Is the animated toon canon?

[Christopher]

I consider TAS to be an artistic representation of the "real" live action adventures. So in an of themselves are the canon, no. But they do represent ideas which I consider to be canon.

Roddenberry often suggested that TOS itself was merely a sometimes-inaccurate dramatization of the "real" adventures of Kirk and the Enterprise. That was how he rationalized the changes he made to the universe in ST:TMP, like redesigning the Klingons and portraying a more multispecies Starfleet with more sophisticated-looking technology -- he asked audiences to believe that it had looked this way all along but TOS just hadn't had the resources to show it properly.

After all, there's plenty of stuff in TOS that doesn't successfully convey reality -- obvious makeup, stagey lighting, fake scenery backdrops and papier-mache boulders, visible wires on alien puppets, constant reuse of stock footage, lots of planets having the exact same continents, the same Vasquez Rocks cliff showing up on multiple planets, etc. TOS requires nearly as much overlooking of its unreality as TAS does. For that matter, so does early TNG with its severely dated video effects (although the remastered edition has fixed a lot of that, I gather).

So I still see no reason to treat TAS all that differently from the live-action shows or movies. They're all best seen as artistic representations of a conjectural underlying reality. Some are just less effective at approximating that reality than others.

 

[Kor]

I think that using a word like "canon" (which brings with it centuries of serious literary, academic, religious, etc. connotations) in connection with a popular entertainment franchise is attributing way too much significance to the whole thing.

Perhaps the whole concept of "canonicity" should be taken to its *ahem* logical conclusion, by categorizing various works into specific categories depending on the degree to which they are accepted as "official" backstory when creating new works: canonical, deuterocanonical, apocryphal... or downright heretical in some cases. And then there are various exegetical and apologetic commentaries that may or may not count for anything.



Kor

 

[A beaker full of death]

I am so sick unto death of this "canon" shit. It's a show. It exists. Ignore it or not. It's up to you. This is not a fucking religion.

 

[Firebird]

I am so sick unto death of this "canon" shit. It's a show. It exists. Ignore it or not. It's up to you. This is not a fucking religion.

This.

 

[uniderth]

I am so sick unto death of this "canon" shit. It's a show. It exists. Ignore it or not. It's up to you. This is not a fucking religion.

It doesn't have to be a religion. It's about determining what IS in the realm of the story. From canon we can draw continuity which is important in ensuring the story makes sense according to the rules it has laid out.


If I tell you a story, but then change attributes such as characters and settings, the story would not make sense. The story would have no impact because it could not be understood.

In a television format consistency within the episode is most important, followed by consistency within the larger narrative. And then, in terms of a large franchise like Star Trek, consistency within the universal narrative.

Is universal consistency required? A large number of people would find individual stories enjoyable in their own right. Others prefer a universal consistency. So it's not really required. But why not make a story that appeals to both groups rather than only one. That consistency is based on what is or is not canon.

That's one of my issues with JJTrek and Enterprise. Instead of making Trek stories that only those people who don't care will enjoy; why not make stories that both types of people will enjoy. Instead of further segmenting(and I admit it may be a small segment) Trek fans, just make something that a larger number of people will enjoy.

 

[Anji]

The issue of what is canon has more knots in it than William Shatner's hairpiece...and is almost as old.

TAS has never been considered canon because it was not filmed, but rather animated. Who decided that? I dunno. But if you talk to most fans they will say that it's not.

And Beaker??? Star Trek is not a "religion"???? Since when?!

 

[Christopher]

I am so sick unto death of this "canon" shit. It's a show. It exists. Ignore it or not. It's up to you. This is not a fucking religion.

It doesn't have to be a religion. It's about determining what IS in the realm of the story. From canon we can draw continuity which is important in ensuring the story makes sense according to the rules it has laid out.

Well, yes, but beaker's point, I think, is that that's got nothing to do with whether a story is worth watching or reading in the first place. Your first question on learning about a story shouldn't be "Is it canon?" -- it should be "Is it good?" You read it for enjoyment. Deciding whether it fits with the canon is something you can do afterward, and merely as a way to classify it, rather than as a judgment of its intrinsic worth as a story. At least, that's how I do it. I read/watch/listen to any tie-ins that interest me, and then I decide on a case-by-case basis whether I think they're consistent with canon. But I still often reread stories that I don't consider canon-consistent, because they're still enjoyable. Indeed, it can be fun to explore alternative takes on a continuity.

If I tell you a story, but then change attributes such as characters and settings, the story would not make sense. The story would have no impact because it could not be understood.

That's not a good analogy, because we're not talking about a single story that suddenly changes its characters and settings. We're talking about different stories that are consistent within themselves but not necessarily consistent with each other. And it doesn't really matter if a story is consistent with other stories. A Batman story is not going to be consistent with a Spider-Man story, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them both on their own terms. And a Batman '66 episode is not going to be consistent with a Batman: The Animated Series episode, but you can enjoy them both as different versions of Batman in separate realities.

That's one of my issues with JJTrek and Enterprise. Instead of making Trek stories that only those people who don't care will enjoy; why not make stories that both types of people will enjoy. Instead of further segmenting(and I admit it may be a small segment) Trek fans, just make something that a larger number of people will enjoy.

The 2009 Star Trek movie was the biggest box-office success in the history of the franchise. Clearly quite a large number of people did enjoy it, and quite a few of them -- myself included -- are lifelong Trek fans.

TAS has never been considered canon because it was not filmed, but rather animated. Who decided that? I dunno. But if you talk to most fans they will say that it's not.

And that's a grossly ignorant prejudice. It's a uniquely American form of elitism to dismiss animation as somehow an illegitimate art form. In most countries, it's fully accepted as being as valid as any other medium. In Japan, animated film and television are probably considered more prestigious and important than live action.

Besides, it's not the audience who decides what is canon. That's a complete misunderstanding of what the word means. Canon is what the creators themselves create and define. In its literal, religious sense, it refers to the doctrine as defined by the church, as opposed to any rival beliefs held by laypeople. The idea of "personal canon" is an oxymoron.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I swear I don't get it. Canon. Reboots. Continuity Nazis. Can't anyone just appreciate a specific production on its own terms anymore? At least two major movie series have had to do massive time loop stories to get around events/casting in previous films. Comic books companies have been wiping out their whole universes every 15 years to escape their own continuity, though no one actually gave a shit about it before 1986. Who cares? Can't anyone just tell a good story anymore?

TOS, especially, was episodic tv. When actors speak of a "show", they generally mean a particular episode. Appreciate the damned episode. Or hate it on its own terms. Not because Shatner's rug was three inches further to the left, and not because some corporation that owns legal rights to the artwork of others has decided that work somehow doesn't count anymore.

Does it matter if someone calls Uhura "Penda" in one book and "Nyota" in another? If those are the things anyone is concerned with, then artwork is wasted on that person anyway.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I heard that Gene Roddenbury only considered "Yesteryear" to be canon.

And we should care about this...why, exactly?

TAS is a Trek TV series. Therefore, it's canon. Why are we even still having this discussion?

 

[Christopher]

At least two major movie series have had to do massive time loop stories to get around events/casting in previous films.

I think it's three -- Star Trek, X-Men, and Terminator. And on television, both Eureka and Fringe used time travel to rewrite elements of their continuity at the start of their respective fourth seasons. It can be a valid way to revitalize or update a series if it's handled right, although of course it won't be in every case.

Continuity, like any other trope, is neither all good nor all bad. It depends on how it's used. It can be worthwhile to work around a series's existing continuity in a way that still respects it; the challenge of making that transformation work can potentially be rewarding. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with having different sets of stories in different continuities either. No approach is universally right or wrong.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

No approach is universally right or wrong.

Then why is there still a smell of lecture in the air?

 

[Terok Nor]

It's all canon. Even the mistakes.

Except the show Enterprise. That was a bad dream.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

(Although for some reason it is still being excluded from the updated edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia which is reportedly in the works.)

...and that's a load of BS if the new volume still treats TAS in that way.

for what it's worth, it's by far the most direct continuation of the original series from a creative standpoint. Gene Roddenberry had complete creative control over it (in theory, though he rarely bothered to get involved with it). D.C. Fontana was its showrunner. It reunited almost all of the original cast, and roughly half its episodes were written by veterans of the original series. No other Star Trek sequel or continuation has had as many creators and performers in common with TOS, or has been as authentic to TOS in its tone, design, and sensibility.

As mentioned elsewhere, before TAS premiered, fans were understandably worried about the quality and if anything could fill TOS' shoes, but the fears would melt away, as the intent to be a natural continuation of TOS was clear from the talents behind the production.

Anyone interested in learning how TAS was considered would do well to read Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation.

The following is how Filmation approached TAS, as related on pages 96 & 98 of the book:

Lou Scheimer (2012): "The network had absolutely zero creative control for Star Trek; they had to accept the show or not accept the show, and I believe that was the first and last time that happened in the history of Saturday morning animation."

Norm Prescott (1973): "This is the first attempt to do an adult show in animation. Never before has an adult audience been challenged to watch a Saturday morning show. We feel it is a bold experiment."

Lou Scheimer (2012): "Wherever she (Dorothy Fontana) went, she begged the fans not to hate the show because it was animated, or it might kill the chances of Star Trek ever becoming another TV show or a movie. And once the fans heard how faithful we were being and how much care we were taking to respect the intent of the original series, they soon came over to our side. Word began buzzing to the 3,000 or so Star Trek fan clubs that Star Trek was coming back!"

 

[Therin of Andor]

nobody's ever told me there was a problem with doing so. I can't believe there are any trademark/copyright issues when TAS is available on home video and Netflix right alongside all the live-action series; as far as I know, it's now fully owned by CBS (formerly Paramount). And I believe Roddenberry's Norway Corporation (Lincoln Enterprises was his mail-order memorabilia company, not his production company) sold all the rights to ST to Paramount a long time ago.

Exactly. When he was vetting tie-in manuscripts for Roddenberry (i.e. 1986-1991), Richard Arnold would enforce the comment by the Okudas (in the Encyclopedia and Chronology) that Roddenberry had asked that Filmation's TAS no longer be referenced, although they got permission to add Robert April, from the first TV series proposal (and with Roddenberry's head Photoshopped onto Pike's torso), and info about ShiKahr and Spock's childhood from "Yesteryear". Similarly, Robert Greenberger's editorial in DC Comics' post-TOS Series 2 adventures (issue #1) explains how the 1989 memo had requested that Arex, Mress and TAS no longer be referenced.

The first new reference to TAS came just after Roddenberry's passing. Jeri Taylor briefly mentioned the Phylosians (from "The Infinite Vulcan") in her novelization of TNG's "Unification".

My annotated list of TAS references desperately needs updating but is at:
http://andorfiles.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/toon-trek.html

TAS has never been considered canon because it was not filmed, but rather animated. Who decided that? I dunno. But if you talk to most fans they will say that it's not.

Not quite. Bjo Trimble's first commercially published "Star Trek Concordance" (Ballantine Books) embraced TAS with complete approval of Gene Roddenberry and DC Fontana, and included official b/w Filmation artwork. It was definitely canon during the 70s and early 80s.

But, by 1989, several things had changed. Fontana and David Gerrold had fallen out with Roddenberry over co-creatorship of TNG and there was a court case (settled out of court for undisclosed sums), Filmation was selling off its assets, all of Filmation's productions were in ownership flux, and Larry Niven was trying to sell the kzinti and "Known Space" as a roleplaying game, and a book series, "Man-Kzin Wars".

Richard Arnold's argument in 1989 - that TAS was merely licensed out from Paramount (to Filmation, Norway Corp and NBC's Children's Programming) - meant, in the then-opinion of the Star Trek Office, it was actually no different to the various licensed comics, novels and RPGs. It was a handy way of resolving the fact that leaving it as canon would be an annoyance for scriptwriters of TNG, since most of those writers had no knowledge of those 22 stories that hadn't been widely aired on TV for many years. But it meant DC Comics had to shed Arex and M'Ress as regular characters, and cameos of TAS elements were frowned upon in the books.

It became very easy to say "Canon = Live action", and he tried to do that often at conventions in the 90s and his columns in "The Communicator".

 

[SPCTRE]

 

[Michael]

^ I still don't understand the “totaling thousands of episodes” line. Didn't they bother to count before they wrote that? Seems weird for such a high profile legal paper.

As for the thread question: Is TAS canon? Yes, it is. But then again, what does it matter? I love it either way.

 

[Christopher]

The first new reference to TAS came just after Roddenberry's passing. Jeri Taylor briefly mentioned the Phylosians (from "The Infinite Vulcan") in her novelization of TNG's "Unification".

Didn't "Unification" itself implicitly reference "Yesteryear" when Sarek was reminiscing about young Spock running off to the mountains?

Not quite. Bjo Trimble's first commercially published "Star Trek Concordance" (Ballantine Books) embraced TAS with complete approval of Gene Roddenberry and DC Fontana, and included official b/w Filmation artwork. It was definitely canon during the 70s and early 80s.

But the first edition of Allan Asherman's ST Compendium skipped TAS. I don't think anyone in fandom was really using the term "canon" back then -- I don't recall seeing the word used much before the '89 memo. But there was definitely widespread difference of opinion over whether TAS "counted" or not, and no consensus on the subject. After all, it was a much shorter series than TOS, with only 22 half-hour installments, so it was not as widely syndicated as TOS, and thus quite a few fans never got the chance to see it, or at least to rewatch it.* And the pre-existing American prejudice against animation didn't help either. In the '80s, there were some tie-ins that referenced elements from TAS (for instance, the Spaceflight Chronology using Carter Winston and The Final Reflection following suit, or Howard Weinstein referencing his own "The Pirates of Orion" in The Covenant of the Crown), but there were others whose authors didn't seem to be aware of TAS (such as Yesterday's Son, which disregarded the events of "Yesteryear" and "One of Our Planets is Missing"). In the letter column of an early issue of DC's first TOS comic, there's a comment by editor Bob Greenberger about how he and writer Mike Barr disagreed on whether TAS should count as "real" Trek, with Bob believing it should count and Mike preferring to ignore it.

So I wouldn't say it was "definitely canon" at the time, at least as far as fandom was aware. Nobody ever officially tried to de-canonize it prior to '89, but nobody tried to stop books from contradicting it either. There didn't seem to be a formal policy one way or the other.

*(I often thought that the people syndicating TOS should have bundled TAS with it, as back-to-back pairs of episodes in an hourlong slot. Then there would've been 90 hours in the syndication package instead of 79. That would've increased its exposure, although I'm sure a lot of people would've skipped the animated ones. And when the Sci-Fi Channel was showing those uncut special-edition episodes in a 90-minute time slot with a bit of background-feature and interview material and an ungodly amount of commercials to pad out the time slot, I thought they should've included one act of a TAS episode per day, as sort of a bonus serial, which would've spread them out over 66 installments and helped fill out the time slot more effectively.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

The first new reference to TAS came just after Roddenberry's passing. Jeri Taylor briefly mentioned the Phylosians (from "The Infinite Vulcan") in her novelization of TNG's "Unification".

Didn't "Unification" itself implicitly reference "Yesteryear" when Sarek was reminiscing about young Spock running off to the mountains?

Indirectly, yep.

But the first edition of Allan Asherman's ST Compendium skipped TAS.

Yep, but he did include TAS in the next US edition. (There was a transition edition in UK/Australasia that was a splicing together of the US first edition and selections from Asherman's "Making of Star Trek II" book.)

I don't think anyone in fandom was really using the term "canon" back then -- I don't recall seeing the word used much before the '89 memo.

True. I think Richard Arnold popularized the term when trying to explain the situation (at conventions) after all the post-TNG Season One hiatus activity, which is when all the tie-in licenses were being overhauled/revoked/reissued, and the rules were being rewritten/redefined.

But there was definitely widespread difference of opinion over whether TAS "counted" or not, and no consensus on the subject.

As a fan who came to TOS as a result of knowing only TAS, TMP and about six episodes of TOS, I spent much of 1980-1982 playing catchup. This included ordering all the back issues of Lincoln Enterprises' official newsletters, with the TAS and TMP issues having been written as those shows were being made - and they certainly gave the impression that everything counted, and that Roddenberry was proud of TAS at the time.

there were others whose authors didn't seem to be aware of TAS (such as Yesterday's Son, which disregarded the events of "Yesteryear" and "One of Our Planets is Missing").

Agreed! And I corresponded with Janet Kagan about the absence of M'Ress in "Uhura's Song". She agreed that, had she been familiar with TAS, having another resident Starfleet felinoid on the ship would have been a useful subplot.

(I often thought that the people syndicating TOS should have bundled TAS with it, as back-to-back pairs of episodes in an hourlong slot. Then there would've been 90 hours in the syndication package instead of 79.

Actually, I think that thought had been debated. I seem to recall that expanding the size of the syndication package was an ongoing issue, and that TAS (and "Phase II") were seen as solutions to reaching that magical "100" number. There was also a mention of TAS again when Roddenberry was explaining about TNG in an early interview reported on GEnie and Usenet. The pilot of "Encounter at Farpoint" had been announced as having a production number of 101. "The Cage" wasn't being counted in the syndication package (until 1989), so there were now 78 TOS and 22 TAS episodes in total (depending on how "The Menagerie" was counted).

However, it turned out that 101 was simply the quirky way that Paramount TV numbered its pilot episodes, not that it was the 101st episode of Trek. (DS9's "Emissary" ended up with a production number of 401. Voyager's "Caretaker" went back to 101. ENT's "Broken Bow" was 721.)

 

[Greg Cox]

This is where I channel my inner curmudgeon and point out that this whole fannish obsession with "canon" is a relatively modern phenomenon. When I was a kid, I didn't fret over whether the latest DARK SHADOWS or GET SMART tie-in novel was "canon" or not, or worry about whether the Gold Key TARZAN comics were consistent with the various books, movies, and TV shows. Hell, we didn't even know the word "canon" back then, let alone care about it.

Yeah, I'd notice if the tie-ins got things wrong and had Barnabas acting out of character or whatever, but that's a different type of consistency than insisting that every story published in every medium all line up in some sort of seamless continuity. As long as Tarzan acted like Tarzan, I was happy. In my experience, it's all about getting the voice right. Few things seem to bother tie-in readers more than if the characters don't sound like themselves. "Riker wouldn't say that!"

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

After all, it was a much shorter series than TOS, with only 22 half-hour installments, so it was not as widely syndicated as TOS, and thus quite a few fans never got the chance to see it, or at least to rewatch it.*

The popular cable channel Nickelodeon ran TAS from November 1985 to February 1990. Considering ST was a huge film franchise at the time, and TNG was a hit by the end of the Nickelodeon run, TAS must have generated enough interest to be run that long, thus it was exposed to a couple generation's worth of children--most not born when TAS was first run on NBC.

Click for the Nickelodeon spot for TAS.