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| Why retcons do bother me. | |
| Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com> | Date: 5/24/11 4:45 p.m. |
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Sure, lack of continuity doesn't necessarily have to detract from one's enjoyment of something, even if it is a property that is "serious" and is something you'd expect to have continuity (as opposed to shows like Ren & Stimpy or Aqua Teen, which exemplify Negative Continuity). Hell, something doesn't even have be written well at all to be enjoyable. However, something that is both well-written and shows strong continuity can be the most enjoyable of fiction franchises. Also, there's some key differences between Halo and other sci-fi franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek. The big difference is that in the case of SW, essentially Lucas only considers the films to be canon. Expanded Universe material is not canon by default, only becoming canon should he choose to integrate it into the films (e.g. Coruscant showing up in the prequel trilogy). The films and EU are according to Lucas two different continuities. Similarly, Star Trek's expanded universe is not considered canonical, with Paramount and the late Gene Roddenberry only recognizing the TV series and films as canon. However, in the Haloverse, the various EU materials (with some exceptions, such as "Odd One Out") have always been considered canon by Bungie from the get-go. There were no established "tiers of canon," no "seperate universes," and the novels, etc., are (or at least were) just as valid as the games. So, we have "Not canon until Lucas incorporates it into the films" and "Only Trek films & TV eps are canon" vs. "Canon by default unless Bungie says so." So, Bungie set the bar for what is considered canon, and they chose "just about everything" as their stance. Therefore, the burden is one them to make sure that everything is internally consistent. Another difference between Star Trek and Halo is that Trek is big, sprawling, and often messy. Trek spans hundreds of episodes across five series (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise) and ten films (the latest being a reboot creating an entirely new timeline diverging about three decades before TOS). As expected of such a long runner, there are dozens of writers and directors. With that many cooks in the kitchen, there's bound to be a number of continuity errors. Compare that to Halo, where the games and EU content is a much smaller pool of content that the Trek series & movies. Furthermore, the bulk of Halo's story material comes from just a few writers: Staten (H1, H2, ODST, CH), Nylund (TFoR, FS, GoO, Halsey's Journal), Dietz (The Flood), Devine (HW), Bucknell (TCP), O'Brien (Reach), and McLees (H3 + some of Reach). That's seven(!) guys responsible for some 90+% of all Halo material, with the remaining 10% being the authors and artists that have produced the handful of comics, the few short stories in Evolutions, and the anime shorts from Legends. So, there's far less room for Bungie to have a franchise rife with continuity errors. With less material and fewer writers, you'd expect a much higher degree of internal consistency than you'd expect from a long runner like Star Trek. Indeed, everything had been largely consistent, with continuity errors being relatively minor and few in number (e.g., the number of active Spartan-IIs seems to fluctuate every other book). For example, there's the issue of the Arbiter's armor caused by the ending of Halo Wars, and there's also some apparent contradictions in the timeline between ODST and Halo 3. You can't get everything 100% perfect even if you try. But Reach on the other hand is just reprehensible in the utter disregard it shows for established canon. It throws out pretty much the entire last act of TFoR as well as retconning other material (e.g., Halsey's ignorance of the Spartan-III program prior to her trip to Onyx). It's almost like during the development of Reach, Bungie was saying "Sure, we've regarded TFoR to be canonical for nearly a decade, but fuck it. We're going to write whatever the hell we want. Who cares about consitency or canon? Besides, it's out of our hands after this." It's obvious to me that they simply stopped caring about quaint little notions like canon or treating this great universe they created with some modicum of care. Reach was almost a slap in the face to many long-time fans of the Haloverse. It's worse than George Lucas Doing in the Wizard by changing the Force from some mystical energy field to something caused by little microorganisms. At least that can potentially be reconciled so as not actually being a Doing in the Wizard moment. There's no way to reconcile Reach with TFoR. The thing is, while this large-scale retcon was deliberate, it was also entirely avoidable. They could have easily written Reach without rendering nearly half of TFoR Canon Discontinuity. The game could have taken place over the course of half a day instead of several weeks, making it closer to the novel's two-hour curb stomp battle. It could have involved a squad of Spartan-IIs instead Spartan-IIIs. It could have had The Pillar of Autumn in space instead of drydocked on the surface. Bungie could have made Reach with negligible continuity conflicts between it and TFoR, but they instead chose to create the most egregious retcon in the series' history. Did Bungie simply give Peter O'Brien free reign to write what he wanted, or did they have this scenario planned out before the first words were written down? In any case, for them to go "Yeah, this is canon," for nine years then suddenly turn around and go "Aaaaand, now it's not," with regard to a major part of the series canon just shows to me that they just stopped caring. Now, I don't mind the occasional minor retcons so long as they actually improve on the story and the franchise. For example, I never liked how TFoR implies that Elites were never encountered on the ground before the Battle of Reach. This was retconned by later works, having Elite infantry present as early as the Harvest campaign. But Reach was an egregious, unnecessary, and inexcusable violation of what was once established canon, not to mention it was poorly-written. As far as I'm concerned Reach is an apocryphal story.
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