Cannonising the Kelvin

You asked for four canon ships with a zero preceeding the registry, I gave you 4. Are you ignoring that reply because it doesn't fit in with your argument?

 

I'll ignore the rather twisted view of canon that's been offered up and simply offer up these findings, which I think is what the OP is looking for....






There are a few things I'd do a bit differently with the secondary hull, like shifting those markings on the lower surface to the upper, but otherwise, I could definitely live with this.

In fact, I may just kitbash this sucker one of these days.

 

Are you calling it a "twisted view" because it doesn't fit your version of canon? You're re-posting those pictures to support the original poster's attempt to "canonize" the ship, which is fine, but since those particular pictures are nothing more than fan art, they don't really back up anything.

The wallpapers of the Kelvin posted by Tobias Richter of The Light Works, while still considered just "fan art", are closer to canonical since they more directly reflect the design we'll see in the movie.

And, like I said in my last post, I think we've come to the point where people waving the canon flag are just saying "Star Trek is *this*" while another person waving the same flag is saying "No, Star Trek is *that*". It doesn't matter what Mr.'s Abrams, Orci, Nimoy, or anyone else says; fans are going to believe what they want to believe.

 

The "twisted" aspect I was referring to was the citing of fanfic and FASA material.

 

Ahh, okay. Sorry if I seemed a bit caustic with my reply; that wasn't my intent.

I've always had an issue with the concept of canon. I've read things in the books and the RPG material that make me think, "Man, that's pretty cool stuff. I wish this was considered canon!" But the limitations set by...hmm...actually, come to think of it, I don't remember who set those limits. Can anyone refresh my memory on that? I'm sure it wasn't just us fans; it had to be someone in a position of authority related to Star Trek that decided what is "real" Trek and what isn't.

Sometimes I wish Trek "canon" could be done the way Star Wars handles theirs. Their books are officially endorsed by Lucasfilm, making whatever is written in them "official" canon.

Sorry; I know I'm off-topic, but since we're talking about "canonizing" the Kelvin, the debate kinda goes hand-in-hand.

 

As far as the novels go, there are too many contradictory stories going on. How many different fates for the Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident" have been published? Not fanfic, but officially licensed novels from either Bantam or Pocket? Or backstories for any of the characters? It was just simpler to lob off all of the novels, even Roddenberry's own TMP novelization, than to sort through the literally hundreds of novels and try to pick and choose which one fits, which one is rubbish, etc. And don't even get me started on the various comic books.

And note that Jeri Taylor's Voyager novels ceased to be canon once she left the show.

It's really a very simple rule: Only what made it onscreen counts. And for the writers, don't contradict what came before, with the proviso for the more advanced players, unless you can come up with a really compelling reason to make the previous writer a liar, or you can figure out a way around what came before so that it really isn't a contradiction. And it's really not any more demanding than any other show, so I don't see what the big problem is in sticking to the established record.

Where it gets dicey is when you start trying to toss out stuff that was actually onscreen, which is apparently what was going on when Richard Arnold was doing his master's bidding, and apparently got a little carried away. As has been discussed elsewhere, TAS was never actually decanonized, just put off limits for a while due to the legal issues of the shutdown of Filmation. Once that was resolved, the TAS references came flowing in. As for dumping the third season of TOS and every movie except TMP, I don't think anyone took that seriously, even Roddenberry.

And as far as TFF goes, I still like the notion that the whole thing was a drunken ghost story told around the campfire. It would certainly explain certain bizzare aspects of the story.

 

Star Trek canon – The mechanism by which certain people fulfill their desperate need to separate what is “real” from what isn’t in the Star Trek universe while totally ignoring the fact that all of it is made-up.

 

Wrong. Whether something is part of the official "Star Trek" continuity - which folks insist on calling "canon" - has not a thing to do with whether it is consistent with other parts of the official continuity. The only working definition of "canon" is that a thing appears in a live-action "Star Trek" TV series or movie produced by Paramount.

What you mean is that the leading "0" makes it inconsistent with other registries. Well, a lot of things in Trek canon are inconsistent with other things in the canon. This will just be one more.

What is and isn't "canon" is not a matter of my opinion or yours. Paramount is the only entity that can define it, and they define it haphazardly and for their own convenience.

Everything in the new "Star Trek" film will be part of the official Trek canon. People don't have to like that or approve of it for it to be so.

Star Trek canon - a point for arguments by which certain people attempt to assert authority which they don't actually possess to determine...well, to determine nothing that's really at all important.

After all, no matter how tightly someone feels they've argued in favor of or against including a factoid in whatever they consider to be the "Star Trek universe" any other person is entirely free to ignore their argument - as Samuel T. Cogley's response points out.

There are many things which are canonical parts of Paramount's official "Star Trek" productions, and all that means is that those things will be used or referred to in future by producers and writers and designers to the extent that they have a use for them and/or the extent to which the studio insists that they should be part of a production.

 

just to be clear, I added the 60s style ships to the article on TrekMovie because I thought they were interesting. However, as has been pointed out, the USS Kelvin is as 'real' as a heart attack...just ask Captain Robau (if he doesn't kill you for even asking him).

The irony is that a TOS style Kelvin is actually less canon, since the Kelvin is from a generation before TOS (it was launched, in the Prime canon universe, before Kirk was born). It sits between ENT and TOS, kind of like the Enterprise C sits between the TOS movie era and TNG. So a TOS style Kelvin could only be a successor or refit of the original (and very canon) Kelvin we will see in the Star Trek movie.

So the OP is not 'canonizing' the Kelvin, he is TOSing a Kelvin (a different ship) and 'fanonizing' a history...and that is all