When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

[Damian]

The narrative pretense of continuity is about the broad strokes, not the exact details.

That's sort of the way I treat the overall Star Trek continuity. As a generalized story. If you sweat too many of the details you'll drive yourself crazy. And some things you can sort of handwave away with some minor explanations. Khan knowing Chekov from TWOK even though Chekov wasn't on the show yet for "Space Seed" for instance---it's easy to envision Chekov being assigned to some other area of the ship and encountering Khan. As much as I harp about continuity sometimes--and set design---I don't sweat all the details.

First the Eugenics Wars which was implied by TOS to be WW3 in the 90's. Killed tens of millions. They ignored it in a couple of 90's time travel stories in DS9 and Voyager.

Then it was it replaced with WW3 in the 21st century that killed 600 million

Guys, Greg Cox already outlined the history of the Eugenics Wars....duh

In all seriousness, yes, "Space Seed" did combine the Eugenics Wars and WWIII. The first mention of WWIII as a separate war was probably "Bread and Circuses" (though it could still be interprester as the Eugenics Wars I inferred it to be a separate conflict). And I'm trying to recall, was WWIII mentioned in "The Savage Curtain"?

First Contact suggested humans started eradicating poverty and social problems after the Vulcans came, but years earlier in TNG, it said humans were still desperate and struggling almost 100 years later.

When was that said? If you're thinking of "Up the Long Ladder," the line there was that Earth was recovering from the war in the early 22nd century, not that anyone was desperate and struggling. A recovery process from such a large global conflict could easily take 6-8 decades to be fully complete.

And the line in "First Contact" about eradicating all the Earth's ills I don't think happened overnight. First Contact was probably just a first step of many. Even on Enterprise there are times when you get the sense that Earth only turned a corner in the previous 40 to 50 years. It's easy to imagine recovery taking to the early 22nd century.

Part of the charm of the tie-ins in the first few decades was how different they were from each other, how many intriguing alternative perspectives they offered.

Yeah, I have to admit it's interesting when reading an older novel. In some ways those early novel writers probably had some more freedom because there wasn't as much canon. Writers today have a lot more to work off on one hand, and a lot more resources to turn to, but at the same time I imagine it sometimes ties their hands on certain things.

 

[Damian]

Okay, then how much can you tell me about the Sierra Leone Civil War, or the Algerian Civil War, or the Burundian Civil War, or the First and Second Congo Wars, or the other African wars of the '90s that killed tens of millions of people? That's hardly small-scale.

And again -- none of the wars in the 20th century, not even the World Wars, had any combat on American soil. Our cities were untouched by the conflicts, except for things like rationing, scrap drives, and propaganda. If Los Angeles remained intact throughout WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc., then it's not even slightly implausible that it was intact during the Eugenics Wars.

I can tell you the Algerian Civil War happened in Algeria...ok I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

But yeah, I didn't really give to much thought to the rest of the world in "Future's End". The Voyager crew were pretty focused on the mission. Other things may have been going on but as it didn't relate to what they needed to do it wasn't discussed. I figure from a real world perspective the writers just didn't want to get into it. It wasn't necessary to the story so why bring up the Eugenics Wars at all.

Because of the lack of home video and such, there was no guarantee that a given viewer would ever get to see every episode of a series, so the priority was to make every one self-contained and complete with no dependence on any other episode. Plenty of shows in the '60s and '70s had little to no continuity and aspired to an anthology-like approach. Creating a sense of a consistent universe was a low priority, because it was harder to experience a series as a continuous whole than as a series of isolated segments.

Yeah, when you watch TV series from the 60s and 70s continuity just wasn't really a thing. I was a fan of "I Dream of Jeannie" in re-runs for instance and while you could argue there was a loose continuity they changed things quite a bit. Early it was noted if Jeannie got married she'd lose her powers--then she got married and no power outages. Roger Healy didn't find out about Jeannie until halfway through the 1st season then it was inferred he always knew about her.

Star Trek actually had more of a continuity then was common at the time. Watching "Amok Time" today for instance, it was made clear Christine Chapel was still in love with Spock as noted previously in "The Naked Time". Later when Chekov meets Harry Mudd in "I, Mudd" it's made clear he did not know Mudd because he wasn't on the ship in "Mudd's Women" (though obviously he must have come on board before "Space Seed" ). And on occasion previous episodes were noted. So for a show from the 60s Star Trek actually had more of a continuity than was common at the time, though nothing like current shows.

 

[Christopher]

And I'm trying to recall, was WWIII mentioned in "The Savage Curtain"?

No, just Colonel Green's "genocidal war early in the 21st century."

 

[DanGussin]

Yeah, they changed it. But it was a change that made sense at the time. In 1967, the 1990s seemed like the remote future. But in 1987, that wouldn't wash anymore, so it made sense to retcon the timeframe of the global war to something more comfortably distant. Honestly, I find it strange that later Trek productions during and after the 1990s were so literal-minded about past canon that they felt the need to re-establish the same Eugenics Wars dates that "Space Seed" had used, rather than updating the timeline to something more plausible to modern audiences, as other series such as Marvel have done with their timelines.




Okay, then how much can you tell me about the Sierra Leone Civil War, or the Algerian Civil War, or the Burundian Civil War, or the First and Second Congo Wars, or the other African wars of the '90s that killed tens of millions of people? That's hardly small-scale.

And again -- none of the wars in the 20th century, not even the World Wars, had any combat on American soil. Our cities were untouched by the conflicts, except for things like rationing, scrap drives, and propaganda. If Los Angeles remained intact throughout WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc., then it's not even slightly implausible that it was intact during the Eugenics Wars.





Or rather, it wasn't too important. Because of the lack of home video and such, there was no guarantee that a given viewer would ever get to see every episode of a series, so the priority was to make every one self-contained and complete with no dependence on any other episode. Plenty of shows in the '60s and '70s had little to no continuity and aspired to an anthology-like approach. Creating a sense of a consistent universe was a low priority, because it was harder to experience a series as a continuous whole than as a series of isolated segments.




I'm pretty sure that's a myth from those disreputable Midnight's Edge videos. Discovery is made by CBS, the company that out-and-out owns Star Trek. No "licensing agreements" of any kind are involved, because the owners don't need a license to use their own property. And we saw that Discovery directly incorporated footage from "The Cage" into If Memory Serves, so clearly they are free to use the original material.

I will have to research the license issue a bit more, thank you for the heads up. It really does not make sense but I have heard it from numerous sources.

For myself, having the Eugenics war / World War 3 extended over a period of decades makes more sense. I think most people just assume that it would be a nuclear or other WMD event between superpowers but a smaller scale series of conflicts on a global scale seems more consistent with what we see today. This also does not affect the established dialogue in Trek from the time of TOS to First Contact as a timeline of events was never nailed down. We know only that a number of genetically enhanced people gained control over parts of Earth in the 1990s and were eventually defeated.

 

[Christopher]

We know only that a number of genetically enhanced people gained control over parts of Earth in the 1990s and were eventually defeated.

But we know the Botany Bay was launched in 1996. That was stated explicitly in dialogue.

Like I said, it's pretty clear that the intent in TNG was to do a soft reboot and ditch those parts of the '60s continuity that didn't hold up in the '80s, so goodbye Eugenics Wars, hello mid-21st-century WWIII. But then the TOS fans who ended up producing DS9 and ENT decided to reintroduce the Eugenics Wars to the continuity without changing the date. Once you had fans of the original producing the new versions, the approach to continuity became more rigid.

 

[1001001]

I will have to research the license issue a bit more, thank you for the heads up. It really does not make sense but I have heard it from numerous sources.

The story is total bullshit.

https://trekmovie.com/2018/04/17/st...arified-as-creative-decision-not-a-legal-one/

How would you even measure “25% different”?

It’s absurd on its face.

 

[Damian]

No, just Colonel Green's "genocidal war early in the 21st century."

Ok thanks. I guess I was thinking of Enterprise when it was mentioned he was a player in WWIII. I couldn't remember if that part was mentioned in "The Savage Curtain".

But then the TOS fans who ended up producing DS9 and ENT decided to reintroduce the Eugenics Wars to the continuity without changing the date. Once you had fans of the original producing the new versions, the approach to continuity became more rigid.

I guess that's when the Eugenics Wars and WWIII were separated into two distinct conflicts. I had thought "Bread and Circuses" sort of did that, but thinking back while the Eugenics Wars wasn't mentioned, but only WWIII, back then there's nothing to say they still weren't the same thing. I had inferred WWIII was a separate conflict by then but I can't recall if I saw that episode after TNG started or not (which had early on noted a WWIII in the 21st century). It's possible I saw TNG, then saw "Bread and Circuses", and thought "Bread and Circuses" were talking about a later conflict. A case where a later show may have altered my perception of the earlier one without realizing it.

 

[Greg Cox]

Regarding "Future's End," the real answer, of course, is that VOYAGER wanted to do a fun time-travel lark along the lines of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" or THE VOYAGE HOME, in which the crew visits "our" time instead of some imaginary dystopian 1990s. But it's easy enough to rationalize that the Eugenics Wars were not being fought in San Francisco and that the Voyager crew were simply too busy to sit down and read a newspaper about Khan's victories on the other side of the world.

I mean, think about it. If a time-traveler landed in San Francisco during World War II for a day or so, they wouldn't suddenly find themselves in a bombed-out battlefield. Sure, if they looked hard enough, they'd probably find billboards selling war bonds or see headlines about the War in Europe or the Pacific. But if you're just running around for few hours, trying to get back to you own time? World War II is not going to be all that visible or important to you. People in San Francisco are still going to be going about their lives, stores and schools are still going to be open, the city will not be in ruins . . . .

 

[Christopher]

Besides, John Ordover has convincingly argued that the "Future's End" timeline was not the real history of the Trek universe anyway, because FE ended with Braxton never getting flung to the past in the first place and having no memory of it happening -- although "Relativity" contradicted that. So by that interpretation, they were in an alternate past all along, one that diverged from the main Trek history in the 1960s and was reset at the end.

 

[BillJ]

The story is total bullshit.

https://trekmovie.com/2018/04/17/st...arified-as-creative-decision-not-a-legal-one/

How would you even measure “25% different”?

It’s absurd on its face.

I’m not so sure? A new Enterprise would be worth something in licensing dollars. Why would any one pay for a new Discovery Enterprise license if the ship is the same as the license the company already holds. Think of someone like Eaglemoss.

 

[DanGussin]

But we know the Botany Bay was launched in 1996. That was stated explicitly in dialogue.

Like I said, it's pretty clear that the intent in TNG was to do a soft reboot and ditch those parts of the '60s continuity that didn't hold up in the '80s, so goodbye Eugenics Wars, hello mid-21st-century WWIII. But then the TOS fans who ended up producing DS9 and ENT decided to reintroduce the Eugenics Wars to the continuity without changing the date. Once you had fans of the original producing the new versions, the approach to continuity became more rigid.

We know from "Space Seed" that Khan's reign was relatively bloodless and he appeared to dislike violence for violence's sake. And he may have realized that a sustained conflict against a unified front of nations would end in defeat.

He may have decided to flee Earth before the true violence started to build his own new world from the ground up. So the launch date for the Botney Bay could predate the official start date of the Eugenics War that eventually morphed into WW 3.

I certainly agree that TNG and DS9 provided more details about the wars but, to me. the dates are still workable.

 

[Phoenix219]

TOS definitely did not have a world-crumbling WW3 and any loss or fractured records of the past - they knew *exactly* what happened in history, including obscurities like the warhead blowing up in the 60s during Assignment: Earth and the Saturn Missions referenced in Tomorrow is Yesterday.

 

[fireproof78]

TOS definitely did not have a world-crumbling WW3 and any loss or fractured records of the past - they knew *exactly* what happened in history, including obscurities like the warhead blowing up in the 60s during Assignment: Earth and the Saturn Missions referenced in Tomorrow is Yesterday.

The 90s were referred to as "fragmentary" in TOS:
SPOCK: Hull surface is pitted with meteor scars. However, scanners make out a name. SS Botany Bay.
KIRK: Then you can check the registry.
SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

 

[WebLurker]

Besides, John Ordover has convincingly argued that the "Future's End" timeline was not the real history of the Trek universe anyway, because FE ended with Braxton never getting flung to the past in the first place and having no memory of it happening -- although "Relativity" contradicted that. So by that interpretation, they were in an alternate past all along, one that diverged from the main Trek history in the 1960s and was reset at the end.

On the other hand, Voyager wasn't set back in time to the point they were before Braxton first found them. While the logic of the loop being broken is kinda wonky, it does look like the idea was that Voyager was still sent back in time in the "final" timeline. Not to mention that the episode makes it pretty clear that Starling's use of the timeship to create the '90s computer revolution was always part of the original timeline (when Janeway and Chakotay discover that Starling built his empire on future tech, their shock is that this was a hidden part of the history they learned in school).

I mean, all we're told is that the Braxton that sent them back at the end hadn't experienced the Future's End events, which could just mean that this one came from the past before the episode. In any event, since "Relativity" shows that his bosses basically just blend temporal duplicates into one, guess they picked up the Braxton who'd been living as a hobo and stuck him in with the one at the end, creating the deranged and tragic figure we meet later on.

 

[at Quark's]

I must admit, the one novel concept I took from the Braxton story arc is that different versions of the same character from different timelines and -loops can simply be integrated to resolve all differences and paradoxes Just wondering what such an integrated character would consider his primary timeline?

 

[Phoenix219]

Fragmented records, yet an entire list of registries from the time as well...?

I must admit, the one novel concept I took from the Braxton story arc is that different versions of the same character from different timelines and -loops can simply be integrated to resolve all differences and paradoxes Just wondering what such an integrated character would consider his primary timeline?

I wonder what would happened if they tried to integrate two people from parallel universes (hello, prime-mirror lorca!) or the same person from two different points in their personal timelines. Let the insanity ensue!

 

[at Quark's]

To be honest, we don't know if people from parallel timelines were ever integrated - only people of which different versions existed due to time loops. In that case it could perhaps make sense to take the "oldest" (w.r.t. the internal timeline of that person). But the mere fact of parallel versions of one person existing in one timeline would make it possible for that person to experience "parallel" timelines if they weren't integrated immediately ...

 

[Phoenix219]

To be honest, we don't know if people from parallel timelines were ever integrated - only people of which different versions existed due to time loops. In that case it could perhaps make sense to take the "oldest" (w.r.t. the internal timeline of that person). But the mere fact of parallel versions of one person existing in one timeline would make it possible for that person to experience "parallel" timelines if they weren't integrated immediately ...

Right; there is really no difference between a time duplicate and an alternate universe duplicate, other then whether the "other" place is a different physical universe, or a rewrite of the timeline in the same physical universe. If they have the tech to do one, it (the tech) shouldn't actually matter (or know the difference) between the semantic differences of duplicate people.

 

[Christopher]

Not to mention that the episode makes it pretty clear that Starling's use of the timeship to create the '90s computer revolution was always part of the original timeline (when Janeway and Chakotay discover that Starling built his empire on future tech, their shock is that this was a hidden part of the history they learned in school).

The only thing that proves is that Janeway and Chakotay believed at the time that that was true. We saw them form the hypothesis, but we never saw it externally corroborated. After all, they didn't know at the time that Braxton's trip to the past would be erased at the end of the story, so they were hypothesizing based on incompete information and thus we can't assume their hypothesis was correct. Okay, the writers probably intended it to be correct, but they didn't think through the temporal logic of their own story and thus introduced a contradiction. The simplest way to resolve that contradiction is to assume that J&C were just wrong.

Right; there is really no difference between a time duplicate and an alternate universe duplicate, other then whether the "other" place is a different physical universe, or a rewrite of the timeline in the same physical universe. If they have the tech to do one, it (the tech) shouldn't actually matter (or know the difference) between the semantic differences of duplicate people.

Yes. In physics terms, there is no difference between an alternative timeline created by time travel and one that branched off spontaneously; quantum-mechanically speaking, they're both just alternate measurement histories of the same ensemble of particles. Despite the terminology, an "alternate universe" is not a physically distinct universe; a physically distinct universe would have a completely unrelated history and would not have any of the same stars, planets, species, or individual people, and indeed it probably wouldn't have the same laws of physics and thus wouldn't have stars or planets or biology at all. A genuinely separate universe is something like Species 8472's fluidic space. If an alternate reality has duplicate versions of yourself, your friends and family, your planet of origin, and aspects of your history, then it's a different quantum state of the same physical universe you come from, and calling it an "alternate universe" is just a figure of speech.

 

[Soong-type Android]

James Bond must be one of the only franchises that doesn't have to worry about continuity and canon. They can just cast a new Bond, ignore everything that happened in the previous movies and create a new status quo from scratch.