Should Star Wars adopt a Star Trek canon policy?

[Whofan]

Basically that all the books/comics/games etc. are not canon? Lucasfilm licensing keeps stating they are, but with the whole Mandalorian controversy, the recent Greedo appearence and a ton of other stuff I think it's time to give this policy a total rest and adopt something similar to Trek (as well as other franchises with spin-offs), which establishes that the non-TV/movie stuff is not part of the continuity. It would certainly encourage a bit more creativity in the Expanded Universe, I think, instead of the overflowing and ever self-contradictory 'canon' of recent years.

Granted, some of it kind of depends on whether one considers Clone Wars part of the Expanded Universe or part of the film canon...however since George Lucas is heavily involved, I accept the former.

 

[Dac]

Eh? I always though this was the case and the Karen Travis thing was just ego.

 

[JarodRussell]

Hm... overflowing and self-contradictory canon. And how exactly is that different to Star Trek's canon?

 

[Whofan]

Here's where it gets confusing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-canon

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

It's not that confusing. Everything is in, until it gets trumped by a higher tier of canon OR Leland Chee and Co. decide that one factoid is cooler than another at the same level and elevate it.

If you consider everything in the movies as truth, everything in the TV shows as essentially true, from a certain point of view, and all the rest in books and game plots, etc. as stories told from some fallible, in-universe perspective, that could get corrected at a later date by on-screen evidence, you're all set.

Star Trek can get away with the film/TV being the sole canon, because it has such a huge reservoir from which to pull stuff. It's EU is essentially bonus. Star Wars has just the movies and only recently a few cartoon seasons of TV. The vast majority of SW stuff is the EU. If Lucas just wholesale officially dismissed everything in the EU, he'd lose money from pissed off fans. This is something he will not do.

 

[fett51]

Lucas also isn't shy about using EU ideas he likes. Coruscant, Aayla Secura, and Quinlan Vos for example are all EU elements Lucas is using. There are some other things which seem at least highly coincidental, for instance Palpatine's speech to Anakin when he reveals he's a Sith was almost dead on things Kreia says to the player character in the second Knights of the Old Republic game.

Regardless, the special editions have shown Lucas is perfectly willing to alter his own work if he changes his mind about it later. The concept of a fluid canon I think is something one has to accept in being a fan of the star wars universe.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Eh? I always though this was the case and the Karen Travis thing was just ego.

Yes ego on her part to shape Star Wars according to her unique philosophy of Mandalorians=man Gods of Star Wars & all Force Users=evil manipulative fascists.

It was a good thing that Lucas tossed all that shit into the wood chipper when he did season 2 of clone wars.

The only people that were crying over it were the ones who thought Boba Fett was the central character in Star Wars.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I don't think it has to. I think most fans are aware that the final authority over canon in the Star Wars universe is Lucas himself and like the poster stated he has taken things from the EU and made major decisions in the EU (like killing two Solo children and Chewie for instance).

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

If everything's canon, then the universe is just ridiculous. How many galaxy spanning altering events can the same 3 people be at the center of? It's just one after another, it's like ongoing superhero comics which are at like issue 600 or something.

If everything actually happened, then their lives just aren't credible, and its impossible to raelistically draw a character who's gone through all of that.

 

[Hound of UIster]

If everything's canon, then the universe is just ridiculous. How many galaxy spanning altering events can the same 3 people be at the center of.

Well it really helps that one is the leader of half of the galaxy and the other is the leader of the jedi knights and that they are still targets for the remnants of the Galactic Empire.

On the scale of major events however, the conflict between the Rebels/Republic and the Empire doesn't even compare to the past wars between the Old Sith and the Old Jedi or the future wars between the New Jedi and the One Sith.

 

[Jono]

If everything's canon, then the universe is just ridiculous. How many galaxy spanning altering events can the same 3 people be at the center of.

Well it really helps that one is the leader of half of the galaxy and the other is the leader of the jedi knights and that they are still targets for the remnants of the Galactic Empire.

On the scale of major events however, the conflict between the Rebels/Republic and the Empire doesn't even compare to the past wars between the Old Sith and the Old Jedi or the future wars between the New Jedi and the One Sith.

The latter is the more important in the Star Wars universe. That galaxy basically revolves around the Force users with the Jedi, and to a slightly lesser extent the Sith, are just the latest (though their reign spans almost 25,000 years) in the line of powerful Force users to hold the fate of that galaxy in sway.

 

[Whofan]

Plus not all the novels focus on Luke/Leia/Han and the others.

There is for instance, the Rogue Squadron novels which feature Wedge, the pilot who survived all three OT films. Although even those get a bit silly at times.


I wonder if Lucas/Filoni will put Han in Clone Wars at some point, after all he almost did it in ROTS.


A few corrections: Although the name Coruscant was adopted from the novels, the concept of the Imperial homeworld being a city planet dates back to ROTJ's development.


Also, judging by Lucas's interviews and also dialogue from the films itself, apparentally his view is that the Republic has lasted for only a millenia, and was established after the Sith War, where the Sith ruled the galaxy and were overthrown by the Jedi. Some have retconned this by stating the Republic temporarily ceased to exist for a while, but then came back after the Sith were believed extinct.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Canon policy for Star Trek and Star Wars should be the same: whatever sucks less, wins.

For Star Trek, I have no overall objection to the TV shows and films generally comprising canon (though I might make a few tweaks such as rescinding red-eye Dukat).

For Star Wars, the situation is messier. Having gotten most of the way thru S1 of Clone Wars, I now see that the characterization of Anakin is completely and happily inconsistent with the prequel movies, and since it's a big improvement, it should replace the prequel movies as canon.

I'm hopeful that the Clone Wars story will conclude with its own superior version of ROTS, and for that matter, I wouldn't mind if they wanted to jump into the OT saga as well and do some filling-in-the-blanks, put Clone Wars Anakin in that helmet that Luke removes for the big redemption scene that concludes Anakin's story, and then continue with the sequel trilogy. They're on a roll, why stop at five seasons? I'd watch fifty seasons.

I wonder if Lucas/Filoni will put Han in Clone Wars at some point, after all he almost did it in ROTS.

Han would be what, about ten years old? Maybe a bit self-indulgent, but I can't help thinking it would be hi-larious for Anakin to meet his future son-in-law.

 

[FPAlpha]

If everything's canon, then the universe is just ridiculous. How many galaxy spanning altering events can the same 3 people be at the center of? It's just one after another, it's like ongoing superhero comics which are at like issue 600 or something.

If everything actually happened, then their lives just aren't credible, and its impossible to raelistically draw a character who's gone through all of that.

Welcome to small galaxy syndrome!

It is like it is.. writers write stories about established characters because people want to read them. Once in a while a writer manages to introduce such an interesting character that the readers want more and he/she gets their own series that doesn't need the main characters to sell books.

You either accept it or you don't.. it started with the very first series that launched the EU when the main movie heroes somehow always managed to be present at pivotal events in the galaxy and be the one factor to spoil the plans of Grand Admiral Thrawn and this has not lessened since and will never do until they are ready to retire all movie heroes and move on with pure EU characters and that won't happen in the near future i guess.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The Lucas "tiered-canon" approach is really just a clever bit of merchandising double-talk. It basically comes down to "canon until contradicted on-screen", which is basically saying the same thing as saying "non-canon". They know that there are folks out there who won't buy the books unless the stories are "real", and this is just a clever way of drawing them in. Neither franchise will flinch from contradicting something established in a tie-in media so, in that regard, there really isn't much of a difference between the Star Wars and Star Trek "canon policies" at all.

 

[Christopher]

^Turtletrekker's right. In practice, both franchises treat their tie-ins the same way in relation to new filmed material: i.e. they aren't binding on it, period, but can be drawn on as a source of names and concepts. (Several Trek characters' first names were introduced in novels before being revealed in movies: Hikaru Sulu, Nyota Uhura, George and Winona Kirk. And elements of Andorian culture from Enterprise were based on a role-playing sourcebook -- and contradicted the novels' Andorian worldbuilding.)

The main difference between ST and SW tie-in policies has nothing to do with the filmed material itself, but only pertains to how the tie-ins relate to one another. In ST, continuity among tie-ins is optional. These days, there's a well-developed, interconnected novel continuity, but it's not comprehensive; there are still novels that aren't connected to it, and most of the tie-in comics as well as the MMORPG are in separate continuities that are incompatible with the novels (and some of the recent IDW comics miniseries aren't even compatible with one another). Tie-ins are only required to be consistent with onscreen Trek, not with one another. But in SW, all tie-ins are required to at least appear to stay consistent with one another -- and even the tie-ins that have been blatantly contradicted by canonical material are still considered to "count" in some ill-defined way.

 

[Harvey]

Star Wars canon has been a mess since Star Wars: Rebel Assault II was included, since it's a sequel to a game that is, in a certain sense, just a remake of Episode IV that replaces Luke Skywalker with Rookie One. I suppose if you pretend that Rookie One and Ru Murleen have some kind of history--just not the history we see in the first game--it fits, but it all seems kind of silly to me.