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The Animated Series as Canon?

Should The Animated Series be canonized?

  • Yes

    Votes: 25 89.3%

  • No

    Votes: 3 10.7%
  • Total voters
    28
M-Red

M-Red

Commander
Red Shirt
Okay so a couple of preemptive apologies:

1. If this has been discussed ad nauseam, sorry.
2. It's a piece of the franchise I'm unfamiliar with and, in fact, I've only seen one episode ("Yesteryear")...but it was quite good.
3. I've always heard TAS wasn't canon so I sort of never really bothered....treating it more like the literature or comics.

But...

Reviewing the production history, TAS was created by Gene himself and some of the same writing talent that created TOS, including Fontana.

And the acting/voicing was all the same as TOS: Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Takei, Nichols, Doohan, - all "played" the animated versions of their iconic characters.


I haven't formed a conclusion and I'm trying to decide what to think about whether (or if...) TAS could someday be canonized.

Should TAS be canonized? Or could it? Why or why not?

TIA.
 
I only remember a couple episodes from TAS. One of these days I need to go back and watch it.
 
I consider it canon, sure there are a couple of goofy things in particular episodes, but so is "Spock's Brain". And as you pointed out, the folks responsible for the stories were the same people who worked on the original show.

Also, as far as I understand, it was Roddenberry's toadie Richard Arnold who decanonized it in an interview, but in the same interview Arnold also claimed that Roddenberry didn't consider most of the movies (likely ST2-6, since he didn't produce those) and parts of the original series as canon, but for some reason nobody took Arnold for his word on that, so I take the decanonization of the animated series with a similar grain of salt.
 
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Sweet shit, canon is a word which should only have meaning in internet arguments, not a deciding factor in if you should watch a TV show or not. If you're a Star Trek fan, you should absolutely watch TAS. It's that simple.
King Daniel Beyond said:
I don't want to be fan of any canon that doesn't have "Magicks of Megas Tu" in it.
Click to expand...
Ditto. Also, The Jihad is pure win on so many levels.
 
From what I've heard the only thing preventing TAS being canon was that Roddenbury didn't want it (perhaps he was old school and thought animation a lesser medium than television drama).

It never had anything in it (in terms of bad inconsistencies) preventing it being canon.

But it's more and more accepted as canon now. Memory Alpha includes it. Maybe the Okudas will accept it as canon in the next encyclopedia. I certainly accept it, irrelevant of it's status.

Another question:

Should Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, and Star Trek: Judgement Rites, also be canon?

They are equal to TAS at least in quality, and fully voiced by Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly, et al.

I think games should be judged very very very strictly on a case by case basis. TAS is written by, acted by, produced by, the exact same people as TOS, and is basically a continuation. Only a couple of games meet that strict criteria. Things like Judgement Rites should be canonized, but newer, less canonical games like Armada or STO, where they were a game first, and Star Trek second, should definitely, absolutely not be - they don't remotely share the feel of the series - they were genre games first, and episodes of Star Trek second. I'm just afraid canonizing one game would lead to people eventually letting all the fanfic level games in. Just allow the stuff that is 100% pitch perfect with the shows. That amounts to maybe three games - all of which were fully voiced and laid out like episodes - so my canon would be:

Television:

TOS - TAS - TNG - DS9 - VOY - ENT - DIS

Films:

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X - 1, 2, 3, 4

Games:

25th Anniversary - Judgement Rites - A Final Unity

You could make a good case for Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy too, as they have mature character-oriented full plots, and were live-action acted by a cast and crew, including Shatner, Christopher Plumber, etc. I'm not sure that any novel should be admitted, because it would be utter horror trying to define which ones didn't contradict screen canon too much. But obviously there are some that have absolutely no stylistic or canonical problems, even going back to Spock's World, etc.
 
I consider it to be a fanciful, exaggerated depiction of events that "actually" happened... which is also how I think of TOS season 3.

Kor
 
TAS is canon along with TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DIS, TMP, WOK, SFS, TVH, TFF, TUC, GEN, FC, INS, NEM, ST2009, INTO DARKNESS, and BEYOND...
 
The 2013 Gorn video game is also referenced in Into Darkness (McCoy's line about a Gorn C-section - never seen in the game or the movie, only spoken about). It also mentions New Vulcan, and has all the AR character actors reprising their roles. Oughta be canon.
 
It's the same ship, the same crew and the same actors from The Original Series therefore it is canon as far as I'm aware. There's not much reason to exclude what is essentially the 4th season of TOS in my opinion.
 
Other thing eventually consider it canon.

For instance, the Orion Female in TAS was a villain in Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures.

Another example was one of the animals on Vulcan from TAS was included in the Star Trek: Enterprise's Vulcan Restoration arc.
 
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Are writers of ancillaries free to contradict TAS? Christopher? You've answered that before and I can't remember.
 
I"m not sure if there's an "official" policy these days. All I can say is nobody has ever cited TAS at me when asking for revisions, as in "You can't do that because of something in TAS . .."

Mind you, I've never deliberately contradicted TAS that I know of. :)
 
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