Okay, makes sense. Wonder why the different policy from the rest of the tie-in series?
It's different because Kirsten Beyer, an acclaimed Trek novelist, is on the writing staff of
Discovery, and the people involved realized that gave them an opportunity to coordinate more closely between the show and the books and comics than has been done in the past. This was explained in the Las Vegas panel discussion whose audio
can be heard here (thanks to
David cgc for the link).
And, again, let's be clear: they
did not say that the books "will be canon until they're not." Kirsten made a point of saying in the STLV panel that it was best to avoid the word "canon" for these books and comics because of the impossible expectations attached to that label. This is not about labels. This is about what makes sense to do practically and logistically. They're doing the best they can to coordinate the tie-ins as closely as feasible, but of course it's impossible to make absolute guarantees about the internal consistency of a work in progress.
I mean, I do get the idea that having a franchise extend its story into multiple media is fairly popular and can work really well (like how the Star Wars movies and the tie-ins are all canonical and work together to create a bigger whole), but why make an exception here against historical tradition?
There's no "tradition" here. That makes it sound arbitrary. It's a matter of practicality, plain and simple. The makers of a TV show have to focus on making their own show. They usually don't have time to pay attention to everything being done in the tie-ins, certainly not tie-ins as abundant as Trek novels and comics. Also, it takes a lot longer to create novels than it does to create TV episodes, so what's current when a novel is written might be obsolete by the time it comes out, and the show can't be expected to delay long enough to stay consistent with something so much slower -- not unless there's close coordination ahead of time. (Note also that all three of the
Discovery tie-ins announced to date, two novels and a comics miniseries, are prequels, so they don't have to keep pace with ongoing developments in the show.)
Or write canonical Star Trek tie-ins to other shows and movies?
The thing to keep in mind is that it would have to go both ways. Keeping tie-ins consistent with the canon to date is not the problem; that's actually obligatory. We all have to get our outlines and manuscripts approved by CBS to make sure that they are consistent with the canon as it stands at the time of writing. The issue is whether later canon can be kept consistent with the tie-ins. And it's up to the creators of the shows (or films, depending on the franchise) to be willing and able to pay attention to what the tie-ins are doing and incorporate it into their work. As I said, usually that's too difficult or impractical. It requires close coordination ahead of time, and it can be too great a distraction from the creators' main priority, which is the show itself.
Canon, at the root of it, is the stuff that the creators or current inheritors of the franchise create. So in order for tie-ins to be canonical or canon-adjacent, they basically need to be created by or in partnership with the same people who create the canon. The Del Rey
Babylon 5 novels were canonical because J. Michael Straczynski outlined and supervised them (and the earlier Dell novels failed to be as canonical as intended because JMS was too busy making the show to give them the attention they needed). The post-series
Buffy and
Angel comics are canonical because Joss Whedon outlines and supervises them (whereas the ones that came out during the series were never anywhere near canonical). In the case of Disney's
Star Wars canon, they have the Story Group overseeing all SW productions in every medium and making sure all their creators are in sync -- but even so, everything else is merely a supplement to the movies, so if the movies have to contradict something from some random comics issue or
Rebels episode, the Story Group probably won't stop them. The tail doesn't wag the dog, after all.
And in the case of
Discovery, we have the phenomenon that is Kirsten Beyer -- a veteran novelist who's close to the other writers and editors of Pocket's Trek books and is also a junior but respected member of the show's writing staff, who knows both the business of books and the business of television, and is thus able to serve as a bridge between them.
