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A bit off topic: Opinion- Star Trek Animated Series: Cannon or Not?
buckner3
Member Posts: 64 Arc User
Just curious what people here think about the short lived Animated series by Filmation.
For the record, I'm in the camp of "Yes" it is canon. As there are many elements that first appeared in STA that we take as "Obviously this is in Star Trek", such as Holodecks, Kirk's middle name, even the ONE time Kirk actually said "Beam me up Scotty" - in STO we have "Personal Shields" as well as the Caitians and Ferasians (well the Ferasians are basically STA's Kzinti, but due to licensing issues re-named them).
So what's the opinion of STO players, just curious.
For the record, I'm in the camp of "Yes" it is canon. As there are many elements that first appeared in STA that we take as "Obviously this is in Star Trek", such as Holodecks, Kirk's middle name, even the ONE time Kirk actually said "Beam me up Scotty" - in STO we have "Personal Shields" as well as the Caitians and Ferasians (well the Ferasians are basically STA's Kzinti, but due to licensing issues re-named them).
So what's the opinion of STO players, just curious.
Post edited by buckner3 on
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^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
for me it has to be shown on film with real actors to be canon regardless of what is said.
I look at the animated series as canon. The original stars play there characters, the stories are far fetched and the different aliens are cool. I see it as canon. I don't look at stuff as soft or hard canon. Either it is or it isn't to me. If its not to me, then its in another dimension/timeline/universe/alternate reality/etc.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_canon
I would say its considered canon officially but I question that logic until I can actually watch TAS
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
I personally see the tripodial Lt. Arex as canon. For a while, I thought I glimpsed either him or another Edosian in the background in the new movies, but I'm now thinking I was mistaken.
I'd also like to think the tribble predator is canon.
He considered the story about Spock's youth canon, at least, it was less clear about the whole time travel back to see. Roddenberry was a bit chaotic with canon, and not just with TAS. He'd pull episodes of TOS in or out of canon, too. Particularly with Star Trek V he changed his stance several times, ranging from the entire movie being out of canon to the events, people, and locations being canon but Sybok is not related to Spock.
As far as STO is concerned, though, it's not. Not because it didn't canonically happen, but because CBS doesn't own the rights to license it.
When Larry Niven's original TAS script was rejected by the network, and he had to grab another story and modify it, he chose "The Soft Weapon", which he reworked into "The Slaver Weapon". Thing is, about all he changed were the protagonists - instead of two humans and a puppeteer, he used Trek characters.
The titular weapon was a leftover from the Thrint-Tnuctipun War, sometimes called the Slaver War, over a billion years ago. The side-effects of the ancient Thrint Empire include the existence of so much life that's similar to other life in the galaxy - descendants of a mutated version of a yeast plant that fed the thrintun. The war ended when the thrintun, who had a sort of telepathic hypnosis ability they called the Power, used an amplifier to issue an order through the Power for every sentient being in the galaxy to die. (Note: sentient, not sapient. If it had a central nervous system, it was dead. Yes, this included the thrintun themselves. With the Power, they never had to be very bright...)
This history is at extreme odds with Trek's forerunners, who were running around a billion years ago planting messages in DNA. The two histories are fundamentally incompatible; they cannot both be canon. Therefore, I have to place TAS in the "soft canon" category, where you can use the bits you like and ignore the bits you don't.
(Well, there's also the fact that while we have personal shields in the game, nobody had them in the movies, which take place later than TAS...)
The question is does STO look at TAS as canon?
I believe Dstahl, and Gekko have said in the past that STO has the rights to TAS and do consider it part of the STO universe (sorry cant give you direct links as reference)
HOWEVER....
I don't see Edosians/Edoans running around on ESD. =(
I would love to see them as a playable race. They basically use the same mechanics as the Undine.
There's my two cents and my "Put Edoans in STO plug"
Exactly. They already have the wire-frames for tripods, just need to arrange it for playable rather than NPC.
It is no wonder fans squabble over canonicity if Gene himself didn't clearly specify what is and what is not. IMHO, I hope he left The Infinite Vulcan out of the canon. I know Koenig wrote it, and I respect his effort, but I considered it about the same as Spock's Brain, that is, pretty flimsy stuff.
He said the opposite, actually. It was in the old engineering reports, though, so it's pretty much lost.
We were originally going to get the Kzinti. They were listed as in progress forever, being held up by CBS approval. That fell through, since Filmation kept many of the rights from that show, meaning they now lie with Dreamworks, not CBS.
which is why we have the Ferasans now, which are pretty much the Kzinti in everything but a couple inconsistencies (Kzinti females weren't intelligent, Kzinti telepaths were forced into low social status, and the species had a slumped feral posture).
Already is. When Q is hanging around, he can sometimes zap you into an 8472 for a time. Which means, yes, last christmas, there were ice skating 8472's on the ice lake.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
...i totally forgot about that....:eek: its been a while, LOL That works for me as canon.
I did some hunting, in the following link Dstahl confirms Cryptic has the rights to TAS .
Dstahl: Good question. Our license with CBS is restricted to the TV Shows, the movies (up to Nemesis), the Animated Series, and some of the book fiction. Unfortunately, this license doesn?t extend to other video games. January(2013) Ask Cryptic
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=800861
There is a podcast (maybe UGC) with Captain Gekko also making reference to TAS and what Cryptic has the rights for, and what they consider canon. He also mentions how the new JJ movies messed up their world view a little in the same sentence. However, Gekko makes like 4 hour interviews, so finding that will be tough.
Sorry I had not joined then, I am.
Undine on ice. Sounds like a Disney show.
A T-5 connie via Filmation?;)
Good Point.
I think the big problem would be uniforms. The designers would have to modify every uniform, or at least some, to make it work.
(On a side crazy side thought...does this mean the Undine are running around naked all the time?:eek:...No wonder they are so ticked off in colony invasion
Edoans might have a better chance showing up as BOFFS and being made semi customizable, or non-customizable like the Breen and Remen, because of the potential cost to make them graphically.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I rank TAS in the Trek Canon scale as being just below the TNG movies and above the licensed books.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon