....or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Continuity and Love the Expanded Universe."

1. Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

The Clone Wars broke out, pitting the Jedi Knights against Mandalorian commandoes. Cloned warriors were created to bolster the ranks of both sides, sometimes grown to maturity in less than a week. Many went insane.

One Mandalorian commando, a journeyman protector named Jaster Mareel, later became the bounty hunter, Boba Fett. Fett was to suffer a fall into the Sarlaac on Tatooine, from which he emerged scarred, but continued to be the most feared hunter in the galaxy.

Following the Clone Wars, the ambitious young Senator Palpatine came to power. Once in office he declared himself Emperor and shut himself away from his subjects. He was increasingly sidelined and distanced from affairs by greedy governors and bureaucrats below him.

Palpatine's enforcer, Darth Vader, hunted down and destroyed the Jedi Knights. Vader's son Luke was hidden with Owen, brother of Jedi Knight Ben Kenobi, to keep him safe from his father.

When the Emperor's Death Star was destroyed, Vader was forced to sacrifice his flesh-and-blood right hand as penance. The second Death Star was taken over by the assassin droid, IG-88, who was about to annihilate both the Empire and the Rebellion, when the space station was destroyed.

The Emperor, though, survived, as he had for many generations, by escaping to a clone body. With Luke Skywalker succumbing fully to the Dark Side and Grand Admiral Thrawn (the only nonhuman servant of the xenophobic Emperor) in command of the Imperial Fleet, the wars continued to rage for many years.


2. Er, that doesn't compute. Wait, er....

Sound familiar?

Hmmm, possibly not.

For hardcore Star Wars fans, there is so much more to that galaxy far, far away than just the six movies that most casual fans are aware of. A bewildering array of novels, comics, cartoons, video games, etc. forms an "Expanded Universe" (or "EU") that fills out the world beyond the films.

The biggest problem with this universe is that it's a continuity nightmare. The EU has been written by dozens of different authors, since way before Lucas started putting his prequel trilogy together, and (in some cases) before even the original film trilogy was completed.

All of this means that we end up with strange contradictions like the ones above. Others include Jedi Knights with spouses and families, whilst Episode II taught us that attachment is forbidden for a Jedi. Or the infamous Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which has Luke and Leia getting up to things that are definitely not appropriate for a brother and sister to do together!

Even where events aren't directly contradicted by events in the films, they can often undermine the intent of that film. Return of the Jedi suffers the worst from this. Boba Fett survives, the Emperor survives, Luke turns to the Dark Side, the Empire continues to threaten the Alliance for years to come. What then, did our heroes really achieve in Episode VI? Not a lot, if the EU is to be believed.

Then there's also the problem that an awful lot of the EU is utter dross. Almost every bleedin' Jedi is "one of the most powerful ever" and nearly crosses over to the Dark Side. The bad guys have an endless string of planet-destroying superweapons. There are aliens out there who don't exist as a part of the Force (you know, that mystical energy field that permeates everything. And many EU writers seemed to have missed the "fantasy" element of Star Wars entirely, and churn out sub-Star Trek sci-fi drivel instead.


3. Train yourself to let go

George Lucas himself has a very succinct answer for all this: "The movies are gospel; everything else is gossip." In other words, the EU doesn't count for all that much. It's not a part of Lucas's story.

And that's true. All the EU, when you think about it, is a collection of stories by a bunch of people who've taken Lucas's universe and characters, and written their own stories within it. There's a name for that - fan-fiction. Okay, it's licensed, officially-approved fan-fiction, but it's fan-fiction nonetheless.

Of course, that's not the whole answer. It is officially endorsed after all, and some fans get highly incensed when they can't make sense of its inherent contradictions. I remember one heated message board discussion about the length of a Star Destroyer, where two different answers had been cited by different authors. I also recall endless whining that Lucas was ignoring and contradicting the EU when he made the prequels.

That last point is truly absurd. The creator of this fictional universe should have to bend his story to pre-existing fan-fiction? Puh-lease! But some people really do think this way. It would be an interesting exercise to compare the reaction to the prequel trilogy amongst readers of the EU with the reaction of those who had only ever seen the films.


4. If I may venture an opinion....

This is all coming across rather negatively. I'm sorry. I don't actively dislike the EU. Well, not all of it anyway.

The point I'm trying to make when it comes to the EU is really just one very simple piece of advice: Don't worry about it.

Really. Don't. It's not worth it.

I view the EU, pretty much as I just said, as fan-fiction. It is other stories set within the same universe, but they're not part of the main story. They're in different media and don't have to make perfect sense with the films. I mean this is fiction we're talking about anyway! There's no absolute "right" and "true" answer because we're dealing with (and I know this may come as a shock to some of you) something that isn't real in the first place.

It's meant to be escapism, light entertainment! Who friggin' well cares that Mace is ridiculously overpowered in a cartoon adventure on Dantooine, or that an SSD is 1600 metres long in one story and only 1000 metres in another???

There's no point in arguing what's canon and what's not. Even calling it "canon" is going a bit far, as it implies an authoritative religious significance on something that really doesn't deserve it.

This impossible desire to tie every little thing together across different, disparate media is pretty much unique to Star Wars. If you take a comic book series like Batman or X-Men, they get re-invented every few years. Even the comics don't have complete internal consistency, never mind the TV series and the movies. And you know what? Hardly anyone cares. Audiences seem quite happy to lap up each new retelling with fresh eyes. Now, why can't Star Wars be the same?

Not worrying about such things gives me much more freedom to just sit back and enjoy whatever stories come my way, and a lot more freedom to ignore the ones that would otherwise spoil the Saga for me.


5. I am the master

There are more Star Wars stories out there than most people could comfortably get around to reading. As I've just made more than clear, I think a lot of it is rubbish or undermines the main story. For me (and it's important to stress this) those parts are not part of my Star Wars story, my experience.

In a market full of eclectic and contradictory tales, we should all feel free to pick the ones we enjoy, and slot them into the main story if we wish, or treat them as "apocrypha" if we don't. Or just ignore them entirely.

I for one do not need some third party person, who is neither George Lucas nor the author of any particular story, dictating to me what "really happened" and what didn't. I don't need ever more contrived explanations thought up after the fact to explain away inconsistencies.

(Please note, this isn't to belittle those whose job it is to do all these, because there's clearly a market of fans who crave these kinds of bizarre, obsessive factoids. I'm just saying that it's not for me.)

Now that I think about it, mine is a philosophy that the "Lucas raped my childhood!" prequel-hating lobby could do well to take note of as well. If the prequels ruined the original trilogy for you, then just ignore them. You'll be a lot happier. There's no obligation to take any of this on board. We are the customers and it's our choice whether to buy or not. (Notice that word? - Customers.) We are the masters.


6. Your focus determines your reality

This blog has gone on for rather longer than I intended. To wrap up, I'll just quickly run through the parts of the EU that I do and don't like.

I'm not a big fan of stories that centre on characters from the films. The story of those characters has already been told, and (with few exceptions) authors don't tend to have the freedom to do anything particularly drastic to them. There's also a tendency to simply rehash past adventures (The first act of the Thrawn trilogy comes to mind as being part-flashback, part-rerun.)

Having said that, I'll happily read any early adventures of Han and Chewie any day, because they're so much fun.

I enjoy seeing the adventures of other characters who either do not appear in the films, or are only in the background. They get a chance to grow on their own. I've really got into the Clone Wars stuff, and I've enjoyed following the exploits of Quinlan Vos, Aayla Secura, Asaaj Ventress et al.

I enjoyed (most of) the Thrawn trilogy, but for the new characters like Mara Jade and Talon Karrde, rather than the originals. I liked Shadows of the Empire, for Xizor and Guri.

It's intriguing watching these side characters flit in and out of the familiar story that the main heroes play in - in a kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead style.

But what I read, what I watch, and what I accept are up to me. And so should it be for you.

Your focus determines your reality.