When do you think the EU jumped the shark?

[Darth Fanboy]

The Lightning Gun, and Palpy being killed by Empatajayos Brand are from DE II and Empire's End respectively.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Dark Nest trilogy was the last straw for me. The New Jedi Order was beginning to turn me off, though there were interesting bits and pieces here and there. But it was clear to me that there was a real sudden urge to kill just about anyone, and do some run around in circles, making everyone look like a doofus.

Crystal Star was one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read. Waru = Q. There were others of course, and that useless diversion to Callista.. ugh..

I haven't read much by way of Star Wars for a while. I have given up on it.

[Sea Skimmer]

EU has had a lot of crap in it from day one, Lucas himself lost his vision and gave us three more then a little sub par movies for prequels, how else are a random selection of other authors with often little or no oversight supposed to keep things together? I just incorporate the best parts of the EU into my view of how Star Wars should be and ignore all the rest, my imagination fills in the gaps. Its much more enjoyable then trying to rationalize away ever last piece of rubbish.

[Chris OFarrell]

I have a feeling a lot of people are going to run into this thread thumping their fists and shouting that they jumped ship at day zero...

But anyway.

I always took the good with the bad with the EU. There were always good books and horrible books. I was even able to live through the Vong books, mostly because it still in SOME way felt like it was moving FORWARD to me, even if I didn't like the direction a lot of the time. The occasional gem like 'Star by Star' and 'Destiny's Way' -which I consider SBS part II kept me going, though at the ending I was getting very tired of the EU.

After book 1 of the Swarm War however, which was an utter piece of shit, I thought it was about time. I went through books 2 and 3, mostly because I was going through the motions, but the utter trash that they were, the horrible characters, plots, scope, story, just made me realize that the EU I had read since I was like 12 or so, was dead.

When I read what was going to happen in the 'legacy' series of novels, I put plan 'Hooker' into action and with every summery about the SW Prequals Mk II AKA 'Legacy of the Force', and the craptacular 'THE EMPIRE SHALL RISE AGAIN! BWAHAHAH!' 100 years into the future comics, I've become increasingly 'fuck it' with the EU, cherry picking my own little SW universe.

[Ace Pace]

I always took the good with the bad with the EU. There were always good books and horrible books. I was even able to live through the Vong books, mostly because it still in SOME way felt like it was moving FORWARD to me, even if I didn't like the direction a lot of the time. The occasional gem like 'Star by Star' and 'Destiny's Way' -which I consider SBS part II kept me going, though at the ending I was getting very tired of the EU.

After book 1 of the Swarm War however, which was an utter piece of shit, I thought it was about time. I went through books 2 and 3, mostly because I was going through the motions, but the utter trash that they were, the horrible characters, plots, scope, story, just made me realize that the EU I had read since I was like 12 or so, was dead.

When I read what was going to happen in the 'legacy' series of novels, I put plan 'Hooker' into action and with every summery about the SW Prequals Mk II AKA 'Legacy of the Force', and the craptacular 'THE EMPIRE SHALL RISE AGAIN! BWAHAHAH!' 100 years into the future comics, I've become increasingly 'fuck it' with the EU, cherry picking my own little SW universe.

Pretty much the same as me, except in better words. I'm not sure how to describe what I went through the past two years of watching the SW EU collectively decide that milking the cow is more important then feeding it for another generation.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Vector Prime pretty much killed it for me. I managed to limp on for a while with cheap, second-hand paperbacks but in the end I didn't finish the NJO and haven't looked at a post-ROTJ novel since the Force Heretic trilogy. It's really hard to find anything good to say about the NJO; even the rare tolerable novel in the arc was massively overshadowed by the utter, utter shit it was accompanied by. And while Traitor wasn't a bad book at all in itself, I fundamentally disagreed with everything it put across RE the Force and it only got worse when Luke seemed to buy into the idea that there's no Dark Side. Between the general low quality, rampant destruction of everything the heroes had fought for when they rebelled against the Empire, and what I saw as the utter raping of the concept of the Force, I just couldn't take anymore.

I still pick up the occassional bit of Star Wars material (the Darth Bane book, the novel where Leia finds out more about her family, and so on) but I doubt I'll ever bother with the mainline post-ROTJ EU ever again. It was never all that great (gems amongst a sea of shit was the usual rule) but now the shit is far harder to ignore than the random Dark Jedi/Imperial Warlord of the week.

[Lord Pounder]

The EU had been flagging ever since KJA put pen to paper, but what killed it for me was the Dark Nest Trilogy. The NJO's highlights such as Star By Star Enemy Lines duology etc. The Dark nest had no redeemable qualities in any way and don't get me started on the Legacy bullshit.

[An Ancient]

For me there are the obvious rather appalling books now and then, but 'chronologically' there was always some redeeming feature in the form of a decent book afterwards, up until a point. The last book of NJO was the endpoint for me, you saw Luke Skywalker act in the fashion we all know he should be capable of, and it finishes in a way that would allow people to draw a line or maybe do one or two follow up stories.

Dark Nest #1 was unreadable for me, and it along with every single book after that simply doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and if anyone ask's "what would happen if Jacen turned Sith?" my answer is "Luke would cut the whiny emo-kid in three and chuck into a nearby sun."

[Sidewinder]

The EU first jumped the shark in 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye, in which a lobotomized Darth Vader loses a lightsaber duel to Luke Skywalker because he stupidly tripped and fell into a bottomless pit. It jumped again when Kevin J. Anderson lobotomized Luke in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, again when Dave Wolverton lobotomized Luke in 'The Courtship of Princess Leia', again when... Well, you get the idea.

Then the EU decided to combine lobotomizing the heroes with castrating the New Republic in the New Jedi Order. (I didn't read the Corellian Trilogy, so I can't say whether or not the New Republic was castrated before the Yuuzhan Vong arrived.) Just when I thought things couldn't get worse...

[General Soontir Fel]

Then the EU decided to combine lobotomizing the heroes with castrating the New Republic in the New Jedi Order. (I didn't read the Corellian Trilogy, so I can't say whether or not the New Republic was castrated before the Yuuzhan Vong arrived.) Just when I thought things couldn't get worse...

The Corellian trilogy is bad, unless your standard of comparison is Dark Empire and The Crystal Star. And it is also the root source of much stupidity in the NJO and LOTF.

1) It is extremely minimalistic, and before anyone jumps on me for what I wrote above, I never said minimalism wasn't a problem--just that it wasn't the biggest one, and if it was the only problem, the EU would be far better than it is. But the minimalism is impossible not to notice. You think 3 million clones is bad? Try the idea that the entire NR Navy is in spacedocks for repairs, and four capital ships from an obscure Outer Rim world make a huge difference.
2) It wanks the Solo kids, especially Anakin.
3) It introduces Centerpoint Station, one of the stupidest plot devices ever. Allston deserves a commendation for destroying it without hope for repair in Fury.

If I have to pick a moment, I'd say it happened with Dark Nest. For all its faults, I found the NJO tolerable--Force Heretic was the only part that was outright bad, and it had a few gems. And the end had closure--the way ROTJ, the Thrawn Trilogy, and the Hand of Thrawn duology do. From then on, in order to stay viable, they'd need to either come up with something completely original, or move away from established characters for greater freedom. Instead, they went back to the threat of the week that characterized a good deal of the rest of post-ROTJ EU. And then, of course, an attempt to rehash the prequels, and (in the Legacy comics) the original trilogy.

In my mind, everything post-NJO is in-universe fiction.

[Darth Fanboy]

Dave Wolverton lobotomized Luke in 'The Courtship of Princess Leia', again when... Well, you get the idea.
.

I wouldn't say Luke was lobotmized in that book, he displays a number of great Force powers one would want to see from a Jedi Master. About the only time he was weak was when Getherzion used the Force to muck with the veins in his brain. Even then Luke survived and piloted the Falcon like a madman in the battle above.

That book was bad for completely different reasons IMHO.

[Sidewinder]

Luke displayed MANY instances of stupidity in 'The Courtship of Princess Leia', from cultural insensitivity, i.e., asking the Queen Mother to remove her veil and expressing disgust at seeing her face, to not realizing the Hapans had sabotaged his X-Wing, to letting himself get captured by a horny Witch of Dathomir... He does display impressive Force abilities, but these displays pale in comparison to the stupidity.

[Lord Pounder]

In fairness Luke is a farmboy with little experience of the realities of life, and no experience of politics, that was his sisters area. Having extraordinary powers does not mean you suddently have great insight to the workings of the world.

[Lord Relvenous]

Well i can join the crowd all hating on the NJO quite easily. I hated the premise to many of those books, if not most. Crappy writing and ripping into the whole vison of Star Wars anus first only made it worse. There were a few that i did enjoy, however. Along the aforementioned Star by Star i also enjoyed Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston. Mainly because of the sheer badassery of the Borleias defenders, and the incredible usage fo a Super Star Destroyer. Taht's jsut my random fanboy coming out though.

[Ghost Rider]

If we define it as the phrase is properly done as:

"A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill."

So we'd have to alter it to say Series for purposes of this discussion.

Dark Empire.

Dark Empire brought back Emperor Palpatine. Whatever one considers the story, the whole thought that Vader's sacrifice and the climax of the entire trilogy was nothing more then "Oh, that was clone number #182." is sheer soap opera stupidity.

Did I consider it a moment where I stopped reading or considered the EU shit? No, not really. But that is a defining moment in the EU that it reached it's peak and everything went downhill per se.

[Havok]

If we define it as the phrase is properly done as:

"A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill."

So we'd have to alter it to say Series for purposes of this discussion.

Dark Empire.

Dark Empire brought back Emperor Palpatine. Whatever one considers the story, the whole thought that Vader's sacrifice and the climax of the entire trilogy was nothing more then "Oh, that was clone number #182." is sheer soap opera stupidity.

Did I consider it a moment where I stopped reading or considered the EU shit? No, not really. But that is a defining moment in the EU that it reached it's peak and everything went downhill per se.

I don't think a clone of Palpatine is that bad, considering, the whole of SW fandom expected or wanted clones ever since Obi-Wan talked about the Clone Wars in ANH. I agree with what you are saying about it being anti-climactic and lame, but I just don't think it is a JTS moment. However being reminded of the Lightning gun and the steam powered space ships in DEII, I am tempted to chose that as the closest moment out there.

[Darth Hoth]

Vector Prime was the first book to make me seriously doubt the franchise. I'd seen bad plots before, but this was something else entirely. The series went on from bad to worse; each book was literally (with a few exceptions) worse than its immediate predecessor. About the only good one was Star by Star, which was saved by its generally epic/tragic feeling.

(Wouldn't that have been one hell of a book... an epic depiction of the Rebel siege of Coruscant, the SW version of the Battle of Holy Terra. But alas, they just sent the flyboys in and the day was saved... )

[Lambda 00]

I'd have to say, I found the beginning of the Vong invasion the point at which I couldn't read it anymore, it just wasn't true Star Wars (In my opinion).

[Darth Meatloaf]

It's spotty for me, but it all started right about the time around Dark Empire, when it devolved into a sort of...

MAKE A VILLAIN: Pick 4 in any order:
Sith
Imperial
Superweapon
Kidnaps the Solo children
Genius
Insane

...sort of deal that I considered the EU past its prime.

Then I read great stuff like Wraith Squadron and all was better.


Then I read Vector Prime and a few books into the NJO, and got sick of it. A race of technophobic, organic-using religious zealots with a prominent warrior caste? Are we going to pass out bat'leths and start expounding on the virtues of an honorable death next?
The NJO doesn't pick up for me until well into its run, when the ridiculously powerful "organic tech" of the Vong gets toned down/out-strategized and their culture starts to become much more interesting and varied, instead of the "RARR WE ARE KILL EVERYTHING FOR OUR GODS DESTROY THE INFIDELS SACRIFICE THE HEATHENS" problem of one-dimensionality that they started with - they actually ended up having some enjoyable depth. Towards the end of The Unifying Force I actually found myself enjoying the story.
I do like how Luke ends up essentially saying "The Potentium sounds really convincing, but it's completely wrong based on what I've seen." Emo-kid Jacen attaining Force-nirvana aside, the series ends on a good solid note.

Then the Dark Nest and LOTF arc starts and I just stopped reading in disgust. I just refuse to keep reading what almost amounts to a sort of "nuh-uh" lore fight between authors.

[Dark Flame]

What I've read of pre-ROTJ EU is pretty good, and I really enjoyed all that I've read. As far as post-ROTJ EU, it's up and down but I think that there's more up than down. The Thrawn Trilogy was good, X-wing books (despite minimalism) were good, I even like most of the NJO. There are a fair share of bad things about it, but it's redeeming works are pretty good.

I've only read 2 of the Dark Nest books, and I could stand them, barely. I'm just starting the LOTF novels, but I'm kinda scared of how bad they could be. I haven't seen anything that's "Put the book down and RUN!!!" bad, but I guess I'll see as I read on.

[JCady]

In fairness Luke is a farmboy with little experience of the realities of life, and no experience of politics, that was his sisters area. Having extraordinary powers does not mean you suddently have great insight to the workings of the world.

That's why I liked the Courtship of Leia. Luke as a very powerful Force user but also still kinda a clueless kid.

[Darth Fanboy]

(Wouldn't that have been one hell of a book... an epic depiction of the Rebel siege of Coruscant, the SW version of the Battle of Holy Terra. But alas, they just sent the flyboys in and the day was saved... )

But that kind of writing is too difficult for a guy like Mike Hackpole.

[Darth Hoth]

(Wouldn't that have been one hell of a book... an epic depiction of the Rebel siege of Coruscant, the SW version of the Battle of Holy Terra. But alas, they just sent the flyboys in and the day was saved... )

But that kind of writing is too difficult for a guy like Mike Hackpole.

Oh, I don't think Stackpole is that bad. It is just that he is better writing characters than he is the epics (although Allston still beats him in that department, of course). But I agree wholeheartedly that they could have written the fall of Imperial Centre as something else than part of the X-wing series.

[Elfdart]

The EU was destined to suck from the very beginning. The Holiday Special was EU, and that was 1978. If you hand so many different people the keys to your car, it's only a matter of time before someone puts it in the ditch. When the next driver sees the damage and is given the keys they are bound to think "Fuck it, I can do what I want and if I put this thing back in the ditch, it was damaged goods anyway."

[Block]

(Wouldn't that have been one hell of a book... an epic depiction of the Rebel siege of Coruscant, the SW version of the Battle of Holy Terra. But alas, they just sent the flyboys in and the day was saved... )

But that kind of writing is too difficult for a guy like Mike Hackpole.

Oh, I don't think Stackpole is that bad. It is just that he is better writing characters than he is the epics (although Allston still beats him in that department, of course). But I agree wholeheartedly that they could have written the fall of Imperial Centre as something else than part of the X-wing series.

Stackpole's actually a very good writer, he just didn't give a shit about the Star Wars EU, so he phoned it in, and still did a decent job.