I have been a member of numerous fandoms in my life. And if you participate in any fandom long enough, you will eventually find yourself in the middle of a canon discussion. Philosophers have spent thousands of years contemplating the nature of reality, but they are rank amateurs compared to two fans of a fictional creation debating what “really� happened to the creation in question.
If you’ve never encountered such a discussion before, “canon� with regards to a fictional universe refers to the set of stories that are considered “official,� such that future stories in that universe will be expected to reflect and not contradict the earlier tales. (Comic fans, who have been grappling with this issue for decades, tend to use the term “continuity.�) The goal is to have an internally consistent master narrative built from a series of smaller stories. It’s a noble goal, but one seldom achieved. Contradictions pop up, some trivial, some major. At that point, something has to give – one of the contradictory elements must be jettisoned. And then there’s the matter of stories that, for one reason or another, a fan would like to ignore and forget about, to the point of never wanting so much as to risk seeing it referred to again. At this point the campaign to have said story expunged from the canon begins.
To be dismissed from the canon is, in the eyes of many fans, tantamount to being branded a leper. For these fans, the possibility that a story would contradict stories they have already read, or that future stories would not reflect its consequences, takes so much of their enjoyment away that the merits of the individual story don’t matter. They only care if it “counts,â€? and to be non-canon is a seal of disapproval. Last year the BBC announced a series of animated Doctor Who stories would be presented on the Web and on DVD. Many fans were excited by the prospect of new stories in a visual medium. (The Doctor has had a steady career in books and audio dramas since he went off the air.) But a significant minority turned up their noses. If it wasn’t broadcast on television, it wasn’t “proper Doctor Who,â€? and they weren’t interested. These fans went into paroxysms of joy when the BBC announced a new television series to air next year – at least until they started worrying about whether this new series would fit into the established canon of the previous series. Read the remainder of this entry »