Disney/Lucasfilm de-canonized all their Star Wars novels

[EnriqueH]

I remember talk of a sequel trilogy around the time of Return of the Jedi. I also remember that is was generally considered to be something that would never get made by the time the Thrawn Trilogy was being written. There were doubts if the prequel trilogy would be made at that point in time, but it was considered a possible thing. The sequels were considered an impossible thing by 1991 standards.

It would take just over 20 years for the impossible to become reality. But for at least the first ten years of that...there was no reason, at all, to consider the novels to be anything other than the continuing adventures of the Heroes of Yavin. After that point things started to waver around a lot. The authors seemed to communicate less with each other. More inconsistency started to happen. The films were remastered with new scenes. Then the Prequels happened, and everything changed...sort of.

I remember someone who hated the Prequels simply for what they made Boba Fett. Not the nature of him as a clone, or his backstory changes, but that he was played by a Maori actor. I think she was smitten with the idea of a white guy in the suit, and the change turned her off. I don't think she ever saw Revenge of the Sith. She was just done with Lucas.

The 1990s were definitely an interesting time to be a Star Wars fan (until The Phantom Menace shook us from our nirvana).

I can remember playing Dark Forces like crazy and seeing all these crazy, cool new worlds in the SW universe.

Everything up until The Phantom Menace served to enhance the Star Wars experience.

Or at least, that was my experience.

 

[BobtheGunslinge]

I think the novels had definitely started choking the life out of the franchise by then. I stopped reading during the Vong/New Jedi Order story, but I had stopped really enjoying the extended universe quite a few novels before that. The consistency and quality evaporated sometime around The Courtship of Princess Leia, and hindsight after the honeymoon revealed that KJA's Jedi Academy trilogy and Truce at Bakura were actually crap once you were honest with yourself.

But the prequels did make it official: Star Wars was dead.


I feel the same way about the Trek extended universe as it existed at the time. There were a few jewels, but most of the numbered books were disposable at best. After the reboot, when the Trek Lit-verse had the freedom to move the story on, things seem to have improved dramatically. Of course, I'm mostly reading the highly recommended books, so I might not have the full picture...

 

[EnriqueH]

There WERE probably way too many books.

But I found that most of them were good. I read everything between Truce At Bakura through I, Jedi, which pretty much covers that Zahn trilogy and the bulk of the X-Wing series.

It was actually the X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston that really got me into the books. There was a book called Tatooine Ghost, which is a kind of loose prequel to the Zahn trilogy, which I enjoyed.

I read several of the prequel era books, which were better than the actual prequel films, such as Shatterpoint, Darth Plagueis, Outbound Flight (by Zahn), and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter.

I never got into the Vong/New Jedi Order series because I was attempting to read them chronologically, (which is a long process).

 

[Relayer1]

I think the novels had definitely started choking the life out of the franchise by then. I stopped reading during the Vong/New Jedi Order story, but I had stopped really enjoying the extended universe quite a few novels before that. The consistency and quality evaporated sometime around The Courtship of Princess Leia, and hindsight after the honeymoon revealed that KJA's Jedi Academy trilogy and Truce at Bakura were actually crap once you were honest with yourself.

But the prequels did make it official: Star Wars was dead.


I feel the same way about the Trek extended universe as it existed at the time. There were a few jewels, but most of the numbered books were disposable at best. After the reboot, when the Trek Lit-verse had the freedom to move the story on, things seem to have improved dramatically. Of course, I'm mostly reading the highly recommended books, so I might not have the full picture...

I could have written this !

Pretty much all of the Trek books are at least O.K. from the relaunch.

Most are rather better than that...

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

That SW fiction was ever regarded as even semi-canonical was merely the result of the franchise being a good deal smaller: First, it was one movie out of a planned twelve, then two movies out of a planned nine, then three out of a planned six, then all six were made, and then some animation was added, and now we're back up to a planned nine. And for the overwhelming majority of the time since the first film was released, books were being published, under very tight control, no more than every other month (and even so, they were mostly monuments to Sturgeon's Law, and only a handful of the SW novels I bought remain in my library).

Conversely, by the time ST fiction (other than MtoH) began, there were three seasons of episodes, very little hope for any more, and very loose control over the fiction. And then came the animated series, followed by the theatrical films. Then TNG. And for a time, novels were coming out two per month, initially still with very loose control (but then, later, with rather tyrannical control that included a ban on inter-novel continuity). With theatrical films and an expanding canon of television episodes, it was hardly reasonable to expect television scripts to be vetted against novels. It was challenging enough to expect scripts to maintain continuity with previous scripts, as the canon expanded, and sometimes they didn't.

Now, SW fiction seems to be hitting the bookstores as frequently as ST fiction used to, although most of it still seems to be monuments to Sturgeon's Law.

(And as to the budding romance between Luke and Leia in Splinter, well, there was plenty of that in canon as well, even the beginnings of a Luke/Leia/Han triangle, up until the moment it was revealed that they were brother and sister, separated at birth.)

 

[Christopher]

...and now we're back up to a planned nine.

From Outer Space!

(Sorry -- it was just too perfect.)

And for a time, novels were coming out two per month, initially still with very loose control (but then, later, with rather tyrannical control that included a ban on inter-novel continuity).

Not quite in that order. Richard Arnold's crackdown began in 1989-90, when there were only TOS and TNG books, coming out in alternate months for a total of one book per month (up from one book every two months when it was just TOS). I don't think it went to two books a month until Voyager came along in 1995 and Pocket had to cover four different series on a regular basis.

(And as to the budding romance between Luke and Leia in Splinter, well, there was plenty of that in canon as well, even the beginnings of a Luke/Leia/Han triangle, up until the moment it was revealed that they were brother and sister, separated at birth.)

Exactly. It was never reasonable to expect SW canon to be a perfectly consistent whole forever, because the sequels even retconned things from earlier movies.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'll also point out that in the Sherlock Holmes milieu, the first one in which the term "canon" was applied to fiction, there are plenty of inconsistencies to be found in Doyle's writings, and in the Oz milieu (where I'm a downright fanatical stickler for canon), Baum's own original 14 books are a veritable minefield of continuity errors.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. Canon is not synonymous with continuity, except in broad strokes. It just means the stories, however discontinuous, that are told by the original creator or copyright owner, as distinct from the pastiches, continuations, and elaborations thereon by other creators.

Although, granted, the creator can choose to remove their own earlier works from what they consider the canon, so there is an element of continuity to it. But it shouldn't be taken to imply an absolutely consistent whole.

 

[F. King Daniel]

There's something about the way tie-ins are always playing catch up with the new (and sometimes contradictory) canon installments of Trek which I find very appealing. The way that, with one line of TV/movie dialogue or one visual, the goalposts can move and the novelverse is left scrambling to make itself fit in neatly again.

I think it's because of how it fires the imagination, trying to find creative ways of reconciling the the one with the other and seeing how the writers do the same.

 

[Christopher]

There's something about the way tie-ins are always playing catch up with the new (and sometimes contradictory) canon installments of Trek which I find very appealing. The way that, with one line of TV/movie dialogue or one visual, the goalposts can move and the novelverse is left scrambling to make itself fit in neatly again.

I think it's because of how it fires the imagination, trying to find creative ways of reconciling the the one with the other and seeing how the writers do the same.

There were many times in years past when a new Trek movie or episode or novel would reveal something that would require me to do a major restructuring of my novel and comic continuity, rearrange the timing of episodes and stories, remove some tales from the main continuity, etc. It could get pretty convoluted, but I enjoyed the creative exercise and the opportunity to get a fresh take on things. Kind of like how I enjoyed periodically rearranging the furniture in my room and bringing some freshness to my environment. (Something I haven't been able to do in the past decade, alas, due to the limited number of possibilities my apartment's layout and available furnishings permit.)

 

[martok2112]

"The chains of continuity will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Mouse has dissolved the unified canon permanently. The last remnants of the Expanded Universe have been swept away."

"That's impossible! How will Lucasfilm maintain control without the tier system?"

"The fans now have direct control over their personal continuity. Fear will keep the populace in line. Fear of nerd rage and flame wars".

"And what of the fanboys! If the Nerdom has obtained a complete technical readout of canon policy, it is possible, however unlikely, that they might find a loophole, and exploit it!"

 

[martok2112]

I know I mentioned this in a post sometime back in another thread, but, I used to have an older edition of the Star Wars Encyclopedia, and in it, there were levels of status given to various SW lore.

The only things that were accepted as official were the movies (at the time of this publication, there was only the OT...not prequels as yet). The novels of the films themselves were considered official. The Radio Plays for ANH, TESB, and ROTJ were also considered official. The novels that went beyond the movies were recognized by Lucas/Lucasfilm, but were not considered canon. The same went for comic books and video games.

Before Disney bought LF, the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed got the distinction of being considered canon. I'm not sure of the status of its sequel at that time.

The CG animated "THE CLONE WARS" was added to canon status. Gendy Tartakovsky's cel-animated Clone Wars did not receive canon status.

Star Wars: Rebels, the upcoming CG animated series taking place during the early Rebellion era is also likely to be given canon status.

I am guessing that since The Clone Wars series is canon, the feature film that piloted it must also be canon.

Pretty much every fictional publication of Star Wars that has come out is/was considered EU, and recognized, but not canonized.

Now that Disney has made its ruling on what is canon and what is not, the field is much narrower.

 

[Christopher]

The CG animated "THE CLONE WARS" was added to canon status. Gendy Tartakovsky's cel-animated Clone Wars did not receive canon status.

Well, they're actually both computer-animated; nobody uses physical cels anymore (that I know of). 2D animation is still drawn by hand, but either it's drawn directly into computers or the hand-pencilled drawings are scanned, inked, painted, and composited in computers.

I'm still unclear on whether the 2D Tartakovsky series is consistent with the 3D series. I think I've been told that there are no major contradictions. But I've also heard a theory that the whole thing was one character's fictionalized cartoon chronicle of the wars, or that it was a set of propaganda films or something. (Which I don't think is viable, since the series alluded to the Anakin-Padme romance/marriage, and not a lot of people in-universe ever knew that existed.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Another example of canon and continuity, this time in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth: The Tar-Aiym Krang was Foster's first Flinx novel, and his first Commonwealth novel (and indeed his first published novel period). It established the whole basic milieu. Bloodhype was his second Commonwealth novel, with Flinx added as kind of an afterthought. It wasn't until 32 years later, real time, that Foster finally managed to fill in the gap between the two, by writing the novel (Running from the Deity) that was the immediate prequel to Bloodhype, and established how he got to where he was when he showed up on Repler III, over two thirds of the way into that book. In the process, Foster ran into continuity problems with one novel establishing surfing as being popular with the Thranx (even to the point where the more adventurous ones would serve as a living surfboard for a Human friend), while another established that the Thranx, because of the locations of their breathing spicules, are extremely vulnerable to drowning, and racially terrified of large bodies of water. (Another discontinuity was when Foster changed the spelling of what a Thranx exoskeleton is composed of, to match the spelling used for what the exoskeletons of Terran arthropods is made of.)

 

[Stevil2001]

I'm still unclear on whether the 2D Tartakovsky series is consistent with the 3D series. I think I've been told that there are no major contradictions. But I've also heard a theory that the whole thing was one character's fictionalized cartoon chronicle of the wars, or that it was a set of propaganda films or something. (Which I don't think is viable, since the series alluded to the Anakin-Padme romance/marriage, and not a lot of people in-universe ever knew that existed.)

I recently rewatched chapters 1-21 of the Tartakovsky series as a prelude to watching the Filoni series, which I'm about a dozen episodes into, and so far it's pretty continuous. (There's not really much story content to the Tartakovsky series to be discontinuous, to be honest.) The only one I can see is that Grievous already has his cough in the Filoni series, which if I remember right was given to him by Mace Windu during the Palpatine kidnapping according to the Tartakovsky series.

The in-universe propaganda thing came from an entry in the Databank for the little boy who watches the Battle of Dantooine in chapters 12 and 13: http://web.archive.org/web/20110629...rs.com/databank/character/paxisylo/index.html It specifically said that "at the height of Palpatine's New Order, a bootleg animated holographic video file began propagating in the shadier parts of the HoloNet. It depicted the heroic exploits of Mace Windu on Dantooine." Mace's Force powers are pretty excessive in that story, but even if that's intended to say that chapters 12/13 are in-universe fictionalizations, that doesn't necessarily include the other chapters. I'm not sure when Anakin/Padme became public knowledge, but it definitely wasn't until after the Battle of Endor, if ever.

 

[martok2112]

The CG animated "THE CLONE WARS" was added to canon status. Gendy Tartakovsky's cel-animated Clone Wars did not receive canon status.

Well, they're actually both computer-animated; nobody uses physical cels anymore (that I know of). 2D animation is still drawn by hand, but either it's drawn directly into computers or the hand-pencilled drawings are scanned, inked, painted, and composited in computers.

I'm still unclear on whether the 2D Tartakovsky series is consistent with the 3D series. I think I've been told that there are no major contradictions. But I've also heard a theory that the whole thing was one character's fictionalized cartoon chronicle of the wars, or that it was a set of propaganda films or something. (Which I don't think is viable, since the series alluded to the Anakin-Padme romance/marriage, and not a lot of people in-universe ever knew that existed.)

Lol....I should've finished my "cel" with "cel-shaded" or something like that. . Yeah, it's easy to see that Tartakovsky's show was computer generated also....it really shows in the ships with their fluid animation. It was a nice marriage of hand drawn art with cg animation.

I don't remember how they classified the 2D series as far as whether it was explained away/theorized as a propaganda story or what, but indeed there wasn't any major continuity errors I could see...but I do remember reading an interview with Tartakovsky, where he said he wasn't overly upset that his version was not considered canon.

I remember I still enjoyed it though.

 

[Destructor]

I don't remember how they classified the 2D series as far as whether it was explained away/theorized as a propaganda story or what, but indeed there wasn't any major continuity errors I could see...but I do remember reading an interview with Tartakovsky, where he said he wasn't overly upset that his version was not considered canon.

Aren't there a lot of elements from the original Clone Wars shorts that are referred to in the animated series, though? I'm mainly thinking the introduction of Ventress, but wasn't Grevious introduced there also?

 

[Christopher]

Aren't there a lot of elements from the original Clone Wars shorts that are referred to in the animated series, though? I'm mainly thinking the introduction of Ventress, but wasn't Grevious introduced there also?

Grievous was created for the opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith. The CW microseries showed the events leading up to that opening sequence, and though it aired before the movie came out, it was following the movie's lead.

Ventress apparently originated as a rejected character from the prequels, a Sith apprentice whose role ended up being filled by Dooku. The microseries does seem to have been her earliest EU appearance.

 

[Destructor]

All I know is, when I take my daughter down the long journey that is Star Wars, I'm going to take her in this order:

IV
V
I
II
Animated Clone Wars
CGI Clone Wars
III
VI

And if she says Daddy was all of that Canon I'll be like: "Yes, dear, all of it."

 

[JD]

Assaj Ventress was actually featured in more than just the two TV series, she also appeared in a lot of the Clone Wars era comics, and a novel, most of which predated the Filoni series. She was created as a crossover character for the entire pre-Filoni Clone Wars multimedia project.