With every rewatch, Hemlock strikes me more and more as the kind of guy who is very smart, but he's also limited in that he has ideas but doesn't know how to make them work/become a reality himself. He needs other people to do that for him. Hence why most of his plans center around convincing Nala Se to cooperate, trying to get Tarkin to give him more clones (as an aside, I know they were working on several different projects, but just how many times were they going to repeat the same exact blood test on all the clones, including Omega?), going after Omega, etc etc etc.
He has the idea of what needs to be done, but it seems to me that he often doesn't have the knowledge to make it work himself. At the same time, he also doesn't display much capacity in terms of, shall we say, creative or lateral thinking; his tendency is to brute force/threaten his way through problems; and he tends to go... overboard in trying to force his projects to succeed (As an example, I give you the abandoned/destroyed laboratory on Setron. Interesting that what happened on Tantiss had essentially happened before, with Hemlock losing control of projects. No wonder Tarkin was keeping such a close eye on him.)
And then it strikes me that Rampart is similar: he will give orders - he has the idea, but he relies on others to do the work for him (dude clearly had never been in actual combat before shooting unsuspecting subordinates doesn't count as combat, RIP Wilco 😞). And he, like most other higher-level Imps, relies on brute force tactics to get his way.
These are some excellent points, I'd never thought about Hemlock that way but you're right. My best guess is that he tends to bite off more than he can chew and either ends up way over his head or just physically unable to keep up with the details of all his projects.
As for Rampart however, I hope you don't mind me offering my own take on his character because he's just fascinating and I wish they'd done more with him. Or just better.
Rampart imo, is actually too intellectual for his post rather than too brutal. Yes, he deals with some issues brutally but that to me stems more from a desire not to get his hands dirty (his 'brutal' solutions are actually pretty 'clean') than any propensity for violence. He's got the accent and behavior to mark him out as more posh and given how young he is when he gets his Vice Admiral rank, we could maybe speculate that there was some nepotism involved.
Or, alternatively, it was his involvement in the War Mantle and Chain code projects that skyrocketed him up the ranks. But more on that later. Regarding his incompetence in combat, I think it's not that shocking actually. Again, knowing how quickly he climbed the ranks, he's most definitely a commissioned officer that probably got his first commission straight upon graduating (him having fancy officer training would also match with his apparent posh background). As for where he graduated, my personal headcanon would be the Judicial Academy, seeing as he acts like such a Tarkin fanboy.
We also know that most humans who held command during the Clone Wars were commissioned officers as the rank-and-file and NCOs were clones. As a commissioned officer, Rampart wouldn't have had to climb the enlisted ranks, starting from the bottom, so it's entirely possible he's never had to be on the ground for any active combat. Because he's so out of his element, it makes him look pretty buffoonish in season three where he's mostly used for laughs which is unfortunate imo.
Now, back to his projects. Rampart is credited as coming up with the Chain code system and he's one of the founders of project War Mantle. As an aside, many famous officers in history have had their careers kickstarted by simply having the right ideological alignment (one such example being Napoleon). Freed's Mask of Fear goes into more depth to show how Palpatine's early appointments in the first days of the Empire were painstakingly picked to have the right views to shape the Empire into what he needed it to be.
And it's my theory that Rampart was simply clever enough to have his finger on the political pulse and was there to supply exactly what Palpatine wanted in the face of War Mantle and the Chain code system (both of which make me wonder if he didn't have any additional education because they just scream sociology major).
That's one reason why he's so crafty, he clearly knew what direction the wind was blowing. Other examples of him being more of a schemer than a brute force guy is the way he faked Taa's attempted assassination to frame Cham's insurgents on Ryloth and the way he pivoted to trying to recruit the batch one last time (instead of outright wiping them out) after they proved more formidable than he'd anticipated.
Out of all the villains in TBB, he's the most flexible with his views, shifting them when needed and adapting depending on what the best outcome is for him. Simply put he's an opportunist rather than a stout ideologue like Tarkin or a simple bigot like Nolan. Which isn't a compliment, it just means he's a shifty two-faced bastard. And a bootlicker lol. But I rather love him for it.
Which makes it all the more ironic that he was backstabbed by the system he was trying so hard to please. That said I do wish they'd kept him around for a villainous return to power, he was far too entertaining. Anyway, sorry for hijacking your post, I just miss Rampart and your words made me think of him again.
