Fandom is a strange phenomenon, especially when it comes to franchises. It requires the forming an emotional connection to what is, essentially, a commercial enterprise. The almost inevitable result is that the fan’s enthusiasm for their beloved films, television shows, video games, or books, will at some point be used by some executive somewhere to profit through minimal effort and imagination. This often means interminable sequels, or pointless prequels and reboots, in the same medium as the original product. However, when a franchise has sufficient exposure, then it can and usually will expand into a different medium, with the brand being strong enough to carry a portion of the original audience over.
In science fiction mega-franchises Star Wars and Star Trek (and, for all I know, the term may have expanded to other areas) this material is known as the ‘Expanded Universe’. The name, I think, is not insignificant. Consistent narrative arcs and character development, it seems to me, take a back seat in these projects to the requirement of giving fans more time to spend in the world – or, rather, worlds – of the franchise.
Anyway, all of the above is by way of introduction to the unique position of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy, a series of Star Wars novels set five years after Return of the Jedi, which achieved unprecedented (and, to my knowledge, unmatched) popular and critical success for any Expanded Universe book series. They are, in other words, pop-culture curiosities.
A long time ago …
Now that I’ve made my cynical views on fandom known, I should probably admit the obvious, that I am something of a Star Wars fan myself, or at least a fan of the Original Trilogy. One of my earliest memories is of Alderaan being destroyed (yes, really), which freaked me out because I was under the impression that, being an insignificant little blue-green planet, Alderaan was, in fact, Earth.[1] But once I’d comforted myself with the thought that any civilisation which can build moon-sized space stations could probably reconstruct a planet, it became quite clear that my parents, quite unintentionally, had indoctrinated me from a young age.[2] When I first read the Thrawn novels (and I can’t tell you when that was, other than that it was more then ten years ago, probably shortly after The Phantom Menace came out in 1999), I had already encountered many of the Expanded Universe’s other, lesser offerings, but that hadn’t affected my love of all things Star Wars. I was, in other words, the perfect audience for the trilogy.
I wasn’t the only one who found Zahn’s vision of the Star Wars universe surprisingly engaging. The first volume of the series, Heir to the Empire, made it onto The New York Times Bestseller list when it was released in 1991. Just this year, The Thrawn Trilogy was voted as #88 on NPR’s poll of the 100 most popular science fiction and fantasy books, ahead of Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction detective story The Caves of Steel and China Mieville’s more recent award-winning novel Perdido Street Station. Meanwhile, someone in Lucas’s vast media empire considered the release of Heir significant enough to warrant a 20th Anniversary Edition, complete with new foreword, introduction, author’s and editor’s notes, afterword and a new novella. Having not touched an Expanded Universe novel in years, I was curious to see whether the trilogy lived up to its reputation, and my own recollections. Had Zahn created a first-class fantasy, or merely legitimised fan-fiction?[3]
… galaxy, far away, etc.
The Rebel Alliance, now the self-proclaimed New Republic, has spent the five long years since the defeat of the Emperor and the destruction of the Second Death Star engaged in so-called ‘mopping-up’ exercises against Imperial forces. Yet, recently, the tide has turned and the Imperials have been regaining ground (or, uh, space). Enter Grand Admiral Thrawn, the main villain of the trilogy, a tactical genius and the mastermind behind the Empire’s recent successes. One thing Zahn does very well is avoid making his villains mere facsimiles of the original movies’s iconic adversaries. Thrawn is a very different character from Darth Vader, the Emperor or any of their various military underlings, and it benefits the series that he doesn’t feel like a retread at all. Grand Moff Tarkin, with his more complex relationship with Vader, is probably the closest reference point from the films, but his role isn’t nearly as central, or his character as developed, as Thrawn’s is in Zahn’s novels.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tarkin/Vader dynamic was, consciously or not, an inspiration to Zahn. Early in Heir, Thrawn recruits insane Jedi Master Joruus C’Boath to his cause, and in some ways their relatively equal footing with each other (as opposed to, say, the subservient Emperor/Vader relationship) resembles the way Tarkin and Vader interact, but with greatly increased competitiveness and instability (C’Boath is, as I said, insane). However, because C’Boath’s only real modes of behaviour are ‘manipulative’ and ‘ranting’, it’s hard to get a sense of any solid character behind the madness, making him something of a cipher. While this might make him seem more dangerous, he also comes off as somewhat two-dimensional, especially compared to Thrawn.
Something, something, something, dark side
It would be easy to spend plenty more paragraphs talking about the characters Zahn introduced into the Star Wars universe. Thrawn, Mara Jade, Captain Pelleaon, Talon Karrde, all of them have had an influence secondary only to the main characters from the original films. But does Zahn manage to give his expanded cast something interesting to do? The results, I think, are somewhat mixed. While, on the whole, I enjoyed re-reading the trilogy, I never felt as thrilled as when I watch the Death Star Trench Run in the original Star Wars, or Luke’s duel with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. The stakes never really felt sufficiently high, and the endings of Heir to the Empire and Dark Force Rising were just a little underwhelming (perhaps a result of the trilogy being a single story in three parts, rather than three sequential stories).[4] The climax of third book, The Last Command, was, well, a little more climactic, but turned into something a bit disjointed as it tried to tie up the trilogy’s major plot strands, before ending a little too suddenly.
Of course, I recognise that I’m comparing these novels to two of the best films in cinema history (yes, they are), and perhaps its unreasonable to expect Zahn, by himself, to match the serendipitous collaboration of dozens of talented artists, actors and others who helped create those films. It’s possible, too, that Zahn may be a victim of his own success. I’m not sure he ever intended to write ‘the sequels that were never filmed’, as The Thrawn Trilogy has sometimes been described. There are definite nods to the original trilogy, of course, such as Zahn’s habit of beginning each book with a scene set on an Imperial Star Destroyer (a reflection of those grand opening shots from the films) or his use of repeated dialogue.[5] But I think these are more respectful homages than any pretense to some larger claim over the Star Wars canon.
The circle is now complete
In short, taken as military/political thriller in a Star Wars setting, rather than as something more significant, The Thrawn Trilogy is much more likely to satisfy expectations, though that means it doesn’t quite escape the Expanded Universe niche. As such, I would be rather hesitant to recommend the books to anyone who wasn’t already a huge fan of the movies (and reading them without having seen the movies would be a very strange thing to do indeed), but, well, if you’re willing to spend your money in order to enjoy more time in that universe, you could really do a lot worse than hunting down a copy. It’s certainly preferable to watching the prequels.
Afterthoughts
- Another indicator of Zahn’s influence: he came up with the name Coruscant (from the Latin meaning ‘glittering’) for the capital of the the Old Republic, which was then used in the prequels. Previously, the planet had only ever been referred to as Imperial Center or, strangely, Had Abaddon.
- Being slightly obsessed with sword-fighting in films and such, I was disappointed in the lack of lightsaber duels in The Thrawn Trilogy, as there isn’t really one until the very end (it’s a good one, though, with a couple nice nods to The Empire Strike Back). To be fair, this is a natural result of Zahn’s avoidance of copycat villains, and it’s better than the overexposure the lightsaber duel received in Revenge of the Sith.
- At one point, Zahn makes a valiant attempt to tie the massive digression that is the first act of Return of the Jedi into the larger plot of the series. It almost works, too.
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[1] Yes, the phrase ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …’ should have been a clue. Give me a break – I was only four.
[2] For some reason, the inevitable practical and metaphysical difficulties in reconstructing the people who would actually have been on that planet at the time it was destroyed never occurred to me. Like I said, I was four.
[3] Okay, so there have been many arguments over whether Star Wars is fundamentally a fantasy or a science fiction series. Because, on the one hand, spaceships and, on the other hand, magic powers. Lucas tried to settle the debate once and for all with The Phantom Menace‘s midichlorians (at least, I assume that’s what he was doing, otherwise I have absolutely no clue why he brought it up), but just made the whole thing even more ridiculous.
[4] I will admit that I can remember the reveal at the end of Dark Force Rising being a lot more dramatic and exciting the first time around. Whether my relative indifference this time was due to my knowledge of what was going to happen, or the fact that a certain element of Star Wars history has become over-exposed in the last few years, I don’t know.
[5] Talking about how the films themselves repeat some noticeable bits of dialogue (I have a bad feeling about this, etc.), Lucas infamously made the groan-worthy statement that “It’s like poetry, they rhyme”. At least in The Thrawn Trilogy it still makes a kind of sense, as Zahn interpreted the repeated lines as the characters having developed their own private language of sorts. With the prequels, as usual, it makes no damn sense at all.
I'll Explain Later 