Are the NuAbrams movies the only canon ?

[The Wormhole]

Was that out of all the non-canon stories, games, deleted scenes, books etc, the Comics were the 'closest' to canon and so to those of us wondering about the fates of Picard, B4, Geordi et al they had the truest answer.

Which leads us onto the idea that just eight years after the events of Nemesis, B4 is Captain of the Enterprise, Picard has had enough of the old exploration game, ignoring Kirk's advice from Generations, and has become an Ambassador of all things.

Preposterous, but a debate for a different thread perhaps.

Well, no, none of that is canon, since Pocket Books isn't required to incorporate any of that stuff into their novels. In fact, amusingly enough a novel from a couple years ago even has Picard stating he has no intention of retiring and becoming an ambassador.

Orci's just wording things sloppily, perhaps intentionally so given how often he gets goaded into calling the comics canon. Besides, STID contradicted the comics at every turn so they clearly aren't canon.

 

[Christopher]

Orci's just wording things sloppily, perhaps intentionally so given how often he gets goaded into calling the comics canon.

I think it's more the general usage and understanding of the term that's sloppy, because different franchises have different approaches to how canon and tie-ins are supposed to relate. Which is very confusing to fans. There's no universal rule for how it works, and so the meaning of the term has to be worked out from precedent on a case-by-case basis.

At the time, Orci was directly involved with the films and was in charge of approving the comics. So from his perspective, that made the comics "close to canon." But Abrams didn't necessarily have as much interest in the comics, because for him the films came first and he'd handed the responsibility for the comics to Orci. So maybe Orci might see the film canon in a certain way and tell Mike Johnson to approach it that way, but then Abrams might have his own differing view that would conflict with that when the next movie came along. And of course Orci is now no longer writing the films, so his views of the canon are no longer binding, just as Jeri Taylor's novels were no longer counted as canon once she left Voyager. Canon isn't gospel carved in stone by some higher power, it's just the working assumptions of the current showrunners. And that makes it a mutable thing. Which just adds to the confusion among fans, especially those fans who are vainly seeking some absolute determiner of the "truth" about a bunch of made-up stories.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Trek and NuTrek are their own separate canons. Like Burton Batman and Nolan Batman.

 

[Terok Nor]

Trek and NuTrek are their own separate canons. Like Burton Batman and Nolan Batman.

Not exactly.

Burton Batman and Nolan Batman were separate continuities with nothing linking them together. Old Trek and New Trek are different versions of the same reality. Leonard Nimoy's Spock even appeared in Trek 2009 and Into Darkness. There's no reason why both universes couldn't crossover again. That was never an option for the 2 versions of Batman.

 

[Dukhat]

Trek and NuTrek are their own separate canons. Like Burton Batman and Nolan Batman.

Not quite. The universe of Nolan's Batman wasn't created from the universe of Burton's Batman thanks to someone from the latter's future coming back in time to create the former.

 

[Christopher]

Old Trek and New Trek are different versions of the same reality.

That's right. Note that this is also how Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Genisys justified their respective divergences from previous film continuity, by using time travel to branch off new timelines from the original. Ditto with the new X-Men timeline created in Days of Future Past and continued in the upcoming Apocalypse. Time travel is becoming a pretty common way of revamping a continuity. DC Comics also did it with some of their multiple continuity resets, most recently with Flashpoint and The New 52. It's also been done to a lesser degree by Eureka, Fringe, and Doctor Who to tweak their continuities without wholesale resets.

 

[OpenMaw]

I think it's fair to say, and a safer bet, that the comics and video games are not really canon to the Abrams films. One big gaff with the game vs the films thus far is that the game directly contradicts what Kirk says about his record before he loses the Enterprise in STID. Some of his crew clearly get killed in the game, vs STID where he apparently had a spotless first year. I think the same is true of some of the comics where crew have been killed.

 

[Christopher]

I think it's fair to say, and a safer bet, that the comics and video games are not really canon to the Abrams films.

You can leave out the "really." They're not canon, period. Nobody has ever officially claimed that they were canon.

One big gaff with the game vs the films thus far is that the game directly contradicts what Kirk says about his record before he loses the Enterprise in STID. Some of his crew clearly get killed in the game, vs STID where he apparently had a spotless first year. I think the same is true of some of the comics where crew have been killed.

That's right. The first four issues of the Ongoing comic adapted "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Galileo Seven" and kept the fatalities in those stories intact. (Indeed, the slavishness of those adaptations was their biggest problem. Not only was it boring to see a familiar story retold -- at least until the "Galileo" adaptation changed the ending to have Uhura steal a shuttle and go rescue Spock -- but it was implausible that the same events would happen nearly word-for-word years earlier in an alternate timeline. Those stories were kind of a misfire, and it was a relief when they started doing looser adaptations and original stories thereafter.)

 

[dahj]

There's no reason why both universes couldn't crossover again. That was never an option for the 2 versions of Batman.

That's not really true.
DC has had a multiverse thing going since way before Star Trek was a glimmer in Gene Roddenberry's eye.

They'd never do it of course because nobody wants to see a crossover between Burtonverse and Nolanverse, but there's nothing stopping them from doing that crossover, you just need one Flash to punch a hole...

 

[Christopher]

That's not really true.
DC has had a multiverse thing going since way before Star Trek was a glimmer in Gene Roddenberry's eye.

Well, not quite. "Flash of Two Worlds" debuted in September 1961, and according to The Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry began working on the concept for ST as early as 1960.

 

[dahj]

^^
Wonder Woman visited a mirror universe several times prior to that, starting in 1953.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, there were stories in that vein all over the sci-fi landscape going back at least as far as Murray Leinster's "Sidewise in Time" in 1934. But you were referring to how long "DC has had a multiverse thing going," and the DC Multiverse as a continuous, ongoing concern only dates to "Flash of Two Worlds."