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Ben and Steve discuss the pros and cons of “canon” and what it means or doesn’t mean to fans!
Canon — S&A146
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One response to “Canon — S&A146”
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LOVED this episode! Great comments, and I agree with pretty much everything that you and Steve said. Particularly these parts:
–People are mad that the Star Wars stories aren’t canon anymore. But were the stories entertaining? Did they have good themes? Did you like the characters? If not, then you were wasting your time anyway. If they were, then what difference does it make if they’re “official history” or not?
–For that matter, when it comes to whether or not a Star Wars story “really” happened: Guess what? NONE of this stuff “really” happened!
–Hats off (to Steve, I think) for the analogy to classic oral storytellers around the campfire who would change the story as needed. The retellings of our modern myths are indeed exactly the same thing.
I suppose I can understand some of the frustration of fans. I don’t mind the novels and comics being contradicted, but I would be mad if a Star Wars movie came along that said that the Original Trilogy never happened; that would enrage me as much as a Star Trek fan is enraged about the JJ Abrams movies (which I actually liked myself, I guess because I’m not a hardcore Trek person).
Ben, it was brave to say that you didn’t like the Timothy Zahn novels! I like the fact that they were the first continuation of the series and that the characters were written well. Thrawn is a strong villain, and Mara Jade is a wonderful addition to the cast.
But, yeah, the prose is kind of dry, and I haven’t much been able to get into a re-read of this or reading other Timothy Zahn novels. These books probably *are* some of the best Star Wars novels, but that might say more about the poor state of the rest of them than about the quality of this one.
Other thoughts:
–It was fun to hear about how the STAR TREK comics had to deal with the absence of Spock! A similar thing happened in the STAR WARS comics between EMPIRE and JEDI, when Han was nowhere to be found. One correction, though: I believe you said that Spock was dead *and* the Enterprise was blown up at the end of ST II. In fact, the Enterprise wasn’t blown up until the end of III, by which time Spock was alive (although perhaps not reinstated to Kirk’s crew yet).
–The Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) is the one who just had all of his audio adventures rendered into canon on DOCTOR WHO, not the Ninth.
That’s all for now, I guess. Keep up the great work!
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