Timo wrote:
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The Tsiolkovsky from TNG's The Naked Now is listed as being built in the USSR.
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We could treat that as an in-joke, no different from the giant rubber duck inside the E-D saucer, as this dedication plaque is not visible in the actual episode.
More exactly, it's so off-focus that the only thing we can read is the name; the rest of the text is so illegible that we can't tell the registry number apart from the class name. |
Not an in-joke as the Soviet Union still existed when
The Naked Now was produced.
There was no nuclear weapons platform in 1968.
There was no Eugenics War in 1992.
There was no manned Saturn mission.
But they all happened in the Trek universe. I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of Trek being an alternate reality where the Soviet Union simply didn't cease to exist. It probably did change at some point later in the Trek universe but held on to the name due to tradition.