So if I became a Star Trek producer and created a pre-TOS series in which Vulcan was destroyed, thus eliminating the possibility for Spock, Tuvok and other Vulcans to even exist, would that be considered "canon" despite the fact that it contradicts what we have seen in TOS, TNG and VOY?
Yep! Although it is highly unlikely that Paramount would hire a producer who does something like that, since Spock is probably still the single most popular
Star Trek character.
In that case, the whole thing with "canon" is silly.
Yep! It always has been.
Canon is important if you're, like, deciding what works to include in a wiki or if you're writing licensed tie-in fiction so you know what info is binding on you as the creator of a derivative work. If the day comes that
Star Trek leaves copyright and enters public domain, there will be multiple
Star Trek canons and it'll be important to know which canon a work belongs to. But it's not important in most other contexts.
That's...actually really cool. I like that.
I'll do the same thing with the
Bonaventure.
Oh and I'm sorry I deleted the message you quoted. I thought my message was offensive. Mea culpa.
Oh, no worries! I didn't realize you had deleted anything. I didn't consider your message offensive, for whatever it's worth.
I always thought that "canon" was something necessary when it comes to setting up the guideline for a series, such as "Vulcan exists in TOS, Spock is a Vulcan and all episodes of TOS and references to Spock and Vulcan in future series made after TOS should be done after those guidelines".
But with current days producers and writers................... oh dear what a mess.
I mean,
Star Trek has
always had continuity errors. First the USS
Enterprise was a United Earth starship, then it was a Federation starship; first its space serve was the United Earth Space Probe Agency, then it was the Federation Starfleet. First humanity had only broken the "time barrier" since the crash of Vina's ship, then humans had had warp drive for hundreds of years. First Zeframe Cochrane was from Alpha Centauri, the he was from the United States. First he was James R. Kirk, then he was James T. Kirk. First Spock had emotions, then he was spared Earth emotions, then he had emotions but he suppressed them. First Spock was Vulcanian, then he was Vulcan. First Vulcanians had been conquered by Humans, then Vulcan hadn't been conquered in cultural memory. First Vulcan had no moon, then it did. First women had only recently been allowed into Starfleet and were banned from commanding starships, then women and men were always equal. And on and on and on. Current producers are no worse than any others with maintaining consistent continuity.
With all this talk about April I'm
really stoked for a flashback appearance of him commanding the
Enterprise in the early days!
Unfortunately it'd mean they'd have to bring back the blue uniforms...
Not necessarily, Pike does have a picture in his quarters showing him and April wearing The Cage/WNMHGB style uniforms.
For that matter, if April was commanding the
Enterprise in the 2240s, then that could pre-date the DIS S1-2 blue uniforms
and the "Cage"-style uniforms. We could see them wearing the uniforms we saw with Captain Robau and the USS
Kelvin at the start of
Star Trek (2009). Or they could wear an entirely new style.
Goodness knows it's now clear that there are a lot of Starfleet uniform designs floating around these days -- I think between
Lower Decks, Prodigy, and
Picard, we now have something like six different uniforms being used circa 2380-2385? (The
First Contact/later
Deep Space Nine uniforms, the
California-class and Starbase 84-type uniforms from
Lower Decks, the
Protostar and
Dauntless uniforms from
Prodigy, and the
Picard flashback uniforms.)
Continuity things are a problem on its own but some of them can be explained and/or written round with some thinking.
But if "canon" is something just based on each and every producers or writers whims, then I can simply put that issue aside and concentrate on my own version of Star Trek which I sometimes make stories about and no one can complain if I get the idea of bringing Gowron back.
If someone complains and says "that's not canon" , then I simply can say: "My universe! My rules!"
Absolutely! Headcanon is a perfectly good way to respond to creative decisions you just disagree with in the canon, or to add texture or context to a story you think needs a bit more.
Yup, and fans are welcome to do so. Again, it's a matter of what does canon actually mean. It means the collected works by the author, or owner, in this case CBS.
Additional context re: the name of
Star Trek's corporate owner. CBS Inc. and Viacom re-merged back into one company. For about five minutes, it was known as CBS Viacom, but now CBS Viacom has changed its name to Paramount Global. In checking out the copyright notice on the latest episode of
Star Trek: Prodigy, it would appear that they're keeping the
Star Trek copyright under the ownership of CBS Studios Inc. as a subsidiary of Paramount Global, but Paramount Pictures (itself a separate subsidiarity of Paramount Global) still owns the copyright on the
Star Trek films under license from CBS Studios Inc. (its sister subsidiary). So in general, I think it's probably a bit clearer to refer to
Star Trek's corporate owner as Paramount or Paramount Global, since Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios Inc. are both just subsidiaries of Paramount Global anyway.
We can ignore all we want (I do) but that doesn't change how others will engage with the material, nor does it obligate anyone else to view it my way.
Fan fiction is quite fun, and offers a lot of variety out there. But, it's not canon, which is what this thread is about. Not personal preference, likes, dislikes, or whatnot. That's like asking what type of pizza is the only canonical pizza?
Pepperoni with extra cheese, extra sauce, and Roma tomatoes, obviously.
Not quite. It was a decree from the Star Trek Office (of Gene Roddenberry), not Paramount itself. And it was in response to Filmation getting divided up and sold off - all Filmation assets were in a state of flux re ownership - and also DC Fontana and David Gerrold suing Roddenberry for co-creatorship on TNG, so it made sense (to some) to deemphasize their contributions at the time of the lawsuit.
Well, when you say "the
Star Trek office," you mean the office at Paramount Television that produced
Star Trek: The Next Generation and reviewed licensed tie-in products for Paramount Pictures, correct? Because if that's the case, then a decree from the
Star Trek Office does indeed constitute a decision by Paramount Pictures, the then-owners of the entire franchise.
Actually, I prefer fan fiction to the messed up circus that official "Star Trek" has become.
In fact, I rather watch TNG, TOS, DS9 and the first three seasons of Voyager than wasting my time on NuTrek and Discovery.
However, I do like Una McCormacks books about Cardassia, especially those where Garak is involved.
Just for the record, Una McCormack's wonderful Cardassia novels are not fanfics, because fanfics are by definition unlicensed, unauthorized fiction produced by fans without involvement from the owners of the intellectual property involved. By contrast, McCormack's novels are authorized tie-in novels produced under license from the owners of
Star Trek.
But I can still tell that PIC had quite a bit of good storytelling, it just wasn't for me.
That's a good attitude to have, and I think if we keep saying more
Star Trek being produced in more and more divergent styles, we're going to have a lot more situations where some
Star Trek shows won't be for everyone even as there is
something for everyone's tastes.
It looks like everything is canonical nowadays.
Does Romulus and Vulcan exist and in which timeline? Well, according to "canon" they both exist and don't exist so acirding to that "logic" your preference is obviously "canonical" too.
As my is!
Not exactly. There are three important timelines in the
Star Trek canon:
- The Prime Timeline (setting of Enterprise, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Generations, Voyager, First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Picard)
- The Mirror Universe (setting of "In A Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II" [ENT]; "Despite Yourself," "The Wolf Inside," "Vaulting Ambition," "What's Past is Prologue," and "Terra Firma, Parts I & II" [DIS]; "Mirror, Mirror" [TOS]; "Crossover," "Through the Looking Glass," "Shattered Mirror," and "The Emperor's New Cloak" [DS9])
- The Kelvin Timeline (setting of Star Trek [2009], Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond)
In the Kelvin Timeline, Vulcan was destroyed in 2258. In the Prime Timeline, Vulcan is never destroyed, but Romulus is destroyed by a supernova in 2387. As far as we know, neither Vulcan nor Romulus was ever destroyed in the Mirror Universe.
Which is a way of messing up things as I see it.
I never understood the reason for the destruction of those planets, especially not Vulcan in the 23rd century since it obviously existed in the 24th century.
The 24th Century of the Kelvin Timeline has never been seen onscreen. The idea behind setting the 2009 film in a new timeline was that it allowed the writers to make radical changes without contradicting the events of the Prime Timeline.
The dramatic purpose was that the destruction of Vulcan in
Star Trek (2009) was the
"all is lost" moment, the point where the protagonists seem as far as possible from the accomplishment of their goals in order to create a sense of triumph when they achieve victory at the end of the story. It established how dangerous Nero was, and it took away the audience's perception that a character that is famous from
The Original Series must necessarily survive the film (thereby increasing the dramatic stakes of the story).
The dramatic purpose behind the destruction of Romulus was that it provided plausible motivation for the film's antagonist to want to destroy Vulcan and Earth. Years later, the first season of
Star Trek: Picard used
Star Trek (2009)'s decision to destroy Romulus in 2387 of the Prime Timeline to serve as a backstory for how the Federation had fallen into xenophobia and Picard had become alienated and disillusioned -- which then opened the door for a story about Picard regaining faith and purpose, and thereby leading the Federation into redemption for its mistakes.
The result of producers with too big egos who try to put their mark on everything.
I'm sorry, but it is really unreasonable to attribute creative decisions you don't like to ego. Like it or not, most of the time these writers are just trying to tell a good story.
