Is the animated toon canon?

[Greg Cox]

I can't resist pointing out that just today on this very board there are no less than three threads about "canon" going on: this thread about TAS, another thread debating whether INTO DARKNESS is still "canon", and yet another thread about whether the books should be "canon" or not. Good god . . . .

Does seem like maybe this "canon" thing is getting a little out of hand . . . .

 

[PCz911]

In 1989, due to ST IV and TNG, Gene Roddenberry had some influence on Paramount when the tie-in licenses were being renegotiated. All proposals and manuscripts had to pass by then-Viacom Consumer Products (and now replaced by CBS Consumer Products) and his own Star Trek Office. Richard Arnold, a longtime volunteer tour guide and convention volunteer, began a fulltime position, as Archivist, and was soon vetting tie-ins on GR's behalf, and the Office began distinguishing what was "canon".

At first, it was defined as "live action, as screened", and that which was produced by Desilu/Paramount/Viacom. That cleverly shunted out TAS (which had been produced by Filmation and Norway Corp. for NBC Children's TV, and wasn't live-action), and licensed tie-in books, comics and RPG materials, but the definition also omitted new live action material, even when filmed on the actual sets (i.e. for video board games, computer games and Universal's "A Star Trek Adventure"). By extension, it also covered later products, such as the two live-footage interactive rides at the "Star Trek Experience" in Las Vegas - and perhaps(?) restored/new footage in revised videos of the movies and episodes.

Roddenberry passed away in September 1991, Richard was suddenly no longer Star Trek Archivist, so by default the "keeper of canon" passed to Rick Berman. Paula Block and her team at Viacom, (later CBS) Consumer Products, continued vetting the tie-ins. Essentially, nothing changed, although TAS started being referenced in the tie-ins again, and was retro-added to the official online encyclopedia entries.

After Berman left, nothing ls has really changed. Bad Robot would designate any change to accepted "canon", and Orci and Kurtzman were supervising how IDW would approach any TNG- and TOS-related tie-ins to the 2009 and 2013 movies (eg. "Countdown", "Nero", "Spock Reflections", "Countdown to Darkness", "Star Trek Ongoing", etc).

But not much has changed. "Canon" would still be "as screened", and that which is produced by Desilu/Paramount/Filmation/Viacom/CBS/Bad Robot. It has never been the novels, comics or RPGs. No one ever clarified that changes for DVD releases altered canon. (e.g. Was the Vejur cloud 82 or two AUs in diameter?)

For the last few years of her tenure at "Voyager", Jeri Taylor treated her novel, "Mosaic", as canon, but only because she was showrunner, and was using Janeway background material she had conceived of for the episodes if ever needed. She invited the other writers to use that book, and "Pathways", but they started ignoring the VOY hardcovers as soon as Taylor left the series.

"Canon" really only affects the licencees anyway.

Wow! This is an answer. It should be archived for those interested in canon and history. Thank you!

 

[Christopher]

Wasn't there also a full-size inflatable Enterprise?

Yes, in "The Practical Joker," and it's actually not as unreasonable as people tend to think. Inflatable habitats have actually been investigated seriously as a possibility for spaceflight, because they're lightweight and easy to launch into space, and because microgravity means you don't necessarily need a heavy, rigid structure.

There are far more improbable things in "Joker," like the cartoony misrepresentation of how "laughing gas" works, or the fact that the Enterprise computer would essentially have to be sentient to be capable of humor, or the idea that exposing the ship to the cloud a second time would magically fix the problem instead of making it worse. (Sometimes I think some alien entity from the cloud possessed the computer.)

I can't resist pointing out that just today on this very board there are no less than three threads about "canon" going on: this thread about TAS, another thread debating whether INTO DARKNESS is still "canon", and yet another thread about whether the books should be "canon" or not. Good god . . . .

Does seem like maybe this "canon" thing is getting a little out of hand . . . .

Oh, absolutely. It's a fan obsession far out of proportion to its actual significance.

 

[Tim Thomason]

The obsession with canon (here and mostly elsewhere) is probably a product of the information age. When I was a child, in the long, long ago, all I had to go by was my Encyclopedia, Chronology, and a couple old Greg Cox novels. They and my shoddy memory of TNG reruns (and the occassional TOS that aired at about 3 AM on UPN - which taught me to get up very early) were all I knew when watching DS9 or Voyager first-run. I never even saw the Animated Series (but heard good things) until after I joined Memory Alpha about 11 years ago.

But now, everything and anything is at one's fingertips. I can search for every line said by everyone in every Star Trek television series within seconds. I have access to countless novels and comics on my phone. There are no shortage of official and unofficial fan encyclopedias on Star Trek, and frankly all entertainment franchises out there.

I've written before that we're in a "golden age" of nostalgia, brought on perhaps by the overall availability of information, and the thirst for more, and the hunt for canon is simply a search by some people for the limits and borders on that information.

 

[Terok Nor]

The animated series could be considered canonical with the rest of Star Trek or it could be considered a tie-in. It's really up to the individual since we've been given conflicting statements about it. I don't see any reason why it can't be in the continuity of the live action shows beyond the fact it's a cartoon. I think its status is justifiably vague and that's fine.

The authors we're fortunate enough to have on the forum have explained that their novels only need to make sure not to contradict anything that happens on screen. The tv shows and movies aren't ever going to take steps not to contradict the novels so there really is no way to reconcile all Star Trek media together. Take what you want and disregard what you don't want is my advice. The tv shows and first 10 movies are supposed to be set in the same continuity and the Abrams universe is an alternate version of that continuity so if you're concerned about canon then that's the only Star Trek that's ever going to be official. If you love a novel and it doesn't contradict anything that happened on screen then, in a way, it's canon to you and anyone else who loves that novel. Even if a novel does contradict something it may not be part of the on screen continuity but you can still enjoy the story in its own right. Nothing wrong with that. The more Star Trek the better.

 

[Christopher]

I've written before that we're in a "golden age" of nostalgia, brought on perhaps by the overall availability of information, and the thirst for more, and the hunt for canon is simply a search by some people for the limits and borders on that information.

Oh, I'm all for defining boundaries and categories. I like to organize fictional continuities and keep track of what works go in which version, being aware of the differences between them. But what I don't understand is the attitude that being in different continuity categories makes one work better or more legitimate than another. To me it's just a matter of structure and classification, not a judgment of worth.

I don't see any reason why it can't be in the continuity of the live action shows beyond the fact it's a cartoon.

Which isn't a solid reason in itself, since there are examples of animated works being canonical in a live-action continuity, e.g. Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Rebels, or the Doctor Who animated special Dreamland, or The Animatrix.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Jesus, that's going the long way around the barn. Crazy idea: why not just tell a story?

Oh, how I wish your attitude was shared by the people running DC and Marvel these days. FAR too many people in comics are more concerned with rewriting the folks who came before them than they are with telling their own stories.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Oh, how I wish your attitude was shared by the people running DC and Marvel these days. FAR too many people in comics are more concerned with rewriting the folks who came before them than they are with telling their own stories.

Post of the day.

 

[suarezguy]

Jesus, that's going the long way around the barn. Crazy idea: why not just tell a story?

Marvel has done that too with the '90s series Untold Tales of Spider-Man, stories set early in his career that take place between rather than instead of the early comics without being clear if they "actually" or just might have happened.

 

[A beaker full of death]

^ Cool. That's the right approach. I wish they did that on a blanket basis.
When comics transitioned from Earth 1 to Earth 2, that is, from the golden age to the silver age, no one spent five years coming up with a way to make it happen. No one said, "well that 1961 adventure was the Earth-2 Batman, but that 1963 adventure had to be Earth-1, because the Joker's tie was crooked." Carmine Infantino spent three pages pulling psychic-connections-across-alternate-dimensions out of his ass and then got down to the business of storytelling.
And even then - the reinvention served the story, not the other way around.

 

[Poltargyst]

If you produce a new story be it in the form of a movie, tv show, book, comic, whatever, and you research what came before, and you make sure you don't contradict what came before, then you are recognizing canon whether you call it canon or not. And this is all I'm asking for. Respect what has already been established, and don't contradict it. Is that so much to ask?

And I agree that in Star Wars, Darth was intended to be Vader's first name, Luke and Leia were not intended to be siblings nor children of Vader. It doesn't bother me that Lucas then decided that they were siblings and children of Vader, though, since it was not explicitly stated that that wasn't the case. Although Darth suddenly becoming a title does annoy me for some reason.

 

[Christopher]

If you produce a new story be it in the form of a movie, tv show, book, comic, whatever, and you research what came before, and you make sure you don't contradict what came before, then you are recognizing canon whether you call it canon or not. And this is all I'm asking for. Respect what has already been established, and don't contradict it. Is that so much to ask?

As a rule, that's a good goal, but every rule has exceptions. Look at it from the creator's standpoint. Are you always happy with the decisions you made in the past? Don't you ever look back and see your choices as mistakes that you wish you could go back and fix? Is it that hard to understand that writers make mistakes too, or that they learn from experience and have better ideas as they move forward? Is it that hard to understand that writers don't want to be held hostage to the imperfections of their past when they have better ideas in the present?

Yes, continuity is nice, but all of this is just pretend in the first place. So sometimes, if you can't fix a mistake within existing continuity, you just fudge the continuity and pretend it was always that way. It's not the ideal option, but it's too much of a straitjacket on creators to insist that they shouldn't have the option at all. Fiction is not that rigid. Fiction is a work of imagination, and readers or viewers with imagination should be able to be flexible and adjust to the occasional continuity correction. Absolutism and inflexibility are not useful traits in the creation of imaginary works.

 

[Neopeius]

I swear I don't get it. Canon. Reboots. Continuity Nazis. Can't anyone just appreciate a specific production on its own terms anymore? At least two major movie series have had to do massive time loop stories to get around events/casting in previous films. Comic books companies have been wiping out their whole universes every 15 years to escape their own continuity, though no one actually gave a shit about it before 1986. Who cares? Can't anyone just tell a good story anymore?.

If nuTrek is any indication, no.

A better question to ask than "Is TAS canon" is probably "which aspects of Trek do you hold in your personal canon?"

The thing about TAS (and the books and the comics) for me is not whether they are individually implausible, but whether it's plausible for a single crew to have SO MANY ADVENTURES!

It's why I'd prefer TOS-era revival shows to focus on ships other than the Enterprise (would that Exeter had survived longer).

But taken on their own merits, TAS episodes are about as good as the rest of TOS. I wish some of them were longer, though...

 

[Taranis]

Personally I think its canon or elements can be considered as such.
there where some very good stories.

 

[johnnybear]

Canon is up to the viewer, fan or reader I suppose!
JB

 

[gomtuu20]

When I was a kid, I was very excited about TAS. Then when it came on the air, it just didn't feel the same. I was very disappointed. Now that I am an adult, I seem to like it more. I don't really understand why.

 

[Kor]

When I was a kid, I was very excited about TAS. Then when it came on the air, it just didn't feel the same. I was very disappointed. Now that I am an adult, I seem to like it more. I don't really understand why.

Was it less impressive than other animated shows of the time?

Kor

 

[Chronos]

The average episode of TAS is about as "out there" as an average episode of TOS. I don't really see why anyone would reason that TAS didn't happen while TOS did. If I were to throw out TAS for being too improbable then I would need to do the same with TOS and all of its many omnipotent beings and sentient clouds -- and some others do consider TOS to be non-canon, but I do not share this view.

If we're going by what Gene wanted then things are still complicated. He may have declared TAS to be non-canon, but he didn't even get a chance to see the later seasons or even the entire runs of TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT. Not to mention all of the newer movies. Are all of these stuck in canon-limbo?

If we're going to judge canonicity (new word?) based on both improbability AND word of Gene then there is no canon and none of the events of Star Trek actually happened -- almost as if it were some work of fiction.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Canon is up to the viewer, fan or reader I suppose!
JB

Nah, that's called "what you like".

 

[In_Correct]

It's supposed to be canon, but on Trek BBS apparently it is not, or it would have its own forum.

There were many problems with it being animated. Back then almost any cartoon in U.S.A. was a Saturday Morning Cartoon, and had to be "Kid Friendly". I don't recall anybody really dieing in TAS either. Which is weird be cause Space Angel (I believe the engineer on Space Angel was a huge inspiration for Montgomery Scott) had people dieing all the time.

There were even more problems with TAS. They had went over budget and as a result it had very bad animation, and no Checkov. No mention of Checkov either.

I always thought this is the reason why TAS was disowned.

There were no more attempts at animation after that. It would make sense if more episodes of TAS would be made with the TOS actors in them. If William Shatner wants to return to Star Trek then animation is the best way to do it.