I both agree and disagree with your points. Now forgive me if I go into an extra long tangent as well.
For starters, I never said I wanted it to be scifi. I am someone who firmly believes that Star Wars is and should be a scifi/fantasy and it should never forget that. The majority of people seem to agree on this (except Disney drones who don't really seem to care about anything except mindlessly defending the brand_. That's been clear from the beginning. Its a multipurpose setting where literally anything can happen. You have
beastmen,
literal orcs,
spellblades,
elves,
bugbears,
giants, literal magic (which C-3PO doesn't deny as existing in ROTJ and follow-up media), among other countless fantasy and D&D-style tomfoolery with dozens of scifi mixtures, and you can pretty much fit in anything else in there because its just that unrestricted, unlike normal scifi or fantasy settings which are restricted entirely by pre-conceived notions, tropes and rules. Hence why I never really gave a shit when something goofy or silly would show up in pre-Disney Star Wars while others would bitch and moan about something ruining their scifi setting, like witches with magic spells in George's Ewok movies. There's room enough for both scifi shit and fantasy shit in SW.
And Planets sharing one geographical feature isn't the problem, the problem is that you have a boundless fantasy/scifi setting where all manner of crazy and amazing planets can exist regardless if they have one biome or not, yet they choose to follow the same repetitive formula and recycle the same things we've seen before or just having them be completely featureless (like the planets in TFA), resulting in the entire galaxy under Disney being nothing but OT retreads all of which are exactly the same and have nothing unique to them because Disney just keeps making them rehashes of pre-existing worlds with nothing unique to set them apart, same with all their aliens just being donut steals of familiar ones, while familiar ones are axed and failing to introduce anything new that's actually interesting or unique. To keep planets from becoming a repetitive copy of one another, give them something unique to make them actually memorable and set them apart from the one they're copying. I wasn't implying that a single biome is silly, but making every planet a single biome while also being a knockoff of a pre-existing planet takes away from what made the originals unique, like having every single desert planet be an exact copy of one another. Like for example, Blablabla-7 is just Tatooine, and it has everything Tatooine has, same aliens, same tech, same landscape, same buildings, same everything, but to set it apart, try and give it something that validates its existence as a separate entity, like make its architecture unique, show some volcanoes or oddly shaped spires in the distance. Anything really. Then there's the Resistance planet and Yellow Yoda's planet in TFA, both are just forest planet with rivers and lakes a la Yavin 4 with no unique features whatsoever except a Yavin 4 rebel base duplicate (except its just a hole in the ground instead of a cool temple) and an old cantina on a barren planet. And while you could argue that both Yavin 4 and Endor are just forest planets, they both have something that make them stand out from one another, one has a giant red planet lording over it, a more tropical theme and is dotted with neat temples (and unique wildlife in old video games), while Endor is tall trees, treetop villages, bear people, many satellites with a giant planet lording over it, and also giants, monsters and whatnot. They feel otherworldly. Meanwhile the planets in TFA don't have that feel, they are just empty or re-use pre-existing visuals that fail to inspire that same sense of wonderment when you saw them for the first time, which even George's prequels managed to achieve since we see a planet of endless rain and water with floating cities, a planet of deep seas full of monsters, dumb frog people and beautiful architecture, a planet of orange wastes, hive pillars and bugmen, a planet of giant mushrooms and flowers, and a planet filled with more holes than swiss cheese. Same with what we see in video games and comics from before Disney, ranging from planets of
dark haunted demon jungles with tall skyscrapers rising from the trees or
planets of half-day and half-night that can support life and have floating rock gardens (How is this even possible? Who cares. Its neat).
Expanding on a media doesn't dilute anything as long you as you don't try to dismiss its key elements and structure. Genndy, KOTOR's writers, Peña, and James Luceno, among others, understood this and achieved great shit because of it. They gave the perfect blend of scifi and fantasy without really giving a damn about whether something made sense or not. The thing, is people also don't want things expanded or explored because they have their own pre-conceived notions or headcanons that prefer things remain unknown or unexplained because they're totally fixated on (forgive the analogy) the original scripture, and thus reject any expansions and reformations as complete heresy even if they don't take away from what made the core tenants valuable and doesn't nullify anything that came before it, but they won't have it regardless because they are so rooted in their fundamentalism that they won't accept anything that comes after the first edition, even if it what comes after doesn't throw the first edition out the window.
Which is where Disney fucked up big time. They actually nullified and threw the first edition/original scriptures out the window, and completely debunked and reformed everything that made what came before them. George's prequels and Special Editions are similar in that regard because they also shat on a lot of what came before them, but here's the key difference, unlike Disney, the vast majority of people were willing to dismiss George's shit and outright call him out for his shortcomings while Disney gets a free pass on everything. Another key difference is that while George's shenanigans took a big shit on a lot of media that came before him, it still didn't nullify the sense of conclusion within the OT and it didn't make Luke, Leia, anyone nor the setting from the First Edition any less important and valuable. Since the prequels take place in the "past", the "future" remained unsullied, and even dumb shit like the midi-chlorians couldn't change the importance of Luke's journey and Vader's redemption (even if his romance backstory was cheesy as presented in the films), and any continuity issues George's prequels introduced to expanded universe media were irrelevant since most people just didn't really care about what George did or said (since by this point he was already retconning even stuff in the OTs) or treated any inconsistencies the prequels presented as not worth their time or simply abridged certain things. Meanwhile Disney actually managed to completely nullify that and make the OT completely and utterly worthless while taking a piss all over what made it special and also throwing out anything that came before them out the window (while George was at least willing to use it for references), effectively butchering the franchise to the point where its nothing but a hollow copycat of the OT.
On a site note, another grievance I see in regards to the prequels is that the setting looks "too advanced", specifically Coruscant, but really, it looks no different than Bespin's own futuristic Cloud City did. And in regards to how much the prequels fucked up the scifi/fantasy element, that was only true as far as the jedi and midichlorians went, and George really fucked up hugely there (almost on par with Disney, but not entirely). In regards to the midichlorians and the jedi (which I suspect was a result of George having been indoctrinated into scientology which is incredibly materialistic and shallow), George really screwed the pooch with that one, thankfully writers and follow-up stories were able to salvage that mess by claiming that midis weren't actually the Force, usually either implying that:
A: They just fed on the Force and prospered in hosts who were strong in it
B: Being the biological measure that determined how the Force could be stronger in one particular family more than another
C: An example of how the jedi had become too soulless and empirical, thus making their near-extinction and reformation a necessity because they had clearly lost their way
Or the best and most common option:
D: Simply ignoring them altogether or
making fun of them and George in Editor Notes because there were actually writers who weren't afraid to stick it to George when needed.
Again, sorry for the TL;DR and if I repeated myself a few times, but just wanted to put that out there.
