The Whole Frontier Canon Mess

[Phantom Hoover]

I was pottering around Ian Bell's website and I decided to look into the source of his text Elite. In the comments at the start he states "Note that this is not the universe of David Braben's 'Frontier' series." I have no idea what to think of this, so I'll leave it at that.

[drew]

I refer you to Selezen's excellent work. He's already figured this one out...

Cheers,

Drew.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well, yes, but Bell has stated outright that the Elite and Frontier universes are separate, which kind of makes that redundant or even non-canon.

[Commander McLane]

Well, yes, but Bell has stated outright that the Elite and Frontier universes are separate, which kind of makes that redundant or even non-canon.

Where's the problem? Frontier is non-canon, as far as Elite is concerned, and nobody has ever claimed otherwise.

When David Braben wanted to create a sequel to Elite, he took over a completely different game, and merely squeezed in a handful of Elite planet names, in order to make it (extremely superficiously) look as if the Frontier universe were the same as the Elite universe. And that's it. If you look at the maps only for a second, it is immediately obvious that the two don't have anything to do with each other (one map is two-dimensional, the other is three-dimensional; the names don't match; system positions don't match either; one has systems with one planet each, the other has multiple-planet-systems; etc. pp.).

It's two unrelated games. But David Braben (who is one of the two creators of Elite) wanted Frontier to be understood as a sequel. And Ian Bell (who is the other guy who created Elite, so his word counts equally) disagrees. The evidence is clearly on Bell's side.

However, there are many players who played Frontier, and were okay with it being a sequel to Elite. For them the two games take place in the same universe. So they made efforts to reconcile the contradictions which result from the two different universes. One heroic effort is the work of Selezen which Drew linked to. It consists mainly of a timeline which tries to place the events in Elite and Frontier in a logical and sensitive relation to each other. As an added bonus it even fits in Oolite (which is not exactly the same as Elite).

So, if you're of the opinion that Elite and Frontier are related, Selezens work gives you a grip on exactly how they are related.

However, nobody needs to be of the opinion that Elite and Frontier are related, and would be in good company (Ian Bell).

Our own community here is fairly equally divided between those who think of Elite, Oolite, and Frontier as one continuity, those who see the continuity between Elite and Oolite but disregard Frontier, and those who simply don't care as long as they get to blow up stuff. And we generally don't feel the need to get into flame wars about it.

Canon is what each player accepts as canon. For most of us that includes everything from Elite (the game; whatever version you played back then), its printed (or online) manual, and The Dark Wheel (the novella that came with Elite). Everything else is personal choice, and some youngsters who never knew any version of Elite or The Dark Wheel wouldn't even necessarily accept them as a minimum.

In other words: you are totally free, as far as "canon" is concerned. And the only thing everybody can agree with is that there is no agreement. But that doesn't stop us from having a lot of fun.

[DaddyHoggy]

Well said, Cmdr McL!

EDIT: When I first got Frontier - I immediately decided to start at Lave with a Cobra Mk 3 - of course it doesn't take long to realise that you have to pay a massive fine to get out of these few recognisable systems - which invariably had to be done by downgrading to something smaller - paying your way out, and then realising that the old Elite ships were massively under performing compared to the new Frontier ships.

(and thus you start again with your Eagle where DB wanted you to start in the first place)

[drew]

Except for the fact that my Frontier box (yes I've still got it) clearly say 'Elite II' on it.

I prefer to see it as a unified mess, much as Selezen does. There's little enough canon, and we're doing our best to preserve it.

Why? Why not?

For me, there is too much commonality to be ignored. Shared ships, shared planets, shared tech, shared baddies (Thargoids, police - take your pick!). Unless it's a parallel universe (yawn - I hate plot devices) then there's a reason, albeit not a good one, why Elite > Oolite > Frontier > First Encounters in some kind of whacky timeline.

We've done our best to string this all together into a meaningful whole, and we're damned if we're going to stop now.

Dammit Jim, I'm a writer, not an existential nihilist!

Cheers

Drew.

[Phantom Hoover]

Unless it's a parallel universe (yawn - I hate plot devices)

But you yourself have used parallel universes as plot devices!

[DaddyHoggy]

Unless it's a parallel universe (yawn - I hate plot devices)

But you yourself have used parallel universes as plot devices!

Tsk, Writer's maxim - do as I say, not, do as I do...

[drew]

Am I a hypocrite? Perhaps...

In my defense m'lud (and trying to be relevant to this thread) Raxxla was already defined as a 'parallel universe' type thing before I got to it, so I can argue I had no choice once I determined to write a story about Raxxla. So that 'parallel universe' isn't really a plot-device per se, it's actually the subject matter.

Exhibit 1; Excerpt from 'The Dark Wheel'

Rafe chuckled and shook his head. 'You see, that's the big question. Your father was chasing the mythical planet Raxxla. Does it exist, or does it not? If it does, then on Raxxla there's an alien construct that's a gateway to other Universes, and all that's in those Universes in the way of bounty, and treasures, and aliens, and life . . .

Parallel universes I'm easy with as long as they're not employed as an 'easy way out' of a difficult plot conundrum.

Classic plot-device examples are:

It was all a dream!
Just as well we could go back in time and change it all with this handy timechanger.
Wow, it just exploded for no apparent reason! Phew.
Oh, it was all a holodeck simulation.

Saying Elite and Frontier et al are just in 'parallel universes' *is* a plot-device, as it's a cheap and unthoughtful way out of a problem, and lacking in imagination. Far more entertaining to try to figure out how Elite could have morphed into FFE via Oolite and Frontier.

Cheers,

Drew.

[Cody]

Far more entertaining to try to figure out how Elite could have morphed into FFE via Oolite and Frontier.

Even in an imaginary universe, morphing from ‘non-newtonian’ to ‘newtonian’ is a good trick.

[drew]

Far more entertaining to try to figure out how Elite could have morphed into FFE via Oolite and Frontier.

Even in an imaginary universe, morphing from ‘non-newtonian’ to ‘newtonian’ is a good trick.

All you need is a set of 'Newtonian Flight Baffles', job done.

To quote Mike Okuda of Star Trek fame, when quizzed on how the inertia dampeners and heizenburg compensators worked on the U.S.S. Enterprise...

"Very well indeed."

Damn, was that a plot-device, or not? I'm getting confused...

Cheers,

Drew.

[Cody]

All you need is a set of 'Newtonian Flight Baffles', job done.

Of course... how could I have forgotten about the 'Newtonian Flight Baffles'?

[Micha]

Exhibit 1; Excerpt from 'The Dark Wheel'

Rafe chuckled and shook his head. 'You see, that's the big question. Your father was chasing the mythical planet Raxxla. Does it exist, or does it not? If it does, then on Raxxla there's an alien construct that's a gateway to other Universes, and all that's in those Universes in the way of bounty, and treasures, and aliens, and life . . .

I read that as being a (set of) gateway(s) (ie, Wormhole(s)) to (an)other Universe(s) as in, set(s) of Galaxy maps, rather than actual parallel universes (universii?).
I mean, the "Galaxy" maps aren't really actual galaxies as we understand them, rather they are space sectors.

Easy to interpret things differently, isn't it?

FWIW, I subscribe to Elite != Frontier/FFE.

[Killer Wolf]

"When David Braben wanted to create a sequel to Elite, he took over a completely different game, and merely squeezed in a handful of Elite planet names, in order to make it (extremely superficiously) look as if the Frontier universe were the same as the Elite universe. And that's it. If you look at the maps only for a second, it is immediately obvious that the two don't have anything to do with each other (one map is two-dimensional, the other is three-dimensional; the names don't match; system positions don't match either; one has systems with one planet each, the other has multiple-planet-systems; etc. pp.). "

but to be fair, a lot of Elite MIGHT have been this had the hardware been available w/ this capabilities. Like saying Oolite is not ELite because we've got fully textured and shadered ships etc.
in all things, flims etc, sequels benefit from better stuff having been developed in the meantime so the next part of the story can be done the way it was envisioned etc. whether that results in a good sequel or not is an entirely different argument.
far as i see it, Frontier IS canon, it's the story pushed on xx years and in a different part of the universe. FFE box specifically says it's pushing the story on 50 years too, so that makes that canon too.

[DaddyHoggy]

Reasonable argument KW, but that doesn't make it Canon, it makes it clever marketing...

I accepted at the time that Frontier was a follow on from Elite and that somewhere in one of the Frontier manuals there's talk of an unusual area of space where these single planet/sun systems were created. Which I didn't need, to be honest, as I'd always presumed in my teens while playing Elite that each system was just the one habitable/trading planet in each system and that the computer had clever removed all of the other non-visitable planets from my scanner/viewport. (This is reasonable when you think at the moment that the Sol system has only one trading planet...)