Lit SOS: Save Our Skywalker, Luke Skywalker (v3)

Maybe we could compile a list of all the "Luke fell" statements in novels and splatbooks, in order of publication- as well as that one "Luke nearly fell" statement- to see if there's any pattern to them?

I suspect Kevin J. Anderson may have been involved in a lot of them - he wrote the first Essential Guide to Characters - and Boba Fett: The Last Man Standing (which also has one such reference) is in Tales of the Bounty Hunters - one of the books he edited.

 

To a degree, I get what they were going for in the post-DE books - they didn't want Luke going: OK, I decked the dark side so let's not worry about it ever!

But I think they went too far in the cautious direction, I quite like IJ's handling of it - there was no better option, but it involved Luke descending into a dark hell, the scars of which, even after getting free of it, would remain.

There should have been a counter-balancing recognition that yes, the Emperor had returned and got his arse handed to him!

 

These do acknowledge that returning from the dark side is an exceptional achievement:

Tales of the Bounty Hunters (December 1996) : The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett, by Daniel Keys Moran - p301-302:
The remnant of the Empire rose up against the New Republic and was defeated; Luke Skywalker fell to the dark side of the Force—and returned, as few Jedi ever had in all the thousands of generations preceding him.

and that Luke did defeat the Emperor:

Saga Edition Roleplaying Game: Jedi Academy Training Manual (May 2009) - p100
Luke faces an even greater challenge in the form of the reawakened clone of Emperor Palpatine. This clone organizes an assault on the New Republic and pushes the former Rebel Alliance to the breaking point. The Emperor's clone succeeds where Palpatine failed and turns Luke Skywalker to the dark side for a brief time. However, the intervention of his sister, Leia Organa-Solo, brings Luke back from the darkness, whereupon he defeats Palpatine's clone.

I'm not sure what WEG: The Dark Empire Sourcebook had to say - and The Essential Guide to Characters I was quoting from my memory of the Palpatine and Luke entries- since I don't have the book itself.

 

God forbid if they did that, that's 2/3 of Luke's story arcs from Bantam & Del-Rey, only outpaced or equal to his times he has been handicapped

Iron_lord, I wouldn't be surprised. KJA has always had an odd view of Luke

 

The Jedi Path does make it a generic "advanced Force technique"- but then, it also makes Force Storm one - with the proviso that "due to its potential for abuse, the Council has recently classified it as a dark side power"

By contrast - Force Grip - which can be used to close a trachea, or simply lift a person, is a "forbidden Force technique" and called "truly a brutal and cruel application of the Force"

The important part of most Force techniques, may be whether it's done with emotions fuelling it, or in a state of calm and peace.

In the endnotes to Dark Empire:

A Jedi does not grasp at power.
A Jedi is not a dominator, not an oppressor.

To grasp for power is to abandon the Ways of the Force.
Such a one ceases to know the Force, except in his Dark Side.

To grasp at power is to take up the path that leads to destruction.

The Dominator is the enemy, yes.
But the Jedi do not use the dark powers of the dominator against him.

Hearing these words, Leia is filled with fresh apprehension. For she knows that Luke, in his audacious quest, has done the unthinkable: He has used the powers of the Dark Side.

 

doesn't sound like it's neutral by that account if the Council(which council ? the one from the KOTOR days, the prequels or NJO ?) has just recently classified as a DS ability There is the other application of Force storm which is the transportation of people/vehicles to certain destinations, and its possible that the OJO had just discovered this power back in the Old Sith Wars and just cited it. To my knowledge there are very few practioners of the Force storm that Sidious wielded, so I imagine it to be one of the more uncanny abilities seen by Force users.

agreed, that arguably comes to how the person wields the ability. In hindsight I can see certain Jedi Orders of the time having that perspective after they fought their own brethren so recently.

and can you tell me what dark powers did Luke used against Sidious ? The only thing I recall was this and that's one of the ultimate applications of the light.

 

Given that the scene is when Leia's studying the Holocron on the retreat from Byss, before Palpatine comes after them in the Eclipse- it's not Wall of Light Leia is thinking of, since that scene hasn't happened yet.

It's possible that she knows Luke has gone to the Emperor's cloning chambers, seeking to destroy him- and it's hinted that he was using dark powers in the process:

Palpatine: "The clone lab is sealed … my moment of transference is close … no-one is allowed in here now."
Luke: "I have come to prevent that transition."
Palpatine: "Yes … so you have … using the powers I have given you."

From the book introduction, it would appear to be Master Fae Coven's council- just over a decade after the New Sith Wars ended around 1000 BBY.

 

(accidentally posted instead of edited)

 

I think it's worth remembering the endnotes in DE were paired to a specific issue and so would be aimed at achieving a certain effect, in this case those notes are likely for #5 and so the idea is to convince the reader Luke really has gone dark! Clearly it succeeded!

 

It certainly convinced the post-Dark Empire authors.

 

I like how there is an allusion to the dark powers, but by no means are those powers ever named, explored, or ever mentioned again. Not to mention Palpatine is still in "convert Luke to DS mode" which goes on even towards Empire's End.

Luke only uses telekinesis during the fight which he had beforehand and then surprisingly loses the will to continue in the fight

Master Fae and his council seem to have stumble upon this power for the first time, as it seems the New Sith Wars was one of the first uses of this power, so its recent moral alignment seems appropriate

 

She's quite a powerful Jedi Master:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fae_Coven

Yoda mentions that even he can't do (now that he's getting old) telekinesis as well as she could.

 

interesting, although she looks like a mouse humanoid

 

She's a Jenet- which do look like rodents.

I recall a theory that the reason the OJO took to the "separate children from parents in infancy and train them" doctrine, was that it was proposed by her- and that it was based on the Jenet social system.

 

Iron_lord:

But Luke didn't kill innocent beings when he was on Byss. In fact, Luke SAVED many, many Alliance lives by sabotaging the Imperial plans and weapons of mass destruction, and by sending the Imperial codes to the Alliance. Palpatine was already killing massive numbers of people with his World devastators before Luke got to Byss. By sabotaging those things when he was put in charge of the Imperial forces, Luke prevented many deaths. But again, I can see Luke blaming himself for people who died while he was on Byss even though it was the Emperor who caused their deaths, with Luke doing his best to put a stop to the carnage.

There was nothing in the text to support that. In fact, it says that the more Luke learned about the dark side from reading the Emperor's dark side books, the more he was "repulsed by it". If he was even repulsed by reading about it, I'd say it's highly unlikely that Luke actually did any of those dark things.

Jedi Ben, do you see why I hate DE so much?????? It certainly doesn't seem to be considered a huge victory for Luke. Instead, many, many fans AND authors seem to really think he fell to the dark side.






MasterSkywalker86:

Exactly! I agree with everything you said above, MS!

And the big point is that Luke spent most of the battle sabotaging the Imperial war effort in order to save lives and help the Alliance win... which is exactly what an undercover agent does.







Iron_lord:

You could be right about that. KJA was also the one who included the events of Byss into the novels for the first time.

And then there was Stackpole, who in I, Jedi was trying to mesh with Zahn, who in turn, wanted to "explain" all of the bad things and bad characterizations that happened in the Bantam books between his trilogy and his duology as Luke having a "darkside influence" because of events on Byss.

Needless to say, I STRONGLY disagree with Mara and her lecture about that and about Luke overusing and abusing the Force. I also STRONGLY disagree that this was a good idea to try to "fix" things that Zahn (and Stackpole) didn't like in other books. I think this just made things worse, as it made it look like Luke was darkish; that he had fallen; and that everything he touched was somehow "tainted" because of Luke's' experiences on Byss. Luke *didn't* fall to the dark side in DE, and everything he did for ten years wasn't negatively affected by the events of DE.


I can tell you that Luke Skywalker, the Last Hope of the Galaxy was published in October, 2008.

Sadly, it certainly did! ... AND, many SW readers too!






MasterSkywalker86:

And if that's the case, doesn't that prove that Palpatine *didn't* successfully turn Luke to the dark side? If he had, why would he continue to need to try to "convert" Luke???

Which doesn't exactly sound all that dark to me....

 

i still don't understand how a man who got his ass thrown down a reactor shaft and went ka-blooey came back twice.

 

In all seriousness, even back in ROTJ Palpatine getting thrown down the shaft didn't make sense. Telekinesis alone makes that idea silly. Now, decades later after ROTS and DE, it's even worse. Just one of those things that we as fans have to let slide.

 

DarthJenari, to be fair being caught off guard and being thrown down the reactor shaft in the span of seconds would shake up anyone's concentration to use of telekinesis/levitation. Fett was defeated by a blind but extremely lucky man after all due to surprise.

 

I think we can all agree there's a fairly large difference between Boba Fett and Palpatine, and what both can accomplish in terms of being surprised. What I personally found to be ridiculous was that Palpatine still kept discharging Force Lightning into Vader, showing that his powers weren't gone by any means, he was apparently just too surprised to use any of the other ones. Naah, that's stupid.

 

You could categorize it under the "idiocies of the bad guy" Sauron was dumb when trying to reach for Isuldir when the latter was clearly going for a weapon. Or when Maul didn't go for the kill when Obi-wan was hanging for dear life, or when Vader rushed into Obi-wan on Mustafar. Clearly overconfidence was their weakness and we witness how well Sidious depended on his foresight for protection.

 

As I said, it's one thing fans have to let slide in the grand scheme for the story to end. Plot Induced Stupidity as they call it.

 

U could also chuck up there Vader not Force grabbing Luke from plunging to his death in ESB too. I'm willing to pass on the Sidious situation cause it looks like he's in pain as well.

 

You do not understand the power of the Dark Side!

If you want super-smart, careful villains, read Tad Williams - SW villains have to be over-confident and open to surprise hits, as it's frequently their only weakness!

As to Byss and what Luke did or didn't do, people's view of it tends to reveal more about them and their attitude to escapist romantic space operas like SW than the story itself. DE is quite simply the old story of a hero having to descend into the underworld to defeat a great evil, at great risk to themselves, but, in the end, they just about pull it off, either alone or with help. The romantic aspect is that you can traverse hell without becoming mired in it, as is the escapism - in the end, you can fight a great evil without becoming it. Both are rarely the case in real life.

The problem for DE now, in a world 20 years later and a post-PT SW fandom, is that people's outlook tends to be darker, more cynical and thus its story cannot work on those grounds. In a world where everyone wants Game of Thrones, DE can do naught bit fail, but in this respect, while it may be a particularly good example, it's far from the only one.

If you really want realism in SW there is one easy rebuff: Realism would have had the Death Star come out of hyperspace on the right side of Yavin to annihilate the moon within seconds!

 

I think the problem was that Kevin J Anderson interpreted it as "the story of how Luke's hubris causes him to fall, needing others to rescue him".

That said, he also acknowledged that Luke was a better person for it- being "tempered - and coming out stronger"

 

I know dark Empire is a maligned, but somewhat respected comic series. I would have liked to see this in novel form. It would have gone in much more detail on what Luke was thinking and what he really had learned. This is why i prefer novel over a comic any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.