Whether he’s retconning or not, I am not sure, but Lucas has explained that he wanted Han to come off as a bullshitter (his words), so the brag about doing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs was not supposed to make sense, it was just supposed to be Han trying to make his ship sound amazing to some yokels.
That said, beyond Daley’s books, the books continued using that explanation for the Kessel Run up until Disney took over and made all the existing books non-canon. I don’t know why they felt they had to throw out everything (well, I guess they’ve kept Thrawn in some capacity, so yay for that), when there was so much universe building already done by so many authors that they could have kept or adapted to keep some familiarity for long-time fans. Oh well.
Related to dangling threads - this never struck me as a gaffe - it’s never explicitily stated that it was a race, just that the Falcon is pretty special for being able to do it, I assumed Han found a shortcut that no-one had. Anyway, I agree with the general theme of the idea that it was an intriguing one-liner that we never needed to see.
“Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?”
“Should I have?”
“It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships. She’s fast enough for you, old man.”
Not 100% certain of that, but it’s what I remember.
It’s Disney. The answer is, to any question, “they thought it was more profitable than the alternative.”
Disney ditched the canon because they didn’t have full control over it, and it let them make more crap movies, tv shows, and whatever branded garbage they think suckers will give them money for.
I’m going to stick up for Doctor Who here. I’m currently rewatching all the new series, some of which I haven’t seen since broadcast. (I forgot how dark season 1 got.)
After 60 years of an expanded universe people fill in gaps. There’s at least three different origin stories for the cyberman and all popular culture has been consumed, see (Sooty | Tardis | Fandom). I don’t know how you can avoid it.
I think the biggest problem is the season long mysteries that don’t go anywhere.
@Lordof1 and I have just been recording a Ribbon of Memes about some 1980s films where the crew just got casually sloppy. I mean, shot 217 hero is standing next to a statue firing a gun, shot 218 bad guys are falling over, shot 219 hero is still standing next to the statue firing the gun. How do you put a different gun in his hands in the two shots? And yet they did.
A casual online acquaintance was a Hollywood continuity coordinator. Her job was to keep track of props and other set things (clocks in location shots are a community n source of continuity goofs). She started in the 70s and worked through the mid 90s. In one discussion of a movie she was involved in, there is a horrible costume mistake, which was known during production: they had to do another take or added a bit, or something along those lines, much later, and the costume had been returned to the rental house. So they just used the one the character was in other scenes, and hoped no one would notice. Others are straightforward mistakes, no one t’embêter which gun the actor was using in a he takes last week (and no way to watch the footage), so they use what they thought was riflght. Big productions have loads of people keeping it from happening, low budget movies don’t have enough props to get them confused, it’s the middle tier that have problems, props, no continuity staff.
Along those lines, she did say how much harder home video made it. In the theater, stuff like that is easier t get away with. Most people won’t notice, and if you do, the scene is over, and you can’t go back to double check. So a one shot goof gets overlooked. With a video tape, you say “didn’t he have a Sten earlier? Where did the uzi come from?”, and rewind to check. And then you are primed to notice more of it.
Probably because one was a reshoot. I’ve heard that is often where a lot of continuity errors come in - they are often in a rush because these shoots weren’t planned.
I just thought of how I read Six of Crows + Crooked Kingdom and never even thought much of all the references I didn’t get… had to be good world-building. I was convinced it was a duology (someone had recommended it to me as such).
I was SOOOOO confused when we watched the Shadow & Bone series.
I kept telling my partner those had to be prequels that unnecessarily filled in all the references from those heist books I had read with weird stuff until I looked up the publishing dates and it turns out they were book #4 and #5 of a whole series.
When I was younger and reading whatever books I could grab from the library, I was used to not reading series of books in the correct order. I am reasonably sure I started Foundation in the middle. One learns to live with the “holes”.
Lois McMaster-Bujold, author of the vorkosigan sagas, has a take on series reading order, which I tend to agree with. It is, roughly, that while reading in the author’s preferred order (which isn’t always either publication order nor internal chronological order ) is best, the author should make it possible to read in any order, because that’s what people who pick up a book from a library or the new release section of a book store do.
Gets out his soapbox, stands on it, unfurls a scroll
I used to be really keen to always read in publication order, because you’re sure of all the background knowledge the author/readers had at the time. The only exception was Pratchett where you really don’t lose anything, and you gain quite a bit, from missing the first two or starting with the first book of witches/guards etc.
But then I realised that I also read the Narnia books in their UK series order, which starts with Magician’s Nephew, and that reading them in original publication order would be terrible. So now I’m more on the fence about it.
There are at least a couple of times when I have read a book gifted to me, loved it for its complexity, then looked for more by the author, only to find it is book 2 of a sequence. Dutifully reading book one often lessens both books …
That said I am on my holiday reading of Ken Liu’s Dandelion Throne series. 4 books, but while book 1 is great and why I got into the series, it’s link to the other 3 books at the moment (starting book 3) seems to be very much prequel worldbuilding. Which I don’t think was planned (my copy of book 2 says that it is the middle volume of a trilogy …).
It’s not a Discworld book (although it kind of is), but reading Strata after reading lots of Discworld turns it from an Ok book into a kind of “making of”, as it includes a lot of stuff that would be reused for the Discworld books.
I do remember liking it more than the first couple of Discworld books, but I haven’t read any of them in ages and I’ve never liked anything Rincewind-focused that much.
I didn’t read the Patrick O’Brian books for years because I was collecting them from charity shops and refused to read them out of order. So I think I got stuck on book 4 because I simply couldn’t get book 5 for well over 18 mths, even tho I already had like 6-13 just sitting there.
until I looked up the publishing dates and it turns out they were book