Post by Falconer on Jul 19, 2018 11:41:04 GMT -6
Hope you don’t mind me spamming the boards with fan material I’ve dug up from the 90s. This one is pretty funny.
*Subj: What really happened after the last command
*Date: 95-12-17 11:15:54 EST
*From: Phoenix@chdpf.demon.co.uk (Colin Ford)
I found this on the newsgroups and had a good giggle at it, someone
asked for it ages ago so here it is. It's not mine and if anyone knows
who Grand Admiral Sean is pass me his mail address and I pass on a
thank you note
Here it is: the long awaited (?) update of "How Zahn Could
Fix This Mess," now revised to include references to Dark Empire II,
Empire's End, Darksaber, and the Corellian Trilogy.
******************************************************************************
It seems that most people agree that the quality of SW books
has been in a continuous nose-dive since the end of Zahn's trilogy. I
know that there are those who disagree. Let me warn you now: this
posting is not for you!!! Rather, this is for those who feel that
Zahn, in his next book, should negate the out-of-character,
off-the-mark, inconsistant, character-assassinating, and totally
un-Star Wars "novels" that came after The Last Command.
The following scenario is, admittedly, a done-to-death writing
convention that has been used in just about every sit-com, soap opera,
cartoon, and Star Trek series. Yes, it is the dreaded, "It was all a
dream" explanation. However, as every author buries our heroes
deeper and deeper in inconsistancies and out-of-character actions, it
seems to be the best, if not the only, way to redeem them. "Desperate
times call for desperate measures," and these are desperate times.
"It is a dark time for the rebellion..." and all that. Besides, Mr.
Zahn would be erasing the messes that other writers have created, not
his own.
My suggestion: Mr. Zahn should make this "dream" explanation
into his second chapter. Why, you might ask, not denounce everything
else right off the bat? Why wait for chapter two? Simple: Chapter 1
is reserved for the Empire. So far, Zahn is the only one who has
caught on that all the Star Wars movies start with a Star Destroyer.
It may not be the first thing on the screen, but the first scene
ALWAYS includes one. I would assume that his first chapter would
consist mainly of Captain Pellaeon getting the fleet ready to move in
for the final campaign. And now:
****************************************************************************
CHAPTER TWO
Luke's breathing got heavier and faster until he suddenly
snapped up and swatted the light on.
"Callista! No!" he shouted, not quite out of his dream.
Beside him, Mara stirred and mumbled, "Huh? What?"
"It was a dream," Luke realized, now fully awake.
"Uh... What dream?" the drowsy Mara replied.
Luke started, "It was horrible. I fell to the Dark Side, and..."
Mara interrupted, "So what? You always have that nightmare .
Now go back to sleep. It's 3:00 in the morning."
"But it seemed so real," Luke continued. "All of a sudden,
there I was, in the middle of Imperial City. The Imperials had taken
over the planet, and I crashed a Star Destroyer on it."
"So you dreamed that Thrawn came back for revenge and managed
to take over Coruscant. Big deal. I hear that most of the military
planners have the same nightmare. It's nothing new. Who in their
right mind would give you command of a Star Destroyer, even in a
dream, is beyond me. Now turn off the light and go to sleep," Mara
said, pulling her pillow over her head.
"But it wasn't the Grand Admiral. It was just some Imperial
factions," he explained.
"Uh huh, sure. And how did they manage that?" came Mara's
voice from under the pillow.
"I don't know," he replied. "They were just...there. And
then I found out that the Emperor had returned, and then..."
At the mention of her former master, Mara sat up, and said,
"You must have been probing my mind in your sleep. I have that dream
all the time."
"You do?" Luke said, quite surprised.
"Yeah," she said. "The Emperor comes back and wants to know
why I married you instead of killed you."
"What do you tell him?"
"Actually, before I can answer, I'm usually helping you and
Vader hack him up. Anyway, good night!" She crashed down into her
pillow again.
"Well, I haven't been probing your mind in my sleep," he
replied. "In my dream, the Emperor came back into a clone of himself.
Then he invited me to join the Dark Side, and I just went along."
"And why did you do that?" said the increasingly tired voice
of his wife.
"I don't know..." Luke said. "I just...did. But Leia helped
me out of it and we killed the Emperor again."
"Good for you. Now go to sleep."
"But there's more. He came back again a few months later.
Sort of like one of those bad chain ads on the holonet. And he was
blowing up planets again. And he had the ability to turn any of his
servants into Dark Siders, whether or not they were Force sensitive.
Sort of like 'Zap! You're a Dark Jedi!' But I managed to hold out
against them with some potential Jedi I found. I actually stumbled
across a planet full of decendants of the Jedi, and they all had Force
potential."
"Gee, a whole planet full. Sure. One or two Jedi, here and
there, maybe, but there's no way the Emperor would have missed a whole
planet full of them."
"I don't know how he missed them. But anyway, we killed the
Emperor a third time, and he tried to possess the body of one of Han
and Leia's kids, but a dying Jedi got in the way, so he took the
Emperor with him when he died."
"Tried to possess another body? How could he do that?"
"I don't know. But we were all worried about the possibility
of him coming back again."
Mara, now quite annoyed, replied, "Well, don't worry about him
coming back. He's dead. And even if he did come back, I would be the
first to know. Now shut off that light. I've heard enough about the
Emperor for tonight - or this morning - or whatever this is."
"But there's more," Luke insisted. "I started a Jedi academy."
"Don't tell me, let me guess...on Dagobah?" came the
pillow-muffled voice.
"No. On Yavin 4. And there was this 4,000 year old Sith lord
that tried to possess my students."
"Trying to possess your students, huh? Why didn't you just
leave?"
"I don't know," Luke replied. "Even after he almost killed
me, I still stayed there."
Mara, now realizing that she would not get to sleep until Luke
was done, sat up and asked, "So this is when I come in and destroy the
ghost that tried to kill you, right?"
"Actually, no. You didn't even know it had happened. And
what's even more bizzarre, neither did Leia."
"You're right. That is strange. Why didn't we know?"
"I don't know," Luke replied again. "At the same time, there
was this ship that could destroy stars."
"A super Death Star, right?"
"No," Luke said. "A fighter sized ship that could fire a
torpedo and was indestructible. In fact, Han was flying it while
being chased by four Star Destroyers, and they couldn't destroy it.
He actually ran it through one of them as a diversion to get to
hyperspace. Destroyed the Destroyer, but Han came out just fine."
"So," Mara asked, "if Han could run it through one of the Star
Destroyers that was chasing him, why didn't he just run it through the
rest of them and be done with them all?"
"I don't know," Luke said. "Anyway, the thing eventually got
sucked into a black hole, along with the prototype Death Star."
"Don't tell me the Death Star came back again, too?"
"No," Luke replied, "it was the prototype Death Star."
"Luke, you yourself blew up the prototype a long time ago.
What, do you think the Emperor would have built a prototype planet
smashing Super-Laser and then just left it in storage?"
"You're right. What a strange dream."
Mara was about to tell Luke to shut the lights off again when
she noticed the handeled mug with a strange brown liquid in it sitting
on the night stand on Luke's side of the bed. "You've been drinking
one of Lando's exotic concoctions again, haven't you? How many times
have I warned you not to drink that hot chocolate stuff late at
night?"
"Funny you should mention Lando. He was in my dream, too."
"As strange as this dream is, I guess he must have gotten a
real money making enterprise going - and kept it. Right?"
"Well, it was a strange dream - but not THAT strange.
Actually, he was hitting up on you."
Mara laughed out loud. "You know, I wish he would. Just to
see the look on his face when I turn him down. Must've been fun to
watch in that dream."
"Actually, no. In the dream, you took him up on it. You took
to living with him and wearing his clothes, but then turned around and
denied the whole thing."
"I did WHAT!? You have GOT to be kidding. There's no way I'd
let Lando... I'd never... I'd sooner take my lightsaber and cut him
in half!"
"Actually, I don't think you had that lightsaber in my dream.
At least, I never saw it."
"Please, Luke. Tell me YOU cut him in half! Tell me that YOU
saved me from that fate worse than death. That's almost as bad as if
C'baoth got me. If you didn't kill him, at least tell me that you put
ME out of my misery!"
"Sorry. I didn't."
"Why not!?"
"I don't know," Luke said again. "I didn't seem to care. It
was terrible. I felt like I was nobody for a while. I had no
emotions when Lando was hitting on you, and then once you were
intimate, I didn't care. About you, that is. I still cared about Han,
Leia, and their kids. Their kids were kidnapped at one point in my
dream."
Mara, more than a little angry about Luke's dream,
nevertheless questioned this new information. "You mean to tell me
that someone actually got through the Noghri? Or did Leia actually
manage to get the Noghri to stop surrounding her and the kids in your
dream?" As she said this, she got a strange feeling that something
was amiss. "Mahk?" she said in no particular direction. The door
slid open and a Noghri bodyguard appeared with a wicked looking knife
in his hand.
"What is wrong, Consort of the Son of Vader?" he said in a
gravelly voice.
"Nothing," Mara said. "Just checking to see if you were
hiding under the bed again. Just last week I caught one of you under
there."
"We are here to protect the Son of Vader. The bed presents an
excellent hiding space to ambush those who would harm him. There are
some new bodyguards who have not yet been told of your preferences in
this matter and seek to take advantage of the hiding place to better
protect the Son of Vader. I shall talk to the others about this. Is
there anything else?"
Mara shook her head. "No. I'm sorry about bothering you."
"Sleep well, Consort of the Son of Vader." The door slid shut
behind the Noghri. "Why does he still call me 'Consort'? I don't
know how many times I've told him to stop it."
"We tried to work something out, remember?" Luke pointed out.
"Oh, yeah, we did. It's just that it works a lot better for
Han. I mean, 'Mara clan Skywalker' just doesn't sound as good as 'Han
clan Solo'. Even 'Mara clan Jade' doesn't sound right. But now, back
to this dream."
"Well, there weren't any Noghri in my dream. Strange. I see
them often enough. Anyhow, there was this incident in the Corellian
system where someone was blowing up stars in an attempt to secede from
the New Republic."
"Wait a minute. I thought you said that thing got sucked into
a black hole?"
"No, it was a different one."
"Another star killing super weapon?"
"Well, yeah. But the really strange thing was, Han and Leia
thought you did it."
"Luke this is ridiculous. Why would I destroy stars?"
"They figured you might want to set up a new Empire with
yourself in charge. But they came around. It turned out that one of
the people involved in the plot was Han's evil twin cousin."
"Twin cousin? Luke, you're scaring me."
"I mean, they looked like each other. Anyway, at this other
part of the dream, I was aboard some enormous ship that was taking
aliens and turning them into Stormtroopers. There were even these
Basic-speaking Gamorreans that thought they were Stormtroopers."
"You're right, it is a strange dream. Talking Gamorreans.
They must have looked funny in Stormtrooper armor, though."
"They sure did. Then there was this ghost Jedi."
Mara groaned. "Another one?"
"Not a Sith Lord," Luke said. "She had given her life to stop
the ship, and her spirit was stuck in it. She came back to life in a
leggy blonde student of mine and we fell in love, but then she left me
because she couldn't get her Jedi skills back."
"So THAT's what this is all about. You've been fantasizing
about someone else and made up this elaborate story to cover it up.
Then you wind up confessing, anyway. I told you that farm-boy honesty
was going to get you into trouble. Hmm. And you try to accuse me of
being involved with Lando. Some noble Jedi you are."
Luke didn't need the Force to know that he was in trouble.
"It was just a dream! I couldn't help it! It just happened! Just
like the girl from that planet of Jedi that I fell in love with, only
she died.
"Luke! How could you! Dreaming of other women..."
"Mara, please! It was only a dream! It doesn't mean anything."
"No, you usually dream about things that you have seen before
and thought about. You probably saw these girls somewhere and
regretted that I'm not a blonde. I'm too tired to talk about it now,
but tomorrow morning, we'll have a long discussion."
Luke got a face full of Mara's long red-gold hair as she
leaned over him to turn off the lights. "But Mara, I didn't mean..."
"Go to sleep. Don't talk to me again tonight. Good night."
Mara turned her head away from her husband and ran through some Jedi
relaxation techniques that he had taught her.
With this, Luke lay back down, but couldn't sleep. The dream
seemed so real. He lay awake trying to figure out what it all ment,
whether there was any sense to be made out of the jumble of episodes
that had tormented his rest. After about 20 minutes, a new thought
dawned on him. He sat up and snapped on the lights again.
"Uhhh...What is it now?" asked Mara, feeling quite annoyed at
being awakened again.
"I've got it! I know what it is!" Luke said triumphantly.
"It was a Jedi vision! That explains why I've never seen some of
those people before. That's why my emotions were mixed up."
"Are you saying that all those things are going to happen in
the future? Well, don't worry, 'cause they won't. I don't have much
confidence in Jedi visions of the future. Or is this just your way of
trying to get out of the trouble you're in? Are you just making up
another excuse for your fantasies?"
"No, I'm not!" Luke defended. "Besides, it didn't seem like
the future. More like the past."
"But none of that ever happened."
"I know," Luke said. "It must have been an alternate past."
"Sure. Alternate pasts. I knew I should have thought twice
about marrying a Jedi. Of course, if what you say is true, and I
consider the alternative... never mind."
"No, really!" Luke replied. "I saw one once on Dagobah. I
saw that if Jabba the Hutt had let you come along to the Sarlacc Pit,
you would have succeeded in killing me.
"Don't go digging up my past again. I've put it behind me.
You of all people should know that."
"I didn't mean it that way, Mara. I meant that I could have
been seeing what would have happened if something else didn't happen.
I wonder what it was..."
"While you're wondering, could I get some sleep? Please?"
"Oh, all right," Luke said as he turned the lights off.
Luke was too interested in his vision to sleep. He looked to
the Force for insight into the meaning of the vision, hoping to figure
out what could have made the difference. After a half hour of
dead-ends, it suddenly came to him.
"I've got it!" he shouted, as he turned the lights on again.
"Uhhh...fine. Now turn off the lights."
"Don't you want to know what it was?"
"No, and if you don't shut up about it, I'll make you sleep on
the couch for the next week. Wait a minute - that's probably what you
want, isn't it? Oh, all right. What was it?"
"The lightsaber!" Luke said, a little too loud for this time
of night. "I gave you my father's lightsaber! That's why all those
things never happened!" he explained excitedly.
Mara felt a tremor in the Force coming from the next room. She
groaned, "Oh, no..." and reached out with the Force. "You're really
lucky, you know that? You were just about to get in even more trouble
than you're already in," Mara said with an obviously softer voice.
"What's wrong?" Luke replied, not quite catching on.
"All your shouting almost woke the kids up. And you know how
hard it is to get them back to sleep. Now keep it down."
"Sorry," Luke said, much quieter.
"That's an interesting interpretation. But I don't think that
some of those things would have happened anyway. I seriously doubt
that the Emperor would return and you'd meet a 4,000 year old Sith
Lord if you didn't give me the lightsaber."
"You're right," Luke said. "I guess it must have started as
just a dream, and then a Jedi vision popped up in the middle of it.
That might explain why you didn't show up until later. Well, I guess
I could turn off the lights now."
Mara stopped him. "Just a minute. Before you do that, I want
you to tell me something. If this was a vision, and if some of those
things would have happened if you hadn't given me that lightsaber, are
you still glad you did, or do you wish you didn't?"
"Why do you think I would wish I didn't?"
"Well, you seemed to come out of that pretty well. You got
your blonde, and Lando got me. So I want to know if you honestly wish
that it happened."
"How could you even think that I would want that to happen?"
Luke said, getting a bit louder.
"Shhh!" Mara whispered. "Maybe because you had no feelings
for me in this dream, or vision, or whatever it was. Or perhaps you
wish I looked different."
"Actually, for a while, you did. When you first showed up,
your hair was shorter, and sort of a red-brown color. Then it turned
back. Then auburn again, then normal again.""
"Get real. That's about as likely as this whole Lando thing.
I don't dye my hair. Why would I do that?"
"I don't..."
"Yeah, yeah, you don't know."
"It was kind of interesting when you and Callista got a chance
to talk together..."
"Who is Callista? Never mind, I think I know."
"She asked you if you were attracted to me at one time."
Mara got an evil look on her face as she briefly contemplated
some wonderfully wicked things she'd like to say to such a person.
"So what did I tell her?"
"Something about how you had once wanted to kill me, so it
wouldn't work out."
"At least THAT sounds familiar. We always used to tell people
that, remember?"
"Sure do."
"But I suppose the only reason I said that in your dream was
because of that ...Lando business."
"Actually, that was when you started denying it. By the way,
now that you've mentioned Lando again..."
"No! I don't want to hear any more about Lando in your
dream!" Mara said, her voice rising a few decibels.
"No, not in my dream," Luke reassured her. "I think you were
right. Maybe it was one of his concoctions that brought this on. But
not the chocolate. I think it was that bowl of that strange spiced
stew. My stomach is a little upset. I guess that might explain how
that incompetent female Imperial Admiral could lose three out of four
Star Destroyers and still be given command of a Super Star Destroyer
and team up with Thrawn's second-in-command."
"WHAT? Well... I don't see why not. Those indigestion dreams
can get really weird sometimes. They never seem to make any sense."
"Tell me about it. Nothing was the least bit logical. I
think that dream may have actually made my indigestion worse. Maybe I
can use a Jedi technique to ease the pain," Luke said.
"Actually, I have a better idea," Mara volunteered. "If you
know a Jedi technique to help you forget things, use it. Now, turn
off the light."
"Sure," Luke said and flicked the lights off. "I don't
suppose you'd want to hear about the Death Star type thing the Hutts
were building?"
"No. Now go to sleep."
It really was a strange, pointless dream, he thought. But
there was a Jedi vision mixed in there. An alternate past could never
be changed, but perhaps there was a lesson in it for the present.
Luke fell asleep contemplating what this could be.
****************************************************************************
There you have it. A scenario to explain all the unlikely
events that have recently transpired in recent books about the galaxy
"Far, far away." Yes, it does nothing to advance a plot, but then,
neither did the other books. Hope you enjoyed it.
****************************************************************************
I knew all along... Had to be a mistake. - C-3PO, the Empire Strikes Back
****************************************************************************
MTFBWY
Grand Admiral Sean
