lordjedi said:Why do they need to continually have a Sith rise up to control the galaxy every 50-100 years? According to the PT, no Sith had been in power "for a millenia", so why the hell does it need to happen so often now? Are the Jedi even dumber than they were before to continually let these Knights cross to the Dark Side and then take over the galaxy?
Well, yes. The Jedi were practically extinct after RotS, and the Sith had controlled the galactic government for decades. After that, there was only Luke's nascent Jedi movement to mop up the remains of the Sith theocracy, and it took Luke years to train up additional Jedi. He didn't even have much in the way of formal Jedi training doctrine until the discovery of the Chu'unthor and the Baas Holocron. Meanwhile, the Sith machinery was operating almost unopposed.
Even if the Jedi had remained strong in the post-RotJ era, the galactic government was weak and susceptible to Sith coups. How long did it take the Republic to consolidate its control over the galaxy? Did it ever? Did the average galactic citizen even care whether Coruscant was controlled by a senatorial clique or a Sith?
For literary quality, yeah, I agree that new formulas should have been tried. Too few authors were creative enough, or given enough leeway, to try that. In-universe, I have to agree with KJA: If they Empire built one Death Star, they would've built other superweapons. Other powers would have built superweapons. As a corollary, if the Sith were powerful enough to take control of the government in 20 BBY, they would've been powerful enough to contend for control of the government in 20 ABY. Sith-of-the-week would be popping up for years.
If I were in charge of the EU, I'd keep the Sith/Jedi, Centralist/Federalist, Human/Non-human conflicts running in the background. I'd tell authors these are the setting, but need not be the plot. /soapbox
blackjack said:how long will it be before we have han luke and leia sitting in the nursing home sniping at each other?
I don't know. How long does it take wealthy, powerful humans to become senescent in the Star Wars galaxy? Many such humans today remain professionally and publicly active well into their seventies, and anti-aging technology in the SW galaxy must be superior to our own.