Memory Alpha Nova:Canon-FAQ

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, auf was TPTB achtet bei dem Drehen von neuen Star Trek Episoden. Alles was in vorangegangenen Episoden zu sehen war ist in dieser Beziehung kanonisch. Was auf dem Bildschirm war, existiert und kann nicht mehr geleugnet werden.
Offizielle Veröffentlichungen von den Okudas, Rick Sternbach, Herman Zimmerman, Doug Drexler oder anderen Leuten, die direkt im Produktionsprozess eingebunden sind, sind so gut wie canon, weil auch die Autoren und Regisseure hier die Fakten nachlesen. Auch wenn diese Bücher mit Informationen, wie Daten oder Raumschiff-Spezifikationen, gespickt sind, die nicht in den ausgestrahlten Geschichten erwähnt werden, können sie doch dazu beitragen, die Spekulationen zu vermindern.
Trotzdem kann alles, sogar das, was in den Serien und Filmen erwähnt wird, in Zweifel gezogen werden, wo es zu Widersprüchen führt (z.B. die 79 Decks der Enterprise-A). Wir müssen nicht alles für bare Münze nehmen und irgendwelche Verrenkungen durchführen, wo Logik und gesunder Menschenverstand versagen.
Schließlich gibt es das weite Feld der Fan-Fiction die sämtlich non-canon sind, einschließlich aller Bücher, Spiele, Rollenspiele und Fan-Webseiten. Diese strikte Definition ist notwendig, weil sonst Kirk so um die 10.000 Jahre alt geworden wäre und die Sternenflotte an die 1.000.000 Kriegsschiffe gehabt hätte, wenn alles "wahr" wäre. Auch die Bücher und Spiele, die von Paramount authorisiert sind, sind non-canon. "Authorisiert" heißt lediglich, daß eine Lizenz an Dritte vergeben wurde, ohne Paramount zu irgendetwas zu verpflichten. Zum Beispiel wird, obwohl viele Fans es akzeptieren, daß in einem Spiel das Scout-Schiff Insurrection unüberlegt der "Venture Klasse" zugeordnet wird, wird es in Okudas' nächster Enzyklopädie einen anderen Klassen-Namen bekommen - oder, noch wahrscheinlicher, überhaupt keinen.

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!