Well, one example, that Sith Lord dude who had a powersuit that gave his multiple lightsabers all over his body which genuinely isn't that stupid.
You're talking about "Lord Nyax"...a character that Aaron Allston created in his New Jedi Order Entry
Enemy Lines, which he conceived as one giant reference to the
balls-awful Callista Trilogy from the 90s. No idea what motivated that creative decision.
But even as dumb as he is, he's only a minor blemish on an otherwise great book.
Enemy Lines has a wealth of excellent character moments, including a fantastic scene of Mara Jade carrying a load of guilt and uncertainty following the birth of her son, where she contemplates whether or not she--a former assassin with decades of blood on her hands--deserves to be a mother. There's also a great subplot where major villain Tsavong Lah uncovers an insurrection from within the Vong Ranks, combatting propagandistic efforts to dethrone him after it a recent humiliating injury raises doubts about whether or not he's still "favored by the Gods"....a subplot that's coupled nicely with another in which he calls upon his aging warrior father to help him strategize around the movements of his wily Jedi enemies. My favorite scene in the whole book, however, is actually the fight with Lord Nyax himself...where one of my favorite EU characters, Tahiri, shows the first sign of real strength and recovery since the tragic loss of the boy she loved in a previous book.
See? This is the kind of thing that helped the EU thrive; even when the authors didn't always have the best ideas, they were often counterbalanced by a monsoon of creative net positives that were often super=rewarding for longtime readers. Redeeming qualities like this are what helped the continuity endure for so long, because any creative misfires were often small enough that they could be neglected.
Important things like the consistency of the characters, the respect of the film lore, and the sincerity of the interpersonal drama were
never compromised, and is why the saga of Luke's Jedi Order--in particular, the saga of the Solo Children--lasted over twenty years' worth of novels, and why newer fans like me can relish their superb quality, in spite of the odd creative mistep.
I'd argue it's closer to a 50/50 split. Even the best EU arcs tend to have some stupid shit, but at the same time, even the worst ones tend to have awesome shit. You have your Bakura arc, but then you also get your Dark Empire or Thrawn Trilogy.
See, I don't even know if I'd agree with that, because if you really think about it, all of the examples of "bad" or "mediocre" novels that people routinely cite are works from the 90s Era, where the universe was still in its creative infancy, and Bantam still held the publishing license. That creative Wild West of Imperial kindappings, superweapons, and often-conflicting characterizations/plotlines only lasted for the first 8 years of the Expanded Universe.
Once Del Rey took over the license in 1999, the consistency in quality smoothened out to the point where you really have to scrub the bottom of the barrel for "bad" books...and even those largely consist of forgettable one-offs like
Approaching Storm, Rogue Planet, or
Jedi Trial. During the 2000's, with Dark Horse at the top of their game, and Del Rey alternating between phenomenal Prequel tie-ins and expanding the post-Endor saga with epic story arcs like
New Jedi Order and
Legacy of the Force, I'd say Star Wars hit its creative and narrative apex. You weren't starved for quality at all, and had to squint to find any examples of poorly-written material.
Not to mention that a lot of the zanier stories of the early EU like
Truce at Bakura or
Dark Fleet Crisis had the gross disadvantage of coming out at a time when the Prequel Trilogy was years away, and the better nuances of the Force, the Clone Wars, and the Jedi Order hadn't been explored yet.
The Disney Era of novels and comics don't have that excuse...and in fact, even with all six films out, have managed to inflict worse damage to continuity in a scant 10 years than the EU did over its 22-year run (or 38, if you want to count early, proto-EU works like the
Han Solo Adventures or the early Marvel comics from the 70s).
