Tagge, General

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Species:
  Human

• Gender:
  Male

• Size:
  1.8 meters

• Weapon:
  Blaster pistol

• Vehicle:
  Death Star

• Affiliation:
  Empire

• 

From the Movies

General Tagge was a high-ranking Imperial officer stationed aboard the original Death Star battle station. Tagge was one of the few Imperials who voiced concerns regarding the threat posed by the Rebel Alliance. The cautious officer presaged the station's eventual doom, as he feared the Alliance would be able to analyze captured schematics to find an exploitable weakness. His warnings went unheeded, and Tagge died when the Death Star was destroyed.

From the Expanded Universe

The House of Tagge has long been an influential order of nobles in the Empire. The family holds immense wealth through corporations such as TaggeCo and through a lucrative spice mining operation. It was not just his family history that assured General Tagge a placement aboard the Death Star as a third of the command triumvirate overseeing the station's activities. Tagge had proven to be a capable officer who eschewed political maneuvering in favor of loyal service to the Emperor.

Though Tagge had a reputation as a brilliant tactician, an analysis of his command decisions aboard the Death Star indicates such praise was undeserved. The uninspired Tagge distributed the Death Star's gunners alphabetically throughout the station, rather than in logical, strategically-defined patterns. This led to disunified firing patterns and less than optimum performance from the Imperial gunners during the Battle of Yavin.

Following Tagge's death, the core group of Rebels were repeatedly harassed by joint operations between the Empire and the House of Tagge. The late general was survived by a number of siblings, including a fellow general, Ulric Tagge, also part of the Imperial starfleet, the scientific mastermind Silas Tagge, the beautiful and manipulative Lady Domina Tagge and the elder brother, Baron Orman Tagge.

Behind the Scenes

Draft scripts of Star Wars often swapped the names of General Tagge and Admiral Motti, leading to notable confusion in the early days of Expanded Universe publishing. While the Tagge seen in the film is a loyal officer concerned about the Rebellion, the screenplay reveals deleted lines spoken by Tagge that prove he's no more convinced in the Dark Lord's ability than the ill-fated Motti:

"I tell you he's gone too far. This Sith Lord sent by the Emperor will be our undoing. Until this battle station is fully operation, we are vulnerable."

The novelization of the film extended Tagge's tirade, and gave him Motti's lines as well. So, in the novel, it's Tagge who gets strangled by Vader, not Motti. The Marvel Comics adaptation of the film is even less clear, since the Tagge in that version looks an awful lot like actor Richard LeParmentier, who played Motti, and not Don Henderson, who played Tagge.

It was this mix-up that led to the creation of a separate General Tagge in the Marvel storyline that continued beyond A New Hope. In the House of Tagge story arc, we learn that a General Ulric Tagge, a long time Vader-hater, is alive and well. This Tagge, it should be noted, looks like Motti and is not the Tagge seen in the film, who is identified as dead in later sources.

And one more final bit of confusion: in the end credits for A New Hope, General Tagge is mistakenly named Commander Taggi.