As Star Trek grew in both size and popularity in the 1980s, fans were faced with the problem of how to treat the ever-growing collection of episodes, movies, novels, comics, technical manuals, and more.
The Star Trek canon is generally defined as all live-action television series and feature films released by Paramount Pictures. With the release of the Animated Series on DVD, the studio appears to have changed its stance, and is now listing the cartoon series (aired 1973–1974), as a part of established canon. [1] [2] [3] The various "official" references (such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia or the Star Trek Chronology) may be used as a guide to canon information, but are not canon in and of themselves.
The definition of Star Trek canon may vary for different fans, and therefore for a reference source like Memory Alpha, the question may become especially difficult.
In those cases, the term fanon is used to refer to "fan canon" (of which the term is a portmanteau). It applies to certain "facts" that may have been accepted as a truth by a large number of fans, and thus either replaces an established canonical fact in the minds of those fans, or fills a plot-hole.
