Your writing has improved tremendously and I wished I could do that.

The following is my cast list for The New Dawn. As TND is a rewrite of The Phantom Menace, which was filmed in 1997, I chose go with actors who were active back then* — active, and around the right ages to play the parts.

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KENNETH BRANAGH as OBI-WAN KENOBI



ILLYA WOLOSHYN as ANAKIN SKYWALKER



NAOMI WATTS as SIRI TACHI



ALANNAH MYLES as ZUL DANAAN



SARAH GADON as NASHIRA DUQUESNE



LANCE HENRIKSEN as PRE VIZSLA



NICHELLE NICHOLS as LWA



JOEL EDGERTON as OWEN LARS



LINDSAY WAGNER as NELLITH SKYWALKER



JIMMY SMITS as CAPT. BAIL ORGANA



CATHERINE ZETA-JONES as CMDR. RAIA VANESS



SAMUEL L. JACKSON as MACE WINDU



IMAN as ADI GALLIA



JEFFREY COMBS as MARQUS DESAAD



JACKIE EARLE HALEY as CRAETORIUS



EWAN MCGREGOR as QUI-GON JINN

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*Sarah Gadon actually didn't begin her career 'til 1998, a year after filming on TPM wrapped up, but I felt the chronology was close enough to include her, anyway.

I originally considered Brooke Shields for the part, but then I realized she would've been too young in the late '90s to have believably portrayed the mother of two mostly grown children.

Here's a description I typed up about the Clone Wars. It isn't info anyone needs to follow the story of my PT, but I thought it would be of interest to anyone curious to know more about the Mandalorians and the state of the SW Galaxy at this point in time.

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Prior to the First Clone War — or the New Mandalorian War as it was known at the time — the Mandalorian civilization had been at peace with the Galactic Republic for almost 4000 years. This long-standing peace was broken when Ranah Teh Naast — an insane clone — rose to power in Mandalorian Space and crowned herself Mandalore the Destroyer.

An incredibly charismatic ruler, Mandalore the Destroyer convinced most of her subjects that after four millennia of peace, the Mandalorian people had fallen into complacency and stagnation through close association with the Republic. To avoid eradication through cultural assimilation, they would have to return to their roots — as starfaring conquerors.

Having themselves grown idle in the thousand years following the New Sith Wars, the Republic hadn't a large standing army or fleet when the Mandalorians attacked. The Jedi of the Alderaanian Order — who had retained a sizable, autonomous fleet — were alone left to defend Republic Space when the Mandalorians began their onslaught. The Alderaanian Jedi failed to stop the berserkers. Capturing/destroying many key hyperlanes, shipyards, and bases, the Mandalorians soon captured Alderaan itself. The Jedi temples and academies on the planet were razed, the Jedi themselves hunted down. Those Jedi not immediately slain were imprisoned aboard dungeon ships, where they were subjected to cruel and obscene scientific experiments. The Order of Alderaan ceased to exist, and with it, its protection.

The Alderaanian Order vanquished, the Mandalorians had secured a foothold in Republic Space, winning them a major victory, yet Mandalore's own unstable and deteriorating mind proved her undoing. While the nascent Republic Starfleet aided by the Coruscanti Jedi began making slow but steady progress against the Mandalorian war machine, Mandalore herself stopped consulting her aides and advisers and executed a series of rash and half-baked strategic maneuvers wholly of her own devise. The tide turned.

As the end drew nigh, the Mandalorians found themselves facing annihilation at the hands of the Republic Starfleet, yet Mandalore — conceited and insane — refused to make peace. With no alternatives to explore, a faction of Mandalorian dissidents assembled and a coup was staged; the mad clone was assassinated.

The war with the Republic was over, be there was to be no peace for the Mandalorians. The Mandalorian throne vacant, various Mandalorian leaders made claims for succession. When compromise could not be reached, civil war resulted. This civil war lasted sixteen years. With the end of those sixteen years, their capital world was left an irradiated wasteland, their civilization in ruin.


In the years following the close of the First Clone War, many systems grew disenchanted with the Republic for having failed to protect them and their interests during the conflict with the Mandalorians and began calling for reform within the Senate. The Senate refused to take their entreaties to heart, all but ignoring them.

When Count Tyrann Dohku of Serreno, a former Jedi master who had left the Coruscanti Order following disillusionment with their principles, came out of seclusion and became their spokesman, these disenchanted systems came together as a unified secessionist movement known as the Confederacy of Independent systems. Their demands for autonomy were made peacefully, diplomatically, but the Senate refused to offer any concessions or make any compromises, leading to increased enmity between the two sides.

Tensions came to a head when Republican spies were captured and imprisoned on the Separatist planet Geonosis. Rather than operating through proper channels, the Senate sent a squad of Jedi in to forcibly extract the prisoners from captivity; the ensuing battle resulted in hundreds of casualties on both sides. In the aftermath, the Confederacy ended all talks with the Republic and declared its independence; the Republic, in response, declared war against the Confederacy.

Following the First Clone War, neither the Republic nor Confederacy had populations sizable enough to support considerable armed forces. To overcome this handicap, the Separatists set about building an army of advanced battle 'droids. The Republic, in turn, contracted Spaarti Creations — a large biotech firm specialized in cloning — to grow genetically modified super-soldiers for use against the Separatists. In a year's time, the war began in earnest.

The war raged on for long, terrible years. Several Jedi, feeling the Republic was not on the side of the angels, defected to the Confederacy. Both the Republic and Confederacy became increasingly corrupt, committing countless atrocities. Politicians with loyalties and connections to the Starfleet were elected into the Republic Senate, leading the government to become evermore militant in orientation.

The Second Clone War ended with the Battle of Coruscant and the Mission to Mustafar. Aboard his flagship the Invisible Hand, Dohku was slain in a duel against his own son, Jard. The other leaders of the Confederacy, in hiding on Mustafar, were massacred by a Jedi assassin. The head of the Confederacy cut off, the body soon died. The Republic was victorious.

In the wake of the Confederacy's defeat, the Galactic Republic reformed into the Galactic Empire. Cos Dashit — an admiral who had won many major victories for the Republic during the First Clone War and the first-fourth of the Second — was crowned emperor. The Senate — which had been headed by a democratically elected president — was now headed by a supreme chancellor, the personally appointed representative of the emperor himself.


The seeds for the Third Clone War were planted and began sprouting while the Second Clone War was still underway.

Iain Cadmus, the atha prime — or head clonemaster — of Spaarti Creations began accruing more and more power within the company, working his way up the hierarchical ladder until he became CEO of Spaarti Creations. Once in power, he began utilizing the resources at his disposal to execute his grand dream: the establishment of a perfect civilization based on eugenics and bioengineering. Head of the Athan Directorate, he personally solicited the creation of a new batch of clones — clones genetically modified for complete subservience to him and his fellow athas. Quietly deposing and replacing important figures in the Cartao government with obedient replicas, in short months the athas became the silent rulers of Cartao.

The athas wasted no time making plans to spread their influence beyond Cartao. Meetings with representatives from the Arkanian Dominion and Kamino — independent states also enamored with genetics and selective breeding — pacts were signed, a mutually beneficial alliance created. Meanwhile, Spaarti Creations continued producing clone shocktroopers for the Republic Starfleet. These clones, like the figureheads installed in the upper echelons of the Cartao government, were engineered with innate loyalty to the athas encoded in their genes.

A year into Emperor Dashit's reign, from Cartao, Order 66 was issued over a secure hyperwave frequency to all clones throughout Imperial Space. Receiving this transmission, the shocktroopers betrayed their Imperial superiors, murdering them, taking command of their ships and installations. Within weeks, Cartao was capital of a star-spanning superpower which eclipsed the Empire itself. Thus began the Third Clone War.

The combined forces of the Cartan Autonomy, Arkanian Dominion, and Kaminoans were ruthless in the establishment of their meritocracy. They invaded world after world. Those populations they conquered, they drafted into compulsory eugenics programs; those populations they didn't, they exterminated with bio-weapons. The Imperial Starfleet, left largely with a fleet of older model Venator-class Star Defenders, struggled to hold its own against the Tripartite Warfleet, which possessed the newer, more advanced Imperator-class Star Destroyers. Yet the besieged Empire preserved, and with time recovered enough from the initial assaults to reacquire captured planets and resources, placing it on roughly equal footing with the Tripartite.