Loose Canons
I have been a member of numerous fandoms in my life. And if you participate in any fandom long enough, you will eventually find yourself in the middle of a canon discussion. Philosophers have spent thousands of years contemplating the nature of reality, but they are rank amateurs compared to two fans of a fictional creation debating what “really� happened to the creation in question.
If you’ve never encountered such a discussion before, “canon� with regards to a fictional universe refers to the set of stories that are considered “official,� such that future stories in that universe will be expected to reflect and not contradict the earlier tales. (Comic fans, who have been grappling with this issue for decades, tend to use the term “continuity.�) The goal is to have an internally consistent master narrative built from a series of smaller stories. It’s a noble goal, but one seldom achieved. Contradictions pop up, some trivial, some major. At that point, something has to give – one of the contradictory elements must be jettisoned. And then there’s the matter of stories that, for one reason or another, a fan would like to ignore and forget about, to the point of never wanting so much as to risk seeing it referred to again. At this point the campaign to have said story expunged from the canon begins.
To be dismissed from the canon is, in the eyes of many fans, tantamount to being branded a leper. For these fans, the possibility that a story would contradict stories they have already read, or that future stories would not reflect its consequences, takes so much of their enjoyment away that the merits of the individual story don’t matter. They only care if it “counts,� and to be non-canon is a seal of disapproval. Last year the BBC announced a series of animated Doctor Who stories would be presented on the Web and on DVD. Many fans were excited by the prospect of new stories in a visual medium. (The Doctor has had a steady career in books and audio dramas since he went off the air.) But a significant minority turned up their noses. If it wasn’t broadcast on television, it wasn’t “proper Doctor Who,� and they weren’t interested. These fans went into paroxysms of joy when the BBC announced a new television series to air next year – at least until they started worrying about whether this new series would fit into the established canon of the previous series.
Of course, it’s not like the Library of Congress maintains an official Registry of Fictional Canons from which something can be stricken. In most cases, the canon is in the eyes of the fan. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the odds of a group of fans, communicating over the Internet, coming to a consensus on anything. In recent years, as the owners of major fan franchises recognize the importance of the fan base and their respect for the canon, some have tried to maintain some sense of an officially-sanctioned canon. They are almost never successful.
For example, take the folks at Lucas Licensing. (Please.) There is a long and proud tradition of licensed Star Wars spinoff stories, and an equally long and proud tradition of George Lucas completely ignoring the plot and character elements introduced in said stories. Alan Dean Foster wrote a novel called Splinter of the Mind’s Eye in 1978 in which Luke Skywalker dueled with and defeated Darth Vader. Marvel Comics published a monthly comic after the movie’s release, including a story in which someone tells Luke about meeting Ben Kenobi and his two apprentices, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, during the Clone Wars. Whoops. No one worked up too much of a sweat about this until the 90s, when Star Wars licensing came back with a vengeance. Timothy Zahn began a series of novels set 5 years after the original trilogy in which the Empire had been largely beaten back and the former Rebels were firmly in control of the capital planet, Coruscant. Around the same time, Tom Veitch began a comic series called Dark Empire, set 6 years after Return of the Jedi, in which the Rebels had been largely beaten back and various Imperial factions controlled Coruscant, having leveled much of it in the process. Rather than acknowledge these as two different possible interpretations of the future of the Star Wars characters, Lucasfilm’s licensing folks decided that a canon had to be established and adhered to; both stories were true, and future Star Wars stories would reflect both.
Now you can imagine the can of worms that’s been opened here. It’s hard enough for any one publisher or producer to keep a set of stories straight. But now Lucas Licensing was demanding that its licenses across multiple media stay in sync with each other, despite Lucas himself being rather stingy with the background information on the stories he intended to create. (Some of this can be attributed to the fact that in many cases, Lucas didn’t know what those details were going to be yet, because he hadn’t written them.) As more and more authors contributed to what Lucasfilm now called the Expanded Universe, the odds of one of them being unfamiliar with and thus contradicting another’s work grew, and it’s happened many times over the years. And Lucas Licensing isn’t always the best at keeping track of this stuff either. They initially declared that the recent Clone Wars animated shorts would be non-canon. Then someone must have realized what a firestorm that would create, and reversed that decision – after the folks at Dark Horse Comics had commissioned and in some cases published stories with the Clone Wars characters that blatantly contradict the cartoons. This has not stopped fans on the message boards, or the folks who write for the official Star Wars site’s Databank, from trying to reconcile the two.
Still, Star Wars has one clear advantage. Everyone knows the primary stories are the movies, and that George Lucas is the creative force behind them. The six films are universally regarded as the ultimate canon, with the Expanded Universe a secondary concern. But what happens when a franchise passes through multiple creative hands? Look no further than Star Trek for the answer. Gene Roddenberry created the series and served as executive producer; he also was a driving force behind Star Trek: The Motion Picture and creator/executive producer of the first sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, he was edged out of any primary role in the films starting with the first sequel; Harve Bennett was the central producer for the second through fifth films before he was forced out and replaced by Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy for the original crew’s swan song. At that point Rick Berman, who had joined Next Generation as Roddenberry’s partner and succeeded him after his death, took the reins with his partner at the time, Michael Piller. Berman has remained at the helm of the franchise ever since, but he has worked with three different head writer/show runners in that time. And even if you resurrected the deceased and locked them all in a room somewhere, they would never agree on which filmed, live action Star Trek stories are “true.�
I must confess that somewhere along the line I realized that this was a game I’d never win, and so I try to stay clear of canon/continuity discussions. I don’t always succeed, and I can certainly see why it matters to people. Serial entertainment is built on the audience developing a familiarity with its characters and settings and forming an attachment to them; we feel like we get to know these people and places. If they contradict what we’ve come to know, then they’re not really the same characters and settings in each story, even as the producers try to exploit our familiarity and loyalty. Somewhere there’s a balance where we in the audience can balance the need for internal consistency with the occasional slip on matters of detail, and where we can enjoy a story in its own right without worrying about how it fits into the whole. Until we find it, though, it would be nice if the folks who make their money telling stories could do a better job of keeping those stories straight.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.