R2-KT

R2-KT was an astromech droid in service to the Grand Army of the Republic's 501st Legion during the Clone Wars. R2-KT sometimes went by the name of "Katie".

Biography

R2-KT with at a meeting of clones and Jedi — R2-KT with R2-D2 at a meeting of clones and Jedi

At the height of the Clone Wars, R2-KT was assigned to the 501st Legion and served on board a Republic assault ship belonging to Jedi Knights Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Over the course of the war, "Katie" and R2 liked to meet and gossip about the war and the Republic Fleet. During the events of Rotta's kidnapping, the droid was present at a briefing of clone troopers and their Jedi commanders.

The astromech droid was also present at the Battle of Ryloth and the Sky Battle of Quell.

R2-KT survived the Clone Wars and subsequently served in the Galactic Empire.^[1]

Behind the scenes

R2-KT started off as a real-world replica of an R2-series astromech droid with pink highlights. Albin Johnson, the founder of the 501st Legion, wanted to build a pink droid for his daughter Katie, who was dying from brain cancer (In fact, the "KT" suffix would appear to be a reference to her name). When it was realized that he did not have enough time, R2-KT was built by Jerry Greene, master droid builder, with the help of the R2-D2 Builders Club. R2-KT makes appearances at children's hospitals, Star Wars Celebration, and charity events in the southeastern United States. A Hasbro action figure of this droid was sold at San Diego Comic-Con 2007 and the character had a cameo in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars film. In large part because of this, she later replaced the astromech droid P3-NUT in the MMORPG game Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures in the role of the gift for the child's play charity event in 2011.

R2-KT was originally going to appear in The Clone Wars D-Squad episode arc. However, since those episodes featured R2-D2 as a main character, The Clone Wars crew wanted to avoid the audience confusion when addressing the droids. As a result, they created the astromech QT-KT instead as a homage.^[2]

In the blog series From World War to Star Wars, R2-KT alongside her substitute QT-KT's pink coloring as well as acting as a secret weapon was acknowledged as having a precedent during World War II where certain fighter planes, such as one of the Spitfire planes, were colored pink to effectively camouflage them during dawn and dusk to photograph enemy targets without being detected, which had been proposed by Lord Mountbatten for the British Royal Navy.^[3]