Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty good actually. My friend, Katie, came over on Monday afternoon and we played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on my Nintendo Switch all afternoon. It was fun because it was the first time that I've been able to have her in the house since February 2020. So that was alot of fun. Today I thought I'd talk about something that many of us geeks know about. Media tie-in novels. If you don't know what these are, they're original novels based on a movie or TV show that usually deal with elements that the TV show or movie doesn't have time to deal with. Novelizations of TV episodes and movies are usually also included in this category, but I'm not really going to delve too deeply aside for two of them that I feel really contribute something to the overall story presented in the movie or TV show being adapted. This also isn't going to be an account of my personal history with media tie-in novels as I'll be doing that in another post somewhere down the line. Without further ado, let's get into it.
So the primary impetus for this blog post is that back in February TrekMovie.com reported that Pocket Books, the publisher that has been publishing novels based on Star Trek since 1981, is going to be publishing a trilogy of novels that is going to wrap up the Star Trek Literary Universe that began in 2001 with the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, Avatar Book 1. The new trilogy will be called Star Trek: Coda and will begin publication in September of this year. I'll link the article at the end of this post for those of you who are interested. But it got me thinking about not only the Star Trek "Expanded Universe" of novels, but also the Star Wars Expanded Universe, both the original Legends continuity and the current continuity, and how fans of both franchises react to the novels and decisions such as this. Like I said, I'm not going to go into extensive detail of my own history with tie-in novels and I will largely be focusing on Star Trek and Star Wars since those are the novels that I've read the most of even though there are other franchises and shows that I've had at least one original novel for.
The only tie-in novel series that isn't Star Trek or Star Wars, or geek related in any way, that I want to bring up are the ones based on Full House. As you may or may not know, I've been a fan of Full House since the show's original run in the late 80s to the mid 90s. Anytime they've brought it back in reruns, I watched it, I even started a watch through of the entire series on Netflix before I got sidetracked with other shows and movies and then got rid of Netflix because I found I was watching more on Disney+ than I was on Netflix. But I digress. Full House had three main book series. They are Full House: Stephanie, which focused on Stephanie Tanner's life and how she felt about her family and life, Full House: Michelle, which focused on Michelle, not that she needed a book series of her own since the TV show became increasingly Michelle centric as it went on, and Full House: Sisters which focused on both Michelle and Stephanie. Oddly enough, DJ didn't get her own book series either during the show's run or after. But, again, I digress. Back to Star Trek and Star Wars.
The very first original Star Trek novel was called Mission to Horatius and was published in 1968, during the show's final season. Originally it was meant to be a young adult book, much like the Starfleet Academy books in the 90s, but was retconned in 1996 as a "lost" novel in the TOS Pocket Books series following Pocket's acquisition of the publishing rights for the book. I've never read this book before and I don't really hear much about it either, but this was a standalone book published by Whitman Publishing, who were also responsible for the Gold Key Comics Star Trek series, which I talked about in a previous blog post.
Bantam Books, which would be responsible for the line of Star Wars novels in the 90s, published a series of novels that adapted episodes of TOS, that ran from 1967 until 1978. Unlike later episode novelizations, these books published multiple episode adaptations in a short story format rather than taking up an entire novel. All the books were published by James Blish, who also published the first original Star Trek novel from Bantam Books, Spock Must Die! which was published in 1970. This series of original novels lasted until 1981 when the Star Trek license was transferred to Pocket Books.
The Pocket Books run is probably the longest running media tie-in series that I know of. Not only did they publish novels based on Star Trek, but they also did The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, and Picard (for some reason there aren't any novels based on Star Trek: Lower Decks or the upcoming series, Star Trek: Prodigy). Picard is actually the reason the Star Trek Literary Universe is coming to an end, since the series takes place within the time period that the post-series novels of TNG, DS9, and Voyager as well as novel series like Star Trek: Titan take place in. Before I go further into the roles these novels play within the various franchises, let's head over to the Star Wars Universe and see the history of the Expanded Universe.
The very first original Star Wars novel that was published was Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster and was published by Del Rey in February 1978, only nine months after the 1977 theatrical release of Star Wars. Aside from the novelizations of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, only seven Star Wars novels were published by Del Rey from 1978 until 1983. Six of them were trilogies, The Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley, and The Adventures of Lando Calrissian by L. Neil Smith. With the movies coming to a close with Return of the Jedi in 1983, the novels ended with the final novel in The Adventures of Lando Calrissian, Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka. Aside from references to The Han Solo Adventures and The Adventures of Lando Calrissian in the final two books in the Han Solo Trilogy, these novels were largely ignored by the Bantam Books series that ran from 1991 to 1999, with Splinter of the Mind's Eye being ignored entirely due to the dynamic between Luke and Leia as this book was written before the revelation in Return of the Jedi that they're brother and sister.
Unlike the Star Trek tie-in novels there was a huge gap in Star Wars publications from 1983 when the Del Rey license ended, and 1991 when Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn came out. With pretty much everything Star Wars having ended by 1986 there wasn't much reason to continue publishing the novels. Which is why it was a gamble to publish Heir to the Empire in the first place as nobody was sure if people still cared about Star Wars and would even buy the novel. The answer turned out to be yes to both questions and the success of Heir to the Empire basically cemented Star Wars's place in the publishing world.
In 1997 the publishing license shifted back to Del Rey though Bantam continued to publish Star Wars novels until 1999 with the short story compilation, Tales from the New Republic, being the final Star Wars book to be published by Bantam. The result of Del Rey gaining the Star Wars license back was the 1999 novel, Vector Prime, which was the first novel in a 19 book series known as Star Wars: The New Jedi Order. While Splinter of the Mind's Eye was still ignored, as was The Adventures of Lando Calrissian, The Han Solo Adventures trilogy was brought up again with a few characters from that trilogy appearing in The New Jedi Order. It was around this time that Lucasfilm Licensing married the Del Rey and Bantam continuities into one cohesive timeline, something the Star Trek novels never bothered trying to do at any point in the last 53 years.
Both franchises had novelizations of their movies with Pocket Books also publishing novelizations of certain episodes from each series, minus TOS, which had the early episode short story adaptations published by Bantam in the 60s, and Star Trek: The Animated Series which had been adapted in the Star Trek Logs series by Alan Dean Foster, and published by Del Rey in the 70s. I decided to not really talk about the novelizations because I feel they're either too different from the films they're adapting, or they don't add anything to the films. However, there are two movie novelizations, one from each franchise, that I'd like to highlight.
The first is the novelization for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The reason I highlight this particular Star Trek movie novelization is because it adds additional details that didn't make it into the theatrical cut of the film, and was only briefly touched upon in the director's cut of the movie which was first released on DVD in 2002. For example, the novel reveals why Scotty was so attached to Cadet Peter Preston, the young trainee, whose body Scotty brought to the bridge following the initial battle between the Enterprise and the Reliant, which had been commandeered by Khan. Preston was Scotty's nephew, but that detail is left out of the theatrical version of the film which was also released on VHS, Laserdisc, CED, and DVD in the 80s and 90s but was restored for the director's cut in 2002. So this novelization fills in gaps like that, some, like Saavik's connection to Preston, which wasn't in either versions of the film.
The novelization for Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace mostly includes extra, or deleted scenes, like Anakin's earlier podrace, briefly mentioned when Anakin is getting ready for the race we see in the movie. Which is cool, but there's one thing told in this book that has an impact on Star Wars publishing moving forward. In 2006 the first novel in a trilogy, Path of Destruction came out. The book is set in the distant past of the Old Republic and stars a character named Darth Bane. Darth Bane was created by George Lucas as backstory in preparation for Episode I, and was introduced in the novelization by the book's author, Terry Brooks. Of course Drew Karpyshyn wrote the three Darth Bane novels in the late 2000s and a version of the character appeared as a Force Specter in the sixth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Which is one example of the Star Wars Expanded Universe having influence on the movies and TV shows.
Now I kinda wanna go over the canonicity of each franchise's tie-in novels because how canon each one is pretty much determines how fans reacted to each being ended or decanonized by their respective owners. Until Episode I came out in 1999, the novels and comics were the only thing keeping Star Wars alive as there weren't any movies or TV shows coming out. As a result fans saw them as basically being canon, especially the novels that took place after Return of the Jedi as George Lucas had made it pretty clear by 1991, when Heir to the Empire was published, that he would not be making a sequel trilogy. Mainly because he'd be almost into his 70s by the time he started working on the sequels given it had taken him ten years each to make the previous film trilogies. However, Lucasfilm Licensing, which handled the licensing of the Star Wars franchise, has flip-flopped between the Expanded Universe being canon, and the Expanded Universe not being canon, never really giving a definitive answer, leaving fans just figuring that the Expanded Universe, which encompassed novels, comic books, TV shows (Droids, Ewoks, and the Ewoks TV movies were not considered canon), and video games, was all canon with a tier level, determining how canon a piece of media set in the Star Wars Universe was compared to the movies).
Star Trek on the other hand was slightly different. While the novels, and comics, kept interest in Star Trek alive in the 70s, Paramount and Gene Roddenberry were always planning something to do with Star Trek, and the reruns of TOS were constantly on TV, so Star Trek didn't disappear after TOS ended in 1969 the way Star Wars did after the release of Return of the Jedi in 1983. On top of that Gene didn't like many of the comics and novels based on his series, so he declared that novels and comics would not be canon, with the TV shows and movies being the absolute authority on continuity in the Star Trek Universe. Amazingly enough Paramount has kept that decree, even now, thirty years after Roddenberry's death.
Because of this, the way fans reacted to the end of the original Star Wars Expanded Universe, now known as Legends, and the Star Trek Literary Universe are completely different. Because of Roddenberry's declaration so early on, fans have accepted that the novels and comic books are their own thing, even from each other with very few crossovers between the two mediums. They've accepted they're non-canon to the TV shows and movies. That doesn't stop Star Trek fans who read the novels and comics from enjoying them. I think that's because we were told from the very beginning that the novels and comics were their own continuity with no crossover to the TV shows and movies and we were told this consistently. Star Wars fans on the other hand are a whole different story.
I remember back in 2014 when Lucasfilm announced that the Expanded Universe was going to be discontinued due to the fact that the majority of the novels and comics would be contradicted by the sequel trilogy and it would free new authors to come up with new stories taking place in parts of the Star Wars timeline that were pretty full with previous novels and comics. The fan outrage was palpable. I'm a fan of the Legends continuity. How could I not be? I mean, aside from home video, and the theatrical releases of the Special Editions in 1997, there was no new Star Wars. George Lucas was slowly working on Episode I, but we'd be lucky if it came out before the year 2000. So those novels were my way of experiencing new Star Wars stories. Especially the only way to get new stories featuring Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Artoo, Threepio, and Lando since it was pretty clear at that point we were never going to get a sequel trilogy.
The other problem is that Lucasfilm was pretty inconsistent with how canon they considered the EU to be. George Lucas himself was pretty consistent on his stance when it came to the EU. He enjoyed it, and even used elements introduced in the EU in the movies, like Coruscant in the prequels and the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi, and Dash Rendar's ship, Outrider, from Shadows of the Empire in the expanded Mos Eisley scene in the Special Edition of Star Wars: A New Hope, but he considered them to just be fun side stories that had nothing to do with his movies. Lucasfilm, on the other hand were more inconsistent with their policy. From what I can recall from talking with other Star Wars fans online and reading the canon policy on Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, there was a point where they went with George's assessment. It wasn't until the late 90s and early 2000s, when it became clear that George had no intention of making the sequel trilogy, they began changing that policy. By the late 2000s Lucasfilm considered the novels and comics to be canon, even though George's opinion on the matter hadn't changed. I mean they even had two people, Leland Chee, and Pablo Hidalgo working as the keepers of the Star Wars continuity chronicle, the Holocron. This was an internal document that kept every detail, character, ship, planet, and piece of equipment straight for use as reference material by people writing for the Star Wars Universe.
In my mind Lucasfilm never really committed to what was canon and what wasn't canon in the Star Wars Universe. Which led to alot of problems when it came time to decanonize the Expanded Universe in order to write the sequel trilogy. I don't understand the hate though given Lucasfilm would've had to do that whether George Lucas was making his sequel trilogy or Disney made the sequel trilogy we got. In Disney's case, the movies Rogue One and Solo contradict several EU sources that chronicle how the Rebel spies mentioned by Vader in A New Hope got the Death Star plans, as well as Han's backstory as a younger man. And since they're both movies, the novels, comics, radio shows etc. had to go because they no longer fit into continuity.
Personally, I've enjoyed the novels and comics of both Star Trek and Star Wars over the years, but I've considered them to be their own thing. With Star Wars I didn't care one way or the other, because I knew I could enjoy them on their own level and they'd still be there for me to enjoy whether movies knocked them out of canon from the movies. For Star Trek, I've always gone with what Paramount says about it. It's easier that way. Especially since there's so many TOS novels and comics out there you can't possibly fit them all into a cohesive timeline. Especially when some novels contradict other novels, or contradict comic books and vice versa.
So those are my thoughts on media tie-in novels for Star Trek and Star Wars. It's kinda rambly, but that's okay because I'm a geek and we like to ramble on about things like this. What are your thoughts on Pocket Books ending the continuity that has built up in the Star Trek novels over the last 20 years now that Star Trek: Picard has contradicted many of the novels for TNG and Voyager? Please let me know in the comments below, or wherever you clicked on this post from. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of issues 1-6 of The Amazing Spider-Girl, "Whatever Happened to the Daughter of Spider-Man?". So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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