Tig Fromm

Tig Fromm was a male Annoo-dat Blue gangster and, as the son of Sise Fromm, heir to the most powerful crime family in the galaxy. Fromm ran the Fromm Gang's operation on Ingo, where he developed a belief that the Fromm Gang could achieve dominance over their rivals through the acquisition of advanced technology and, to this end, designed and manufactured his own droids to keep his secret base functioning and to provide security. However, a series of misadventures with his creations earned him the nicknames Tiggy, Baby-Face Fromm, and Junior Fromm. When Fromm learned that the scientist Lonn Idd had developed a powerful new laser, Fromm attempted to steal it for use by his gang, but was thwarted by the intervention of the droids C-3PO and R2-D2.
Fromm later began his most ambitious project: constructing the weapons satellite Trigon One as part of a plot to overthrow the Fromm Gang's rivals. Fearing that the secret project had been discovered by the local speeder racers Thall Joben and Jord Dusat, Fromm kidnapped Dusat to find out what he knew. Dusat was rescued by Joben, Kea Moll of the Annoo resistance, C-3PO and R2-D2, who later returned to Fromm's base and stole the Trigon One. Hoping to recover the vessel, Fromm captured the young rebels and took them to his father's stronghold on Annoo, where Joben revealed the Trigon One location. Fromm retrieved the weapons satellite only to discover that Joben had sabotaged it to collide with his father's base. Although both Fromms escaped before the crash, the loss of both the stronghold and the Trigon One effectively brought about the downfall of the Fromm Gang.
Intent on gaining revenge and redeeming himself in his father's eyes, Fromm pursued Joben and Dusat to Boonta, where he planted a thermal detonator aboard Joben's landspeeder, the White Witch, ahead of the Boonta Speeder Race. Sise Fromm, however, had hired the bounty hunter Boba Fett to capture Joben; as Fett chased Joben during the race, the thermal detonator was dislodged and destroyed Fett's own Silver Speeder. Deciding to cut his losses, Fett captured both Fromms and turned them over to rival crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure. They were later released after paying off the Hutt.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Born on the planet Annoo, Tig Fromm was a male Annoo-dat Blue and the son of the renowned gangster Sise Fromm, leader of the Fromm Gang. His brother, Sise's eldest son Sonko Fromm, served as their father's right hand in the organization until he was captured during a failed transport raid and imprisoned in the dungeon of Sise's stronghold on Annoo as punishment. Tig too followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a gangster of some repute.A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded He became increasingly convinced that his father's methods and reliance on muscle power were outdated and that technology represented the future of the Fromm Gang. Establishing a secret base in the Vaj Desert on Ingo, Fromm began designing and manufacturing his own droids at the base, including the Fromm Tower Droid,The Essential Guide to Droids and made use of his creations to keep the base functioning and to provide security. Though he was given the freedom to run his operation largely independently from his father's, the two would often work in cooperation.
However, Fromm's reliance on technology was known to backfire. On one occasion, droids assigned to protect his father malfunctioned, turning on Sise and handing him over to the authorities. Fromm's reputation was further degraded when the attempted rescue of his father resulted in him breaking somebody else out and leaving Sise there. On another occasion, Fromm accidentally destroyed his father's vacation palace on Bolad.
Fromm's failures earned him the nicknames Baby-Face Fromm and Fromm Junior. Sise, embarrassed with his son, assigned Vlix Oncard to act as Tig's personal bodyguard and keep watch over him. Oncard never let Fromm forget his failures, frequently referring to him by the derogatory nickname Tiggy.
===The ultimate weapon===
Fromm's interest in technology led him to search for increasingly powerful weapons. Upon learning that the scientist Lonn Idd had developed a powerful new laser to aid in his droid research, Fromm set off for Idd's repair station to capture the scientist and demand that he install the device on Tig's ship. Accompanied by Oncard, a pair of Annoo-dat Blue guards and several hover guard and interrogation droids, Fromm hoped to use the threat of force to persuade Idd to do as he asked.
Aboard the space station, Fromm was about to begin physical persuasion when Lonn's children, Vik and Nikki, returned to the station on their shuttle along with the droids C-3PO and R2-D2. Nikki walked in on her father's interrogation, providing Fromm with a new means of persuasion: threatening to hurt Nikki if Idd didn't cooperate. Before Nikki was captured, however, she was able to activate the station's communications system, alerting her brother to what was happening. R2-D2 suggested a plan to rescue Nikki where C-3PO would cause his counterpart to blow a fuse, distracting the guards, while Vik rescued his sister. The plan failed, however, due to the intervention of a hover guard, and both Idd children were now in Fromm's custody.
Lonn Idd reluctantly completed the installation of the laser, but Fromm planned to test its power by destroying the station as he left, killing the inhabitants. Just before he could leave, C-3PO arrived wearing the empty shell of a guardian droid. Fromm, mistaking it for a real guardian droid, planned to take the valuable droid with him and demanded its control disk. Instead, Nikki Idd threw perfume in Fromm's face, momentarily blinding him. C-3PO took the opportunity to attack and, protected by his armor, proved virtually invulnerable to the weapons of Fromm's hover guards. As C-3PO backed the Annoo-dat Blue into a corner, Vik activated a control, dropping a packing net on them and trapping the gangsters. Lonn Idd subsequently turned Fromm and his companions over to the authorities. Mindful of his brother's fate, Fromm avoided contacting his father for some time following his release from prison.
===Power play===
By 15 BBY,"Star Wars Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO" in Polyhedron 170 states that Star Wars: Droids is set 15 years before Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. The New Essential Chronology places the events of A New Hope in 0 BBY, meaning that Star Wars: Droids takes place in 15 BBY. Fromm and Oncard were free to pursue a new scheme for power. Despite Sise's distaste for technology, Fromm persuaded his father to invest heavily in a covert project to build a powerful weapons satellite dubbed the Trigon One and designed by Fromm himself. Despite its relatively small size, Fromm assured his father that it would have the firepower of something a thousand times its size. Using its orbital laser, the Fromms planned to move against other gangs and secure their place as the dominant criminal organization in the galaxy. Placed in charge of the project, Fromm oversaw the construction at his secret base.
As the Trigon One neared completion, word of its development reached Demma Moll, leader of the Annoo resistance, who dispatched her daughter, Kea, to investigate. Upon arriving, the young freedom fighter saw Fromm's old enemies, the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, together with their new owners, the speeder racers Thall Joben and Jord Dusat, accidentally enter the restricted zone around Fromm's base. With Moll's help the group was able to escape from the sentry droids which had moved to intercept the intruders.
Fromm and Oncard feared that the location of the base might reach the other gang leaders and compromise the Trigon One project. Deciding that the speeder racers needed to be silenced before they could talk, Fromm led a group of muscle droids to their speeder shop to capture them. Arriving while Joben and the droids were away, the droids ensnared Dusat and waited for Joben's return. However, Moll intervened once more to help Joben escape the trap.
Fromm had Dusat taken back to his base, where he and Oncard interrogated the prisoner to discover how much he and Joben knew. Before Fromm could have Dusat transferred to his father's stronghold on Annoo, however, Joben, Moll, and the droids were able to break into the base in a rescue attempt. When Fromm became aware of the situation, he dispatched Strong Arm Droids to ambush Joben, Dusat, and R2-D2 in their speeder, the White Witch, as they made their way out of the base. However, C-3PO and Kea Moll had gained access to the security system and redirected them to a different area to allow their allies to pass. Frustrated, Fromm tried again to stop their egress, ordering his droid cruisers outside to await them and disabling his sentry droids to prevent them attacking the cruisers. However, C-3PO was again able to use the security system, this time to reactivate the sentry droids. As the two groups of droids opened fire on each other, the White Witch escaped.
===Loss of the Trigon One===
In the aftermath of Joben's rescue, Fromm stepped up production of his Fromm Tower Droids to replace those destroyed in battle against the cruisers. The young gangster feared that the racers' escape would lead to the other gangs finding out about the Trigon One but, as luck would have it, as the group traveled to Boonta for the Boonta Speeder Race, a hyperdrive malfunction caused them to head to Annoo for repairs. Fromm contacted his father to apologize for his failure, only to learn that the Fromm Gang's spies had already reported the group's presence on Annoo to Sise, who vowed to deal with them himself.
At some point, Fromm moved the Trigon One into hiding in the desert mountains while he prepared for its launch. When Joben and Dusat intercepted a message from Fromm to his father, they located the weapons satellite and set out to prevent its launch. While Joben created a distraction, Dusat and R2-D2 boarded the ship and disabled it before the group made their escape, leaving Sise once more furious with his son.
With the Trigon One nearing completion, Fromm traveled to Annoo to pick up his father for an inspection of the base on Ingo. By the time he arrived, the young racers had yet again escaped an attack by the Fromm Gang and had learned the whole truth about what the Fromms were planning from Demma Moll. Upon hearing that Fromm had come to Annoo, Joben, Moll and the droids found a way to infiltrate his father's starship for the journey to Ingo, in the hopes of gaining access to Fromm's base and destroying the Trigon One.
With the Humans hidden in a pair of cargo containers supposedly carrying parts for the Trigon One, the infiltrators were able to gain access to the hangar where the final work was being completed on the weapons satellite. Observing from a control room, Fromm quickly recognized the intruders and ordered his forces to stop them, but they were able to steal the Trigon One and escape. Believing that the Trigon One weapons systems were still inactive, Fromm dispatched droid starfighters to intercept. However, R2-D2 was able to activate the weapons systems and the fighters were destroyed as the Trigon One fled Annoo.
With the loss of the Trigon One, the future of the Fromm Gang seemed bleak. Knowing that the other gangs would unite against them, Fromm suggested starting again somewhere else and building a replacement for the Trigon One. However, his father—blaming Fromm for what had happened—insisted that he would operate without his son in future.
In retaliation for the loss of the Trigon One, Sise's agents captured Kea Moll and imprisoned her in Sise's heaquarters, demanding that Joben and Dusat return the weapons satellite in exchange for her release. However, R2-D2 and C-3PO infiltrated the facility and freed Moll from her cell. As the trio fled, Tig ordered his guards to intercept, but they were unable to prevent their escape.
===The fall of the Fromm Gang===
Desperate to prove himself to his father, Fromm planned to capture Joben, Moll and the droids and learn where they had hidden the Trigon One. To this end, he sent Oncard with a group of his Annoo-dat guards to attack them at the speeder shop on Ingo. Though they escaped in a landspeeder, they were pursued and channeled into a trap. Oncard returned the prisoners to the speeder shop, where Fromm personally interrogated them. Joben initially refused to tell Fromm where he had taken the Trigon One but, upon learning that Dusat and Demma have been captured by Sise's gang on Annoo, he agreed to reveal the location, but only to Sise himself.
Angry at yet another humiliation, Fromm departed for Annoo with his captives aboard a Lambda-class shuttle. After arriving at Sise's stronghold, the prisoners were taken before both Fromms while Sise questioned Joben, during which the young racer revealed that the Trigon One was hidden in the Jarl forest on Ingo. Fromm asked his father to let him personally retrieve the ship, to which his father agreed, but only if Oncard accompany him. Returning to Ingo, Fromm recovered the Trigon One and flew the vessel back to Annoo, leaving Oncard to return in the shuttle. On the way back, he contacted his father to demonstrate the capabilities of the primary weapon to Sise, impressing the elder Fromm by destroying an asteroid. However, Sise's newfound respect for his son was not to last. Joben and R2-D2 had sabotaged the Trigon One and, as Fromm attempted to engage the docking sequence, it entered a collision course for Sise's stronghold. After trying in vain to alter the ship's course, Fromm was forced to flee aboard Oncard's shuttle, from which he contacted his father once more to warn him to evacuate the base. Sise escaped, as did the young freedom fighters, moments before the Trigon One collided with the stronghold, turning it into a crater. The loss of the base on Annoo, together with the weapons satellite, effectively spelled the end of the Fromm Gang. Sise was furious with his son.
News of the Fromms' plan soon reached rival crime lord, Jabba Desilijic Tiure. The quick-witted Hutt struck while the iron was hot and placed a bounty on the heads of the entire Fromm organization, aiming to crush them while they were still reeling from their losses.
===Revenge===
Intent on getting revenge, the Fromms pursued the young rebels in Tig's modified Lambda-class shuttle, the Voor Viper, as they resumed their course for Boonta. As Moll's Starrunner-class starship, the Sand Sloth, prepared to make the jump to hyperspace, Fromm opened fire and succeeded in damaging the other ship's engines and injuring Dusat. However, a weapons malfunction on the rundown shuttle allowed the speeder racers to escape before he could destroy the Sand Sloth. Despite having their own engine problems, the Fromms entered hyperspace to pursue their adversaries to Boonta.
After arriving on Boonta, Sise contacted the bounty hunter Boba Fett and asked him to capture the speeder racers and their companions. Since Fett owed Sise a favor, he agreed to overlook Jabba's bounty and do as the elder Fromm asked. Tig, however, was determined to prove himself to his father and resolved to beat the bounty hunter to the punch and get revenge. After enlisting Oncard's help—in exchange for the promise of a new wardrobe—the pair located the garage where the racers were storing the White Witch ahead of the upcoming Boonta Speeder Race. Fromm planned to plant a thermal detonator on the White Witch, but arrived just as a gas leak in the garage caused R2-D2 to break down the door in order to get Moll outside to safety.
Taking cover nearby, Fromm and Oncard followed C-3PO as the droid moved the White Witch to another facility. There, Boba Fett attacked Joben and Moll, providing Fromm with the cover he needed to plant the thermal detonator on the White Witch, setting it to detonate at the end of the Boonta Speeder Race's tenth and final lap. Thall Joben escaped in the White Witch and headed straight for the Boonta Speeder Race with Fett in pursuit. However, Proto One, a droid the racers had met on Boonta, saw Fromm plant the device and warned Moll.
Fromm headed straight to the Boonta Speeder Race, where his family had requisitioned a private viewing box from its unwitting owners. By the time Moll reached the race track, the White Witch was already participating in the race. With no way for Joben's friends to warn him, it appeared that Fromm's plan was set to work. However, Fett was pursuing Joben in his Silver Speeder. Fett attacked Joben throughout the race, unaware of the thermal detonator. An attack involving magnets accidentally loosened the detonator, which attached itself to the Silver Speeder. Although Fett ejected in time, the Silver Speeder was destroyed. Joben went on to win the race.
After the race, the Fromms confronted the victorious racer and his companions one last time. Interrupted by a blaster-wielding Proto One, they attempted to flee but ran straight into Boba Fett. Fett blamed Fromm's meddling for the loss of his speeder and almost his life. Capturing Fromm, as well as his father and Oncard, Fett took them to Jabba to claim the reward. The trio's imprisonment proved short-lived, however; the Fromm's bribed Jabba into canceling the bounty on them by agreeing to pay him a percentage of their profits and committing their Annoo-dat gangsters to eliminating the Mandalorian Death Watch.
At some point, Fromm dispatched Oncard to intercept Moll, C-3PO and R2-D2 on Annoo in an attempt to retrieve a datacard in Moll's possession which contained instructions on how to build a nuclear missile. Oncard brought the trio before Fromm and he agreed to let them go after Moll turned the datacard over to him, unaware that C-3PO had wiped the data it contained. Fromm later invented a method of producing an artificial smoke cloud in space which would allow him to prey on passing vessels. While testing the device, Fromm ensnared C-3PO and R2-D2's transport, but the two droids boarded Fromm's ship and deactivated the device, allowing them to escape.
==Personality and traits==
As the son of Sise Fromm, Tig spent much of his life in his father's shadow and, despite running the Fromm Gang's operations on Ingo, his reputation failed to reach the level of his father's. Seeking a way to differentiate himself from what he saw as Sise's antiquated methods, the young Fromm developed a fascination with technology, and over time, an aptitude for designing droids and other advanced technology which he believed were superior to sentients due to greater loyalty and power. Such was the level of Fromm's knowledge of droids that, in addition to Galactic Basic Standard and Dat-an, he was also able to understand their Binary language.
However, Fromm ultimately became over-dependent on technology, and his plans often failed due to malfunctions in his droids. Although Fromm always had an excuse ready when something went wrong, his frequent failures left Sise with little faith in his abilities, and the elder Fromm assigned Vlix Oncard to watch over him, for which Fromm long resented his father.Droids Spanish picture book In addition to his father's own contempt of Fromm's abilities and threats of what would happen if he failed again, Oncard's frequent mocking of Fromm and use of the nickname Tiggy proved a source of great frustration, and Fromm relished the opportunity to take his revenge on Oncard whenever possible. Fromm was determined to finally prove his worth to his father but, despite frequent suggestions from Oncard that he use gang members for jobs, he stubbornly refused, becoming increasingly reliant on droids and distrustful of everybody else. At the same time, Fromm was aware of his father's advanced age and looked forward to the day when he could take charge of the whole Fromm gang and put Oncard in his place.
Fromm was ambitious and had plans to increase the Fromm Gang's power and secure their place among the galaxy's most powerful gangs. He was ruthless in pursuing his goals and willing to torture or kill anybody who stood in his way, including Lonn Idd's children. When confronted by Boba Fett over the loss of the Silver Speeder, Fromm quickly turned on Oncard, attempting to blame his bodyguard for what went wrong.
==Behind the scenes==
Tig Fromm was created for the animated series Star Wars: Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO, in which he first appeared in the episode "The White Witch," written by Peter Sauder and first broadcast on September 7, 1985. Fromm served as the main antagonist throughout the first story arc, consisting of the episodes "The White Witch," "Escape Into Terror," "The Trigon Unleashed," and "A Race to the Finish." Fromm also appeared in a series of picture book adaptations of the Droids episodes published by Dragon Picture Books in 1987The White Witch picture bookEscape Into Terror picture bookThe Trigon Unleashed picture bookA Race to the Finish picture book and The White Witch: A Droid Adventure, a 1986 adaptation of the series' opening episode, written by Emily James and published by Random House.The White Witch: A Droid Adventure The character later appeared in Droids (1986) 2, the second issue of Marvel's Star Wars: Droids comic series, written by David Manak and illustrated by John Romita Sr. The comic's position in the timeline is unclear, but the fact that the Fromm Gang is still around places it before the events depicted in the animated series.
Both of Fromm's appearances hinted at his many earlier failures, and these were later elaborated on in the 2004 Rich Handley and Abel G. Peña article Star Wars Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO, which appeared in Polyhedron 170 and was illustrated by Jeff Carlisle. Among Carlisle's inspirations for the article's illustrations was an early promotional image for Star Wars: Droids which appeared in Starlog magazine and which what Carlisle has speculated may have been a female version of Fromm. Fromm has also been mentioned in several reference works, including entries in A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (1994), the Star Wars Encyclopedia (1998), A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded (2000), and The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia (2008).Star Wars Encyclopedia A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded A Tig Fromm action figure was produced by Kenner as part of its Star Wars: Droids collection to accompany the television series.
In 1986, Spanish publisher Editorial Gepsa released a comic series called MyComyc featuring characters from popular cartoon series, including Star Wars: Droids and Ewoks, in a number of two-page short adventures. The comics were unknown in the United States until 2013, when Dark Horse Comics Vice President of Publishing Randy Stradley explored the possibility of republishing them. However, Lucasfilm staff were unable to find proof that the comics were officially licensed and they are considered ambiguously canon. Fromm was featured in the MyComyc stories Neutralizing Trigon I, Kea Kidnapped, The Secret Disk, and The Cloud. also depicts Oncard talking via subspace transceiver to "the boss," but it is unclear whether this is intended to be Tig or Sise Fromm. The MyComyc stories depict events which are not shown in the television series and their chronological placement is unclear. Abel G. Peña, who translated the comics to English, has commented that Neutralizing Trigon I and Kea Kidnapped may be an alternate retelling of events in the Droids cartoon.
Droids, a Spanish picture-book adaptation of "The White Witch," contains some differences to the episode. In this version, Joben arrives in the White Witch while Fromm and Oncard are interrogating Dusat, knocking down a wall and rescuing his friend while the Annoo-dat gangsters run for cover in another room and sound the alarm. After Dusat is rescued from Fromm's base, his father takes personal control of the Trigon One project, ordering Fromm to transfer all material to another base and destroy the Ingo facility to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Abel G. Peña, who translated Droids into English in 2014, speculated that such differences may be due to the novelization being based on an early script rather than the final episode. In Droids, the Fromm Gang is said to have "innumerable droids and androids (and, above all, clones)" in its service while both Fromm and Oncard are described as "androids half-human and half-reptiloid in appearance." Peña has suggested that this may suggest that Fromm and Oncard are cyborgs.
==Appearances==
*Droids (1986) 2
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*The White Witch picture book
*The White Witch: A Droid Adventure
*Droids Spanish picture book
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*Escape Into Terror picture book
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*The Trigon Unleashed picture book
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*A Race to the Finish picture book
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==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Annoo-dat Blue
Category:Fromm Gang members
Category:Males