Alternative Star Wars Saga
Register
Advertisement
The Chosen One redirects here. You may be looking for the Chosen One of prophecy.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One
TheChosenOneFinalCover
Attribution
Author(s)

Brandon Rhea

Cover artist

Solus

Editor(s)
Publication information
Release date

September 29, 2012

Media type

.PDF e-book

Chronology
Canon

Fan fiction

Era

Rise of the Empire era

Series

Alternative Star Wars Saga

Followed by

Star Wars: Episode II -
The Princess of Ondos

"The saga begins again."
—Tagline

Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One is a fan fiction novel set in the Alternative Star Wars Saga by Brandon Rhea. The novel is designed as a reboot of the Star Wars film series, with the author having been inspired by reboots such as Batman Begins and Casino Royale. The story re-imagines the life of the canon Anakin Skywalker and is told primarily through the eyes of Michael Lars, the Alternative Saga version of Anakin Skywalker, as he begins his journey towards his destiny as the Chosen One.

The story begins in the aftermath of the Rim Wars, a failed rebellion against the Hutt Lords who control much of the Outer Rim Territories, including Michael's home planet of Tatooine, where the story is set. Also in the backdrop is a war in the distant Galactic Republic, a war that soon arrives on Tatooine. These events conspire to thrust Michael towards his destiny as he is made to choose whether he wants to assume the mantle of the Chosen One. Major supporting characters include Padmé, Sara Jade, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, among many others.

The Chosen One has been in various stages of production since late 2007, when Rhea began the first, incomplete draft of the novel. A second draft was released from early 2009 to early 2010, but it was also canceled before its completion. Rhea has released six chapters from what he intends to be the final version of the novel. Reception to the opening chapters of the novel has been generally positive.

Opening crawl[]

Episode I
THE CHOSEN ONE
It is a desperate time for the 
galaxy. Poverty and suffering 
have infested the far frontiers 
of the cosmos, and their 
governments are ill-equipped to 
respond to the endless harrowing 
cries of a hopeless population. 

In the great Republic, home to 
some of the greatest thinkers and 
visionaries history has ever known, 
political and economic corruption 
runs rampant, with whole worlds 
falling victim to oligarchs and 
sycophants. 

But just beyond the rim that 
divides the Republic from the 
tyranny of the Hutt Lords, where 
forgotten wars have left scars 
that will last for time immemorial, 
one tiny planet will give rise to 
the one who can change it all....

Editions[]

Table of contents[]

The following are the individual chapters of the final edition of The Chosen One:

Synopsis[]

It is the year 22 BBY, several decades after the end of the Rim Wars, an unsuccessful rebellion against the Hutt Cartel that controls the Outer Rim Territories. Former rebel strongholds have been oppressed even more than they had before under the iron-fisted rule of the Hutt Lords, leading to poverty and despair throughout Hutt-controlled space. One of these planets is the backwater Tatooine, a desert world where the destitute people barely scrape by to survive.

Michael Lars

Michael Lars.

On Tatooine, the young Michael Lars has just finished an archaeological dig near an old battlefield from the Dune Sea War. When he leaves to return to Anchorhead Station, the capital of Tatooine, Michael takes a long way around the battlefield so as to not disturb the historical site. To make his way around, he briefly enters the dangerous Eastern Dune Sea, where he encounters a group of sand people—sentient beings who live in the desert and who kill settlers as a blood sport.

The story opens as Michael is fleeing the sand people, desperately running towards the refuge of the capital. As he makes his way back to Anchorhead, he is spotted by soldiers from the Hutt military who are guarding the city gates. On the order of Colonel Deacon Darklighter, Michael's uncle and the leader of the Hutt military on Tatooine, the soldiers open fire on the sand people, killing most of them and forcing the others to flee. With the sand people gone, Michael is picked up by his uncle, who chides him for putting himself in such a dangerous predicament.

By nightfall, Michael goes to the Yarga Cantina, one of the central places for entertainment in the poorest quarter of the city. He is met by his friend and fellow archaeologist, Ray'kele, who asks Michael if he found anything at that day's dig. Michael shows him a small wooden idol, which Michael thinks is not worth anything. Ray'kele, however, explains that the carving of the man and woman represents a shaman and the woman the shaman loved. The vagueness of the idol is meant to represent one of the shaman's teachings, which is that interpretation is the key to understanding. As Ray'kele begins to leave the cantina, he reminds Michael that an item's value is not always in its material worth, and that the idol could have value beyond money.

Michael remains in the cantina after Ray’kele leaves and remembers he has a book in his jacket called Beyond the Rim, a book that once belonged to his adoptive father, which Michael found in his room after not having looked at it for several years. As he looks it, the bookias taken by Joshua Banai, someone with whom Michael used to be friends before an accident in Michael’s past changed the way people thought about him. Along with Joshua are Dirk and Lorn, all three of whom are drunk even in spite of the Hutt prohibition of alcohol on Tatooine. They taunt Michael until he swings at them, and they get into a bar brawl. Michael is pinned down and Joshua hits him relentlessly, still angry over the accident from their past, until the fight is broken up by Sara Jade, Michael’s former girlfriend and Joshua’s current girlfriend.

SaraJade

Sara Jade.

Joshua, Dirk, and Lorn leave the cantina after Sara threatens to turn them in for breaking prohibition, and Sara helps Michael clean up from his pummeling. They talk for a few minutes, mainly about Sara’s relationship with Joshua and about why Sara is no longer with Michael. She feels that Michael lost the initiative to be someone who took action; whereas he was once someone who dreamed of taking part in a new rebellion against the Hutt Lords, now he is too afraid to do anything that might get someone hurt, stemming from his accident. Sara suggests that if he became the man he once wanted to be, they might have a future together.

Michael returns home, where he finds his father, Luke, and Deak waiting for him. Deak has told Luke about what happened with the sand people, and Luke demands an explanation. Michael explains that he went through the Eastern Dune Sea to avoid disturbing the historical site, angering Luke that his son would be so careless as to enter such a dangerous part of the desert. Michael apologizes to Luke and Deak, and Luke sends him off to do his day’s chores. When Michael leaves, Luke mentions that he doesn’t expect any special treatment because of being Luke’s former brother-in-law, saying that his family never gets special treatment anyway. Deak scoffs, reminding Luke that Michael has had to be saved multiple times and that the Lars family is behind on the moisture farming quotas, so any other family would have been arrested or executed. Deak then leaves, hinting that he is only in the Hutt military for ulterior motives.

Later that night, Michael confides in his adoptive brother, Owen Lars, about what happened with the sand people and at the cantina, for which Owen tells him to shake it off. After going to bed, Michael has a dream where he relives the memories of the last time he flew his Skyhopper, and the dream ends as the ship begins to spiral out of control and crash. Shooting out of bed, Michael realizes he cannot stop thinking about Sara, and decides to go to her house. There, he finds out that Joshua broke up with Sara, saying she humiliated him in front of Dirk, Lorn, and the entire Yarga Cantina.

Michael and Sara decide to go to Smuggler's Ridge, overlooking the Tusken Valley, where Michael used to go to spend time and be alone. Sara realizes that Michael went to her house because he was hoping for a romantic encounter again, and she apologizes for the things she said at the cantina. Michael, however, tells her that she was right and does not need to apologize. After talking some more, Michael tells Sara about a battle Luke fought in during the Rim Wars, when Luke was rescued by someone that Michael thinks is a Jedi Knight. Although Sara laughs at the idea, believing the Jedi to be a myth, she is drawn to Michael and they nearly kiss, but Sara leaves when she realizes she wants to reconcile with Joshua.

Before Michael can leave, he sees a ball of fire descending from the sky. He realizes he is witnessing a starship heading for a crash on the desert floor. The vessel crashes into the Tusken Valley moments later, and Michael, drawn towards it because of his own crash experience, runs towards the valley in a subconscious desire to help. He finds the twisted wreckage of the ship and numerous mangled corpses from within it. As he surveys the site, Michael sees a drone fighter being chased by a Hutt fighter. The Hutt fighter shoots down the drone, which crashes near Michael and into a group of Hutt soldiers who were sent to respond to the crash.

SandPeople

The sand people in the Tusken Valley.

One of the soldiers from the drone crash is Joshua, who Michael finds injured. Although he briefly considers leaving Joshua there to die, Michael carries him towards a cave for safety. After setting the unconscious Joshua down, Michael is attacked by a sand people warrior. Michael, who is injured in the attack, is rescued by a woman who scares off the sand people and mysteriously heals Michael’s wound before he falls unconscious.

Michael wakes up a few hours later, with Joshua still unconscious, and finds a man named Ben in the cave. Although Michael is initially hesitant of Ben, he feels that Ben is trustworthy and begins to talk to him. Ben says that he lives in a settlement a hundred kilometers north of the cave, at which point Michael realizes he is lying and begins to suspect that Ben was in the crashed starship; the fact that Ben comes across as a courteous and selfless individual, traits not often seen on Tatooine, further that belief. Ben is reluctant to say anything, however, and Michael drops the discussion. Michael also suspects that the mysterious woman who saved him was with Ben, but Ben denies any knowledge of her, though he too is curious about the woman as well.

As they continue to talk, they are interrupted by Ben’s companion Logan Amator, and Logan tells them that soldiers have spotted their location. Michael tells them that the soldiers are from the Hutt Cartel, which Ben and Logan did not suspect—further helping to confirm to Michael that they are not from Tatooine. Before they can escape, they realize that Joshua is gone, though he soon returns with other soldiers and places them under arrest. He accuses Michael, as well as Ben and Logan, of trying to kill him, rather than saving his life.

Appearances[]

By type
Characters Creatures Droid models Events Locations
Organizations and titles Sentient species Vehicles and vessels Weapons and technology Miscellanea

Characters

Creatures

Events

Locations

Organizations and titles

Sentient species

Vehicles and vessels

Weapons and technology

Miscellanea

Behind the scenes[]

Production[]

Conception[]

Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One was first conceived by author Brandon Rhea in the late summer of 2007. Prior to its development, the Star Wars canon film re-imaginings were meant to begin with Star Wars: Episode IV, then-called A New Beginning, leaving the canon prequel trilogy intact. Ultimately, however, Rhea stated that "so many ideas for a [re-imagined prequel trilogy] came to me that I couldn't pass up the opportunity," and so set out to conceive and write The Chosen One.[1]

Release[]

The release of the novel’s first draft took place from November 20, 2007 with the release of the draft’s prologue, to August 18, 2008 with the release of the seventeenth chapter. That draft remained incomplete, and it was abandoned in favor of a second draft. The release of that draft began several months later, on January 23, 2009, until that draft was abandoned after the release of the sixteenth chapter on February 20, 2010. Rhea announced later that summer his attention to make some changes to the second draft before proceeding with it further, but those changes did not materialize.

An announcement of the final version of the novel first came on July 20, 2011 with a blog introducing the new setting of the novel as well as its characters, but no release of content followed. However, on August 29, 2012, Rhea finally announced his intention to hold a content release on September 30, 2012. After a few additional blog announcements, Rhea stated that he would be releasing the first four chapters of the novel on that date, a timeframe he met with the release of those chapters on September 29th. The next content release, with an undetermined number of chapters, is scheduled for October 31, 2012.

Reception[]

Upon the initial release of the first edition, The Chosen One was met with fairly positive reviews from online readers. Fans of the canon Trade Federation were happy to see the inclusion of both the Federation and the Neimoidian species, however Star Wars Fanon wiki user Troyb was disappointed when Rhea stated that the Confederacy of Independent Systems would not factor into the novel or the Alternative Saga.[2] Initial reviews on TheForce.Net were equally positive, when many users remarking that they felt it was an enjoyable alternate universe story with interesting potential.

Some tempered feedback came from Atarumaster88, also a user on Star Wars Fanon, who remarked that the similarity of the opening chapters to The Phantom Menace made it seem that "someone took a script of Episode I and made changes with a red pen." He noticed that while it was an intentional similarity, it wasn't "particularly original."[2] Ataru also remarked that it "Reads almost exactly like an Episode I novelization,"[3] and that if "I wanted to read Episode I, I would, well, read or watch Ep. I."[4]

Reviews became more positive once the focus shifted to the plot on Tatooine. Atarumaster88 praised Annikin Skywalker's introduction, saying it was "nicely detailed and gave us a good picture of this character,"[5] as well as that Annikin could be a "Good character if done well, dismal character if handled improperly." Unit 8311 on Star Wars Fanon enjoyed seeing Annikin "older rather than a whiny nine-year old."[6]

Sarus, however, was less well received than Sarus, casting negative lights onto the under-featured Ophuchi. Atarumaster88 remarked that "Nobody at all questions Sarus's interpretation or validity of his prophecy" when he declared Annikin to be the Chosen One, making it appear that Sarus was manipulating the minds of the characters.[7]

Nonetheless, on the whole, most reviews were favorable, with reviewers noting that the second draft was an improvement over the first.

Beginning with the release of the first four chapters of the latest version of The Chosen One, reviews have continued to be overwhelmingly positive. Readers on Star Wars Fanon, TheStarWarsRP.Com, and TheForce.Net have remarked that they feel the character of Michael Lars is likable and relatable, and that the story has piqued their attention. Some criticism was leveled at the fifth chapter, with some readers noting issues with flow and the wording of certain sections. Rhea has noted that he was aware of the flaws and chose to release the chapter anyway so he could continue on with the novel, with the plan of coming back and revising the fifth chapter later.

Notes and references[]

External links[]

Advertisement