One bigass ret-Khan they would need to do...

[Myasishchev]

Shazam! wrote:

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They haven't 'rebooted' Trek though. Everything pre-Kelvin still includes historical events detailed in TOS and beyond.

I don't know why it's so hard to accept that in the fictional Star Trek universe there was a war in the 90s.

Because it places Trek in a universe not remotely our own, meaning that the triumph of the society in that fictional universe is in no way actually connected with the evolution of the society in our own.

Basically, it takes one of the central premises of the whole franchise--that if we play nice, we can have a great world too--and undermines it. The future of Trek ought to plausibly be our future, not the future of a world where genetic engineering technology was being perfected in the early 1960s and interstellar ark ships were being built in the mid-1980s. Also--and I'm still no booster of seeing Khan in the Abramsverse--no audience wants to see an alternate 1992 that has no bearing on their own memories of 1992. Imagine Voyage Home being populated by bands of young Augments. It'd have been silly. Even sillier than the whale thing, and a lot less relevant. Heck, Kirk maybe could've avoided the dangers of time travel back to the future by putting himself, his crew, and the whales in freezeless stasis, apparently on the cusp of being developed in the 1980s inasmuch as it was an incredibly robust technology in the mid-1990s, and sailed out on a DY-100.

[Dusty Ayres]

Myasishchev wrote:

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I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

I don't really want to see Khan or the Augments in Star Trek 12, but if I did, I would be pleased to see them from at the earliest the 2050s.

According to the prequel novels by Greg Cox, the creation of the Augments was a secret project that nobody else in the world knew about, not even the CIA, KGB, MI6, Mossad, or any other intelligence agency-the only one that did was Gary Seven and the Aegis, who tried to stop it as best as they could, but to no avail, since Seven spared the lives of the various kids created by the project, all of whom grew up to start the Eugenics War. BTW, this project was an international undertaking, not just something 'from the East'.

Good call on setting the war in the 2050's instead of the 1990's.-in fact, I'd have it be WWIII as well, or set before WWIII.

The DY-100 ships were intended for interplanetary travel, not interstellar travel, and would have not made it to another system without something like the HAL-9000 computer flying the ship, which they didn't have in the '1990's'-that's why Khan & Co. never made it to Tau Ceti, and would most likely have died if the Enterprise had not discovered their S.O.S.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Abrams can't mess with Khan too much, since his reboot doesn't "start" until the destruction of the Kelvin. Anything before that should be the same as in the prime timeline, Khan included.

[Sabataage]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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Abrams can't mess with Khan too much, since his reboot doesn't "start" until the destruction of the Kelvin. Anything before that should be the same as in the prime timeline, Khan included.

Which is why I agree with others that they should leave him alone, for now. I'd save him for the third or fourth movie when they actually have a good idea for how to use him and can get around or change his origin without making too much of a fuss.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sabataage wrote:

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In Clarke's follow-up 3001, characters referr to the events of the first two books as happening sometime in the 2030's and 40's.

In fact, I believe that all four of Clarke's 2001 novels (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001) are set in slightly different 'universes'. He even admits this in at least one of the forewords.

[JoeFromEarth]

[URL="http://trekbbs.com/member.php?u=559" wrote:

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Captaindemotion[/URL]]I wonder what they'll do when they re-issue those books in 20 or 30 years. Assuming that the events of 2001:ASO haven't come to pass in the interim.

They never renamed George Orwell's 1984, so I don't see why they'd rename 2001.

Also, quick thought on the Eugenics War and WWIII: perhaps they're the same war much like WWI and WWII are almost the same war?

[Kegg]

They really don't have to give dates as to when Khan ruled the Earth. He's an evil genetically engineered dictator from the Earth's past; that's about the extent of backstory we need (one doesn't even need to know he's Sikh, though you may as well).

Basically this is a huge nonissue and I suspect if O&K did put Khan in a movie they'd just sidestep this matter entirely, and they'd be right to.

So no, this isn't something that has to be retconned. Just ignored. The new films will be doing a lot of the latter - it's not likely to be visiting the planet where Apollo or Plato's stepchildren or gangsters or TV-watching Romans hang out, for obvious reasons, but in 'canon' these would still be there.

[Shazam!]

Myasishchev wrote:

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The future of Trek ought to plausibly be our future

Yes, but the history of Trek needn't be our present.

[Myasishchev]

Dusty Ayres wrote:

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According to the prequel novels by Greg Cox, the creation of the Augments was a secret project that nobody else in the world knew about, not even the CIA, KGB, MI6, Mossad, or any other intelligence agency-the only one that did was Gary Seven and the Aegis, who tried to stop it as best as they could, but to no avail, since Seven spared the lives of the various kids created by the project, all of whom grew up to start the Eugenics War. BTW, this project was an international undertaking, not just something 'from the East'.

A human genetic engineering program isn't cheap or easy to conceal, though. I mean, who ran it, Hugo Drax?

The secret program/few Augments paradigm I just can't truck with. To be effective, there would have had to have been hundreds of millions of them. A few thousand guys with trebled strength and doubled intelligence? So what, they aren't bulletproof. How do you seize power in (what was it?) forty nations with a few thousand guys?

To be viable, Augments have to have a large presence in the population. Frankly, I think that's more interesting anyway, in that it elevates the Augies beyond supervillains.

Good call on setting the war in the 2050's instead of the 1990's.-in fact, I'd have it be WWIII as well, or set before WWIII.

Now on this, we're in total agreement.

The DY-100 ships were intended for interplanetary travel, not interstellar travel, and would have not made it to another system without something like the HAL-9000 computer flying the ship, which they didn't have in the '1990's'-that's why Khan & Co. never made it to Tau Ceti, and would most likely have died if the Enterprise had not discovered their S.O.S.

Sometimes, I still kind of think they were only like three LY out from Earth. Enterprise got near the location of the discovery real quickly in TWoK, anyway... plus the sublightness of the whole endeavor.

[Wereghost]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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In fact, I believe that all four of Clarke's 2001 novels (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001) are set in slightly different 'universes'. He even admits this in at least one of the forewords.

Yeah, I think he refers to them as "variations on a theme" in the foreword to 3001. Sensible approach. I think that it's one that could easily have been taken with the new movie without tying it to existing continuity. Tweak what it makes sense to tweak, but keep as much of the important stuff intact as you can.

[Corran Horn]

startrekrcks wrote:

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what go down the Khan road again. What more could they do about him?

Excellent point.

[Sabataage]

Kegg wrote:

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They really don't have to give dates as to when Khan ruled the Earth. He's an evil genetically engineered dictator from the Earth's past; that's about the extent of backstory we need (one doesn't even need to know he's Sikh, though you may as well).

Basically this is a huge nonissue and I suspect if O&K did put Khan in a movie they'd just sidestep this matter entirely, and they'd be right to.

So no, this isn't something that has to be retconned. Just ignored. The new films will be doing a lot of the latter - it's not likely to be visiting the planet where Apollo or Plato's stepchildren or gangsters or TV-watching Romans hang out, for obvious reasons, but in 'canon' these would still be there.

I quit watching ST:ENT during the Xindi arc ("We are evil lizard men bwah hah ha!! ... " ), though I heard that they introduced a ship full of Augments later on in the series. I'm curious how they handled the origin there. Did they re-write their origin, keep it vague and unexplained or just completly ignored it outright?

[Kegg]

Sabataage wrote:

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I quit watching ST:ENT during the Xindi arc ("We are evil lizard men bwah hah ha!! ... " ), though I heard that they introduced a ship full of Augments later on in the series. I'm curious how they handled the origin there. Did they re-write their origin, keep it vague and unexplained or just completly ignored it outright?

Vague.

Which is also exactly the same thing Wrath of Khan did (remember, TWOK was made a mere ten years before 1992, so such claims of an immenient seizure of power by supermen seemed doubtful even then); although not only did TWOK not mention the date it retconned what Khan's guys were (they were not engineered supermen in the original episode... they were made through selective breeding. Er. Right.)

The specific dates of Khan's reign and even the fact he's a Sikh have only ever been things that are important to us, Trekkie nerds. For a new filmic take on him this it's completely irrelevant.

[Red Ranger]

First, I hope they don't resurrect Khan. But if they do, I agree being vague about some of the details of his backstory would be welcome. BTW, the Augments storyline in ENT was a poor rip-off of both Space Seed and TWOK. -- RR

[Myasishchev]

Arik Soong as ably played by Brent Spiner was a bright spot in it all, however, despite the arc being mostly lousy. And the torture bit was intense.

The Augments themselves were of course woefully lame, from the depth of their characters to their dialogue to their fashion sense. Seriously weak.