Lit The EU going the ''Star Trek'' route?

They magicked her back?

Well thats...silly. Tasha Yar is still dead isnt she, why....oh nevermind.

I like the fact that Star Wars fits together, but its not going to stop the Novels and the Comics from fiting together.

And frankly considering neither the clone wars, nor the prequals were all that good, and I dont really have big hopes for the new series anyway.

push come to shove there is such creative sterility out there,the new crap will just borrow heavily from the EU.

 

The novel The Eternal Tide apprently had her resurrected by one of the Q.

There was apparently one TNG comic where she survived and fell in love with Ro Laren

 

I don't buy Infinities EU, and don't plan on buying anymore EU if it all becomes Infinities. I won't lie, I will see the films, but there's no point buying into EU 2.0 if they've already shown disregard for EU 1.0. I don't want to read re-treads (especially inferior), and lament over what was once.

 

If a theoretical new EU puts out good stories, I'll at least take a look. Particularly if they keep on Zahn, Allston, Miller, Ostrander, Duursema, et al. Though whether I invest in such a universe remains to be seen.

 

I've been predicting this for a while. The Star Trek route in my opinion is the most likely outcome. It's possible they'll create a revised EU and only keep some post-ROTJ and dismiss the rest, but I sincerely doubt the post-ROTJ EU will survive mostly intact.

 

Honest question, and not meant to sound snarky, but are you spending money on stuff you don't care about now and if so...why?

I mean, as a comic book reader, I've bought the odd copy of a cross-over just to read the tie-in now and then, but the stuff that I know I won't like? I just don't spend money on it.

In theory the entire Marvel and DC universes are linked, but I don't buy all their comics to learn the "full story". Why not just buy what you like and leave the rest whether it's a "single canon" or not?

And...I just don't buy that the Star Wars Canon as it stands is a single canon.

In order to make it a single canon fans have to mentally fudge a whole host of things, think about "canon levels", ignore what goes against their unification, trust in others to retcon things to bring them in line, sometimes to a ridiculous degree, and despite all the contradictions and the attitude of "let the fans figure it out" that seems to rule, people still swallow that it' s a singular universe.

Okay, so in general there's a timeline that is mutually agreed on as the single canon, but if there were a retcon, no one is going to come in and burn your old SW books, games, etc. Even a total reboot just gives us a new EU to watch grow and change.

IDK, as someone who has seen many of the universe he loves reborn over and over, or just changed, I think it's okay to have a fluid canon. I like how Doctor Who does it, which is to just ignore canon. Everything is canon and nothing is canon depending on the needs of the story.

I understand why that doesn't work for SW, but this insistence that unless the fiction of a single "true" history for a fictional universe being mandated as in place despite obvious contradictions meaning the result is worthless just doesn't make sense to me.

I'd be enjoying the new Brian Wood STAR WARS comic whether it was officially in the timeline or whether it was some Infinities that "didn't really happen".

As I said, maybe growing up a comic book reader groomed me for having different canons or continuities where the canon was flexible, but I couldn't imagine walking away from the joy that SW brings me just because of some continuity or canon changes...or even a reboot.

I liked old-school Star Trek, and I loved the new movie. I can watch STII:The Wrath of Khan and nu-Star Trek and enjoy both. I can enjoy old school Battlestar Galactica (okay, I enjoyed it as a kid, not so much now) and the nu-BSG.

I kinda get it, but at the same time...good stories are good stories. And I'd rather have cracking Star Wars stories than bad ones that are bound by thirty years of baggage that is falling apart anyways.

It blows me away that this is such an issue in a franchise where the owner/creator/director gleefully changes things when the mood strikes to the point of contradicting himself.

I do respect those who love the single canon, and I get the excitement of having a single living history, but I'm okay with it being "living" and open to change. Even if the worst happens you'll still have that 30 year block of stories that roughly "fit".

 

This.

And the TL;DR version of my previous post is:

If people I like work on the products and the products are good I'll drop money on them. If they aren't...I won't. Simple as that.

 

Same here, I would stop buying new merchandise alltogether. But I would probably continue my long hunt to complete my pre-Disney EU collection. Without a constant barrage of new products, I could concentrate on tracking all the rare stuff I'm still missing.

 

Although I am a serious current-EU-collecor, I will probably also buy the books/cmicswhich come out under the Disney-umbrella (especially if they are being done by Del Rey and Dark Horse, both companies which have done everything to establish the EU as we know it now...). I guess we will see what happens: no point in worrying before the actual movie comes out...

 

Trek EU authors can go in pretty much what ever direction they please, there by having much more creative freedom than Star Wars EU authors who are restricted to keeping consistent continuity with the films.

 

I think what many are missing is that both approaches have their share of pros and cons. At its worst, continuity can indeed be constraining. At its best, it can be a catalyst for extended, meaningful story arcs and character progressions. A Star Trek author can indeed go in any direction they might choose; the problem with this approach is that this direction will end and cease to matter in any relevant works you might decide to look into. If continuity is utilized well, can even improve subpar works on the basis of it adding to a greater body of work. The Courtship of Princess Leia is nothing special, but it's significantly improved by reading the Wraith trilogy beforehand. The idea of a story that's always evolving, always changing, is a very appealing one, at least to me. In contrast, the Star Trek approach feels like each author presses a "reset button". Whatever trials the characters through will be rendered irrelevant in further stories. Tie-in fiction, by its very nature, thrives on collaboration. I know that if Star Wars fully makes this transition, I don't think I'll be able to stay interested.

Of course, the great problem with upholding a tight continuity is that you're stuck with all the mistakes made along the way. It's certainly not a perfect system, but then again, what is. Perhaps Star Wars needs to find some kind of compromise.

 

To be honest, I won't care. The Star Wars fictional world and Expanded Universe in the state they are just right now will continue to exist way after the Sequels and Episode X+. Disney will not send a strike team into your house burning all Star Wars novels and comics into ash and dust with heavy flame throwers.^^ The only thing going to happen is that some parts or entirety of the Expanded Universe loose their current state in official Star Wars canon.

But what would it change in your entertainent by consuming Star Wars novels, comics and videogames or the enjoyment of talking about this fictional universe? To me, nothing. If the Expanded Universe looses it's brand official Star Wars canon, it still counts counts to me just like it did before.

The Expanded Universe cannot cease to exist, just loose it's state/position in a classification system. To me everything official canon except the post-NJO Expanded Universe, The Force Unleashed, parts of The Old Republic, Darth Maul's return, IG-88's droid revolution, some parts of Post-Endor-EU and a few other certain parts of works, is canon. Episode VII certainly is going to change this view. If it directly contradicts the entire Pre-Republic, Old Republic and Rise of Empire era by claiming the hyperdrive was invented 100,000 BBY, there were three republics at all and the Jedi and Sith both came into existence on Coruscant 30,000 BBY, I will accept it. But still the old Star Wars universe is there and will ever be.

To answer the question of this thread: Probably yes. Unlikely and kinda sad, but to me, no end of world galaxy.

 

It seems wrong to destroy the EU. I mean it's come so far( we're on Legacy now right?) destroying it would make it all Infinites.

 

Would I continue to read Star Wars books? Probably not.

For a long time, I've felt that my Star Wars obsession is actually at the cost of reading quality literature, and that I really ought to read other things more, so if there ceases to be the same intricate patchwork of intertextual relationships that the current EU represents, then there will also cease to exist the same benefit from reading something like Wild Space or The Crystal Star solely for the purposes of better appreciating later references to earlier stories.

I hated Wild Space. But I still read to the end. Why? Because it might have had some importance to later Clone Wars stories. But if that's no longer guaranteed to be the case, I'd have just read the preview, decided I didn't like the writing, and left well enough alone.

So will I continue to pay into Disney's coffers just to experience the "whole" story? No.

Will I read something if it looks really, really interesting? Still very doubtful, to be honest. Why should I settle even on an author like Stover when there are better authors out there writing other things, their own things? I'd much rather read Stover's own stories than his novelisation of Episode IX: Rebirth of Palpatine if all the novelisation is going to be is just a novelisation, and no longer serve to connect the film into that patchwork of countless other stories. The attraction of Star Wars has for me always been rooted in its interconnectedness, so if that goes, so does the reason I'll sit through a film like The Clone Wars or play a crappy video game like Empire at War when there are much better movies and video games that I could spend my time and money on.

This is exactly the same reason as why I haven't bough the new Devil May Cry game. I was previously a big fan of the series' storyline, even though I'm not a huge fan of button smashers, but I played all the games because I was curious where Dante's story was going. But DmC? I don't like the look of it; the reboot is clearly designed for today's teenagers, not the teenagers of fifteen years ago; so I've given that a miss, and have moved on to other things, and accepted that Devil May Cry is simply no longer for me.

Might we all be eating our words when they come out with awesome books and video games...? Maybe, but if most direct film tie-ins are anything to go by, then the quality will get worse, not better, as they'll have a much easier time getting sales.

 

You make some good points, but I still stand by what I said. If the products are good, I would probably be familiar with them, and care about them. I am not familiar with non-canon things because I don't make the effort to consume them because they "don't count". There are things I care about very much that I don't buy, such as the series Elfquest and manga.
I follow things because of content, not because of the people involved in them. I think very highly of people like Ostrander and Duursema, but if I am not interested in what they are creating, I'm not going to buy them just because I like the creators. Same thing with movies - I do not see movies because an actor I like is in them. I see movies because I am interested in what the movie is about.

 

DC, despite their multiple attempts otherwise, isn't a "single canon" - well, we'll see how the New 52, their latest attempt to do so, works out.
I don't buy every Marvel comic, but the reason I buy the regular ones that I do is certainly because of the Marvel Universe - see the quote by Peter David in my sig. My DC purchases have been limited to the Long Halloween trilogy (self-contained), the Arkham Asylum games and Planetary (which was published through a sub-group, Wildstorm, written and illustrated by the same two people for the entire self-contained run, and barely connected to the other Wildstorm comics). So, theoretically, if there's a really good story I might purchase standalones. Somehow I doubt that would be the case, because I've never felt the slightest desire to buy a Star Trek novel, or an Aliens novel, or Terminator novel, etc.

No, it most likely will go - as the thread title states - to the "Star Trek" route. Which is not having an Expanded Universe.

I'll be blunt here - for me personally, here's what's going on. I walked away from Star Wars shortly after ROTJ when it became clear that they weren't interested in telling stories about Star Wars I cared about (mostly Ewoks garbage, and a Marvel series where they were told by LFL that they couldn't show anything about the development of the New Republic, etc.). I came back because of the Star Wars materials in the early 90s - the X-Wing games, the RPG, and most importantly the novels and guides. That, plus the OT, is Star Wars to me. If that material gets thrown away, I'm really not interested in following Star Wars. If I was younger, I might give them a chance if they did sink the EU - but I'm terribly conservative nowadays after being burned by situations like KJA's Dune novels.

As the constant "they won't burn your books" arguments point out, I'll still have works like the X-Wing series or the Essential Guide to Warfare. And I've got plenty of other franchises to spend money on that I feel are much more worthwhile.

Red herring, considering that it's not technically a "reboot" but an "alternate universe" - there's nothing stopping them from going back and squeezing out another TNG movie, for instance.

Also a red herring. Reimaging the entire series is very different, and I would genuinely be shocked if Disney even remotely considered doing that to the OT.

And again, I believe that a consistent background is the hallmark of good storytelling - why singular authors like Martin or Tolkien write such compelling stories. Shared universes are trickier, and of course there isn't going to be a 100% fit - no one expects that. But as Zahn discovered when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy, having a background to work from is a boon to writing, not a restriction.

 

On this note, the new MMO continues in the old universe

 

If someone told me Super Star Wars didn't really happen for real I would go into a cave and never come out again.

 

Not trying to change your mind on this one, but having played the previous games and DmC...I really, really love DmC. Is it different? Sure. Is it a fantastic game in a genre I don't usually get on with (button mashing fighting games)? You bet it is.

They over-egg it a little bit and the "I LOVE THE DEVIL! I LOVE THE DEVIL!" soundtrack is a bit off putting to an old man in his 30's such as me, but it's still a great game that I think a Devil May Cry fan would enjoy.

 

When I was a kid, I saw Star Wars, the movies blew me away, and I wanted more Star Wars. So I got into the EU. But I haven't stayed in the EU for sixteen years because of some overwhelming hunger for things that say "Star Wars" on the front. I stayed in the EU because there was a story to invest in, a big, consistent universe that was all telling the same stories, the got bigger and bigger, that told more stories and inspired my imagination about the stories. I got into the EU because of the movies. I stayed because of the New Republic, because of Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin, because of Corran Horn and Tycho Celchu and the Wedge Antilles of Stackpole and Allston, because of Nom Anor, because of Etahn A'baht, because of Quinlan Vos and Iaco Stark and Tholme and Sagoro Autem, because of everybody named Fel. I stayed because of the Battle of Orinda and the death of Elegos A'kla and Grand Admiral Thrawn's campaign and the replacement warlords and the Caamasi Document Crisis and the Empire of the Hand and Jerec's trying to seize the Valley of the Jedi. I stayed because of Cloak of Deception and Destiny's Way and Starfighters of Adumar and The Essential Atlas and Jedi vs. Sith and the Galaxy Guides and the collected works of Abel G. Peña. I stayed because Gallandro drew first, because the Unknown Regions are full of terrors, because Zayne Carrick was innocent, and because the Vong could bring on their thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. Ganner didn't give a damn. None would pass. I stayed because an obscure early-WOTC sourcebook established that Wilhuff Tarkin was a talented philosopher and poet, and that means something to me.

If all that goes out the window, as far as the new movies or the new EU is concerned . . . what's my motivation to stick around for them? What's my motivation to care? I already have a continuation of the story. I have a continuation, and a whole universe, I've invested in over the course of two-thirds of my life. I'm not excited just because it has "Star Wars" on the tin. I'm in this thing because they built a universe and I invested in it. If that universe is gone, I'm not particularly interested in spending the energy to invest in a half-assed, minuscule alternate version of that universe being built up all over again. They can come out with movies about Luke's son Dave, they can come out with books about Luke's son Dave. I don't care. I care about Ben. If their new EU doesn't have the stories I care about, the universe I care about, I don't care what franchise's label it has on it. I'm not going to have the same investment.

tl;dr: WEG or GTFO.

 

That's the way life works, no? Reset buttons don't exist in nature, and they ought to stay out of Star Wars as well.

Star Trek I don't know much about. I've seen most of Voyager (I love that show), some episodes of Enterprise I watched because there was nothing better on TV in that timeslot, and some of the movies. I don't feel compelled to buy anything with Star Trek printed or embossed on it precisely because licensee spin-offs are non-canon (and honestly, because I don't really like the whole thing very much). Perhaps I'd be interested in the continuing adventures of the Voyager crew though, but why should I look for them? They're not canon, therefore there's nothing "continuous" about them.

 

I'll see your PAD quote and raise you an Alan Moore:

"This is an imaginary story, but aren't they all?"

I'm not saying you're wrong, just explaining that I come from more of that school. The school that Grant Morrison is a part of that allows for things like Hypertime and comic book stories being allowed to be stories; a participatory adventure and suspension of disbelief.

I would argue that anything outside the core media is an expanded universe, but I don't want to bog down a discussion in pedantry.

At the end of the day I respect anyone's decision to buy or not to buy whatever they want. I stopped buying FoTJ halfway through because I wasn't enjoying it.

I would argue that DC and Marvel have always tried to maintain the fiction that they're both existing in distinct shared universes. I'm not sure what your comment about DC not being a singular universe was about, unless you mean the DC/Vertigo split, which is fudged by things like Sandman showing up in JLA or the JLA in Sandman as well as other crossovers.

DC has had more of the massive outright reboots such as the Crisis stories, while Marvel just works on a sliding scale and assumes everything happened, but they're just not going to tell you how it all fits. They just keep moving things as needed, which is why Tony Stark now has his origin in Iraq instead of Vietnam, but they still claim that every comic published happened.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it isn't quite binary. There isn't an absolutist reality to SW EU as it is, and even with a theoretical reboot the result wouldn't just be random stories that happen with no connection.

Halo fans have tried to hammer square pegs into round holes for awhile, but there is simply no way that the novel FALL OF REACH and HALO: REACH make sense next to each other. I know fans, and even some pros, have constructed elaborate work arounds, but it still just doesn't fit.

And, honestly, in some cases I'd rather a franchise writer worried less about absolutism and more about making a good story.

I know some of it is in fun, but trying to wedge everything down to Disney Rides just comes off silly to me, but again, I'm coming at this as a comic book reader who has been trained by reading comics to include a mental "fudge factor", and I think the most important part is that it doesn't have to be a binary option.

 

The "Star Trek Route"? By that, I assume you mean the alternate timeline/universe business? I never got into Trek that much, so I don't know a lot about it. The only reason I watched "Voyager" was mainly for 7of9 and the "Lost In Space" theme of the show. Come to think of it, if there had been a Star Wars TV show series during that time, I would never even had known Trek existed.

The new Trek movies are fun sci-fi action joyrides, but for me, my interest ends there.

I have never had any interest in "infinities/timelines/alternate universes". If Star Wars goes down that road, I'll ignore that junk. I won't buy any of it, unless they come out with a new Hasbro FX lightsaber I really like, or something. I won't buy into a new SW universe when I know it can't be trusted....if I spend my hard-earned money on a novel, I want to feel safe in its continuity. If D/LFL can do it once, they will likely do it again. I like libraries for that reason...I'll check stuff out, but I won't buy it.

I really want a Corran Horn Hasbro FX 'saber. Y'know, if they keep everything the same EU-wise (more or less), I will gobble up all the new material. If they change everything, I won't buy it. Like everbody else, I'll watch the new films, perhaps buy the DVDs if they're good...but if they change the SW galaxy's history irrevocably, I'm done with it beyond that.

I really, really want to be able to trust D/LFL. I won't give my money to a company that can't be trusted. I stopped giving my money to WotC for their D&D RPG books for simular reasons...it should never had gone beyond v3.5. I'll just switch to Pathfinder, TYVM. Same goes for Star Wars. However, LFL has gone through a lot of effort to maintain continuity so far, why should they stop now? I'll trust 'em, for now, until they break that trust.

 

The context of that quote is that it prefaced his "final Superman story", which he was well aware that DC wasn't going to make official - and a callback to the Silver Age Superman "What If?" stories.

This is also coming from a man who writes one of the most continuity-laden series of all time, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is to say is one of my favorite works.

Pull an issue from 1985 for DC. Is it canon? Is it in continuity? The short answer is "Who knows". The comics never made much of an attempt to be consistent which each other. DC has tried about four times, the most recent being the "New 52" reboot, to create an actual canon since the 1990s.
The Marvel Universe has always been fairly consistent, and with Mark Grunewald's "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" has stayed so - sliding scale notwithstanding. There's a strong suggestion that Johnathan Hickman's SHIELD series, when finally completed, will end up using the "sliding scale" as a plot element. The bottom line is that Marvel and DC both seem to take it seriously enough that the former still continues to use continuity and the latter has been desperately trying to set it up.

I'm not sure where you're drawing this from, as that's exactly the case for Star Trek's secondary material.

Exactly. It's a complete waste of time when it's clear it's not meant to be anything other than fan fiction you're paying money for.

 

Isn't it all fan fiction we are paying for?

I suppose its easier of Trek fans, Gene Roddenberry smug filled TNG season 1 and The original series? half the stuff that contradicts the other half. The crap Brannon and Braga produced with voyager and enterprise?

Is Deep Space 9 cannon the first setting in the Trek verse to step away from the name Enterprise? Peter Davids works? Kieth R.A Decandido?