park rangers than as disgruntled TIE Fighter pilots, you know?

Anyway, Disney, I’m around if you want to hear more.