Maybe I'm excessively pragmatic, but I just kinda accept that the Eugenics Wars were backdated since they weren't really happening on Earth in the 90s. World War III and the Eugenics Wars are one and the same and take place in the mid-21st century. Spock and McCoy's dialog has been retconned in keeping with the real world. That's hardly the only thing from TOS that doesn't really fit with later series.
In the real world, I don't see a WWIII happening this century, let alone a Eugenics war. I guess it will go the way most things sci. fi. go IE nowhere. Terminator didn't happen, Blade Runner didn't happen, ditto Soylent Green, ditto 2001, 2010, back to the future II... Nothing ever happens the way it was predicted.
There's no need for that. Trek can't afford to keep retconning things that haven't actually happened. They'd never be able to keep up. I mean, 2032 is not so far away, and there's not a chance in hell that we'll actually have a Mars mission by then. So what do we do, retcon VOY's "One Small Step"? And what happens when 2063 rolls around and we don't actually meet the Vulcans? Chuck the entirety of ST:FC into the bin? Not only that, but the SS Valiant is due to be launched only a few years later, and obviously this isn't really going to happen. So does TOS' "Where No Man Has Gone Before" get the big heave-ho? You see where this is going. People are just going to have to accept that Trek exists in an alternate reality and that subsequent shows or movies cannot simply write things off because they haven't really happened. There's a reason why we call it Science FICTION, after all.
I seriously doubt we'll ever have the beam thing that heals bones in ten seconds or any kind of slashes on the skin for that matter. McCoy's pill that makes your kidneys grow back in ten minutes! Yeah, right! Note how inconsistent they are all the time. Archer gets a hole burned through his leg (episode one) and Phlox heals him in a few hours, no after effect whatsoever. A year later Reed gets a hole drilled through his thy of about the same size, and he takes weeks to recover!!! Whatever happened during that year?
I'm still waiting on that personal jetpack, flying car, and those domed cities that were predicted like every decade from the 1900s to the 1980s
Archer was shot in the leg with a phaser. He didn't have a literal hole bored through his leg. He had a small wound which the doctor used on of his creatures to cauterize. Archer was also supposed to return each day for more treatments. Reed, otoh, had a giant metal robotic limb puncture and pass through his leg. Can you imagine the damage that would cause? It probably broke bones and ripped through muscle and ligament. Ouch!
Actually, it's the other way around burns take a long time to heal while stabbing wounds take less. A cylinder of Archers flesh was burned, carbonized. IRL you don't ever recover from that kind of wound.
That was a bit of futurism with some pessimism and science fiction mixed in. A futuristic war with genetic engineered men fighting to controlled the world, 30 something million people killed. From the 60's TOS's point of view, it would have seemed like a huge apocalyptic number, but then as we've seen, TNG and the other shows updated the number higher for more dramatic effect. It appeared as if TOS Trek was saying that this was the war that convinced humans to change after civilization was almost wiped out. TOS could have just as easily have said that humans struggled and bungled their way into enlightenment, but it would not have as a dramatic a point as an apocalyptic world war. .
It would depend on how it functions, though the time frame might be off. The research going in to how the body heals itself and how to stimulate that healing is fascinating to me.
It'd be pretty damn creepy if they did, don't you think? Depends. Does it bring the novels Federation and Strangers from the Sky into continuity?
And nobody expects things to happen the way they do in science fiction stories. Science fiction stories just tell stories about (often future) events that might possibly be possible depending on whether various scientific theories are correct and on the course of future technology. The most science fiction stories do predict is possible future trends in technology and possible sociological effects of those technological changes. But predicting the course of future political and military history? Forget about it! No science fiction story, episode, or movie predicts the course of "The Future". If the concept of alternate universes is correct, then there are countless possible futures, many of them highly different from others, branching off every second, and so there isn't anything which can be called "The Future", but many contradictory but equally real futures that really will happen in different alternate universes. You may experience only one future and thus complain it is different from various fictional futures you remember from various fictional works, but if any of those fictional futures was scientifically possible, it actually happened in various alternate universes you have not experienced. Furthermore, in the case of Star Trek it clearly happens in an alternate universe separate from ours. Not only in events that happened after TOS aired in 1966-1969, but also in events that happened before the era of TOS. Since the creators of various Star Trek productions did not always describe historic events accurately their historical errors put Star Trek in an alternate universe than ours, regardless of the intent of the creators. Any story which depicts past events differently from the historical record is automatically in an alternate universe which diverged from our sometime before the historical event, regardless of the intent of the creators, regardless of whether the creators ever even heard of the concept of alternate universes. I may add that I comment on the various world wars in Earth history in post number 16 in the thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/your-last-so-called-world-war.300954/ and post number 219 on page 11 in the thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/the-omega-glory.296189/page-11
Every time I see those devices on a show I'm always curious about how we might be invent one of them one day.
Trek has become sort of a symbol of our future for a lot of people, even non fans. They've been exposed to the shows for so long it's kind seeped its way into the subconscious. When people especially fans, think "positive future", Trek images probably come into mind. It was supposed to be just a 'space adventure show', but now a lot of fans hold it up to a high standard and take a lot topics on the show seriously. There are a lot of other future based space shows on TV, but Trek is the only one that people really take seriously as a guide to a possible future.
I don't think it will ever be as quick and simple as shown in trek movies but in case of mutilations, e.g. a dog or a wild beast bites off a chunk of your flesh, you lose an arm in an accident, an organ is damaged... etc... Partial cloning could be the answer. Instead of growing a full clone, (which would create ethical problems among other things), just grow the part that is needed. And then you can graft it without fear of rejection or incompatibility because in a sense it's yourself. I don't know if it will ever be practical or even feasible but I got a feeling that it will. Maybe we'll also find a way to accelerate the growth so that you don't have to wait say sixteen years to get an organ of adult size. I mean that's a long time to wait!!!
star trek spends too much time telling stories about time travel and alternate realities and not enough about um star trekking.
We did get a form of sanctuary district. I wouldn’t count out a Eugenics War or sentient AI, or various dystopian scenarios involving one group dominating the world with AI surveillance and enforcement.