Is our Earth the original?

[Noname Given]

Good summary. Then there was one monoculture (miramanee) and two cultural contaminations (nazis and gangsters) but a narrative to connect the others would be nice.

Neither of the above instances you site are actually parallel Earths.

In "Patterns of Force" a federation observer who was also a historian decided to interfere with the culture he was observing (because they were anarchists and militant and killing themselves); and he formed a government based on Nazi Germany as dispassionately he viewed that country as the most efficient one Earth ever knew. His plan might have succeeded except for an Ecosian who wanted power for himself and drugged the observer (John Gill) and effectively took over.

In "A Piece of The Action" that society was contaminated by a history book on gang warfare in the 1920s (which was left behind by a starship before the non-interference directive went into effect); and that planet's inhabitants used / took the book as a template for how to establish a working form of government.

In "The Paradise Syndrome", The American Indian society that existed there was actually transplanted from Earth itself onto that planet by a species who referred to themselves as The Preservers. They roamed the galaxy and if they saw a society in danger of extinction, they would transplant it to a world they considered safe where the society could continue to thrive. As these American Indians were in a environment that supported their way of life; they felt no need to advance technologically in any way, and pretty much remained as they were from the time they were taken (which is assumed to be the 19th century of Earth).

So yeah the other episodes you describe, while they were imitations of aspects of Earth's society; they were not true parallel Earths in and of themselves.

 

[Kor]

Good points.

Kor

 

[Phoenix219]

That's what I said, and were a distinct other category. The monoculture was a transplant and the other two were cultural contamination, which means they have explanation for being earth cultures. It would be nice to have a narrative explaining the other ones.

 

[Pauln6]

More likely Trek is just in a parallel universe but it is an interesting question. Maybe our Earth is still too primitive to be contacted by the Federation or maybe we never survived global warming.

 

[johnnybear]

Miri's world was an alternate earth as was Omega IV and the Roman Empire earth but the Nazi one and the gangster world were only similar due to the intervention of John Gill with his National Socialist appreciation and the Iotians were culturally contaminated too because of the book left by the USS Horizon a century before! Other planets include Beta III which was similar to earth until you learn of Landru and the planet's long six thousand year old history and the USS Archon hadn't affected it much at all in comparison!
JB

 

[Timo]

Nothing about Omega IV or the pseudo-Rome yelled Earth from orbit, though: not only were the continents different, but there was no commentary on the diameter, mass or other specs being similar, like there was with Miri's world. That one still proudly stands alone, then.

That these would be alternate Earths in the sense of once having been more like Earth culturally is far from said, too. Gill managed to make his Ekos look pretty convincingly (Hollywood-)Nazi German (American?) within just a generation. Similar tampering could have resulted in the pseudo-Rome and pseudo-post-superpower-war-apocalypse, without requiring any special adaptive abilities from the natives.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

Nothing about Omega IV or the pseudo-Rome yelled Earth from orbit, though: not only were the continents different, but there was no commentary on the diameter, mass or other specs being similar, like there was with Miri's world.

oh FFS, it's not like there isn't a website with the episodes transcribed. From "Bread and Circuses":

CHEKOV: Definitely class M, somewhat similar to Earth.
KIRK: Yes, similar. But the land masses and oceans are quite different, however.
SPOCK: Different in shape only, Captain. The proportion of land to water is exactly as on your Earth. Density five point five, diameter seven nine one seven at the equator, atmosphere seventy eight percent nitrogen, twenty one percent oxygen. Again, exactly like Earth.
KIRK: Exactly in some ways, different in others.​

 

[Timo]

Oops, true enough. It's still not a second Earth unless we assume this is supposed to mean that it's geological ages out of sync with ours, that is, the continents have drifted more or then less than here. And even then, different geological ages would mean different ratio between land and water.

Spock is just describing Class M criteria there anyway, save for the diameter. (Although of course this is also way off because the real figure is 12742, not 7917! ) And then adding that the atmosphere is exactly like Earth, as expected.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Oops, true enough. It's still not a second Earth unless we assume this is supposed to mean that it's geological ages out of sync with ours, that is, the continents have drifted more or then less than here. And even then, different geological ages would mean different ratio between land and water.

Spock is just describing Class M criteria there anyway, save for the diameter. (Although of course this is also way off because the real figure is 12742, not 7917! ) And then adding that the atmosphere is exactly like Earth, as expected.

Timo Saloniemi

The diameter of Earth at the equator is 7,926 miles, not 7,926 kilometers. That is about 1.00113 times what Spock said.

So Spock was a lot more accurate than you think. Though the difference in diameter might be enough to make some people think that the Star Trek Earth is a different Earth than ours, and that one or both might possibly be some sort of duplicates or decoys of the true original Earth.

 

[Timo]

The point I was making was that Spock never gives a unit to go with his "7,917", so we're perfectly at liberty to think that he's using kilometers, as any Starfleet officer at his time and age should - thus distancing him from describing a hyper-exact copy of Earth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

Though the difference in diameter might be enough to make some people think that the Star Trek Earth is a different Earth than ours, and that one or both might possibly be some sort of duplicates or decoys of the true original Earth.

It's worth noting that the diameter of the Earth at the equator is not a value with a single answer but one that depends greatly on how one defines the circumference of the Earth at the equator. To illustrate what i mean, this chart lists accepted though slightly different values for the radius.
Edit to add; My point being that Spock's value not matching a current known value isn't a deal breaker on Trek's Earth being like our Earth, physically.

 

[Neopeius]

My pet theory for the multiple identical Earths in Trek is that the galaxy was kaleidoscopic for some reason. Bits of it were endlessly repeated over and over, and that's why there were so many Earths and human analogs. Indeed, it may turn out that the Klingons have their own Earth.

 

[Neopeius]

The point I was making was that Spock never gives a unit to go with his "7,917", so we're perfectly at liberty to think that he's using kilometers, as any Starfleet officer at his time and age should - thus distancing him from describing a hyper-exact copy of Earth.

Timo Saloniemi

Sure. Or furlongs. Or yards. Yeah. I'm sure he meant yards. It's just a very small planet.

 

[Ronald Held]

Implicitly, it is a physical duplicate of the Prime Earth. So miles would be expected. Add in the mean density and KMs seems not to fot.

 

[Tenacity]

diameter seven nine one seven at the equator

The figure is right for the diameter in miles running throught the Earth's poles.

 

[Yistaan]

I've mentioned before that locking down Earth years in Star Trek was a big mistake, and it's now clear our Earth is not the same as in Trek's. Furthermore, setting an Earth timeline for Trek completely removes the need for stardates. Stardates were invented specifically so that TOS' Earth year wouldn't be identified.

It just occurred to me there is a way of fixing that, especially as Trek continues towards dates like 2063 that won't be like Trek's 2063. Namely, retcon everything we know about Earth years in Trek. Reveal that Trek's World War 3 was so devastating and so many records lost, that the survivors didn't even know what year it was and just made an estimate of 2063, when in fact they could very well be in 3363. They don't even know if it was indeed the third world war, but any records of any possible ones between WW2 and the current conflict were lost.

All of Trek's chronology would be based on these in-universe estimates and as such, Trek could always be "our" future.

 

[BK613]

^^Way too many cat, dog and monster truck calendars for that.....

 

[Yistaan]

^^Way too many cat, dog and monster truck calendars for that.....

They, uh, had a lot of totalitarian governments faking calendars to justify their rule and altering memories to, uh, turn people into sleeper soldiers. Yeah, that's it.

 

[Timo]

All of Trek's chronology would be based on these in-universe estimates and as such, Trek could always be "our" future.

To what possible end? A future like that wouldn't be in any way relevant to ours - the disconnect you postulate there would make these people as alien and fake as any slightly-parallel-reality ones, equally uninteresting as a goal to aspire to or steer away from.

Conversely, there's about as much there in Star Trek to distance us from its pseudo-reality as there is in, say, Picket Fences. It doesn't really matter. If we can accept television entertainment as relevant to our lives, TOS in the 2260s, with a Khan-infested 1990s, is a fine example.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Yistaan]

To what possible end? A future like that wouldn't be in any way relevant to ours

I disagree actually. A future where powerful agencies and chaos tells people what to think and believe instead of what they see and hear for themselves, down to being told what date it is, if anything, is probably too relevant to our society given the state of things.