TOS set during the 22nd Century!?

[Christopher]

throwback wrote:

---

The Wrath of Khan was two-faced on the dating - the title card identified the time period as the 23rd century, yet Khan said that he ruled a large part of Earth two centuries before, which would place his rule in the late 21st century.

Maybe that was the intent. After all, the mid-1990s were a lot closer in 1982 than they were in 1967, so it's quite possible the filmmakers were retconning the timeframe of the Eugenics Wars, pushing them into the future to make it less implausible to contemporary audiences. It wouldn't have been the only retcon in TWOK -- see Khan and Chekov having a history, Khan's multiethnic followers turning into a bunch of blond Nordic types and becoming impossibly young for people who'd been stranded as adults 15 years earlier, their residences on Ceti Alpha V being adorned with movie-era equipment rather than TOS-era, Kirk having "never faced death" despite having lost Gary, Edith, Sam, and Aurelan and lived through the Tarsus IV disaster as a youth, etc. Fans today get so up-in-arms about continuity problems in new Trek productions, but they tend to overlook how cavalier TWOK, which so many of them consider the definitive Trek movie, was about continuity.

[mb22]

Navigator_NCC2120 wrote:

---

In a trailer for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", the narrator Orson Welles states that a living object of infinite proportions is about to encounter a 23rd Century starship from Earth called Enterprise.

Here is the link to that trailer.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

And of course, there is this well known teaser advertisement from 1979:

http://i31.tinypic.com/2rcx6hg.jpg

[ssosmcin]

BillJ wrote:

---

But then in the same film you had Khan stating that he was a prince on Earth "200 hundred years ago".

Also remember McCoy grings Kirk some Romulan Ale dated 2283. Since it "takes this stuff a while to ferment," it would be closer to the end of the century. Even if they were being sarcastic about the vintage, it's at least 2283.

Unless someone wants to say the label was a typo.

[Christopher]

There have been a bunch of theories about the 2283 vintage over the years. McCoy was being sarcastic; it was a Romulan year; it was a stardate; etc.

[Mytran]

Add to the list of "two hundred years" references Sulu's comment about the handgun he found in Shore Leave - an antiquie which hadn't been manufactured for a couple of centuries, according to him.

[BillJ]

Christopher wrote:

---

Maybe that was the intent. After all, the mid-1990s were a lot closer in 1982 than they were in 1967, so it's quite possible the filmmakers were retconning the timeframe of the Eugenics Wars, pushing them into the future to make it less implausible to contemporary audiences.

But doesn't Khan specifically mention 1996 in TWOK?

[Christopher]

BillJ wrote:

---

But doesn't Khan specifically mention 1996 in TWOK?

Oh, yeah, he did. That would just make it a continuity glitch, then -- copying what "Space Seed" said without thinking it through, the same way Ron Moore had an admiral in "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" say the Eugenics Wars were 200 years earlier because he was just copying what TWOK said rather than thinking it through and realizing it'd be more like 380 years by that point.

[T'Girl]

Mytran wrote:

---

Add to the list of "two hundred years" references Sulu's comment about the handgun he found in Shore Leave - an antiquie which hadn't been manufactured for a couple of centuries, according to him.

The Smith & Wesson Model 10 is still in production (four inch barrel only), at what point in time will it be no longer manufactured? If they are produced passed the time period of the third world war, then Sulu's estimate is fine.

Also, Sulu statement of "hasn't been one like this made in a couple of centuries," could be somewhat vague. Today someone could make the general conversation statement that the American Civil War started " a couple of centuries ago," and they would not be politely called on the 49 year inaccuracy. General conversation.

And in Space Seed, Kirk's response of "two centuries we estimate," might have been partially base on his earlier belief that they were dealing with a DY-500 spacecraft built sometime in the 21st century. Plus Kirk might not have been making any effort to be precise with a semiconscious man.

BillJ wrote:

---

But doesn't Khan specifically mention 1996 in TWOK?

Chekov said he was from the late 20th century, and never gave the exact year.

Khan's statement in TWOK of be from 200 years in the past (okay this is a stretch) might be from no one ever correcting what Kirk first told him.

[Christopher]

T'Girl wrote:

---

Chekov said he was from the late 20th century, and never gave the exact year.

Khan's statement in TWOK of be from 200 years in the past (okay this is a stretch) might be from no one ever correcting what Kirk first told him.

Sorry, but Khan himself did give the year. I initially forgot that myself, but have since been put straight.

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html

Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?

Then a few lines later in the same scene:

On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.

[Harvey]

Interestingly, Khan's line in the script was originally "three hundred years ago." An October 14, 1981 de Forest Research memo correctly noted that the series was usually dated as being two hundred years in the future, not three hundred, so the line was changed.

The memo doesn't mention the vintage of the Romulan ale nor the opening "In the 23rd Century..." title card, suggesting they weren't developed until later, which is probably why the movie is inconsistent about when it is set.

(The memo also suggests changing the stardate from 6230.3 to 8130.3, which is the stardate in the finished movie, to make it consistent with the first feature).

[Melakon]

This is just conjecture, but it's also possible that between being thawed out on the Enterprise, taking over the ship, and being banished to Ceti Alpha V, Khan (despite his superior intellect) never bothered to find out what the actual year was.

[Timo]

I'm sure he knew quite accurately and exactly in ST2 that it was Year 15 of the Second Reign of Khan the Magnificent!

Out of the "not in the late 23rd century" references in TOS and the TOS movies, most are quite vague, possibly unintentional (such as the 900-year thing from "Squire of Gothos" - preempted by Trelane's mobile planet anyway), or otherwise not intended to be taken seriously. The ones relating to the length of time Khan spent asleep are fairly definitive in comparison with, say, the "Tomorrow is Yesterday" joke, though. But we can always argue the time Khan spent asleep is different from the interval between his going to sleep and waking up. After all, he was moving at relativistic speeds in the meantime...

Timo Saloniemi

[SchwEnt]

Christopher wrote:

---

Sorry, but Khan himself did give the year. I initially forgot that myself, but have since been put straight.

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html

Then a few lines later in the same scene:

With Khan's lines quoted above, I'd say the first one is him pissed off and setting the record straight with Terrell and Chekov, thus the "1996" and facts about cryogenic freeze. He's telling them like it is.

His second line is him musing poetically on his lost reign, thus the "two hundred years ago" rather than "224 years ago" or whenever. Less accuracy although largely correct.

[T'Girl]

On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.

Given the large area of the world Singh was supposed to have ruled, should not that be "with power over more than a billion?"

With Khan's ego, you would think he would emphasize the largest number possible.

[Christopher]

^But that doesn't sound as poetic. And a (US) billion is a thousand millions, so it's technically correct.

EDIT: Come to think of it, since he was supposedly from India, he'd probably go with British usage and refer to 10^9 as a thousand million rather than a billion (which in traditional British usage would be 10^12, an American trillion).