Geekery

[fj]

Is ST:TAS considered canon?

Edit: Yes, I corrected spelling.

Comments

[jered]

Wikipedia says no.

At the end of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, all licenses for Star Trek spin-off fiction were renegotiated and the animated series was essentially "decanonised" by Gene Roddenberry's office. Writers of the novels, comics and role-playing games were prohibited from using concepts from the animated series in their works.[3] Among the facts established within the animated series that were called into question by the "official canon" issue was its identification of Robert April as the first captain of the USS Enterprise in the episode "The Counter-Clock Incident".

[redarius.livejournal.com]

In general, yes. Sad as it is, I've read a great deal of debate either way, but the core TOS crew was involved in TAS, and it was produced by many of the same people... so it's canon.

And this may be the geekiest thing I've admitted I have an answer to on LJ in a long, long time. ;)

[redarius.livejournal.com]

Ah, I did not think to check wikipedia.

I do know that some versions of the RPG did make use of content from TAS, however. But there have been so many.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Embrace the Geek. It's Hot.

[redarius.livejournal.com]

Oh, no question. With open arms. ;)

Re: the wikipedia thing, it's almost tempting to challenge the article for bias... but getting into wikipedia contests is like beating off without being able to finish -- it gets old really quick, no one wins, and if you do it too long you chafe.

What's most amusing about all of this is that even though it's almost exactly the same creative team, they tried to get rid of it entirely. The ideas they were able to put into ST:TAS were things they could have never done with foam rocks and plywood sets in ST:TOS, you know? The "re-envisionaries" that did ST:TNG retconned plenty (heh although nothing comes close to what Enterprise did later), but pretending ST:TAS never happened was silly.

I've generally found the "space between" stories in the ST universe to be better than the ones that focused on characters I already knew through shows and movies. I've wasted some hours recently with the new ST:TOS - Vanguard storyline set in an outlying area of the federation which features some pretty cool development around the Tholians. I have a pretty flexible imagination, though, so I don't get too bogged down in "in episode #, they said this, so nothing can contradict it ever!" That kind of behavior about fantasy takes the fun away.

[urbear]

Don't think so. There were several concepts that were mentioned in TAS that never made it any further... for example, Larry Niven's Kzinti were present as another set of adversaries (mentioned in passing in one episode, the focus of another, "The Slaver Weapon"). No way that could have been ignored in the later canon.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that episode is pretty much just a Trek rewrite of an existing Niven short story. it's somewhere in the Neutron Star collection, I think.

[urbear]

Yep, Neutron Star. "The Soft Weapon" was the original story, with Nessus the Puppeteer playing the role of Spock (or vice versa, since the Niven story came first). I far preferred the Niven version; among other enhancements, it featured lots of blood and guts. It also marks Nessus' first appearance.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed Niven did the rewrite; he must, at least, have sanctioned it.

I didn't read the story till years after seeing part of the Trek episode, so I was initially confused at the similarities. ;-)

[urbear]

Niven is indeed credited as a writer, both in this Wikipedia entry and this IMDB entry.

I also didn't read the Niven story until a few years after the TAS episode ran, but the first time I encountered Niven's Kzinti I remembered the show. It didn't take me long to track down "The Soft Weapon" and realize that the show was a re-write.

Funny side story... according to this Memory Alpha Wiki entry, the Kzinti uniforms were pink in the episode due to a misunderstanding between the animation crew and the director, who was colorblind. D.C. Fontana personally apologized to Niven on his behalf for the error.

[popebuck1.livejournal.com]

Geez, shouldn't "animation director" be right up there with "airplane pilot" on the list of jobs you really shouldn't pursue if you're colorblind?

I'm just sayin'.

[urbear]

One would think. One would also think a president should be a smart guy not prone to rushing to war, but...

[popebuck1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for some reason, "idiot guy frothing at the mouth to bomb everybody" is (inexplicably) a selling point for some people. Go figure.

[shanynrose.livejournal.com]

I just checked that Wiki; while I never read the original Niven story or saw the episode (I was really little when it was on TV and I *gasp* didn't like Star Trek) I do remember stasis boxes. Maybe from one of the novels?

I need to check, but I think Robert April was the captain in "Best Destiny" by Diane Carey. That's the book where a young Jimmy Kirk was bratty, arrogant, and constantly getting in trouble (okay, that sounds like the adult Kirk too,) so his dad - who was with Starfleet Security - took him along to "the office" (on that trip it was the brand new Enterprise on her maiden voyage.) Jimmy Boy sabotaged the Bad Guys, became a hero and, of course, straightened up and went on to the Academy.

Time to find that book.

[urbear]

Niven used Slaver stasis boxes in several stories; one entire novel, World of Ptaavs, revolves around the concept. Other authors have mentioned similar technologies... Vernor Vinge, for instance, wrote two novels (The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime) in which Bobbles, a similar doohickey, figure prominently.

[shanynrose.livejournal.com]

I remember now - I saw it in a >blush< fanfic, the only one I've ever read.

[chucknoblet.livejournal.com]

OMG I didn't even know that existed! Neat!

[sabin.livejournal.com]

i need cliff notes for all these abbreviations.

[fj.livejournal.com]

That means you are still on the sane side.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

ST: TAS is not canon. There is claim that some movies are not canon either, but you didn't ask about that.

[mcbrennan.livejournal.com]

As this thread amply demonstrates, there is no widely-accepted answer on this issue. There's this school of thought that "it was, but now it isn't"...I find this ridiculous. It was made by almost the exact same creative team. Many of the concepts and ideas explored in TAS were later incorporated into the various live-action series--planets, names, technologies that originated in TAS. To suddenly and arbitrarily make it a non-entity, as was supposedly done around the Next Generation era, is just insane. Who gets to decide these things? (If Gene's approval is required for canonocity, then Star Trek V and Deep Space Nine and Voyager and Enterprise aren't canon, either, and I am in complete agreement with that idea.)

Then again I find the whole concept of "canon" in these things pretty laughable too--if you as a creative entity license someone to create official spinoff stories for your series, then those stories are by default "canon" and if you don't want them done, you shouldn't license someone to do that and take the resulting money. But I think the Star Wars Holiday Special is "canon" too for that matter, so you probably shouldn't listen to me. Typically, those of us who are so elderly that we watched TAS first-run usually consider it canon. Younger folks frequently do not.

[urbear]

Well, if you're creating a "future history", you have to decide what parts belong and what parts don't, or the consistent framework falls apart. I fall into the old-fart-who-watched-it-first-run category, and while it might have qualified as canon at the time, the stuff introduced in the series versus the movies and series that followed simply make it impossible to reconcile TAS with the rest of the ST universe.

Canon fodder.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

On a purely practical basis, because several of the TOS original cast were used, *prior* to TNG's debut, most people I knew personally (including me) considered ST:TAS to be canon at the time. Once TNG started, many fans decided TAS wasn't canon (starting with Roddenberry's office).

I personally consider TAS to be canon, since a number of elements from TAS appear in later TOS movies and TNG episodes. (See the Wikipedia summary and main article on TAS for more details on carryover elements.)

One possibility for the carryovers I'd never considered until today ... perhaps a number of producers and writers for post-TAS series and movies included TAS elements as a protest against decanonisation?

Food for thought. If TAS elements are carried over into later canon series ... doesn't that re-canonize TAS? (Or at least part of it.)

Re: Canon fodder.

[maltlick.livejournal.com]

I actually think of it as a "mining all the worthy material all ready invested while leaving the rest of it as crap" move. Think of it as moving and bringing the furniture you like and tossing the rest out.