OK so this is a newbie question...

 

In the Star Wars movies (Eps 1 - 3), I see Jedi Star Fighters have the TOR Empire symbol on its tail. Why is that? Thanks so much!

Palpatine, used the old Sith Empire symbol as the Galactic Republic/Empire symbol. It was part of his corruption of the Republic and victory as a Sith.

Except they are not quite the same.

 

Sith Empire (Old Republic era): http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110601202161/starwars/images/thumb/6/62/StupidSithEmblem-Traced-TORkit.svg/250px-StupidSithEmblem-Traced-TORkit.svg.png

 

Galactic Empire: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b2/Galactic_Empire_emblem.svg/200px-Galactic_Empire_emblem.svg.png

 

And then there's the original Sith Empire logo: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080305064555/starwars/images/thumb/c/c8/Sith_Quad-Sun.svg/250px-Sith_Quad-Sun.svg.png

OK thanks for sharing!

 

Since Palpatine was only a senator in Ep 1, did he have enough influence to put a "Empire"-like symbol on Jedi/Republic star fighters? But I guess since Palpatine is a very smart Sith, he could have figured out a way.

Well, they are all based on the Bandu symbol which stands for the Force unifying the galaxy. I suppose it is a symbol as common as, say, the eagle or the star in flags worldwide.

Unfortunately, it's somewhat obvious that this was a blatant grab at "familiarity". The majority of people know this as the symbol the Galactic Empire in the movies, so this is what the Sith Empire in TOR got. Even though it already had a different symbol in KotOR 1 and 2. This weird "era mix" can be found throughout the game, from uniforms to weapons and armor, which makes TOR appear way closer to the movies than to KotOR.

 

Business knows this as brand recognition value. Matter of preferences, I suppose. For canon geeks, it is somewhat difficult to justify the Galactic Republic now being bound to adopt what looks disturbingly close to the Sith Empire symbol, way before Palpatine even becomes Chancellor.

That might be true if history was entirely written and we knew everything that happened between swtor and the movies. We don't, and I expect that's part of the story.

Well, they are all based on the Bandu symbol which stands for the Force unifying the galaxy. I suppose it is a symbol as common as, say, the eagle or the star in flags worldwide.

 

I always thought this to be the case, that the republic adopted a symbol that stood for a unifying force and was based on an ancient Jedi symbol and each "spoke" on the wheel stood for a diffrent aspect of the force. I thought that the empire used a similar "corrupted" version that had more spokes on the wheel.

I suspect Palpatine had a cartman complex and OD'd on fuzzy force feel good one day, in the vacant stages f doodling on his notepad he came up with a gnarly tatoo idea from the original pretext and decided to put it on everything.

 

The force. Space pot for the uninitiated but wiley