Canon vs. Non-Canon

Hi Trekkies! For some reason we Trekkies spend a lot of time and energy thinking about what is "canon" and what isn't. T

Recently, a very wise Trekkie pointed out that only Star Trek fans seem to care about this type of thing. He pointed out that Batman, for example, has many different inconsistent versions. There's a separate continuity for the Golden Age, Silver Age, modern age, the Adam West series, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, the Tim Burton Movies, Batman Forever/Batman & Robin, the Christopher Nolan movies and The Dark Knight Returns. Batman don't care and never get confused. Why are Star Trek fans up in arms when Enterprise is inconsistent with TOS or when the new Star Trek movie ignores the TV continuity? I don't know but we are.

I'm going to go a step farther and say that we Trekkies should care even less than Batman fans about continuity. A lot of us grew up with multiple Star Trek series creating official canon stories every week but we should remember what came before that. There were 79 episodes of the classic TV series. That's a pretty bare skeleton to build a franchise on. For eighteen years, 1969-1987, there was no canon Trek except four movies.

This was the era when the Star Trek Universe was really created. It was built on the bare bones of the old series, and it wasn't built by clever TV writers -- it was created by Trekkies like us in the competing continuities of Gold Key, Marvel and DC Comics, animation, fanzines, Best of Trek anthologies, Saturday morning animation. At times these "Forgotten Treks" were bad, at times they were inspiringly done. But the important thing is that, more than any other series, Star Trek's universe was explored and shaped by fans rather than professionals. Maybe that's why it's done so well.

So, Trekkies, don't be a canon Nazi. Try to enjoy the Star Trek Universe in all its glory.