Star Trek - What is Canon
The Star Trek canon is usually defined as comprising the television series Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, and the ten motion pictures, and excluding everything else. However, the official Star Trek website acknowledges that this definition is not set in stone, but that the notion of what constitutes canon is fluid, open to interpretation and debate.
TV series
As a rule, all live action Star Trek TV series that aired are considered canon, while the cartoon Star Trek: The Animated Series and the planned but cancelled live action Star Trek: Phase II are not canon. However, this policy does not make clear which version of the live action shows is the canon one. Indeed, there exist longer and shorter versions of several episodes. For example, in the 1960s during the original run of TOS, an hour-long show was actually 51 minutes excluding commercials. As of 2007, an hour-long show is only about 42 minutes long. The canonicity of the missing nine minutes of material in modern airings of TOS episodes has never been addressed. Likewise, when special two-hour-long episodes are aired as two one-hour-long episodes in syndication, several minutes of material have to be cut to make time for the duplication of the opening and closing credits. The canonicity of this cut material has also never been addressed. Finally, the remastered TOS episodes released in 2006 present several visual differences from the episodes originally aired. Once again, no official statements have been made regarding the question of which version of these episodes is canon.
To further complicate matters, it has been noted that Gene Roddenberry was something of a revisionist when it came to canon. People who worked with Roddenberry remember that he used to handle canon not on a series-by-series basis nor an episode-by-episode basis, but point by point. If he changed his mind on something, or if a fact in one episode contradicted what he considered to be a more important fact in another episode, he had no problem declaring that specific point non-canon.
See, people can easily catch us, and say "well, wait a minute, in 'Balance of Terror', they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and then in 'The Enterprise Incident', they don't know anything about cloaking devices, but they're gonna steal this one because it's obviously just been developed, so how the hell do you explain that?" We can't. There are some things we just can't explain, especially when it comes from the third season. So, yes, third season is canon up to the point of contradiction, or where it's just so bad... you know, we kind of cringe when people ask us, "well, what happened in 'Plato's Stepchildren', and 'And the Children Shall Lead', and 'Spock's Brain', and so on — it's like, please, he wasn't even producing it at that point. But, generally, [canon is] the original series, not really the animated, the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in certain aspects but not in all... I know that it's very difficult to understand. It literally is point by point. I sometimes do not know how he's going to answer a question when I go into his office, I really do not always know, and — and I know it better probably than anybody, what it is that Gene likes and doesn't like.
— Richard Arnold, 1991
Another thing that makes canon a little confusing. Gene R. himself had a habit of decanonizing things. He didn't like the way the animated series turned out, so he proclaimed that it was not canon. He also didn't like a lot of the movies. So he didn't much consider them canon either. And – okay, I'm really going to scare you with this one – after he got TNG going, he... well... he sort of decided that some of The Original Series wasn't canon either. I had a discussion with him once, where I cited a couple things that were very clearly canon in The Original Series, and he told me he didn't think that way anymore, and that he now thought of TNG as canon wherever there was conflict between the two. He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it.
— Paula Block, 2005
Another factor that contributes to blur the line between canon and non-canon is the fact that some writers like to include elements from popular non-canon works into canon episodes. Such is the case, for instance, of several concepts that first appeared in the Animated Series' episode "Yesteryear", including The Forge and the city of ShiKahr, and which were later included in the Enterprise three-part story that started with The Forge. However, despite the fact that elements borrowed from the Animated Series are considered canon, the series itself remains decidedly non-canon.
One final issue comes from text that appears on props such as computer displays, but is not legible during the episode. The transcript of the text can often be obtained through behind-the-scenes pictures and interviews. This leads to the question of whether material that is in the episodes but cannot be seen clearly should be considered canon. Although there is no answer valid for all this material, some of it at least, such as the biographical information seen on a computer display in "In a Mirror, Darkly" , has been clearly declared not to be "hard canon".
Movies
All live action Star Trek movies are considered canon. However, much like for TV series, this policy fails to note which version of the movies is canon. This leaves unknown the canonicity of scenes missing from the theatrical version of a movie but included in home releases or director's cuts. Such is the case, for instance, of a scene revealing that the character of Peter Preston was the nephew of Scotty in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Adding confusion to the issue is the fact that Roddenberry is quoted as saying he didn't like the movies, and "didn't much consider them canon". Unfortunately, there exists no definitive list of which movies in particular Roddenberry disliked, or what elements in them he didn't consider canon. For example, the reference book Star Trek Chronology states that Roddenberry considered elements of Star Trek V and Star Trek VI to be apocryphal, but it does not specify which particular elements in the movies Roddenberry objected to.
The canonicity of extra features found on home DVD releases, such as deleted scenes, has never been explicitly addressed.
Publications
Although books are not considered canon as a rule of thumb, some ambiguity remains. For instance, the status of reference books, such as the TNG Technical Manual pictured here, remains uncertain.
Fictional novels
The original novels published by Pocket Books are not considered part of the canon. This was a guideline set early on by Gene Roddenberry, and repeated many times by people who worked with him.
And as long as Gene Roddenberry is involved in it, he is the final word on what is Star Trek. So, for us here – Ron Moore, Jeri Taylor, everybody who works on the show – Gene is the authority. And when he says that the books, and the games, and the comics and everything else, are not gospel, but are only additional Star Trek based on his Star Trek but not part of the actual Star Trek universe that he created... they're just, you know, kinda fun to keep you occupied between episodes and between movies, whatever... but he does not want that to be considered to be sources of information for writers, working on this show, he doesn't want it to be considered part of the canon by anybody working on any other projects.
— Richard Arnold, 1991
However, even this rule is not without its exception. Two Voyager novels written by Jeri Taylor, Mosaic and Pathways, were written early on in Voyager's run and detailed the background of the show's main characters. These were meant to be canon, and to be used as references by the show's writers when fleshing out the characters. These two novels are sometimes named as exceptions to the "no book is canon" rule. However, as some of the background information mentioned in those books was never referenced in an episode of Voyager, their status as canon is still open to debate.
Novelizations
The novelizations of episodes and movies are not considered canon. This is a tradition that goes back to Gene Roddenberry himself. Roddenberry wrote a novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which included many tangents and new material that were not part of the movie, such as revealing that the woman who dies in the transporter accident was Kirk's lover. While this novel filled in many gaps left in the movie, Roddenberry is quoted as saying it should not be considered canon.
Reference books
A special case is made for non-fiction reference books such as The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Star Trek Chronology, TNG Technical Manual and DS9 Technical Manual. Unlike the novels and novelizations, these reference manuals have never been explicitly named as non-canon, and the fact that they were officially sanctioned by Paramount and given to episode writers as guides serves to give them an aura of credibility. Roddenberry himself considered it part of the "background" of Star Trek. Meanwhile, Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach, two art and technical consultants since Star Trek: The Next Generation and the authors of several of these reference books, considered their work "pretty official". However, they stop short of naming the books canon, leaving the debate open.
Star Trek writer and co-producer Ronald D. Moore dismisses such official material as "speculation", and says that the writing staff did not consider it canon. However, Viacom, the parent company of Paramount, seems to believe differently. In a series of posts to the official Star Trek website's forums, Viacom Senior Director Harry Lang left no doubt that he considers the reference books as canon.
Other publications
The Star Trek comic books and Star Trek magazines are not considered canon.
Other material
Nothing that takes place in Star Trek games, the Star Trek: The Experience attraction, Star Trek fan productions or Trekdom is considered canon.
Roddenberry-approved material
Based on the amount of creative control Roddenberry exerted over the first seasons of Star Trek, some people argue that only Roddenberry-approved material should be considered canon. Such an approach would eliminate from canon anything Roddenberry didn't like, as well as everything made after his death, including five movies and three TV series.
However, Roddenberry himself pre-emptively rebuked such an attitude. He had hoped that Star Trek would go on after his death. As Star Trek was constantly improved by each following generation, he expected people to look back upon its humble beginnings as just that, the simple beginnings of something much bigger and better. Roddenberry clearly never intended Star Trek to be limited to his work, but to include all the hopefully superior work of future generations.
Klingon language
The Klingon language was first conceived by James Doohan for the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and consisted only of a few words. Later, Marc Okrand proceeded to flesh out the sparse vocabulary into a real language, complete with grammar rules and phonology, and went so far as to publish The Klingon Dictionary and to create the Klingon Language Institute. Okrand's Klingon language was used to write the Klingon dialogues heard in several Star Trek movies and episodes. However, despite these facts, there is no exception to canon rules on record for this complete Klingon language. Therefore, only the Klingon words spoken on-screen qualify as canon.
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