Is TAS considered canon, and a close "cousin" to TOS?

In short, TAS was put on the shelf for legal reasons related to the shutting down of Filmation, and had nothing to do with the perceived quality or "worthiness" of TAS to be considered part of the Star Trek canon. That Roddenberry didn't feel it necessary to explain this legal nicety to his gofer Richard Arnold really isn't surprising, nor is it surprising (sad, but not surprising) that Richard was allowed to continue in his "GR doesn't like TAS anymore" fantasy because any comment from Paramount, pro or con, likely would've played holy hell with the negotiations over the rights to TAS.

Once those rights were secured, TAS was back in the fold. Rick Berman just forgot to make an official annoucement.

 

That's because there was no official policy that needed to be changed. It's the individual showrunners who decide what's canon; it's not some formal doctrine, just a matter of creative choice. Roddenberry wanted TAS to be ignored, but as soon as he died, that ceased to be binding.

And really, an online poll about this is as irrelevant as an online poll about what next week's weather should be. It's just opinion. The only people whose opinion actually means anything on this subject are the people writing and producing new onscreen Star Trek productions. And as we've established, they've often included references to elements from TAS -- although they've always been fairly minor elements like ship and planet names, and the only TAS episode whose plot has ever been directly referenced or followed up on to any degree is "Yesteryear."

 

Well, with regard to the Kzinti, there was a legitimate legal issue there, since they were brought in from a preexisting property (granted, it was done by their creator, but Larry Niven seems like a pretty reasonable guy and I'm sure a good deal for all wouldn't be hard to reach).

Bjo Trimble has made it quite clear that during her fairly extensive contact with GR during the production of TNG, at no time did he express any dissatisfaction with TAS, let alone suggest that any future updates of the Concordance exclude any reference to it.

Yeah, that sounds like his lawyer. Still, it might've been prudent to give Richard a bit of hint that TAS wasn't being completely disavowed, just put off limits for legal reasons, so that he didn't go off on some personal jihad to rid Star Trek of that shameful Saturday morning cartoon.

Does anybody have a copy of the full memo? I hate having to work from partial info and supposition, no matter how logical and correct that supposition seems to be.

 

TAS likes:
- New ship designs (even if some of them didn't make sense).
- Alien crew members and exotic aliens.
- New alien landscapes.
- Generally above average subject matter and writing for the medium of the time.
- New Enterprise interiors.
- Some of the music tracks.
- Likenesses of the familiar characters.
- Most of the stories.

TAS dislikes:
- Stiff animation.
- Extensive reuse of same shots (well so did TOS) and over reuse of same music cues.
- Occasional questionable ideas: a fifty foot Keniclius and Spock clone, a time reversed universe, "BEM" (botched depiction of a colony being), "The Practical Joker," revisiting Cyrano Jones and a giant tribble...

 

I agree 100% on all the likes. On the dislikes, I forgive the first two because of the medium. The others definitely point to my only gripe with TAS ( and in fact all of Filmation productions) is that the humor is extremely dopey.

 

It should be noted that both "Bem" and "More Troubles, More Tribbles" were originally planned for the hoped-for fourth season, before Fred "Star Trek isn't a comedy" Freiberger showed up and bungled things up.

 

I loved those episodes as a kid, but the humour is so dopey.
All the Filmation shows had that.. Gerrold had that dopiness in Land Of the Lost as well.. Mudd's Passion, however, is exquisitely dopey.

 

I love those episodes NOW, and the "dopeyness" is part of their charm.

 

Funnily I could see "Mudd's Passion" working in TOS given a proper rewrite and different sensibility to the story. Indeed I think many of the TAS stories could have served TOS with some fleshing out and some rewriting. That shows in Alan Dean Foster's adaptations.

But I'd have zero interest in revisiting tribbles and Cyrano Jones. And "Once Upon A Planet," well...maybe, if done right.

 

If those dialogue tracks without the music of effects still exist, I'd love to take a crack at reediting them into a more realistic rhythm and see how close the episodes clock out compared to live action episodes.

 

And real Trek wasn't?

Thank goodness for small favors. Go Fred!

 

I'm a huge TAS fan, myself. In my little head, TAS fits perfectly with TOS, and Arex and M'Ress are a part of the interpid Enterprise crew, canon be damned.

I didn't realize the whole history behind the Roddenberry memo - this is is a very interesting read!

There are novelizations for all the TAS episodes. If TAS isn't canon, and Trek novels aren't canon, are the TAS novels extremely non-canonical? Or are they so non-canonical that they loop back around and become canon?

 

I find Alan Dean Foster's adaptations of the TAS episodes for the most part more convincing than the actual episodes. He fleshes things out so the stories don't seem so abbreviated and edited. And in prose it's easy to imagine the stories unfolding in TOS' live-action "reality."

 

This.

As long as Paramount can still make money off of it... its' canon.

It's all canon. Especially the 50 foot tall Spock.

 

It has to be Canon, TAS gave us one crucial piece of information that is still used today: Captain Kirks middle name! In the episode "Bem", we finally learn what the "T" stands for, Tiberious of course!

 

It also establishes Robert April as the ship's first commander and Sarah April as the ship's first Chief Medical Officer (even if "The Counter-Clock Incident" is a silly story). And it gives us some neat backstory about McCoy in "The Albatross."

 

I consider TAS canon. As much as the other TV series and movies. It's referenced in DS9, VOY, ENT, and in the new Abrams film. It happened.