Theory thursday: Making Sense of Pirate Talk part 1

In “Star Wars Tales”#19, Han and Chewbacca crash the Millennium Falcon on a mysterious planet that looked a lot like Endor. The native humanoids though were wary of the newcomers and attacked the two pilot. Chewbacca carried the dying remains of his friend Han Solo back to the ship that meant so much to them both as Han slipped into “the great unknown”. Years later, an archaeologist that looked a lot like Han Solo discovered the remains of the ship whilst on the trek to find the legendary Big Foot.

Now the question is, did this actually happen in Star Wars?

Welcome to Theory Thursday.

So what is canon? I’ve heard it said that geeks, bronies, Superfans, Trekkies and the bunch of them probably sound a lot like Pirates with how much they talk about ships and canons and I think it’s time someone put an end to  the mystery of what is being said and explain what Canon is and how to tell if something is “Canonical”.

The Council of Nicea is one of the most prominent
of these councils and determined a lot of our canon
in scripture today.

After the Christian church pretty much rotted away after the death of Christ’s original apostles, the remaining faithful gathered to discuss and cement the ideology and the scripture of the traditional Christian faith. During these councils, a new word was formed: “Canonical”. This word was meant to refer to the writings that they had at the time that were considered “Scripture” and inspired by God.

This wording transferred over to fiction once we started having contradictions within a serial story. For example: in the universe of Doctor Who, Star Trek is both a non-fiction event as evidenced by crossovers from the two franchises and also as a fictional T.V. show as evidenced by the references made to it within the episodes. When contradictions like that take place is when people of high rank get together, not unlike the early Christian church, and discussed which of those two events actually happened in the context of the franchise and how it will be addressed in the future. These people who gather together will usually be the creators of the franchise but if the creators are no longer available (as is the case with Doctor Who) then the people who are charged with writing the show, comics, books, and other forms of media will get together to address the issues.

after canon has been decided, it will usually be announced through
an officiall channel and a question/ answer sesh is sometimes held
at a grand convention, like Comic Con!

This process can often get messy but what usually happens is that there is a higher ranking official (either by profession or connection to the franchise) that everyone usually submits to. In the case of Doctor Who, this would be the showrunner, or the producer of the T.V. show at that time. This leaves the other creators free to create within their own sphere but also places their creations in partial jeopardy themselves (more on that partial bit later).

The next aspect is one that is most at home in the world of Superheroes and it’s the idea of the multiverse. This means that a character can exist in more than one timeline and because of this more stories can count without technically contradicting past events. This is why Superman can be rocketed to earth from Krypton in both “Man of Steel” and “Smallville” yet we acknowledge these two as separate events without relation to each other.

Some timelines can get really complicated.

A good rule of thumb to go with as far as determining what Canon is to determine 1) what timeline would this take place in and then 2) how far away is the new material from the source material.

So examples: if you are trying to determine what happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then the MCU is the timeline and your source materials are the movies. Next, you would probably look at the script, then statements from the directors and producers, then comic book tie-in’s, then novel adaptions, etc.

Canon is complicated, but once you get it down and you can understand how it works, then it is easy to look extremely impressive and knowledgeable in one particular subject.

The next idea though takes you from looking intelligent to looking like a fanatic, and that is the world of head-canon, but that is a subject for a different day.

What do you think? What is Canon to you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to share this article with a friend who could use some help understanding your pirate talk.

Be sure to like my Facebook Page and follow me on twitter @SupermanLegion to make sure you always get the next theory Thursday as well as other impressive series!