Lit Star Wars: Timelines... are we ready for 25000 years ABY?

We had 25000+ years of past under Legends, with more creeping in on 100000 years if taking all the vague ancient stuff into account. Are we ready for the same dive into the future? Legacy comics were a mere 140 years into it only and too close for many fans to established lore to constrain it. Cancelled Lucas own game ideas for TFU and else had game ideas flying around set 500+ ABY with joint Jedi and Sith Councils. And not few fans speculated if the Dune universe may be an appropriate look for one potential post Legacy future of Star Wars many millennia later in a post-droid society that abandoned artificial life after its uprising.

While SW was always careful to go into the future, given it does not intend to loose its "a long time ago" feel and technological status quo is a problem when extending the timeline in any direction in significant ways without profound changes or dark age setbacks, what might such a future look like?

The galactic map is changed by rotation (even if minor only in the cosmic scale) and hyperlanes being lost and new ones charted. The Unknown Regions and satellites fully explored and reacheable? The Outer Rim pacified and new "Rim"'s added beyond former Wild Space and at the outermost satellites?
New looks for familiar old places? Oceancovered Tatooine, Green Coruscant, Alderaan Station being a planet sized construct of Death Star junk metal and Asteroid rocks turned into a cohesive athmospher covered artificial world through and through like a gigantic Worldcraft? Dac in an ice age freezing up with only few warm waterholes thx to undersea volacanies giving access to the unfrozen ocenas below the ice? Kashyyyk facing californean heat fires and unable to stop them, forced to exodus their world for another?

One needn't even got 25000 ABY just yet but opening a new future era that is distatched from the SW Saga and past which Legacy comics were not, and yet feels SW might be interesting if a KOTOR style project or High Republic style project opens up said spot in the timeline.

And while one can argue as some fans do that 25000 years are too much in any direction, with most stories shuffled repetitions of the saga's elements and that only the last 1000 years truly are relevant for the main Saga anyway, how might their approach look at a far future, even if it is set only 1000 years in the future or no further than 5000? A time where the modern myth of the main saga truly has become a myth and not memory or recorded history like in Legacy comics?

Jedi and Sith no more but legends with new Forceusers rare and like Bendu serving harmony via both extremes and balance?
Droid Rights successful as recognition as life forms, end of their slavery and equally accepted into everyday life or secluded and shunned in droid only communities and planets?
With travel and space accessible near instantly due to hyperdrive revolutions at the speed of plot will scienece turn its eye on to time or micro and macrocosm, utilizing Sharu shrinking tech to explore entirely new worlds in the small and large?

While the scientific concept may be too hard science and not as space fantasy at first glance, exploring micro and macrocosm can be done in a way befitting SW. The MCU kinda already did the same with Antman's microverse exploration with supertiny new worlds and species and likewise realisation that we are all only a cog in the machine of superlarge universal or planetary beings like Sekot, like an intelligent GFFA or the Force that unites all in its W(h)ill? Guardians of the Galaxy/Ant Man styled exploration of scifi concepts may feel StarWarsy if done right and not overdosed. Thus the micro/macro aspect of a fractal universe may come into full play like in no other media before. And without the scifi typical timewars and and alterations, even time may be explored in different and new ways that befit SW and its status quo more than any copypaste scifi timetravel paradox scenario other franchises explore. Try new concepts like circular time or fractal time or even a version where timetravel like hyperdrive mishaps and other we already had do not threaten but strengthen the timeline and where new concepts actually enforce and make sense of the GFFAs technological status quo rather than disrupt it.

 

Not 25000 but I always wanted some 1000 ABY. I think this was the closest thing to it (haven't watched it).

 

As a general rule for storytelling in Star Wars, I think that large time skips (100+ years, let's say) should be reserved for following up on events so earth-shattering that to immediately throw the Galaxy back into turmoil in a sequel would come off as absurd. A good example of this would be how the Legacy comics chose to follow up on consequences from the ending of the New Jedi Order series by jumping forward 100 years, or how The Old Republic is set 300 years after the events in the Tales of the Jedi-Knights of the Old Republic narrative. Even giving narratives a five or ten year breaks like the Dark Nest Crisis or the first Thrawn trilogy did for their predecessors is a good step in the right direction. I would recommend that a jump in the double digits (say 20-60 years) is always useful to establish a present that connects to events that directly succeed previously-published material; for example, Knights of the Old Republic jumping 40 years after Tales of the Jedi to establish that a Mandalorian War followed Exar Kun’s rise and fall.

I’ve gone on record before saying that I take issue with the overextension of the Legends Old Republic era. In an attempt to preserve a multitude of contradictory information on the founding of the Sith and the age of their order, we have duplicate characters and events and retcons causing narrative problems within a single comic book issue. Then there’s awkward moments in Knight Errant and the Bane trilogy where characters quote or reference events that from their point of view occurred three thousand years in the past, and those examples aren’t even excusable since the writers knew what kind of gap existed at the time of writing. There are ways to simplify the distended timeline that I hope are considered by LFL as they start to reevaluate the Old Republic era.

Personally, I would warn against jumps too big (1000+ years) having any strong connection to previous status quos or era. I would hope that any jump in the thousands represents a totally new status quo with a new cast of characters mostly or totally disconnected from previous era (unless we’re going for a Buck Rogers-style scenario.) When it comes to new technology, I would prefer to see it crop up in these eras so that we can fight back against the notion that Star Wars exists in a tech-frozen setting. I also second any effort by writers to explore droid rights, droid sentience, droid rebellions, and droid-absent settings. Also, if there ever is a jump that has a quadruple digit attached to it, I would hope that it’s a reasonable number like 1000 years instead of 10,000 or 25,000 because frankly I don’t see why there would be a prominent or meaningful difference to the audience.

I’m not well-versed in the idea of fractal time but from a glance it reminds me of my old attempts to link The Star Wars comics with the mainstream universe. My personal ideal 1000ABY would include a Galactic civilization(s) without an Unknown Regions, whose satellite galaxies are being colonized and serve as the new frontier, perhaps with the threat of colliding with the abandoned Vong home-galaxy which might be full of nasty remnants. Or perhaps successful Outbound Flight missions have taken place and the Jedi Order has to deal with splinter factions influencing extragalactic policy. I am also a lover of anything and everything to do with dimension-hopping and I think the idea of dreamscapes like those found in the writings of Lord Dunsany and in the mind of Cody Sunn-Childe could be interesting to see interact with Jedi teachings. I don’t want to see regular travel between a multitude of galaxies, but I would like to see micro and microtechnology explored in an impactful way. How did the construction of the Death Star change how GFFA engineers think about energy and construction?

 

I definitely don't mind there being big events in the far past, but I feel like explicitly showing them in stories ruins the mystery. For most of the EU, what we saw of the Old Republic was a well-established Jedi Order, Republic and Sith. I'd like to keep it that way. Any of the foundational lore should be kept a bit mysterious—things like the 100 Years Darkness and anything prior. In my humble opinion, the 25k slot is well outside the scope of Star Wars at the moment.

 

Honestly, I want someone of Yoda's species to go dark and rule the Galaxy for several centuries.

 

I feel like a tech-frozen setting is for the better. Otherwise you'd have to keep coming up with reasons for why this tech has changed and improved, but that tech hasn't. Pretty soon you're going to run out of ideas. And you'd also have to deal with the way these technological improvements would affect the plot. Like say, if every single Star Destroyer can mount a planet-killing superlaser, doesn't that change a lot of fundamentals about the Star Wars universe?

 

That's kinda the point, though. To explore the Star Wars galaxy to its maximum potential. Exploring those avenues and eventually running out of ideas is better than being creatively stagnant with a bunch of unexplored ideas. Seeing how these changes affect the universe's storytelling is a creative exercise I'd like to see happen more. I'd argue that there's only so much you can do without changing the status quo, and you'll run out of ideas a lot sooner.

I'd like to see stories set in the future, but preferably ones that build off the most recent setting/stories of the timeline. I wouldn't want any big time jumps unless it's really necessary for the plot. A hundred years or so may be fine, though it risks putting creative limitations on stories that can take place within the time gap. 25,000 years in the future is so different and detached from the rest of the galaxy that the time jump becomes arbitrary, and I lose interest. I'd say the comic "Storyteller" used the far future premise well, but even then it was really a one-off novelty.

 

My preference would be no more than 10,000 years in the past and no more 1,000 years in the future, but even those are absolute maximums. I feel that huge spans of time in stories work best with one of two options. A) They're kept nebulous and vague. Ie "10,000 years ago the great evil was defeated, but now it's coming back" kind of thing. And they rarely if ever actually show the distant past to keep the magic and mystery. B) Like others have said, keep the time skips to when really significant events happen.

I think the A Song of Ice and Fire franchise really shows this. It has tens of thousands of years of history. But if you read supplement books like The World of Ice and Fire or Fire and Blood, things get less and less detailed the further back in time you go from the main series. It keeps mystery by leaving some things vague, and cuts down on confusion or redundancy by separating out big events and only giving more detail to certain areas.

Now, let's talk technology. To some degree I think the "Medieval Stasis" of Star Wars makes sense. I read an alternate history book about aliens who invade the Earth during World War II. Their method of interstellar travel takes centuries, so when they arrived on Earth they expected more of the horseback mounted soldiers they'd initially observed. They didn't think humans would now have guns, planes, and atom bombs. But, as one character pointed out, if the aliens had begun their journey 2,000 years ago instead of 1,000 years ago, humans *would* still be at around the same tech level. Sometimes tech levels do remain stagnant, though IMO 25,000 years of that sort of thing is a bit of a stretch.

It's a struggle between making things too samey, and making things so different it's not recognizable as Star Wars anymore. Should characters in the distant past not have droids, or characters in the distant future have teleporters? If no, then things haven't changed for millennia. If yes, then is it really a Star Wars story without droids? Is it really a Star Wars story if they beam around like Star Trek? The answer will depend on the viewer.

 

I take big issue with this perception.

I'm not familiar with the book you're referencing, but the idea that the only enormous jump in technology occurred at the Industrial Revolution (if I am understanding your statement correctly) is false. If we were to assume that "high civilization" does exist on a continuum from 2500BC starting in Mesopotamia and spreading from there until present day, we see enormous changes between each millennium in what math, science, and military technology are capable of (along with architecture, art and religion.) Dominant material cultures also rise, alter, decay and split up as the eras go by. It's not even entirely agreed anymore that most of the world outside of the River Valleys and the Mediterranean were stuck in hunter-gatherer or pastoralist stasis up until European colonization; there were most definitely civilizations originating outside of those zones with their own technological achievements that fit the environments available to them.

I think @ColeFardreamer mentioned in a previous post outside of this thread that even in real life there may have been "high culture" prior to the end of the Ice Age, although various groups have their own reasons for trying to invalidate those theories. Medieval stasis is very much a trope predicated on a present-superiority mindset that assumes the Industrial Revolution was the best and/or most notable advancement of civilization.

 

My intention wasn't to suggest that the Industrial Revolution was the only time anything significant happened in regards to technology or science. Or that ancient people were a bunch of dumb cave men. But that there can be long periods where technology remains at roughly the same level, and the Industrial Revolution *was* a pretty big leap forward. Yes the ancient Greeks successfully predicted the circumference of the Earth. All sorts of monuments from pyramids to stone hedge required math and engineering know how. Da Vininci examined corpses to learn about anatomy and Galileo studied the stars. But the truth is for a large chunk of history, if aliens did invade Earth, the human armies they'd face would be composed of soldiers on horseback armed with pointy objects.

(Just for clarity the book series was the "World War" by Harry Turtledove, though personally I found his story ideas better than the actual execution).

 

Thinking of the 25,000 year span and also the Jedi order being around 10,000 years old, I wonder where the first hyperdrives fit in.

Ahch-To is far away from civilization, so man made hyper drives are 10,000+ years old or the first Jedi temple was founded by people who either traveled via sleeper/generation ship (that path though would be either all human or a lot less alien diversity) or like Legends, taken by an ancient alien race that pre dates man/film alien made hyperdrives.

I wonder what path they will take when Disney eventually does a story about Jedi origins.

 

I'm not ready for 25,000+ years of galactic future, ABY. The deep, dark past 25,000 BBY is still being refined, if Lucasfilm is bold enough. There are too many underpinnings, saga elements, and seeds planted in the 25,000 BBY period that need to be solidified before 25,000 ABY can be explored. Lucasfim can wow us, fascinate us, and tantalize us for decades to come by simply solidifying the galactic history, BBY.

The galactic future should only be shown in brief glimpses and blips for now. Brief glimpses into the future can be shown while the history is being sorted out. This allows Lucasfilm to solidify the "Point of View" narrative approach -- that we reconstruct the past, and each reconstruction is yet only another piece of the puzzle. The power of the "Point of View" approach is that it allows one character or group to construct a flexible narrative that can later be changed. More dominant pieces of the puzzle may always remain undiscovered that can lead to a "global" change in understanding some aspect of recent history or ancient history. There is no denying that understanding history and our place in history is essential for a better future. Telling people that the past has no bearing on the future is a power trip.

All beings are finite and gain their information through finite sensory systems. There is no escaping "Point of View."

Yes, and that is one of the reasons I have stayed reading Star Wars and Robert E. Howard. The power of "Point of View" is that it allows us to challenge the "present-superiority mindset" you refer to.

I'm also of the opinion that when Lucas found a younger audience attracted to SW through merchandising, he shifted some of the underpinnings of SW. We should ask the question, Would Lucas devote himself to all this world-building if the end goal was merely fairy tales and fantasy? I disagree that presenting space fairy tales was Lucas' motivation. That is shallow thinking to me and it seems like a cover story. There is a thought-continuum from THX to Star Wars with Lucas. My view is that Lucas was imagining ancient high technology civilizations in other galaxies and how their "history" could be transmitted to Earth through robots.

 

Journal of the Whills is a great example of what you’re talking about. It was more explicit in earlier drafts, but we know that Lucas was throwing around the idea as recently as Revenge of the Sith’s production (R2 telling the story in the films to the Whills 100 years later)

 

I get that the problem with showing the future, near or far, is that one has to settle on how to deal with the past Saga in the future. Will it be the big historic event with lasting effects? Will it be downplayed by continued violence and conflicts? Will it be used as building block to a new end or might it be kept as an event to end things and something new springs from it? That and a lot more is to be considered.

We had several approches seen already in Legends and canons continuation of the saga. And moving forward, will status quo once again mean the Jedi, a Republic, the Sith return once more in the future? Will it differ and show the same under a new name? Or something really new with the old name? Or new name and new concepts?

Authors always have to consider, what will they portray in the future and what in the past. If in the past, why did it not stick? Say, Jedi and Sith worked together once... why did it not last? Could it last? If portraying it in the future, is that the end it all scenario or just one step in the road to something more?

Every story needs to decide what to depict in what detail and of course fans ask, who rules the galaxy with what system? What about crime? Military? Free love? Ok kidding with the last one but a story needn't go into these details to work if written well around it. Not every story needs the capital involved. And the PT and NJO onwards only really threw us into a government and military try to solve it all storytelling.

Look at ANH, no Emperor, no capital, the entire story that began SW worked without them. Just a namedrop to the senate and Emperor. All we needed was space nazis and persecuted Jedi hermits to get a feel for the times of rebellion. We did not need to see how it worked, but we learned the Empire was not perfect and people work against it. Likewise any future might do the same from the opposite pov: We do not see or know who or how the government works but learn through namedrops that it works and people are happy with it. That is enough, what system works is open to each ones own interpretation. The story can revolve without it, so long it does not invalidate any of that message by showing ineffectivity of said rule.

Even if said government of the future fails to make way for new conflict and story potential, we need not learn why it failed or how and when, just have the story portray it as: it worked well, for a time and then as people changed and technology did something else was needed and progress from that.

Maybe more personal tales can be as epic and grand as the "government hero, military commander, superpowered forceuser" saving the day? WEG rpg had many great characters and tales woven into the fabric with lesser folks than those.

Rogue One had a nice moment befitting this: On Jedha when Saws folks blast it out with the Empire, Jyn is a sidecharacter watching the battle between government and extremist rebels. She notices the girl in the midst of fireworks and saves her life. The supposed heroes, the rebels are portrayed as terrorists not caring for collateral and the smaller folk like Jyn standing by did the actually impressive heroics here loving and taking care of everyone, not just missions and grand dreams. Such smaller heroes are great for storytelling and show the true collateral of superheroism (The Boys tv show would agree though I dislike its execution it adresses a neat core problem of superheroes, collateral damage and casualities).

If you want to show a galaxy evolved, a future where people are happy, we need to show the people learned some lessons. Not just tech advances but social advances of society and people. As Anakin said in TPM: Nobody helps each other. And as the people fleet did in TROS, they came together to help each other. Show that everyone counts, not to sacrifice the few for the wellbeing of many. For that would be how dystopia is built hidden under an utopian elitist society.

 

@ColeFardreamer

I think you hit on something when it comes to expanding universe and honestly it's something I think the Nu Era has handled better then the old EU and that's...what is the thematic relevance of going forward and back.

Instead of just tech and what not....what is the thematic angle...the Meta Story and what it adds to the overall themes of Star Wars.

If you can find a thematic hook to why going back in time (Or forward) is important then I think that should be the starting point beyond...well, what did the galaxy look like back then. Oooh lore.

 

RE: Tech advancement. The weird thing, for me at least, is that it doesn't really bother me as much as some others If anything I'm more interested in aesthetic evolution, which isn't the same thing but is often confused as such. This is where you get people confused at how Star Wars tech got "worse" by the OT, even though it more reflects how designs evolved in our world from sleek to practical. I love the idea of there being "regal" phases, then more practical phases, then back to regal, etc.

A lot of Star Wars' DNA is rooted in great iconic design, so for a future story I'd love to see what conceptual artists and authors might think up there.

 

The question for me is, will we see Skywalker's or a new leading family entirely?

 

Oh man. I wish they had gotten the funds to film the 3rd one instead of just this trailer:

 

Who is to say it has to be a family at all? It could go other ways, about friends, or else. Though families will evolve out of anthing most likely I am kinda hoping they do not go dynastic.

In the ST we already had a Skywalker who is a Solo and not named Skywalker in Ben. Then a Skywalker by virtue but not name in Rey. So the name of any future family or constellation of protagonists and antagonists is less relevant I think. If calling any Skywalker it may rather detract from the story for fans will seek lineages and connections to older stories then that are less relevant for an all new future.

I am more interested in more arthurian myth that the ST used nicely, but this time used to the full extent. Both canon and Legacy used arthurian myth in their future scenarios. Be it Legends benevolent Felpire kingdom falling to the Sith after being tricked into a war with another GA realm, or be it the Imperial Knights of the Round Table of the Felperor. Or the Mortis Knights seeking the holy grail, aka Mortis dagger to kill Abeloth. There could be anything from rise of King Arthur, to his fall and legacy stories. Holy Grails, Knights of Round Tables, even Lancelot was an Imperial Knight.
New Canon too dabbled in castles and medieval analogues and crossguards in the ST all over introducing Avalon the fabled land of fairy nuns where Merlin Skywalker went into exile. Lady of the Lake Maz Kanata gave Rey and Finn the legacy lightsaber Excalibur.

Aside many eastern, western, modern and past influences SW always mixes brilliantly, both futures in Legends and canon were rather medieval arthurian by design (and where not arthurian rather Tolkien-esque).

So going by these examples how might a future progress? Skywalkers sinking into myth like Arthur and his realm, galactic historians neglecting it as a fairy tale until evidence surfaces of some truth it in distant times? A New Age movement in the far future gffa nostalgic for the old times and the Force rediscovered, reawakening? Romanticising the Empires? Imperial Knights doubling as bards singing songs to their loved maids?

Bring forth the full extent of these Star Wars days of a future past!

 

I mean if Tatooine was a desert thousands of years into the past, I doubt its going to change in the future. The Star Wars Universe seems to have it so planets are unchanging, unless certain man-made things happen to them. So obviously, a place like Korriban is thriving under Sith control. Centuries later, its an abandoned ruin, but the common thing of both Korribans is that they're desert planets. In terms of environment, the SW Galaxy seems to be pretty static, but you could change this as I said, through man-made events. Perhaps Coruscant stops being a capital of the Galaxy (much as in the ST) and it slowly declines to becoming a backwater or periphery system. Maybe whichever political faction ends up taking control of Tatooine decides to invest more into it, resulting it becoming SW Dubai.

 

Coruscant could have been this after TUF. Rebuilding was supposed to take what? Decades? But was virtually fine 10 years later?
And then Denning threw it in the wringer again in Apocalypse.

 

(Speaking of legends) I think the hardest thing about doing the far future is exactly what is it suppose to look like? Is it the eternal Jedi Sith dance? Or is the galaxy vastly different? The galaxy of 25,000 BBY is not near the same galaxy as 140 ABY. So the galaxy fifty thousand years after the founding of the republic in my opinion should look dramatically different.

The question is, “how so”.

 

Stars with planets should go supernova at some point, right?
And what about Black Holes? Do some planets get sucked up?
Or what about asteroids? Like when the dinosaurs on our world got wiped out?
Or ice ages? Or massive climate changers like that?

 

We did get changing climates specifically addressed in the case of Rhen Var - which we are introduced to as a planet on the tail end of an ice age. Of course, we revisit the planet 4,000 years later and it looks exactly the same. Maybe we just went to a part that is still icy?

 

If planetary environments didn't change for literally thousands of centuries dating back to the Rakatans, why would it suddenly change now?