I'm pretty sure they got Ralph McQuarrie-themed Christmas cards as well. That was a standard practice at Lucasfilm back in the day. 
Star Wars: Episode VII: The Nerd Rage Awakens
- Thread starter cooleddie74
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Not really since the mind and spirit was the original Palpatine. Though further retcons established that he only transferred his body to a clone after his death in ROTJ and that he went insane as a result of becoming disembodied post-ROTJ.
Furthermore the writing and conception of the first DE I believe occurred BEFORE the Thrawn Trilogy (which introduced the idea of clone madness) and why they had to insert in a battle before the story telling of how the Rebels lost Coruscant and the Imperials started another Civil War with each other. If we follow original intent it would have been Dark Empire -> Thrawn Trilogy.
I'm pretty sure they got Ralph McQuarrie-themed Christmas cards as well. That was a standard practice at Lucasfilm back in the day.
As coveted as those would be, I was thinking more along the lines of their own Ewok, or sound studio, or something...
It is unfortunate there were so many super-weapons in the early EU but it was basically limited to the Dark Empire comics and the Kevin Anderson novels. I believe the only one outside of that was the "Eye of Palpatine" dreadnought in that terrible novel... Planet of Twilight?
Doctorwhovian
Fleet Captain
Yeah, the Barbera Hambly novels were pretty bad. Main problem I think was that they were kind of boring IMO. Darksaber (By Kevin J Anderson) takes place in between them, and was kind of a really goofy, over the top story involving the Hutts building a Death Star that looks like a giant lightsaber (The "Darksaber"). It's notable as being one of the first EU to off a character from the films, although a minor one, Crix Madine who did part of the briefing in ROTJ.
Apart from the Eye and Darksaber, they was also the World Devestators from Dark Empire (Which pretty much scooped up cities like a vacuum cleaner and crapped out fighters and droids), the Galaxy Gun from Dark Empire II (Basically a Death Star but with missiles that can go through hyperspace instead of a big laser), the Death Star Prototype and Sun Crusher from Kevin J Anderson's Jedi Academy, Centerpoint station from the Correlian trilogy (Which also destroyed stars), and probably a few others that I can't think of right now-and that's not even counting what the Vong stuff brought out.
Although the more recent EU isn't exactly free of this either. The Knights of The Old Republic game had the Star Forge, and the still-canon Clone Wars series had the Malevolence.
I remember at the time that the Stackpole and Allston X-wing novels and comics were seen as a much needed break from the OTT nature of the Veitch and Kevin J. Anderson EU. Even then they had their share of silliness and Gary Stu/Mary Sue stuff.
Regarding Dark Empire, it had it's origins as a marvel project, and I think was even advertised in Marvel fanfare (I think that was the name of their 'news'/business magazine). The original concept I think involved Vader being cloned, I think. Despite the problems with the story, DE was still kind of fun, with some neat moments such as Luke taking down a walker with the force, more or less, and Leia starting to embrace her Jedi heritage more (Which of course, was mostly ignored by Bantam later on, although Del Rey made her a full Jedi by the time of the NJO/Dark Nest/Legacy).
Apart from the Eye and Darksaber, they was also the World Devestators from Dark Empire (Which pretty much scooped up cities like a vacuum cleaner and crapped out fighters and droids), the Galaxy Gun from Dark Empire II (Basically a Death Star but with missiles that can go through hyperspace instead of a big laser), the Death Star Prototype and Sun Crusher from Kevin J Anderson's Jedi Academy, Centerpoint station from the Correlian trilogy (Which also destroyed stars), and probably a few others that I can't think of right now-and that's not even counting what the Vong stuff brought out.
Although the more recent EU isn't exactly free of this either. The Knights of The Old Republic game had the Star Forge, and the still-canon Clone Wars series had the Malevolence.
I remember at the time that the Stackpole and Allston X-wing novels and comics were seen as a much needed break from the OTT nature of the Veitch and Kevin J. Anderson EU. Even then they had their share of silliness and Gary Stu/Mary Sue stuff.
Regarding Dark Empire, it had it's origins as a marvel project, and I think was even advertised in Marvel fanfare (I think that was the name of their 'news'/business magazine). The original concept I think involved Vader being cloned, I think. Despite the problems with the story, DE was still kind of fun, with some neat moments such as Luke taking down a walker with the force, more or less, and Leia starting to embrace her Jedi heritage more (Which of course, was mostly ignored by Bantam later on, although Del Rey made her a full Jedi by the time of the NJO/Dark Nest/Legacy).
I've always really loathed Dark Empire. Besides the fact that the art and coloring was atrocious, the story only made sense after a few EU books referenced it. In the actual story, Luke turns to the darkside out of nowhere and for no reason, totally nullifying his whole story in ROTJ. In the books, when it was mentioned as Luke being overconfident and thinking he could just learn a bit and shrug off the darkside, and its something he knows he screwed up and shouldn't have done. The comic was just a big mess.
I think it was planned for Vader being a persona that would be passed onto other darksiders rather than him being an Anakin clone
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
LOVE a good "Contact" reference, any time!
Second Star to the Right, and strai...no, stop it...
Hope that is not all they got!
Some got Bath Towels and others got VHS players.
Last year most got shower curtains... with little ILM logos on them.
I love Dark Empire. The art is absolutely amazing and I wish I could more by that guy. And I loved the story. The Emperor reborn! Luke goes to the dark side! The Rebellion on the run! The return of Boba Fett! Aside from the super-weapon thing (and remember DE was the first to do it!!!) this story is awesome. *
*Aside from the fact that it completely invalidates the ending of ROTJ. But c'mon, man. When Sidious "died" there was a huge storm of blue lighting that ran away! That was his spirit leaving his body!!!
*Aside from the fact that it completely invalidates the ending of ROTJ. But c'mon, man. When Sidious "died" there was a huge storm of blue lighting that ran away! That was his spirit leaving his body!!!
I think it was tired in that the Emperor returns. It feels like a retread rather than forging in to more new terrain.
I just don't want to see the Emperor again.
They only really did the Emperor coming back for the Dark Empire series. And explained it, and used that against him.
Any other time it seemed to come up, it was a fake or rumor to get someone to move.
The West End Games sourcebook for Dark Empire brought on how the Thrawn Trilogy and DE exist together. The New Republic barely defeats Thrawn, but the Empire's Moffs and Admiral continue his campaign until they manage to retake Courscant. The Republic scatters again. At this point the Moffs and Admirals, without Thrawn, start bickering over leadership and actively start to fight it out over Coruscant. The reborn Emperor has been watching and drawing on those most loyal to him and his New Order to Byss to reform the fleets and unlease his secret weapons being built in the Deep Core (which is largely unexplored due to navigation problems with that many stars that close together). He lets the Imperial Civil War continue for about six months to a year to weed out the weak Moffs and Admirals and those that would be a problem for him to control. Luke takes notice and tries to fight the Emperor, and like Yoda, fails. But Luke decides to try to take him out from the inside by joining him. This sort of works. Sort of doesn't. it takes Leia to get Luke to come back.
The Emperor's clones burn out quickly from his Dark Side corruption of the Force forcing him to jump clones every few months, and it is getting worse. He cannot sustain it much longer and wants a living body. The unborn Anakin Solo will do.
Also there something to be said. Don't mess with Han Solo's family. He won't care how powerful you are, he'll just shoot you. In the back.
Any other time it seemed to come up, it was a fake or rumor to get someone to move.
The West End Games sourcebook for Dark Empire brought on how the Thrawn Trilogy and DE exist together. The New Republic barely defeats Thrawn, but the Empire's Moffs and Admiral continue his campaign until they manage to retake Courscant. The Republic scatters again. At this point the Moffs and Admirals, without Thrawn, start bickering over leadership and actively start to fight it out over Coruscant. The reborn Emperor has been watching and drawing on those most loyal to him and his New Order to Byss to reform the fleets and unlease his secret weapons being built in the Deep Core (which is largely unexplored due to navigation problems with that many stars that close together). He lets the Imperial Civil War continue for about six months to a year to weed out the weak Moffs and Admirals and those that would be a problem for him to control. Luke takes notice and tries to fight the Emperor, and like Yoda, fails. But Luke decides to try to take him out from the inside by joining him. This sort of works. Sort of doesn't. it takes Leia to get Luke to come back.
The Emperor's clones burn out quickly from his Dark Side corruption of the Force forcing him to jump clones every few months, and it is getting worse. He cannot sustain it much longer and wants a living body. The unborn Anakin Solo will do.
Also there something to be said. Don't mess with Han Solo's family. He won't care how powerful you are, he'll just shoot you. In the back.
There's not a damn thing in this EU stuff that I like, so I'm really happy that it's been decanonized, going forward into the new films. 
There's not a damn thing in this EU stuff that I like, so I'm really happy that it's been decanonized, going forward into the new films.
Eh, there were some good stuff here and there. The only real problems were the NJO (19 books was too much), and the two other nine part series, the last of which I still haven't read.
As for "decanonization", who cares one way or the other? It's all still there for people to enjoy at their leisure.
I was concerned with decanonization of the works that had been under discussion recently in-thread only because it's assured that the new films will not be beholden to it. Not all EU stuff is bad, some is alright, but the Emperor clone business in particular is simply awful.
I liked the Yuuzhan Vong as a species and as a threat in the post-Jedi timeline, but the way they were usually written and the sheer amount of tripe connected to their attacks on the galaxy (like Chewbacca's death when he's crushed by a falling moon or whatever precisely happened to him) just got to be too dumb and/or annoying for my tastes. The EU did have some amazing material over the decades (the Thrawn Trilogy, Old Republic-era stories and video games, some Prequel-era novels like Darth Plagueis, the Han Solo and some of the Bounty Hunter books that preceded the events seen in the original film), but a lot of it was just glossy and incomprehensible junk.
Life creates the Force, makes it grow, but just because it is created by life does not mean it cannot embody "negative" emotions. The desire for power, hatred, jealousy, revenge, are all natural and ubiquitous.
A Jedi seeks balance and peace, a Sith seeks power above all else. They are two sides of the same coin, and in a way are both needed for the Force to remain in balance.
The fact that the Vong were disconnected from the Force was the big "shocker" moment that made the Vong stories cool, and the last book of that series contained some of the best Luke scenes in the entire EU, but as overall the Vong stories went on far too long. When they casually dropped the fact that several trillion beings had been killed in the Vong war, it soured me to the EU going forward. It was almost like the authors had decided "lets do something REAL CRAZZZZYYY!!!" and hadn't given any thought to what the real implications of their actions would be.
You have to think about it in more eastern religious context of the proper perfect order of the universe, not a western good vs evil one. Balance isn't achieved by having equal amounts good and evil, but in finding the serenity of accepting that good and evil exist in even the best of us and overcoming that selfish, proud, destructive nature to live with as little disturbance of that order as possible.
The Sith had grown so powerful they apparently managed to manipulate the force as a whole to create the goddamned Jedi Jesus for them to corrupt. They weren't working within the natural order of things, they were throwing rocks in the pond and diverting the river for their own ends.
Well, at least that's what Sidious and Plagueis believe in the now decanonized novel Darth Plagueis.
At the risk of starting up the crazy argument again, ROTS and the PT generally (and the OT for that matter) really say nothing one way or the other. Nor do they imply anything, where by imply I mean necessitate.
The PT and the OT are perfectly consistent with either idea, on the one hand of Anakin having been created as a result of Plagueis's life-creating experiments, and on the other of Anakin's creation not being such a result and instead having (what are as far as we presently know) purely mysterious causes.
Certainly, the Darth Plagueis novel was one of the brighter spots of the old EU, but frankly I didn't find it fully satisfying either. In any case, that was only one perspective on Anakin's birth. Based on what's been revealed in The Clone Wars, such as in the Mortis arc, no doubt there are other differing perspectives. Perhaps the new canon going forward will weigh in on the matter.
