Disney aquires Lucasfilm

In 2012 Disney acquired Lucasfilm (The Walt Disney Company, 2012), and reset the continuity of the Star Wars universe. They found that producing new stories set after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983) was difficult, as much had occurred in the expanded universe novels, such as Chewbacca sacrificing himself in The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (Salvatore, 1999); Luke Skywalker’s marriage in Union (Stackpole, 1999-2000); and the events preceding this in the Thrawn trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Zahn, 1991; Dark Force Rising, Zahn, 1992; The Last Command, Zahn, 1993) and Hand of Thrawn Duology (Specter of the Past, Zahn, 1997; Vision of the Future, Zahn, 1998).

The Star Wars expanded universe had received over time the same lack of continuity and communication between authors the original Doctor Who novels displayed (as discussed in a previous post in this series), so Disney decided only the six films, (A New Hope, Lucas, 1977; The Empire Strikes Back, Kershner, 1980; Return of the Jedi; The Phantom Menace, Lucas, 1999; Attack of the Clones, Lucas, 2002; Revenge of the Sith, Lucas, 2005), the Clone Wars animated TV series (Filoni et. al., 2008-2020) and the official novelisations of the films would remain canon (Sansweet, 2001).

This enabled Disney to cherry-pick fan favourites (or what they considered to be the best parts) and return them to official canon in new stories, such as the character of Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels (Filoni et. al., 2014-2018), and the new Thrawn novels (Thrawn, Zahn, 2017; Thrawn: Alliances, Zahn, 2018; Thrawn Treason, Zahn, 2019), the latter ending with the events preceding the last episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Family Reunion – and Farewell” (Kinberg et. al., 2018).

Within these new stories, new information could be discovered that built upon official canon, such as the revelation in Phasma (Dawson, 2017) that Phasma constructed their armour from the ruins of Palpatine’s Naboo yacht, or how Luke Skywalker started his journey to exile in Star Wars: Battlefront II (DICE, 2017).

Major plot elements did not occur in the ancillary texts, which “allows passive audiences to simply sit back and enjoy the parent show in blissful isolation, while at the same time it gives active, migratory and participatory audiences opportunities to engage in a rich, and extended multimedia experience” (Perryman, 2008, p. 37). Perryman writes this about Doctor Who transmedia storytelling, but it is highly relevant to the Star Wars universe, indicating that this transmedia strategy is transferrable between franchises.

The BBC Disney partnership has enabled a reset of Doctor Who, with “Christmas Special: The Church on Ruby Road” (Davies & Tonderai, 2023) listed as Series 1, Episode 1. Furthermore, it is cleverly insinuated in Giggle (Button, 2023) that all previous iterations of The Doctor are canon as they could have been played out in one of the Toymaker’s many realms – an interesting way around a full continuity reset that Star Wars saw.

This is important for Doctor Who fans, as it does not mean they must keep on top of what is and isn’t official canon, as Star Wars fans did. This fresh start allows a new plan of action to be formed between the BBC and Disney in much the same way as Marvel handles their phases of the Multiverse Saga. (For example, their San Diego Comic Con announcements, Paige, 2022), but also means the passionate fans can glean as much information about Doctor Who texts past and future without the worry of wondering whether it is canon.