Battlestar Wiki:Canon

In science-fiction works, the term "canon" describes characters, events, and locales that are generated and recognized officially by the creators of the fictional universe. The term was originally a term used to differentiate heretical from accepted scripture in the Catholic Church.

A "non-canonical" story, in comparison, is not considered an official element of the storyline in a particular work of fiction, commonly a series of novels of a television program.

For fans of the work, identifying canonical stories, characters and the like reduce the level of confusion in keeping track of storylines. Determining whether an officially-licensed work is canonical or not is often a point of debate for many fans of a show or story.

The SF television show Babylon 5 is unique in that all published works are considered canonical by the series creators. However, other shows such as Star Trek have many officially-licensed stories (books and comics) that are not considered non-canonical because the story content often contradicts the aired episodes or theatrical films of the program. The Star Wars franchise attempts to unify their officially-licensed novels and comics into the central movie storyline, with general success.

What's Canonical in Battlestar Galactica?

The Battlestar Wiki:Citation Jihad project article details sources that are considered official information for the Original Series and Re-imagined Series.

Battlestar Wiki recognizes all content from any aired episodes (including the Battlestar Galactica 2003 Miniseries and, at present, Galactica 1980)) from the Original Series and Re-imagined Series, interviews and podcasts from cast and crew, and publicity information from the Sci-Fi Channel website as canonical unless otherwise retconned or retracted by the official sources.

Battlestar Wiki is an encyclopedia for all officially-licensed Battlestar properties, aired or printed, canonical or non-canonical. Thus, to prevent non-canonical storylines (from comics and novels) from conflicting with canonical aired information while fulfilling the wiki's mission of chronicling all officially-licensed stories, Battlestar Wiki marks articles with non-canonical characters, events and situations in accordance with its separate continuity policy.

Battlestar Wiki does not allow fan fiction or fanwanking of any kind in whole or in part in any article.

See Also

Canon (fiction), from Wikipedia.