Shadow Toa battle

Hello!

In the BC1: Tales of the Toa, The Shadow Toa were defeated by the Toa Mata by changing the opponents which was considered non-canon because of the Encyclopedia.
In the Encyclopedia, the Shadow Toa were simply defeated by absorbed by the Toa Mata.

Couldn’t it be possible that after the Toa defeated the Shadow Toa as Hapka wrote in the BC1, the Shadow Toa reappeared and were absorbed as it’s written in the encyclopedia? Meaning that both versions are canon and Hapka’s battle description could be a prequel to the final ending of the Shadow Toa and the final confrontation with Teridax? the same thing happened in the Manas fight (MNOG - Hapka book mixture).

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No, because once defeated, there would be no way for them to come back.

But they were only shadow projetions of themselves weren’t they? And the shadows can regenerate and so the Shadow Toa could do this before their absorbtion. (They did when their respective Toa Mata attacked them in the BC1)

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The reason Hapka’s version is not canon is that it came from an outdated story bible. I’m not going to canonize something that didn’t even make it into the final story bible for that year.

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This is branching off a bit into a different question, but could you elaborate on what an outdated story bible would be? Was Hapka referencing a story bible produced in 2001, or 2003? Was the Bionicle bible for 01 frequently revised, and if so, what do you consider the “original” story bible for when people ask you questions regarding it?

Thank you!

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Story bibles are like movie scripts, they get revised a lot before they are final. Cathy was working from an earlier version of the '01 bible, not the final. One of the challenges she faced was that she had to work from the material she was given and didn’t really have the ownership of the universe to be able to take things in her own direction.

If you ever read a movie novelization, you’ll find they often differ from the actual movie, because they are written from earlier versions of the script.

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But what happened in the movie novelizations and weren’t seen in the movies and don’t contradict with the storyline can happen/or more likely often happen/ off-screen like the Lohrak fight from the LoMN book and the Rahkshi’s breakout from Kopaka’s ice from the MoL novel.

There are slight differences there. In the case of the BIONICLE movie novelizations, stuff was added in to help clarify things that were omitted in the movie or to help get the book to the right length. There were certainly instances of things in those books where they were based off old scripts, and things changed later.

In general, if a scene winds up on the cutting room floor, though, it is not considered to have happened. Otherwise, it would be mandatory that you watch deleted scenes to understand what happened in the film.

In this case you are dealing with a contradiction between versions of how the Shadow Toa got defeated. One is accurate, and one isn’t.

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