I, personally, don't like Harve Bennett's idea to upend Khan's ending from "Space Seed", but I can't argue that his outsider's perspective is what kept Star Trek from dying in the early '80s. Not from lack of interest from the fans, but Paramount not wanting to take the gamble. Might not have gotten The Next Generation or everything that came after. Just some more novels and comics, probably. And, I know it's not everyone's opinion, but I found the best TNG to be the stuff we got under Maurey Hurley's watch -- late first season through second. He was brought in because he was a good producer -- same as Harve, over in the movies. The writers' room, full of Star Trek fans, hated him, because he kept rewriting their scripts so they adhered to the dictates of Gene, that he saw it as his job to enforce, whether he agreed with them or not. Heck, this goes all the way back to the Original Series. Harlan Ellison was angry for the rest of his life that his script for "City on the Edge of Forever" got heavily rewritten. His draft was a good and compelling story... but not good Star Trek. I'd've loved to see his script adapted into a standalone work, but I firmly stand by the rightness of the rewrite.
Star Wars needs that. As inconsistent as Gene and George have been over their lives without realizing it (Gene had recognized that he'd evolved as a person, but didn't believe it had changed his take on Star Trek, as a reflection of his own mind), they were still the Final Say. Even with the shifting view of those created worlds over the decades, it was still a more consistent vision than even one person removed. Harve and Gene clashed constantly, to the point Paramount kicked Gene off his own creation. Maurey got so sick of Gene's lack of consistency he ended up quitting. But Star Wars has never had anything like that. Not even, really, George.
Star Wars was part George, but the final film we saw was Marcia's. Empire was part George, but the final film we got was majority the blend of Leigh, Larry, and Irv. Jedi was the most unfiltered George, and I think it suffered for it. It's been pointed out lots of times over they years, but it's a matter of basic storytelling structure. In Star Wars, all the plot threads converge on the battle over the Death Star. In Empire, all the plot threads converge on Cloud City and Luke's failed attempt to save his friends. In Jedi, we spend the entire third act bouncing between the land battle, the space battle, and Luke's tribulation.
Then the Prequels happened, and much of what we got there is Rick. He's the one who convinced George to do them. He's the one who convinced George the saga was the story of the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. He was involed heavily all the way through the trilogy. And whatever he brought to the equation, it wasn't narrative clarity. TPM was even worse than Jedi -- four separate plot threads taking up the last act of the film, not coming together until the coda.
In a real sense, Dave and Jon are the most consistent, coherent vision guiding Star Wars ever.
There was none in the early ancillary fiction. There are contradictions between them, between them and the films... By the '90s, the licensing division was making sure the new stuff that came out didn't contradict each other, earlier works, or the films -- which has led to some annoying misinterpretations being perpetuated and canonized. When the Story Group was formed, it was still from a point of view of making sure all the proposed content coming though was in agreement with each other and the extant canon, and not from creating that content themselves. With the exception of Shadows of the Empire (which should never have been a thing), there was no single vision directing the EU -- it was just author after author showing up and going, "Hey -- I have this idea..."
Same holds true now. Kathleen is a businessperson. She enjoys Star Wars, but doesn't "get" it, knows she doesn't, and doesn't presume to dictate. But the problem is, she's missed the final step of that chain -- recognizing that someone needs to. So the post-Disney-sale content, while all on the same level of canon, still lack a consistent overseeing vision. So the books and comics and games are just spooling out stories, and running into the same problem as the old EU -- the adventures Our Heroes are up to are cramming the timeline wall to wall. They never get two seconds to catch their breath. One narrow escape into the next crisis into the following upheaval into... *sigh*
