GR did create/had authorship of TAS and then apparently decanonised it.
No, he didn't. At the time of the 1989 memo, Roddenberry was in very poor physical and mental health and had been eased back to a strictly ceremonial position within the franchise. His memo had zero influence on the actual shows, which did occasionally reference TAS (the events of "Yesteryear," the
Klothos, Edosian orchids etc.) during the time when it was supposedly "banned." The no-TAS policy applied
only to the tie-ins, because Roddenberry's aide Richard Arnold was in charge of approving the tie-ins and he was able to enforce the restriction on them. But that had nothing to do with canon, because canon is by definition the stuff that
isn't tie-ins.
The only real effect of that stupid, toothless memo was to fool fans into believing canon was something completely different from what it actually is. It was an old, insecure man's attempt at a petty power trip to compensate for his loss of any actual power. He wasn't in control of the actual canon anymore, so he tried to pretend he had the power to define canon retroactively, and the fans fell for it. But it never had power over anything except tie-ins and public opinion, and it stopped having any impact on the tie-ins more than 20 years ago. This myth is long, long overdue for extinction.
So GR started this canon thing in Star Trek.
He called attention to it, yes, and warped its definition in fans' minds, but the concept of fictional canons existed long before
Star Trek. As far as I know, the use of the term in its sense of an official core continuity of a fictional series as distinct from inauthentic derivative works began among Sherlock Holmes fans.
Hey if it was up to me I'd include a large percentage of the novels/comics in canon.
The whole point of the word is that it's
not up to you. Not unless you're the author or owner of the series in question. That's what canon really means -- it's not about "what happened," but about authorship. A fictional canon is the entire original work of a single author or the creative team of a shared universe. Tie-ins are often canonical when they come directly from that author or team, but almost never when they're created by different people. That's why the Dell
Babylon 5 novels published during the series were mostly not canonical while the post-series Del Rey ones were, and why the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics published during the series were not canonical while the post-series ones were. The difference is that the post-series ones came from the creators themselves. Outside authors can only imitate or approximate the core work; only its actual creators can add something integral to it.
Of course, as an audience member, you're perfectly free to count non-canonical works in your personal view of the continuity. But that's got nothing to do with canon, because canon is not a statement of "reality" or "rightness" (an absurd standard to apply to make-believe stories), just authorship.
Does Kurtzman really have the power to decanonise anything like GR thought he did.
Again: Canon is not an officially assigned label or seal of approval. Canon is just a descriptive nickname for the entire body of works that make up a series. Whatever the creators add to a series is part of its canon
by definition. So yes, whoever is creating a series has absolute power to rewrite it however they want, because it's all just make-believe and we're only pretending any of it happens anyway. The creators of
Dallas erased an entire season from its continuity -- although that season is still part of its
canon, because canon does not mean continuity, it means the complete body of creative works in a series or category, whether they're mutually consistent or not. I doubt you could get a complete experience of
Dallas without the "dream" season -- especially since the spinoff
Knots Landing still referenced its events.
general: "The Enterprise Incident" has Spock stating to the Romulan Commander that it is unbecoming of a Romulan to "be clever'. TNG disproves that time and again...
Does it? The two series are a century apart. A culture can change a great deal in a century.
