Rookie One

"Rookie One" is the handle of an otherwise unnamed Rebel pilot.

Biography
"Uuuh.. which way to the hangar?"

- Rookie One

Rookie One was a farmboy from Tatooine, who lost his parents after an accident early in his life. In Mos Eisley he met with the rebel Turland Hack while training. Impressed by the young hotshot, Hack wanted to help the rookie become the best in the fleet.

Soon after his training by the Anchorhead Base, Rookie One was essential to the assault against the Devastator along with his educator, Ru Murleen, after which, he flew to Mos Eisley and caused some casualities to the Imperial forces that attacked the city.

He fought in the Battle of Yavin, under Blue Squadron where he managed to neutralize a giant cannon on the Death Star's surface. There are indications that he also participated in the Trench Run, where Jake Farrell saved his life.  Warning:  The following section is ambiguously canon. After the battle, Rookie's whereabouts are uncertain. There is some indication that he was a staff of the Gamma Base or Echo Base and had a minor action in the Battle of Hoth flying a Snowspeeder under the Rogue Squadron. He was one of the last who fought his way in the occupied Echo Base until the hangar, in order to escape the planet in his X-wing on the nick of time.

Some time later, he rescued the freighter Corellia Star on the planet Dreighton, which gave the Alliance hints on a secret Imperial project on Belt of Arah. Being a part of the Rascal Group, Rookie destroyed the Imperial mining facility there, but soon after they received an attack and Rookie witnessed the Phantom TIEs, being the sole survivor of the group. With this information, Rookie traveled to Imdaar and with the cooperation of Ru Murleen, he managed to infiltrate the Terror. The couple captured a TIE phantom, and destroyed the facility before surrendering it to the Alliance.

After the mission was over, it is known that the two Rebels were romantically involved.

Behind the scenes
Rookie One is the character of the games Star Wars: Rebel Assault and its sequel. In the first game, his name and face do not appear, and his gender is customizable, so that the players can identify themselves with the character. According to Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, however, Rookie is male.

He is portrayed by Jamison Jones in Rebel Assault II.

It is no coincidence that Rookie One and Luke Skywalker have much in common, it is deliberately done this way by LucasArts to make the player feel like Luke Skywalker from the Original Trilogy.

Rookie One also happens to be the handle which Ace Azzameen is assigned during his training missions.

Non-canonical bio
The first game is S-canon and Rookie One does feats that don't fit in the timeline, like repelling an AT-ST assault on Mos Eisley which is frowned by fans (later sources confirm a Skirmish in Mos Eisley which can be related to it), participating in the Battle of Hoth under the Gamma Base while the game takes place before Hoth's colonization, and most of all, destroying the Death Star instead of Luke. For obvious reasons, these have been silenced from his 'biography' but some of them should partially bear some amounts of canonicity.

As for the 'Hoth' sequence, it is totally unrelated to the rest of the story which is centered about the Death Star. It just intermits itself without contributing anything to the storyline. After the Rebels and Rookie is seen leaving the base, the Death Star plot continues as if uninterrupted.

It is not thus clear if it should be 'deleted' altogether from the canon, if it should be regarded as having occurred on a similar planet other than Hoth, or, if we prefer to value it, we should consider the facts canonical, but ignore the time it is presented. Therefore we can retroactively consider it to happen later than the game's timeframe, in the time when Hoth was colonized, despite appearing in the middle of the story.

In the latter case, this is a semi-canonical indication that Rookie One was one of the staff of the actual Echo Base and participated in the Battle and this is incorporated in the biography, of course in the appropriate time. However, all this is only a matter of subjective interpretation.

It is possible that Rookie One shot the Death Star thermal exhaust port as shown in the game, but his proton torpedoes only impacted on the surface and didn't go in.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Rebel Assault
 * Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire