Possible canon change for Star Trek?

[The Dark]

I acquired some of the writer's tech bibles recently, and was looking up the canon policies just for the heck of it. Oddly enough, the Paramount FAQ entry on canon doesn't cover everything - the shows are canon, and "the fictional novels, video games, the Animated Series, and the various comic lines have traditionally not been considered part of the canon." Note that it covers novels and comics, but not other print media. It also covers the Jeri Ryan novels, noting that their canonicity is controversial.

In 2005, the Senior Director at Viacom Interactive (part of the company that took over Paramount) took part in a thread here discussing canon policy. His quotes:

Right. Only the reference books (tech manual, encyclopedia, etc...) and two books by Jeri Taylor are considered canon outside the tv show and movies.

The tech manuals are written by ST production staff, same as the Encyclopedia (Mike Okuda). Since their contents report on what is canon, they are technically canon.

Again. The encyclopedia is a reference to what has appeared on the show and in the movies. It's content is reporting on canon.

The tech manuals are written by the production staff about what has been established on the show and then expands a little.

The two novels were also written by a member of the production staff (the exec. producer in this case).

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but it suggests at least part of the company that produces ST considers the encyclopedia and tech manuals canon.

[harbringer]

The problem is that Viacom isnt directly involved and as such it is open conjecture whether it changes anything at all as paramount retains all production and rights - including over canon. Unless Paramount see fit to issue a statement it will probably be considered to have an unchanged policy.

[DaveJB]

It looks like that initial quote was badly phrased, and implied that the tech manuals themselves were canon, instead of the data that they contained from the episodes. Besides, Paula Block made some pretty firm statements that the tech manuals and Jeri Taylor's novels were not canon later in 2005, and from what I know she's far more directly involved with Star Trek licensing than the guy in that thread.

In any case, the TMs are traditionally allowed to be used in debates when the show fails to cast any light on a certain aspect of Treknology, so whether or not they're canon doesn't matter too much for the purposes of the debate. (Remember when the debate was actually about whether or not a Star Destroyer could beat down a GCS or SCS, instead of arguing about what is or isn't canon in SW and ST? )

The encyclopaedias are just collections of data from canon sources, so it's actually pretty moot as to whether they're canon in of themselves. They're just quick references, more than anything else.

[Darth Wong]

Frankly, I got sick of all the wrangling over "correct canon policy" a long time ago. It's really only Darkstar and his ilk who try to turn this into a protracted legal debate over admissibility of evidence. The fucking writers themselves don't take "canon policy" as seriously as Darkstar does.

For everyone else, the TM is handy for filling in gaps where they don't understand something in the show, as long as its explanations make sense.