I agree about the killing of Chewie thing. I never precieved it as trying to make the series more real, but rather as the "super weapon of the week thing", that was pretty obvious from the beginning. They even marketed off of that. I think it was in the SW.com email that they made a big deal about Salvatori (sp?) killing off Chewbacca with Lucas' blessing. The article talked about how Salv. decided that it was Chewie's time to go and when he asked George what he thought he told him he liked the idea, go with it. That is very much marketing, and I am sure that was much more effective than saying that this novel features a new super duper, ultra, mega Star Destroyer 5150 times larger than Vader's and with 27 laser cannons, each able to destroy planets 88% more efficiently than the Deathstar.