There ya go.. that should be the final answer to the question. Who knows if Robert April is canon? Who knows if any of the existing Trek shows/movies are canon?
Is Capt. Robert April Canon?
- Thread starter Vivman
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There ya go.. that should be the final answer to the question. Who knows if Robert April is canon? Who knows if any of the existing Trek shows/movies are canon?
I prefer to look at the Bond films the same way you just came up with, even if a couple things don't entirely mesh. It was Connery's Bond who played in the movie after Lazenby's, but you could easily suggest that he voluntarily came out of retirement to avenge his successor and then went back into retirement once the job was done, and then MI6 found a new Bond (Moore), who eventually put an end to Blofeld for good in the beginning of For Your Eyes Only.
Although it is a fabulous new technology at the time of Encounter at Farpoint.
Set years later. However, this one I will give you, as ENT implies force fields were in development (and tbh essentially complete) at that time and nothing we've seen contradicts this assumption.
Captain X
Rear Admiral
You gave me attitude to begin with, so don't try to lecture me, got it?It was more a matter of not having enough time this morning than anything. College would be great if it wasn't for all those pesky classes...I attempted to search through the TrekToday headlines and didn't see the article I remembered reading...
That's not surprising. As the www.startrek.com article makes clear, TAS has never been declared "canon" by the studio. If this hypothetical TrekToday article says otherwise, it's a misstatement.
And if you don't like my attitude, drop the snotty "It's not my job..." dodge for not being able to support your position.
Because holodecks were this new and novel thing in early TNG - that ENT example is one of the things some fans hold against ENT, along with the cloaking devices that were regularly used throughout the series. As for the personal force-fields, I don't remember the example you're citing, though I do remember one that Worf managed to jury-rig for an holodeck malfunction episode of TNG. But seeing how pretty much every time we've seen crew go EVA, they've been wearing actual suits, it's silly to think that they'd be doing that in the late 24th century if they had the capability to have force-field suits in the 23rd century.
Yet Janeway once said she had use of a holodeck during her childhood years. It's not as if all Trek fit together perfectly in one continuity except for TAS. It fits in just as well as any of the other series.
I don't think anyone says it's a new technology. Riker acts pretty amazed, but that's about it. For all we know, the "rec room" seen on TAS was a rudimentary prototype, and the TNG holodeck was simply a more advanced version with an amazing level of realism that nobody had ever seen before. Maybe that's why Riker was so amazed.
Well, I don't think anyone says on screen that there was a specific year when personal force fields were invented. But really, my whole point is that if it's possible to accept pre-TNG holodecks and personal force fields on other Trek shows, why is it so hard to accept them on TAS?
Captain X
Rear Admiral
Seems to me that it's stated as new and amazing technology in the first and second season, something they apparently don't entirely understand given how they reacted to various scenarios they had in the holodeck, like the first Dixon Hill jaunt and the first one with Moriarty.
I also pointed out that one of the criticisms of ENT was the routine appearance of 24th century technology on the show, even if it was being used by aliens.
I also pointed out that one of the criticisms of ENT was the routine appearance of 24th century technology on the show, even if it was being used by aliens.
Some things in TAS just don't work, though. What about the Bonaventure instead of the Phoenix? Or the Kzinti? How the hell can they fit into the pre-ENT timeline?
That's what ryan is saying... all the Trek shows have their continuity issues. TOS had "James R. Kirk". DS9 got the date of the Eugenics Wars wrong. VOY went back to 1996 and no wars were going on at all. Seven's parents were hunting the Borg 20 years before Picard ever heard of them. Romulans had cloaking devices in ENT. Is Zefram Cochrane from Alpha Centauri or not?
The list goes on and on. You can rationalize all of these problems, and many people have, but it's not like TAS is the only show with errors that can't be reconciled with the other shows.
Everyone acts amazed, right through the first season of TNG, there's even a whole scene in the briefing room where Picard gushes about it. Given what the Rec Room can apparently do in TAS, its pretty difficult to believe that in creating a detective's office 80 years later the improvement is that noticeable that everyone acts so dumbfounded.
The Janeway connection is much easier to justify - she doesn't say she remembers holodecks, she says she remembers the characters in the kiddie holoprogram, which hardly implies a fully interactive holodeck. I remember Captain Scarlet, but the puppet version; doesn't mean CGI was around when I was a kid.
He's dead, Jim.
That is incorrect. In the Chronology (can't remember if it's in the Encyclopedia), in either the Introduction or an Appendix or somewhere like that, it is specifically mentioned that some of the content (mostly dates) is nothing more than conjecture. Which means that some of what you see in there in the Chronology is just guesswork on behalf of Okuda, etc. (in other words, it contains non-canon stuff). I can't remember if a similar statement was made in the Encyclopedia, and I don't have my copy handy so I can't comment on that book. But as for the Chronology, I am 100% sure that comment is in there.
Well, as a I said before, Enterprise showed holodecks in a pre-TNG timeframe. So if the Rec Room is is a point of contention that makes TAS somehow less worthy of being considered "canon", then you'd also have to argue that Enterprise is less worthy of being considered "canon", for the same reasons.
Well I wouldn't use that argument to determine its place in canon, because as IamNS said earlier, 'canon' and 'continuity' are totally different concepts. Enterprise's continuity is quite frequently shocking, the holodeck being one of the worst offenders - but it is inescapably canonical. TAS, by virtue of being ignored by later writers, also has massive continuity problems with the series that followed, which is what we were discussing RE: holodecks, but that isn't the reason it isn't canonical. It isn't canonical because those who defined the canon said it wasn't, and that has never been revoked or changed. That's all a canon is - someone in authority over a work, or sometimes popular consensus where no authority exists, determines the content. Continuity within the canon is an entirely different ballgame.
That would make it Alien technology not 24th Century technology. All Trek shows have encountered advanced alien technology that they seem to forget about, even when encountering it for a second time.
^Yeah, like Starfleet forgetting about cloaks between 'Minefield' (ENT) and 'Balance Of Terror' (TOS).
About continuity and canon as seperate concepts: Aren't there a few Biblical stories which have been refuted, and excluded from the 'canon'? They're called the Apocrypha. And there's a few lost Shakespeare plays which are contested as to whether they were actually written by the Bard or not.
The new PTB at Paramount haven't said if they think TAS is canon or not, yet. I wonder if Abrams and his team on Trek XI consider it canon. The screenwriters for the film, Orci and Kurtzman, think the books are canon, so it wouldn't surprise me if we get a few nods to TAS too.
About continuity and canon as seperate concepts: Aren't there a few Biblical stories which have been refuted, and excluded from the 'canon'? They're called the Apocrypha. And there's a few lost Shakespeare plays which are contested as to whether they were actually written by the Bard or not.
The new PTB at Paramount haven't said if they think TAS is canon or not, yet. I wonder if Abrams and his team on Trek XI consider it canon. The screenwriters for the film, Orci and Kurtzman, think the books are canon, so it wouldn't surprise me if we get a few nods to TAS too.
There are a number of books (fourteen seems to ring a bell) which are part of the Roman Catholic Old Testament canon but which are excluded from the Protestant one; these are called the Apocrypha. There are others found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere which were excluded from the Bible altogether at the time of its original codification in the 4th century (ecumenical Council of Nicaea, 325 AD, whence also came the Nicene Creed.)
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