STAR WARS: ROGUE PLANET

By: Andrew Osmond
Date: Friday, September 15, 2000

Star Wars: Rogue Planet, available in hardback, is the first Lucas tie-in to be set around the time of Phantom Menace (not counting Terry Brooks' book of the film). As such, it occupies an interesting position in spin-offery. Most such books are written with what might be called a negative requirement: avoid contradicting anything that's happened on screen. But Rogue Planet bridges the gap between Menace and the yet-to-be-seen Episode 2. Once upon a time, this wouldn't have meant much. Readers may recall Alan Dean Foster's enjoyable Splinter of the Mind's Eye, written before Empire Strikes Back, with a very obvious (ahem) tension between Luke and Leia, plus a premature Luke-Vader duel. But these days, Star Wars books are meant to be consistent forward and backward. It's safe to presume Bear wrote Rogue Planet to guidelines laid down from above, guides which may be clues to the next film.

The book is set three years after Menace. Anakin is twelve years old. While a superb Jedi student, the lad retains a reckless side; the book opens with him narrowly surviving another lethal race. 'I burn like a sun inside!' he tells his concerned teachers (Mace Windu has a cameo). They pack him and Obi-Wan on a mission to find a lost apprentice Jedi. The expedition takes them to the world of Zonama Sekot, a planet where symbiosis is the rule, and inhabitants have a most unusual way of building spacecraft. But Zonama Sekot also catches the eye of an ambitious Republic Commander, with power over what's left of the Trade Federationa commander called Tarkin...

Rogue Planet is a case of the ideas being more interesting than the story. Certainly, there are plenty of suggestions about where the saga will be heading. Anakin now regards Obi-Wan as both father and hero, while the older man's love for a new son is mixed with intense fears and forebodings. The Jedi ability to see into possible futures is emphasized. Given the reader's own foreknowledge, it all suggests a tone nearer Dune than Flash Gordon; it'll be interesting to see how the fatalism is treated in the movies. There's also some nice foreshadowing with the baddies. We get our first glimpse of a very familiar space station, and toward the end there's the first meeting of two fearsome colleagues-to-be.

Yet the book is strictly average. It doesn't help that Obi-Wan and Anakin were hardly the greatest presences in Phantom Menace. Despite the potential in their relationship, they're little more than ciphers on the page. Yes, we see some of Anakin's dark side; in fact it's heavily signposted from the start, more Tell than Show. One never gets a sense of what makes the boy tick, how the parts of his personality fit together. I'd have liked more development of one suggestion, that Anakin 'tested his mother again and again, to make sure she loved him.' More in Part Two perhaps? Of the other characters, Tarkin comes off quite well, as does his suspicious ally Raith Seinar. Against that, none of the Zonoma Sekot cast register, making the reader indifferent to their fate.


Spin-off writers are always faced with the choice of whether to imitate or complement the screen material. Bear has a few action sequences, most notably the opening race in a garbage pit, but they don't always work, because it's tricky to envision what's happening. Just to be contrary, one of the big climactic battles takes place off-page, but this only leaves the reader feeling short-changed. A no-win situation? Personally, I'd have liked more about Zonama Sekot, its people and history, with a fuller exposition of the building of Anakin's spaceship, an evocative sequence that feels oddly cut-off. In all, perhaps Rogue Planet would have been better if it hadn't been a Star Wars book.