why is it that for a ship in starwars to be "Canon" it can be in a movie or in a recent book.(Or recent CARTOON) but for star trek its Movie or TV only???

because before lucas sold star wars to Disney he basically wiped out all the EU making it non cannon giving Disney almost a blank slate for their new franchise

It was that way before Disney?? only MORE books were allowed as Canon for starwars..

originally lucas allowed the books to be considered cannon.

but with the sale of the franchise they are no longer considered cannon.

no more yuuzhan vong no more solo twins it seems either. Hell atm Mara Jade and people like that are no longer considered cannon

Didn't Marvel do the original Star Wars comics? Doesn't Disney also own Marvel? If yes, then how much of the Marvel stuff will become canon again?

the current standing is unless it's in, as far as I can remember, :

the films

the clone wars tv show

rebels tv show

and the recent book set before FA

it is part of the EU and not part of the Cannon

ok why is it that starwars ships can use BOOKs as canonical sources but Startrek cannot?? thats what i was really wondering. I get the whole Disney take over etc but as i mentioned its been this way for awhile way before Disney..

because the books for star trek were never considered part of the cannon. originally all books for star wars were considered cannon

Even when most of the EU was still "Canon" there were different levels of Canon.

Movies and clone wars were the highest tier of course.

ok why is it that starwars ships can use BOOKs as canonical sources but Startrek cannot??

Because that's what the people who own the IP have decided. There's no hard and fast rule about what is or isn't canon. The term actually means 'those things which are held to be true'

So if Paramount or whoever owns the IP can decide what is or isn't canon, including what sources are considered canon.

Because Lucasfilms/Disney has it set up so that 90% of the stuff they make is canon. Paramount/CBS/whatever decided that only the Movies/Shows are canon, and that the Books, Video Games etc. are basically just legends, or Paramount approved fan-fiction.

Isnt the force unleashed still cannon?

The EU/Legends is still considered a part if the official star wars lore until superseded by any of the post Disney takeover.

As for Trek, Trek has hundreds of hours of screen time for official story material, adding in books etc just over complicates things for any future episodes/films.

When Disney purchased Lucasfilm there were a few concerned parties who were worried their projects would be given the cease and desist order. Apparently, George was fine with fans doing what they wanted with SW and rarely intervened. Fan films, books, spin offs, edits, etc. He was happy for fans to help build that universe. Disney on the other hand, has a reputation for keeping a much tighter grip on their IP.

I'm a little annoyed that the game 1313 got binned. It looked like Mass Effect in the SW universe and showed some promise. In hindsight, it may have been that its story contradicted some of the new material.

Final note: there is a difference between canon and cannon. The first is the topic of this conversation, the second is the upgrade we put on our ships.

An another point. We all seemed to get bogged down in what is canon and what is not.

The way I see it, you build your own personal canon. Some people loved the Thrawn stuff, some people are into the Solo kid's story arcs, heck I'm sure there's someone out there that thought Jaxon the Rabbit was a good idea. Personally, I thought they were all a bit sucky and never felt quite like SW to me. They didn't fit my personal canon. On the other hand, I loved the X-Wing series (both novels and games) as they adhered to my idea of the SW universe.

My point is, read/watch what you like. If it's a good story then great! Build our own SW universe and let's not get bogged down in what's 'official'. At the end of the day, it's there for your enjoyment.

An another point. We all seemed to get bogged down in what is canon and what is not.

The way I see it, you build your own personal canon. Some people loved the Thrawn stuff, some people are into the Solo kid's story arcs, heck I'm sure there's someone out there that thought Jaxon the Rabbit was a good idea. Personally, I thought they were all a bit sucky and never felt quite like SW to me. They didn't fit my personal canon. On the other hand, I loved the X-Wing series (both novels and games) as they adhered to my idea of the SW universe.

My point is, read/watch what you like. If it's a good story then great! Build our own SW universe and let's not get bogged down in what's 'official'. At the end of the day, it's there for your enjoyment.

The problem there being if what you like isn't the official story, you're hosed 'cause disney isn't gonna make anymore of it.

An another point. We all seemed to get bogged down in what is canon and what is not. The way I see it, you build your own personal canon. Some people loved the Thrawn stuff, some people are into the Solo kid's story arcs, heck I'm sure there's someone out there that thought Jaxon the Rabbit was a good idea. Personally, I thought they were all a bit sucky and never felt quite like SW to me. They didn't fit my personal canon. On the other hand, I loved the X-Wing series (both novels and games) as they adhered to my idea of the SW universe. My point is, read/watch what you like. If it's a good story then great! Build our own SW universe and let's not get bogged down in what's 'official'. At the end of the day, it's there for your enjoyment.

The problem there being if what you like isn't the official story, you're hosed 'cause disney isn't gonna make anymore of it.

True, but it opens the door for possibly more exciting things.

Because when LFL restarted the EU with the Thrawn trilogy, there was a serious effort made to maintain continuity among the various EU sources. Timothy Zahn was sent a big pile of west end RPG material to use as references and for a while other authors were similarly encouraged to cross pollinate background material. Since, at that time, there was no new films being produced, and the secondary material was being kept moderately coherent, the entire body of work could be considered "canon" without serious contradictions.

Star Trek, by comparison, was willing to hand out contracts for novels to basically anyone who coud meet a deadline. There was no effort to maintain consistency between books, all any given author really tried for was to be consistant with the original show. THEN they started making more movies and next gen, and the new primary sources blatantly contradicted stuff from the Trek EU, so any pretense that all this stuff was part of one unified canon flew out the window. Note, how something very similar happened when lucas made the prequels, and again when Disney decided to make the sequels.

Basically, there was a long stretch when the ONLY new Star Wars being produced was novels and comics and games. While that was the case, a level of consistency could be maintained. As soon as major money started being spent on new films and TV shows, the EU got ignored. The same thing happened with Star Trek, but it happened a lot earlier in the development of their supplemental material and so the Trek novels and such never solidified into anything close to a coherent Expanded Universe.

Amusing aside on this topic to highlight what I am saying. Waaay back in the day, Diane Duane wrote a couple of the better Star Trek novels that featured Romulans and Romulan culture, "My Enemy, My Ally" and another one whose title I don't remember now. They were among the more popular ST books. Then next gen came out and basically completely contradicted everything in them and totally invalidated the book's view of Romulans. But the books were good and popular, so at some point the author and publisher said "screw it" and she wrote another book in her own little Star Trek continuity that made no attempt to reconcile or acknowledge the direction the new shows went. THAT'S why the Trek EU has never been considered "canon".

Vs JJ Canon!

Lets face it the canon of both Star Trek and Star Wars might as well not exist! They are already owned by big name studio publishers and they could do what they want with it. Relax it is not like they are trying to rewrite history (although some people are).

As far as arguing over which is official canon and which is not official it is probably better to just argue over the better story or the better version of the story. We all can admit that for Star Trek the JJ Trek is the weaker version. For Star Wars that has yet to be seen.