Yeah, I've got your moment right here, flyboy.

Not long ago my colleague Pablo Hidalgo wrote a very entertaining piece about Top and Not-So-Top moments in the Expanded Universe, as a companion to a similar article in Star Wars Insider magazine. Pablo discussed the options with some of us first, polling me, Ghent, Dan Wallace, and TastyTaste. It was a lot of fun to see where we agreed and disagreed.

Maybe simply because we're all different, or maybe because I was the only female in the group, I was stunned that we all didn't share the same outstanding lowpoint in Star Wars fiction: The Gun of Command.

We can excuse Pabs for not wanting to pick on the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia with more than one entry, and he was bent on including C-3PO singing and dancing. But really . . . what could possibly be worse than Han Solo slipping totally out of character to shoot Princess Leia with a gun, the beam of which would make her obey his commands? With the intent of convincing her to marry him!!

Here we see a totally new strategy for seduction - shoot first, charm later. As if being obedient was going to charm our Leia in the long run. Once she came out of it and found out what he'd done she'd skin him rather than marry him.

Solo in Courtship was under some pressure of course. He was surrounded by women who had also slipped out of their characters. Leia (ooooohhhh...I'm not sure if I love Han.) and Mon Mothma (Maybe you should marry the prince, Leia. We really need the money.)

I'm not slamming the entire book, mind you. Riding rancors, and Han brilliantly flying the Falcon right through the enemy ship were very cool strokes.

However, my personal Star Wars hero, Han Solo, the most charming scoundrel in the galaxy, having to resort to forced ...OBEDIENCE? Which universe were we in anyway?