Head Canon

[Mr. Laser Beam]

... the word you are looking for is CONTINUITY, not CANON.

The words you are looking for are "personal canon," verse "CBS Television canon."

"Personal canon" IS continuity.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^ As has been pointed out several times, the word you are looking for is CONTINUITY, not CANON.

We should say continuity instead of canon

Is that canon?

I think it's fair to say that at this point, the word "canon" has become synonymous with "continuity", at least within the realm of popular fiction, whatever it originally meant.

 

[BillJ]

^ As has been pointed out several times, the word you are looking for is CONTINUITY, not CANON.

We should say continuity instead of canon

Is that canon?

I think it's fair to say that at this point, the word "canon" has become synonymous with "continuity", at least within the realm of popular fiction, whatever it originally meant.

But a hundred-million wrongs still don't make a right!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There is no head canon. It's not the fans' place to choose what is canon and what is not. That goes against the very MEANING of canon. That word only applies to what the official material is - meaning, whatever is onscreen. Whatever the people making it, says it is.

Nor is it Paramount's place. Canon is owned first by the original creators, and then when creative control is no longer held by the original creator, it passes to those with the most emotional attachment to it, not to those whom a legal document bestows the right to exclusively profit from it.

Having the legal economic ownership of an abstract idea doesn't give you spiritual ownership over it.

There are multiple different Trek franchises each with their own canon. Just as Batman has several different franchises which don't affect each other. Comic books, Burton continuity, Nolan continuity, Arkham Asylum continuity. It's the same with Star Trek. There's TV series continuity, novel continuity, and NuTrek continuity.

 

[hux]

To me, canon (or continuity) comes primarily from the official shows and movies but even using that criteria, you still choose what is real or what is important to you. You still choose to find fault where others refuse to see it etc. NuTrek technically means TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager never happened but does anyone really believe that. You can believe they both happened but in different universes/timelines or you can believe that that NuTrek creates a new timeline where they don't. I think most people probably put the shows first as far as continuity is concerned

My canon would also include my own ideas concerning the Federation's economic system, the organization of Starfleet, and the Federation as a alliance (not a nation-state).

Have you made any previous threads/posts elaborating on those concepts (they'd make for a good read)?

If not, could you explain further, here?

Another thread about utopia and bettering ourselves. Yes please

 

[-Brett-]

Ain't no such thing as head canon. Fans have every right to like what they like and not like what they don't, but they don't get to decide what is and is not canon. If you want the right to do that, create your own sci fi property.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I don't know about some sort of central source which establishes this but I have my reasons. For one thing, whenever they rattle off Enterprises no one ever mentions the NX-01 in any of the other shows. Some would argue that it wasn't a Federation starship, so it wouldn't be included... yet it seems to me that there is a strong continuity from "Earth Starfleet" to "Federation Starfleet," so that distinction seems pretty artificial to me. Another clue is in the Voyager episode "Hope and Fear" where the crew encounters a cutting edge Federation starship sent to rescue them This starship is the Dauntless NX-01-A. As it turns out (spoiler alert) the ship was a fake presented by an alien with his own objectives. HOWEVER, the crew is in no way flustered by the idea of a starship named Dauntless labeled as NX-01-A. Now, we know from the Enterprise letter suffixes, they make it possible for a new ship to honor the memory of an older one by recycling both its name and number. By this logic, we would have to assume the NX-01 would have to be (at least in the memories of the Voyager personnel) Dauntless.

So in First Contact, when the Enterprise crew throws the temporal prime directive out the window and spills all the beans for Zephram Cochrane, even so far as showing them their own starship Enterprise through his own telescope, they corrupt the timeline in a big way. I can imagine that "Prime" timeline would have had similar events to what we see in Enterprise, but with differences. The first warp five ship would have been named Dauntless, a reference to humanity proceeding into the unknown undaunted by hand-wringing Vulcans. Contact with the Klingons would have happened quite a bit later. But, temporally corrupted Cochrane, influenced now by his encounter with the future astronauts on their "some kind of star trek," suggests the new ship be named Enterprise instead of Dauntless. Enterprise has different missions than it would have as Dauntless including encountering leftovers of the future robot zombies from the north pole who came along with the future astronauts. Who knows what other differences would have happened? It's a good way to explain away the many continuity differences between the Enterprise show and the four or five other shows which precede it. (Five if you count TAS... which I do.)

I've heard this before and I like it. There's also the Temporal Cold War arc, which provides a similar get-out clause for any continuity discrepancies to Nero's and Spock's temporal shenanigans in the Abrams-verse, if we assume that the 22nd Century wasn't a front of the war in the 'Prime' timeline.

There have been so many temporal incursions and examples of our heroes time travelling across all versions of Trek that who knows what changes the butterfly effect has wrought? The Trek-verse of Nemesis might be markedly different from the one we started out with in "The Cage", we just wouldn't know it.

 

[IrishNero]

With the endless movies, shows and books, it's little wonder that writers may choose to steer clear of canonical bumps by simply inventing a new timeline, or brazenly bulldozing over some canon like it doesn't exist. I would imagine that it's a writer's nightmare to navigate that minefield; particularly when you're under pressure to finish a script. Couple that with the many re-writes and edits by team-mates, and I'm sure there are bound to be issues. I'm a big picture kind of guy, so I don't really sweat it, but I can understand where detail-oriented people may take issue with some of the canonical stuff.

Regarding the issue of the 'NX-01-A Dauntless' in a Voyager episode: I spent 23 years in the military, and there is no such issues with re-using alphabet soup today, so it's plausible that would remain the same centuries from now. How many years separate the Voyager from the NX-01 Enterprise? How many ships have we already seen named 'Enterprise?' Ever heard of a fighter plane named the F4? Well, are you speaking of the Corsair or the Phantom? - Two fighter planes separated by less than a decade that share the same main designation. Further, the 'X' designation in the US military often stands for 'Experimental,' which means that it's possible the NX-01 was a prototype, and as a prototype, it never really receives a firm designator. That would mean that you're free to scrap that designation and apply it later as it suits you. The military doesn't really concern itself as much with history or 'canon.'

Now, if you step away from the remote control and into the boardroom, perhaps you may see that those on control of the dollars wanted another 'Enterprise' as they thought that would attract more viewers. I suspect that network suits care more about that than stepping on the toes of a few isolated fans who get offended by canonical issues. Right or wrong, that's just how it is.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I pretend Michael Jan Friedman's Starfleet: Year One is the way it happened. That felt like a plausible predecessor to the world of TOS in a way ENT never could.

 

[martok2112]

Canon is corporate and official.
Fanon is personal choice on what one considers to be official (historically or technically).

The thing is that certain aspects of the Trekverse are not quite so absolute, including The fore-mentioned Franz Joseph works and TAS and their somewhat "gray area" canonical involvement, being attached to corporate/official Paramount projects on-screen.

Yeah, Paramount is/was a bit picky with "beyond the writers' bible" sources for canon. (Which makes me wonder: Did they have a "writers' bible for TOS?")

TMP has mention of a couple of other ships listed in the FJ Tech Manual (one a scout, one a dreadnaught) by name and registry number. Now, if Paramount had the list already made out, then it's internal canon, but if it was taken from the Franz Joseph Tech Manual, then it would seem that at least those parts of the TM are canon....not the entire TM, but the names and registries mentioned for certain.

Just like Paramount said that only the episode with Spock going back in time to save his younger self in TAS is considered canon, whilst the rest would seem to be apocryphal.

 

[Nerys Myk]

My head "canon" is it all counts. Even the films,episodes and series I don't like. The fun part is making the contradictory stuff work with each other.

 

[Ithekro]

Ever heard of a fighter plane named the F4?

Even more than that. Wildcat was the F4F. The Corsair was the F4U. F4D was the Stingray. The F4 Lightning was a variant of the P-38. The Phantom II was the F4. The Phantom was the FH or FD. Just a mess within twenty years.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Ain't no such thing as head canon. Fans have every right to like what they like and not like what they don't, but they don't get to decide what is and is not canon. If you want the right to do that, create your own sci fi property.

This should be a Q&A sticky.

The only ones who really have to deal with canon are companies who have licensed Trek out from CBS for merchandising purposes.

Otherwise, fans are just talking about things they personally want to follow or ignore. One can ignore the things in Trek they don't like, but that's nothing short of pretending they don't exist. It's kind of reverse for those who want to include things that didn't happen onscreen (pretending that something off-screen happened).

 

[Forbin]

Ever heard of a fighter plane named the F4?

Even more than that. Wildcat was the F4F. The Corsair was the F4U. F4D was the Stingray. The F4 Lightning was a variant of the P-38. The Phantom II was the F4. The Phantom was the FH or FD. Just a mess within twenty years.

F4D was the Skyray.
The photo P-38 was the F-5 - which designator was later applied to the Northrop F-5 jet fighter!

 

[137th Gebirg]

Nerd!

 

[IrishNero]

 

[Makarov]

Ain't no such thing as head canon. Fans have every right to like what they like and not like what they don't, but they don't get to decide what is and is not canon. If you want the right to do that, create your own sci fi property.

But nobody is saying they decide actual canon. They are talking about "head canon" which is pretty much fans deciding what they do and don't like. It is not official, hence "head" canon which everyone has a right to do. It's their own head.

I don't get the backlash against head canon Saying it is irrelevant is like saying someone's opinion is irrelevant. Also the terminology debate.. whether you want to call it head canon, fanon, fan continuity, it's just people making the universe fit in their own head the way they want. Once an artist releases their work to the world it's out there to be interpreted and digested the way the audience wants.

I don't see any downside to using your imagination and picking/choosing what you like from franchises. Pretty much every Terminator fan does it with T3 / TS and every Aliens fan does it with Aliens Ressurrection by ignoring these things.

The only standout moment of head canon I have in regards to star trek is Locarno / Tom Paris thing, which is such a horrible rip off of their own character, that I like to just think of them as the same guy. Right there is a moment where official canon is great for some producer/writer's business decision but sucks continuity/canonwise.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

My personal continuity (not canon) includes certain novels like The Final Reflection and Strangers From The Sky, certain comic book stories like the Mike W. Barr versions of Kirk's first and last missions on the Enterprise, and some of the backstory I've constructed in my head. Kirk didn't die in either of the ways shown in Generations. World War III and the Eugenics Wars were the same thing. And I don't especially care for VOY or ENT, so I have no problem discounting either of them.

 

[The Lensman]

Ain't no such thing as head canon. Fans have every right to like what they like and not like what they don't, but they don't get to decide what is and is not canon. If you want the right to do that, create your own sci fi property.

This should be a Q&A sticky.

The only ones who really have to deal with canon are companies who have licensed Trek out from CBS for merchandising purposes.

Otherwise, fans are just talking about things they personally want to follow or ignore. One can ignore the things in Trek they don't like, but that's nothing short of pretending they don't exist. It's kind of reverse for those who want to include things that didn't happen onscreen (pretending that something off-screen happened).

The OP asked what people personally follow or ignore, that was the whole point of the thread. As for people doing "nothing short of pretending they don't exist"......well that sounds a bit ridiculous when talking about a pretend universe with pretend people in the first place.

 

[Warped9]

The OP asked what people personally follow or ignore, that was the whole point of the thread.

Exactly.


And in the spirit of the question I will be redundant in restating what is probably already known according to my likes and dislikes.

TOS is it.

TAS also happened although it was in some respects a skewed or stylized representation of what happened in the TOS universe. I think the Alan Dean Foster adaptations in the Star Trek Log series are more realistic versions of the events.

TMP happened. Then there was a second 5-year mission.

TWOK/TSFS/TVH/TFF/TUC happened in some alternate reality rather than the same one as TOS/TAS/TMP. Something similar might have happened in TOS' future continuity, but for me there is a large blank slate between TMP and early TNG.

I like the first three or so seasons of TNG and I see that happening in TOS' future. The latter seasons as well as DS9 not so much. By extent this includes VOY because it just doesn't exist for me.

The TNG films don't exist for me.

ENT never happened in TOS' continuity. Instead I accept the prehistory referenced in James Blish's adaptation of "Balance Of Terror." The historical aspects of the novel Federation happened in TOS' continuity. The Vulcan and Romulan prehistory in The Romulan Way works. Quite a bit of John M. Ford's The Final Reflection also works for Federation and Klingon prehistory. Quite a bit of Marvel Comics' Star Trek: Early Voyages works for the Pike era. Ditto for John Byrne's Crew stories from IDC.

The Star Trek Continues production continues TOS (so far).

JJtrek...simply doesn't exist for me.


That's my personal continuity.