One of the primary questions I have

One of the primary questions I have with higher-level fan fiction is the inherent legitimacy of the revisions, in view of “canon”. An example, indeed the one that started me thinking about this question, is that of the Star Trek novels of Alan Dean Foster, written in the 1970s. To understand the potential importance of his work, we need to remember that this period was the gap between the original run of the series (1966-68) and the return of the “official story” with the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. While Gene Roddenberry and later Ric Berman refer to the series--now a franchise of series-- and motion pictures as solely representing the canonical text of the Star Trek story-line, Foster’s work arguably influenced the content of the story-lines in the movies as well as maintaining both interest and sufficient remembrance of the series throughout the decade-long period in which no official text was being created. The question is then how much of this influence translates into actual authority, in terms of the text. The answer is surprisingly little officially; the Roddenberry/Berman-authorised canon remains hegemonic in the world of Star Trek.
However, when represented in new textual formats, the authorial dichotomy of ‘canonical’ and ‘peripheral’ text is often inverted. For example, YouTube parodies such as “mishaps” represent the new canon in that genre, with traditional textual representations relegated to the status of peripheral influence and cultural source language in Saussurean semiotic terms. The ideas of symbology, discrete and deliberate choice are repeated. However, it would be easy to see the differences solely in terms of symbology. Hwever the truth is more layered than a simple, single point of derivation; for every narrative “beat” in the new media there is an implied collective knowledge, one that is assumed to be understood by the viewer