So, rumour has it that the title may be 'The Ancient Fear'?

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67205

That's a great idea. I remember the comics adaptation being pretty good. I always found it hard to visualise what the Noghri looked like so that was a big help. I think Thrawn is one of the best characters to come out of the EU.

My personal picks are:

Prequel era
Jedi Council: Acts of War - the Jedi who cameo in the Phantom Menace engage with a hostile alien species.
Republic: Stark Hyperspace War - another 'war' arc featuring the Republic at war
Republic: The Devaronian Version - amusing comedic story about a bounty hunter

Republic: Into the Unknown - order 66, a prequel of sorts to Dark Times
Dark Times - pretty much the entire run
Star Wars: Purge - usually standalone stories involving Vader on the hunt for Jedi post-ROTS

Tag and Bink are dead - comedic series about two hapless characters whose antics weave in and out of the films, not entirely unlike Stacy/Pink Five. There's a prequel two-parter and an original trilogy two-parter, both are pretty funny.

Original trilogy era
Empire: Princess Warrior - an early story about Leia, inspired by the 1970s Radio Drama
Empire: Darklighter - backstory for Biggs between his leaving of Tatooine and reunion with Luke
Empire: To the Last Man - best summed up as 'Zulu for the Imperial army'
Empire: In the shadows of their fathers - Luke adventure on a planet which went through hell during the clone wars
Empire: Wrong side of the war - Luke and rebels on a sabotage mission

Actually, pretty much most of the Empire run is good. Lots of good one-shots.

Post-ROTJ
Dark Empire (I and II) - perhaps most interesting to see what they did in this really early EU
X-wing Rogue Squadron: The Phantom Affair - Wedge and friends try to get a planet to sign up to the New Republic
X-wing Rogue Squadron: In the Empire's Service - the rebels run into Baron Soontir Fel, ace imperial pilot
X-wing Rogue Squadron: Requiem for a Rogue - Wedge and friends run into some stranded Bothans on a weird planet
Star Wars Infinities (ANH, ESB and ROTJ) - alternate reality what if versions of the films, interesting to explore

My picks heavily favour the artwork of David Fabbri (reasonably cartoonish style) and Douglas Wheatley ('detailed pencils' style). A fair amount of the art in Star Wars comics is pretty old/bad, so I tend to be drawn to those where I like the style. For instance, there are actually quite a few good well written stories in the Republic series, but the artwork I was never too big a fan of. Likewise, some of the X-wing series are just horrid to look at.

I've heard good things about the Knights of the Old Republic series and also Legacy. I've read none of the former, and what little I read for the latter, set a long time into the future, revealed it to have given almost every character a lightsabre (which really didn't really appeal to me that much).

The TL:DR version is the Dark Times and Empire runs.

My book knowledge is probably more than most but mostly relates to the first decade or so after ROTJ - Zahn's trilogy and duology sequel, Anderson's Jedi Academy and Dark Saber, and a couple of the X-wing novels. So no YuVong stuff. I do know the main beats I suppose, having wasted a few idle hours on Wookiepedia.

Comics I'm more in tune with, and have read practically everything except the Marvel run and the ancient history EU (that is, thousand years before prequels). I still collect the comics and am quite sad that Dark Horse's superb stewardship of the medium is coming to an end after so long.

Oh man, completely missed this. Looking forward to giving it a listen.

Someone needs to enroll the Internet for sensitivity training.

All the characters wear plot armour and after the nth time they've escaped unscathed from encounters with the Germans (whilst simultaneously winning everything), I realised the lack of danger had robbed the film of almost all of its drama. What remains is a rather cringe-inducing romantic subplot with the Maverick pilot, a wasteful subplot about the squadron commander drinking alot (I say wasteful because it has little to no bearing on his flying performance, sure the film wants us to think it caused an accident by it doesn't), and the 'oh noes aren't White people racist' theme that despite the caricature level probably lends the film its best moment by far. There's also this scarred and blond German ace who likes to shoot down the American bombers [that are trying to kill German civilians] and is sort of developed into an antagonist, but since he doesn't actually do anything of import (like, say, shoot anyone down), he too ends up just being a caricature.

It also suffers from that rather unpleasant African-American movie tradition of having virtually every black character be wise-cracking, loud and arrogant.

I think Train Job was my first Firefly experience and I don't even remember finishing it - it seemed impenetrable and weird, and I thought the re-use of Starship Troopers gear made it seem really cheap. It was Serenity that opened my eyes.

So yeah, some anecdotal evidence that Train Job failed as a pilot.

Not sure about top five, but Apollo 13 and Phantom Menace are two of my personal favourites, and The Abyss is great listening due to Uncle Trey's stories.

Yeah, as if we couldn't figure out a way to chemically block our fear...

I saw Last Days on Mars

I knew nothing about it other some of the cast, and had even avoided the trailer. I was therefore expecting something like Moon or Europa Report. What I got was... very different. I won't give away anything and will simply say that my slightly flabberghasted reaction was 'wow, really, you went for that?'

Yeah, I can't make it tonight either and sunday would perhaps be better for me personally (would also give me time to fire up Skyrim for "research").

So who's the team of adventurers on this one?

I am liking it so far, definite a different feel than Sagan but Tyson has always been great at showing his infectious passion and amazement about science, and that's a key thing to have as presenter.