It baffles me that when looking at TC-14 being a Silver, Female copy of C-3PO, whoever handled the newer lore books decided that there is now an entire line of Female Droids that look identical to C-3PO instead of simply saying "there are voicebox options" Ignoring the older books that you mentioned get contradicted by this new information, it would've been way simpler to just say that the voice is customizable like the outer shell is. Why make an entire new series of Droids simply because the voice is different? Especially when it is literally a recolor, no unique body parts or a different head. Hell, giving TC-14 some kind of "hair" would make it unique enough to argue that it's part of a different series.

As someone who's been writing a Warhammer 40k Only War campaign I can say with 100% confidence that I understand your need to make this video about a small detail that ultimately doesn't matter and about 10 people would even even remember.

I always figured tc-14 called itself that because that's part of its serial number just later down the line. The hero C-3P0 is calling himself that because that's what Anakin called him, so that's what he introduces himself as.

We can change the names of our wifi, computers, phones, and virtual characters. We can change the voice on the GPS in the car or the assistant on the phone. The answer that changes nothing in the lore is that when the Traid Federation received its protocol droids, the IT dept plugged them in and configured and "named" to corporate standards. T (Traid Federation), C (C3PO or something), 14 (shorthand for the droids long serial number). We have droids with real names (Chopper, Mr. Bones), and when you played Pokémon as a kid you probably had a Charmander named "Charmander". I thought this blue milk mustache was going to be permanent.

There is a canonical precedent for droids using only part of their serial number as their name. AZI-3 in clone wars full designation is AZI-345211896246498721347. Its pretty easy to imagine that all other droids have similarly long-winded and unique identifying codes, that they choose a short section of for organics to use as their name

The TC-Series makes more sense as a C-Series under license. It's the same thing made by a different company

One thing that went unmentioned is that C-3PO got assembled by Anakin from scrap parts, so we don't really know how much he conforms with standard 3PO units. Like his Droid brain is that of C-3PO, wich makes him think he is in fact C-3PO but the rest of his parts could very well be all over the place.

Hi the bread circus, I commented a while ago. Since then, youve gained 5k subscribers. If you think the force is strong with me, I believe you deserve 5 million.

I can't get over how this channel is seemingly tailor-made for minutiae-obsessed Star Wars nerds like myself. I like how you're not afraid to discard lore that doesn't make sense, regardless of how "official" it is. Kudos for mentioning the J9, one of my favorite Star Wars droids. I've always liked the backstory about its Verpine creators not knowing how to market their protocol droid model to non-insectoid customers, resulting in it being sold at massive discounts and often being misused as a labor droid when people took the "worker drone" moniker literally. In all honesty a TranLang II-equipped protocol droid is probably still quite the capable diplomat. One million different languages is likely sufficient to cover the vast majority of major and minor dialects in the Core, Mid Rim and higher profile Outer Rim worlds.

In ANH, R5-D4 is referred to as an "R2 unit" by Luke. I always just assumed some of these things were just designators for a wider scope of variation within the same model. Like a Ford F150 with different trim levels.

The one thing that kinda messes with this all the way from legacy lore is the assumption that the droids introduce themselves with their model number. The way each droid introduces themselves it sounds a lot more like it's a unique serial code assigned by the owner or manufacturer. If you've ever seen IT in a big company every deceive is uniquely named based on some internal naming scheme so they can be tracked and faults correctly identified. If they hadn't already chained themselves to droids using their model as their name, the difference in naming could have easily been chalked up to the Alderan government and the trade federation using different naming conventions, and both droids are from the same production line.

this channel always oozes quality!

also, I have not yet read the books, but a logical thing for me would be: the full name for TC-14 could be TC-3P0-14[numbers]. the trade federation having multiple 3P0, they chose to name it by the model modification (TC) and part of the discriminant (14) anakin's droid is also based on a TC-3P0, however, when building it little annie did not want to use its serial number, prefering to shorten it to C-3P0 (or 3P0). or, it could even be that TC modifications of 3P0 and C modifications are different (the C could stand for Casing modification and the T for another type of mod. maybe the language one. it's common in real world to append letters to differentiate the variations in the same model (just look at processors or graphics cards). tldr; might be same model (3P0) but different modification (TC vs C)

Finally, I thought I'd have no quality content to watch for tonight!

Glad the tumbnail turned out so well. Another great success to the channel and I cant wait for more so you can get that bread. You lot deserve it.

Always blown away by the extreme attention to detail in these breakdowns. Truly awesome stuff!

Good to see you back. 😎👍 Great video. Peace ✌🏻

I always smile when this channel uploads

And a Get Smart reference!

Hello boyos. Glad to see you guys uploaded another thought provoking video Here's a thought/question hybrid. Did you at any point notice how incredibly similar you are to a high quality 3po Droid? No meat based entities I know besides you can teach a management Droid a thing or three about logistics while simultaneously translating wookie.

as always, your videos are an absolute treat

Star Wars needs to get a hold of the guys who write all the lore for Gundam's hundreds of unit designations and histories.

ive always seen him as custom made!

I've always thought that because Anakin assembled C3PO, it's very likely that C3PO was bodged together with whatever parts were on hand to a slave kid. Because of that, C3PO really should be considered a one-off, at least until C3PO is brought to an maintainence shop stocked with actual OEM parts.

apparently my starwars book was from 1999 a while before i was born

Female 3po's happen when one part is missing ... The logic and reasoning core

You have to remember C3PO was custom made, sometimes using spare parts that could be found, so maybe he does have some parts from different models of protocol droids, he's not an off the shelf model.

This complaint doesn't make that much sense. Of course older source books prior to the Prequel films named 3PO as a 3PO series - they had no idea what his backstory was at that point outside of his service as a diplomat translator droid! You are acting as though the Prequels themselves do not affect the lore, but they do. The fact that C3PO was built from scratch by Anakin changed *everything* we knew about him. It would actually make less sense for him to just be a 3PO series droid because it would be really odd to find all the exact parts to make a correct 3PO series droid just lying around in a junk pile.

haven't seen anybody mention yet that threepio received his gold plating when he became Amidala's personal protocol droid between episodes ii and iii. this would have been when his voice was changed if it were true that this was tied to political service.

Not in a postion to support the Patreon atm but i'm really glad to see your making new videos. Best Star Wars content on youtube 🏆

Fantastic hes back!

This is a nothing burger; it doesn't say he's not a 3po, just that anakin used various parts when repairing 3po

I never thought of this before, but I could see the different name for different market places. Similar to how cars are named differently when being sold in different countries. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.

Fascinating as always.

Love your videos i have been binging them this universe of Star Wars is my hyper fixation and I love that you can make all the Lord makes sense because it hurts a lot when things are contradictory

So, I'm glad you showed that, I still have that thing, and I now know I need to hi res scan the entire book for digital preservation....albeit, it was mine, and uh, 1999 was a while ago, if you catch my meaning.

I figure it's more like a "C + #" designation, with a modifier on one end and a model number extension on the other. So TC-14 would be a C-14 at its core, and C-3PO would be a C-3 at his core.

I always thought the TC-14 used a female voice only so the audience knew that it wasn't C3P0. LOL

3PO is not a 3PO? Correct. He was built by a (gifted) child in a closet and may not have all the correct parts to be classed as a proper 3PO. (Edit) the correct parts may have been added down the line. I'm not up to date on most of the lore.

Interesting video about droids, thanks.

I can change my Google Nest from male to female with a single command. There's no reason to think you can't also change the voice in a 3PO model.

0:33 watch ne roll up to the cantina with my RGB protocol droid

One thing I'd disagree with...the 3PO line had *both* the TranLang II *and* III, depending on when the unit was made...most likely the III was initially the 'Nvidia 40xx upgrade' of the line, more often seen in use by the wealthy (like, say, Hutt ganglords and Trade Federation higher-ups), then later made a standard component.

9:27 99 it took me a second, I wasn't expecting a get smart reference in a video about star wars lore

Its common for products with the same hardware but different software to have different model numbers. This is especially true if the user can't reprogram the device. Look at tvs or cars for example. However it's very uncommon for these to have wildly different model numbers. Instead you use a base model number and add extra characters as feature identifiers. The argument could be that the softwares have to share base and need to be kept separate to more easily track for support and recall reasons.

4:02 This is just silly. the OT lore was focused around the OT and did not account for the creation of the PT. To right off lore as being baseless because previous out-of-date sources say something else makes no sense, it is like saying that the EU story surrounding the Mandalorian Protectors being nearly wiped out was wrong simply because prior lore states that this was done by the Empire. Both of these things no longer work because the SW Galaxy in the 1980-90s was very different to how it was in the 2000s. With the added context that 3PO models have been around since before Anakin was born which hadn't been known prior to the PT, it would make little sense for them to have OT-era Tranlang 3 modules.

There is one singular instance of Femine 3PO Programming I found in the originals. C-3PO was cursed at in The Empire Strikes back, by a feminine droid. It was barely there, but the E-Chuta was not spoked by a male actor. "E-Chuta." "How rude!" *Beep Whistle* "Oh my? Was that an R2-Unit?" "Oh, my, I'm terribly sorry to, no no wait, please don't get up! No!" *Soft, confused Wookiee Growl*

so no mention of the fact that C-3PO was build by a 9 year old mostly out of scraps from a junk yard.

thank you, almighty algorithm, for suggesting this video, this shit rules. and thank you, bread man, for making it.

It's simple. Anakin named him C-3PO instead of using whatever his original number was. Of course, that begs the question: what was his designation before he ended up in the junkyard?

i always assumed as a kid that protocol droids have different designated names just like the astromech droids like R2-D2 and R4-P17 and R5-D4.

10:24 I didn't expected to hear a dalek

Some times writers try to explain things that didn't need explaining and that tends to cause problems and contradictory information.

thanks for the nice video. Again if seems, things are muddled and confused by the newest content that has been added

I remember seeing more feminine droids in clone wars. Being one example on the last episode of the first season, is my memory doesn't fail me

If I had to come up with lore on-the-fly as seems to be expected of modern SW, I would say the designation was something simple, like "Trade Coalition model 14" droid. TC-14 being just an internal naming convention among Trade-fed vessels.

“C-3p0 did some time in a Jawa sand crawler” man, c-3p0 is just straight up made entirely out of spare scrap parts that anakin painstakingly salvaged from literal junk, the fact that he can even be classified as a factory model droid is baffling

Wasn’t C-3PO a custom built droid made by a young Anakin? Maybe due to this, 3PO is not actually any specific model. 🤖

I could imagine the TC- series as a marketing variation, like GM cars, where its re-named and re-badged and given something to distinguish it (like say having a feminine default voice) then sold to a different market by a 'different' company

The only times I consider older lore to be incorrect, relative to newer material, is if it's explicitly errata'd, silently retconning does not count but if there is an actual error fixing this is fine if done appropriately.

I always thought that the TC series was an up-modified 3PO, with enhanced "intuitive" or deductive processes, hence why TC-14 was able to accurately surmise that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were Jedi.

C-3po was created with spare parts and used goods originally so he may be a different model or altered model mind while the body another. He was made from old protocol Droid parts later got cleaned up and much shinier.

I thought the name C3PO was a designated model and unit number set by the factory he was created by.

The droids related in the same way the Morris mini and the Austin mini in the sixes until both companies were incorporated in the into British Leyland both were almost identical

C-3PO is basically the droid version of Johnny Cash's Cadillac from the 'one piece at a time' song

It makes perfect sense that tc-14 is simply a variant of 3po. By that, I mean, if a client orders enough of a model of something that'd require a dedicated run of it just for them, often they are allowed input on many of its features. A big client orders an entire run of a cell phone, they can often opt to substitute in a different camera, or maybe to have a physical off switch for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth. It's entirely possible that the trade federation could've ordered 3po model and opted for some changes in their run. Though the female voice is likely something they all can do, and it just requires it be turned on in preferences. And the model name difference. Often products will have different model names in different markets. Famicom vs NES anyone? Sega Genesis or mega drive? Maybe the trade federation calls their own variant of the 3po a tc-14? They're really the same, minus some tweaks and a different designation in another nation. Maybe the they initially used the earlier mk2 language model, which still has an impressive 1 million languages. And the trade federation, which probably trades with countless nations and cultures, desired their variant to carry an upgraded module to help facilitate their trade deals with these cultures. Once these were produced, the manufacturer saw the appeal in the the extra linguistics capabilities, since they can boast it in advertisments to boost sales, so they made it a standard part of the package. We see real life examples of similar all of the time. Again, id conclude they're the same, just called by a different name in a different country, that bought enough to request the upgraded linguistics module in their production run.

I'm guessing TC-14 stands for Trade Federation - a way to identify the legitimate owner quickly Cybot - where they purchased the droid from in bulk, as there was also the RA-7 used 14 the last two numbers in the Serial Number, like how stores identify products based on the last few digits on the UPC instead of the whole 14 digit code As for the programming, it would honestly be as straightforward as being an octave or two higher than droids with masculine programming (given Astromechs and 3POs have both, it seems like user preference like you said along side options for paintjobs)

Maybe "TC" isn't a series but the abbreviation for Trade Center and she was the 14th Protocol Droid manufactured for the Trade Federation or at least that station.

Okay, I want my protocol droid to be plated with racing stripes.

The TC series is not a protocol droid like C3P0 is in the original films. She is a concierge model. Any type of humanoid droid can have a similar chassis to any other model. In my understanding, The "TC" acronym means, "Totally Concierge". This would somewhat distinguish the two as different applications of use rather than claiming they are the same droid. In other ways, the TC-14 was told to cover for her masters and completely came up with the name. Meaning, "Totally Covering for 14 life forms". The voice box was more likely the type-2 rather than a type-3 or vice versa because C3P0 was still a work in progress at the time. When Anakin grew up and was allowed to finish his droid. He upgraded the voice box to a type-3. Type 2 has two different vocal modes if you want to use that as to why the two different voices exist.

One other thing with C-3PO, he might, technically, not be a 3PO droid there...just that he has a pile of 3PO parts along with who knows what else that Anakin scrounged up when building him from scrapped droids

🎵You didn’t have to cut me off🎵

You have to remember… Anaikan said he made him from different parts from other droids. It’s mostly a protocol droid. He is basically a custom robot.💯🤷🏾‍♂️🫡

I like to think the Tc designation is merely its orderd model TC = trade commission 14 is just 14th one in the batch

When is a 3P0 not a 3P0? When it is a disguised CIS assassin!

Surely this is all academic because Anakin made C3-P0. The kid's hobby was not finished when he was taken by Qui-Gon Jinn. Someone else must have put "protocol droid" plating/covers on it to not only finish it but make it ready for sale to the Empire.

TC 13 refers to the droids designation onboard the ship there are clearly more than just that one Droid within the ship so therefore that's its name

well in the prequels annie was said to have built 3po. meaning 3po was a unique machine, not a model of device which already existed. if you can name a pet dog whatever, then you could name a a device you build whatever you want. then through analogy, if you know what your thing is, you could know what another thing is. if you name your dog fido, and you lack the word dog, then someone could convey meaning by saying 'that is a longhaired fido' this also explains why the tubes and wires which emerge out from under the breastplate down into the 'pants' are also custom. moreover there could be hidden differences between the models. like one could use servos, and another could use gyros. or in a less physical way one could use dc power and the other ac. anyway the big thing is that if annie built the droid, then he assembled it partially out of junk but also custom fabricated some parts. if he didnt build any of teh parts himself and only used leftover parts then he didnt build it, he assembled it. by extension he wouldnt have been the inventor of the droid. so ultimately, are the movies cannon? last thing, different organizations on earth have their own naming systems. so having a custom brand name for retail and a different brand name for giant customers like the trade federation, the empire, and other state, near state, and ngo actors mean you could have different price points for each customer's custom needs. if you could sell basicly the same thing for double the price and 5% more cost, then you would do so. so saying that one droid is another droid cause the differences are negligible is a rejection of marketing. i could sell hand soap with a frother, or just bulk. and in a situation where clean water isnt common, a waterless hand sanitizer would be in demand. then there is the topic of capacity to pay. governments with capacity to inflate the currency and their subordinate militaries are basicly blank checks. military grade and government grade then mean you may need to secure some features which other models lack. eg. if you have figured out how to get sign language, and scent language, then perhaps only government droids would need it. and for the more mainstream droid you have written languages and spoken languages.

I always chalked up the naming difference to the ever budget-conscious Trade Federation opting to buy a 3PO knockoff, or either leasing the design/committed corporate espionage to build it themselves for cheaper. (I support this claim with the Geonosis Droid Factories being able to effectively work on a 3PO unit and even connect its wiring to an OOM/B1head and vice versa.)

C3P0, as we know him, was built by young Anikin, as a hobby. So it is not improbable to assume he was put together with non-factory parts. So yeah, it is quite possible that C3P0 is not actually a C3P0 unit according to factory specs.

Ah yes, The New Essential Guide to Droids. The book responsible for making the Exile female in "canon".

Greetings to K-Dam the Kakapo

I dont understand why people cant grasp droids roll of the production line like Honda Civics, , even if they look the same, they probably are different somehow

13:12 If I had one of those ships I'd call it the michelangelo

"E chu ta" 👏😂 The thing that you fail to mention is that "C-3P0" wasn't manufactured on an assembly line per se, but instead was kitbashed and custom built by young Anakin from the salvaged parts he was able to glean during his employment with Watto. For all we know, "C3P0" could have R2, HK, pit Droid, etc parts as well, with only his processing and memory circuits coming from a/ or several "protocol droids"....so what the star wars reference guides said could be true, from a certain point of view 😂

The trade federation might have numerous 3PO's on just one ship, requiring more "first names". So, TC14-3PO.

Maybe TC could also be a rebranding of sorts; maybe the same model with only slightly improved parts but interchangeable with the base model. Probably a "limited edition", customized or license-built brand, but a 3PO nonetheless. Real life companies do this all the time!

This is kind of headcanon but I've always assumed that droid names are just a short bit of a much longer serial number, with the model number always in there somewhere.

Is it possible TC series droids are like Shelby Mustangs? Shelby Mustangs are a high-performance variant of the Ford Mustang, it takes your basic car and tweaks and tunes it to produce a higher BHP.

Any differences among C-3PO and others of his series as well as any similarities between C-3PO & TC-14 is easily explained by the fact that Anakin built him from parts he scrounged up on Tatooine. Anakin’s C-3PO is a unique entity. He is likely considered a 3PO because the chassis Anakin scavenged when building him was that of a 3PO. As far as the TC droid, this is likely a combination of a different model and naming convention used either by the trade federation or by the manufacturer at the time. Let’s compare this one to car models. An S4 is an extra sporty version of the A4 and an RS4 is even sportier. As far as moving the number around in the name, this could be similar to how Mercedes has swapped the number and series letter on multiple occasions over time. Another thing about droid names is that they are always nicknames. Droids have the equivalent of galacticly unique VINs. They’ve nickname is usually a subset of that ID. A 3PO droid that serves on a diplomatic base where thousands of the same model are used to translate for each visiting party of diplomats could not possibly give each 3PO a unique name by using the model name. They’d have to use a different set of characters from their ID or even actual nicknames. They’d also need different voices and finishes to make it easier for others to tell them apart

There must have been a program package with TC-14. THE T as the designation for whom the package was meant for. 14 was the program itself. I'd assert that Droid is C-14.0 Which is a later update to 3P.0 Anaking used parts from a junkyard to make him, which lends to the evidence of 3P0 being an older droid, thus older programming. TC-14 was probably specialized in trade deals, brokerage, galactic law and red tape.

It's my guess that vocal settings on protocol droids are simply a matter of preference chosen by the owner of the droid.

I always figured C-3PO and TC-14 were names, not models. That's like every human calling themselves human, it's not a name or a way to introduce yourself. If you had a situation where you have multiple 3POs, say you buy 3, you wouldn't call them A-3PO, B-3PO and C-3PO. You'd call them Larry, Curly, and Moe or something.

What madman decided 3PO is a model name and not the C- part?

I think there are several things to consider here. 1) C3P0 was REbuilt from scrap parts by a boy who worked for a junk trader. So who knows what parts he/it has inside. 2) If all the C3PO units all used the same name it would be confusing but every unit would have been given both a MODEL # and a SERIAL #. So why would it be such a stretch to use the first part of their Serial # as their name? I will leave the rest of my thoughts for you to ponder on your own.... I hope your a mind reader.

C3PO was made by a child who was abnormally proficient in engineering. i thought he only classified as a protocol droid because he had the skills for the title and the droid shell. i assumed everything under the chassis was the equivalent to a custom gaming PC for Anakin.

The thing about Threepio not being a 3PO, I think that he isn't a 3PO simply because of 1 thing: He wasn't made by Cybot Galactica. He's a custom build, made by Anakin.

They could have avoided all this confusion by saying that the "names" of individual droids are actually their serial numbers.

Ypu pick your color, like choosing cabinet hardware, or faucet and ahower head. The choices are black, white, rubbed oil bronze, brass, gold, chrome, or brushed nickel. Chrome is the most popular. Like all protocol droids, you choose which gender/voice you prefer in the settings. as these droids are used for important dinners and other VIP functions, etc. Apparently you can also get red...i guess.

We could easily say TC-14's voice is the way it is for... those reasons...