Canon vs Novel storylines on Startrek.com

[Jsplinis]

I was just looking at the Star Trek Padd App on my iPhone. It features all of the information that's on the official Star Trek.com site.

Anyways, I was reading the Spock article and noticed that it gives the year that Spock joined Pike's crew and his rank. I thought these details weren't established in canon and there have been conflicting versions in non-canon. I assumed that the official site would only use canon information. But it looks like that's wrong. Am I mistaken in my conclusion that the official site uses non-canon info for its encyclopedia?

Also if you look up Arex there is a lot of back story given for him and Chekov 's supposed shared history that I don't recall being revealed on screen.

So if the official site is not canon I guess I'll stick to Memory Alpha for my canon reference needs (that is unless someone knows any major problems with their info)

Thanks and have fun,
jsplinis

 

[Therin of Andor]

So if the official site is not canon I guess I'll stick to Memory Alpha for my canon reference needs (that is unless someone knows any major problems with their info)

The official site has never been "canon". It's outsourced as a license just like the novels, comics, RPGs and toys. Material written for the official site gets approved by the same CBS Consumer Products process, AFAIK.

Memory Alpha is contributed to, edited and info deleted by fans. It's as reliable as Wikipedia, Memory Beta and IMDb. Great, useful resources but... let the reader beware.

gives the year that Spock joined Pike's crew and his rank.

We do know that Spock served with Pike for 13 years (IIRC), so any date that has been pinned down is conjectural, and probably tallies with the one guessed at by the Okudas in the "ST Chronology".

Back story on Arex would be from the two-page biography sold by Lincoln Enterprises in the 70s and 80s.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Memory Alpha is contributed to, edited and info deleted by fans. It's as reliable as Wikipedia, Memory Beta and IMDb. Great, useful resources but... let the reader beware.

Indeed. I disagree with some of their policies - like including information from scripts as gospel, even if the scripts are early versions with notable differences from the finished product. For example, Spock's ship from the last Star Trek movie is listed as being armed with missiles, when the weapons seen were yellow phaser bolts. The script they got that info from differs in several key ways from what was filmed, most notably that Spock went back in time deliberately to rewrite history and save Romulus. That obviously isn't included. At most, infomation from scripts should go into the background sections, and not the main article.

And FWIW, the novelverse gives Arex a different backstory to the old Lincoln Enterprises bio.