New Star Wars TV Series Confirmed

merauder writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that the new Star Wars TV series is set to run at least 100 episodes. From the article: "The series will be set between episodes three and four of the film saga. It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers. McCallum said there would be 'a whole bunch of new characters' and the series would be 'much more dramatic and darker.'"

Comments

A New Hope

[eldavojohn]

In my youth (prior to eighth grade), I read every Star Wars book out there. I think it was half way through the Young Jedi Academy series when I lost interest (Episode One was the final nail on the coffin of my fondness for Star Wars).

Now breathe and get everything out of your system about me being a nerd without a life. I was, in fact, a farmboy without a permit or vehicle ... although I'm prepared for some colorful replies in response to this post.

Kevin J. Anderson & Timothy Zahn could write a story. In their books, they expanded on what Lucas first saw. I read everything and loved the rich histories and futures laid out in the books for characters in the Star Wars universe. Sadly, none of these characters were in the new movies. None of the Jedi were cloned. Everything alluded to in the Thrawn (Zahn) Trilogy was omitted from episodes one through three. There was no talk of Spaarti cloning cylinders or Joruus C'Boath being cloned from Jorus C'Boath.

Why? Because although these books were licensed by Lucas, they were not official parts of the story. These works became known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe meaning characters not in the movies. This material expands and continues the stories told in the films, taking place anywhere from 4,968 years before The Phantom Menace to about 130 years after Return of the Jedi. In fact, some of the works (like the Dark Empire comics and Zahn's Trilogy) conflict directly with other works.

Don't be deceived, some of these works (like Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly) sucked. But I heavily suggest the Thrawn and Jedi Academy Trilogy if you want to read some of the better stories from the Expanded Universe.

I would like to say that I remain optimistic about what Lucas can still do with the Star Wars Universe. I believe that he has made mistakes in giving himself supreme veto power over what is shown or added in the movies and I think this attitude has ruined Star Wars for me somewhat. I wish that Lucas would open his mind to other ideas as some of these books have proven that there are other people out there capable of helping Lucas create story lines. I shudder to think that he might attempt to write all 100 episodes without the help of coauthors. It has been my experience that television shows with multiple authors are less likely to grow old. I also hope that Lucas has finally realized that his fans don't want hilarious/annoying Jar Jar Binks but instead want the drama and emotion of Episodes Three and Five.

Episode One left me disinterested. Star Wars Galaxies left me angry. Hopefully this series will win me back although I think a lot of us will have a hard time adapting to the new actors in old parts. I hope a large part of Luke's Youth is omitted as I cannot think of one young child actor I have liked.

Re:A New Hope

[Mayhem178]

I've been in your shoes. At home I have well over 100 Star Wars novels sitting on my bookshelf, and not one of them is unread (save for Republic Commando: Triple Zero, which just came out). The Expanded Universe is, for the most part, a wonderful continuation of the Star Wars saga, with a few inconsistencies or downright blunders (*cough* Planet of Twilight *cough*). The SW:EU has seen some of the most talented sci-fi writers of our age. And I can't think of any character I like better than Grand Admiral Thrawn.

I do hope this TV series will live up to the ongoing story and be just as enjoyable as the books have been for me. I pray that they will heed the prior works of the authors and beware of glaring inconsistencies (one of which I intend to keep an eye on being young Han Solo).

Re:A New Hope

[Venyce]

Timothy Zahn wrote some excellent Star Wars, I agree. I'm a little amazed that anyone could read something like the Jedi Academy series and find them to be anything better than grade D trash. They had to have Michael Stackpole (of X-Wing / Rouge Squadron books) come in and basically re-write it so it was partially believeable.

The Dark Empire comics where relativly OK, as comics go. However they were trash compared to the good books. Most of the writers had to spend a lot of time ignoring the "Reborn Emperor, and Luke goes to the dark side blah blah. It was shit, but it had to be considered 'canon' for the sake of expanded universe books.

Now we have the New Jedi Order books. I read 2 or 3 and that was the end. Just too cheesey. Other than Zahn, Stackpole, and a couple of others (whoever adaped Episode 3 and the guy who wrote Shadows of the Empire) I ignore Star Wars books now.

Stackpole was right when he wrote his main character telling Luke that you can't take a guy who blows up a whole star system and say he's a great Jedi Knight. Good ole Kevin J. invented the super-weapon of the week club. The Deathstar 3, the Sun blaster who whatever that little twit jedi character he wrote used to blow up a star. It was just lame.

And don't even get me started on the "Wonder Twins" saving the day through any number of books before they were even 12 years old. All of our main characters from the 1st triligy are standing around like assholes, so the kids can do it all.

No thanks. Star Wars has become questionable. I approach anything writen or done for the screen with skepticism.

On a good note, look around on the internet and see if you can find "Stuff". A piece of Star Wars fan fiction that was written to try and fix all the dumb shit various authers had done to the story after Zahn's books. It's very well written and pretty funny to boot.

Re:A New Hope

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Why? Because although these books were licensed by Lucas, they were not official parts of the story.

Actually, most EU content is considered cannon, unless it disagrees with the films or other Lucas-produced works. Indeed, much of the content used in the prequels came from the EU.

New Characters?

[magicsquid]

It will be interesting to see if they create the new characters with the ultimate eye towards plot development or whether they are simply created in order to sell merchandise.

Given Lucas' focus in the last 5 years, I'd guess merchandising.

Least interesting part?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

It seems like a silly timeframe for a star wars show. Jedis when theyre hiding, luke when he doesn't know anything about the force, dark side ruling without any serious opposition.. The way they described it makes it sound like there won't even be any light sabers.

Seems like theyre trying to clone the success of Smallville, except Superman found out his powers on his own-- Luke didn't know about them until taught.

Attack of the clones, indeed.

Re:Least interesting part?

[bckrispi]

It seems like a silly timeframe for a star wars show. Jedis when theyre hiding, luke when he doesn't know anything about the force, dark side ruling without any serious opposition.. The way they described it makes it sound like there won't even be any light sabers. Silly timeframe? The 20 years between RotS & ANH are arguably the *darkest* period in the whole saga. There are plenty of interesting plot threads that can be covered:

1. The subjugation & enslavement of resistant worlds by the Empire
2. Vader "hunting down and destroying" any Jedi who survived Order 66
3. Bail Organa & Mon Mothma stirring the seeds of rebellion.
4. Obi-wan's early relationship with Luke and Uncle Owen. We know from ANH that there is history between these characters.
5. Palpatine consolidating his power away from the Imperial Senate to his hand-picked regional governors.

Sounds like they're following the wrong Skywalker

[Channard]

'Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader' shows that there's still plenty of mileage in Vader's post ROTS and pre-New Hope years. Hunting down rogue Jedi, dealing with the rebel resistance etc - more fun than Luke Skywalker's life would be.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This...

[malikvlc]

It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.

I am confused - just HOW much of a mystery could his life have been? Growing up on the moisture farm, rise early to avoid the heat, dust off the droids, whine to Uncle Ben, lots of sand on Tattoine...

Lucas should not milk this cow any longer, prequels are not his strength! I'd root for something that picked up twenty years after Ep VI, the books are full of the political intrigue and scandal Lucas adored so much for Ep's I, II, and III...

Ok, maybe even that would suck.

Han better be in there somewhere...

[mobiux]

Like a side story, just bringing him into the story.

That type of character is what was missing from #1-3.

People aren't just good or bad, some people walk the line between the two.

Kurosawa

[corporatemutantninja]

I've been thinking for years that Lucas should do a Star Wars version of the Yusagi Yojimbo story. It got retold as a Clint Eastwood Western (For A Few Dollars More), so why not as Sci Fi? Lone Jedi on a remote mining colony, two alien races in conflict, light saber vs. blaster. "My mistake, make that 4 cryogenic suspension tubes."

A TV Series would be a perfect opportunity for this idea.

Re:Could've picked a better setting

[mcc]

That said, if he hated his life enough to consider signing up for the Imperial military, why would it be of any interest at all to us?

The answer is obvious and, unfortunately, terrible. They're almost certainly going to pack luke's early life with exciting star-flung adventures, cameos of star wars characters, and a constant use of the force powers he supposedly didn't know he had. By the time the series ends, whatever suspension of disbelief the once-powerful opening scenes of A New Hope originally conjured will have been totally destroyed by the knowlege that Luke Skywalker is in fact just as experienced and battle-hardened as any character from Sailor Moon.

An alternate possibility is that when they say "the 20 years luke skywalker was growing up", they don't mean luke will be the focus of the series-- they just mean that is the period over which the series will take place. That is, perhaps the action will all follow Bail Organa, Mon Mothma et al, who have exciting and dangerous space adventures while Luke Skywalker is repainting the grain silo. This would make for an interesting and believable series-- and putting Leia through complex and traumatic adventures (while Luke sits at home and watches the news dispatches depicting the Empire's party line propaganda version of those same adventures) would be totally consistent with what we see in the movies. But I do not consider this likely to happen. Over 100 episodes, the temptation of somehow dragging Luke in every other plot will be too great to resist.

Oh-- and expect a long and drawn-out plot arc in which Obi-Wan takes increasingly dangerous journeys into the underworld in a desperate attempt to make the last three clumsy minutes of dialogue in Return of the Sith seem dramatic and important instead of just being a hastily composed plot band-aid. Expect Luke to feature in these semifrequently, although he supposedly had never met Old Ben before the beginning of A New Hope.

I'd rather have 100 TV episodes of 'Serenity'

[ironduke-particle]

... and I'm not the only one, see paragraph 6: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/15/star_wars_ tv_spin_off/

It's simple

[sterno]

If Lucas mostly keeps his hands off of this it will be good. Lucas is really good when it comes to the big picture view of the Star Wars universe. He did a fantastic job of creating this rich world with all kinds of potential. But if you look at the output from his work, the more involved he is with the movie, the more it sucks, generally speaking.

What is the best Star Wars movie of all time? Empire Strikes Back, the one he had the least involvement in. Lucas is bad at writing and directing. He really struggles to bring any sense of emotion to the characters. Whenever you see emotion it feels like Soap Opera camp. You look at the stilted dialogue of Padme and Anakin in Episode 2 and 3 and it's just painful.

So I believe that if Lucas is willing to keep his hands mostly off of this project and let it become it's own thing it stands a chance of not sucking. But it does fascinate me how things have come full circle. Star Wars set a bar and Battlestar Galactica came out shortly after trying to meet that bar and failing quite specatcularly. Now Star Wars comes to television and we have a very high bar set by Battlestar Galactica for what a sci-fi television show can be. Can Star Wars hold up? Probably not, but there's always hope I guess :)

Re:It's simple

[skam240]

Even without Lucas they're going to have a hard time making this both interesting and true to the starwars story line. Luke is pretty much some country bumpkin living on a farm in his youth. He doesnt ever leave the planet, he's ignorant of city life in episode 4 so he probably won't be going to cities and running into the native crime lords that much, he won't know anything about or be learning the force and the character wont really develope at all given that luke starts off episode 4 as a winey, naive kid. That pretty much just leaves the sand people. A hundred episodes of fighting sand people sounds pretty terrible. Sure there's a few other bits you can throw in there (like him developing his piloting skills through the canyons) but I just don't see how there's all that much good material to go with here.

new show

[spartacus_prime]

Hmm...somehow, I think this is going to end up very similar to "Smallville." Luke had no knowledge of his abilities before Obi-Wan Kenobi told him. Although there is a plethora of non-canonical information on what exactly happened before Episode 4, is it really going to keep Star Wars fans entertained? I have my doubts, I'd rather see a show about Leia's childhood, or perhaps a show dealing with both.

Uhg...

[Cyno01]

Luke is the last character we wanna see as an adolescent. C'mon, he was a farmer on a desert planet, snore. Even leia would be more interesting. Her dad was a senetor in the imperial senate. And anyone whos read the illustrated starwars universe knows how kickass alderran is. The character that me, and im sure everyone else would like to see grow up between epIII and IV... Boba Fett. C'mon, his father gets killed in front of him, thats gonna make for an extra angsty teen. From kid to the biggest badass in the universe. Now that would be a cool show. Not Dawsons Creek with landspeeders and Jawas like this is gonna be.

Re:Mysterious Future

[greysky]

Fox will have first dibs at the rights to air the seires, and we all know what fox does with scifi series in the post-x-files world. The series will be aired versus the superbowl, or some other mega-draw, the episodes will be run out of order, and they will not even bother airing the pilot. It will be cancelled by the time the sixth episode airs, and all the fanboys out there will start a "save starwars tv" website, asking for donations to privately fund the production of more episodes. Rich Macullum will write to the fans on his blog thanking them for their dedication and support. And it will all be covered here on slashdot...

Follow Han, not Luke

[Pfhorrest]

That's something I'd be far more interested to see. The history of Han Solo leading up to ANH. Luke, as has been said everywhere, was a boring farm boy on a backwater planet. Han Solo was a riotous space cowboy smuggling for the Fetts. His story would be far more interesting.

Besides, Han is about the only character from the original trilogy whose ancestry/history/whatever aren't talked about in the prequels already...

Lucas rape the classic trilogy? No way, dude!!

[elrous0]

Just look at how faithful his "special edition" versions of the film were to the originals as evidence of how much he loves and respects the original canon.

-Eric

A Book for a Simp in the Field

[eldavojohn]

Good ole Kevin J. invented the super-weapon of the week club. The Deathstar 3, the Sun blaster who whatever that little twit jedi character he wrote used to blow up a star. It was just lame.

Yeah, I sure did enjoy it when I was an grade school farm hand. I liked the part where stuff 'sploded! I didn't have the luxery of owning the movies but I had seen them and the books were freely available at the library.

You (and a number of other posters) seem to be highly critical of my grade school interests. Isn't it amazing that low grade science fiction is entertaining to someone who has to geld piglets and pick rock? Hell, Kilgore Trout would have satisfied me then. Now I read James Joyce, Herman Hesse or any number of various real authors. That's not to say I fail to recognize my roots in reading.

Do I feel like a smarter person now? Do I reject reading and liking Star Wars paperbacks on the grounds that they're literary trash? Not at all. I remember them. I remember liking them. And I always will. Laugh and jeer all you want, I'll defend Anderson because he gave me something to enjoy as a kid.

Call me crazy but I'll also always find the original Tetris to be more sacred than any religious work due to the amount of time I invested in stacking bricks. It was like ... virtual hay bailing ... with rockets! Far out!

So go ahead and trounce Kevin J. Anderson and Stephen King and Michael Chrichton and a number of other authors I read in grade school. I'm not really concerned about what literary snobs have to say about them. I don't care if you think Madeline L'Engle, Ray Bradbury, Brian Jacques or Laura Ingals Wilder suck as authors, I still love them--even though I've met people here and there that have a good time picking them apart and laughing at their simple plot lines.

Re:A Book for a Simp in the Field

[kcarlin]

Actually, you make a good list there. Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain, both the novel and the movie, combined a tight A-novel/A-movie sensibility with science fiction without completely losing the audience the way the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey did, helping science fiction overcome its B-Movie reputation in the mass culture. (Planet of the Apes and Omega Man were fine adventure vehicles for Charlton Heston, but Andromeda Strain was relevant in a more immediate way.)

Stephen King is a good enough writer to have convinced me to read Salem's Lot and the Shining long after I had lost interest in genre horror and fantasy, his realism was top-notch in Salem's Lot. His long suffering at the hands of screen adapters reputedly ended with the Stand, so perhaps I'll watch that some day.

L'Engle and Bradbury and Heinlein were the best of their day. "Great Works" is a game for academics trying to bring what they consider best forward, and it changes radically and routinely. In High School we read Moby Dick, the Scarlet Letter, and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The pantheon of literature changes some each year, but it is a messy and perverse process, not to be mistaken for a mechanism for personal validation. Every year something abominable slips in and something core and critical is lost. Literary fashion and clothing fashion both enjoy heights and valleys. In the 1950's, only a handful of academic specialists had spent any time on the Romantics for about a hundred years, their opus of incomplete works, their subversive hedonism in life and on page, the classicism/paganism. And fantasy was routinely disguised or passed off as science fiction to avoid giving offense to religious elements, with a fraction of the titles released per year that we see now. Suddenly pot, LSD, Stranger in a Strange Land, Lord of the Rings, were front and center and the Romantics were suddenly campus favorites.

Whenever you look at anyone's pantheon, ask the following:

1. Who picked the works? There is always an agenda. Take the Bible, take Catcher in the Rye, take Bug Jack Barron, take the Satanic Verses, why were these things included or excluded? What would you include or exclude?

2. What viewpoint do they represent? Are they trying to sell me something unsavory? (I have met too many narcissistic ideologues that cheerfully hijack a course to bully students into echoing a bankrupt position to achieve a passing grade. I believe in giving everyone a hearing, but forced conversions are Muhammed's folly, and the notion that the curriculum planned is of no import compared to their unapproved and uncataloged replacement requires some examination. A good literature teacher will draw out student debate on a literary position, and only reluctantly put a position forward themselves and only when the discussion has gone horribly wrong.)

3. What other competing pantheons are out there? What does Berkeley do? What does the University of Chicago do? What about Hitler, Stalin, Mao? What about C. S. Lewis, Maya Angelou, or Victor Davis Hanson? Do they align more closely with my core beliefs? Most people actually do have core beliefs, and any pantheon that is aggressively or subversively in opposition to those beliefs will find opposition in the engaged reader.

4. Most of all, people should read what they enjoy. I enjoy comic books and I have translated Chaucer hundreds of lines of Chaucer orally for a class as easily and accurately as one might read a passage from a Star Wars novelization. I have enjoyed treatments of Beowulf by John Gardner, Crichton, and Niven/Pournelle/Barnes. If you have acquaintances too rude and narcissistic to be polite on matters of literary conviction, you might want to consider changing friends. Some people you meet in life will be Hitlerites or Stalinists or Jihadists or Maoists, and it won't always be obvious which is which off the bat.

Before I concern myself with whether someone validates me in some ar

Re:The wrong 20 years.

[teal_]

No, there will be plenty of Jedi... fugitives who escaped order 66, and Vader will be hunting them down. In the book "Dark Lord Rising", which takes place immediately after episode iii, one of the main characters is a Jedi named Roan Shryne. The book starts off with him leading a campaign on Murkhana with a battallion of clones when all of a sudden his clones turn on him and he barely escapes. He ends up with a group of smugglers, evading Vader and his legions (also with him are a couple of padawans whose masters have been killed.) He is looking for other surviving Jedi, and makes his way to Kashyykk (the wookiee homeworld) to look for Yoda, but gets trapped there by Vader and ultimately we see Vader's power... as well as the empire's military dictatorship and its atrocities, as they pretty much commit genocide on the wookiees with only a few escaping... like Chewbacca.

Meanwhile, we see the rise of the empire with the new regional governors taking control of the sovereign systems (such as Governor Tarkin.)

This series has HUGE potential, and I can't wait. I too had a problem with episode I, it left me very cold, but after seeing episodes II and III, and how they tie it all up, I love it now, I have learned to just ignore Jar Jar, and believe it or not, I don't even mind him any more, he serves a pretty important purpose in the actual story (though we could have done without a few of his lines that made us all cringe.) In the end, amazingly, I find that I enjoy watching the prequels even more than the OT!!! (blasphemy, I know, and I'm one of those pathetic geeks who can answer just about any obscure star wars trivial pursuit question, from the OT!)

So, to sum up, I think the series will feature:

• Senator Organa and the rise of an underground resistance... the rebel alliance
• The rise of the military dictatorship and Governor Tarkin -> Gran Moff Tarkin
• Darth Vader the emperor's enforcer, flushing out the fugitive Jedi and reigning in defiant star systems
• Jedi fugitives looking for other surviving Jedi
• Chewbacca, his species having been all but extinct, getting into the smuggling game... perhaps we'll see him hook up with Han and Lando? Maybe we'll find out what Han did to Lando that Chewy reminded him about on the way to Bespin, where Han said "that was a long time ago, I'm sure he's forgotten all about that", and how the millenium falcon changed hands
• There will be no Yoda, no Obi-Wan, no Luke. They're all gone, in hiding, or growing up on some back-water planet. This isn't going to be like young Indiana Jones where we see Luke's adventures growing up. It's clear that he has a very dull life as a moisture farmer on Tatooine and wants to leave. This series won't be about him at all.
• Leia might be seen here and there just as Bail Organa's daughter but she won't be doing anything. Maybe we'll see how she gets to be a senator at age 20 though. But Alderaan seems to be an off mix of a monarchy and a democracy, Senator Organa is called "your majesty" by captain Antilles, so maybe Leia just gets appointed as a successor in the (powerless) imperial senate.
• And, I hope, this all gets seen through the eyes of our favourite droids, the prissy protocol droid C-3PO and the heroic astromech droid R2-D2. A Kurosawa device... telling the story through the eyes of two insignificant characters who are just there, pretty cool. Refer to Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress

Now, about the issue of episodes 7-9, no, that I do not want to see. This whole saga is really all about Anakin Skywalker's rise, fall, and rendemption. After he dies, it makes no sense to continue.

Sit back, enjoy, let yourself go. Don't be jaded. Relax. It's fun. Don't be ashamed to enjoy.

Zahn, Stackpole. And others.

[demonbug]

Stackpole was pretty good (the X-Wing/Rogue Squadron series is the best Star Wars I've read aside from Zahn), I tried reading one of Anderson's books and it was pretty bad. Zahn's are definitely the best of the Star Wars books by far (and his other books are pretty damn good, too - try the Conquerors series, or Icarus Hunt). I remember when Heir to the Empire came out, it was just awesome - it was the first non-Lucas Star Wars book out there (that I'm aware of) and it was very well written. Zahn has consistently lived up to it, alhtough I have to say his latest book in the Star Wars universe wasn't nearly as good. Outbound Flight just felt rushed, and a littel bit stilted - but part of that might be due to Zahn trying more to fit in with episodes I-III. The parts where Zahn stays with his own characters (Thrawn, etc.) are much better than the parts where he includes Ben and Anakin et al.
That said, it is still a hell of a lot better than most of the Star Wars crap that is out there now. The whole "expanded universe" thing is really, really lame - if there was ever a case of "Too many cooks ruins the soup", it is Star Wars (at least the books - the movies, strangely enough, seem to exhibit the reverse).

On a somewhat related note, Give Me Another Tie Fighter (or X-Wing - I loved those games)!