[3][4] Although Roddenberry exerted almost total creative control over the first seasons of Star Trek,[5] he preemptively rebuked any notion that he would be the final authority.
[3][4] Until 2010, everything outside of the live-action television episodes and films were "traditionally" considered non-canonical, including Star Trek: The Animated Series.
[2] However, large portions of the fan base, as well as Star Trek affiliates, supported The Animated Series being adopted as fully canonical.
People who worked with Roddenberry have remembered that he used to handle canonicity on a point-by-point basis rather than series-by-series or episode-by-episode.
[citation needed] See, people can easily catch us, and say "well, wait a minute, in 'Balance of Terror', they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and then in 'The Enterprise Incident', they don't know anything about cloaking devices, but they're gonna steal this one because it's obviously just been developed, so how the hell do you explain that?"
But, generally, [the canon is] the original series, not really the animated, the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in certain aspects but not in all ...
Gene liked giving people titles instead of raises, so the errand boy got named "archivist" and apparently it went to his head.
Gene handed him the responsibility of answering all fan questions, silly or otherwise, and he apparently let that go to his head.Another thing that makes canon a little confusing.
And – okay, I'm really going to scare you with this one – after he got TNG [Star Trek: The Next Generation] going, he ... well ... he sort of decided that some of The Original Series wasn't canon either.
He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it.No definitive list exists of which films in particular Roddenberry disliked, or what elements in them he did not consider canonical.
[13] Similarly, Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach, artists and technical consultants since Star Trek: The Next Generation and the authors of several of these reference books, considered their work "pretty official".