Roger Roger

When watching The Phantom Menace on the big screen I recall hearing a battle droid say roger, roger. For some reason this struck me as funny. I recall that I laughed out loud. This was the only laughter in the entire theater. Why was it funny? What does it mean?

It turns out 'Roger' is the term for the letter R from the old JAN alphabet (Joint Army/Navy). This sequence went Able, Baker, Charlie, etc. The modern or NATO phonetic alphabet use the sequence Alpha, Bravo, Charlies, etc and uses Romeo for the letter R.

So 'roger' is simply the letter R but still what does it mean? Apparently it was a term used by WWII pilots to signal they had received a transmission. And roger wilco means message received, will comply.

But that still does not explain why it was funny. Perhaps it was the context of use in the movie. Perhaps the droid was scared or malfunctioning. I don't recall.

We bought the kids a Nintendo Games Cube for Christmas. One of the games they have is Lego Star Wars. This games is amazing (if only they would let me play too). During the game, you often hear a battle droid say "Uh oh!" or "Roger roger". This tickles me too. Perhaps it is just the computer synthesized voice.

Did you know the term droid started out as 'droid, an abbreviation for android.