Do you consider Enterprise (NX-01) canon in your campaigns?

I don't want to bash Enterprise here, there are some episodes I like and others I don't. All I want to know is, do you treat Star Trek Enterprise as canon history in your campaigns. I haven't been forced to make a binding statement to my players, yet, but I believe I'll ignore the events from Enterprise.
Responsible for my decision was a sentence of Daniels: "It takes some time for the effects to ripple through the timeline." :confused: These might not be the exactly same words he used, anyway, this sentence left me no choice. IMHO Enterprise messes up the timeline so much (and sometimes for no apparent reason) that I can sleep much better knowing that my campaigns won't be affected by whatever the writers might come up with next.

I ignore most of Enterprise. The Xindi War I can explain away as a statistical blip on the radar before the major dust up with the Romulan Empire.

The TCW is a frame I'd use in the back ground for time-travel adventures. but that's about it.

Photonic torpedoes: I consider those cutting edge weapons and not alot of ships have them. still mostly using phase cannon, spatial torpedos and thermonukes for onboard weapons.

in short...ignore anything that contradicts TOS.

For me, if it's on screen, it's canon...no matter how much I disagree with it (*cough* Voyager *cough*). Of course, I love Enterprise, so that's not a problem for me. :)

I agree that NX-01's armament is probably so state-of-the-art that very few ships share her capabilities (and in the Romulan War, most of the combatants will be less capable than the NX-class, and vastly more numerous).

Case in point on "disagreements": Voyager established that there appeared to be little effect on the American lifestyle in the late 90s during the Eugenics Wars. The on-screen evidence allows me to say that the Eugenics Wars were mostly "foreign" wars that the US may have been involved in, but the nation was never (or rarely) really at risk.

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
For me, if it's on screen, it's canon...no matter how much I disagree with it (*cough* Voyager *cough*). Of course, I love Enterprise, so that's not a problem for me. :)

I agree that NX-01's armament is probably so state-of-the-art that very few ships share her capabilities (and in the Romulan War, most of the combatants will be less capable than the NX-class, and vastly more numerous).

Case in point on "disagreements": Voyager established that there appeared to be little effect on the American lifestyle in the late 90s during the Eugenics Wars. The on-screen evidence allows me to say that the Eugenics Wars were mostly "foreign" wars that the US may have been involved in, but the nation was never (or rarely) really at risk.

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Many years ago, I intended to write a story that explained the on-scree discrepency of the Eugenics wars against an apparent 1990s that had seen no such conflict. Never finished that story, but I did turn it into a sidenote in a post Dominion War era Star trek adventure i ran using the LUG game. The basic idea was that the Voyager crew had unwittingly stumbled into a parallel timeline caused by some futuristic yahoos screwing with the past. The ultimate intended result was that, combined with a series of other temporal manipulations, the Federation would never be born as a peaceful, advanced civilization, but rather as a warlike advanced civilization.

Of course, the reason the Trek series proceeded as normal at all was because the PC and his crew went back and made certain the war happened as it was supposed to.

Basically, I think that Voyager episode was an example of someone dropping the ball. Either that, or simply not caring. But hey, you know, it could all have to do with the TCW storyline (obviously, this is a retcon on my part, because Ent didn't exist when Voyager was aired), which didn't exist when I ran this adventure because Enterprise wasn't even in the works yet AFIK. But it throws my old adventure into a new light. In my mind at least.

I paraphrase Kirk; I like to think that there are always possibilities. Making Ent canon isn't easy, because there are a great deal of little changes that really mess with a GM's sense of continuity. But they are not insurmountable.

I'm not the biggest fan of Ent, but I am more willing to treat it as canon than not.


Strictly Speaking

I haven't had anything really impacted by Enterprise, yet, so I'm still on the fence. But most likely, I'll include it in some way or another. :)

Do you treat Star Trek Enterprise as canon history in your campaigns?

There's no reason I shouldn't.

The only part of Enterprise I have a problem with when it comes to considering what is and isn't canon for the purposes of my campaign is the whole "only a small genetic minority of Vulcans are capable of mind meld" concept. Every Vulcan character generated has those powers, and it seems improbably that they all happen to be a part of that minority!

Its a role playing game, you include what's cannon and what isn't. There are part of Enterprise i don't include, like the phase pistols, but i might inlcude them in the future. I do have more than one NX-01 but Starfleet is relatively tiny nonetheless. I haven't included the Xindi conflict, yet but I'm waiting on how it'll resolve. I change a bit of "cannon" in the the 23rd or 24th century as well. Thankfully, my players are not Trek fans :D

As a rule I never use any thing from a series until the series ends. Movies are incorperated as they come out, not as part of a series (next movie to incorperate First Contact...).

Exactly my point! The Enterprise bashers are complaining about things that haven't been explained yet! Its completely silly to me that people do that.

Example, there was a whole thread on the startrek.com forums about T'Pol not being a real Vulcan because she was SO emotional when Archer decided to sacrifice himself in Azati Prime. They complained for DAYS about how the writers screwed up, yada yada yada... THEN in the newest episode we find out she is an emotion addict... :) Not very good story, but hey, it explains what they complained about.

The "changes in time ripple..." thing... it could be that in the FAR future where he is from, they discovered that time changes REALLY work that way and that what we previously thought was wrong (I can think of MANY real life science facts that were proven wrong in the future).

I suggest letting them explain the "incorrect" things before judging them... they are trying to setup a long term plan and are just shadowing on certain things (at least I HOPE this is the case).

I agree with the above poster's sentiments completely.

When I say I am ignoring the whole "minority of Vulcans can mind meld" thing, my whole series is set in the 23rd century, and every Vulcan we saw in the 23rd century seemed to be able to mind meld, so in my game, every Vulcan can mind meld. I am assuming that Enterprise will explain why mind melds are much more common in the 23rd and 24th century eventually, and it isn't as if I make a point of contradicting Enterprise in the game. I am just assuming that the apparent disrepency between my game and Enterprise will work itself out.

So far, my players haven't complained, whether they're fans of Enterprise or not.

Even though I am not the biggest fan of the show itself, I do like alot of the background story that has been created (particularly the Andorians.) If I were ever to run an Ent based game I would have to make some changes to mesh with the old continuity, but I don't see any problems with keeping 90% of what has been seen as canon.

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Originally posted by Phantom
Even though I am not the biggest fan of the show itself, I do like alot of the background story that has been created (particularly the Andorians.) If I were ever to run an Ent based game I would have to make some changes to mesh with the old continuity, but I don't see any problems with keeping 90% of what has been seen as canon.

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Agreed! :) Andorians are the coolest thing to hit Star Trek since the USS Defiant.

I do find certain aspects of the show weaken the continuty but not enough for me to hate the show.

Canon, but I ignore "weird" parts. I just read summaries, anyway.

I'm making Sato's mind turn out to be the basis of Universal Translators. Insert Technobabble, and HELLO fun computer trouble mission.

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Originally posted by Mazza
I agree with the above poster's sentiments completely.

When I say I am ignoring the whole "minority of Vulcans can mind meld" thing, my whole series is set in the 23rd century, and every Vulcan we saw in the 23rd century seemed to be able to mind meld, so in my game, every Vulcan can mind meld. I am assuming that Enterprise will explain why mind melds are much more common in the 23rd and 24th century eventually, and it isn't as if I make a point of contradicting Enterprise in the game. I am just assuming that the apparent disrepency between my game and Enterprise will work itself out.

So far, my players haven't complained, whether they're fans of Enterprise or not.

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While I agree that mind-melding vulcans are probably more common in the 23rd and 24th centuries, just because every Vulcan we saw was capable of mind melds does not mean every vulcan in existence is capable of mind melds. We usually saw Vulcan focal or significant characters or highly important personages with this capability. This could be easily chalked up to the idea that the cream of the genetic crop possess this ability.

Obviously, this is still just a retcon on the part of Ent's writers. Prior to Ent, the assumption was (based on the indidivduals we saw) that all Vulcans can do it. In truth, without actually sampling the entire Vulcan race, this can only ever really be an assumption.

If I were to address the issue in a game, I would still allow any Vulcan PC to have the ability, and would likely let any significant NPC to have it as well. The simple logic being that PCs are above and beyond the average person.

There are a lot of retcons going on in Ent. part and parcel of a prequel. I don't really care about minor retcons like the lack of widespread laser weaponry or the contrivance of Archer not bothering to ask what those strangely greedy little aliens who tried to take his ship were actually called so that he could report them to Starfleet...I hold out the hope that the important retcons will be explained and explained logically.

But...

At the same time, I'm still holding out the hope that Lucas has some plan to make Ep 3 not-stupid...
;)


Strictly Speaking

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Originally posted by Phoenix
As a rule I never use any thing from a series until the series ends. Movies are incorperated as they come out, not as part of a series (next movie to incorperate First Contact...).

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I use this method also.

I wait until everything is done. I used to hate VOY but finally incorporated nearly everything it set as canon.

I don't use anything from ENT...yet. I've missed alot of episodes, so I'm going to wait until I can see them again. Just to check what they say and some background stuff.

In the 'Star Trek: the High Frontier' campaign's one Mirror Universe episode, called 'Pressed Against the Glass', the mirror counterpart of the PC CO in the game, Captain Ariel Ibanez (although, actually, he was 'Admiral' Ibanez in the mirror universe), made the throw-away comment that, for me, defines where Enterprise is in my game. In a personal log that opened one of the Acts of the episode, he said, as an aside comment, that 'Archer was right. We should have learned, like he did, from his mistakes, and shut our doors when we had the chance.'

In short, my campaign's contention is that Archer's timeline is our Mirror Universe. :)

I have since gone on record, yes, as telling that to my players, and making it official. The more I thought about it, the more it grew on me.


CmdrBJ

I have no problem with phase pistols, lasers, phasers, lasers that act like phasers.... it's just a TV show. I not like I'm not saying that every advancement we've discovered since TOS can't be in Star Trek because they never mentioned it... we didn't have much to argue about before TNG. I just consider the pilot episodes to be 23rd century produced entertainments and somebody didn't hire a good technical advisor, so that fixes my continuity problems.
So far I haven't seen too much that really changes canon, depending on how you interpret on-screen dialogue.

At the moment, I am completely against incorporating ENT into anything I run. There are all sorts of inconsistencies that I can't justify, but it really comes down to one thing: Dedication Plaques.

They call the NX-01 a starship. NCC-1701-A's dedication plaque says "Second starship to bear the name." It doesn't say "Second Federation starship to bear the name," so the most frequent counter-objection is counter-counter-objected. If Enterpise-A is the second, that makes NCC-1701 the first. Therefore, NX-01 cannot exist.

*Watches ENT vanish is a puff of logic, and rejoices.

I may give it some consideration when it's finished, but not a moment before.

I tend to run TNG-Dominion War times so Enterprise stuff is kinda moot (or as joey says moo). Besides I don't get Enterprise (or UPN) so I'm not caught up since the start of season 3.

Also I view any campaign as an alternate timeline to begin with, so whatever you put in doesn't matter, as long as you have enough consistancy to run the game.

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Originally posted by TJLanza
At the moment, I am completely against incorporating ENT into anything I run. There are all sorts of inconsistencies that I can't justify, but it really comes down to one thing: Dedication Plaques.

They call the NX-01 a starship. NCC-1701-A's dedication plaque says "Second starship to bear the name." It doesn't say "Second Federation starship to bear the name," so the most frequent counter-objection is counter-counter-objected. If Enterpise-A is the second, that makes NCC-1701 the first. Therefore, NX-01 cannot exist.

*Watches ENT vanish is a puff of logic, and rejoices.

I may give it some consideration when it's finished, but not a moment before.

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But was the Enterprise-A's dedication plaque ever actually legible on screen? On my DVD of Star Trek VI, no matter how much I zoom in, I can't read what the text on that thing says. If you're going to count something which isn't legible as canon, then surely all of the gags on the LCARS displays on the Enteprise-D are canon too...

...just saying and all. ;)

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Originally posted by Mazza
But was the Enterprise-A's dedication plaque ever actually legible on screen? On my DVD of Star Trek VI, no matter how much I zoom in, I can't read what the text on that thing says. If you're going to count something which isn't legible as canon, then surely all of the gags on the LCARS displays on the Enteprise-D are canon too...

...just saying and all. ;)

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No, but some of the other ones are seen, and all of them are shown in the Encyclopedia. They're numbered sequentially with A as "Second", B as "Third", and so on.

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Originally posted by TJLanza
No, but some of the other ones are seen, and all of them are shown in the Encyclopedia. They're numbered sequentially with A as "Second", B as "Third", and so on.

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They're all seen, but I don't think any of them are legible, with the possible exception of the TOS one, which says nothing about which ship it was. And as fantastic as the Encyclopedia is, and as much as I love it, it isn't canon. ;)

I know that the plaques actually did say what you've said they say, but the fact that we couldn't read them on screen means that there's some wriggle room. The plaques also say things like Admiral Gene Roddenberry is in Starfleet Command - are these things also canon if the enumerations are?

I suppose we'll just start arguing the canonicity of the dedication quotes now...

As for the Roddenbury thing... why not? Guy has to have a name anyway. Gene Roddenbury doesn't exist in the Star Trek universe by name, he's called "God" there. :)

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just saying that ignoring a whole TV show for the sake of a dedication plaque we can never read on the actual show seems a little excessive to me.

There are better reasons to ignore Enterprise . ;)

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Originally posted by Mazza
I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just saying that ignoring a whole TV show for the sake of a dedication plaque we can never read on the actual show seems a little excessive to me.

There are better reasons to ignore Enterprise . ;)

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There are all sorts of issues with Enterprise, many of which have already been mentioned here. That one just happens to be the final nail on the coffin for me.

Personally, the first nail on the coffin is the theme song. It's bad enough that it has lyrics, but it's also in first person singular. If it were written in the first person plural (we/us instead of I/me), then I could at least appreciate it as refering to humanity in the Trek universe. As is, though, it's just emotional drivel.

It could also be said that since the NX-01 belongs to Earth's Starfleet & not UFP's Starfleet it doesn't count in the liniage

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Originally posted by Karg
It could also be said that since the NX-01 belongs to Earth's Starfleet & not UFP's Starfleet it doesn't count in the liniage

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As much as I love that idea, they've already "adjusted" the numbers in a few sources (like the Decipher RPG books).

Yes and no , I would love to play or run a game in this time setting .

The three or four games I did manage to run took place a other class of warp five ships build in secret with out the knownage of the Vulcan High Command.