Flare Sci-Fi Forums: ST The animated series

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Posted by Brown_supahero (Member # 83) on :

why isn't this canon.

Everybody lent there voices
DC fontana and gene rodenberry was in the closing credits.

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

Mainly because Gene said so, and his word is supposedly God when it comes to Trek canon.

Canon is effectively a measure of how hard you need to work to reconsile contradictions. When a novel contradicts an episode, you toss the novel and leave it at that. When an ep contradicts another ep, you have to resolve it. Or at least we do.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Posted by USS Vanguard (Member # 130) on :

I sure wish it were though, it answers lots of background questions, and wouldn't it be nice to include those freightor classes to our ship lists?

Anyway, the series occasionally pulls out ship names from TAS, like the USS Shir Kahr

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Basically, canon is the stuff that the writers have to consider "true" when writing. They don't always, but that's the theory. That's why novels aren't canon. They may not contradict anything, but the episode writers don't have to take them into account when writing the show.

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-Matt Groening

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

I'd say it's canonity is just below that of all other official productions, but above that of all books and such, including tech manuals. Second tier, and it's worth working out any contradictions.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

I heard that Gene didn't want TAS as canon because it had silly story lines like people growing younger and miniturisation - both which have now been done in episodes - "Innoncence" and "One Little Ship" respectively.

Andrew

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Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :

Tsk... If you all regard TAS as non-canon because The Great Bird says so, then why don't you recognize ST5 as non-canon??? Gene personally de-canonized ST5! Not to mention his discomfort with some events in ST4 and ST6. Sorry to say, but I think you're a hypocrite if you regard ST4/5/6 as canon, but not TAS.

Anyway, I agree that some TAS stories are a bit far-fetched and illogical. But doesn't Canon also include such things? A small list:

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" [TOS]
21st century crappy old ship made it to the galactic edge, and so did the Enterprise. 26,000 ly appearently crossed in a small amount of time, instead of decades.

ST4
Humpback whales are intelligent.

ST5
The Enterprise gets to the galactic core (which is 24,000 ly away) in virtually no-time.

"Threshold" [VOY]
A shuttle travelling at infinite speed. No matter how you bend or invent physics, infinite speed requires infinite acceleration, which in turn requires infinite energy, which eventually makes for a silly and illogical story.
Salamanders are higher developed beings than humans.

Need more examples?

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[This message has been edited by Alpha Centauri (edited August 02, 2000).]

Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

Humpback whales aren't intelligent then?

I don't actually remeber then being portrayed as being especailly clever. One knewshe was pregnent, and didn't like humans killing whales. Pretty simple stuff, really...

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Many whales, humpbacks included, are exceedingly intelligent. Now whether they're sentient or not is another matter.

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

They didn't actually turn into salamanders in "Threshold". They turned into a far-future evolution of humans which happen to be vaguely lizard-shaped.

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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, and then, suddenly, it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-Matt Groening

Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

quote:
Gene personally de-canonized ST5!

Why did he do that?

quote:
some events in ST4 and ST6

Do you know, which events?

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Sadly, Gene found himself playing less and less of a role in Star Trek by the time those movies were released, for a number of reasons. Many see his claims that these movies were apocryphal as an attempt to reexert some control over his creation. Of course he had some real objections, such as the (to him) uncomfortably militaristic themes TOS movies had started toying with since The Wrath of Khan.

Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :

Well, if I may believe Okuda's statements in his Chronology, Gene did considered ST5 as a whole, and partially ST4 and 6, as apocryphal, and thus decanonizing it.

I don't know exactly what Gene's reasons were, but if you allow conjecture, then I'd say that ST5 was invalidated because of the travel to the galactic core. ST4 because of the whales-can-communicate-with-alien_spaceprobes-and-are-sentient thing. But I don't see anything in ST6 that The Great Bird might consider non-canon.

About the whales issue: it has long been thought that they were intelligent, but recent research revealed that their intelligence is not that high; in fact, they're not more intelligent than most other animal lifeforms. I'll see if I can dig up an URL concerning this research. And indeed, they were not explicetely referred as intelligent in ST4 (my fault, don't shoot me), but it was at least vaguely suggested by the sum of events.
To clear something up: I didn't judge them as non-intelligent because they are non-sentient. I know very well that intelligence and sentience are entirely different things.

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[This message has been edited by Alpha Centauri (edited August 03, 2000).]

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

ST6 had a ship that could fire when cloaked. In current Trek, they're back to being unable to do this.

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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, and then, suddenly, it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-Matt Groening

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

It's like that Excelsior t/warp drive. Never heard from again. Perhaps the thing was a special modification that wasn't REALLY useful in real combat, being only intended to be used in the assasination attempt. Maybe it's that big surge of nutrino radiation? Perhaps exposure to the shere numbers of nutrinos causes cancer rather quickly. 'Course, that'd have to be a FREAKIN' lot of neutrinos, but I don't see why that can't be the case.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

The fire-while-cloak BoP: Valeris said there was just the prototype. Perhaps that's all there was, and no kind of blueprints or anything...?

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

No one's that stupid.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

Not even the Klingons...?

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"Fragile. Do not drop"
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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Regarding the cloak, the movie did show that a BoP with the new one could still be detected...the traditional ones were probably more effective.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I think Frank's hit on the answer. Sure, the bird of prey could fire while cloaked. It could also get blown up while cloaked, as the movie demonstrated. I would imagine that the Klingons and Romulans are always developing better cloaks to counter UFP sensor advancements, and vice versa.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

They detected it because of its impulse trail, which they said all ships have. Although, now that I think about it, I can't recall whether they said that it was detectable through the cloak because it was weakened (by weapons use). I don't think they did. Meaning that, if a way has been found to cloak the impulse trail, the plan is still viable. Or, they just don't use impulse while cloaked (which they must not be doing anyway, if it's still detectable).

Either way, the method used to detect the ST6 ship didn't seem to be special to that ship...

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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, and then, suddenly, it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-Matt Groening

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

I think the dialogue from the movie said something about the Bird of Prey expending an enormous amount of power by firing weapons while still cloaked. As such, the cloaking device was unable to fully mask the plasma trail.

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

This "arms race" between cloaks and sensors is also mentioned in either the Encyclopedia or the Chronlogy. In the same way, US "stealth" technology could be considered a form of cloaking device in that it made aircraft invisible to sensors (radars). Of course, as sensors have developed, the cloak is no longer as effective. Stealth aircraft can also fire (drop bombs) when cloaked.

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