Lit STAR TOURS canon, retcons official Blog entry!

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/in...artures-the-history-of-star-tours/#more-24520

James did it again... brilliant! Evading nearly all troubles, paving the canon path of Star Tours attractions, connecting it with Galaxies and more!

 

"Earth system."

 

yeah that one was not brilliant.. the rest though is. Death Star 3 reporting for duty!

 

Great retcon.

 

u mad bro?

 

don't worry, if it were a Tie-Shuttle piloted by a mouse droid he'd love it

 

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times yes. Wonderful. The SW blog has been the single greatest EU licensee these past few months.

Leland acknowledged the Death Star III (and consequently Star Tours as canon eight years ago, but damn, man, this is still amazing.

OK, time to read the article. Yeah, that's right, I knew it was amazing before I even read it.

Edit: Amazing. There were some pretty obsure references in there, such as this un-captioned picture from Gamer mag:



LelalMekha will be very pleased. He first described the events of that image on the Wook last summer, and I can't help but wonder if McFadden would have otherwise missed it.

 

I always figured the question mark was due to the conjectural name that he gave the space station. Since Leland's blog posts were all about sharing what was in the holocron, I doubt he would have included the third Death Star if he didn't consider it to be canonical. Edit: And included a date for it to boot.

Besides which, references to Star Tours have shown up all over the EU over the years, so blog post aside, it was s-canon at the very least. And now, with this blog post, there's no doubt of its canonicity at all.

 

Glad you liked it! I made sure I scrounged up every Star Tours reference I could find.

That "Earth system" was already out there. Just being thorough. But to me, I always thought it was more fun including every story as best you can in the continuity. Besides, isn't Star Tours more fun when it's YOU taking part in the "real" Star Wars universe? BUT, if you want to get technical, it doesn't literally say, "This is canon," right?

For this article, I wasn't allowed too much in the way of original material, but it was an opportunity to more officially nail down the timeline. Leland's dating of the Death Star III was definitely ambiguous, but it did match up with an old Gamer article that placed things a few months after Endor. I always figured Leland took a stab at making that date more specific. It was also gave me a reasonable excuse to mention the Tof invasion from my Hyperspace article!

I actually did remember that image on my own as I really have been planning this article in my head long before I got to write it. But LelalMekha is one of the Wookieepedians who keeps on top of Star Tours stuff. And I admit you will find my fingerprints all over the Star Tours articles on that site.


All that aside, it was a fun article to write, and I hope I'm able to do more like it!

 

I would say I agree that you can't really make much sense of some of the random scenes in the new ride. Really? Another, earlier Battle of Hoth with AT-ATs and snowspeeders? In my mind those various scenes pretty much can be looked at like various video game outcomes like you suggest. That's why it works best in the vague way I described it. Even given more independence in this article, I don't think I would have canonized any specific scenes. Whatever you experience on the ride is what happened. The same reason not to give any details about the Rebel spy. The Rebel spy is whoever it was they randomly chose when you were on the ride!


And don't worry about it! I got what you were saying. But I suspect you also may have not expected the author to pop up and reply.

 

Jello, I have an ETE assignment for you: "the case against completism, as demonstrated by Star Tours".

 

Prioritize this over your current assignment, "Star Wars Insider #113: Meh".

 

Of course blog entries aren't inherently canon --- but whenever Leland wrote one, he was, as I said, reporting on what was in the holocron. There's literally no higher authority on what's c-canon than that. You have our situations reversed --- you're trying to deny what's canon because you don't want it to be true. But with this new blog entry by JMM, it's really a moot point anyway. Star Tours is canon.

Ah, brilliant. I didn't realize that "James McFadden" was JMM; otherwise I wouldn't have doubted your ability to dig up obscure references.

Yeah, you did brilliantly by not mentioning any specific scenes."Once all on board agreed, Artoo flew the ship to the coordinates, where the spaceliner was attacked by enemy vessels. The brave astromech evaded the pursuers, and brought the StarSpeeder in for a safe, if somewhat rough, landing." Vague enough that people can keep their sanity by imagining that the more logical planets are the ones where they actually stopped. I would have been happy even with the silly ones, though. I'm 100% aboard team "Make all of the old wacky stuff canon." If the Ewoks cartoon can be real, why not Star Tours?

Edit:

Ah, I just saw this part of the post. Per what JMM said, specific things like a Separatist attack on Imperial Center aren't necessarily canon, so I guess we're not really in disagreement, then. But I do love that the third Death Star is canon. Why the heck not? Now we just need to know the name of the pilot who destroyed it.

 

I have a number of ideas about the true origins of whatever that Death Star really is, but since I couldn't reveal that,it was left vague. So, the exact nature of that space station remains unknown.

Oh, and I did have a short list of candidates for Red Leader, but he also remains unknown. But I would like to think that's just "for now."

 

Any chance you could share those origins and that shortlist? Fodder for various "Behind the scenes" sections on the Wook?

 

Oh, and speaking of things controversially canon? My friends Rich and Abel have just bumped my article from the top of the page with some obscure video game canonizing. I'm not even so sure I agree with this one...

 

wow... the blog is busy today !

 

Sorry. There's always a chance another opportunity to use that stuff could come. I'll keep it to myself for now.

 

I'm particularly happy since my edits on those two Sanyassans won't be called "original research" and "speculation" anymore.

 

Didn't you guys get the memo?

This is the first official entry into the new level of continuity ... Cranon*

*(Portmanteau of Crap and Canon).