Gene Roddenberry disagrees. It’s considered a promotional tie-in, just like the novels, games, specials, comic books, and everything else not produced specifically by Paramount and/or Desilu Studios.
From The FADD:Warp Chart Impulse power is .25 sublight.
OOps, make that PADD
Yeah, well, Gene Roddenberry’s dead.
It was broadcast under the auspices of Paramount, Paramount owns it and markets it (or marketed it; it’s out of print on VHS and unreleased on DVD), they don’t get to declare it non-canon. Nor, frankly, should the fans be able to declare it non-canon. There are all kinds of Trek-crap I’d declare non-canon (coughST5cough) but there it is on the screen anyways.
Roddenberry’s death doesn’t invalidate his edict and as creator of the series, his word on the matter – that all live-action Trek is canon – is final unless eventually turned over by Berman, which I don’t expect.
Making TAS canon is too much of a headache with its inconsistancies and contradictions with modern – including movie-era – Trek. I much prefer the way it is now, where it’s being mined for its better ideas, i.e., sehlats, Vulcan’s Forge, ShiKahr, et al, and leaving all its more ludicrous ideas buried. Having to put up with “God” in ST:V was bad enough, I don’t want to have to give creedence to Satan, or “Lucien”, too.
::: sigh :::
The owners of the Star Trek franchise, Paramount, have given a definitive answer.
When in doubt, ask the people in charge.
The official exceptions:
I don’t see any statements from Paramount taking that back, btw. So it seems to still stand.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that they were decanonized when Taylor left *Voyager *but I could be wrong.
I’ll try to find a cite.
While these aren’t necessarily correct, they synch up with what I’ve read about the novels.
And a thread about the books, including *Mosaic *and Pathways, at TrekBBS.
This is why the Trek franchise largely sucks these days.
It sucks because Branon Braga is a hack, not because the novels aren’t canon. As much as I love The New Frontier (which is what I assume you are referencing), making them canon would just be … goofy. They’re awesome books but they’re also irreverent and more than a little satirical, which would jive well with established canon at all.
The DS9 Relaunch books, on the other hand, are some of the best Trek ever.