Lit I think, if anything, Vector Prime should be the point of divergence from the sequel trilogy.

*realizes this is actually a lit discussion*
Oh.

 

It does seem that the ST has more potential to screw up the EU than most EU works. With my "historical documents" perspective, it's basically been incredibly easy to make everything in the EU fit. The ST, if it just doesn't even try, has the potential to make such extreme changes that even this incredibly liberal perspective won't work.

But I think it'll still be doable. Say Chewie shows up in the ST. Well, even if the movie says it takes place post-Vector Prime, I can just argue that the dating and anything that supports said dating is in fact inaccurate and it happens just before. Or else say that the inaccuracy is that the sidekick was Chewie; Chewie was actually dead by then and Han had hooked up with another Wookiee in much the way that he had hooked up with Droma in the Agents of Chaos books. Something like that. I doubt it'll be so radical that I can't make anything they come up with scan into my version of the GFFA.

 

One of the great assets of the EU is that it allows for sourcebooks to be presented as in-universe documents. From the first Roleplaying Game books to the Essential Guides, some of the best stuff written under the Star Wars license has been presented as material plucked from the Star Wars universe. So, while slight inaccuracies can be explained away as historians having poor sources or an agenda or just being lazy, a certain amount of faithfulness to the "real" events is needed for the whole thing to function. Moving a year here and a month there may be fine in less crowded eras. But moving around chunks of time like 20 years when everything is tied together so tightly is out of the question. The butterfly effect: change something in the Legacy era and you'll find it completely messes the Old Republic era. I'd say the best analogy is historical documents from the Late Middle Ages -- we can't say exactly how accurate they are, but they do represent a fairly advanced stage of historiography. The method you propose moves the analogy to a quasi-mythical time (like, say, the Trojan War -- it definitely happened, but the sources are mythological and artistic, not historical), and takes all the fun out of the EU, as it's no longer necessary for anything to make much sense.

Screwing over the EU is screwing over the EU, I'm afraid. It's like a house of cards.

 

I was with you until the GI Joe clip...

Whhhy?

 

See I'm such a fan of somehow making the whole thing fit that I love these sort of insane ideas to make it work, like we've got Luuke Skywalker holding the body of Darth Revan ala Superman holding the body of Supergirl yelling NOOOOOO!!! while Darth Vader is holding the body of Talon Karde while they're trapped in the ancient Sith past yelling WHYYYYYY???!!! to the heavens as the time-displaced Yuzang Vong try to crash a moon on his head or whathaveyou. Long running media franchises eventually all lead up to some sort of continuity pipe cleaning after a few decades. They eventually become unwieldy things that have to be morphed by TPTB at some point into whatever vision they want to set for the future (in this case, this is the guys who are creating Star Wars Episode 7 are setting the future and the spin-off media has to find a way to get into step behind them). So you have to go down long, weird corridors like Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil to erase his marriage or something crazy like that. The way I see it, continuities don't retire, that's a bit too pat, they get reborn from a viking funeral pyre of mass destruction into whatever way the people running the show are headed.

Hell, just flat out cross-over with Bill and Ted! 3 issues mini-series! Just go the whole 9 yards for that sweet satisfaction that, yes, whatever piece of whatever story that you're reading that was published before that happened, it all tied together. And still does, if you follow the continuity shoelace to where it got all knotted up.

 

This is why I think the clean excision plan makes the most sense, especially in regard to the NJO and Legacy Eras, since they are the most self-contained and least-referenced portions of the EU. The number of sources set earlier in the timeline that get screwed over are few indeed - Outbound Flight, Rogue Planet, and maybe handful of other things, and those can be helpfully finessed since the term 'Yuuzhan Vong' doesn't actually appear. The very nature of the Yuuzhan Vong, extra-galactic, means they aren't really a part of galactic history, the repercussions of their elimination are smaller than any other major group in the EU.

I mean, ideally we wouldn't have to go down this route but setting the ST in the clear time period after Crucible pushes the date out to around 50 ABY. That's older than the current actors (though its not hard to age-up someone with makeup) and in the wrong generational space for the Jaina/Jacen cohort. It also means a major EU invention, the Galactic Alliance, playing a big role. Now, it's certainly possible to do that, especially if the chosen plotline is some threat from beyond the galaxy like a new alien invasion or the Sorcerers of Rhand or whatever, but I just don't really feel we're going to get that lucky.

In terms of setting in ~30 ABY preserving the Bantam Era is easy - don't mention Luke's marital status and bam, he's still with Mara but she's busy doing something else. Same with the Solo kids (honestly, I really hope Abrams and co. avoid Sky/Solo nepotism and pick new heroes with new names regardless of continuity choices) and even the existence of the Imperial remnant. These are the kind of steps that I suspect Abrams, who handled the Star Trek reboot with considerable delicacy, might take.

Ultimately, excising the NJO and onwards is still, from a continuity perspective, still a very bad thing, but it's probably the least bad thing that could reasonably be done.

 

Personally, I'll give them more credit if they actually come out and say that they're splitting the franchise into different universes than if they decide to create a cutoff point and say that everything after that just didn't happen. I'd really just have a whole new canon (D-Canon, I guess) I can view as Infinities. To be perfectly honest, I think that pretending that something many people worked hard on, was well received and financially successful and still generates discussion, never happened is, pardon my language, bull$!-!it.

If they go with different universes, all I ask is that no travel is possible between them, and I'll just stay with the good old Star Wars universe I know and love.

 

You know things are bad when people start talking about "least bad" things that can be done.

Seriously, I'd just say it'd be far too confusing to choose just a specific splitting point of the Star Wars universe and start from there. I'd say it's either all or nothing.

 

i would hate to see the NJO series cut out of canon. Is there a betetr ending to the eu than The Unifying Force??

 

Yes.
The NJO killed a number of characters who are likely to be in or at least have the potential to be in Ep. vII, and it's not particularly good pr well thought-out, anyway...

 

Indifferent, the NJO tried to push starwars forward thematically, and character wise. Like Trek and to move away from Kirk and then ht TNG cast, To grow Mass Effect defiantly had to move away from Shepard.

Star Wars, has failed to move away from the 03, both in theme and character development, in the non NJO books of course the slow motion rehash train wreck thaw is the prequal trilogy. If the New Movies keep the spirit of the NJO i'll be perfectly happy as if they preserved it.

If they Generic-format it like Abrams did to Star Trek 2009 (for which i agree with Plinkett it is what Trek needed at the time after the disastrous Star Trek:enterprise show and Nemesis movie ) I suppose even that would be a step in a new direction, soulless dren but still a new direction.

 

Nope. There is not.

 

Or a Ranat named Mick?

 

Have to? While Star Wars and its continuity is most likely going to be morphed or reinvented in some fashion, it didn't have to be.

What you're talking about as inevitable is symptomatic of the kind of comic book universes defined by their characters (meaning they have to constantly roll back on themselves so Bruce Wayne can forever be Batman, or Tony Stark can forever be Iron Man, or whathaveyou) but Star Wars is far more defined by its setting.

If you were to take away all the iconic characters from Marvel or DC, you'd essentially be left with nothing.

If you were to take away all the iconic characters from Star Wars... you'd still have Star Wars.

You don't need to constantly reinvent Luke Skywalker when you can jump tens, hundreds or thousands of years into the future or past and tell the stories of Cade, Zayne or some new character.

If continuity is genuinely getting too dense and convulted in one era, it's as simple as creating a new one.

Ew, don't say that! No you don't.

Chrétien de Troyes didn't need to preface his stories of Arthur's court with a dimension hopping tale explaining where Launcelot came from, did he? He just did his own thing without needlessly ruining what came before.

Even something like the New 52 didn't need an in-continuity explanation. DC could have just retired the ODCU and launched the new one. I wasn't an ODCU fan, but if I had been, I'd have been much more annoyed by the setting I loved being literally destroyed "in (multi)verse" as opposed to simply being discontinued OOU.

And, indeed, that's why -- if the already familiar characters and eras of Star Wars are going to be endlessly reinterpreted -- I'd much rather we take the "mythological cycle" approach.

 

Often times, I feel like many of the stories that make up the Star Wars EU are actually different tellings of the same story. Look how many times:
1. Jedi and Republic are complacent
2. The Sith, who were defeated long ago, corrupt someone and take over
3. The Sith are betrayed by a high-up apprentice, saving the day

 

Sure, you do. Luke obviously needs to make a deal with Abeloth before Episode 7 to erase his memories of his life with Mara.

And... please don't hurt me, but your idea of Lancelot hopping across dimensions actually sounds kinda cool.

But, yeah, like you said: Star Wars isn't defined by individual characters the same way Spiderman is about, er, Spiderman. As I said in the Disney thread yesterday, I kinda hope the spin-offs aren't about any of the major characters, but provide the "Film EU" that expands the universe beyond the Skysolos so that Episodes 8 and 9 remain fresh and exciting, with Spin-Off 1 something very different that won't just feel like Episode 7.5.

 

Yeah, they often are. But at least it's the same story told with different characters.

To be honest, as I wrote it I was thinking: "Though, actually....."

 

fixed

 

I actually would agree with you that Star Wars is not subject to continuity revamps, and it has a long rich fictional history where you can drop into different time periods and play out whatever story you want to tell. And it could have gone on for that. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on someone's point of view) Disney is going to make Star Wars Episode 7, and I can't see that same history having any part of whatever direction they decide to take. So you're left with the question of, "What do we do to this continuity that's been running for about 2 decades and how to we make it fit into Ep. 7"? Like if Skippy Skywalker-Mothma is the main protagonist along her sidekick Chewbacca, how does that aforementioned post ROTJ history fit? Heck, even making "Vector Prime" a cut-off point means that Jacien, Jania, Anakin, the Yavin 4 Jedi Academy, Mara, all that jazz, is still kicking around in the mix. Sure it doesn't have to be mentioned or used at all in Ep. 7 but you're still changing post-Vector Prime and those would have to be addressed in some media form or another. As for me, I like seeing a story that puts the puzzle pieces together and don't bat an eyelash at something like New 52 taking apart what came before. Because I do like the fact that there was a story that even tore that universe apart, and even the actual "rebuilding" of the DCU is literally done in a single splash page, I forget the specifics, but basically Flash puts the DCU back together somewhat wrongly. Star Wars used to not be subject to these giant revamps that happen every once in awhile. "Used to be" is the important term. So you're left with how, exactly, will that medicine be delivered? A single Leland Chee twittering that says post XYZ ABY is tossed? Heck, no! I say throw in Thanos or something! Patton Oswalt is totally on the right track!

 

I personally hate what Abrams did with the old Trek universe. Just set it in a different universe, don't kill the other one...
And NO! to Thanos in SW. No.

 

No universe is infinitely malleable. Star Wars has certain concepts and themes that have to be preserved or it stops being recognizably Star Wars (and in fact, one of the reasons NJO is so polarizing is that some people felt all that dark material and biotech had no place in Star Wars). Similar narrative structures will re-occur as a result no matter what you do. Of course, the Eu has hardly been neutral in this fashion and has made many deliberate attempts to cash in the appeal of the movies, whether it be through characters in the form of the big three's prolonged careers or artistry, as in TOR's design rehash.

That's why we know the ST is going to have Jedi, and lightsabers, and starfighters, and there's probably going to be some action on Tatooine at some point.

 

To be fair, they did use the words "alternate reality" in Star Trek. And the writer is running around saying that the rules in the Trek movie abide by creating an alternate universe time travel as opposed to Back to the Future / Terminator single timeline rules (although that runs in the face of every time travel story in Star Trek, ever, where they have to fix the timeline.) But, for all intents and purposes, the original Trek timeline is still kickin.

As for Thanos, c'mon! It's Thanos! He's all mean and purple and has gloves that bend reality and stuff! That's a quick fix if I ever saw one!

 

When history teaches an obvious lesson, you don't just ignore it, yet the EU GFFA does just that.
1. The Jedi should stop training more Jedi because whoever they train will ultimately become a Sith
2. Sith should stop counting on apprentices
3. The Jedi and Republic should stop being so complacent

Anyway, different tellings of the same story allow Star Wars to stay Star Wars without such extreme stupidity.

 

No, it was capped when Vulcan was destroyed....it can't continue.

Unless I misinterpreted everything....which I'm pretty sure I didn't....


NO. I don't like comic reboots all the time, and introducing Marvel into SW will mean it'll be likely rebooted a lot, (and would ruin the series completely.) Please, no.

 

The destruction of Vulcan did not destroy the original timeline, because what happens in the new timeline, has no effect on the original timeline (new Kirk could have died and it would not have erased original Kirk from existing, because said event is taking place in a different universe). There is a reason why old spock didn't get erased from existence.

The planet of vulcan is still alive and well in the original universe.

No where in the film was it mentioned that the reality in which old spock came from was destroyed.