• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Pacifist Mandalorians?

USS Avenger

USS Avenger

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
This is new to me, though some may know this already. Karen Traviss' Imperial Commando 2 has been canceled. Now, some may be upset, some may be overjoyed and some may not care about that. What I find interesting is that the canon changes to be brought about in the Clone Wars cartoon were "revealed" here, at least some of them.

http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/sooty-and-a-clean-sweep.html

the Mandalorians were being revamped as long-standing pacifists who'd given up fighting centuries ago and that Mandalore was now a post-apocalyptic wasteland devastated by war
Click to expand...

Pacifist Mandalorians? :cardie: It just doesn't seem right. For Star Wars fans, guess we will have to wait and see how it pans out
 
That's in the cartoon, eh? I'll pass judgement when I see the episode, but until then aver an opinion.

It seems an... odd stance to take, to be honest. The series has already done the pacifist story with the 'Irish' lemurs; and it's already made a big deal of a bounty hunter antagonist, Cad Bane.

Neutering the rest of the Mandalorians - who'd be a useful supply of mooks to break up the unending sea of battle droids, if nothing else - doesn't seem the best idea at first glance.

But then, maybe it is. I'll get back to you on that.
 
I have been slacking on keeping up with the Star Wars EU, and have never read a Traviss book. But I always thought that the Mandalorians were an extinct race that were wiped out long before Luke and Han et al. were ever born. And to me that just added to Boba Fett's coolness. Wearing the armor of some long-dead warrior people is cool.

But now the mystery is gone and Boba is losing cool points by the day.
 
IRC, the Mando are less one race but a collection of races. Basically any stray indidividual can be a Mando if he commits to living the life and preserving Mando culture. The whole pacifist thing would seem to toss a kink in a lot of the EU, which has the Mando's being little more than a culture of Mercenaries for hire by the highest bidder.

Then again, EU really doesn't have to much weight on the productions. It's almost like, despite the public line, the novels and productions are separate continuities. hmmmmm.....
 
Exactly. Mandalorians are a culture, not a race or species of people. Their culture is one that embraces violence. Calling them pacifists would be like a practicing Jew being antisemetic. A complete contradiction to who they are.
 
Teelie said:
Exactly. Mandalorians are a culture, not a race or species of people. Their culture is one that embraces violence. Calling them pacifists would be like a practicing Jew being antisemetic. A complete contradiction to who they are.
Click to expand...
Well to be fair, Mando as we known them is almost 100% a EU construct. Apparently Lucasfilm's production office/Lucas decided to run another way. So unless the episode implies or states that these are a splinter/exiled group of Mando, canon is going to get overwrote.
 
That's true, though I blame Del-Rey as much as I do Lucas for the screwed up EU we're now getting. It used to be everything from the movies down to the tech manuals was essentially meshed together as best as possible. Canon rules were obeyed across medium. Then Del-Rey got the license, got some hack writers and now Lucas has their cartoon series and all of it goes out the window. Even the comics are being contradicted by the EU books.
 
Honestly? I think Lucasfilm stopped caring about contradicting the EU or making it all meshed. All that matters if what Geroge wants, and what George wants George gets.

SW is now in the spot that ST is: Film/TV is canon, books are their own thing.
 
That is why I liked Star Wars books over Star Trek: the books and movies were all in the same EU. When Del-Rey took the license and started their NJO series I should have known what was coming. Instead I held on until the last Republic Commando book finally put me off them for good.
 
Teelie said:
That is why I liked Star Wars books over Star Trek: the books and movies were all in the same EU. When Del-Rey took the license and started their NJO series I should have known what was coming. Instead I held on until the last Republic Commando book finally put me off them for good.
Click to expand...
Well it was a fine policy when there wasn't anything coming out of the Lucas Storymill on regular basis. But once Lucas started the new movies and 'toons, then it became unrealistic to expect it to proceed like it had in the past.

And that's why I roll my eyes at Traviss getting all whiny over the way canon has took the Mandolorians. It's George's sandbox and he gets to set the rules.
 
Last edited:
Star Wars canon makes perfect sense to me. It basically has an ascending order of importance. The films are G-canon, the highest level, while most of the EU is C-canon (this includes the Tartakovsky series).

The new TV series has its own, intermediate level, T-canon. So, if G-canon contradicts C-canon, G-canon is right, and if T-canon contradicts C-canon, T-canon is right. Since the only higher authority is G-canon and that has given us very little information on the Mandalorians, T-canon has pretty much a clear hand in saying whatever the heck they want to say. It also means this series can overwrite its predecessor canon-wise.

This is a useful system because George, in fairness, doesn't want to be constrained by the EU when creating new stuff for his own intellectual property, but it doesn't just outright reject everything in the EU as having no canonical value either.

I can see why this gets people pissy if they're EU fans, but it's something conceptually I'm willing to play ball with. I'm more bothered when the Clone Wars seems to ignore continuity with itself, which it basically did in "Senate Spy." You can't arrest the leader of the Trade Federation in S1 and keep it as an agreed assumption he's a major part of the Seperatist cause and then awkwardly retcon the idea that the Trade Federation is sorta kinda neutral because George wants to do Notorious and expect me to just swallow it. But I disgress.

I don't know if Del Rey had anything to do with the formulation of this canon system, but I like it.
 
TheGallifreyanSith said:
Honestly? I think Lucasfilm stopped caring about contradicting the EU or making it all meshed. All that matters if what Geroge wants, and what George wants George gets.
Click to expand...

Lucasfilm never cared about the content of the EU. The EU is and always has been secondary. GL has made that quite clear for a very long time. The EU is nothing more than a cog in the Lucas -machine.

Teelie said:
That is why I liked Star Wars books over Star Trek: the books and movies were all in the same EU. When Del-Rey took the license and started their NJO series I should have known what was coming. Instead I held on until the last Republic Commando book finally put me off them for good.
Click to expand...

Well the vast majority of Trek books over the last ten years or so have been in a consolodated continuity. In fact, in a thread from a year ago, I pointed out how there are over 300 book and comics going all of the way back to The Entropy Effect that fit in or are consistant with the larger book continuity in one way or another. I'll try and dig that thread up later.

Kegg said:
Star Wars canon makes perfect sense to me. It basically has an ascending order of importance. The films are G-canon, the highest level, while most of the EU is C-canon (this includes the Tartakovsky series).

The new TV series has its own, intermediate level, T-canon. So, if G-canon contradicts C-canon, G-canon is right, and if T-canon contradicts C-canon, T-canon is right. Since the only higher authority is G-canon and that has given us very little information on the Mandalorians, T-canon has pretty much a clear hand in saying whatever the heck they want to say. It also means this series can overwrite its predecessor canon-wise.

This is a useful system because George, in fairness, doesn't want to be constrained by the EU when creating new stuff for his own intellectual property, but it doesn't just outright reject everything in the EU as having no canonical value either.

I can see why this gets people pissy if they're EU fans, but it's something conceptually I'm willing to play ball with. I'm more bothered when the Clone Wars seems to ignore continuity with itself, which it basically did in "Senate Spy." You can't arrest the leader of the Trade Federation in S1 and keep it as an agreed assumption he's a major part of the Seperatist cause and then awkwardly retcon the idea that the Trade Federation is sorta kinda neutral because George wants to do Notorious and expect me to just swallow it. But I disgress.

I don't know if Del Rey had anything to do with the formulation of this canon system, but I like it.
Click to expand...

But all having "different levels" of canon existing under the movies simply means is that nothing under the movies is canon. The whole notion of "tiered canon" is, and always has been, just a crafty and successful sales-ploy by Lucasfilm to attract people like Teelie (no offense) to whom which this irrelevant notion of "canon" is for some reason important. Honestly, there is no significant difference between the SW EU and the Trek book continuity.
 
Turtletrekker said:
But all having "different levels" of canon existing under the movies simply means is that nothing under the movies is canon. The whole notion of "tiered canon" is, and always has been, just a crafty and successful sales-ploy by Lucasfilm to attract people like Teelie (no offense) to whom which this irrelevant notion of "canon" is for some reason important.
Click to expand...

I'd make an important distinction there.

1. Yeah, it's a marketing strategy, designed to placate continuity-minded Star Wars fans. No argument there.

2. It doesn't then follow that nothing under the movies is canon. Canon in Star Wars is exactly whatever the hell the license holders define it as being.

And I think it's a pretty sensible attitude. With C-canon, different books, comics and games are expected to in theory remain in-continuity with each other, but Lucas doesn't have to let that stuff hold him down. You get to have it both ways, more or less, and still have a bit of nerd legalese to wish away any complaints.
 
Kegg said:
Turtletrekker said:
But all having "different levels" of canon existing under the movies simply means is that nothing under the movies is canon. The whole notion of "tiered canon" is, and always has been, just a crafty and successful sales-ploy by Lucasfilm to attract people like Teelie (no offense) to whom which this irrelevant notion of "canon" is for some reason important.
Click to expand...

I'd make an important distinction there.

1. Yeah, it's a marketing strategy, designed to placate continuity-minded Star Wars fans. No argument there.

2. It doesn't then follow that nothing under the movies is canon. Canon in Star Wars is exactly whatever the hell the license holders define it as being.

And I think it's a pretty sensible attitude. With C-canon, different books, comics and games are expected to in theory remain in-continuity with each other, but Lucas doesn't have to let that stuff hold him down. You get to have it both ways, more or less, and still have a bit of nerd legalese to wish away any complaints.
Click to expand...
But is that really any different than Star Trek-- beyond the assumption that the tie-in media will mesh in some way? There's really no difference between a "Tiered" system and saying "The movies/shows is the real story, the books and comics are their own little spin off universe"
 
TheGallifreyanSith said:
But is that really any different than Star Trek-- beyond the assumption that the tie-in media will mesh in some way? There's really no difference between a "Tiered" system and saying "The movies/shows is the real story, the books and comics are their own little spin off universe"
Click to expand...
Conceptually, yes.

You'd have to rework the canon to let the books and comics ignore the other books and comics, and while I don't follow the Trek media it's my understanding the books and comics are not in continuity with each other - and, of course, no 'canonical' reading of a game's plot is required.

Beyond that the distinction is important to canon and continuity debates. One rarely sees Trekkies cite book facts as proof of a given position; at most I've seen them cite them as an example of a possible solution to that position. A C-canon source, however, could be seen as a solution, and it's why in the Star Wars versus Star Trek tech debates, Wars won and Trek lost: Wars' technical manuals were canonical.

It's not an omigoshthisissovaluable difference, and it's definitely not something I think Trek needs to implement, but it's a difference.
 
Kegg said:
...and while I don't follow the Trek media it's my understanding the books and comics are not in continuity with each other -
Click to expand...

Some comics are in the book contiuity and some aren't. Characters from Marvel's Early Voyages and Starfleet Academy comics have turned up in the SCE and Titan series respectively. The character "Bernie the Klingon" from the first DC series appeared in the novel Strike Zone. Both of Malibu's DS9 series were compatable with the re-launch and included the characters of Tiris Jast, Elias Vaughn and Shar. Michael Martin and Andy Mangels imported the characters of Etaana Kol and Kirsten Rictor from their Marvel DS9 run into the re-launch. And of course both Malibu and IDW have done New Frontier comics that fit into that series continuity. Sara Tuchinsky, the transporter operator from DC's second series turned up in (I believe) Mere Anarchy. The Star Trek: The Last Generation alternate universe comic had a shout-out to Elias Vaughn.

So it's not really that cut and dried. For comics that don't fit into the continuity, I just say "alternate timeline" (an option that doesn't really work for Star Wars stories), if it worked for JJ Abrams, It works for me. :lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top