Memory Alpha Nova:Canon-FAQ

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Was ist "Canon" genau?

Es gibt mehrere Definitionen, was als canon betrachtet werden kann. Bei Memory Alpha versuchen wir bei der folgenden, gebräuchlichsten zu bleiben.

• Technisch gesehen ist canon das was TPTB pay attention to in the making of new Star Trek episodes. Everything that was shown in a previous episode has to be canon in this respect. After all, if someone/something can be seen on screen, it should not be allowed to deny their/its existence.
• Official publications by the Okudas, Rick Sternbach, Herman Zimmerman, Doug Drexler or other people directly involved in the production process may be as good as canon, since this is where the writers and producers look up the facts. Even if these books are supplemented with some information like dates or starship specs not mentioned in the show, this might be important to limit the room for speculation.
• Still, even anything stated in the series or movies may be doubted, where it's not consistent (the 79 decks of the Enterprise-A, for instance). We don't have to buy everything and make up twisted explanations where logic and common sense fail.
• Finally, there is the huge category of fan fiction all of which is non-canon, including all novels, games, RPGs and fan-made webpages. It is obvious that this strict definition is necessary, since Kirk would have lived around 10,000 years and Starfleet would have some 1,000,000 warships if all this fiction were "true". Even the novels and games authorized by Paramount are non-canon, considering that "authorized" merely means that a license is given to a third party which doesn't oblige Paramount to anything. For instance, although many fans accept that the Insurrection scout was imprudently christened "Venture class" in a game, it will almost definitely get a different class name in the Okudas' next Encyclopedia - or, more likely, none at all.

Why don't you distinguish better what is canon information and what was made up?

For the time being, ALL information included in Memory Alpha that pertains to the Star Trek universe must be canon. Speculation is limited to very obvious conclusions and always explicitly marked as such - please adhere to the systematic use of the subjunctive, of "could, would, might be" and little words like "if" or "perhaps." Unlike it is the case on most other websites and especially many databanks, we don't make up any information, even if this leaves wide gaps in the lists and charts.

Okay, so why do you have novels and comics listed here? Those aren't canon!

Although we may be restricting information about the Trek universe itself to canon for the time being, we also can't ignore the novels, comics, and other parts of the Trek franchise which have contributed to its success over the years. Therefore, we're including lists for "meta-Trek" topics (i.e. all episodes, movies, novels, etc. - stuff in the real world) to create a useful reference base that we can build from in the future.

And what about The Animated Series?

At the moment, Star Trek: The Animated Series is the only real exception to the official canon on Memory Alpha. While TAS has officially been declared "apocryphal" by the studio, Memory Alpha considers it to be too important to simply ignore. TAS was created by the same people as TOS, and is certainly not completely incompatible with the live action shows. To be short, Memory Alpha considers The Animated Series to be canon.

Why are you so strict about "canonicity" anyway?

Until Memory Alpha develops a larger article base as a reference source, we want to ensure the greatest possible reliability for all readers and contributors. This means restricting the kinds of articles we accept to those that are most familiar - and for the Trek universe, that means Roddenberry's definition of canon.

There are people who accept only canon — because they know the Okudas' Encyclopedia by heart or because they just don't accept anything else. On the other hand, there is the kind who stir up canon and fandom at will — because they either don't know that much and believe anything they see or read or because they don't want their creativity be limited by the strict yet contradictory canon of TPTB. We know lots of either type of fans and any shade in between. One typical situation is that some people in a message board explicitly talk about the number of nacelles on canon starships and someone throws in that the Federation class and Saladin class (from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual) are odd-nacelled. The result is a useless discussion about the term "canon," about the value of canon, about the authority of Roddenberry, Okuda, Paramount or Pocket Books, about books which should be considered canon because they are written by Jeri Taylor, about Colonel West and the Starfleet Marines, and so on. Since we're tired of such discussions, we go with TPTB and agree with their *definition* of canon (but not necessarily everything they tell me), while we encourage anyone to include whatever he likes to his personal view of the Star Trek Universe. We would never want to miss the fan-made stuff all around the planet because they really enrich the universe, no matter if we "believe" in them. We probably can't help those who don't even want to see anything that was not released by Paramount or the other extreme group, those who don't care about the idea of Star Trek and are turning Starfleet into a military organization with big-gunned warships. For anyone in between, canon is a common ground. Everything else is left to our imagination and tolerance or better, mutual understanding. There are always possibilities!