TK-421

TK-421 was the designation assigned to a human male who served as an Imperial stormtrooper during the era of the Galactic Civil War. Following a period of service on Lasan, a planet under siege by the Empire, he was stationed on the Death Star battle station and assigned to the Maintenance Unit within Sector AA-345. The MSE-6 series repair droid designated MSE-6-G735Y, affectionately nicknamed "G7," aided him by transporting supplies and equipment to various sectors of the station. TK-421 held the opinion that G7 was the fastest mouse droid within the entire Imperial fleet and assured G7 that, should his transfer request be approved, they would embark together to participate in the racing circuit on Coruscant, the galactic capital and the center of the Empire. While he appreciated the aesthetic qualities of the Death Star, he felt confined by the rigid routines, the lack of leisure time, and the restrictive nature of his armor, especially his helmet.

On one particular occasion in 0 BBY, he complained to the droid about how the helmet affected his skin, specifically mentioning a pimple on his chin that he exaggeratedly compared to the size of a Kowakian monkey-lizard. When he instructed G7 to examine his skin, he inadvertently triggered the activation of its holorecorder. As a result, the droid recorded the stormtrooper without his helmet, revealing his face, which was a violation of regulations.

Shortly thereafter, TK-421 dispatched MSE-6-G735Y to deliver a HypnoHypodermal Injector Needle C-7R to an IT-O interrogator droid located in Detention Block AA-23; following preparation by an Imperial officer, specifically Lieutenant Blagg, the interrogator droid was intended to be used by the Sith Lord Darth Vader in the interrogation and torture of the imprisoned Princess Leia Organa. The commander of the Death Star, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, was on his way to assess Blagg's preparations when G7 was making the delivery. Tarkin's impending arrival caused Blagg to panic and order the droid to leave quickly. In its haste to depart, G7 collided with Tarkin, whom the droid recognized as possessing Alpha One security clearance but could not identify by name. The collision resulted in injury to Tarkin and damage to G7's holorecorder matrix, causing it to inadvertently project the holorecording of TK-421. After expressing admiration for the stormtrooper's appearance, Tarkin instructed G7 to replay the entire message, which the droid was compelled to obey because an Alpha-One-level clearance superseded all of its known commands and subroutines. However, G7's damaged state prevented it from complying and necessitated maintenance. Tarkin informed Blagg that he would personally address the trooper responsible for the droid and then directed G7 to report to his officer's quarters in Sector GM1-A and enter sleep mode.

After Tarkin repaired G7, he sent the MSE-6 unit back to TK-421 with a holomessage that indicated his interest in the stormtrooper as well as an invitation to visit his quarters to repair his aqualeisure unit. TK-421 felt flattered that he had caught someone's eye, telling G7 that, if he played the situation right, he could get them a transfer to Coruscant or anything else they wanted. Recognizing he was dealing with an officer who had Imperial Academy experience, TK-421 affected naivete and a backwater accent as he recorded his response, saying he would report to Tarkin's quarters after he showered with the antibacterial nanofoam Tarkin had sent him. He sent G7 ahead to deliver his message.

Upon arriving at Tarkin's quarters, TK-421 thanked him for repairing G7. Tarkin invited him inside but required him to first remove his armor to avoid tracking grease or other residue on the new carpet, which TK-421 recognized as Coruscant fiberweave and complimented. Tarkin pointed out a chair made with veermok hide; he had extensive experience hunting veermoks on his homeworld, Eriadu. He then told TK-421 to go about his business in the aqualeisure unit while he prepared for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, and reminded G7 to execute Imperial Protocol Alpha One to delete all records regarding the encounter.

Some cycles later, the Death Star was still positioned in the Alderaan system following Tarkin's order to destroy the Rebel Alliance-affiliated planet Alderaan, which was also Princess Organa's home planet, as a demonstration of the Empire's power. During that cycle, TK-421 woke G7 and told the droid not to worry about its memory gaps. He confided in the droid that they needed to maintain secrecy because everything occurring on the battle station relied upon Tarkin, whom he described as having an icy exterior with other people that was dropped when they were alone together. TK-421 said he made Tarkin laugh when they were together and that G7 was better off not witnessing certain events or keeping them in its memory. With his security level raised from Lambda to Beta and his transfer to a comfortable position in station security on the 300 level, TK-421 had hopes that he and G7 would continue their advancement to an assignment in Tarkin's personal detail; after that, they would move to Coruscant, where G7 would enter the droid racing circuit and TK-421 would live in Tarkin's penthouse overlooking the Imperial Palace.

TK-421's conversation was interrupted when he received a transmission via his helmet's built-in comlink, ordering him to guard a captured light freighter, specifically the YT-1300 light freighter known as the Millennium Falcon, which had been captured using a tractor beam upon its arrival in the star system. He dispatched G7 to Tarkin's quarters and reported for his first guard duty assignment in Docking Bay 327.

TK-421 was instructed to stand guard over the starship while a scanning crew verified whether there were any occupants on board. He positioned himself to the left of the entry ramp, while his fellow stormtrooper, TK-710, stood to its right. The stormtroopers observed the scanning crew's difficulty in maneuvering their equipment as they boarded the ship. Once inside, the crew members were ambushed by the ship's Wookiee co-pilot, Chewbacca, and its captain, Han Solo, who used his blaster to stun them. Although both stormtroopers heard a thud from within the ship, they only briefly glanced in that direction before turning away again; they dismissed the sound as the crew dropping equipment. One of Solo's passengers, Luke Skywalker, then joined Solo in setting a trap for the stormtroopers. Solo pretended to be one of the crew members by calling out for aid. TK-421 approached the base of the ramp and peered up it before gesturing for TK-710 to follow him. As soon as they reached the top of the ramp and reached for their weapons, they were outdrawn and had no idea what hit them when Solo downed them with two blaster shots.

Skywalker then joined Solo in removing the troopers' sets of armor to use as disguises; Skywalker wore TK-421's armor. Lieutenant Treidum, who was stationed in the docking bay control room, noticed that TK-421 was missing. When Treidum attempted to contact the stormtrooper and asked why he was not at his post, Skywalker emerged from the ship in TK-421's armor and pretended the helmet had a malfunction that interfered with the transmission. Along with Chewbacca, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the droids C-3PO and R2-D2, Solo and Skywalker infiltrated the station. They initially only planned to deactivate the tractor beam trapping them but subsequently discovered and rescued Princess Leia Organa from her imprisonment.

Imperial forces discovered TK-421's dead body in a crawl space and removed it from the Millennium Falcon, along with the bodies of TK-710 and the scanning crew, while R2-D2 and C-3PO observed from a concealed location. Upon learning of TK-421's fate, the stormtrooper TD-110 privately remarked that, although they were not close, TK-421 had been strong and did not deserve to die. After the Battle of Yavin commenced, G7 was awakened from sleep mode by Tarkin, who informed the droid that rebels had murdered TK-421 and admitted that he had envisioned plans for them together. He vowed that he would soon avenge TK-421 by annihilating the last of the Rebellion with the battle station's destructive power. He invited G7 to join him on the command bridge to witness the imminent destruction of the Rebel Alliance's base on the moon Yavin 4, but the droid did not arrive due to being caught in an explosion. Seconds afterward, the entire Death Star was blown up by Luke Skywalker, killing Tarkin and destroying MSE-6-G735Y.

TK-421 was a human male with a height of 1.847 meters. According to stormtrooper TK-450, it was evident that TK-421 had personally programmed MSE-6-G735Y because the droid stopped recording TK-450 while he was still talking, a behavior that TK-450 compared to TK-421 ignoring what he did not want to hear. TK-450 also thought the other trooper spent more time talking to droids than other beings. TK-421 was indeed fond of G7 and frequently confided in it about his feelings and his wishes for a future where he would paint racing stripes on the droid and enter it into a racing circuit. Although he was not eloquent, he talked at length to the droid. In his discussions with G7, he spoke of them as a pair advancing together. TK-450 mistakenly believed that TK-421 would be unable to stand up to the intimidating attention of someone like Grand General Cassio Tagge, Darth Vader, or Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.

TK-421 appreciated the aesthetics and engineering of the Death Star, particularly its distinctive lighting that was installed in the walls rather than overhead. He preferred the Death Star to his previous station on Lasan, where the overhead lighting made everything look depressingly sallow. One of his plans for life on Coruscant involved installing lighting of the same style as the Death Star's. His recognition of the craftmanship of Tarkin's Coruscant fiberweave carpeting caused him to temporarily drop his feigned accent.

Tarkin described TK-421 as beautiful. According to Luke Skywalker, TK-421's uniform smelled like the Death Star had served a spicy lunch that day. TK-421's aesthetic concerns included his personal appearance and the image he projected of himself. After receiving his short-lived promotion to station security, TK-421 told G7 that the benefits included ordering people around and carrying a blaster rifle. He described it as "very butch," a characteristic that he thought he did not possess but should display when he responded to Tarkin's initial holomessage. Although TK-421 pretended to be less experienced and knowledgeable in their encounters, Tarkin considered it a game between them and noticed TK-421's cleverness. They were each envisioning a future together before their deaths.

Based on a single holomessage, TK-421 successfully calculated behaviors that would appeal to Tarkin in order to secure advancements in his station that the Grand Moff had the power to grant. That included adopting a persona characterized by TK-421 as a "backwater, rough-around-the-edges military grunt" along with an associated style of speech; his natural voice lacked that accent and had a higher pitch.

TK-421 wore white plastoid stormtrooper armor over a black body glove and carried an E-11 medium blaster rifle while on duty in Docking Bay 327, a weapon that was not ordinarily assigned to him. He hated how the requirement to always wear his helmet had negatively affected his complexion. Although he did not carry a thermal detonator on his utility belt, he was equipped with a tool kit, blaster power cell containers, and a grappling hook attached to a fibercord reel, the latter of which proved useful to Skywalker when he and Organa needed to swing across a chasm.

TK-421 made his initial appearance in the 1977 film, Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, which was part of the original trilogy. While his name was not in the film's credits, some stormtrooper extras, such as Stephen Bayley, have since received recognition, and Bayley has even attended fan conventions as the actor who played TK-421.

The concept of utilizing a stormtrooper's armor as a disguise on the Death Star originated with the early character Annikin Starkiller in The Star Wars: Rough Draft, which George Lucas completed in May of 1974. In the third draft from August of 1975, titled The Star Wars: From The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, both Han Solo and Luke Skywalker don the disguises. In A New Hope, TK-421 exits the frame when he boards the Millennium Falcon, and his fate is implied through sound effects. The sounds were initially described in the fourth draft as a "quick round of gunfire," then changed to a "large crashing sound" in the revised fourth draft, ultimately becoming two blaster shots in the film.

During the production of A New Hope, originally known simply as Star Wars, the Death Star hangar set was constructed on sound stage 3 at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, England. The scene featuring TK-421, designated as scene number 81, was filmed between May 19 and June 1 of 1976. According to Bayley, he was chosen on the day of filming when additional extras were needed to portray the two stormtroopers guarding the Millennium Falcon.

The stormtrooper whose armor Luke wore was initially designated "TX-four-one-two" in the fourth draft dated January 15, 1976, and later "TX-421" in the revised fourth draft shooting script dated March 15. The stormtrooper's designation was changed once more to "THX 1138" in the November 12 novelization by Alan Dean Foster as a tribute to George Lucas and Walter Murch's 1971 film, THX 1138. In the French dub of A New Hope and the September 9, 2015 junior novelization A New Hope - The Film Novel by Lucile Galliot, his designation is instead T.K.F. 821. The German dub of A New Hope has the trooper's designation as TK-241.

The "TK-421" designation served as inspiration for the naming conventions adopted by the 501st Legion fan costuming organization, which was established in April of 1997. Artist Chris Trevas created "The Folly of TK-421," which was showcased and sold as a print at Celebration Anaheim, an official Star Wars convention held from April 16 to 19, 2015. The painting depicts Solo pressing his blaster to TK-421's unarmored armpit aboard the Millennium Falcon, while Chewbacca disarms and grapples with TK-710, and Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi observe the scene. Trevas commented on his painting, stating, "It's a scene we only hear but never see in A New Hope. Luckily for Luke, TK-421 was well prepared with a belt comlink and grappling hook."

Information on the specifics of TK-421's demise is inconsistent across canon sources and reference works. The A New Hope Read-Along Storybook and CD by Randy Thornton, which was released on February 10, 2015, mistakenly states that Skywalker, Solo, and Chewbacca agreed to rescue Organa before deciding to subdue the stormtrooper guards and take their uniforms, which is the reverse of what happens in A New Hope. In Tony DiTerlizzi's The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, published on October 7, 2014, stormtroopers remain on board to guard the ship after a search and are then knocked out, but in the film, they are stationed outside the ship prior to being tricked into entering. Delilah S. Dawson's storybook The Skywalker Saga, released on October 1, 2019, presents the stormtroopers as believing the ship is empty when they board, in contrast to the film, where they observe a scanning crew entering. Discrepancies like these that contradict the film's sequence of events are considered errors in this article.

In the film, two blaster shots are heard immediately after TK-421 enters the Millennium Falcon, but several books for young readers omit any mention of the rebels using blasters at all. In The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem, a highly stylized work by Jack Mitchell published on September 28, 2021, the number of shots is changed to "three muffled shots" instead of two. The reference book Star Wars: Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor, co-authored by Ryder Windham and Adam Bray and published on October 24, 2017, claims that "The Folly of TK-421" depicts "the offscreen moment that Han Solo and Chewbacca kill the inept storm-troopers" and that it "restores a little of the 'scoundrel' persona in Han Solo." However, the image shows TK-421 firing his blaster as Solo prepares to shoot him, which contradicts the two blaster shots fired solely by Solo in two junior novelizations: A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, written by Alexandra Bracken and published on September 22, 2015, and Star Wars: A New Hope, written by Ryder Windham and published on May 4, 2017. The Odyssey of Star Wars also states that Chewbacca removed the stormtroopers' equipment, while Bracken's novelization includes an extended scene where Solo and Skywalker do so and discuss the condition of the armor. This article operates under the assumption that the junior novelizations are accurate regarding the number of shots, who fired them, and who removed the stormtroopers' armor.

While some books specify that TK-421 and TK-710 were only knocked unconscious upon boarding the Falcon, Windham's Star Wars: A New Hope describes a later group of stormtroopers exiting the Falcon while "carrying the bodies of the scanning crew and the two troopers who'd unwittingly donated their armor to Luke and Han." Additionally, the short stories "Of MSE-6 and Men" by Glen Weldon and "Bump" by Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, published on October 3 in the 2017 anthology From a Certain Point of View, place TK-421's death before the destruction of the Death Star, with "Of MSE-6 and Men" adding that his body was hidden in a crawl space by the rebels. Because the exact timing of TK-421's death is unclear, this article refrains from specifying when it occurred.

In the Star Wars LINE Webtoon by Hong Jac Ga, which was released in Korean on May 5, 2015, Chapter 7 contains several inconsistencies regarding TK-421's appearance. In this version, TK-421 and a stormtrooper named TX-4120 are searching the ship instead of guarding it, Solo grabs one of their legs from a hidden smuggling compartment rather than shooting them, and Kenobi activates his lightsaber. Furthermore, Pol Treidum's aide attempts to contact both stormtroopers via comms and fails, rather than Treidum himself seeing Skywalker disguised as TK-421. Given that the discrepancies in this adaptation cannot be reconciled with the film, they are not included in this article.

In the non-canon LEGO Star Wars mini-series LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales, the third episode, which first aired on September 7, 2015, features TK-421 in a flashback recounted by C-3PO to a group of droids in Mos Eisley on Tatooine. Darth Vader orders TK-421 and TK-710 to guard the Millennium Falcon's boarding ramp as C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Obi-Wan Kenobi gather at the top. When Luke insists on saving Princess Leia, Han argues that they cannot get past the stormtroopers. Obi-Wan states he will use a Jedi mind trick, tricking the pair with a "look over there" so they turn their heads, at which point he hits their helmets with a wrench. The group then leaves the stormtroopers tied up inside the ship. In the LEGO version, both TK-421 and TK-710 wear pink shorts and have light skin and black hair, one with large curls and the other with a short haircut, though the episode does not specify which trooper has which hairstyle.

In the non-canon video game LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, released in 2022, TK-421 and TK-710 are featured in a cutscene that adapts the events of the film. While Darth Vader speaks to Imperial officer Edmos Khurgee and contemplates a sensed presence, a shocked Khurgee remains still as Vader is too preoccupied to notice blaster fire and sounds of struggle coming from within the Millennium Falcon, as well as one of the troopers falling onto the boarding ramp and being dragged back inside by Chewbacca. The unaware Vader and the confused Khurgee depart as the disguised rebels sneak out of the ship. During the subsequent mission, Skywalker remarks that both sets of armor contain thermal detonators, unlike TK-421's armor in the film.