I grew up with Star Wars, but not from a very early age. It wasn’t until around the mid-to-late 90s that I watched A New Hope and was immediately captured by the promise of these stories that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
After watching the three movies, I remember passing by a stand of Star Wars novels in John Menzies in Falkirk and picking up The Last Command, my first Star Wars novel.
I didn’t know at the time that this was the third book in a trilogy, so some of the story was lost on me, yet I was still completely taken in and hooked. I would later go back to and fill in the gaps, completing Timothy Zahn’s trilogy before moving on to other titles like the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the X-Wing series, and more. Thankfully, Stenhousemuir library was well stocked with Star Wars books, because my parents would not have been able to keep up with the rate at which I devoured these novels.
I was really gutted when they knocked that down. Is… is that foreshadowing?
I think the Star Wars Expanded Universe, or at least the novels that comprised the majority of it, really shaped me in a lot of ways. First and foremost, they were my first proper novels. It was the first time I wasn’t reading books created explicitly for children. It also established for me a lot of the things I look for in media today. Star Wars always straddled the line, for me, between sci-fi and fantasy, and those are the genres that I do gravitate to now. The EU was also unabashedly unafraid to embrace political storylines. Many of my favourite plotpoints and storylines didn’t involve swashbuckling or Jedi space magic, but rather focused on the political machinations going on within the fledgeling New Republic, or the scheming and backstabbing between the Warlords of the Imperial Remnant. Thrawn was presented as someone who could handle himself in a fight, but that’s not why he was an interesting character. He was slow, thoughtful, tactical, political. I love politics in my sci-fi and fantasy. Just look at some of the media I’ve written about on this blog:
- Gods of the Wyrdwood – political fantasy
- Charles III – speculative political drama
- The Bezzle – corporate/financial/political thriller
- The Collapsing Empire – political sci-fi
- The Death of Stalin – political comedy
- Yes Minister – political comedy
Would I have become interested in politics without Star Wars? Probably. My interest has gone well beyond that sort of fiction, as I shared recently, and as you may have inferred from some of my writing. It was my first exposure to these themes, though. I grew up reading about Thrawn, Mon Mothma, Garm Bel Iblis, Leia Organa Solo, Borsk Fey’La, Ysanne Isard, Talon Karrde… so many amazing characters that were either directly involved in politics and/or diplomacy, or had to engage with others in a similar fashion.
It wasn’t just the politics, of course. The X-Wing books made for a fantastic, action-packed series full of thrilling dogfights and interesting character development. They told the story of the aftermath of the Galactic Civil War that was portrayed in the original trilogy. They developed Wedge Antilles into a fully fleshed-out character and gave us other great characters like Tycho Celchu and Corran Horn.
The Jedi Academy trilogy followed Luke and the first apprentices at his new Jedi Academy. Again, this developed Luke as an existing character, but also gave us loads of amazing new ones. Kyp Durron was a great, roguish, conflicted character. Cilghal represented the Jedi Consular template that I loved from the D20 edition of the Star Wars RPG. It also showed another of many of the ridiculous superweapons that are such a staple of Star Wars. Admiral Daala, one of my favourite Star Wars villains, was also introduced here.
There were so many more but, suffice to say, I really loved the expanded universe…
And then, 10 years ago, it ended.
I actually wasn’t that bothered, in all honesty. I’d largely moved on from Star Wars by then. I still liked it. I would re-read an old novel every so often.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm and cleared the decks for their new continuity the news was interesting to me, but mostly as a curiosity. I liked the idea that they were going to do something new. I liked the possibility that, even if the universe I knew would no longer be developed, they might pick and choose the best bits to be part of the new media. And to some extent, they did.
We’re now seeing Thrawn take an important place in the episodic streaming content. We’ve Dark Troopers return. We’ve seen the Darksaber. We’ve seen so many different little bits from the EU make their way into Disney’s offerings from their Star Wars…
But then there’s the movies.
When Episode 1 came out, it was fine. It was a spectacle. It had some cool ideas. It had some annoying bits. It had some idiocy. It was fine.
When Episode 7 came out, it was… fine? It was a spectacle. It had some cool ideas. It had some annoying bits. It had some idiocy. It was familiar. It was just… familiar. At that point it seemed that Disney had no real intention of taking things in a more interesting direction and would instead just retread old ground, repeating the same storybeats. I was disappointed, but I do enjoy spectacle.
I was given some hope (a new one?) when Rogue One came out. That film was excellent. I’m all in favour of Star Wars exploring more the galaxy without needing to always involve the space wizards. The tone, the look, the story, the overall polish and delivery; all contributed to making Rogue One one of my favourite Star Wars movies. That scene at the end with Vader? Perfection! It shows the sheer unstoppable inhumanity of the character in a way that no other Star Wars movie did. We are not seeing Obi-Wan’s former apprentice here. We aren’t seeing Anakin Skywalker struggling with his inner demons. We are seeing, through the eyes of Alliance soldiers, an inhuman killing machine; unstoppable and remorseless. Given the development of Anakin in The Clone Wars, and the focus on internal conflict in many different pieces of media, that was quite a bold choice for Disney. It filled me with hope for what would come next.
I was disappointed. I like being positive here, so let’s not get bogged down in the failings of Disney’s Star Wars trilogy. It wasn’t good. It had good bits. It was visually stunning. It wasn’t good.
And you know what? Fine. Whatever. Would I have preferred a series based on the previous Expanded Universe content? I don’t actually think I would. I liked the Thrawn trilogy, but I’m not sure that it would necessarily make the best set of films. I’m okay with the EU being closed off. I suppose it makes it this finished thing that I can still access whenever I want to. It’s like when people get all upset at a new edition of an RPG. It’s not like a video game when the servers get turned off and it’s no longer playable (lookin’ at you, Ubisoft!). Your books are still there, and that’s comforting.
If I, for whatever reason, were asked a question about what happened in the Star Wars Galaxy following the fall of the Galactic Empire, I’d likely start rhyming off the events of the Bacta War, The Thrawn Crisis, the funding of the Jedi Academy, the rediscovery of the Outbound Flight, the Yoouzhan Vong invasion. That wouldn’t even be as a slight against the Disney Star Wars canon. I like some of the streaming stuff. Not all, nor even most, but I do like some. It’s just that, for me, the Disney stuff all came pretty late. I grew up on the EU and that’s what’s ingrained. It’s not coming out without a lobotomy at this point. And that’s fine. I’m a World of Darkness fan, I’m used to reconciling big changes, retcons, and even different, contemporaneously-existing series.
The Expanded Universe is dead. It was buried a decade ago. I’m okay with that. It doesn’t mean we have to stop loving it, and there’s plenty to enjoy in the new canon, too. We have media with which we can revisit that which came before. Hell, if you want to end on a slightly negative note, at least Disney can’t hurt the Expanded Universe like they have the mainline films.
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