HAL 9000 is awesome. He's a supercomputer who controls every aspect of life on this science vessel going to Jupiter. Then one day, he made a mistake, or so it seemed.
Because 9000 series computers had never before been know to make a mistake, the crew decided to take HAL offline and run the ship on manual control.
"Open the pod bay doors HAL."
"I'm sorry Dave, but I can't do that.
"Open the doors HAL"
"I know that you and Phil are planning to deactivate me, and I'm afraid that is something I cannot allow to happen."
HAL is creepy because he is so matter of fact and polite about turning off your oxygen or leaving you to die in outer space. His secret mission is listed as more important than protecting the crew, so he can kill them if they get in the way. He's really very sorry, and he's feeling much better now. Can he please stay on line?
EU is Expanded Universe. It's the catchall for a number of mass produced lines of games and books that bear the Star Wars brand. Unfortunately, with the Death Stars, the Empire and the Sith all extinct, their isn't much to war against in the stars, so there's always one more rogue Imperial officer trying to rebuild the Stormtroopers, who also happens to to be force sensetive (even though that shouldn't be possible) and have some sort of Death Star prototype that everyone just forgot about.
Occasionally, a jedi goes to the dark side and strts a new sith cult, but he usually dies within a few books. The writers all like their own villians best, so they kill the other ones off if they get the chance. Naturally, they all kill their own villians now, so they at least get to go out with style.
I blame Timothy Zahn, who wrote some of the first EU novels and got the whole cycle started.
