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Could books Ever become Canon?

^All of which underlines the problem.

I'm not attacking the quality of their content, certainly not. They may be required to be consistent with the existing true canon material available at the time but that doesn't mean they are consistent with each other. There were a lot of Star Trek books written before 2000.

The TV shows struggle to maintain their own continuity, bringing hundreds of books in to it would serve to do nothing but confuse every discussion you could possibly have about the show.

Oh, definitely. I don't think that it would be a good idea to canonize much of any novels before 2000, and would only favor the canonization of the current shared TrekLit continuity if the writers of the canon were willing to work closely with the folks at Pocket -- which is itself an unrealistic goal. Better that the folks at Pocket work around the canon (though it would be nice if maybe a few basic facts about the Litverse, like Min Zife and the Tezwa war and Nan Bacco, were canonized).

that Trip's death was faked. And even that is not strictly speaking a contradiction of the canon, since the canon did not establish that Trip had died in 2161, but rather that people in the 24th Century believed he had died in 2161.

That's definitely a strict contradiction of canon any way ya slice it. The show made it explicitly clear what happened to him.

Well, no. It's a contradiction of Berman and Braga's clear creative intent, but it's not a violation of what they actually established. We never saw any of the ENT characters in "These Are the Voyages...." We saw holographic re-creations of them created centuries after the fact. In real life, that sort of re-creation would be prone to error anyway. "These Are the Voyages..." did not establish that Trip died in 2161, it established that people in the 24th Century believed that he had died in 2161. The Good That Men Do did not contradict what "These Are the Voyages..." had established, it merely revealed that the people of the 24th Century were mistaken in their belief.

And on top of that, Trip's death in "TATV" made no sense. At all. He sacrificed himself to defeat invaders when he had never done so before to defeat intruders that were much more numerous and more dangerous -- and, further, he practically begged for it from the very beginning. Watching "TATV," what struck me was that it almost seemed like Trip wanted to be killed defeating them -- which was something that he had never been like before.

So for me, it actually made far more sense when The Good That Men Do revealed that Trip seemed unusually eager to die because he was acting for the internal sensors. It also created a very interesting new arc for the character that I'm enjoying very much.

This is however, a very great example of why books should never be made canon. "The fans don't like what the showrunners did to a character, therefore we are gonna brush the big magical eraser over what happened on-screen to give the fans what they want instead (and sell more books that way)." :rolleyes:

1. There's no reason to think that anyone thought that bringing Trip back would sell more books. They did it because his death was so poorly handled in the ENT finale that it practically demanded a revision.

2. The very same editor, Margaret Clark, who brought Trip back in the ENT Relaunch has steadfastly refused to bring back Data, a far, far, far more popular character on a far more popular series, so your assumption that they only brought Trip back because he was a popular character is invalidated.
 
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At least one FASA class made it into canon (the Orion Wanderer), as it was seen on several 1st season TNG computer displays...

Yep, which is why I said "usually". :techman: I knew there was at least one. DC Comics used it too.

A background voice in TMP refers to a dreadnought, too, which GR later said he regretted letting Joseph put that class of starship/warship into the Tech Manual.
 
This is however, a very great example of why books should never be made canon. "The fans don't like what the showrunners did to a character, therefore we are gonna brush the big magical eraser over what happened on-screen to give the fans what they want instead (and sell more books that way)." :rolleyes:

The sarcastic part of me wants to say: "Agreed! How DARE they?!? Don't readers know it's a writers' job to give them what's GOOD for them, not what they WAN?!?"

That aside, consider the environment that TATV was written in....Coto had in ONE season generated more positive buzz for the show than the "Killer Bs" had in THREE. People were working night and day trying to get the PTB at Paramount to give him one more season to worth with...a season that would have been even BETTER than S4. Enterprise was well on it's way to being what it always SHOULD have been: a true TOS prequel.

The Killer B's couldn't stand being shown up by a "highly placed underling", so in one fell swoop, they break up Trip/T'pol, KILL Trip, and shoehorn in TNG characters that had ZERO business being in the Enterprise finale.

I remember some of the comments attributed to the production crew when the script hit. I remember hearing some SERIOUSLY cheesed off actors protesting the forced insertion of some OTHER show's characters into what was supposed to be THEIR last turn on stage.

If the book's writers wanted to give Enterprise fans a little of their own back in the face of the "scorched earth" farce that BnB inflicted on the franchise, I say MORE POWER TO THEM!
 
At least one FASA class made it into canon (the Orion Wanderer), as it was seen on several 1st season TNG computer displays...

Yep, which is why I said "usually". :techman: I knew there was at least one. DC Comics used it too.

A background voice in TMP refers to a dreadnought, too, which GR later said he regretted letting Joseph put that class of starship/warship into the Tech Manual.

I've read the interviews with FJ's daughter who had his notes and papers...Gene was pissed at Paramount and took it out on FJ. Typical Gene, from what I hear...
 
A background voice in TMP refers to a dreadnought, too, which GR later said he regretted letting Joseph put that class of starship/warship into the Tech Manual.
Which is nonsense, and par for Roddenberry's post-fact revisionism; he didn't object to such during the creation of the Technical Manual.

And here's the thing. What does it matter what Roddenberry thinks about the Technical Manual? Paramount doesn't own it. Roddenberry doesn't own it. It's Franz Joseph's.

That's probably the real issue. FJ was able to license it out to become a wargame, Star Fleet Battles, something that Roddenberry and Paramount had no control over.
 
Bottom line: The books are not cannon. But they could be if Paramount ever changed it's mind on the subject.
 
You're right. The books are not cannon. But Paramount can't change its mind on that fact; it's simply a question of definition. What's an artillery officer to do with a Star Trek book, when what he needs is a cannon? :)
 
The Killer B's couldn't stand being shown up by a "highly placed underling", so in one fell swoop, they break up Trip/T'pol, KILL Trip, and shoehorn in TNG characters that had ZERO business being in the Enterprise finale.

Had Enterprise continued beyond S4, the events of TATV would have made no sense whatsoever.

Case in point... any time Trip would have been put in danger... it would not have mattered. It would never had mattered. An explaination would have been in order as to why future generations would believe Trip dead after the "Incident with the Nameless Jewel Theives".

This is why I rationalize that some aspects of the novelization are canon enough for me to enjoy the shows more (faked death). If that makes me ignorant, I could truly care less. Honestly, TATV was sloppy enough to give considerable weight to the faked death theory.

But of course, I'm certain others will feel free to "piss in my Cheerios," as the curious saying goes. ;)
 
Well, bits and pieces from books can become canon, like Sulu's first name being established as Hikaru, as I believe it was first used back in the novel The Entropy Effect by Vonda McIntyre, and I think was used in Generations. But entire novels? Probably not. -- RR
 
Well, bits and pieces from books can become canon, like Sulu's first name being established as Hikaru, as I believe it was first used back in the novel The Entropy Effect by Vonda McIntyre, and I think was used in Generations. But entire novels? Probably not. -- RR

Was 'Tiberius' as well? Written before spoken by the Klingon magistrate in STVI? If it was written beforehand, I won't pretend to know where.
 
Which is nonsense, and par for Roddenberry's post-fact revisionism; he didn't object to such during the creation of the Technical Manual.

An interview with GR had him saying it was his own shortsightedness. He truly thought ST was dead when Joseph signed his contract to create a semi-licensed publication - one to which a loophole enabled Joseph to retained the rights to "sub let" his original concepts.

And here's the thing. What does it matter what Roddenberry thinks about the Technical Manual? Paramount doesn't own it. Roddenberry doesn't own it. It's Franz Joseph's.
Well, Paramount half owns it. And, with the original version of the publication, if you slid out the cover slick from the black folder, it no longer even says "Star Trek".

That's probably the real issue. FJ was able to license it out to become a wargame, Star Fleet Battles, something that Roddenberry and Paramount had no control over.
Exactly. And GR felt bad for Larry Niven when Star Fleet Battles adopted the kzinti ships from TAS, because the same contractual loophole prevented Paramount from stopping it.
 
And, with the original version of the publication, if you slid out the cover slick from the black folder, it no longer even says "Star Trek".

For one simple reason: it's supposed to be an in-universe document, and none of the characters, cultures, or institutions of Star Trek know that they're in a TV series called Star Trek.
 
^ Not really. "Canon" is determined by whichever producers of whatever show or film is currently in production. It really shouldn't matter to everybody else, at least not to the often ridiculous extent some folks take it.
 
You're right. The books are not cannon. But Paramount can't change its mind on that fact; it's simply a question of definition. What's an artillery officer to do with a Star Trek book, when what he needs is a cannon? :)

So, you're saying I misspelled canon? Oops. I did.

But my point stands. The books are not canon until Paramount says otherwise. Say, for example, if one of them was made into a future movie. Now it's on screen, so now, that book (whichever one it is) would be canon.
 
But my point stands. The books are not canon until Paramount says otherwise. Say, for example, if one of them was made into a future movie. Now it's on screen, so now, that book (whichever one it is) would be canon.

The movie based on the book would be canon; the book itself wouldn't necessarily be. There are always changes when a movie is based on a book, and there's no reason to assume a movie based on a Trek novel wouldn't have major changes, not least because filming everything that happens in an average-length novel generally requires a miniseries, not one 90-minute movie.

This isn't hypothetical -- the TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before" is very loosely based on Diane Duane's novel The Wounded Sky, and Doctor Who did a two-parter based on Paul Cornell's DW novel Human Nature. The latter was a lot closer to the source material, but it still had a number of significant changes: different Doctor, different companion, etc.
 
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