"Canon should not be confused with cannon, although cannon can be used to enforce canon."
That which counts, in terms of
continuity. Coming from religious terms, a "canon" was a stick by which to measure straightness. So in this term, canon is the standard for official works.
Canon, as it applies to television series, is a substantially different concept from its literary counterpart. For example, there is no question of which ''
Sherlock Holmes' stories (the literary works to which the term was applied) are canonical: those written by Doyle are, everything else isn't. Likewise, the canonical works of Shakespeare are only open to debate in terms of whether or not they were actually written by the bard.
Television canon works much differently, as there are many authors involved. Works not officially sanctioned are generally outside of canon, but what remains inside is more nebulous. Officially licensed material, novelizations and tie-in novels are not usually considered canon. Even broadcast material can be excluded from the canon when decreed by
Word Of God.
The primary issue is that canons for completed works (especially with a single author) are
descriptive, whereas fans attempt to define canon for ongoing works as
prescriptive. If a fact is "canon", you are "not allowed" to contradict it. Of course, the concept of canon is almost entirely a fan-invention. The writers will ignore or include whatever facts they damned well like (which is not to say that the writers totally lack a sense of continuity, but it is a much weaker concept than "canon" as presented by fan communities). Sometimes these things are applied in
Broad Strokes, mixing and matching things that they need to tell the story. Thus, in fan communities, "canon" often boils down to "The bits I like". Fans will attempt to find any excuse to
"de-canonize" facts that they personally find inconvenient.
Historically, this is not entirely dissimilar to the debates which established the canon of Christian religious texts, deciding which of many competing gospels was official. In that case, the decision was made by people with some kind of power to enforce their decisions.
A related term is
Deuterocanon
, which in this context refers to those persons, places and/or events which are not explicitly shown on-screen, but which are considered "official" or close to it. For canon that comes not from the source material but from pronouncements by the creator see
Word Of God. For the contrary idea that something is canon only if it appears in the source material see
Death Of The Author.
Canon should not be confused with
Fanon, but everyone
does it all the time. See
Dis Continuity for when people decide en masse to disregard actual canon, and
Canon Dis Continuity when the writers do it. Alternatively, see the
Continuity Tropes index for all related concepts.
For the similarly titled anime, see
Kanon.
Examples of debates on canonicity:
- The Star Wars film series is atypical in that nearly all officially licensed material (books, comics, video games, toys, etc.) is considered canonical by Lucasfilm unless explicitly declared otherwise. For more on this, see Expanded Universe (and the Star Wars Expanded Universe).
- Doctor Who: To some fans, the 1996 Made For TV Movie doesn't count as canon, despite official BBC statements that it does. Likewise, the canonicity of the original novels and webcasts is often debated. There have even been substantial calls to decanonize the entire Seventh Doctor era, on the basis of some people not liking it. A lot.
- Oddly enough there is only one non-tv or non-movie story that has an official canon status. "Scream of the Shalka", a webcast and later novel, is officially non-canon thanks to the new series. It originally existed to give the fans a 9th Doctor to write stories for and to resurrect the Master, slightly.
- Star Trek: Most debates over elements of Star Trek Enterprise center around the question of whether or not it violates canon. Generally, the source of the debate comes from the confusion between Canon and Fanon.
- In the 1970s, there was serious fan discussion over whether James Blish's novel Spock Must Die! should be regarded as canon, despite the fact that it contained errors against canon (a major plot thread depending on Vulcan internal anatomy being bilaterally symmetrical, when the show had established that it is not) and a blatant rearranging of the universe (ending with the Klingon Empire out of the picture for about the next thousand years).
- Star Trek The Animated Series is generally not considered canon (with the possible exception of the episode "Yesteryear", according to the authors of The Star Trek Encyclopedia). The official status does seem to change from year to year, considering how many writers worked on both shows.
- The never-produced series Star Trek: Phase II (which morphed into Star Trek The Motion Picture) was to have been based around a second five-year mission of the original Starship Enterprise. Many canonical Trek sources, including a book written by Trek technical consultant Michael Okuda, suggest that this mission did in fact take place after the movie. It appears to be a tacit assumption made by Trek production staff. However, Gene Roddenberry and Paramount decided in 1988 that only live-action events seen on screen qualify as canonical Star Trek, scripts written for this mission remains less than fully-canonical. (Compare Word Of Dante.)
- Power Rangers Wild Force: The canonicity of the series' tenth anniversary episode "Forever Red" was so hotly debated that most forums have banned discussion of the matter entirely.
- Like, Star Wars, Babylon 5 also has canonical licensed tie-in media.
- Red Dwarf: From the third season onward, the broadcast version of events was generally superseded by the interpretation offered in the novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.
- Lost's ARGs and tie-in video game have mixed canonicity, and the showrunners have used the podcast to declare what can be taken as canon and what cannot. More strangely, the show's "enhanced" episodes contain informational pop-ups written by the ABC promo department, not the show's writers, so even these are of disputed canonicity.
- Many games (and especially Visual Novels) have the problem of the story branching into Multiple Endings, thus creating a number of mutually exclusive but canonical happenings. This becomes particularly relevant when the source material is adapted to a linear medium like a TV series and one of the paths has to be chosen, adding "extra canonicity" to it. The same applies to sequels. Choose wrong, and the original fans will be up in arms; and there likely is no right answer. See Tsukihime for an example.
- In the games Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV, which also had novelizations contracted out by Origin, you are given several choices as to an action path to take, as part of the "interactive movie" feature of those games. Origin (later bought by EA) has declared that the choices taken in the novels are the official history of the in-character universe. Sorry, Locanda IV.
- Let's not forget sequels to multiple-ending games; I'm still trying to figure out how Mortal Kombat II came about when only one character could have had their own ending...I assume Liu Kang won and spared everyone?
- Odd for a Nintendo game since Nintendo hardly makes sequels, but mention Super Mario Bros. 2 and you're going to get people who either claim the Japanese version (aka The Lost Levels) is the true Mario 2 or that the American veggie tossing version is the true sequel. Naturally, Nintendo is pretty mum on this issue.
- Legend Of Zelda. Unless purely dedicated to such discussion, most forums will either ban or flame anybody who brings up the heavily-debated question about what order the games happen in.
- Pikmin. In the bad ending of Pikmin 1, Olimar fails in collecting all the ship parts and doesn't make it home. This obviously isn't canon because in Pikmin 2 he lands on Hocotate and it is requested that he go back.
Toys
- Pretty much all Dragonlance fans regard the stories written by Margaret Weis and/or Tracy Hickman as being the official canon, but attitudes towards the books written by other authors range widely.
- All things created by J.K. Rowling are considered Canon in Harry Potter; however, there are several cases where statements in interviews or on her website were contradicted by later books.
- Per Word Of God, only the Peanuts comic strip counts as canon, not the animated TV specials and movies. However, a lot of casual fans aren't really aware of this.
