An interesting trend has been emerging in several science fiction franchises, it’s
hardly a recent one, but nonetheless I think it makes for an interesting conversation point,
and tha t is the notion of transmedia storytelling and the usage of a franchise’s wider universe
to create its own take on previously established works. Hi, Ric here and this video is a bit
different from my usual lore segments, but I thought I’d take a look at some pros and
cons of this sort of franchise borrowing from its own transmedia sources. Is it a good thing?
Generally, I enjoy it when a series decides to create spin off stories to add lore and
flesh out its world-building, but the canonicity of these tales towards the franchise in question
often differs depending on the license. Let’s look at four examples, Star Trek, Star Wars,
Mass Effect and Doctor Who. There will be plot spoilers for all four, by necessity.
Star Trek has always held to the approach that what appears on screen is in continuity
and the rest of the narratives are official, but not part of canon. The fandom often divides
these into Memory Alpha and Memory Beta to differentiate.
In the not-too-distant-past, when Disney acquired the Star Wars titles, they drew a hard line
between “Canon” and “Legends”, a similar division to Trek initially, but with a selected
few works across multiple media formats that are treated as occurrences within the Canon
chronology. Mass Effect has treated its spin-off books
and comics as part of the greater narrative from the start, with later games even including
characters such as Kahlee Sanders who got her start in the prequel Mass Effect book,
Revelation and the story of one of Mass Effect 3’s DLCs being a conclusion to events set
in motion in comics. And finally there is Doctor Who, which basically
doesn’t really care about its continuity. Built into the show’s DNA is the notion
of copious amounts of Time Travel, so they have a get-out-clause to rewrite whatever
they want. Add that to the fact that the Doctor him/herself often forgets things and lies
for plot convenience and you generally have a show where they prioritises telling stories
over any internal consistency. Four different science fiction franchises
and four different approaches to their official spinoff media. So let’s look at the pros
and cons each approach shall we? Star Trek’s Alpha/Beta divide is rife with
discrepancies and inconsistencies and there exist numerous works of Beta canon that cannot
have occurred in order for certain shows to have taken place. Often, spin off media in
Star Trek will attempt to fix as many plot holes as it creates, but the reason for this
line in the sand becomes apparent the more of these stories you explore. Personally,
I’ve held the approach that a novel, comic or game can be considered a sort of “soft”
canon in that it’s true until disproven by the shows, which always take precedent.
I do this because there are numerous tales out there across a multitude of formats that
all have something going for them and it would be a shame to “strike them from the record”
as it were just because they’re not canon. And clearly, the writers of modern Star Trek
think so too. In both Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard, we’ve seen them take
elements from their expanded media and fold them into primary canon, aka the shows. The
notion of the Romulan Tal Shiar getting their hands on Borg tech as well as the fractured
state of their collapsed Empire is the same sort of background set dressing created for
Star Trek Online, a video game which if you’re a frequenter of my channel, you probably know
all too well. In Star Trek Discovery’s second season,
their main antagonist was a rogue Starfleet Section 31 A.I. called “Control”. Section
31 is sort of Starfleet black ops division, but the origin of this “Control” was from
Star Trek licenced works by the same name about that S31 division of Starfleet and their
A.I. taking matters into its own hands. There were several changes, the time period and
the depiction of Control itself chief among them, but the core idea was there. So the
pros of this split between Canon and not materials allows for a myriad of ideas to be created
and explored in sort of “removed universes” that reflect the canon Star Trek timeline
but aren’t beholden to the law and lore if its continuity. Then, if the writers of
the shows like a particular idea, they can pluck those elements out and sprinkle them
into the canon. We see the same thing in Star Wars, the most
notable example to my mind is inclusion of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Originally a character
from the “Dark Heir” books and graphic novels set after the events of Return of the
Jedi, the popular character was added to the show Star Wars Rebels, a canon show whose
elements have surfaced even in the films of the franchise. So here we see another approach.
In the same way as Star Trek, we see that many of the older works of Star Wars are relegated
to the “Legends” material, equitable to “Memory Beta”. They are a hectic mix of
“soft” canon and stories that simply can no longer have occurred. But Disney Star Wars
goes one step further and has selected materials across a number of media that it bestows the
stamp of Continuity to moving forwards and this does include games such as Jedi Fallen
Order and the campaign of Battlefront 2 as well as several series of comics and numerous
books. Not to mention the aforementioned Star Wars Rebels, Resistance, the Madalorian and
the Clone Wars. But this creates a new problem. Many of these
spin-offs, in whatever form, while frequently rather good, have a much smaller audience
than the core films. But being “canon” are to have definitively occurred in the same
timeline. Therefore, when these elements do crop up within the films, audiences unfamiliar
with the expanded universe are often left in the dark. This varies by the methods of
inclusion, from “Oh, I just didn’t see that” like spotting the Ghost from Star
Wars Rebels in Rogue One and Rise of Skywalker, to “WTF, that guy is still alive?” like
Maul’s reveal in Solo: A Star Wars Story. This is where the argument, “I shouldn’t
have to research X to understand Y.” comes from. Understandably a show (or film in this
example) should have just made it clear on its own if something was going to be relevant
and made the time to explain it. The worst outcome of this approach is leaving
the audience confused and frustrated, while the strength is that those who have followed
such media feel rewarded for their efforts. Also from a business standpoint it encourages
people to pay more attention to these spin-off stories, especially if they are labelled as
“canon”. The final point I’m going to raise on the
Star Wars front is Rise of Skywalker. This film was, in my opinion, not great. Not awful,
but definitely not the climactic culmination that had been promised. However, having read
the Dark Empire comics as a kid, I applied my knowledge of those comics to the films,
specifically with regards as to how Palpatine survived Darth Vader’s betrayal. I assumed
that we were looking at a clone body of the Emperor, housing his spirit and the reason
for its decayed state was that it could not contain Palpatine’s power. This is why he
needed a strong force sensitive vessel, like Rey. None of this was made clear in the films,
aside from a vague insinuation that Snoke may have been a clone of some sorts. But then
the novelisation launches and I see Star Wars Theory’s video on the reveal stating that
the novel included an explanation of Palpatine’s survival, and lo and behold, clone body.
This highlights another two issues with such multimedia story telling. One, if you borrow
from an older source, you need to retell it. Where Admiral Thrawn was an example of how
to do this right, this is an example of how not to do it. There are a lot of people out
there unfamiliar with the plot of the “Dark Empire” legends stories. This then creates
a further divide between people who fill in the blanks with their own legends-fuelled
canon and those who just go “what is…this?” A couple of extra lines of exposition could
have prevented that from ever being an issue anyway. Which draws me to the second point.
The Novelisation of the Rise of Skywalker includes extra content not seen in the film
that explains away a lot of plot holes so which takes precedent? If the book is to be
believed, then there are far fewer issues with the film which is good right? But not
really because that’s not how it works. Because those issues are in film. With no
explanation and therefore, they are plot holes, the suggestion of sloppy storytelling, even
if these extra bits were meant to always be in the film and were cut.
Mass Effect is probably the only one on this list that doesn’t suffer to badly at the
hands of telling its universe’s tales across multiple fronts. The comics are fairly self-contained
and while several of the books contain events that are referenced in the main games, such
as the Cerberus attack on the Migrant Fleet, the game does a good job of filling in the
blanks with dialogue and an in game codex where you can brush up on your lore. Do we
need to know how Shepard was recovered between Mass Effect 1 and 2? No, but the games tell
us that Liara did it and brought Shepard to Cerberus to be rebuilt. If you want to know
more, you can read the comic about this instance. Good, you’ve delivered the relevant information
and piqued my interest, but I don’t feel like I’m missing a piece.
Finally, Doctor Who, which in many ways is far easier to more excusable because of its
blasé approach to continuity. In the “Doctor Who, 50th Anniversary events” there was
a short episode called the “Night of the Doctor” uploaded to the internet that depicted
the regeneration of Doctor Eight, played by Paul McGann to John Hurt’s “War Doctor”.
Not only was this arguably a transmedia story in of itself, although it was aired on TV
too, it most definitely was in continuity with the shows of the time and even included
the Doctor giving affirmation of his numerous companions. These companions however were
only ever heard from in the audio book series that rose in Doctor Who’s hiatus, never
appearing in the shows. If “Night of the Doctor” is canon, then so too are the names
of Eight’s companions and possibly the entire audio book library featuring them.
In my opinion, this is actually a good balance of how to portray such multimedia continuity
short of retelling entire narratives. We get a soft affirmation that these tales happened,
but people who have not listened to them, don’t feel like they’ve missed a trick,
because they weren’t a focus of that episode. On top of this, the “Night of the Doctor”
short itself serves as a prequel to “Day of the Doctor” but isn’t required viewing
as all the relevant details concerning the War Doctor are presented in that anniversary
special. This isn’t even touching on the fact that some of the best TV stories were
based on media from beyond the screen. Although Doctor Who is not without gripe.
There is of course the “Cartel Master Plan”, an unused backstory for the Doctor that was
to explain how he was in fact a genetic reincarnation of a very important figure in Timelord history,
the Other. This never came to be in the shows, but over time, elements of this unused backstory
cropped into other media around Doctor Who such as the “Lungbarrow” novel.
On top of this, the notion of the Doctor being instrumental in the Timelord’s founding
was eventually reused in series 12 of the revival, with Doctor apparently being the
Timeless Child, the origin of regeneration, and much like the “Cartel-planned” Doctor,
was unaware of her lineage. Of course there are a couple of change ups and the abandonment
of certain elements, but again, the core idea is reused.
For the most part, I enjoy other mediums to consume my favourite franchises. Sometimes,
I want to read a book, or play a game, not stare passively at a screen and the added
lore and stories I get from these are often enlightening and entertaining. However, like
too much water being poured into a vat and spilling over to be captured in buckets, these
books, comics, games and novelizations can serve to bolster and expand a narrative’s
content beyond its original means. The problem arises when the contents of that Vat aren’t
enough and those extra buckets stop being “extra” and become necessary.
Then again on the counter-side, people don’t like being told that the time and investment
put into anything was all for nothing, so hand waving away entire swathes of extra content
because “it’s not canon”, is going to make people less interested in those other
sources and experience fewer of them. Also, the trend of franchises, dipping into
their own expanded lore for ideas is an odd one and on one hand, I think it’s brilliant
to see these stories being folded into continuity and therefore on display to a larger audience…
But on the other hand, does it detract from those original stories? Are people going to
read the original “Thrawn” books now they have the new, “Canon” ones to go to? In
the same way I don’t want these stories to become required reading for a show, I don’t
want them to become irrelevant. Personally I don’t like it when the primary
medium cannot portray the entirety of its relevant details and these end up in spin-off
adaptations or other works, but equally those other works need to have value to the whole
beyond just being “a disposable story that never really happened”.
What do you think? Is there a definitive middle ground and ruleset that could curate extra
content? Something like Disney’s Canon stories approach, or do you prefer the Trek notion
of “Do what you like, it doesn’t matter.” How about the notion of borrowing their own
elements for retelling, is it lazy? Would you rather see an extra-canonical story told
ad verbatim on screen or is merely seeing a reference enough? I’m predicting varied
responses here, because fans of one character that only ever cropped up in books, for example,
would no doubt love to see them in canon, while others probably couldn’t give a fig
for a character’s origin as long as it’s explained properly. Others may just want their
continuities clearly defined and never the two shall meet and there are merits and cons
to every approach as I hope I’ve Illustrated. Thank you for taking the time to watch this
one, and I hope to hear some interesting opinions amid the inevitable angry rants. Thank you
again, I’ve been Ric and until next time, Goodbye!