New Frontier book series and New Earth. Anyone else like them?

[KRAD]

"Tiered canon" is a fancy way of saying "not canon." Canonicity is a binary state. Either it is or it isn't. "Canon until we contradict it" is, by definition, not fucking canon.

And, I say for the millionth time, who gives a damn? Why are people stressing about what's real in a fictional construct? The Marvel Cinematic Universe is also not canon, yet people still go see those movies.................

 

[WebLurker]

"Tiered canon" is a fancy way of saying "not canon." Canonicity is a binary state. Either it is or it isn't. "Canon until we contradict it" is, by definition, not fucking canon.

That honestly doesn't make any sense to me. I am weird, but still. I mean, pretty much anything in a franchise is canon until contradicted. "U.S.S. Enterprise Starship Class, San Fransisco Calie." "On Earth, two hundred years ago, I was a prince..." and so on and so on. Heck, "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" are taking quite the canon beating by DSC in terms of the uniforms and design of the Enterprise.

And, I say for the millionth time, who gives a damn? Why are people stressing about what's real in a fictional construct? The Marvel Cinematic Universe is also not canon, yet people still go see those movies.................[/QUOTE]

Well, those movies do form a self-contained canon onto themselves, which I think is how most viewers see them.

 

[KRAD]

Well, those movies do form a self-contained canon onto themselves

:beats head against wall:

No, they don't. They form a self-contained continuity. But the canon is the Marvel Comics that they're based on. That's the original text. The movies are tie-ins to the comics.

 

[Christopher]

As far as I can tell, the facts are that the EU was canon (albeit on a secondary tier, literally) until the Disney reboot.

No, they just said it was. In practice, it was freely contradicted by new movies and shows and kept having to rewrite itself to keep up with the changes. The movies totally overwrote the EU version of the Clone Wars and Republic history, The Clone Wars totally ignored Karen Traviss's ongoing Mandalorian novels, and so on. Yes, there are fans that delude themselves into believing it was all consistent until 2014, but that's blatantly ignoring the facts. It just pretended to be consistent as it repeatedly rewrote itself to conform to new movies and shows and quietly swept the old, contradicted continuity under the rug when it couldn't find a handwave to reconcile things.

"Canon" is just a word. Labels don't create truth, they just describe things that exist. Canon means the core body of work. If that core body freely ignores and contradicts its tie-in books, then sticking the word "canon" on them doesn't make them canon, any more than writing "Ferrari" on a cardboard box makes it a sportscar. The word is meaningless by itself; it's the practice that matters.

Sure, I was thinking more that the DSC arrangement seems different then anything Paramount/CBS/etc. did before and it does make one wonder why a different tact was taken now.

I'm sure I've answered that question from you before. The only difference is that Kirsten Beyer is on the show's staff and thus it's convenient to use her as a liaison between the two branches of Trek that she's connected to.

And again, the goal is to improve the ability of the tie-ins to keep up with the show, something that the early tie-ins to past shows were not always able to do successfully because of the rapid changes that can happen early in a show's production. That does NOT mean it goes in the other direction. And we've already seen that it hasn't even worked -- despite their best efforts, both Desperate Hours and the comic The Light of Kahless have had elements that were contradicted by season 2 of Discovery.

So it's really not fundamentally different from what's been done in the past. It's just a matter of degree, an increased amount of access and communication from the show to the books. But it still doesn't guarantee mutual consistency, because that's just not a realistic expectation given the moving target of TV series continuity.

On the other hand, if there's nothing but silence on the issue, kinda hard to prove or disprove.

That's the wrong way of looking at it. Tie-ins are rarely canonical. It's almost impossible to make them canonical unless they're from the actual creators of the original work. So the automatic default assumption should be that they aren't -- it usually isn't even a question.

It's best to think of "canon" as "the stuff from the original creators or owners." You'll almost never go wrong that way, because it's exceedingly rare for anything that isn't from the original creators or owners to be part of the canon.

Since the movie series was canceled, could it be considered canon? No real reason not to, given that Saban is silent on the issue and it's not like it's going to impede anything down the road or likely to get reevaluated.

If the question is whether you personally want to count a story as "real" in your mind, then the word "canon" has absolutely no relevance to that decision whatsoever. It doesn't matter in the slightest what label you stick on the thing. Just count it already and stop wasting effort worrying or arguing over what to call it.

Most of these things have multiple creators, including ones who come and go.

That's why "or owners" is part of the definition too. Creators hired by the owners of the property to continue the primary work are in a different category from creators working for a separate licensee to create supplementary works. The former is sort of like the heir to an estate; the latter are basically just contractors hired to work on the estate.

Heck, in the Star Trek Kelvin movies, the writing teams had mutually contradictory ideas on how the time travel accident worked and what changed it did and did not make to history (granted, neither was canonical, but still...).

For the five millionth time, whether something is canonical has nothing to do with whether it is self-consistent. Many, many canons are full of contradictions. That's not what it's about. It's about the consistency of the overall authorial voice and vision behind a work, not the consistency of individual plot details or factoids.

That honestly doesn't make any sense to me. I am weird, but still. I mean, pretty much anything in a franchise is canon until contradicted.

Not in a franchise, because a franchise consists of the original work (which we nickname the "canon") plus its derivative works like adaptations and tie-ins and merchandise.

And again, "canon" is a noun, not an adjective. It's not a declaration of value or consistency or reality. It just means the original work that other things like tie-ins or fanfiction or adaptations are based on.

 

[WebLurker]

:beats head against wall:

No, they don't. They form a self-contained continuity. But the canon is the Marvel Comics that they're based on. That's the original text. The movies are tie-ins to the comics.

Semantics?

No, they just said it was. In practice, it was freely contradicted by new movies and shows and kept having to rewrite itself to keep up with the changes. The movies totally overwrote the EU version of the Clone Wars and Republic history, The Clone Wars totally ignored Karen Traviss's ongoing Mandalorian novels, and so on. Yes, there are fans that delude themselves into believing it was all consistent until 2014, but that's blatantly ignoring the facts. It just pretended to be consistent as it repeatedly rewrote itself to conform to new movies and shows and quietly swept the old, contradicted continuity under the rug when it couldn't find a handwave to reconcile things.

Yeah, this is known, that's how the canon worked when Legends was a thing. It's been well documented up til the very end (see The Essential Reader's Guide). The point still stands.

"Canon" is just a word. Labels don't create truth, they just describe things that exist. Canon means the core body of work. If that core body freely ignores and contradicts its tie-in books, then sticking the word "canon" on them doesn't make them canon, any more than writing "Ferrari" on a cardboard box makes it a sportscar. The word is meaningless by itself; it's the practice that matters.

That goes against literally the vast majority of what I've seen on the subject (and I find this crap interesting, so I've seen a bit of it).

That's the wrong way of looking at it. Tie-ins are rarely canonical. It's almost impossible to make them canonical unless they're from the actual creators of the original work.

And yet it happens all the time.

It's best to think of "canon" as "the stuff from the original creators or owners." You'll almost never go wrong that way, because it's exceedingly rare for anything that isn't from the original creators or owners to be part of the canon.

Yeah?

For the five millionth time, whether something is canonical has nothing to do with whether it is self-consistent. Many, many canons are full of contradictions. That's not what it's about. It's about the consistency of the overall authorial voice and vision behind a work, not the consistency of individual plot details or factoids.

And again, "canon" is a noun, not an adjective. It's not a declaration of value or consistency or reality. It just means the original work that other things like tie-ins or fanfiction or adaptations are based on.

You'e one of the only people I know of who holds that view. Make of that what you will.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

*awkwardly clears throat*

So... How bout that New Frontier and New Earth series, everyone? Those are... certainly things, right?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Sure, I was thinking more that the DSC arrangement seems different then anything Paramount/CBS/etc. did before and it does make one wonder why a different tact was taken now.

Likely because the Berman regime seemingly mostly saw tie-in novels as nothing, but Kurtzman is a fan of them (I recall him and Orci posting top 10 lists in 2009, and including a huge Spock's World reference in their '09 script which sadly never made it to air) and brought on Trek novelists as writers and consultants.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, this is known, that's how the canon worked when Legends was a thing. It's been well documented up til the very end (see The Essential Reader's Guide). The point still stands.

The point is, it's contradictory to call it "canon" at all if the actual canon ignores it. Labels do not create reality. Labels are irrelevant. What actually happens in practice is what matters, and what actually happened with Star Wars's so-called "canon" was the exact same thing that happened with Star Trek tie-ins, namely that the screen productions freely ignored them and the tie-ins had to change themselves to keep up with the screen. In practice, they worked the same way, so the difference in labels was meaningless.

That goes against literally the vast majority of what I've seen on the subject (and I find this crap interesting, so I've seen a bit of it).

The vast majority of what fans say on the Internet about "canon" is wrong. It's a very simple and relatively unimportant concept that fans have blown up into an absurd mythology and excuse for petty gatekeeping games.

And yet it happens all the time.

No, it doesn't. Canonical tie-ins almost always have the involvement of the original creators. J. Michael Straczynski plotted and oversaw the Del Rey Babylon 5 novels (and it was his inability to supervise the Dell novels as closely that kept them from succeeding as canonical tie-ins). Joss Whedon has written, plotted, or "show-run" the tie-in comics to his shows, and only the Buffy/Angel comics published after those shows ended were able to be canonical because he couldn't directly oversee the comics while he was busy on the shows. The Avatar/Korra tie-in comics and novels are plotted by the shows' creators. The Animatrix was produced and co-written by the Wachowskis. And so on.

The only significant exception I know of is the current Star Wars line, and that's a special case because there's a whole department at Disney/Lucasfilm dedicated to overseeing everything, movies and TV included, and keeping it all uniform. So that is all still overseen by the same people in that sense.

Likely because the Berman regime seemingly mostly saw tie-in novels as nothing, but Kurtzman is a fan of them (I recall him and Orci posting top 10 lists in 2009, and including a huge Spock's World reference in their '09 script which sadly never made it to air) and brought on Trek novelists as writers and consultants.

It's not about liking or preference. This is a profession, not a hobby, so decisions are not just about personal likes and dislikes. They're about what's feasible and attainable. It's extremely difficult to coordinate tie-ins with an ongoing production. Making a TV show is like building a train while it's roaring down the tracks at full speed. Tie-ins are like cars driving alongside the tracks. Imagine trying to have workers constantly crossing from the train to the cars to exchange parts. It's exponentially more difficult. The train needs to be able to run on its own and not depend on the cars' ability to keep pace, because there's no way to guarantee that they always will. You can see that by the contradictions that have already cropped up between Discovery and its tie-ins despite the effort to coordinate more closely.

A canon ignoring its tie-ins has historically been the rule, not the exception. Canonical tie-ins have become more of a thing in recent years, but I can't think of a single instance of them before Babylon 5, and they're still far from ubiquitous today. So it's got nothing to do with creators' feelings about the tie-ins. It's just that audiences today have become more preoccupied with continuity and dismissive of tie-ins that aren't canonical, so that creators sometimes make an effort to follow suit.

 

[KRAD]

Semantics?

Dude, I'm a writer, semantics are important. *laughs*

And yes, canon and continuity are two different things.

For the record, everything Christopher has said is right.

That goes against literally the vast majority of what I've seen on the subject (and I find this crap interesting, so I've seen a bit of it).

Big deal. The vast majority of what you've seen on the subject is wrong.

You'e one of the only people I know of who holds that view. Make of that what you will.

Then you need to broaden your horizons to people who have a better understanding of how this works. And what words mean.

I'm curious, how many of the people you know that you mention actually work in television, movies, or tie-in fiction?

 

[Damian]

That honestly doesn't make any sense to me. I am weird, but still. I mean, pretty much anything in a franchise is canon until contradicted. "U.S.S. Enterprise Starship Class, San Fransisco Calie." "On Earth, two hundred years ago, I was a prince..." and so on and so on. Heck, "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" are taking quite the canon beating by DSC in terms of the uniforms and design of the Enterprise.

Ooh, another canon argument

I think you're confusing "canon" with "continuity". As Christopher and KRAD have noted to varying degrees, canon for Star Trek is simply the on screen product. Different franchises may have different ways of defining their canon, perhaps some consider tie-ins to have some value to the canon.

But for Star Trek, it's pretty well defined I think that it's the body of screen work....and that's it.

But that doesn't mean it's all consistent. The on screen stuff has contradicted themselves from time to time. But that's a continuity issue. Even things that have been known to bug me a bit like production design and technology issues are continuity issues I have.

And I really thing we fans get a bit too concerned about 'canon'. Frankly the only ones that need to be worried about that are showrunners and esp. tie-in writers (since they can't contradict what's in canon, at least not without an ok from the PTB I guess).

I consider a lot of the novels in my own Star Trek continuity (some call it 'head canon' though I'm not fond of that word)--and novels are explicitly NOT canon. So canon-schmanon--as a fan I don't really care too much about it.

 

[Christopher]

I think you're confusing "canon" with "continuity". As Christopher and KRAD have noted to varying degrees, canon for Star Trek is simply the on screen product. Different franchises may have different ways of defining their canon, perhaps some consider tie-ins to have some value to the canon.

As I've said, "canon" is just a shorthand term we use to refer to the core body of work from the original creators or owners. Sometimes, those creators/owners extend their series across two or more media; usually they don't, and the works in other media are just emulations by other creators. If you just focus on who's responsible for the work's creation, rather than what medium it's in, then it's far easier to understand what is or isn't canonical. It's not a matter of anyone formally defining the label, because the label isn't what matters. It's just a description of what happens in practice. What matters is what the creators do, not what they call it.

And I really thing we fans get a bit too concerned about 'canon'. Frankly the only ones that need to be worried about that are showrunners and esp. tie-in writers (since they can't contradict what's in canon, at least not without an ok from the PTB I guess).

As I've said many times, showrunners don't need to "worry" about canon at all, because what they do is automatically the canon by definition. The word "canon" only exists to differentiate what they create from the derivative/imitative works by other people. So the only time that creators/showrunners need to address the concept of canon at all is when they're explaining to the audience whether the tie-ins count as part of the canon. And since tie-ins rarely are part of the canon, it's rarely an issue that the creators have any reason to care about.

I mean, you're right that tie-in writers aren't free to contradict the canon. But the creators of the canon itself are perfectly free to contradict and redefine it, because it belongs to them. The owner of a building gets to remodel it, but renters have to leave things the way they found them.

I consider a lot of the novels in my own Star Trek continuity (some call it 'head canon' though I'm not fond of that word)--and novels are explicitly NOT canon. So canon-schmanon--as a fan I don't really care too much about it.

Right. Canon is what the creators do. That's irrelevant to the question of what you or I as an audience member choose to pretend is part of the story. We don't need any official approval to count a story we like or discount an episode we don't. We're just pretending and imagining anyway, so why does it need any kind of formal authorization or permission?

 

[Damian]

As I've said many times, showrunners don't need to "worry" about canon at all, because what they do is automatically the canon by definition.

Yeah, I guess that's true enough. The current show runners are building off the existing canon because they chose to, not because they have too. I think I was falling into the continuity trap again.

I mean, you're right that tie-in writers aren't free to contradict the canon. But the creators of the canon itself are perfectly free to contradict and redefine it, because it belongs to them. The owner of a building gets to remodel it, but renters have to leave things the way they found them.

That and your borrowing the car analogy are probably good ways to think about canon. When you get down to the bare basics of it all, really, officially licensed tie in writers are probably really the only ones that have to worry about canon. The show runners can worry about it, but it's not required for them. The rest of us, I guess the only issue that arises is if we don't like a current on screen show since future tie ins can't contradict that.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I guess that's true enough. The current show runners are building off the existing canon because they chose to, not because they have too. I think I was falling into the continuity trap again.

They choose to tell stories pretending to be set in the same imaginary universe as the previous shows, using their concepts and continuity to the extent that it serves the stories they're telling now. Telling new stories is the goal, and using elements from prior stories -- or changing them when necessary -- is a means toward that end.

When you get down to the bare basics of it all, really, officially licensed tie in writers are probably really the only ones that have to worry about canon. The show runners can worry about it, but it's not required for them.

Again, canon does not mean continuity. It just means what the shows are and the tie-ins aren't. The showrunners create the canon, by definition. "Canon" is just a metaphorical nickname for the stories they tell. And tie-in authors' job is to base our stories on their stories -- as simple as that.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I feel like pointing out that the STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE was never canon to George Lucas and he considered it just its own thing. However, it was so large, expansive, and interconnected that many fans were traumatized by the decision to discontinue it for the Sequel Trilogy.

So just because something isn't canon doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

 

[Christopher]

So just because something isn't canon doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

Of course not. The biggest misconception about the word "canon" is that it's a value judgment, as I've said a million times. It's just a description of one category as distinct from another. If a story is part of the canon, that means it's part of the backstory future canon is built on, so one can expect at least nominal consistency. If a story is not part of the canon, then there's no reason to expect future canon to reflect its events. It's not about the relative worth of either set of stories, just about their relation to each other or lack thereof.

 

[JD]

The way I always interpreted the whole "tiered canon" thing with Star Wars, was basically just that the books, comics, ect. had to be consistent with each other, but the movies didn't have to be.
So yes, they weren't canon, but they had to stay consistent with each other, which was a different approach from things like Star Trek, which pretty much just let the different tie-ins all do their own thing.
As for my feelings on canon, I really couldn't give any less of a shit about what is or is not canon, I just want as many good stories about characters I like, set in universes I like, as I can find.

 

[Christopher]

The way I always interpreted the whole "tiered canon" thing with Star Wars, was basically just that the books, comics, ect. had to be consistent with each other, but the movies didn't have to be.

Yeah, that's basically all it was. And calling that a canon created confused expectations in the audience's minds.

I mean, in a way, I can understand why they called it that. Broadly, a "canon" is an overall body of works considered authentic or definitive, the totality of a single collective artistic creation. So considered in isolation, the SW tie-ins could be said to form a canon in that they were meant to be definitive and unified, rather than free to disregard each other and tell alternate versions of events like Trek tie-ins at the time. But at the same time, those tie-ins were not part of the films' canon. So I guess calling it a "secondary tier of canon" was valid in a sense -- but it's a sense that requires familiarity with the technicalities and nuances of the term in literary analysis. The problem is that fans only tend to recognize one definition of the word -- "the stuff that 'really' happened in this universe." So its usage in two different ways created confusion.

 

[Damian]

So I guess calling it a "secondary tier of canon" was valid in a sense -- but it's a sense that requires familiarity with the technicalities and nuances of the term in literary analysis. The problem is that fans only tend to recognize one definition of the word -- "the stuff that 'really' happened in this universe." So its usage in two different ways created confusion.

I know that threw me off in regards to Star Wars. I thought the tie-ins of the past were part of the overall Star Wars universe. I didn't realize it was separate. But it wasn't a huge deal for me because I never got into Star Wars to that extent. I just watch the films basically.

Again, canon does not mean continuity.

Yep, see, I fell into the canon trap again.

As for my feelings on canon, I really couldn't give any less of a shit about what is or is not canon, I just want as many good stories about characters I like, set in universes I like, as I can find.

I think most of us that are novel readers (or even readers of other tie-ins) probably feel the same way, because novels aren't canon.

The only time I really think about canon anymore is if something on screen eliminates story threads in the novels. I think a big one is coming up with Picard. I think that will probably eliminate many story threads in the relaunches.

I have to admit I have very mixed feelings about that. I'm glad to see TNG era continue on screen. But I really enjoyed the novel stories over the last 15+ years and hate to see it end. Part of me wishes I can have my cake and eat it to--that is for the existing novelverse to exist as an alternate universe and continue while Picard does it's thing. But I know that's not how things work with Star Trek tie-ins.

Even better would be for the Picard show to be consistent with the continuing novelverse. But that's just a selfish wish. Not everyone liked the novelverse (though I can't imagine why anyone would feel that way ).

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

While I understand it’s decided on at levels far beyond any of our pay grade, and that there are practical reasons for it, I do have to admit some frustration with the corporate decision which says that things like the Star Wars Legends and the Star Trek novel continuity of the last twenty-ish years can’t see new material alongside the new continuity.

I mean, comics have had multiple continuities in production simultaneously, like Marvel having their main line and the Ultimate series, to say nothing of the MCU being its own thing, plus every now and then a video game or animated series would come along and tell its own spin on old stories. Why can’t we see that for other media and franchises?

I mean, I’m fully accepting of things as they are, just that I’d love to see continuations of the ongoing lines along with “new canon” continuity. Because I’m invested in the setting and stories we have now and would like more.

 

[Thrawn]

Yeah. Star Wars in particular; it seems like the "Legends" branding is pretty clear and the fanbase is large enough to be able to navigate that. It would've been nice if they had at least commissioned a set of 5-10 books in various eras to tie up loose ends. Ah well.