A worthy opponent

[Shannon]

Given what we've seen of alte from the EU, and given that many plot elements and villain types seem rehashed, how would you conceive of a worthy villain post ROTJ? So far we've had Sith Lords, Sith Apprentices, Dark Jedi, Grand Admirals, bureaucrats, murderous cyborgs, slimy crimelords, merchants and (if youd add the EU) the Yuuzhan Vong.
What kind of opponent would you create worthy of SW?

[Shannon]

Ghetto edit: Hit the 'submit' button instead of 'preview'. That first line should of course read '... of late ..."

[The_Saint]

I always liked the short tales of imperial outpost #3456764654564 dealing with the local crime syndicate... and when I mean local I mean just that planet or planetary system. Kinda like tv crime shows today except in the star wars universe. Fairly standard villian just not on a galactic scale.

I suppose that the Star Wars universe follows real life close enough that the 'biggest villians' are probably going to be either bureaucrats or crime lords... same goals but differnet methods as the last lot of bureaucrats and crime lords ...they tend to be the rule in life and the random evil jedi or cyborg seems to be the exception.

[Cykeisme]

Agreed, Saint.

Galactic-scale threats are supposed to be as common as global threats in real life. I mean, how many Hitlers have we had in the past century?

Palpatine and whatever Lucas figures happened 1,000 years before the movies (if he ever canonized it, I doubt it'll be anything like what the comics portray) are a rarity, not the norm.

I mean, the way SW goes, it's like all that EU stuff is the real-life equivalent of B-grade movie plots happening every five years. In real life.


I hope the series that comes after the upcoming Clone Wars series will be exactly as you mention.. just as lots of things can happen in real life with cops, criminals etc that are interesting even though they don't change the course of global events, interesting adventures can happen that don't change the course of events of the galaxy.

[Starglider]

I would not have had the Empire disintigrate after ROTJ. Sure there would be a ruling council of Moffs with weak collective leadership and internal power struggles, but plenty of real-world totalitarian states are like that. The destruction of the DS2 and Palpatine should've been enough to give the Rebels a chance at full-scale open warfare, which should've gone on for at least another decade, with perhaps a Palpatine successor (with their own quite different style) emerging in that time. The central premise of a galactic civil war against a facist empire was fine and could've gone much further without the constant wacky EU nonsense. SW should stick to its strengths rather than try to shoehorn in assorted sci-fi concepts which don't really fit the style or ethos of the films (and which inevitably look like cheap ripoffs of other universes - to be fair the Trek books are much worse in this regard). For a supposedly WWII inspired franchise, we never got to see the vast well-matched fleets sweeping across the galaxy and clashing repeatedly over key worlds, other than the utterly messed up Vong stuff. Instead we got an endless parade of superweapons (which were cool) being defeated by a few lucky hero characters (most definitely not cool), like a series of pastiches of ROTJ that descended progressively into parody. In fact as I read more of the EU I can recall myself getting progressively more bitter and twisted with regard to the Rebels. The Empire, and to a lesser extent others keep building these wonderful engineering marvels (DSI, DSII, Executor, Sun Crusher, Tarkin, Night Hammer, Galaxy Gun, Eclipse I+II, Darksaber, Star Forge, World Devestators, assorted cool droids, HRDs and cyborgs, Arc Hammer, Trigon One, cloaking Executor-class, night cloak, torpedo spheres, Eye of Palpatine) and the sickening rebels keep striking them down in their prime, often before they can even be used. That wouldn't be so bad if they replaced them with their own engineering achievements, but no, the rebels have merely a sickening mish-mash of mostly civilian and obsolete technologies that cannot hold a candle to the dark elegance of Imperial creations. They harken back to an era (the Old Republic) of technical stagnation and weakness - it took an intergalactic invasion to make them realise that even our larger capships we in fact needed (and even that they had to hide under PR gloss). Usually these sickening 'rebels' (they are really little more than terrorists) don't even fight openly, they burrow like worms into the core of our ships and stations and sabotage them from the inside, against all the odds and despite layered security precautions that should work. These corruptive peacenik scum, who have no appreciation for order, elegance or engineering genius, cannot be tolerated any longer! Exterminate the rebel scum! Hail the glorious Imperial Engineering Corps!

I'm sorry, I blacked out there for a moment, what was I saying?

[Cao Cao]

I too just wouldn't bother with galactic scale antagonists.
I mean, come on. George Lucas gave writers an entire galaxy to work with and what to they do? Evil galactic threat after evil galactic threat. The Empire/Sith/evil aliens threatening the New Republic for the 495844646th time. While Luke, Leia, Han and the others are at the center of it all.
And when it's not them, it's the Jedi! Hey let's forget anything else in the galaxy that'd possibly be of interest.

[NecronLord]

<Snip>

I'm sorry, I blacked out there for a moment, what was I saying?

That was awesome. I thought you were seriously saying the Rebels shouldn't have destroyed things like Arc Hammer and The Tarkin, then I began to imagine a Davros-esque progressively-getting-higher-and-higher-and-angrier voice to it.

It is stupid that the New Republic doesn't appear to build anything to rival the Empire's constructs itself, though. How useful would something like the Sun Crusher have proven when the Vong showed up?

[Spearfish]

I too just wouldn't bother with galactic scale antagonists.
I mean, come on. George Lucas gave writers an entire galaxy to work with and what to they do? Evil galactic threat after evil galactic threat. The Empire/Sith/evil aliens threatening the New Republic for the 495844646th time. While Luke, Leia, Han and the others are at the center of it all.
And when it's not them, it's the Jedi! Hey let's forget anything else in the galaxy that'd possibly be of interest.

It's always annoyed the life out of me that seemingly every single threat to the galaxy is stopped by the same group of characters. It's like EU authors are afraid to show that the galaxy is a reeeeally big place, with lots of people in it. Different people. But it's always the same few heroes that defeat all the threats. World Devastators, stopped by that astromech droid. Couldn't they have used a different one? For variety?

This is why I rather like the WH40K 'EU', as it were. There's not one or two characters who are present in virtually everything. I mean, Eisenhorn (to take a random example) was a hard bastard who countered some big threats, but he didn't save the entire Imperium over and over, like a certain moisture-farmer-turned-Jedi. In fact, he never seems to have strayed outside of the Helican Subsector very often. That, and the writers' fearlessness of large numbers ("The uncounted billions of the Imperial Guard" versus "Three Million Clones") helps to cement the idea that the 40K galaxy is pretty fucking huge, whereas the EU authors like to shrink the SW galaxy down by always using the same people and many of the same locations. How many times have we seen Tatooine now?

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

[Starglider]

I thought you were seriously saying the Rebels shouldn't have destroyed things like Arc Hammer and The Tarkin,

The Rebellion didn't really have a use for pure terror weapons such as the Sun Crusher (which I dislike anyway). Things like the Star Forge really had to be destroyed because of the dark side energy's inevitable corrupting effect. But the Tarkin would've been very useful (though difficult) for the Rebels to capture, as they could've used it to destroy Imperial space stations, orbital shipyards and possibly command ships. Going by the game continuity capturing the Arc Hammer seems relatively plausible, given that the protagonist single-handedly kills just about every officer and stormtrooper on the thing. Possibly the rebellion wouldn't have used the droids, but it also produced starfighters and surely the factories could've been repurposed for rebellion needs (plus any proper capship half the size of the Executor would be useful for them). The Eye of Palpatine and the Knight Hammer should've been relatively easy for the New Republic to capture (by tractoring after it had been abandoned in the later case; Ackbar's fleet should've had the capability) and highly useful against later enemies. But no, they fell victim to the standard EU 'everything (shiny) in this novel must inevitably explode' bullshit.

I began to imagine a Davros-esque progressively-getting-higher-and-higher-and-angrier voice to it.

I moonlight as a writer for the engineering wing of the Imperial Remnant's Galactic Museum. Placards below some of the models:

'The Arc Hammer, a revolutionary advance in automated construction and the first of a class of factory ships planned to greatly accelerate industrialisation of deprived rim worlds, was tragically destroyed by the terrorist forces of the rebellion. This loss was doubly tragic as it was just about to complete a major advance in security droid research that would have meant a better, safer society for all Imperial citizens. Her captain was one of the Empire's greatest war heroes, general Rom Mohc, who was murdered in cold blood by mecenary assassins in the pay of the rebels.'

'The Tarkin was a mining platform designed to release locked up mineral wealth in the core of various dead moons and large asteroids. The project promised a substantial increase in wealth across the whole Empire, but in particular would have invigorated mining activity around deprived mid-rim worlds. Though a great technical success in early trials, demonstrated to the satisfaction of Lord Vader himself, this marvel was sabotaged and destroyed by the spiteful rebels, determined to keep the mid-rim in poverty to ensure a supply of cannon fodder for their human wave attacks'.

'The Olympic was the most advanced of the Empire's premier capital ships, the Executor class star dreadnoughts. Designed with a network of cloaking generators, the Olympic was designed to be capable of patrolling our outer worlds undetected by planet-side rebel spies. When the terrorist rebels moved to attack a seemingly undefended outpost, the Olympic would be able to decloak and quickly destroy their misshapen Mon Calmari cruisers. Unfortunately this sterling addition to the Empire's defences was never able to contribute to the security of Imperial citizens, as the crack terror unit 'Rogue Squadron' infiltrated the shipyard in stolen Imperial ships (after murdering their brave imperial pilots) and destroyed cloaking units on the Olympic just as they were being powered up for initial tests, initiating a chain reaction that destroyed the ship and much of the surrounding docks. Again we see the clear pattern of the rebel terrorists; murder loyal imperial soldiers in cold blood, steal imperial equipment, defeat our security with deceit and low cunning, vandalise advanced technology and kill thousands of innocent construction workers (just as they did at the DS2).'

It is stupid that the New Republic doesn't appear to build anything to rival the Empire's constructs itself, though.

The 'Viscount class' (MonCal version of the Executor) finally got added to the canon recently. The thing is ugly as hell, basically a huge mottled brown blob, but at least it's sensibly sized and armed. No minimalist EU writer would've done such a thing; it only went in because the Starship Battles game would be unbalanced without it. But generally the new republic is all about hero-worship of the principal cast and politically correct bullshit, not appreciation of engineering brilliance (technolgical terrors or otherwise ). Wong's versus fanfic wasn't professional writing, but it did have a pretty nice scene of a death star being attacked by conventional means (with a good sense of scale), whereas the EU writer's obsession with having the main characters do everything personally means that they'd never include anything like this (closest we got AFAIK was the space battles against the Vong worldships, though I haven't read those books).

[Lord Relvenous]

Really I concur with the sentiment that the stories of SW should involve someone other than a Solo or Skywalker. Everything gravitates around these characters in the most ridiculous fashion, and while I can understand maybe a little bit of it, what annoys me the most is that authors never challenge themselves by writing a story based entirely on some other character that we've never heard of before.

That's actually why I at least appreciated the idea of the X-Wing series. While the "stars" did feature somewhat, it was in their appropriate roles as people with celebrity status to the characters. They were not the focus of any of those novels and it did not make the books uninteresting nor did it diminish the reality that they were placed in the SW universe.

I would chaulk up the use and reuse and again reuse of characters to authors' laziness. Why exhaust all the effort to build a new character when you can rely on a pre-existing backstory that needs no explanation?

[Starglider]

while I can understand maybe a little bit of it, what annoys me the most is that authors never challenge themselves by writing a story based entirely on some other character that we've never heard of before.

Be careful what you wish for. You may get Tyber Zann (and his hangers on). I picked up that expansion (Forces of Corruption) recently and it comprises the most gross and horrible addition to SW canon I've seen to date (the only good thing about it was that it slightly softened the idiotic minimalism of the first game, which had the ISD as a rare pinnacle of Imperial ship construction - but then I have to take that back for their ludicrously under-gunned version of the Executor class, even worse than WEG).

[Lord Relvenous]

while I can understand maybe a little bit of it, what annoys me the most is that authors never challenge themselves by writing a story based entirely on some other character that we've never heard of before.

Be careful what you wish for. You may get Tyber Zann (and his hangers on). I picked up that expansion (Forces of Corruption) recently and it comprises the most gross and horrible addition to SW canon I've seen to date (the only good thing about it was that it slightly softened the idiotic minimalism of the first game, which had the ISD as a rare pinnacle of Imperial ship construction - but then I have to take that back for their ludicrously under-gunned version of the Executor class, even worse than WEG).

Well the whole horrible EU authors thing is a completely different problem. A very large, very disturbing problem.

[dworkin]

Shouldn't the most pressing problem facing the major charaters be things like scelrosis of the liver. 60 years of beer and poker nights every friday can do that.

[Jim Raynor]

Shouldn't the most pressing problem facing the major charaters be things like scelrosis of the liver. 60 years of beer and poker nights every friday can do that.

I haven't read a lot of the new books, so I have to ask:

Just how fucking old is Han now, and is he still physically kicking people's asses?

I don't have a problem with the main characters being in the EU books, provided that the authors and continuity managers are smart enough to provide variation and not have them at the center of every galaxy-threatening crisis. They're the characters people care about most, after all. But when you get to the point of where the stories are taking place several decades after the movies, it's time for movie characters to gracefully step aside (if you MUST continue to produce spinoff stories).

[Noble Ire]

I don't have a problem with the main characters being in the EU books, provided that the authors and continuity managers are smart enough to provide variation and not have them at the center of every galaxy-threatening crisis. They're the characters people care about most, after all. But when you get to the point of where the stories are taking place several decades after the movies, it's time for movie characters to gracefully step aside (if you MUST continue to produce spinoff stories).

The EU careers of Lando Calrissian and Admiral Ackbar are fairly good examples of how the movie-period figures should have been handled. Lando ended up leaving the NR military fairly quickly, returned to his roots as a private entrepreneur, and showed up only occasionally when Han or Luke called in a favor, or as familial/business interests dictated. By the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, he seemed to be more or less retired. Ackbar served as a central figure in the NR government for several decades, although outside of a handful of scandals and crucial military actions, he more or less stayed in the background. He eventually retired because of old age, returning briefly as a rallying figure during the darkest hour of the Vong invasion, and then dying just before the conflict's conclusion, presumably because the renewed stress was simply too much for him.

Now, I don't mind the implementation of the main film cast in the post-ROTJ EU as much as some, but I will willingly admit that they are both over-used and more often than not misused as well. As Jim Raynor points out, Han's seemingly continuous state of youth is rather exasperating, even considering the rationalizations involving the increased life expectancy of SW universe humans. Mara Jade (not a movie character, but still roughly of the same central class as far as the EU goes) is a particularly onerous example of this apparent lack of authorial imagination and realism; whereas her husband Luke physically ages, if inconstantly from depiction to depiction, over time, as of Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice, set during 40 ABY, some fifty eight years after her birth, Mara bears the appearance of an athletic woman in her late twenties. I can only imagine this is because someone in LFL refuses to lose the character's defining, "sexy" image.

[PainRack]

I won't mind something like the Clone Wars novels set in the Galactic Civil war setting though.... Some of the Clone Wars novels like Medstar or even Shatterpoint introduced secondary characters/campaigns and fronts.
Yes, I know Rogue Squadron exists, but surely there has to be a major campaign that involves forces not being commanded by Wedge and Ackbar.

Its gets a bit irritating, cause any major battle we see is either led by movie characters or involve uber commandoes.

[Darth Wong]

It would be nice to see stories written about "the little people" in some of the SW universe's past galactic-scale conflicts in which they make their small contribution, risk their obscure lives, and try to survive, without somehow becoming a pivotal element which turned the fate of a major campaign.

If Leo Tolstoy can write about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and make up characters who do not figure prominently in Napoleon's victories and setbacks, why can't the SW writers do the same? Oh no, if you're going to write about somebody, he has to be a nobody who becomes really important!

[Noble Ire]

It would be nice to see stories written about "the little people" in some of the SW universe's past galactic-scale conflicts in which they make their small contribution, risk their obscure lives, and try to survive, without somehow becoming a pivotal element which turned the fate of a major campaign.

Quite true. The only EU novels I can think of that follow those lines are the Medstar Duology and, somewhat surprisingly, the first Republic Commando novelization. The first two follow the lives of a few medics involved in a relatively inconsequential campaign (including a single, very minor film character), and the second lacks any film characters at all, and focuses on an even more minor skirmish. The upcoming Coruscant Nights Trilogy is reportedly going to follow the tale of a reporter and a small handful of minor Jedi survivors during the Purge; unless I hear good things about the new Death Star novel, I probably won't buy another one of the books until the first of the Nights series comes out.

[Darth Fanboy]

The Commando novel might have qualified had it not been the first step in KT Jelly's plan to get the Clone Commando's elevated to sainthood. But I agree with you on the MedStar duology, that was a great read with great characters.

Would like to see a book about the "heroes" of both sides mentioned in the opening crawl of RoTS. Specifically, the heroes who fought for the CIS thinking that it actually was a noble cause.

[Cao Cao]

Would like to see a book about the "heroes" of both sides mentioned in the opening crawl of RoTS. Specifically, the heroes who fought for the CIS thinking that it actually was a noble cause.

I hope that some of George Lucas' TV productions will center on this, seeing as how 99% of EU writers have proven incapable of it.

[Coalition]

I would chaulk up the use and reuse and again reuse of characters to authors' laziness. Why exhaust all the effort to build a new character when you can rely on a pre-existing backstory that needs no explanation?

There was one, Lt Sunber, who was an honorable Imperial officer.

Then we found out he was a childhood friend of Luke, and I dropped that series.

Still, the World Devastators would have been very useful for both the Rebellion to build/rebuild, and against the Vong. They just suck in raw material, and provide whatever you want built out the back. You could even have a small series about the ship, and how it changes in response to the priorities of the crew. Even more fun, is if it is stolen from the Imperials, so at the start it is a twin of an existing model.

As the series goes by, we can see how the two ships slowly diverge based on the priorities of the command staff. The rebellion version might be more focussed on construction, healing, and repair, and it would slowly turn itself into a mobile repair yard/hydroponics station, hospital, and factory. The Imperial version is dedicated to finsing and destroying its 'twin', and adds on more weapons, sensors, droid controls, etc.

The final battle between the two would show them finally heading to each other, and only one will leave. End the series righ there, and let fans speculate what might happen.

[Knife]

Given what we've seen of alte from the EU, and given that many plot elements and villain types seem rehashed, how would you conceive of a worthy villain post ROTJ? So far we've had Sith Lords, Sith Apprentices, Dark Jedi, Grand Admirals, bureaucrats, murderous cyborgs, slimy crimelords, merchants and (if youd add the EU) the Yuuzhan Vong.
What kind of opponent would you create worthy of SW?

With a galactic scale economy, in any of the eras; there's bound to be plenty of 'subcontractors' outfits out there who provide 'special services' to employers with the money to afford it.

Not whores either. Or the standard merc angle you do see in the EU. Rather a more strategic minded organization, things that conspiracy theories are based off of. They made Palpy into this a bit and I always thought it was interesting, no reason why a bog standard person/sentient could do it too (no force powers basically).

T'would be a worth opponent, especially since the badguy/girl would have worked for some of the more prominent planets/sectors. If a do-gooder did catch them, what would they do with them? Arrest them and put them in the justice system where the badguy/girl has thousands of contacts to just let them back out?

[PainRack]

With a galactic scale economy, in any of the eras; there's bound to be plenty of 'subcontractors' outfits out there who provide 'special services' to employers with the money to afford it.

Not whores either. Or the standard merc angle you do see in the EU. Rather a more strategic minded organization, things that conspiracy theories are based off of. They made Palpy into this a bit and I always thought it was interesting, no reason why a bog standard person/sentient could do it too (no force powers basically).

T'would be a worth opponent, especially since the badguy/girl would have worked for some of the more prominent planets/sectors. If a do-gooder did catch them, what would they do with them? Arrest them and put them in the justice system where the badguy/girl has thousands of contacts to just let them back out?

The Bobba Fett duology covers this I think, with a conspiracy by Kuat to eliminate his successor, not to mention the mess with the Bounty Hunters guild.

Alternately, didn't the Darth Maul novels also cover this angle?

[Warsie]

It is stupid that the New Republic doesn't appear to build anything to rival the Empire's constructs itself, though. How useful would something like the Sun Crusher have proven when the Vong showed up?

Didn't the Mon Calamari build massive cruisers close to the size of the Executor after the BFC?

And the NR didn't need those massive warships first, and IIRC some Jedi were prevented form reactivating old Imperial superweapons...

Would like to see a book about the "heroes" of both sides mentioned in the opening crawl of RoTS. Specifically, the heroes who fought for the CIS thinking that it actually was a noble cause.

What about Alto Stratus and Shogar Tok? And there was the 'Last of the Jedi' series with the Acherin Confederates and the New Plympto comics.

[Cao Cao]

It is stupid that the New Republic doesn't appear to build anything to rival the Empire's constructs itself, though. How useful would something like the Sun Crusher have proven when the Vong showed up?

Didn't the Mon Calamari build massive cruisers close to the size of the Executor after the BFC?

And the NR didn't need those massive warships first, and IIRC some Jedi were prevented form reactivating old Imperial superweapons...

Oh they always needed warships since the galactic threat of the week was always showing up to spank the New Republic.
Then again, many New Republic era novels were written during that super minimalist period when the Executor apparently bankrupted an Empire that built two Death Stars and a piddling fleet of 200 dildo ships constituted a massive military force.