What is your Personal Canon?

The only way there would be an issue of canon is if CBS told a licensee that they can't produce any merchandise or tie-ins to something.

Everything else is an issue of continuity.

 

Whatever a character says on screen, it is canon that they said it, however that doesn't mean what they said is true within the Star Trek universe. Example when Quark says that the Vulcan didn't re-establish warp flight until the 20th century is false, Quark thought it was true, and it is canon that he said it.



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Surely Wrath of Khan and everything after until TNG comes under the same umbrella, since Starfleet officers in that era wear similar militaristic dress uniforms but while on regular regular duty?

 

I ascribe them to there being multiple races in an interstellar empire.

Not everybody in Starfleet looks the same either.

 

Anything produced up to and inclusive of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is in my personal continuity of Star Trek. As the years go by I am less and less of a fan of what came after that.

 

But doesn't Kor look like himself?

 

Agree.

 

But that John De Lancie tag along link I posted earlier rocks (at least before consoles took over gaming).

 

I think of anything on-screen as being canon.

I sometimes enjoy thinking of the relaunch novels as canon too, but because of how they are made it's difficult.

 

If it's on screen, its canon. As far as I'm concerned. All six shows including TAS, and all of the movies. NuTrek is as canon as any of the Mirror Universe episodes. I appreciate that they attempted to tie them together with the rest of the ST universe, via Nimoy's presence.

I like to include some of the relaunch novels too, such as the TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT relaunches. For those who just can't let go of the 24th century storyline. And a few of the video games I like to include as well.

 

I don't recall that Gene Roddenberry was excited about these militaristic overtones and the violence in general that unfolded with TWOK.

The thing with nuTrek for me is that when I saw all those scenes with parade uniforms, the hangar assembly etc. the opening fanfare from "Starship Troopers" came to my mind with everybody saying "I'm doing my part". A really cool addition is the UFP cogwheel flag, so I'm seriously considering editing a youtube video with the sounds and music from "Starship Troopers" but with images from nuTrek. Sounds like fun.

Bob

 

I'd like to disavow STV the movie and Voyager's Threshold.

 

Can we get rid of Masks and (yawn) Inner Light too?

 

Inner Light?! No. Well, you can. More for the rest of us.

(Not sure how that would work, really, but still - MORE FOR US.)

 

"If it's on the screen it's canon."

I like that.

Kirk died in the NCC1701-B, Picard hallucinated all the 2nd half of Generations, everybody else died. It's all there on the screen.

 

TOS - Canon! What a campy, FUN introduction to the STAR TREK universe!
TAS - Not Canon.
TOS MOVIES - Canon!
TNG - Canon! It is, after all, the truest interpretation of Gene Roddenberry's bold vision for the future of Humanity! Every utterance and activity is absolute gospel.
TNG MOVIES - Canon!
DS9 - Canon up until Michael Dorn insinuates himself into the proceedings and DS9 keeps trying to be more like TNG!
VOY - Canon when it's KesFULL! A matter of opinion once it's KesLESS! I think Seven's charming, but you have to get to know her. Otherwise, she reminds me of a buggy-eyed, skanky ho in her painted on tights.
ENT - Seasons 3 & 4 Canon!

 

When I imagine what a bad acid trip would be like, it would probably be "Masks".

 

I personally haven't seen every incarnation of Star Trek enough that my mind requires me to reconcile my own sense of canon or continuity. I've been through the complete series of TOS, ENT, VOY and DS9 exactly one time. I've probably seen most TNG episodes a few times due to their continued replay on t.v. I pretty much absorb what I am watching and move on.

I am currently working my way through the novels going all the way back to the early numbered pocket books. Continuity kind of stretches and bends a little bit in those early TOS novels but as long as it stays consistent in that particular story I don't mind. Some of the newer novels I have read have opted to go back and tie up loose threads either through a "Lost Era" type story or a mini sequel to a particular episode. Sometimes these are so subtle that I am not even aware the writer is doing it. I started using Memory Beta to jog my memory so I can appreciate what the writer is trying to do. Trying to weave this giant tapestry out of all the shows, movies and novels seems overwhelming and exhausting to me. I have always enjoyed consuming Star Trek one series, story arc, episode, or book at a time.

This is not a knock on those that want things to fit nicely. I know people like the timeliners, fan fiction/fan production enthusiasts and the professional TrekLit writer's themselves either need to or enjoy trying to reconcile the Star Trek universe.

 

Yes, yes I do have preferences when it comes to my "historical documents." Definitely. (Nods in deference to That Guy. Thank you for Being That Guy. Continuity it is.)

TOS is the core of my favored Trek continuity, and not even all of TOS: I am more than happy to pretend that Turnabout Intruder and The Alternative Factor simply never happened. TMP and TWOK are the core of my favored movie franchise continuity, especially the latter.

Spoiler: Reason

(Reason: This was the Trek universe in some ways at its cheesiest, but also for my money at its freshest, when it felt the most "open" and adventurous.)

The TOS movie franchise post-TWOK -- especially but not solely TFF -- are adapted memoirs penned by Kirk after a breakdown occasioned by the events of The Wrath of Khan forced his retirement.

Spoiler: Reason

(Reason: TSFS onward was when the movies began to suck, relatively speaking -- TVH was the high point of the period but even there the sentimentalism had gotten cloying -- and this really would explain so much about the specific patterns of illogic that occurred.)

TNG and DS9 depict a possible future or parallel universe of TOS. VOY is a popular fanfic written by Kathryn Janeway (who in her real life was perhaps a filing clerk or something). ENT is The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, describing an alternate timeline of no significance at all. The TNG movie franchise is an extended nightmare experienced by Patrick Stewart after eating some bad salmon.

Spoiler: Reasons

(Reasons: I liked a lot about TNG and DS9 -- they're the Trek I most directly "grew up with" on regular broadcast television -- but they haven't aged as well as I'd like, TNG's ultra-sanitized Federation and the overall prevalence of Klingon Klaptrap in particular. VOY was Trek of this era starting to decay into irrelevance and ENT was its complete collapse. The TNG movie franchise was mostly in retrospect an ill-conceived series of attempts to make Big Dumb Action movies with a cast that wasn't suited to them.)

NuTrek is the result of a holodeck malfunction that spontaneously combined elements of TOS and Captain Proton with, for reasons unknown, copious lens flares and product placements from the early 21st century.

Spoiler: Reasons

(Reasons: They're somewhat interesting as a glimpse of what Star Wars movies would look like dressed up as Trek movies, but the Abrams movies are not particularly interesting as Trek and, IMO, will ultimately prove a blind alley.)