@CWO:
Ah, I see. Thanks. No wonder it made no sense to me; I’ve never read any of that expanded universe stuff. In fairness, Star Wars isn’t the only sci-fi franchise that brings back dead characters; over in the Star Trek universe, for example, Denish Crosby once said that her best roles on the show were in the episodes that were made after they killed off her character.
Oh by far. Selah was a far more interesting character than Tasha Yar. To be fair, TNG season 1 wasn’t great and most of the characters were not well fleshed out… Geordi, Worf, Wesley all really stand out in addition to Yar. But once the show developed more and they were able to work in an interesting plot line for her, she worked out well. Even to the point of being a favorite character for video game spin offs.
They brought Spock back in ST:III, but that seemed like a planned story arc from ST:II. Although I think I remember Leonard Nimoy asking to be killed off at one point. Maybe they just all thought better of it after the fact.
They set the same thing up for Data in Nemesis, with him downloading what amounted to his memories into his long lost brother before going on his suicide mission. Unfortunately we never saw where it went from there.
Hell they killed Kirk and then brought him back all in the same film. (Edit: and then killed him again.)
Nothing is as bad as the Emperor in the Star Wars expanded universe. He was killed in RotJ and then brought back as a clone like, what, at least 3 times?
Can’t let the good established characters permanently die it seems. The universe just isn’t as good without them apparently. If you count the Death Star as a character (and I do), they did it at least twice with that (RotJ and FA). And even more times with the whole Superweapon concept.