Regarding canon: isn't it ironic?

[Christopher]

That Lucas had the ability to contradict them but generally didn't and that the writers generally were able to retcon and explain the inconsistencies makes it all the more impressive.

The only reason Lucas "generally didn't" contradict them is because he generally wasn't making movies. Up until the past few years, it was unusual to get new Star Wars screen material. That was something that happened only four times between 1986 and 2008 (the prequels and the 2D Clone Wars microseries), so there were vanishingly few opportunities for anything to be contradicted. Trust me, if Star Wars had been coming out on a weekly basis like Star Trek, then the tie-ins would've been contradicted just as frequently. George Lucas was not trying to honor the tie-ins. I'm sure he didn't feel obligated to acknowledge them at all, except on those occasions when he found a name or character from them worth borrowing (e.g. Coruscant and Aayla Secura). He just didn't have that many occasions to produce material that would conflict with them.

Retcons and plain continuity errors also appear in canon material so in practice the highest (and therefore only?) level of canon in SW isn't the films and TCW but the latest-released film or TV material.

And Lucas did, of course, re-edit his own films on several occasions, changing the screen canon at will. (Who shot first? What victory song did the Ewoks sing? Which version of Anakin appeared to Luke as a Force ghost?) In practice -- in Star Wars and pretty much any other ongoing canon -- the newest version of the continuity overwrites the older ones. Which is why the U.S.S. Enterprise is a Federation Starfleet vessel commanded by James T. Kirk instead of a United Earth Space Probe Agency vessel commanded by James R. Kirk.

But Piller and Taylor didn't create the TNG characters, Moore the DS9 characters, Coto the Enterprise characters and they were working for Paramount, were writing new adventures for other people's characters (albeit in the main format).

Well, sure. I was talking about the foundational principle behind canon, the way the term was originally applied in a literary context -- the Sherlock Holmes "canon" was the stuff written by Arthur Conan Doyle as distinct from the stuff written by other people. As long as you're dealing with a single person's creation, like Sherlock Holmes or Babylon 5 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then it's easy to say that the canon is what that creator defines it to be. But when dealing with a creation that passes from one creator to another, like Star Trek or Star Wars or Doctor Who, then the business that owns the copyright is treated as the "author" of the work for all intents and purposes. So instead of a difference between stories written by the sole author and stories written by others, it becomes a difference between the works produced by the studio that owns the property and works produced under the auspices of other companies that are licensed by the studio. Piller and Taylor and Coto are hardly in the same category as myself or Greg or Kirsten Beyer, because the former group of people were making the actual, original work itself as employees of Paramount/CBS itself, while we're just making derivative works under contract with a separate company that has CBS's permission to create supplementary works.

So in both cases, there is a clear difference between those creating the core work itself and those who are just following their lead.

A lunchbox and toy don't have a story and so wouldn't affect the main product (other than a minor detail like a Paris action figure having lighter hair than the real character) and do seem to be just promotion and thus not worth affecting the main product.

But that doesn't matter to the studio. The reason that tie-ins exist is the same reason that lunchboxes exist -- to promote the original work and make more money in the process. It is completely invalid to expect the tie-ins to be on an equal level to the core work just because they happen to have stories. No tie-in will ever affect the core work unless the creators decide they want it to.

Fans overthink the hell out of something that's actually very simple. It's a matter of who is in charge of the creation and who is just following their lead.

Selling the new story but saying it didn't really occur within the (of course) fictional universe seems to be saying, unless it's just a pragmatic issue, that it's necessarily less good than the live action material.

No, it doesn't! Continuity has nothing to do with quality. Citizen Kane and Casablanca and Blade Runner don't take place in the Star Trek universe, but that doesn't make them worse than Star Trek. It is bizarre to me that anyone would imagine that "not in the same category" in some way equals "inferior."

Obviously the people who commission tie-ins want them to be good, because if they weren't good, they wouldn't sell as much and wouldn't make the studio as much profit. So it's ridiculous to see this as some kind of value judgment. The only value the licensors are interested in is dollar value, and the better the books are, the more money they earn. But it's just not reasonable to ask the core, original creation itself to be compelled to follow the lead of the works that exist to follow its lead. Greg has handily explained the myriad of practical and common-sense reasons why that just can't happen. It's not a condemnation of tie-ins, it's simply understanding what they are and what they are not.

Maybe I'm too much of a purist but that thousands of people read SW books in which Luke was married and Chewbacca dead (statuses maintained for at least 19 books and 10 years) and that it was the company policy for 20 years that the books do count should motivate the filmmakers to try to make their films consistent, either keep the changed statuses or set the films before the changes they dislike.

But the books never really did count. That was a misleading claim by Lucasfilm's licensing division, and it created false expectations in the audience.

And who cares if they count???????? It's not like you're studying for an exam and have to get the right answers!! None of this is real. It's all just a bunch of made-up stuff that never actually happened, a bunch of colorful fibs meant for our entertainment. So it's a monumental waste of time and thought to worry about whether one totally unreal thing is more unreal than another totally unreal thing. Just read the damn stories and try to have fun. Don't ruin the fun for yourself by panicking over what you're "allowed" to enjoy.

It's kind of a shame that Star Wars, and Star Trek, and Underworld, and whatever else can't be treated like a comic book multiverse, with an "Earth-2266", "Earth-JJA", "Earth-Mirror1" and so on.

But that's exactly what the new Star Trek movies have done. They've branched off an alternate universe so that they could create new interpretations of the continuity without conflicting with the old one.

*Incidentally, how ballsy is it to reprint a bunch of books right after saying they don't count, with THIS DOESN'T COUNT printed right on the cover? A lot of franchises would just pretend the old stuff never existed, not say "Now that there's a new movie coming out, read a totally different story of what might've happened after the OT. And also read the actual story of what happened after the OT, coming summer, 2015, in inexplicable present-tense."

Again, this obsession with "counting" is bizarre and completely irrelevant. Does Godzilla count as part of the Star Wars universe? Does Mad Max count as part of Star Wars? Does The Great Gatsby count as part of Star Wars? And if not, does that in any way impact your ability to enjoy them? Of course not. Continuity and quality are two entirely separate issues.

Whether different stories fit together is not the only thing that makes them worthwhile. None of this stuff actually happened at all. None of it is more real than the rest. As long as you enjoy it, then it bloody well counts.

 

[Idran]

Here's a question: if even the canon doesn't necessarily need to be consistent, and if consistency is only added value rather than a primary goal (both of which I agree with), then what is preventing a hypothetical creator of some hypothetical franchise from just declaring "everything is canon, regardless of if I am involved in the creation or not, and regardless of if it is inconsistent or not"?

Because it's not about the label, but the practicalities of producing the stuff, particularly if the Hypothetical Series is still a going concern and the Hypothetical Creator is still on the scene.

Picture this scenario: The Powers That Be are meeting to plan out their next big $200 million dollar movie. Everyone loves the new screen treatment, the HC, the stars, the studio, etc. But there's a problem.

"Um, this new script completely contradicts an old HS comic book issue story that came out a few years ago. And we said the comic book was 'canon,' remember?"

You really think they're going to scrap the new script and go back to the drawing board just because of some old comic book issue? Or even rewrite the script to accommodate the bit in the comic book, which 99% of movie-going audience has never read or heard of? Just because it was approved by the Licensing Department a few years earlier?

Of course not. That would be ridiculous. In real life, in fact, this issue would probably never even come up, or would be greeted with incredulous looks. "Seriously?"

So what would be the point of declaring everything "canon" if it doesn't have to be consistent?

Mess with fans.

 

[David cgc]

Again, this obsession with "counting" is bizarre and completely irrelevant. Does Godzilla count as part of the Star Wars universe? Does Mad Max count as part of Star Wars? Does The Great Gatsby count as part of Star Wars? And if not, does that in any way impact your ability to enjoy them? Of course not. Continuity and quality are two entirely separate issues.

Whether different stories fit together is not the only thing that makes them worthwhile. None of this stuff actually happened at all. None of it is more real than the rest. As long as you enjoy it, then it bloody well counts.

It wasn't my idea to promote a second EU that would be the really-for-real-true-story of what happens outside the films as a selling point concurrently with rereleasing novels that were explicitly labeled as not the "real" stories. Of course, to be fair, I have no idea what the churn was on things like the Thrawn trilogy and other evergreen EU books, so it could be every time I saw one at the bookstore, it was a fresh copy, and I only noticed they were being replaced regularly once the reprints began to have the new branding on them.

I was going to try and draw a comparison to something else, but all the ones I can think of are movies like "I, Robot" that were extremely divergent from the source material, yet nevertheless had the original book reprinted under the film's branding, which is probably worse from a trans-media synergy perspective than the "Legends" rereleases.

 

[Christopher]

It wasn't my idea to promote a second EU that would be the really-for-real-true-story of what happens outside the films as a selling point concurrently with rereleasing novels that were explicitly labeled as not the "real" stories.

None of it is real. A story doesn't have to be real for you to enjoy it. Rebooting the tie-in continuity is something the filmmakers did for their convenience and practicality. There's no reason why it should have any effect on what stories you choose to read and enjoy. You are not going to be harmed in any way if you read a story that isn't still part of the continuity. Nobody will come and throw you in canon jail. You won't get apocryphal cooties. All you will do is read a story and either enjoy it or not enjoy it. Whether it's consistent with other stories is a secondary concern, merely a matter of bookkeeping.

This is how I've always approached media tie-ins to any franchise. First I read the stories. Then I decide whether I think they're consistent with the canon and the other tie-ins I accept. If they aren't consistent, that doesn't mean I stop liking them or burn them or tell other people not to read them. It just means I classify them differently in my mind. Being in continuity doesn't make a story better. Being out of continuity doesn't mean the story has ripped you off somehow. Continuity is just one of the many aspects that go into the experience of a story, like writing style or humor. It's not the only thing that matters.

I actually like it when a series's tie-ins are not uniformly in continuity, because then I get to decide for myself which ones to count. I get the creative exercise of building my own version of an "expanded universe." And when a new episode or movie comes along and contradicts some of the stories I accepted, I just shrug and reconfigure my version of the universe, getting to apply my creativity yet again, which is hardly a bad thing. As for the stories that no longer "count," if I find them enjoyable, I just move them to a different shelf on my bookcase. I can still read and enjoy them as a conjectural alternative view.

As Alan Moore wrote, "This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?" A canonical story is exactly as unreal as an apocryphal one. It's only there to be entertaining, to make you think and feel. So anyone who would value a badly written canonical story more than a superbly written apocryphal story is misunderstanding the entire purpose of fiction.

I was going to try and draw a comparison to something else, but all the ones I can think of are movies like "I, Robot" that were extremely divergent from the source material, yet nevertheless had the original book reprinted under the film's branding, which is probably worse from a trans-media synergy perspective than the "Legends" rereleases.

Worse? I'm sure Greg Cox will be along to point out that the opposite is true. The audience for a film adaptation of a book is huge compared to the audience for the book itself. If even a fraction of them are motivated to buy the book because they see a photo or logo from the movie on its cover, that's a huge bump in sales and royalties for the author. And that's a very good thing, regardless of the quality or fidelity of the movie.

 

[Idran]

Yeah, bringing a deserving work to a wider audience is an undeniable good.

 

[The Wormhole]

Maybe I'm too much of a purist but that thousands of people read SW books in which Luke was married and Chewbacca dead (statuses maintained for at least 19 books and 10 years) and that it was the company policy for 20 years that the books do count should motivate the filmmakers to try to make their films consistent, either keep the changed statuses or set the films before the changes they dislike.

1) You do realize it is generally held that only something like 2% of any given fandom even bothers with the tie-in material, which I'm sure extends to the old Star Wars EU or "Legends" or whatever you want to call it. So why should anyone making a major Hollywood blockbuster be required to adhere to something such a small percentage of the target audience will even be aware of. And yes, I do feel the same principal applies to making the "Lucas Story Group's" existence a silly waste. Besides, people are already complaining TFA was light on backstory. Can you imagine the outcry from people who have never read a SW novel if things like Chewie being dead, the Yuuzhan Vong or Grand Admiral Thrawn were mentioned in the movie?

2) These details of the EU were adhered to and considered to count while Lucasfilm was in charge of the franchise. Once the franchise was handed over to Disney, they are free to incorporate or ignore whatever they wish. Obviously they didn't want to adhere to a twenty year old novel continuity, and that's their right.

 

[JD]

Even if the movie diverges from the book, seeing a movie tie-in edition could still get the fans attention and make them want to see where the story originated.
When it comes to canon/non-canon stuff, or stuff that isn't consistent with canon, I couldn't care less. I've read a couple Trek books that aren't consistent with the current canon, and I plan on reading more. I've also read a whole bunch of Star Wars: Legends books and comics and I plan on reading more, even though the movies have gone in a different direction. I like that version of the universe, and I want to read more stories in it, even if has been wiped out by the movies.

 

[Greg Cox]

Christopher and Idran and JD beat me to the punch, but let me go into my usual rant anyway.

Slapping the movie art on a pre-existing novel can boost sales enormously, which not only benefits the author financially (if they're still around), but also means that hundreds of thousands of new readers discover a book they might never have read otherwise. How is that a bad thing?

Case in point: I was personally responsible for putting Will Smith on the cover of I AM LEGEND, which meant that I also got the pleasure of calling Richard Matheson to tell him that his 1954 novel had finally hit the New York Times bestseller list.

It's funny. After the Will Smith movie came out, I saw a few purists waxing indignant on Matheson's behalf. "How dare they put Matheson's title on that movie! He must be rolling over in his grave!"

Trust me, not only was Richard very much alive, but he liked the movie, and he certainly had no complaints concerning the way his sales figures went sky-high because of the movie. (Warner Bros. was also nice enough to arrange a special advance screening for him not far from his home.)

And that's not a unique case. The same thing happened with WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, which had been out of print before the Robin Williams movie came along and got permission to use the movie poster on the cover . . . .

Never underestimate the power of a movie tie-in cover to attract hundreds of thousands of new readers to a great book.

End of rant.

 

[Idran]

That's a rant? I was expecting something more Lewis Black-esque.

 

[Greg Cox]

That's a rant? I was expecting something more Lewis Black-esque.

It's been a long day. I'm tired.

 

[David cgc]

It wasn't my idea to promote a second EU that would be the really-for-real-true-story of what happens outside the films as a selling point concurrently with rereleasing novels that were explicitly labeled as not the "real" stories.

None of it is real. A story doesn't have to be real for you to enjoy it. Rebooting the tie-in continuity is something the filmmakers did for their convenience and practicality. There's no reason why it should have any effect on what stories you choose to read and enjoy. You are not going to be harmed in any way if you read a story that isn't still part of the continuity. Nobody will come and throw you in canon jail. You won't get apocryphal cooties. All you will do is read a story and either enjoy it or not enjoy it. Whether it's consistent with other stories is a secondary concern, merely a matter of bookkeeping.

I don't disagree with any of your points, but I think it might be excessive to take a relaxed view of story consistency so far that you're ignoring that using canonicity as a marketing tool is a thing the Star Wars franchise did. And when they realized that was a terrible idea, they wiped the slate clean and did it again, as if this time will be different.

It doesn't matter if you or I think "canon" doesn't actually matter. It was and is used as a marketing gimmick by Lucasfilm. That's a historical fact. It happened. Repeatedly. Star Wars advertised the novels, comics, cartoons, reference books, video games, and so on as all being part of one vast, interconnected, epic Star Wars mythology, and that supposedly made them more worthy than the disposable media tie-ins of, for instance, Star Trek. Not to say that contrasting with the Star Trek policy on canon was a conscious choice (I wouldn't know), or that the lack of a "canon" label does somehow devalue Trek books (I'd hope a decade-plus here talking about them would demonstrate I don't believe that), but it is a notion that existed in the fandoms.

In any event, the situation changed, and Lucasfilm said, "Never mind, that's no longer true. Now we're doing a new set of novels, comics, cartoons, reference books, video games, and so on that's really all part of one vast, interconnected, epic Star Wars mythology, so be sure and to read/watch/play those if you want the whole story. And you can catch up on the ones from the last time we tried that, because it sure was fun while it lasted. We'll put them right next to the new ones, but with a sticker on them so you don't get confused."

This whole topic is based on the perceived value of a work's inclusion in the canon being exploited by Lucasfilm for the past quarter-century or so, and the fact that it put them in a bit of a bind when they elected to make more movies. If Series Six is set in the 25th century of the Prime timeline and the first line of the first episode is, "Gee, those pesky Borg sure have been bothering us consistently and without any gap since Shinzon took over Romulus," the next printing of "Destiny" won't have a "Tales of the Star Treks" banner or something on it, because Trek tie-ins have always been clear about the whether the tail or the dog does the wagging. Maybe too clear, in the case of the infamous "Vendetta" disclaimer, which claimed it was even more not-canon than the rest of the novels.

I was going to try and draw a comparison to something else, but all the ones I can think of are movies like "I, Robot" that were extremely divergent from the source material, yet nevertheless had the original book reprinted under the film's branding, which is probably worse from a trans-media synergy perspective than the "Legends" rereleases.

Worse? I'm sure Greg Cox will be along to point out that the opposite is true. The audience for a film adaptation of a book is huge compared to the audience for the book itself. If even a fraction of them are motivated to buy the book because they see a photo or logo from the movie on its cover, that's a huge bump in sales and royalties for the author. And that's a very good thing, regardless of the quality or fidelity of the movie.

To elaborate a bit, when I said

...from a trans-media synergy perspective...

I meant that if someone picked up Asimov's "I, Robot" in the hopes of finding out more about what was up with Will Smith's robot-arm, they were probably a bit surprised by what they found, and that might not be desirable if you're trying to launch a movie franchise starring his character. Just like how it might not be ideal if you're marketing a novel line as having the true untold story between "Return of the Jedi" and "The Force Awakens," and you're putting them on the shelf right next to fresh reprints of books telling the old, defunct untold story of what happened after "Return of the Jedi." Pushing both types of stories simultaneously seemed like it might invite audience confusion, which is why I thought it was more audacious than, say, letting off the accelerator on the "Legends" reprints for a while and flooding the retail channel exclusively with stuff from the new canon.

The example I was searching for would be something more like the rumors about Paramount wishing CBS would cool it with the TOS merchandising while they were pushing the JJ-verse movies, except in a case where that actually happened.

If I meant that it was a bad thing overall that movie adaptations might get more people to read literary classics, I would've just said that and not thrown a bunch of buzzwords into the middle of the sentence. Nor would I have brought it up in the middle of a discussion about the marketing value of having a self-consistent universe of multimedia tie-ins, whether that's in order to exploit fear of missing out on storyline, or to take advantage of completionism, or to piggy-back on the perceived validity of a property in its home medium (i.e. "this book is worth reading because the movie references it").

 

[Christopher]

I don't disagree with any of your points, but I think it might be excessive to take a relaxed view of story consistency so far that you're ignoring that using canonicity as a marketing tool is a thing the Star Wars franchise did. And when they realized that was a terrible idea, they wiped the slate clean and did it again, as if this time will be different.

I'm not ignoring the fact that they did that, I'm questioning the validity of their doing that. Trying to keep the tie-ins all consistent with the canon and each other is a worthwhile thing to do, but claiming that the tie-ins themselves were "canon" was misleading and created unrealistic expectations in their fans.

I think there are two things responsible for infecting fandom with their modern obsession with "canon" as something overarchingly urgent. One was Richard Arnold's approach to Star Trek canon and tie-ins in the TNG era, his judgmental and exclusionistic view. He was pretty much the one who popularized the term "canon" in the first place -- it existed going back to Sherlock Holmes fandom, of course, but I don't remember sci-fi fans making use of the term or being all that obsessed with the canon status of a work until the '90s. The other thing that promoted fandom's unhealthy and disproportionate obsession with canon was Lucasfilm Licensing's approach to the SW EU, their promotion of the alleged "canonicity" of tie-ins as a crucial element of their appeal. That helped infect genre fans with the twisted notion that whether a story "fits" is somehow more important than whether it's good, as if all this were study material for a final exam and you had to make sure you got the right answers. I think genre fandom as a whole would be much better off if those two influences hadn't promoted a disproportionate fixation on canon and continuity.

In any event, the situation changed, and Lucasfilm said, "Never mind, that's no longer true. Now we're doing a new set of novels, comics, cartoons, reference books, video games, and so on that's really all part of one vast, interconnected, epic Star Wars mythology, so be sure and to read/watch/play those if you want the whole story. And you can catch up on the ones from the last time we tried that, because it sure was fun while it lasted. We'll put them right next to the new ones, but with a sticker on them so you don't get confused."

Really, I'm not sure why that's so hard for SW fans to understand. I mean, DC Comics has only done that, like, three or four times in the past 30 years. Not to mention all the various movie series and TV series that have been rebooted. There's an old Battlestar Galactica continuity and a new Battlestar Galactica continuity. There an old James Bond continuity (loosely) and a new James Bond continuity. There are multiple different versions of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Godzilla, Tarzan, you name it. So why is it so shocking for Star Wars to close down one continuity and start up another? Sure, yes, I know, "They said it was canon." But just because something is canonical for one series, that doesn't mean that series will be perpetually in existence for all time. Sometimes a given franchise will have different, consecutive canons. And this isn't even canons, just tie-in continuities. So I really think the fan outrage over this is pretty pathetic. It shouldn't be that hard to cope with.

I meant that if someone picked up Asimov's "I, Robot" in the hopes of finding out more about what was up with Will Smith's robot-arm, they were probably a bit surprised by what they found, and that might not be desirable if you're trying to launch a movie franchise starring his character.

As pointed out above, the tie-in audience is only 1-2% of the filmgoing audience. So the supposed dissatisfaction of your hypothetical reader would be utterly irrelevant to the people making the film franchise.

And again, it's a simple matter of media savvy. If you're at all experienced with fiction, then you'll surely be aware that works based on other works are often very different from their source material. If some hypothetical audience member is, say, very young and not well-read and hasn't come across that phenomenon before, then being exposed to that phenomenon is an opportunity for them to learn about it. It's invalid to say that nobody should ever do something because inexperienced people won't understand it. Being exposed to something they don't understand and learning about it is how people get experience. It's always better to challenge an audience to expand their understanding than it is to cater to what you imagine to be the most ignorant member of the audience.

Pushing both types of stories simultaneously seemed like it might invite audience confusion, which is why I thought it was more audacious than, say, letting off the accelerator on the "Legends" reprints for a while and flooding the retail channel exclusively with stuff from the new canon.

Again, confusion is not a bad thing. Confusion is an incentive to learn.

The example I was searching for would be something more like the rumors about Paramount wishing CBS would cool it with the TOS merchandising while they were pushing the JJ-verse movies, except in a case where that actually happened.

I believe the rumor was that it was Bad Robot, not Paramount, that was requesting that.

 

[suarezguy]

And as for "setting the movies before the changes they dislike," that's the whole issue right there. Why should the movies--which are the Main Deal--have to work around the (often very cool) tie-in material? That's completely backwards to the way things really work. Something as important as the setting of the new movies is not going to be determined by the books or comics.

To me it seems a small adjustment to make in recognition of that other sequels were written and published and enjoyed, albeit likely by a much smaller audience, earlier.

instead of a difference between stories written by the sole author and stories written by others, it becomes a difference between the works produced by the studio that owns the property and works produced under the auspices of other companies that are licensed by the studio. Piller and Taylor and Coto are hardly in the same category as myself or Greg or Kirsten Beyer, because the former group of people were making the actual, original work itself as employees of Paramount/CBS itself, while we're just making derivative works under contract with a separate company that has CBS's permission to create supplementary works.

Fair enough distinction.

Continuity has nothing to do with quality. Citizen Kane and Casablanca and Blade Runner don't take place in the Star Trek universe, but that doesn't make them worse than Star Trek. It is bizarre to me that anyone would imagine that "not in the same category" in some way equals "inferior."

But a quality judgment, about the format if not a particular work, does seem implied when a work is separated from the continuity even though it features the same characters, tries to use a similar style to and not contradict the main format stories.

This is how I've always approached media tie-ins to any franchise. First I read the stories. Then I decide whether I think they're consistent with the canon and the other tie-ins I accept. If they aren't consistent, that doesn't mean I stop liking them or burn them or tell other people not to read them. It just means I classify them differently in my mind. Being in continuity doesn't make a story better. Being out of continuity doesn't mean the story has ripped you off somehow.

To me continuity/consistency does contribute to both the fun and believability of a series or franchise and is an aspect of quality. I like a What If now and then but generally if a story reuses characters but of a different version they're likely to be less interesting and I feel less interest in and liking for them since I've never actually experienced them before and certainly know less about them.

 

[Christopher]

But a quality judgment, about the format if not a particular work, does seem implied when a work is separated from the continuity even though it features the same characters, tries to use a similar style to and not contradict the main format stories.

No, it's got nothing to do with quality. Not every difference between two things is about quality or worth. Sometimes it's just about the particular nature or category of a thing. Tie-ins are different from canon simply because they are a different thing. They play a different role. Are the windshield wipers in your car inferior in worth to the brake pads? Are the woodwinds in an orchestra intrinsically lower in quality than the strings? Ideally, no. They're just separate things that fill different functions within the larger whole. Saying that one thing is different from another is not saying it's better or worse. It's just acknowledging that they are not interchangeable.

To me continuity/consistency does contribute to both the fun and believability of a series or franchise and is an aspect of quality.

Contribute, yes. An aspect, yes. But both those word choices make it clear that it's not the exclusive thing that matters, just an ingredient in the mix.

I like a What If now and then but generally if a story reuses characters but of a different version they're likely to be less interesting and I feel less interest in and liking for them since I've never actually experienced them before and certainly know less about them.

I find that an odd thing. There are a lot of characters and concepts out there that exist in many, many different and parallel forms -- Sherlock Holmes, Hercules, Tarzan, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. Are you saying that you can only enjoy one version of each of those characters? If so, that's very sad, because you're missing out on quite a lot of fun.

 

[suarezguy]

No, it's got nothing to do with quality. Not every difference between two things is about quality or worth. Sometimes it's just about the particular nature or category of a thing. Tie-ins are different from canon simply because they are a different thing. They play a different role.

But you earlier said their role was to promote the main work (like action figures and other merchandise do) although also to be good stories in order to do so, that seems a lesser role than just making good stories to try to entertain people. True that in actuality there is a difference, that tie-ins do have that additional function, but the difference shouldn't (but I think often does) lead people, including fans of the main works, to overlook that they both try to entertain and dismiss the tie-ins as necessarily inconsequential or less well-made.

There are a lot of characters and concepts out there that exist in many, many different and parallel forms -- Sherlock Holmes, Hercules, Tarzan, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. Are you saying that you can only enjoy one version of each of those characters?

No but I will compare a new version to an older one and often feel that it's not as good (though it can be as good or better) and I will, at least if the new version is very different, initially have less liking for the character than if I were reading a new installment of the old version (although again my liking can certainly increase if it's well-done).

 

[Christopher]

But you earlier said their role was to promote the main work (like action figures and other merchandise do) although also to be good stories in order to do so, that seems a lesser role than just making good stories to try to entertain people. True that in actuality there is a difference, that tie-ins do have that additional function, but the difference shouldn't (but I think often does) lead people, including fans of the main works, to overlook that they both try to entertain and dismiss the tie-ins as necessarily inconsequential or less well-made.

Okay, sure, they're less important to the overall scope of the franchise, lower in the hierarchy. They're read by far fewer people and have less of a financial impact on the studio's profits. But why should any of that matter to you, or to any other reader? You don't work for the studio. You're not required to answer to them. You're a free agent. You can choose for yourself what's important to you, based on how much you enjoy it.

Audiences are not supposed to be passive, obedient absorbers of content. Good stories should engage your mind and your critical faculties, stimulate you to think for yourself and engage critically with the work and find your own meaning in it. You're free to disagree with the author's interpretation of the characters and the plot and the meaning (look at how much transgressive fanfiction is out there, most famously slash and "shipping" fanfic that posits romantic relationships the authors never conceived). So you're certainly free to disagree with the franchise owner's assessment of which works are more important. You're not their employee. They aren't paying you to read this stuff -- on the contrary, you're buying this stuff, so you're paying them. You're the boss of your own reading experience. Their job, our job, is to entertain you and stimulate your mind and emotions. Your satisfaction is the goal and purpose of the whole exercise. And only you can define for yourself what is satisfying or important to you.

No but I will compare a new version to an older one and often feel that it's not as good (though it can be as good or better) and I will, at least if the new version is very different, initially have less liking for the character than if I were reading a new installment of the old version (although again my liking can certainly increase if it's well-done).

Sure, it's natural enough to be resistant to something new -- but as you just acknowledged, it can be just as good or better. Which means it's not wrong to start over with a new approach. Of course it doesn't always work -- nothing always works -- but it's worth doing, and worth keeping an open mind about, for the times when it does work.

 

[JD]

But a quality judgment, about the format if not a particular work, does seem implied when a work is separated from the continuity even though it features the same characters, tries to use a similar style to and not contradict the main format stories.

None of this has anything to do with quality, some of the absolute best Star Trek stories I've come across have been in the tie ins. For example I'd put the Destiny trilogy right up there with Wrath of Khan, City on the Edge of Forever, The Best of Both Worlds and In The Pale Moonlight.

 

[Idran]

I've said it before many times, but I'd even go so far as to drop the "some of", myself.

 

[suarezguy]

Okay, sure, they're less important to the overall scope of the franchise, lower in the hierarchy. They're read by far fewer people and have less of a financial impact on the studio's profits. But why should any of that matter to you, or to any other reader? You don't work for the studio. You're not required to answer to them. You're a free agent. You can choose for yourself what's important to you, based on how much you enjoy it.

Audiences are not supposed to be passive, obedient absorbers of content. Good stories should engage your mind and your critical faculties, stimulate you to think for yourself and engage critically with the work and find your own meaning in it. You're free to disagree with the author's interpretation of the characters and the plot and the meaning (look at how much transgressive fanfiction is out there, most famously slash and "shipping" fanfic that posits romantic relationships the authors never conceived). So you're certainly free to disagree with the franchise owner's assessment of which works are more important. You're not their employee. They aren't paying you to read this stuff -- on the contrary, you're buying this stuff, so you're paying them. You're the boss of your own reading experience. Their job, our job, is to entertain you and stimulate your mind and emotions. Your satisfaction is the goal and purpose of the whole exercise. And only you can define for yourself what is satisfying or important to you.




Sure, it's natural enough to be resistant to something new -- but as you just acknowledged, it can be just as good or better. Which means it's not wrong to start over with a new approach. Of course it doesn't always work -- nothing always works -- but it's worth doing, and worth keeping an open mind about, for the times when it does work.

Good perspectives, I do indeed decide for myself which works are the best and most important.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Some fans refuse to let go of the Old Canon in SWEU.

There's a Legends/Nu Canon merging thread on TheForce.net