The reason I ask is because in Star Trek VI, when they have the Klingons over as guests on the Enterprise, the crew acts like they have never hung out with Klingons before on friendly terms (the Enterprise crew even says they've never been this close before to a Klingon ship), but yet in the ending of Star Trek V it shows the Enterprise and that Bird of Prey flying alongside each other with the Klingons hanging out on the Enterprise as guests. At first I thought that might have been an oversight by Nicholas Meyer but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that he deliberately did that to contradict Star Trek V as if to say "Folks, Star Trek V never happened, so just forget about it." And hey, if Star Trek V isn't canon, then so much the better. It would erase a lot of the inconsistencies that movie had (like how they got to the center of the galaxy so fast).
It is my belief that in a long series of adventure stories or tv episodes that is not serialized like a soap opera or like many modern TV dramas, most of the stories or episodes happen in alternate universes of their own, separate from the alternate universes of other stories or episodes, instead of happening one after another in the same timeline. Thus the characters can survive all their dangerous adventures, because the writers have searched billions of alternate universes and selected the most exciting and dangerous adventures of the characters from those alternate universes to make stories about. No episode should be considered to happen in the same alternate universe as any earlier episode without specific evidence that it is a sequel to it. Therefore it is easy to explain that the heroes in ST VI:TUC have never been this close to Klingons before since STV:TFF and STVI:TUC happen in alternate universes and STV:TFF never happened in the alternate universe of ST VI:TUC which is not a sequel to STV:TFF. Both movies are canon in Star Star Trek as a whole, but neither is canon in the alternate universe of the other one. Of course that does not solve going to the center of the galaxy in STV:TFF, but I have other explinations for that.
It's still canon in the sense of still being considered to be considered a part of the official ST continuity, but the reality is that TFF was a bad movie that did a lot of dumb things, so most people aren't going bend over backwards to acknowledge it. If a better story comes along that contradicts TFF to some degree, so be it.
They still sell it, so it's about as canon as anything else in Trek. Which means it'll either be ignored or contradicted or have a sequel/prequel made depending on what whoever is currently in charge of Star Trek thinks.
If it's onscreen, it's canon. And, honestly, nobody at CBS or Paramount has ever objected to me referencing it in the novels.
Something being unpopular and/or inconsistent doesn't make it "non canon." Consistency / continuity and canon are two totally different concepts. And, in fairness, all things being equal...in the example given here, it was TUC and later VOY that violated continuity established by TFF...not the other way around. Should we be having conversations about whether or not they are non-canon? Klingon blood was inconsistently portrayed as pink in TUC. Does that "decanonize" that film?
The Internet claims that: "Gene Roddenberry publicly expressed his own dissatisfaction (with TFF) by stating that certain plot elements were 'apocryphal,' although it is not known exactly which elements he was referring to."
Sybok as Spock's brother was presumably 'apocryphal' to Roddenberry. I can't think what else it could've been. The Original Series had tackled similar plot elements before, with about the same or down right worse results.
While The Final Frontier seemed to get it particularly bad in terms of being ignored by future TV shows, most of the other TOS films are actually only referenced in fairly oblique ways. In fact, of all the TOS films the only one that seemed to be regularly referenced in TNG-era shows was The Undiscovered Country, and even then only because the Federation-Klingon peace treaty was such an important part of the TNG era's backstory.
Applause. This is something I endlessly find a source of frustration, the idea of "canon" which represents some seamless continuity between events in a comprehensively plotted, mapped and realised universe which we only see in glimpses. This is a total nonsense, most trek episodes struggle to go forty minutes without some sort of internal consistency in their own plot, much less the one that came before or one from 40 plus years ago. If it is an official star trek film or episode, it is canon. It doesn't matter if next week we discover Picard is suddenly captain of the Discovery and Harry Kim has also joined the crew but is a Tholian, it will still be canon, much as WNMHGB's James B Kirk does not invalidate every episode of TOS which followed.
Exactly. V'Ger and Decker and Ilia were never mentioned again, but that doesn't mean TMP isn't "canon." The Genesis Device was never mentioned on any of the subsequent STAR TREK tv series. Hell, Edith Keeler was never mentioned onscreen again, but that doesn't mean "City on the Edge of Forever" never happened.
Although it might be interesting to try to come up with a Trek viewing order that only includes episodes and movies that are referenced subsequently.
GR also objected to some things he'd done in TOS and it was said he'd get rid of large bits of TOS he wrote if he could and of course he decanonised TAS. So I'm not happy to decanonise stuff based on GR's fights with TPTB. I'd rather get rid of GEN than TFF. The only thing you'd need is to explain is what happened to the 1701-D and the rest of the TNG movies could run fine. In fact all the TNG movies are far more independent than the TOS movies.
It's canon. "Never been this close." Kirk's embellishing. Plus it's several years later. Things must have become a lot more tense in-between and we just didn't see it. To use the Real World as an example: the atmosphere and overall feel of 2018 is far more tense than 2008 (despite America having been involved with two wars simultaneously and having an economic collapse at the time). To put it in more of a 1991 context, though: I normally don't pull The Novel Card but this is a case where I will. The novelization of TUC does a good job of setting up the context for why Kirk's hatred of the Klingons has flared up again and why Starfleet has turned more hawkish.