No, but none of that material counts in the eyes of Paramount. It's non-canon, which is the same as if it didn't exist. Why would someone be interested in writing a new Trek novel or manual if no fans will buy it and Paramount will consider it as "inferior" because it's a tie-in?
There is not a single assumption in that paragraph that is correct. First of all, it is completely wrong that non-canonical material is required to be ignored or treated as nonexistent. If that were so, Sulu's first name of Hikaru, which originated in the novels, would never have been used onscreen in
The Undiscovered Country. Non-canonical material isn't forbidden, it's just
optional. It's something that the writers of canonical material are free to ignore
or use as they see fit.
Second, as I said, Roddenberry's canon policy, the one that you and so many other fans assume is still binding on Paramount,
has not been in effect since Roddenberry died. As I already said. The false fan assumption is that Roddenberry's memo, which defined canon in terms of exclusion, represents the standard film/TV industry approach to the issue of canon. Nothing could be further from the truth. People in film/TV don't have to worry about canon much, because it's a tautology: anything they're making is automatically canon, so what's to worry about? The Roddenberry memo only represents Roddenberry's (and Richard Arnold's) own personal view of things. He was very protective of his creation, and he was
very threatened by the idea of sharing it with anyone else. So he found it necessary to define a strict dividing line between
his view of
Star Trek and everyone else's. But after he died, none of his successors felt the same need to draw such strict lines. They were too busy actually making the show.
Third, and trivially, ST licensing is now the purview of CBS Consumer Products, not Paramount.
Fourth, that last sentence has no connection to any reality I'm aware of. Why would anyone write a new novel if no fans will buy it? Huh???? You are aware, aren't you, that there's still a new novel being published every month? Heck, you're talking to someone who's written five
Star Trek novels and has just sold a sixth, so obviously fans are buying them, from me and from plenty of other authors. IDW's Trek comics are also proving quite successful. So obviously non-canonical status does not prevent people from buying a book.
And I don't get what the one has to do with the other; why would a statement about the status of tie-ins have any effect on the freedom of the people creating the shows themselves? Hell, that's the whole point of declaring tie-ins non-canonical: to give the writers of the actual core creation total freedom to create whatever they want rather than being beholden to something from a tie-in that only 1-2 percent of the show's audience will ever read.
No. The original purpose of the policy was to protect the official media (TOS) as the prime source for Star Trek.
Yes, that was Gene Roddenberry's purpose, but he was just one man, and he died a long time ago, and his successors have not been bound by his personal need to treat everything as an adversarial relationship.
The official medial do not need to be "protected" as the prime source for
Star Trek. They already are, automatically. The percentage of the audience that reads tie-in fiction is tiny, only 1-2%, as I said. The majority of people who watch the shows and movies don't even
know there's tie-in fiction, let alone read it.
It was to keep the staff from feeling beholden to some tie-in, but it was made at a time when the future of the series as a popular one was very much in doubt. Once TNG came along and helped make Trek into a powerful franchise, that was no longer the case.
Your chronology is very wrong. Roddenberry's canon memo was issued in 1989, after TNG had already become a hit.
It gained a solid core of canon for the production staff to draw from, and there was far less likelihood that fans would trust a non-canon source over a canon one.
Fans' "trust" was never the issue. I mean, seriously -- "trust?" We're talking about a work of
fiction. Something that's completely made up, a great big lie to entertain people. How does "trust" enter into that at all?
Hence, the policy became obsolete and it's still in effect today, because nobody who took charge after Gene has particularly felt the need to change it.
It hasn't been formally revoked, no, but that doesn't mean it's in effect. Nobody's bothered to enforce it since Roddenberry died, and it's been violated in practice many times. I've already given you examples of that, and I wish you'd actually read what I said, since I'm not going to repeat myself. Roddenberry's memo is a dead letter, except in the minds of various fans who don't understand how the industry works.
I mean, who do you assume is enforcing this imaginary "policy" right now? Do you think Paramount or CBS actually pays people money to work as traffic cops enforcing "canon law" for one of their countless franchises? Who the hell would have the time for that? No. No. Defining a show's canon is exclusively the responsibility of the executive producers of that show. After Roddenberry died, it was the job of Rick Berman and Michael Piller to decide that. Then Berman and Piller and Ira Behr, then Berman and Jeri Taylor and Behr, then Berman and Braga, then Berman and Braga and Coto. Each showrunner had his or her own definitions of what was canonical, and each successor changed those definitions. (Taylor considered her novels
Mosaic and
Pathways to be canonical, but Braga disregarded that and allowed them to be contradicted multiple times.) The definition of canon is purely up to the individual showrunner; nobody higher up has the time or the interest to enforce it.
Right now, the only people who have any say over the definition of ST canon are J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman. And they are on record as saying that they consider the tie-in fiction to have some "canon value" and that they've incorporated references to various tie-in novels in the movie itself.
And we can see the results. The only Trek books produced in any amount are novels, and Trek games (about the only other common media) have virtually dried up. Nobody wants to make them because nobody is convinced they can sell or appeal to fans.
Again -- you're talking to a Trek novelist. I want to make them. Pocket pays me to make them. And fans buy them. Most fans don't care if they're "canon" or not. This isn't a classroom. You don't have to worry about getting the "right" materials to study from, since there's no test you have to pass. It doesn't matter what's "real" or not, whether there's a single uniform "truth" or not. It's fiction. It's about whether the story is enjoyable.
I'm not that familiar with Trek games, but from what I've seen, I think there's quite a sizeable audience for them; it's just that the companies making them have kind of a checkered history with them and they tend to do poorly. I can't imagine anyone refusing to buy a Trek game because a movie studio told them it wasn't "real" enough. I mean, how can you even discuss a game in such terms? By its very nature, a computer game depicts a different scenario, a different "reality," each time it's played. How can it possibly be defined as anything other than imaginary?
By contrast, Star Wars produces a range of non-novel books and still makes games and RPGs, and they sell. The fact that these products are considered official, and thus effectively canon until George Lucas or Lucasfilm directly says otherwise, is a huge factor in my view.
It's really sad that you feel you have to have some external authorization before you'll let yourself enjoy a work of make-believe.
But what it comes down to is that Paramount's marketing sucks, and that marketing is motivated in some degree by the fact that tie-in materials are not supposed to count in Star Trek's continuity.
