Regarding canon: isn't it ironic?

[Therin of Andor]

The SW canon always seemed like a farce to me, since George Lucas said the concept was based on how Star Trek treated it's tie-ins!

But he only said that much later. There was a big gap in original SW fiction after "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", the Han trilogy and the Lando trilogy. When the new "EU" books started up there was a "Starlog" interview where Lucas noted the almost-mainstream success of hardcovers such as "Spock's World", which didn't even have "Star Trek" on its spine. And bookshops would display EU timelines suggesting that all the forthcoming SW books really, really happened. Of course, SW only had the three movies and two Ewok adventures as live-action "canon".

 

[Therin of Andor]

And yet here I am, trying to figure out what the state of the galaxy is, who is where, what has happened to who, and which person is on first.

So how far into ST fiction have you come? What books have you read? Lots or only a few? What episodes are behind you? All, or only a few?

 

[Charles Phipps]

So how far into ST fiction have you come? What books have you read? Lots or only a few? What episodes are behind you? All, or only a few?

Well, I've read:

ST: New Frontier (all)
Typhon Pact (all)
Articles of the Federation
The Department of Temporal Investigations (2/3)
ST: Ex Machina
Star Trek: Destiny (all) and A Singular Destiny
Voyager: The Rising Tide
Cold Equations (all)
Some of the Star Trek: Titan series (up to Torrent Sea)
Death In Winter
Avatar 1 and 2
Section 31: Abyss
Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures

I'm familiar with all of the Star Trek episodes. So, I don't know if this qualifies as "lots" or few.

 

[Idran]

That honestly seems pretty comprehensive; what are some of the questions you still have about the present state of things? Between recaps and whatnot I'm honestly not sure what would've been missed across those.

 

[Charles Phipps]

That honestly seems pretty comprehensive; what are some of the questions you still have about the present state of things? Between recaps and whatnot I'm honestly not sure what would've been missed across those.

Thanks. I actually created by website, the United Federation of Charles, to review Trek Lit novels before I branched out. The thing with me is that I CAN get into the novels but I feel like I'm missing subtleties that a book explaining the intricacies of would help. I understand who President Bacco is (poor girl) as the President of the Federation but knowing more would broaden my horizon and something more conveinant than Memory Beta would help, I think in getting reacquainted.

Obviously, YMMV.

Also, I need to read The Fall.

 

[Idran]

Well, I mean, to jump off your specific example: Articles of the Federation is exactly where we know the most about her. She was in the end of "A Time To...", yeah, but we learned most of what she's about in AotF; it might seem like she's been around for ages, but if you want to know who she is, that's the book to read.

It might be that you think there's more than what you actually get in terms of summary and backstory and whatnot? Like, it could be that you feel as though you're missing out but you're actually not?

 

[Therin of Andor]

It might be that you think there's more than what you actually get in terms of summary and backstory and whatnot? Like, it could be that you feel as though you're missing out but you're actually not?

Exactly!

Yes, I think I would recommend using Memory Beta to research and, when a specific plot point is referenced, and you are intrigued or puzzled, locate that novel and read that.

I can't see that a book version of who-did-what-to-who is ever going to be up-to-date enough, which is why online encyclopedic entries are probably the way to go.

I recall in the old days of the Psi Phi bbs, when prolific Trek reader Baerbel (wow - I wonder what happened to Baerbel?) read the then-newly released "New Frontier" novel, "Gateways: Cold Wars", and celebrated the addition of two brand new characters, Arex and M'Ress, not having any idea they weren't original Peter David characters, but escapees from Filmation's TAS and some movie-era DC comics by Len Wein and PAD. Finding out old connections can be fun (for me, at least), but not always essential. I remember when Baerbel found out what she'd missed she was delighted and intrigued, but had been happy in her original ignorance.

 

[Christopher]

It's worth pointing out that the very first Star Trek story ever made was full of references to prior events in its early scenes -- the mission to Rigel VII, the death of Pike's yeoman, etc. Most fiction begins with the characters knowing more about their past than the audience does. Heck, look at Hamlet. The death that set the whole plot in motion happened before the play began.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Memory Beta is certainly a useful resource. I confess my primary complaint is the coalition of the ST:O and the Novelverse events so it becomes difficult to discern which is which. I will say that my return to Star Trek lit's forums was inspired by two questions which Memory Beta helped answer.

1. What happened Worf's son after DS9?

2. What happened to Kurn and did he ever recover his memories of being Worf's brother.

Which, among other things, means I need to check out the Klingon Empire books.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It's worth pointing out that the very first Star Trek story ever made was full of references to prior events in its early scenes -- the mission to Rigel VII, the death of Pike's yeoman, etc.

Totally agree. Even Spock's limp said so much!

 

[Idran]

I thought that was Nimoy actually having a limp during shooting?

Wait, no, or is it the other way around; that was what people thought, but it actually was written in?

I read about this just last month, but now I can't remember which it was.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't the "Cage" script just get posted online last week as part of the anniversary stuff? Surely someone snagged a copy of that and can check for Spock's limp.

But it's clear enough that the story opened with the crew wounded and heading to Vega Colony to treat its injured. That's why Pike ignored the Talos signal at first. So it would be a huge coincidence if Nimoy had just happened to be limping for some unrelated reason.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Didn't the "Cage" script just get posted online last week as part of the anniversary stuff? Surely someone snagged a copy of that and can check for Spock's limp.

The Cage - Spock's limp by Ian McLean, on Flickr

So the limp was in very early script editions, including this one, where James Winter is crossed out in pen to become Robert April, then adjusted with a typed page script note that it is now Christopher Pike, and the title was still "The Menagerie".

 

[Christopher]

So the limp was in very early script editions, including this one

Thanks, I figured as much.

and the title was still "The Menagerie".

That was its final title, the one it was filmed under. It wasn't officially changed back to its working title "The Cage" until its home video release in '86, though it had been unofficially called that in reference books before then to differentiate it from the 2-parter.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Google Groups seems to have fixed some of their previous searchability issues, so I took a trip to the Eighties to see what fans were saying on Usenet about canon in the two main franchises being discussed in this thread.

Here's a post from May 1984 on the net.startrek newsgroup:

The TECH MANUAL is really great and I've enjoyed it tremendously. The same
goes for the STAR TREK SPACEFLIGHT CHRONOLOGY.
They cannot, however, be taken as official references for the canon. While they
both have legitimate licenses from Paramount, they were not produced in any
"official" capacity. I also feel the same about the novels. As far as I'm con-
cerned, the only true elements of the canon are the tv episodes (live action and
cartoon), the three movies, and the novelizations of all of them.
In a similar vein, Alan Dean Foster's SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE, Daly's
three Han Solo novels, and Smith's three Lando Calrissian novels, not to mention
the Marvel comics, are not officially part of the Star Wars canon.

Here's one more from the following month on the same newsgroup:

Anything that is licensed for publication as a STAR TREK item,
regardless of who does it, is copyrighted by Paramount Pictures. Any-
one *not* putting a copyright notice on such an item is open to a copyright in-
fringement lawsuit. That doesn't make it an "official" part of the STAR TREK
canon.

Here's yet another one from June 1985 on the same newsgroup, which I've quoted here before:

>And also as part of a disclaimer to the reference to the DC comics,
>they are considered by Bennett et al to be an official part of the
>Star Trek Universe. The story lines used in the comics are approved.

Just because they are approved doesn't make them canon. I believe that
all of the novels are approved, also. And Lucasfilm approves Marvel's STAR
WARS comic, but does not consider them to be part of the Star Wars
canon. Bennett et al. may *say* that the DC comics are an "official"
part of the canon, but if so, how does one explain away the fact that
the third movie picks up right where the second left off, and yet in
the comics, there are 8-9 issues worth of stories that take place in
between?

"Canon," not "continuity," is the term in all of these cases, and it's being used in the same way we're using it in this thread. I could only find one instance of the phrase "Star Trek continuity" on Usenet in that entire decade (someone in 1982 complaining that there isn't much continuity between TOS episodes), and I can't find any reference to Richard Arnold at all before late December 1989 (in a review of the TNG novel A Rock and a Hard Place.)

It's funny to see how often fans, even then, were comparing the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises against each other in terms of their canon approaches, but the conversation doesn't seem to have changed all that much since the days before either corporate owner had anything official to say about it...

 

[Christopher]

Okay, so the term was in use by some people, but of course if you search for a specific term, naturally you'll find it, so that doesn't really prove anything about how widely utilized it was.

At least one thing was pleasantly different in those old posts -- back then, they still understood that canon is a noun. There's only one use of it as an adjective in those quotes; otherwise, they still knew that it's "the canon," that it's a term referring to the entire collective whole, instead of getting into nitpicky arguments over whether a single individual detail of set decoration only visible in freeze-frame is "canon" or not.

It's also quite interesting how different the interpretations of what counted as part of the canon were. The first person counts the movie novelizations along with the movies themselves -- even though the novelizations contradict elements of the movies (for instance, Vonda McIntyre correcting the bizarre "Ceti Alpha" inversion to the proper "Alpha Ceti"). Plus it's interesting to see the claim that Harve Bennett considered the comics to have official standing. Although I think that may have been a misinterpretation, the perennial confusion of "official" with "canonical."

Also, I don't get the sense from any of those quotes that they're dismissing the worth of the non-canonical materials; indeed, the first poster starts out by praising them. Maybe I'm projecting what I want to see, but to me those quotes have more of the tenor of an intellectual discourse on classification, simply a clarification of the way the process works. I find those excerpts to be refreshingly rational and fact-based compared to the nonsense that dominates canon discussions online today.

Which may stand to reason -- after all, a lot of terms start out as fairly technical or scholarly usages and only later become more widely popularized. Back then, the people who were familiar with the term "canon" were likely to be more educated and acquainted with literary/media criticism, and thus to understand its usage and significance. It was when the term became popularized as a more general buzzword that more people started using it more recklessly and with less understanding.

 

[Idran]

At least one thing was pleasantly different in those old posts -- back then, they still understood that canon is a noun. There's only one use of it as an adjective in those quotes; otherwise, they still knew that it's "the canon," that it's a term referring to the entire collective whole, instead of getting into nitpicky arguments over whether a single individual detail of set decoration only visible in freeze-frame is "canon" or not.

Wher-for is an olde usage bettre?

 

[Christopher]

Wher-for is an olde usage bettre?

Because it's not just the usage, it's the understanding that goes with it. A canon is something defined in large-scale terms, the entire body of works considered as a whole, complete with its inconsistencies and retcons and mistakes. These days people argue over whether a single specific shot is "canon," or whether the original or Remastered version of a TOS effect is "canon," or whether a tiny bit of text or graphics on a viewscreen that can only be seen in still frame on a Blu-Ray is "canon," and that's missing the point. The canon is the whole thing.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Honestly, I'm of the mind that canon is a poor choice of words for dealing with issues of "what is and isn't true in Star Trek/whatever franchise." Canon is a reference to the issue of the Holy Catholic Church's view of what is and isn't true about the nature of the universe and God. So, it's a spiritual co-opting. However, the thing is that it inherently loses some of its power when dealing with works of fiction.

It makes sense if the licensees of Star Trek fiction don't care about any interconnectivity and any spin-off works are just independent with no relationship to any future works. Take, say, the Battlestar Galactic novels which introduced a religious minority which worships the Aesir. That's something which would have come up in the show and doesn't because it's not true outside of the books.

However, it's something I talked about with Star Wars Legends/Star Wars NEU and the movies themselves. If you have a spin-off universe which is interconnected and evolving separate from the pre-existing universe then it doesn't matter if it is canonical to its parent or not.

No, Star Wars: The Novelverse is not canon to the television show. Barring a miracle, we'll not see Star Trek: Destiny detailed in the new Trek series. It's not even canon to the MMORPG because people like blowing up Borg. It is, however, canonical to ITSELF and that has an inherent value. Expanded Universe material also, can be major factors to long-running franchises.

Russell T. Davies, for example, was a huge fan of the Doctor Who audio-dramas and declared them via Word of God to be canonical as far as he was concerned. Likewise, he frequently pillaged them for material for the television show. Dalek being an (loose but, honestly, better) adaptation of Jubilee, the Cybermen episodes being similarly adapted from Spare Parts, and Human Nature being a actual adaptation--which, ironically, caused a minor fit in the fandom because if it was showing up on the show then it couldn't have happened in the books. An odd but actual complaint. His successor, however, didn't feel the same way and moved away from that.

So my take is to not sweat the details (the horror for a Trekkie!) and take the Novelverse as a separate thing of itself. I think Bridge Commander is one of the greatest things ever, for example, but it exists independent of everything else unless there's been a reference to it in the novelverse I don't know about. I also can appreciate the Novelverse and Online as both existing in an "official" capacity thanks to the fact the Trek universe is a canonical Multiverse.

My .02 at least.

 

[Idran]

Because it's not just the usage, it's the understanding that goes with it. A canon is something defined in large-scale terms, the entire body of works considered as a whole, complete with its inconsistencies and retcons and mistakes. These days people argue over whether a single specific shot is "canon," or whether the original or Remastered version of a TOS effect is "canon," or whether a tiny bit of text or graphics on a viewscreen that can only be seen in still frame on a Blu-Ray is "canon," and that's missing the point. The canon is the whole thing.

Do you have a better term that's equally concise? (And don't say "in continuity", that's twice as long to write and twice as long to say; who has time for that? )