Earth's Second Dark Age: From Eugenics War to First Contact?

[dswynne1]

We know about the period of instability in the aftermath of the Eugenics War (though, according to the DS9 Episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", this conflict took place in the 21st century, not in the 20th century. Following that is the Carpenter Street Case (ENT Episode "Carpenter Street"), the protest at the Millennium Gate Project in 2012 (VOY Episode "11:59"), the Bell Riots of 2024 (DS9 Episode "Past Tense"), the reunification of Ireland (TNG Episode "The High Ground"), and of course, the ending of World War III in 2063 (TNG Movie "First Contact"). Curiously, according to TOS, WW3 took place in the 20th century, though later retconned to have taken place in the mid-21st century. I also believe that ENT took a stab at this by implying that the TOS character Colonel Green (who first appeared in the TOS Episode "The Savage Curtain") was a pivotal player during WW3, even to the point of having an influence in the founding of the xenophobic group Terra Prime, which would later make an appearance in the ENT Episode "Terra Prime". Me wonders if the Temporal Cold War had an effect on these changes in 'Trek history...

So here is my point: what could have happened that would have caused WW3 to happen? On another thread, I offered the idea the departure of the Augments left a power-vacuum that enabled fascists, nationalists and fundamentalists to seize power. Certainly, in the case of the West, you would have a more conservative American government that is resource scarce, which would indicate why the government would create "Sanctuary Districts" as a cost-cutting measure. Also, as an aside, thanks to ENT, I am now convinced that the so-called "Mirror-Verse" is a timeline where the Enterprise-D had not chased the Borg into the past. Thus, you can say that the so-called Prime Timeline is an altered timeline of the Mirror-verse, and not the other way around...or something like that.

At any rate, I am curious as to how progress could be made that would lead to the nuclear holocaust that TNG depicted in the TNG Episode "Encounter At Farpoint"...

 

[T'Girl]

... according to the DS9 Episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", this conflict took place in the 21st century, not in the 20th century.

Captain Archer also spoke of his grandfather fighting in the eugenics war in Africa. This suggests (imho) that there was another eugenics conflict separate from the 1992 - 1996 eugenics war.

Following that is the Carpenter Street Case (ENT Episode "Carpenter Street")

The year 2004 depicted didn't look that bad.

the protest at the Millennium Gate Project in 2012 (VOY Episode "11:59")

The protest there was tiny.

the Bell Riots of 2024 (DS9 Episode "Past Tense")

The episode did mention considerable political problems in Europe.

the reunification of Ireland (TNG Episode "The High Ground")

It would be interesting to know if Northern Ireland left the UK and joined the Republic of Ireland, or if the Republic of Ireland ceased to be an independent nation and rejoined Northern Ireland to resumed being a part of the UK.

Curiously, according to TOS, WW3 took place in the 20th century

During TOS the year of the third world war was never mention, maybe you're thinking of the eugenic wars which was a separate event from the third world war.

I also believe that ENT took a stab at this by implying that the TOS character Colonel Green (who first appeared in the TOS Episode "The Savage Curtain") was a pivotal player during WW3

Of course "Green" is an incredible common European name. The Colonel Green in TOS was said to be someone who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth. Early 21st century might seen to rule that character out as being the same character from the mid twenty-first century. Sounds more like he was involved in a Balkan-like conflict with ethnic cleansing.

So here is my point: what could have happened that would have caused WW3 to happen?

This would depend heavily on who the participants were, which we don't know.

Certainly, in the case of the West, you would have a more conservative American government that is resource scarce, which would indicate why the government would create "Sanctuary Districts" as a cost-cutting measure.

How did you get there? The episode took place in San Fransisco, which currently has one of the most liberal city councils in America.

")

 

[The Wormhole]

We know about the period of instability in the aftermath of the Eugenics War (though, according to the DS9 Episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", this conflict took place in the 21st century, not in the 20th century

Ron Moore admitted that was a mistake. He just copied the "three hundred years ago" line from TWOK and forgot to adjust for another century.

 

[Timo]

Captain Archer also spoke of his grandfather fighting in the eugenics war in Africa. This suggests (imho) that there was another eugenics conflict separate from the 1992 - 1996 eugenics war.

Actually, that was "great-grandfather", which can mean either the father of the grandfather or the ancestor of the grandfather (father, grandfather, father of grandfather, etc).

And it was always "Eugenics Wars", plural, so there certainly is room for continuing conflict even after 1996 when the last superman government was explicated as having been brought down. Although "Space Seed" also seems to indicate that the supermen disappeared from the scene altogether at that point, not merely from the top seats of governments.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

We know about the period of instability in the aftermath of the Eugenics War (though, according to the DS9 Episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", this conflict took place in the 21st century, not in the 20th century

Ron Moore admitted that was a mistake. He just copied the "three hundred years ago" line from TWOK and forgot to adjust for another century.

They should have let that accidental retcon stand.

 

[Christopher]

Captain Archer also spoke of his grandfather fighting in the eugenics war in Africa. This suggests (imho) that there was another eugenics conflict separate from the 1992 - 1996 eugenics war.

Which would explain why we talk about the Eugenics Wars, plural.

During TOS the year of the third world war was never mention, maybe you're thinking of the eugenic wars which was a separate event from the third world war.

Actually Spock did explicitly describe the Eugenics Wars as "your last so-called World War." It wasn't until TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint" that WWIII was retconned as a mid-21st century conflict.

The Colonel Green in TOS was said to be someone who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth. Early 21st century might seen to rule that character out as being the same character from the mid twenty-first century. Sounds more like he was involved in a Balkan-like conflict with ethnic cleansing.

I don't think a single word should rule anything out. One always has to be flexible about the details in order to pretend that a bunch of individual episodes and shows by different writers made over the course of decades can fit together into a cohesive history. Maybe Excalbian concepts of time don't translate perfectly into English.

Ron Moore admitted that was a mistake. He just copied the "three hundred years ago" line from TWOK and forgot to adjust for another century.

Actually the line he copied was "two hundred years ago." Which would've put the Eugenics Wars in the 22nd century. In retrospect, we can hypothesize the admiral was thinking of the Augment crisis from Enterprise.


If I may digress about the thread title, the fact is that Earth never really had a first Dark Age. For one thing, the term "Dark Ages" was only ever meant to apply to European history, and the time in question was actually a time of great cultural dynamism and progress in most of the rest of the world. For another thing, even in Europe, the Dark Ages are largely a myth. The term was popularized by Reformation-era Protestant historians who had a jaundiced view of the corruption in the Catholic Church, and later by Enlightenment-era writers who thought poorly of religion in general. Both groups thus painted a exaggeratedly negative picture of the centuries during which the Catholic Church dominated Western Europe. But in fact the medieval Church did a lot to promote learning and science, and standards of living in the era were nowhere near as squalid or oppressive as modern popular culture assumes. Twentieth-century historians tried to use "Dark Ages" to mean merely a period with few surviving historical records, but even that is no longer the case about medieval Europe, so the term has fallen largely out of favor.

 

[T'Girl]

Actually Spock did explicitly describe the Eugenics Wars as "your last so-called World War."

Spock said that the middle 1990's was the era of "your last so-called World War." Spock never mentioning eugenics wars.

At which point Dr. McCoy corrected him with "The eugenics wars," and Spock responded with "Of course."

 

[Christopher]

^That's a rather convoluted interpretation.

 

[Anwar]

It does mean that WWIII still fits. McCoy corrects him by stating the Eugenics Wars were the name of the conflict which still could mean WWIII happened later (the Colonel Green conflict of the 21st Century).

 

[Timo]

^That's a rather convoluted interpretation.

I'd actually say it's the originally intended one, and even very clearly so.

Why else would Spock say "Of course"? The only plausible use of that response is to acknowledge error. (Possibly in a condescending manner, or in a humoring-the-mad manner, but it is still necessarily an acknowledgement.)

We've also discussed the fact that the beginning for the episode consists of our heroes making mistake after mistake and gently correcting each other, in a friendly game of one-upmanship. Spock being dead wrong here is thematically highly fitting.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

"Of course" can also mean, "Yes, I know that.".

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Wasn't it Encounter At Farpoint which placed WWIII in the mid-late 21st century, because they wanted to demonstrate that things got worse before they got better?

 

[Christopher]

Wasn't it Encounter At Farpoint which placed WWIII in the mid-late 21st century, because they wanted to demonstrate that things got worse before they got better?

Yes to the first part, but the latter was implicit in TOS episodes like "Space Seed" and "Bread and Circuses" (and explored more fully in Roddenberry's early-70s pilot movies Genesis II and Planet Earth). The reason "Farpoint" retconned the time frame was because the 1990s were only a few years away by that point and it wasn't far enough in the future anymore.

 

[wulfio]

I don't know if referencing ENT is the greatest idea. Continuity seemed to be an impassable hurtle and inconvenience for those writers. I guess their idea manatee's had a limited selection.

 

[Christopher]

^ENT was no worse with continuity than any prior Trek series. If anything, TOS did the worst job with continuity, partly because they were making it up as they went, and partly because continuity was not a priority in '60s TV.

 

[wulfio]

It's been ages since I've seen TOS. But I'm speaking from the 90's trek point of view, when it came to the timeline. Off the top of my head, I'd say they tried to maintain continuity. And when they came up with something new, it wasn't a massive plot hole.

ENT didn't care whatsoever for continuity. Carpenter Street, and the Borg episode completely disregarded the established timeline. And that's just 2 episodes subjects I'm referencing. That's not factoring in the glaring issues in many sub plots and plot points, etc. The whole show was essentially a walking plot hole. The only episode I can really recall that doesn't disregard continuity is Carbon Creek. There was nothing overtly invasive about what happened, and it was just a nice story that began, and wrapped itself up in 1 hour.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's been ages since I've seen TOS. But I'm speaking from the 90's trek point of view, when it came to the timeline. Off the top of my head, I'd say they tried to maintain continuity. And when they came up with something new, it wasn't a massive plot hole.

ENT didn't care whatsoever for continuity. Carpenter Street, and the Borg episode completely disregarded the established timeline. And that's just 2 episodes subjects I'm referencing. That's not factoring in the glaring issues in many sub plots and plot points, etc. The whole show was essentially a walking plot hole. The only episode I can really recall that doesn't disregard continuity is Carbon Creek. There was nothing overtly invasive about what happened, and it was just a nice story that began, and wrapped itself up in 1 hour.

The Borg's continuity was "disregarded" by the creation of Seven of Nine and the films Generations and First Contact. Two of which have the Borg a known entity prior to the Enterprise D encountering them.

What the problem with "Carpenter Street"? Other than time travel, I've forgotten its plot.

Enterprise probably violated "fanon" more than canon.

 

[Gotham Central]

One might have suggested that the event's of "Future's End" on Voyager created a divergent timeline. Voyager traveled back to 1996 and yet we saw no indication of any sort of global struggle against genetic supermen. The problem, of course is that DS9 contradicts this somewhat by putting things back where they belong and Enterprise reinforced the idea....so scratch that.

The Eugenics Wars, even by TOS standards was ALWAYS problematic. Kahn was atleast 30 when he went into hibernation in 1996. That means that the science that concieved him was in place in 1966.

The thing is that all of the Treks have given us radically contradictory information about the late 20th and 21st century. The 21st century is supposed to be a reach bitch on humanity, yet some kind of way we still manage to have an incredibly robust space program. The Charybdis, Christopher's mission to Saturn, the Mars probe, Friendship One etc are all happening during a period of utter chaos and collapse on Earth.


All that said, DS9 gives us the best picture of what a world hurtling toward war might have looked like in "Past Tense." It shows us a US that is in something of an economic decline and a government going to rather extreme measures to control the situation. More importantly it paints a picture of a Europe that's falling apart and suggests that the situation in the US will get much worse before it gets better.The Neo Trotskyite movement in Europe and chaos it causes is supposed to spread. All we do know about WWIII is that at least once faction in the War was called the ECoN (we'll assume that that is Eastern Coalition Nations).

Of course, both First Contact and Enterprise openly contradict what we are shown in TNG. Q's "Post Atomic Horror" court room was from 2079...16 years after first contact. Yet Picard, Troi and company suggest that within 50 years of 2063, Earth would be paradise. Were the Vulcans sitting on their hands while drugged out soldiers were killing irradiated peasants?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Were the Vulcans sitting on their hands while drugged out soldiers were killing irradiated peasants?

Yes

 

[Christopher]

Of course, both First Contact and Enterprise openly contradict what we are shown in TNG. Q's "Post Atomic Horror" court room was from 2079...16 years after first contact. Yet Picard, Troi and company suggest that within 50 years of 2063, Earth would be paradise. Were the Vulcans sitting on their hands while drugged out soldiers were killing irradiated peasants?

It's a big planet. It could easily have taken decades for the reforms triggered by First Contact to spread across the world. There would certainly be some parts of the world that resisted reform more than others. And it's not like the Vulcans came by the thousands and landed ships in every city and settlement and imposed martial law. They probably kept their intervention rather limited, and it was we humans who rebuilt our own world with some assistance from them. That's a process that would've taken a long time. And it probably would've started out quite slowly and needed to reach some sort of critical mass before it accelerated. So after just 16 years out of 50, just under a third of the way, it's reasonable that there would've been limited change.