So how important is canon, then?

[Dukhat]

Not my Star Trek. I refuse to bow to my corporate overlords. Discovery and Picard are NOT Star Trek.

In your head-canon, maybe. Since you do not own Star Trek, it’s not up to you to determine what is or isn’t Trek. As people have already pointed out, canon as far as Star Trek is concerned is either:

1. What’s shown on screen, as per CBS, the current IP holder of Star Trek, and/or

2. Whatever the current IP holder of Star Trek says it is.

When you own the Star Trek IP, then you can tell us all what’s canon or not.

I’m not a huge fan of Picard, Discovery, or Lower Decks. But I’m not so entitled that I don’t think they’re canon. Because that’s not my decision to make.

 

[BillJ]

Fine, call it canon. What Kurtzman has done to Star Trek, and what Johnson did to Star Wars, it's all canon. Yay. It's also, shameful, cheap, hackneyed, disrespectful, and plain old disappointing.

Obviously not everyone sees things the same way and some like like the direction the two live-action shows have taken.

I feel like I have a right to be disappointed.

You absolutely do, you just don’t have a right to dictate what is canon.

 

[cooleddie74]

My own Trek stories and fan films are head canon to ME but Paramount doesn't care about that, nor should they.

They own Star Trek. I don't.

 

[BillJ]

My own Trek stories and fan films are head canon to ME but Paramount doesn't care about that, nor should they.

They own Star Trek. I don't.

So you’re saying my fan fiction where Picard and Janeway have a romance, elope through the Guardian of Forever and are actually Jim Kirk’s parents isn’t canon?!

 

[fireproof78]

That "canon" is simply a skin suit that can be bought and sold, and used by any hack creator with corporate backing as a way to disguise their mediocre, unspired, and/or insulting story as a genuine part of an already beloved universe with a built in fan base. It's nothing but a cheap commodity.

Star Trek was always a commodity. That has not change since Roddenberry wrote the first TOS bible, recognizing that they needed to entertain a large enough audience or they didn't stay on the air. Star Trek is not sacred, nor is it special, in that way.

I feel like I have a right to be disappointed.

I feel that it's wrong for a company to hire some hack writer to stomp all over a rich established fantasy universe

You have the right to feel the way that you do. That has little to do with canon.

would have Roddenberry rolling over in his grave.

Maybe, maybe not. After all, his son has a producer credit on some of the newer productions. Roddenberry was a person who made changes to Trek too, and altered it to suit his own personal viewpoint as well as make money.

You might like the current output of Trek; you're not alone in that nor is it "accepting the sludge" (as so artfully stated) to recognize that we the fanbase do not have the sanctioning power over the canon of Trek. We do, however, have the buying power and if we are dissatisfied with the product stopping our purchases is one way to demonstrate a lack of satisfaction. Declaring it noncanon is not an effective solution.

 

[cooleddie74]

So you’re saying my fan fiction where Picard and Janeway have a romance, elope through the Guardian of Forever and are actually Jim Kirk’s parents isn’t canon?!

If it's good enough? Yes.

 

[Orphalesion]

1. What’s shown on screen, as per CBS, the current IP holder of Star Trek, and/or

2. Whatever the current IP holder of Star Trek says it is.

When you own the Star Trek IP, then you can tell us all what’s canon or not.

Well, then let's get everybody on the BBS together so that we can buy the IP.

From there it should be easy to find a consesus on what canon is

 

[fireproof78]

Well, then let's get everybody on the BBS together so that we can buy the IP.

From there it should be easy to find a consesus on what canon is

Indeed. We will have a meeting and first must all agree as to what pizza topping can be ordered to the satisfaction of all. After that, getting consensus on canon will see fairly easy

 

[XCV330]

Not my Star Trek. I refuse to bow to my corporate overlords. Discovery and Picard are NOT Star Trek.

ok we've got most of the boxes checked now. Would you care to say anything about Kurtzman, Gene's Vision, or red phaser beams?

 

[nafeasonto]

Here is my take:

I honestly don't care. The writers are the ones that make the show, not us. They can change canon anytime they want. Let's be honest, sometimes it's REALLY hard to keep in canon. Hence in Discovery they broke a few canon rules, and it made it more exciting. Like the Klingons having cloaking before they were supposed to. Oh well.

 

[GNDN18]

 

[Lord Garth]

Like the Klingons having cloaking before they were supposed to. Oh well.

I think people who try to hide behind "STD broke canon because Klingons have cloaking!" are full of it.

In TOS, they never actually established that Klingons couldn't cloak. It's not something that came up. TSFS was the first time we ever saw Klingons cloaking, in production order, but I never got the sense, ever, that that was the first time Kirk's crew had run into a Klingon ship that could cloak. I'd always assumed they had these types of encounters before, and we just hadn't seen it.

Maybe ENT might have established something like "Klingons can't cloak yet!", but since that's 100+ years before TOS and DSC, I figure they developed cloaking technology somewhere in-between.

 

[JesterFace]

What if.... I have a simple solution.
Everybody can decide what episodes or movies they like and watch them. I do it and it works....

 

[BK613]

I like canon and it helps the franchise flow a lot more smoothly and logically for me. That said, this "capitalist" interpretation nonsense is just ridiculous. The IP owner and creators get to decide what's official and what is apocryphal and we don't except in our own personal head canon, and no company is going to listen to MY idea of what I consider official.

Well, except for the part where you are giving them money or not.

 

[ChallengerHK]

Canon is what's on screen. Period.
Whether it's any good or not, is up to the individual viewer.

Here's another way of looking at it. Canon in the Biblical sense carries the concept of "Is it real?" "Am I supposed to believe this?"

That's one of the reasons why "canon" is so tied into "consistency." What parts of what they have shown me am I to accept as the "real history" of Star Trek?
"Am I supposed to believe that a group of grade school kids can run a starship?"
"Am I supposed to believe that Spock has a never-ending supply of siblings, waiting in the wings for a story which can use them?"

Those types of things are up for debate, but I think a significant number of people would like to see that debate based on something like the merit of the story or how the story progressed characters. Instead, the debate frequently centers around the equivalent of "Gene decided he didn't like all the work that he got paid for in TAS, so he also decided none of it was canon," or "the Voyager producers were so embarrassed by one episode that they declared it null and void." Those types of arguments, which come down to "We fucked up" don't really help anything make any kind of decision.

Ultimately, everyone creates their own canon, hence the term "head canon". At this point, I am of the opinion that each series takes place in its own universe, and some episodes do as well. That's an easy way to cut out the crap and not have to deal with making it all fit. It doesn't have to fit, and when it doesn't fit it's two different universes you're looking at. I can't help but notice, though, that the MCU fits together pretty darned well, much better than Trek, across dozens of products. I have to believe that Trek could have done that if the will was there...or maybe the talent...but it wasn't. Pity.

 

[fireproof78]

I think the more interesting part is the psychology of individual's ability to tolerance inconsistency and ambiguity.

For me, the fun of Star Trek is that it is rather inconsistent and that it is a part of my own engagement with the story to line things up a little bit better. Now, an argument will happen as to whether or not that is the audience's job but that's what I enjoy doing is fully engaging with the work, and if it doesn't like up with past episodes that's OK I can make it work. I don't think TMP fully meshes with TOS but it is there, part of the overall story, and thus I am willing to have it all hang together.

To me, hanging each piece out separately can work but seems unnecessarily nitpicky.

 

[1001001]

At this point, I am of the opinion that each series takes place in its own universe, and some episodes do as well. That's an easy way to cut out the crap and not have to deal with making it all fit.

Of course, the other way is to not care about small contradictions in a 55 year old story and just enjoy the ride.

 

[Dumbbell]

I am of the opinion that each series takes place in its own universe, and some episodes do as well.

I agree. I would even go so far as to say, each move and each television series.

Interestingly, Wikipedia says,

The official Star Trek website describes Star Trek canon as "the events that take place within the episodes and movies" referring to the live-action television series and films, with Star Trek: The Animated Series having long existed in a nebulous gray area of canonicity.

That is funny because Wikipedia’s definition of Star Trek canon does not include the Star Trek website that defines it.

Neither should Wikipedia itself be considered canon for anything either, for that matter.

 

[F. King Daniel]

and politicized place

Yeah, how dare they make "A Private Little War" in 1968

 

[Dumbbell]

ok we've got most of the boxes checked now. Would you care to say anything about Kurtzman, Gene's Vision, or red phaser beams?

When the ship's phasers are red it is because the tactical officer remembered to set them to kill during the battle. (All this time, they were set to stun!)