Disney have destroyed the Star Wars Expanded universe

A small section of my Star Wars Library

It is as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

Yesterday it was announced that the entire Star Wars Galaxy had been destroyed... Not by a Death Star, nor the Sun Crusher or the Galaxy Gun but by Disney.

I was born in 1980 and grew up watching the original Star Wars trilogy at Christmas every year, I was a teenager when the Special Editions came out and I was beside myself with excitement when I saw my favourite movies in the cinema, an experience I never thought I would get. Before that I had got into the Expanded Universe.

In the wake of Return of the Jedi many people wanted more. The Role Play Games expanded a lot so that gamers (like me) could experience more of the Galaxy far far away and do the things we had seen in the films, be it flying X-Wings against a Stardestroyer (I lost my port engine by the way) take on Dark Lords of the Sith or Boba Fett...

There were also works of Fiction. Timothy Zahn started the ball rolling with Heir to the Empire,  Dark Force rising and The last Command and if you haven't read them and call yourself a Star Wars fan you have to read them. These were followed by books by Kevin J Anderson, Dave Wolverton, Kathy Tyers, Aaron Allston and Michael A. Stackpole which I spent my teenage years digesting and falling in love with. My favourite character Imperial Admiral Daala has, in recent books, become head of the Galaxy's Government.

I bit my tongue through the prequels... OK not hard and I admit I did rant a little... and often... about how some of the stuff from the Expanded Universe had been neglected or altered by the early films but ultimately most was left in tact so my room for complaint was small and Timothy Zahn et. al started bringing in Prequel stuff into the EU including Luke Skywalker encountering a Droideka some twenty years after Return of the Jedi having never mentioning them before hand. It was OK... I accepted it, so did everyone else - it was a necessity to link Original Star Wars, the EU and New Star Wars.

Last night I read this....strw.rs/1nNvyUm

Disney have killed it all off. All those characters, all those planets, all those events... gone...

Oh yeah there will be new books and new stories based on the sequels and the new project Star Wars Rebels but everything else... all those books that made George Lucas and now Disney buckets of money are all irrelevant. They don't exist and they never did in the narrative of the Star Wars Universe.

Yeah it does mean that the film makers have a lot of freedom to write and create the new series of movies but...

It feels like a big middle finger to the fans who have followed the Expanded Universe for over twenty years. For me the films (even though Episode I and II were not great they did add to the story) and the Expanded Universe were Star Wars, for the majority of my lifetime and for millions of fans like me. 

This news will have sent ripples through the Star Wars fan base and a great many people will be most displeased.

Star Wars VII - don't do it George!

There are somethings that are more important in life than the political squabbles of a few or the oneupmanship of Gunwharf party politics.

The most important thing? Star Wars.

Following yesterday's announcement I have been shocked to my very core. For those of you who missed it, Disney have splashed $4bn and bought out Lucasfilm - to cap that they've announced the release of Star Wars Episode VII for 2015.

Am I excited that I get to go and watch a new Star Wars in the cinema? Hear the opening music and read the scrawl as it treks over the star-field for the first time and await the inevitable space ship? That I get to take my little girl to share a precious lifetime moment?

No, I'm deeply vexed and hurt. I've not been this hurt since Nick voted for the rise in tuition fees.

But it is only a movie... I hear those of you who don't know me say.

Star Wars is my thing. You might think it was being a Libdem or German aircraft but those are only facets of who I am. For a decade Star Wars defined me. I grew up watching it every Christmas on ITV and the old Betamax recording of Return of the Jedi every weekend until at the age of twelve I rediscovered The Empire Strikes Back. Watching the AT-ATs crossing the Hoth wilderness I fell in love. I've always been an Empire man.

I've got all manner of merchandise, including two lightsabers, models, lego, Darth Vader pen, action figures, computer games, around 4000 of the Decipher CCG cards, Role playing game books (D6 and the controversial D20) - coincidentally I came 2nd in the Star Wars RPG category at the Student Nationals in '06. I've also got a good chunk of the sequels.

Sequels?

After the curtain went down at the end of Jedi in 1983 many thought that was the end and kids like me (aged 3) would only see them on tv. In 1992 an author called Timothy Zahn wrote a trilogy of books, that were sequels to Jedi, often nicknamed the Thrawn trilogy which relit the touch paper. Great series like Mike Stackpole's X-wing books, Kevin J. anderson's Jedi Acadeny series... We've watched the lead characters grow up, get married, have kids, lose loved ones and yes *spoiler* even Chewbacca died.

For two decades now George Lucas has reaped the financial rewards of these books and watched his universe expand and develop and now they will probably deny its very existence.

A Galaxy far far away without Mara Jade, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Jacen & Jania Solo or my favourite Admiral Natasi Daala just doesn't bear thinking about.

Now I've put up a lot of crap from George in the past. Boba Fett a clone, getting rid of the original Emperor scene and subbing in Iain McDiarmid in ESB, Han Solo shooting first and Jake Lloyd as Anakin. It is easy to look down on Episode I but it was a good cinematic film and Jarjar... Well kids like him and at least Ahmed Best's performance was good (and better than Natalie Portman, Ewan MacGregor and Jake Lloyd put together). Episode II was like watching Dawson's Creek in space but Return of the Sith redeemed the lot.

I fear the future... I fear the Galaxy I know and Love will be torn away and ruined.

On behalf of the fans, the geeks, the nerds - my fellows and brethren who have dedicated themselves to this franchise, who have dressed up as a Jedi or Sith, who have stood next to Daala on the burning Knighthammer, who know what a MT-AT is, or who Lt. Tanbris is - Don't do it George. Please leave it be.