Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
3. Be diplomatic.
Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
view the rest of the comments
It depends on whether or not you think the act of distributing is part of the commonly understood definition of canon.
The definition most reasonable Trek fans operate on is "the shows and movies made by the rights holders," although most aren't aware they've internalized that second part because nobody wants to admit they spend any amount of time caring about "the rights." (Ask them if they think Continues or New Voyages is canon and you'll cut to the heart of that matter real quick.) That latent "rights holders" qualification isn't there out of any particular deference to Paramount, it just gives us a convenient and durable boundary that a huge, varied, and global fanbase can largely agree on. Paramount decides what Star Trek to produce, but that decision results in canon Star Trek because it's a simple enough boundary for Trekkies to collectively accept without much friction.
Point being, Paramount is part of the definition but Paramount is not the source of authority for the definition. The fans are. This is an important distinction if you want to investigate whether or not this ugly Prodigy business has altered or clarified the definition of canon.
This act of cancelling and archiving is uncharted territory, yes. Assuming you agree with my earlier definition, it comes down to whether or not you think there are more qualifiers hiding after the word "made." Something like "made, released, and currently being distributed," which is an interesting set of qualifiers to add because it would decanonize pre-remaster TOS.
Personally, I think that's too much control over the definition to hand to Paramount. We care about "made" because it's the most minimal way to establish this "rights holders" boundary. I think we could have a reasonable debate over whether or not "released" is already part of the intuitively understood definition (i.e. "are deleted scenes canon?") but I would wager most Trekkies will agree that "currently being distributed" is not part of the intuitively understood definition.
So, yes. Prodigy is still canon.