Eh, I’m just not a big fan of the EU’s penchant for assigning almost every background character from the films some grandiose backstory as a secret Rebel or Imperial agent or whatever. Couldn’t the Ice Cream Maker Guy just be a regular joe with a regular job with a regular life? I’d much rather read that type of story than a dozen warmed-over “James Bond in Outer Space” rehashes.
Yeah, sometimes this is the sort of thing that has the most impact.
In Empire seeing all those normal people fleeing grabbing whatever they could get their hands on just because Lando announced that the Empire was taking control of the city really brought home just how evil and feared the Empire was on a personal level. It also made it easy to understand why Lando would make the deal with Vader, he just wants to protect his city full of normal people. If the cloud city becomes a hot bed for rebel spies, then the emotional impact is not as great and it means we are not seeing normal people fleeing, we are seeing rebels running and that means all the Empire is doing is what every government in history has always done. It doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t feel as evil.
Sometimes giving something a deeper meaning and making it more of a part of the plot can lesson it’s impact.
A good example in recent years is the game Mass Effect 3. That game had the moment that packed more of an emotional punch for me then any other moment in a game up to that point. When the game starts and the Reapers invade earth there is a child in a vent that Shepard can’t save and then at the end of the first level all Shepard can do is run from earth to get help as some of the best music I have ever heard in a video game plays and watch as the kid is killed by the Reapers. Then throughout the game Shepard keeps having nightmares where the boy is consumed in flame. The boy who’s name we never learn becomes an avatar for everyone Shepard can’t save in the war and it brings home the personal costs in a way that all the big explosions in the world can’t hope to match. Then it is all undone because in the end we find out the kid was really just some sort of grand puppet master who has been manipulating Shepard the whole type and the impact is lost. By trying to make the kid a bigger part of the story the writers took away our connection with him and ended up making the players care less about him and the story.
I think that is the mistake the writers of the AU made a lot of the time with background characters in Star Wars as well.