Picard wrote:Yet it's exactly type of excuse people use to make Star Wars EU canon...
Yes, and those people tend to be acting like retarded fanboys to get their way. Not that it really helps their argument in the end, but that's just how some fanboys are.
While I think that they might have boosted TAS to canon to boost DVD sales as a cheap ploy, they certainly never seriously considered TAS canon before now. They might have borrowed, but that's not the same thing.
@2046
1. This should be located in the rules of evidence forum.
Oops.
2. The Trek website writers have seemingly been advocating for TAS canonicity since the old guard that ran the site were cast aside. Although the site itself making the claim is itself a bit of evidence for the claim, I for one would have much preferred some backing from actual production staff. However, everything we have from producers suggested TAS was never thought canon, though some TAS facts did graduate to canon status.
The old guard? I'm a bit lost on that. You seem to be indicating that there's division in their ranks. Do you have any information on this? Because if it's just a few people trying to use the site to push something without any authority for their own agenda, I'll be very cross indeed.
Put simply, right now there really isn't a single governing authority for Trek, so any recent statements representing a shift in the common point of view go, in my not-so-humble opinion, only as far as that product. So if JJ says DS9 is out, that only applies to his reboot universe. If the Star Trek Online guys say some crappy old comics are in, that only applies to their game universe. And so on.
Well, JJ is supposed to stay in his alt universe, sans what he already did to Trek Prime during his genocide run against the Romulans. I don't really care what STO says. Their timeline is terrible and I find the authority for their canon less than acceptable. But I don't understand how that works into what the website says.
It is not without consternation that I propose this point of view. But by the rule that ownership gives authority to dictate canonicity, the heavily fractured ownership of the Trek franchise means that the Trek universe is now equally fractured. CBS cannot rewrite canonicity regarding the Viacom JJ-Trek, for instance, and any disputes over the canon status of prior works are not logically solvable via past methods of rank and ownership.
Off the top of my head, I am not even able to recall which company and under which aegis (Viacom or CBS) the site is running under nowadays.
I just checked wikipedia and it said this:
At Star Trek's creation, Norway Productions, Roddenberry's production company, shared ownership with Desilu and, after Gulf+Western acquired Desilu in 1967, with Paramount Pictures, the conglomerate's film studio. Paramount did not want to own the unsuccessful show; net profit was to be shared between Norway, Desilu/Paramount, Shatner, and NBC but Star Trek lost money, and the studio did not expect to syndicate it. In 1970 Paramount offered to sell all rights to Star Trek to Roddenberry, but he could not afford the $150,000 ($898,000 today) price.[76]:218,220
In 1989 Gulf+Western renamed itself as Paramount Communications, and in 1994 merged with Viacom.[76]:218 In 2005 Viacom divided into CBS Corporation, whose CBS Television Studios subsidiary retained the Star Trek brand, and Viacom, whose Paramount Pictures subsidiary retained the Star Trek film library and rights to make additional films, along with video distribution rights to the TV series on behalf of CBS.[77][76]:223 Both Viacom and CBS are controlled by National Amusements.[78]
So, Paramount Communications divided into the CBS Corporation and Viacom. The CBS Television Studios subsidiary retained the Star Trek brand, while the Paramount Pictures subsidiary retained the Star Trek film library and rights to make additional films, along with the video distribution rights to the TV series on behalf of CBS.
Fuck that's complicated.
But it seems as though they're both run by National Amusements.
Overall, it looks as though the actual brand belongs to CBS, but Paramount has the rights to video distribution and movie rights. So it looks like they both have authority over canon, since Viacom can make more movies, which adds to canon, but CBS controls the actual brand, so I would think that they'd be the authority on whether or not TAS is or is not canon.
The site authors' suggestions, though interesting fodder for TAS-ophiles, are unlikely to have weight on or bear fruit in other works. And for me, even though there are some scenes I would absolutely adore having access to (the bridge auto-defense phasers and Spock digging a moat with a hand phaser come to mind), the films, TNG, and ENT era were produced without TAS much in mind. Introducing it retroactively muddies the waters both from a story and tech standpoint, over and above the prior explicit production staff denials, and so I must oppose it on that basis.
To play devil's advocate, was it not true that at one point, there were semi-canon or fully canon Voyager novels? And Gene himself didn't really consider TOS canon at some point during TNG. I understand your point of how TAS was treated and therefore its stance is shaky on those grounds, but you also have to consider that this isn't the first time that Trek canon was altered. Gene's opinion on TOS and the Voyager's staff opinion on the Voyager books were both changed and later changed back.
And as far as story and tech standpoints--a great deal of things were changed from TOS to TNG era already, these really just bring in several more changes. Although it does make me scratch my head at them having a belt with a force field built in and later apparently dropping it for...nothing. Although it would explain how Worf was able to rig up his own belt shield generator in A Fistful of Datas. And the admiral from Paradise Lost did mention that they were stocking personal shields...so I guess it sort of works.
But you mentioned something about division. Perhaps that might change my attitude on this. Could you shed some more light on that?