“Nexus” – get it?? –>

Heh. Anyway…

Introduction

I should start, of course, with the famous caveat that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. In the nebulous world of polling, people’s feelings are one of the hardest things to quantify, and even if that were not the case, the fact remains that I am by no means a statistician. There are always mitigating factors – one or two of which became apparent to me as this experiment went forth – that could, and do, prohibit me from making any absolute declarations as the result of my survey. My goal, then, was simply to probe an area of fandom I felt could stand some probing, in the hopes of starting up a conversation I felt was worth having. I’ve been wrong in the past (once or twice), and I could be wrong now.

To recap, requests were posted on both TheForce.Net’s Books and Comics pages and the Jedi Council forums for Expanded Universe fans to complete a survey that involved rating certain books and comics, as well as certain plot elements, on a 1 to 10 scale. The order of these ratings was random, but the selection was very careful and very specific – aside from a handful of red herrings, the vast majority of the plot items were “paired” with their respective book/comic, and vice-versa. The idea for this was as follows: I’ve always sensed, from extensive conversations with other fans, as well as fan news articles and reviews, a degree of variation between how much we like the events depicted in a Star Wars book and how much we like the book itself. While I’ve been keeping an eye on other related factors, like how long ago a book came out, and the amount of people who’ve actually read the item versus the amount familiar with the plot, the central question has always been “do we like the books more than we like the plots, and if so, what does that mean?”
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Back in August, Star Wars Insider published the definitive Top 20 memorable moments in all of the Expanded Universe.

At least, how they saw it.

The article was accompanied by more than one request for readers to send in their own top moments, so I started up this blog in order to do just that. It may have taken me another two months or so to actually do it, but what can I say – this baby clocks in at almost 4,700 words! I have a sneaking suspicion that even the official article isn’t this long. In any event, here goes…

20. “The Empire will always strike back.” – Force Heretic I: Remnant

Sometimes it takes nothing more than a good talking-to to make a moment great. Readers have loved Gilad Pellaeon longer than almost any other EU character, but what is perhaps his greatest moment was not given to us until a couple years ago, near the end of the New Jedi Order series. Vong commander B’shith Vorrik scores a resounding victory at Bastion against Pellaeon, now Supreme Commander of the Imperial Remnant’s forces, then moves on to Borosk, snapping at Pellaeon’s heels. Thanks to added support from the Galactic Alliance, Pellaeon calls Vorrik’s bluff, and – while directing the battle from a bacta tank, it should be noted – picks up a transmission from the Vong command ship for the sole purpose of gloating. Taunting the disgraced commander as he flees the system, Pellaeon utters a line twenty-three years in the making: “You may win the occasional battle against us, Vorrik, but the Empire will always strike back.”
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