So I was wondering about this, and thought…“They arrrree…but some aspects are exagerrated. Made sillier or funnier.”
Then I thought, Lets take the opposite approach. Its all true, every bit of it. After all, if you look at Captain Kirk’s logs:
“And then they encountered Apollo (?) …and then this duochrome skinned guy said he was hunting another guy for…50,000 years??..ok now it says Abraham Lincoln appeared in space.”
TAS has been considered non-canon, some canon and canon at different points.
So has anything they’ve done mess with canon?
I’m thinking it mostly passes.
Right. If anything is non-canonical, it has to be TOS. It’s over the line *fantasy. What could TAS possibly do to the canon that TOS hasn’t already opened the door for? The live action stuff doesn’t even begin to cohere into something resembling SciFi until ST:TMP, and it’s not until ST2:TWOK et seq that we finally have something resembling the Star Trek franchise I grew up with (TNG through VOY, with ENT being something of a take or leave proposition on the way to the Kelvin-verse, with everything up for grabs again).
*And Kirk is like a completely different person when comparing the movie representations of the character to TOS, but that’s neither here nor there (except to the extent it further establish s TOS as an outlier that should set a fairly low bar for what could possibly constitute “canon”).
TOS has metaphor shows and half solid sci-fi/half morality plays (Like the two pilots) and occasional full sci-fi like That Which Survives or The Immunity Syndrome
What TOS really excels at are the titles!
Pick one: Biblical quote, or Shakespeare or something 60’s like The Galileo 7 or Operation Annhilate or…The Immunity Syndrome.
I’ve never had any problems slotting TOS into canon with the rest of Trek. And I can’t think of any part of it that isn’t sci-fi. Metaphor shows and morality plays are a huge part of SF–as long as they have the SF trappings.
But the jokes in TOS mostly didn’t hinge on plot. When something is clearly only included to be funny, it becomes harder for me to accept it as canon. Especially when it seems to contradict what we know. That’s why I took at least the first few episodes of Lower Decks to be exaggerations.
That said, I’ve still only watched a small bit of it. It’s possible I would have no problem. I just still haven’t bit the bullet to pay for Paramount+ beyond my initial trial. The first few episodes of LD seemed like they weren’t really my thing. It was only after my trial was over that I found out those episodes were not the norm. The Rick and Morty aspect of it apparently goes away.
I feel like when i first watched it a few years ago…DISCO had tainted my views of new Trek…so i didnt like what I saw.
But i just rewatched S1E1 and i liked it. Loved the animation, Im ok with the crazy on speed tone. And if it changes down the line, Id be okay with that too.