Wolf Moon Rising novel

[David]

Here's a way we can all safely look at Lara's novels, the comic books, and the audio CDs:
as imaginary tales, like the imaginary Superman/Batman stories in DC Comics.
They're all speculating as to what the TV show MIGHT have done had it continued beyond 4/2/71.

The 1991 series & the Burton film are remakes.

[Josette]

Here's a way we can all safely look at Lara's novels, the comic books, and the audio CDs:
as imaginary tales, like the imaginary Superman/Batman stories in DC Comics.
They're all speculating as to what the TV show MIGHT have done had it continued beyond 4/2/71.

The 1991 series & the Burton film are remakes.

I'll go along with most of that, but I wouldn't include Burton as a remake.  1991 was still Dan Curtis and pretty much repeated the original storyline.  Burton is not only a totally different creator, but the whole thing is very different from the original.  I think one has to take that as just a separate take on the same subject matter as opposed to a remake.

[The Doctor and K9]

I think you'd have to call most of the projects remakes. With the exception of the audio series, the Innovation comic, and perhaps the current comic series (I'm behind on that), all the other licensing has totally ignored what was on the show.

Whether you want to consider the audio series canonical or not, it has attempted to remain faithful to what we saw on TV.  Have there been errors and gaffes? Yes, but the OS couldn't even remain faithful to its own canon. Look at the contradictory origins of Angelique and Barnabas. 

The Innovation comic actually filled in a gap left within the 91 series continuity, fitting betwen the 3rd and 4th hour of the show.

No matter how hard you try, you can't fit any of the other projects into continuity. They all start from scratch and remake the OS. I suppose you can count Night of Dark Shadows as an exception. It does loosely adapt the PT story, but it's no more a remake than the Gerard ghost story was a remake of the Quentin one.

I suppose, in the end, David's suggestion that they are all imaginary tales of what might have been makes sense. Let's face it, they're all imaginary tales! Unless of course you want to suggest there really is a town of Collinsport and we just can't find it on the map.

[michael c]

i think i might be more likely to consider the audio series, if not necessarily canonical, but at least part of an "ongoing story" if the forty-odd year span of time between the series' conclusion in 1971 and the present was taken into account. sort of an updated story about what these characters were doing "today"...


but it is to my understanding(i've only listened to two or three)that they pick up where the OS left off in 1971 or shortly thereafter with the actors playing their characters at the age they would have been then.

to me that's a continuity gaffe even at the audio level. touching on the delicate issue of age a 70 year old actor does not sound like a 25 year old character. i don't mean that to be unkind but it's true. that audio difference jumped out at me in the few listenings i gave these.

at the time of the RTC performance it worked because it seemed like a lighthearted festival presentation meant to be taken as just that. i thought it was being recorded merely as a festival momento so to speak. i had no idea it would end up being taken so seriously and then considered canonical by so many.

or maybe it's just the "dramatic readings" and not the "audiodramas" where they are playing the characters at the age they were then. i'm not sure.

[michael c]

again parhaps i'm incorrect on the timeline of the audiodramas...


i get them confused with the timeline of the RTC presentation, lara parker's books, the current comic series etc...

[Gothick]

Even though original cast members have done some of the audio dramas, the first one which is the only one I have heard in entirety just did not work for me as a "continuation" of the original series.  I found the dialogue and characterizations too different from how the characters/personalities were established in the OS.  I'm particularly remembering a scene between Maggie and Willie at the Blue Whale and a couple of later ones with Quentin and Angelique.  The dialogue just felt really off key and jarring to me.

I am a writer (of sorts) and very sensitive (maybe overly so) to the textures of words and the nuances of characterizations.  Why I consider DS my all time favorite show is because the characterizations were so exquisitely nuanced and theatrically presented in the unfolding story.  Granted, even the OS had its speed bumps--I mentioned in the episode discussion a couple of episodes where I felt Julia was behaving and speaking completely out of character.  It was Grayson Hall in a show produced in 1968 or whenever but I just felt as if something wasn't right there.  Not to belabor but I guess it stuck out because by and large, the OS writing, even when it had severe continuity problems, DID have consistent writing for the characters. 

This kind of thing is very subjective.  But at one point in time, the definition of canon for TV shows was really simple. Anything that was aired, original broadcast content, was canon.  Period.  Fanfic, novelizations, tie-ins etc. have a relationship but aren't canon.  Film versions are their own canon.  I definitely think this about Serenity, the film that spun off from the Joss Whedon FIREFLY series (just to give a more recent example).

cheers, G.

[Gerard]

The problem with the canon (meaning the OS) is that, over the years, it became somewhat convoluted leaving lots of logical gaps.  I also noticed that Ms. Parker took some liberties with it in Angelique's Descent (a novel which I loved, by the way), but to make her own work flow she had to move this, turn that, twist that thing over there, even when having to reconstruct direct scenes from the series.

When I wrote my DS novels in the late '90's (hoping for them to be published in the quickly risen and then fallen Harper-Collins series), I had to do the same thing.  For example, I had to jettison the whole thing about the members of Collinwood remembering Quentin's haunting because - since it ended up never happening - there would be nothing to remember.  Some, like an elderly Roger (and that novel was set in 2000), had vague, inexplicable memories that remained, despite the paradox.

Gerard

[michael c]

my recollections of 'the salem branch' are quite dim but didn't parker pull a mary sue move and cast herself as angelique in a sympathetic light and using the name "antionette"


that alone throws the whole thing so far out of whack i cannot square it with OS canon in any way.

[The Doctor and K9]

i think i might be more likely to consider the audio series, if not necessarily canonical, but at least part of an "ongoing story" if the forty-odd year span of time between the series' conclusion in 1971 and the present was taken into account. sort of an updated story about what these characters were doing "today"...

I hadn't really thought of it that way until recently. To me, their voices hadn't seemed to age that much in the beginning. Lately though, many of them are even starting to sound old to me.

I don't really have an ear for that sort of thing though. For example, many people complain that Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, sounds a lot older. He sounds pretty much the same to me.

I can see how that would be jarring though. In the case of Selby, they don't really have a choice. His character is ageless.