Aliens! They're one of the coolest things about Star Wars. The Mos Eisley Cantina scene from A New Hope has become the stuff of legend, and with modern special effects, the prequels have integrated cool new alien designs into meaty character roles in ways we only dreamed we'd see in Star Wars.

But why do we never see any aliens in the Galactic Empire?

Well, they're out there, and in a new series of Hyperspace exclusive articles, co-author Rich Handley and I illuminate what it was like to be a nonhuman in Palpatine's xenophobic Empire. Part I: Hierarchy of Power and Part II: To a Traitor Go the Spoils have been published, and will be followed by one more exploration of these bizarre-looking villains.

Creating in-universe explanations for curiosities in the Star Wars films that have their roots in real-world factors is a cherished fan pastime, and Star Wars authors are no exception. Hence, the origin of Harrison Ford's chin scar was explained by Brian Daley in his novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy as a knife wound Han acquired in a fight. Similarly, the ubiquitous 70s sideburns the officers aboard the first Death Star sport have been hilariously rationalized by Kevin J. Anderson in his Jedi Academy Trilogy as a fashion trend popular among old-guard Imperials.

When West End Games was the only Star Wars source in town fleshing out the saga, the products took a stab at elucidating why not only males but only humans seemed to make up the ranks of the Empire. Of course, the real reasons were unsurprisingly practical. In the first instance, when the Original Trilogy was produced in the late 70s and early 80s, gender equality in film was not what it is today ... particularly not when it came to imagining women perpetrating acts of evil "equal" to the cruelties history's most villainous men have catalogued. (The Star Wars Expanded Universe has since created several excellent examples of female architects of evil, including the X-Wing series' Ysanne Isard and more recently Lumiya in the Legacy of the Force series). The reason for the lack of Imperial aliens in the Original Trillogy was perhaps even more practical: money.

Sure, there had been enough moolah to make a kick a** cantina sequence (and only just so), but to take on the added burden of cramming the brightly lit corridors of the Death Stars and Star Destroyers with walking, talking realistic aliens in an age before computer graphics would have bankrupted the films. In a sense, however, that's precisely why there's a very alien-looking Darth Vader in the Empire, as well as robotic-looking Stormtroopers, faceless TIE fighter pilots, and even a zombie-like Emperor. While not literally aliens, they certainly look very nonhuman. Also, there's something significantly unsettling about an all-male, all-human army that refers to both aliens and Rebels equally as "scum." They're almost like ... clones. As director Irvin Kershner has said in interviews, he intentionally had all the Imperials in The Empire Strikes Back speak in English accents to drive home the uniformity of the Empire. (No offense to any good guys across the pond).

Well, West End Games' in-universe solution to the all-male, all-human Empire was devilishly simple. The Galactic Empire, epitome of evil, was essentially a bigots-only club, catering to--you guessed it--human males. The tongue-in-cheek fix was elegant, fitting the Nazi-like undertones of the Empire to a T.

Well, the taboo on aliens in the Empire has changed a bit since the advent of the prequels, wherein two of Palpatine's closest henchmen, Mas Amedda and Sly Moore , are aliens (one of which is also female), not to mention his Sith apprentice Darth Maul. So in this series, Rich and I have done a bit of reexamining of the Empire's alien views, and tried to figure out where exactly that evil mastermind Palpatine stands on the issue. Mr. I Love Democracy can be pretty hard to figure out, but one thing's for sure: the Emperor buys into the idea that one of the primary objectives of life is "the quest for greater power." Whether Palpatine is the source of the Empire's anti-alien bias or not, the fact of the matter is that connoisseurs of power are fairly indiscriminate about where and how they acquire it.

We've dug deep to flesh out the histories of the handful of these rarest of contributors to the Galactic Empire. Enjoy the series, folks! ~ Abel G. Peņa

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