Novelverse "facts" you've taken into your head-canon

[Christopher]

As for the other discussion, does this count as fanfic or profic? It's unlicensed but it's obviously been written with the intent to sell.

That's called plagiarism. Fan fiction is something you do for fun. Professional fiction is marketing work you have a legal right or permission to market. Trying to profit off of something that belongs to somebody else, without their permission, is stealing. It's anything but professional, because it violates the standards of professional conduct. And it's anything but fannish, because it disrespects the property and its creators by trying to usurp it as one's own. It's just greedy.

 

[Lonemagpie]

IMO, Professional writing is what's contracted/paid/licenced. etc; fan fiction is what you do as a hobby; the stuff you don't yet know whether it's going to be paid or unpaid is just writing...

As for the thread's actual question- I fear that personal canon is, as Terrance Dicks once described continuity (before the internet made research easier), What You Can Remember At The Time...

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I accept all the litverse books I've read into my personal headcanon. It just makes the Star Trek universe so much more rich and fleshed out and I will gladly accept more. But there are story lines that feel more canon to me. The first DS9 relaunch still feels like an official season 8 to me (particularly with the characters Shar, Tenmei, Ro, and Vaughn), and the post-Full Circle Voyager novels feel like if they had made a Voyager revival series with a bigger budget and directly for Netflix, several years later. There's not a lot of logic to how I feel in particular about what stories feel more 'real'. For instance, Bashir and Dax going off to 31 and the Aventine feel a lot more 'real' than say...the entirety of the Typhon Pact's existence or the Jaunt Drives in the alternate universe. The modern Breen feel more real than the Tzenkethi. Doctor Soong surviving Brothers and building a financial empire over decades culminating into bringing Data back felt real, but the thread of the Enterprise-E falling out of favor and being shamed during the A Time To... series was hard to swallow.

 

[Timewalker]

Whichever book had the Borg cube eating Pluto is NOT EVER going to be in my head canon. That was as disgusting as the Klingons using one of the Voyager probes for target practices and cheap laughs.

 

[Jinn]

Whichever book had the Borg cube eating Pluto is NOT EVER going to be in my head canon. That was as disgusting as the Klingons using one of the Voyager probes for target practices and cheap laughs.

Before Dishonor... Probably my least favorite Peter David thing I've read.

 

[Timewalker]

He's one of the Trek authors I've actually met in person (in the '90s, at a science fiction convention in Calgary). I enjoy most of his writing, but that book was just awful.

 

[JD]

I love how much the books have done to really expand the universe, to me the stuff that the books have introduced is just as much a part of the universe as the stuff from the shows/movies.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I've taken the Andorian four sexes into my head canon, other than that I prefer not to restrict myself with how the Trekverse progressed after the end of the TV shows.

As with @tomswift2002 I prefer see "Year One" as being the early days of Starfleet and the Federation.

 

[Cicero]

Andrew Robinson's depiction of Garak's youth in A Stitch in Time is very much part of how I understand the character and his world. It's hard to imagine him without Palandine or his time at Bamarren.

In broad outline, I tend to think of Diane Duane's version of Romulan society and history. I don't think all of it makes sense (even in the absence of contradictions on screen), but I love S'task (especially “I am a Vulcan, bred to peace”), the general sweep of the exile (including what turned out to be a useful explanation for the Debune and proto-Vulcans), the nature of second contact with the rest of the galaxy, and the overall structure of life on Romulus.

A strange detail that has stuck with me from TOS is the (essentially undescribed) Avenger-class scoutship USS Halcyon from the short story Intersection Point.

Also, I've developed something of a composite impression of Yeoman Colt (from "The Cage"). Some of these are also somewhat supported by the episode:

• She goes by "Mia." (Early Voyages)
• She was an officer during "The Cage," and was promoted to lieutenant shortly thereafter. (Captain's Log: Pike, Early Voyages)
• She and José Tyler are friendly. ("To Walk the Night", Early Voyages)
• She's clever, capable, ambitious, affable, and curious—and knows her way around both a fight (on ship or planet) and an engine room. Actually, Colt's unusual competence is a weird recurring element of many of her appearances. (Captain's Log: Pike, Early Voyages, Where Sea Meets Sky, Child of Two Worlds, Legacy)

A few other ideas about the Pike-era that have stuck for me:

• Gabrielle Carlotti was head nurse under Dr. Boyce. (Early Voyages)
• Sita Mohindas was a Starfleet helmsman who knew Christopher Pike. (Early Voyages)
• Environmental suits looked like this. (Early Voyages)

Finally, I really like David Mack's ideas about Breen egalitarianism. I don't know that I regard them as "facts" about the Star Trek universe, but they're fascinating.

 

[Jinn]

Yeah, everything from EV I take as fact, except some of the character backstories from the first issue.

 

[Greg Cox]

• She's clever, capable, ambitious, affable, and curious—and knows her way around both a fight (on ship or planet) and an engine room. Actually, Colt's unusual competence is a weird recurring element of many of her appearances. (Captain's Log: Pike, Early Voyages, Where Sea Meets Sky, Child of Two Worlds, Legacy)

.

I suspect that's a reaction to her being portrayed as new and inexperienced in "The Cage," as well as Pike's initial doubts about her. We all want to show that "yep, she worked out fine once Pike got used to her."

 

[Enterprise1701]

The ENT crew never actually saw what the Romulans looked like in all the times they showed up in ENT.

First, in "Minefield," they were just playing tag with the mysterious vanishing Romulan ship the whole time. And at the very end of the fourth-season Vulcan arc, it turned out that the Romulans had been working in the background and even had an operative on Planet Vulcan, and our heroes never even knew. And finally, all throughout the Aenar story arc, the Romulans were hard at work once more, but the ENT protagonists yet again never saw what they looked like because they boarded the Romulan vessel and it turned out that their ship was unmanned and operated by remote control!

Kor

And then in the novels, the few times Coalition troops had ground clashes with Romulan troops, the Romulans were always wearing masked armor. So no one except higher-ups and spies knew the truth.

 

[thribs]

The explanation as to why they kept what the Romulans looked like a secret was also well thought out.
The destruction of DS9 I don’t keep canon in my head, especially because of that monstrosity that replaced it.

 

[Tuskin38]

Whichever book had the Borg cube eating Pluto is NOT EVER going to be in my head canon. That was as disgusting as the Klingons using one of the Voyager probes for target practices and cheap laughs.

I did like the line that implied that scientists were still arguing about the classification of Pluto though.

 

[Timewalker]

Considering the technology available in the 24th century, I should think they'd have the Kuiper Belt catalogued and sorted out by that time.

 

[F. King Daniel]

A strange detail that has stuck with me from TOS is the (essentially undescribed) Avenger-class scoutship USS Halcyon from the short story Intersection Point.

I've not read the story in question so have no idea if it was the intent, but "Avenger-class" was the fandom designation for the Miranda-class pretty much up until the original Star Trek Encyclopedia came out in and was used in loads of unlicensed technical manuals and booklets. I've always wondered if Avenger-class came from a BTS source on Wrath of Khan or if some random fan came up with it and it stuck.

 

[Christopher]

I did like the line that implied that scientists were still arguing about the classification of Pluto though.

I thought that was quite silly and dated. I mean, when Ceres, Vesta, and the other largest asteroids were first discovered, they were classified as planets for decades and there was a similar controversy when it was proposed to reclassify them as asteroids, but then it was resolved, and nobody today even remembers that those asteroids were once counted as planets. So it seems unlikely that people 400 years from now would still be having the equivalent debate over Pluto, or that they'd even remember that astronomers once reluctantly counted it as a planet for lack of a better category.

Okay, okay, Peter was probably trying to reconcile the reference to "nine planets" in "The Changeling." But a better way to do that would've been to posit a different ninth planet. Indeed, astronomers have found evidence that there may indeed be a new "Planet Nine" out there and are actively searching for it right now.

I've not read the story in question so have no idea if it was the intent, but "Avenger-class" was the fandom designation for the Miranda-class pretty much up until the original Star Trek Encyclopedia came out in and was used in loads of unlicensed technical manuals and booklets. I've always wondered if Avenger-class came from a BTS source on Wrath of Khan or if some random fan came up with it and it stuck.

I've never heard anything to suggest that the makers of TWOK had a class name in mind. If they had, TNG's makers probably would've used it. (The name debuted in onscreen signage in TNG, before the Encyclopedia came out. I think I first saw it mentioned in a magazine article or something of the sort.) And Memory Alpha says that an early script for TVH called it the Reliant class, which is also what the FASA games called it. I would've assumed a belligerent name like Avenger would've come from a combat game, but I guess not.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Considering the technology available in the 24th century, I should think they'd have the Kuiper Belt catalogued and sorted out by that time.

Most likely the case, but the DTI novels also reveal that as there is little of interest in the Kuiper Belt even in the 24th century, the Federation DTI is able to maintain its vault of time travel artifacts in reliable secrecy on Eris.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Not exactly the novelverse, but I accept the Starfleet Museum ships as part of my headcontinuity. Would have loved to see them onscreen...

 

[Christopher]

Most likely the case, but the DTI novels also reveal that as there is little of interest in the Kuiper Belt even in the 24th century, the Federation DTI is able to maintain its vault of time travel artifacts in reliable secrecy on Eris.

It's not about lack of interest, it's about the fact that the Kuiper Belt is huge. There are so many objects out there -- at least 100,000 objects more than 100 km across, and millions more below that size -- that a lot of them would probably have never been directly visited even 400 years from now. It's also pretty cold out there. Think of it as the equivalent of the US government maintaining a secret vault in Antarctica, say. It's not that there's no scientific interest in studying Antarctica -- quite the contrary -- but that it's vast and remote and forbidding enough that the vault's exact location would be hard to find and nobody would be likely to stumble upon it by accident. Only exponentially more so, because space is really, really big.