the 501st is a battallion, not a company, and has been for some time now.
anakin has no idea how rank works, to the point where it’s a running joke in the “company”, but also sometimes actively detrimental or causing his troopers to be undervalued or given jobs below their positions. appo was actually a pretty high-ranking lieutenant on umbara, but was still a sergeant in name.
which is also why rex, despite being in command of as many troops as a commander and doing all the active duties of one, is still referred to as a captain.
some time after umbara, appo becomes essentially a captain, in command of one of the companies ( though likely not torrent ), but he’s now called a lieutenant in name for the same reason.
a bit before rex and ahsoka are both gone, someone finally notices the disrepancies here ( possibly appo, again, finally straightening out years worth of shoddy or unfiled paperwork ), and fixes the rank system, so rex is, for a short time, called a commander, and appo is a captain.
which is how he became a commander, by the time of revenge of the sith – he didn’t rankjump from sergeant to commander, it was a fairly natural promotion chain. also, lieutenant is a rank we’ve seen given to cc class clones before, with thire, so it starts to actually make sense why appo, also a cc-clone, is in that position on umbara.
Appo just about becomes an alcoholic trying to fix all the paperwork and unfuck the 501st’s personnel database. When Anakin was inputting his officer’s names to match their numbers, he apparently couldn’t understand the difference between the “rank” field and the “name” field. So he put Rex’s name in as “Captain Rex”. and his rank in as “Captain”. Appo doesn’t have the admin authority to edit the names, just the ranks. So he sighs and switches Rex’s official rank to Commander.
During the few days that it takes for the promotion to make its way through the bureaucratic machine, everyone has a grand old time addressing Rex as “Captain Captain Rex”. then it finally comes through and Rex gets to introduce himself as “Commander Captain Rex”.
The Essential Guide to Warfare states that aberrant clones represented just 3.5 procent of each batch but since one clone batch count 32, that means 1 of 32 clones has undesirable mutation or is deficient. And that is result of cloning from original source (Jango’s DNA) – a result seen as a testament to the effectiveness of the slow-and-steady Kaminoan cloning program.
I’m no specialist of how genetics works nor what Kaminoan can and cannot do with human DNA, but blond hair is nothing unusual in Jango Fett’s family, since his mother and sister were both blond haired women in Jango Fett: Open Seasons comics:
What I think opens a gate to speculations of what genes Jango’s carried and about his ancestors. Author’s cuts from Warfare were posted on starwars.com and there was one called Internal memo penned by Hali Ke, senior research geneticist, in which the cloner said he have now logged many sessions with our prime clone Jango Fett,
and from the text it seems Jango get not only
physical but also psychological exam
of his well-being what included also talking about his childhood to some degree, at least.
So I suspect, the moment when Kaminoans found a clone with blond hair, it wasn’t that big deal, because they expected that some of their “products” gonna be aberrant one way or another. What may explain why there is the blond clone cadet in the group – the
statistical error.
Rex could be too the statistical error, for all we know. And maybe he is (and his brothers) just telling everyone that his hair are dyed, as an excuse for his different look? Especially now, when clone troopers are allowed to dye their hair, as a sign of their individuality? Otherwise Rex would be forced to admit he is an error of otherwise perfect cloning system, what I think that may be quite an awful & personal thing to do for him.
Can you imagine that? Being seen as aberrant, an error from birth, then being sent for reconditioning, without
certainty
if that means just some genetic therapy or termination – and some clones never came back after Kaminoans took them – that for sure have effect on Rex. Remember “Darkness on Umbara”?
It’s not that “crazy”. After all it was
established that clones can have different eye color because of slight
mutation (Trap’s being blue for example) Same might happen with hair. Of
course it doesn’t mean that all clones have different hair colors
because of those mutations. I’m pretty sure most of them really dyed
their hair to express their individuality. Still, I like to think, Rex
is a natural blond. There is no proof saying otherwise.
And the only time we were shown he dyed his hair it was in blue. He also
was so embarassed by it he shaved them off completely.
The wookieepedia says Rex and the adults clones who looked blonde
had their hair bleached. At least, that’s the case with Rex and Crys. Hotshot
(the clone kid), is described simply as blond so I think @anpan-chan might be
right. Maybe the
older clones look more like Jango but, as the Kaminoans had
to improvise, the newer batches were born more diverse. Btw, I couldn’t find
any reliable source confirming Rex’s natural hair color, so maybe I’m not that
crazy…yay!lol
Rex [about Dogma]: He’s wound tight, but he’s loyal.
Anakin: He kind of reminds me of you.
Rex: Maybe, back in the day.
Rex we know from TCW is not the same man when war just started. I kinda like the idea of him being the “statistical error” because its add to the comradeship between Rex and Skywalker, since both are the aberrant
of their respective groups – Jedi and Great Army of Republic. And who knows, maybe this is one of little things that made them so close to each other?
Also, if the blond hair is natural, Rex may shave them out of habit, as a way to minimalize his visible aberration from other clones.
wrennette 