I know it isn't canon but I thoroughly enjoy it and highly recommend it to any Trekkie with an open mind. Agree?
The Animated Series
- Thread starter JeffinOakland
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Actually, although The Animated Series status has been a matter of much debate for decades, the current official line out of CBS/Paramount is that TAS is 100% canon.
Things such as the Star Trek magazine do articles based on it all the time, after decades of keeping a very 'hands off' approach to it. Having said that, I too have always considered it canon, and have never understood the fuss made about it (in my mind it's the final two years of the original "five year mission"
)
Well, whatever. I don't really "care" if its canon or not. I'm not a fanboy, just a fan.
Just to clarify: The only time TAS was considered "not canon" was for a couple of years around 1989-91. For one thing, Filmation had gone bankrupt and it was unclear who held the rights to TAS, so Paramount preferred to distance themselves from it. For another thing, Roddenberry at that late stage in his life had become very jealous of his ownership of Star Trek and was systematically shutting out everyone else's contributions (which is why D.C. Fontana didn't get the TNG co-creator credit she was entitled to as the co-writer of the series pilot). Since TAS had been Fontana's show rather than his, he wanted to marginalize it (even though he'd been its executive producer and it was the only part of the Trek franchise that he ever had full, unfettered creative control over). So Roddenberry issued a 1989 memo clarifying what was canon, and TAS was excluded.
But Roddenberry died in 1991, and the rights issue was resolved with Paramount Television Studios (now called CBS Studios) owning the rights to the entire franchise, including TAS. Pretty much ever since, it's been just as canonical as anything else, getting occasionally referenced in shows and films (particularly the events of "Yesteryear," but also the name Klothos for Kor's battlecruiser and a few other subtle nods) and frequently referenced in tie-in novels and comics, as well as being included in the "canon-only" reference sources Memory Alpha and StarTrek.com. The "TAS isn't canon" notion has been a dead letter for over two decades at this point, yet for some reason it lingers in fandom.
But Roddenberry died in 1991, and the rights issue was resolved with Paramount Television Studios (now called CBS Studios) owning the rights to the entire franchise, including TAS. Pretty much ever since, it's been just as canonical as anything else, getting occasionally referenced in shows and films (particularly the events of "Yesteryear," but also the name Klothos for Kor's battlecruiser and a few other subtle nods) and frequently referenced in tie-in novels and comics, as well as being included in the "canon-only" reference sources Memory Alpha and StarTrek.com. The "TAS isn't canon" notion has been a dead letter for over two decades at this point, yet for some reason it lingers in fandom.
Yes, it's a weird situation.
I am heartened by the fact that, like I say, the official Star Trek magazine now frequently uses the animated series as source material for articles, which would have been somewhat of a touchy subject even as recently as a decade ago. I think many of us have definitely embraced it with open arms now.
Of course, spin-off media have unabashedly used TAS and its unique characters for decades. Novels and comics featuring Arex and M'Ress, etc. So whatever it's so-called 'official' status was, there have always been people willing to accept it... they just didn't have an official word on the matter until CBS finally declared it fully canon with the DVD release.
I am heartened by the fact that, like I say, the official Star Trek magazine now frequently uses the animated series as source material for articles, which would have been somewhat of a touchy subject even as recently as a decade ago. I think many of us have definitely embraced it with open arms now.
Of course, spin-off media have unabashedly used TAS and its unique characters for decades. Novels and comics featuring Arex and M'Ress, etc. So whatever it's so-called 'official' status was, there have always been people willing to accept it... they just didn't have an official word on the matter until CBS finally declared it fully canon with the DVD release.
I think it's because the "It's NOT canon" was an actual edict from Roddenberry himself. And, correct me if I'm wrong, I want to say that this edict was also established in several official non-fiction Trek books at the time.
However, when TAS was officially put back into canon, there was no fanfare or announcement that I can recall.
There was a surefire "TAS is out" edict, but as far as I remember, no surefire "TAS is back" memo. And if there was, it didn't come from an established Trek person, (again, correct me if I'm wrong), like Rick Berman or JJ Abrams or whoever might've been in charge.
So I think that's probably why I think some Trek fans still assume it's not canon.
It came from startrek.com (the official website), after extensive consultion with the fandom themselves via the internet (who suggested they *wanted* it declared as canon).
Admittedly, as far as edicts coming down on stone tablets from the almighty go, it's probably sketchy on those grounds. But bugger it, TAS is Star Trek as far as I'm concerned.
The DVD set, for what it's worth, has a little note in the episode booklet basically saying "Here are the episodes, make up your own mind".
Admittedly, as far as edicts coming down on stone tablets from the almighty go, it's probably sketchy on those grounds. But bugger it, TAS is Star Trek as far as I'm concerned.
The DVD set, for what it's worth, has a little note in the episode booklet basically saying "Here are the episodes, make up your own mind".
Granted, but that's because most people in the industry don't even consider canon an issue. Canon is mostly a concern of the fans. Whatever gets created by the owners of the franchise is the canon by definition; they don't have to think about it any more than fish have to think about water. The term is really only defined in comparison to secondary materials like tie-ins and fanfiction; canon is that which is not those things. The term originated in Sherlock Holmes fandom as a label for the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as opposed to other Holmes tales by other authors.
So creators only have to bother with the concept of canon when they're addressing the status of supplementary and tie-in materials -- e.g. Lucasfilm addressing whether Star Wars novels, comics, and cartoons counted as part of the core universe. Roddenberry's '89 canon memo was largely in reference to tie-in books and comics; when TNG came along, a lot of fans were surprised or upset that it contradicted what the novels had established about the Klingons and Romulans and the like, and so the memo was put out to clarify the distinction between the core screen material and the secondary print material. And since the ownership of TAS was up in the air at that point, and since various people including Roddenberry had a poor opinion of its quality, that was lumped into the "not canon" pile as well.
But once Roddenberry was out of the picture and the legal status of TAS was resolved, nobody else in the industry really bothered to think about canon labeling, since canon is usually something that only the fans think about. They just took it for granted that it counted.
Still, I have to wonder why fans need an official announcement when we've had clear references to TAS elements in episodes like "Unification" and "Once More Unto the Breach" and when the Spock childhood scenes in the 2009 movie were a practical remake of scenes from "Yesteryear." The onscreen evidence itself shows that TAS counts; what further announcement is needed?
Again, there is no situation. There hasn't been for over two decades. There is nobody alive today in any official role at CBS or Paramount who considers TAS to be non-canonical.
Besides, what difference would it make? All of Star Trek is equally imaginary. None of it "really happened." It's just stories for our entertainment. So all that matters is whether you like the stories or not. You're not an employee of CBS or Paramount, so you wouldn't have to follow their instructions even if they did still exclude TAS. And even if they did exclude it, that wouldn't mean you were forbidden to watch and enjoy it. It would just mean that the people who wrote new Trek stories wouldn't be bound by its content. It would have nothing to do with your freedom as a private citizen to watch whatever TV shows you wanted.
Well, again, it goes to Roddenberry---the creator---saying it wasn't canon. I don't think there would've been confusion if Gene hadn't made it a point to declare it non-canon in the first place.
It's a matter of clarification, especially since the literature of the time also declared it apocryphal, or non-canon. And then suddenly, it's canon. For those of us, like myself, that grew up with TAS being declared non-canon by the leading authority on Star Trek himself, it creates a sort of cognitive dissonance.
As much as I admire and respect much of Gene's positive qualities, he dropped the ball here as far as I'm concerned.
The thing is, the term "canon" was never really heard in fandom prior to 1989, but tie-ins before then were often inconsistent on whether they referenced TAS or not. There was no uniform policy one way or the other, but a lot of novelists had never even seen TAS, because they'd missed it in its original run and it was rarely seen in syndication, and this was before its home video release. So some novels disregarded TAS, whether deliberately or from lack of awareness of it, while others acknowledged it overtly. And there were debates among fans about whether it should count or not. I remember coming across a discussion of this in the letters page of a DC Trek comic -- IIRC, editor Robert Greenberger said that he wanted to count TAS, while the comic's writer Mike Barr preferred to ignore it.
I think attitudes are different now because TAS is more easily available along with the rest of Trek, so it's not seen as an obscure sidebar like it used to be.
Honestly, during the era of the '89 memo, I don't recall whether the novels clearly discounted TAS's existence in any way. They didn't reference it, but they were under a lot of continuity restrictions at the time, forbidden to reference one another or anything beyond the live-action canon, so none of them really established enough about the broader continuity of the universe to make it clear whether TAS had happened or not.
Besides, the biggest TAS reference in later onscreen Trek was in "Unification" in 1991, when Sarek talked about the events and concepts of "Yesteryear" in his reminiscences about Spock's childhood. That was just a couple of years after the memo, and it was written and shot before Roddenberry died, and while his assistant Richard Arnold was still employed at Paramount and imposing his rigid restrictions on the tie-ins. So the actual onscreen canon was acknowledging TAS at the same time that the tie-ins were under orders to ignore it. Which forced the Star Trek Chronology to handwave about TAS not counting except for some aspects of "Yesteryear."
Really, the whole thing was Roddenberry and Arnold's vendetta. They were the only ones who had any real desire to exclude TAS, and their opinions were only binding on tie-ins, not on the show itself, as "Unification" proved.
Well, as we've since learned, Roddenberry also considered most of the later movies to be apocryphal, and apparently he even wanted to decanonize parts of the original series. He approached TNG as a sort of soft reboot, acknowledging some aspects of prior canon but avoiding or retconning many others. And his TMP novelization pretty much declared that TOS had been an inaccurate and somewhat fictionalized dramatization of the "real" story, with TMP being a more authentic account; he probably intended TNG to be the same, a revised draft of the Trek universe superseding the rough draft of TOS. To some extent it was about quality, wanting to distance Trek from the parts that had been silly or implausible or not well-regarded; but I've come to believe it was largely about ego, about Roddenberry wanting to hoard Star Trek to himself and push aside anyone else's contributions to the franchise. The only parts of the Trek franchise he did consider canonical at that point were the ones he'd personally created or overseen, and not even all of those.
One of the most damning things Roddenberry ever said about TAS was that one time he claimed he never would have made it if he ever knew that Star Trek might come back as live-action one day.
His misgivings, perhaps only in retrospect, changes nothing about the fact that he *did* make it, though.
In my mind, there's no doubt about TAS being true Star Trek. It tastes like true Star Trek (albeit cut down to handy, bite-sized half-hour morsels). Some animated adaptations of live-action material take great liberties with their source, whether it's giving the main characters a goofy comic relief sidekick, having them do things that would be out-of-character in the original, using different voice actors to those who played the roles originally, whatever -- but TAS never suffered from any of this. It was written by original series script writers, produced by the original creator alongside one of the series' most popular writers, the original main actors came back to play their roles, and the universe of the animated show remained completely consistent with what had already been established in the live-action version.
To me, it's always been a part of proper Star Trek. Even before it got 'officially' declared as such.
His misgivings, perhaps only in retrospect, changes nothing about the fact that he *did* make it, though.
In my mind, there's no doubt about TAS being true Star Trek. It tastes like true Star Trek (albeit cut down to handy, bite-sized half-hour morsels). Some animated adaptations of live-action material take great liberties with their source, whether it's giving the main characters a goofy comic relief sidekick, having them do things that would be out-of-character in the original, using different voice actors to those who played the roles originally, whatever -- but TAS never suffered from any of this. It was written by original series script writers, produced by the original creator alongside one of the series' most popular writers, the original main actors came back to play their roles, and the universe of the animated show remained completely consistent with what had already been established in the live-action version.
To me, it's always been a part of proper Star Trek. Even before it got 'officially' declared as such.
The same way the live action contradictions can be reconciled.
Easy: Magicks of Megas-Tu is legtimate, whereas TFF was a bad hallucination experienced by Kirk after he fell from El Capitain and bumped his head on a rock, necessitating that Bones drug him up with something (possibly illegal) from his kit bag.
Or to put it another way: Magicks of Megas-Tu features the *real* devil, but The Final Frontier only has a false god.
Or to put it another way: Magicks of Megas-Tu features the *real* devil, but The Final Frontier only has a false god.
It's a myth that "canon" means "every single part counts." Canon just means the original, core body of work as distinct from derivative works like fanfiction and licensed tie-ins. Any long-running canon will contradict or disregard parts of itself. There are multiple live-action Trek episodes that are ignored by later episodes. "The Alternative Factor" interprets antimatter and dilithium in a way that contradicts what earlier TOS episodes had already established (e.g. claiming that an antimatter reaction would destroy the universe, when "The Naked Time" had already established that antimatter reactions powered the ship), and it has been ignored/contradicted by all subsequent Trek productions. DS9's portrayal of the Trill race contradicted or retconned most of what TNG's "The Host" had established about them (their appearance, their inability to use transporters, the hosts' total lack of individual personality, etc.). VGR: "Threshold" portrayed transwarp in a ridiculous way that the producers themselves later disowned and ignored; even its own writer declared the episode apocryphal. And both "Megas-tu" and TFF were contradicted by the consistent assumption in TNG (primarily "The Nth Degree"), DS9, and VGR that it would take decades to cross any large swath of the galaxy on warp drive.
Then there are all the little continuity glitches like Data routinely using contractions before it was declared that he never did, or Deanna repeatedly kissing Riker with a beard and then saying in Insurrection that she'd never kissed him with a beard.
So being part of the canon doesn't make any story binding. A canon is a story being made up as it goes, and it sometimes rewrites itself and ignores bits and pieces of itself. Yes, there are parts of individual episodes of TAS that have been contradicted by later episodes and films, but the same is true of the live-action shows and movies.
Who cares if its canon? its a children's cartoon. Its fun. Its ok to have fun and not worry about sinning against the Trek Gods. Just watch the tv show.
Christopher is correct. All "canon" means is that the creators consider it official. That's why novels and comics aren't canon, because CBS has not decreed them as such. However, CBS could backpedal tomorrow and state they are canon, and we'd have to accept that because that's what the creators say.
And TAS's contradictions to other Trek shows & movies are no different than any other contradictions.
And TAS's contradictions to other Trek shows & movies are no different than any other contradictions.
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