Fanon: The Eugenics Program that produced Khan

[wayoung]

Even in the 60's, having Khan the result of a Eugenics breeding program that takes over 1/4 of the world in the 90's doesn't make any sense. Nor was TOS locked into needing it to happen fairly "soon" since TOS taking place in the 23rd century wasn't established until the 80's. They could have said The Eugenics War took place hundreds or thousands of years in the future if they wanted, or not even tie it to a specific date at all.

Montalban was about 45 in Space Seed (& Cumberbatch was in his 30's in STID). That means Khan would have been born in the 1940's at the earliest, most likely much earlier if we assume part of his generic superiority is slower aging. So whatever eugenics program that produced him would have had to start hundreds, if not thousands, of years earlier.

Later Trek did retcon it so Khan et Al were genetically modified instead of bred through a eugenics program, but that brings its own issues. How were people modifying DNA in, at the latest, the 1930's/40's?

It all seems an area pretty open for fanon. I have a couple fav theories for both the original Eugenics program and the later genetically modified retcon. What are yours?

For the OG Eugenics program I like the idea of a breeding program starting with the Mongol Empire using Ghengis Khan's descendants, shepherded by the Mughals, which went underground with some of the Mughals resources to continue the program with the fall of their empire. The goal being to recreate the great Khan's empire and finish his job.

For the genetically modified retcon I like to assume it was Nazi scientists experimenting off the books in India who were never discovered by anyone after the 3rd Reich's downfall. The Suliban gave them knowledge and tech to do generic modification which explains how they could do such manipulation so far ahead of human tech. The tech was lost/destroyed during the wars which is why Khan & Co resorted to a Eugenics program while they were in power.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Khan could have been born in the 1970s as far as we know and his genes were programmed so that he would become full-grown--both physically and intellectually--in just a decade or so.

 

[FederationHistorian]

With in universe Earth history basically diverging in the late 1960s, its not a stretch to say that the Augments were created in the late ‘60s. But Khan, and other unknown Augment leaders, had their growth accelerated by a decade. And this contributed to the Augments rebelling against their creators and eventually world conquest.

Do any of the other Augments aside from Khan look older than 30, which they would be when Botany Bay leaves in 1996?

 

[jaime]

Even in the 60's, having Khan the result of a Eugenics breeding program that takes over 1/4 of the world in the 90's doesn't make any sense. Nor was TOS locked into needing it to happen fairly "soon" since TOS taking place in the 23rd century wasn't established until the 80's. They could have said The Eugenics War took place hundreds or thousands of years in the future if they wanted, or not even tie it to a specific date at all.

Montalban was about 45 in Space Seed (& Cumberbatch was in his 30's in STID). That means Khan would have been born in the 1940's at the earliest, most likely much earlier if we assume part of his generic superiority is slower aging. So whatever eugenics program that produced him would have had to start hundreds, if not thousands, of years earlier.

Later Trek did retcon it so Khan et Al were genetically modified instead of bred through a eugenics program, but that brings its own issues. How were people modifying DNA in, at the latest, the 1930's/40's?

It all seems an area pretty open for fanon. I have a couple fav theories for both the original Eugenics program and the later genetically modified retcon. What are yours?

For the OG Eugenics program I like the idea of a breeding program starting with the Mongol Empire using Ghengis Khan's descendants, shepherded by the Mughals, which went underground with some of the Mughals resources to continue the program with the fall of their empire. The goal being to recreate the great Khan's empire and finish his job.

For the genetically modified retcon I like to assume it was Nazi scientists experimenting off the books in India who were never discovered by anyone after the 3rd Reich's downfall. The Suliban gave them knowledge and tech to do generic modification which explains how they could do such manipulation so far ahead of human tech. The tech was lost/destroyed during the wars which is why Khan & Co resorted to a Eugenics program while they were in power.

It being ‘pure’ eugenics, works well for the forties time frame. The problem is, it also suggests that Eugenics in some ways works. Hence the genetic retcon. Overall it reminds me more than a little of the story to Metal Gear Solid, and I would still instinctually go for mad Nazi scientists taking advantage of the chaos in the fall of the British Raj to set up their little program, take advantage of local populations (something with real world parallel in IVF labs) and pop Khan out in the 60s. By the 90s he’s a local warlord, and the ‘eugenics wars’ is something added as a name only after all the details come to light. Especially as this plays into things like dynastic rulers and caste systems. Then, in the nineties, local near-east governments stick him on trial, and the Indian Space Agency sticks him in orbit on the sleeper ship. Prison. Some act of ‘terrorism’ by his forces, or an act by someone who didn’t think the punishment for their crimes was enough, whacks him out into deep space, and WW3 comes along and no-one is tracking him anymore as he constantly accelerates and bumps off gravity wells. WW3 may even have been kicked off by that act, with Econ or the west mistaking it for a nuclear strike.

I haven’t read the novels, so no idea where they went with it.

 

[publiusr]

The 1990s in the “Secret Wars” trek timeline I imagined as a child in the 70s as looking like what we may actually see in the next couple of decades with Retron Library Recombineering (RLR).

In my TOS head canon, the microchip was invented on a moonbase years after we got it here in real life.

This forced gigantism of rockets earlier for human-tended Orbital Antenna Farms like Clarke wanted. A stasis box was found in a lunar lava cave wreck by an astronaut. The devices there allowed anti-gravity, but computers lagged.

Medicine moved forward in space. Submarines were floated explaining conning tower designs. Lack of computer modeling and amoral researchers stumbled onto RLR too early…and Khan the result.

But there was never any Covid….as all disease labs were on the Moon.

No Ebola Reston either. THE STAND could never happen in this timeline, but SPACE 1999 could. Due to the stasis box however and early fusion…fissile materials/radwaste was disposed of beyond Earth-Moon, so no Breakaway.

 

[Vger23]

The 1990s in the “Secret Wars” trek timeline I imagined as a child in the 70s as looking like what we may actually see in the next couple of decades with Retron Library Recombineering (RLR).

In my TOS head canon, the microchip was invented on a moonbase years after we got it here in real life.

This forced gigantism of rockets earlier for human-tended Orbital Antenna Farms like Clarke wanted. A stasis box was found in a lunar lava cave wreck by an astronaut. The devices there allowed anti-gravity, but computers lagged.

Medicine moved forward in space. Submarines were floated explaining conning tower designs. Lack of computer modeling and amoral researchers stumbled onto RLR too early…and Khan the result.

But there was never any Covid….as all disease labs were on the Moon.

No Ebola Reston either. THE STAND could never happen in this timeline, but SPACE 1999 could. Due to the stasis box however and early fusion…fissile materials/radwaste was disposed of beyond Earth-Moon, so no Breakaway.

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[MAGolding]

With in universe Earth history basically diverging in the late 1960s, its not a stretch to say that the Augments were created in the late ‘60s. But Khan, and other unknown Augment leaders, had their growth accelerated by a decade. And this contributed to the Augments rebelling against their creators and eventually world conquest.

Do any of the other Augments aside from Khan look older than 30, which they would be when Botany Bay leaves in 1996?

There were many rather careless historical references in TOS that established that event even prior to 1966 happeneed differently in the alternate universe of Star Trek. Thus the divergence must have been before 1966, decades, centuries, or millennia before 1966.

But there are also a number of reasonably correct historical references in TOS.

And if the alternate universe of Star Trek was a normal alternate universe, the correct historical references would be to events wh ich happened before a specific date, and the incorrect historical references wuould be to events which happened after another specific date. And the date when the two universes diverged would be sometime during the period between the two dates.

And once the two universes diverged, they would never rejoin. Instead each would diverge again and again into more and more different alternate universes.

However, in the case of various Star Trek productions, one or more accurate historical references will be followed by one or more inaccurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more accurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more inaccurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more accurate historical references, and so on and so on, with periods of accurate historical references and periods of inaccurate historical references alternating.

Alternate universes will naturally drift farther and farther apart over time. They will never come together again. Therefore some "mysterious unknown force" as they used to say in Space 1999, must be acting from time to time to make the two alternate universes resemble each other more. And this "mysterious unknown force" is probably some unknown powerfull intelligence or intelligences working to make events in the two alternate universes happen as similarly as possible.

So the goal of this hypothetical intelligence might be:

1) to make events in the Star Trek universe happen as closely as possible to events in our universe.

or:

2) to make events in our universe happen as closely as possible to events in the Star Trek universe. I all that the "God is a Star Trek fan Theory".

Or:

3) To make events in our universe, and events in the Star Trek universe, and maybe also events in many other universes, happen as closely as possible to events in some third universe.

 

[Timo]

The very idea of alternate universes branching off each other willy-nilly carries the connotation that drifting apart is not mandatory. After all, there will be infinite branching, and the camera can always follow those branchings that result in the most interesting universe. Say, it is always possible to have Jim Kirk be born even if none of his known parents, grandparents and great-great grandparents ever existed. Infinitely unlikely, perhaps, but infinite does not matter when the camera gets to pick and choose.

Khan being much younger than Montalban (but maturing rapidly due to his, uh, makeup) is attractive to me, since his children in ST2:TWoK are portrayed by older actors as well. The other interpretation, that the apparent 15-year-old-but-looking-more-like-Michael-J-Fox kids are Khan's preexisting followers from "Space Seed" who somehow got rejuvenated while Khan himself got older-looking than in TOS, isn't nearly as attractive, plus we'd lose the Kirk-and-Khan-both-have-a-crew-of-kids angle.

Genetic tampering being classified as eugenics is factually correct if the goal is to improve the stock. It being referred to as selective breeding is a more creative take on the terminology, but doable even when it's technologically more involved than mere choosing of breeding pairs. And in practical terms, there's little reason to think the mad scientists of Earth would have been incapable of the gene manipulation feat in the early 20th century, either in the model where they simply invented the techniques a bit before we did (and kept them close to the chest, thus not benefiting other areas of science much), or in the model where they benefited from the frequent if not regular input of ideas and technologies from outer space.

The Trek timeline really has to be given every possible advantage over ours, seeing as to how we are incapable of going to outer space much, let alone meeting the 2063 deadline for FTL travel. And it's not contrary to what we know of history and the human nature if we come up with spaceflight a few decades earlier, or with microchips or the internet a few decades later. It wouldn't be all that odd for history to yield Moon shots in the 1500s, either - the society would just look different, then (with English an unlikely dominant language, say).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[mithril]

it is worth noting that since khan states "on earth, 200 years ago, i was a prince" in a film set in 2285, you could make a strong arguement that the eugenics wars were in the mid 21st century, possibly a part of or one of the causes for World War 3.

DS9 "Dr Bashir, I presume" lends credence to this, since there we have an admiral repeating the 200 years line in reference to khan, and then Ronald D. Moore going on record that he'd forgotten that DS9 was set a century later than ST2:TWOK and should have adjusted the date accordingly.
apparently there was a real consideration at the time to confirm a stealth retcon in DS9:
according to Joe Menosky, who was the script editor, "I heard they were going to point blank, have a statement that said the Eugenics Wars occurred in the 21st century. That was the rumor that was floating through the building. I think that people would have hit the roof if they would have done that, so maybe they just decided to leave it up in nebulous hyperspace. The point is, if they would have gone that route, then you would have had to come up with some theory about how history got screwed up. The records got destroyed, or something messed up the original dates." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 110)

personally i prefer this idea.. Khan can remain the product of late 20th century genetic engineering.. with the 90's as when he was *created*. but he grew up and took power in the 21st century, which led to a series of conflicts as he and other augments fought. and the result of those wars and the efforts to get rid of the augment control was the power structures involved in WW3.


as far as the application of the term "selective breeding".. well in the ENT episodes we find out that the sperm and ovum that were used to make the augment embryo's Soong stole came from athletes and other people who expressed the higher end of human physical capabilities. presumably chosen because the augment's creators saw such people as "superior humans." it is likely these genetic samples were then selectively matched in order to produce specific traits even before the actual genetic engineering was applied to push the result into even higher extremes.

 

[Timo]

Then again, "Space Seed" is extremely specific about the 1990s, while "two centuries ago" is subject to rounding ambiguities in most of the cases we hear it used. It's pretty natural to think of the "Dr Bashir" utterance as a character-made error and nigh-impossible to think of the multiple "Space Seed" ones as such, at any rate.

And moving the Eugenics Wars (or at least one of them!) to the 21st century doesn't help much with Admiral Bennett's figures, which would still be off by a century. Having the last of these Wars conclude in the 22nd century might be doable, though. Sure, World Wars would be over with the Third, and Khan would be gone in the 1990s already, but we know Colonel Green did Eugenics well after WWIII, and he may have had followers later on.

Of course, even that doesn't help Bennett out of the pit, since the statement specifically refers to the experimentation that gave the world Khan. But it might be a partial solution. Just not necessarily preferable to the "he said 200 when meaning 400" one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jaime]

There were many rather careless historical references in TOS that established that event even prior to 1966 happeneed differently in the alternate universe of Star Trek. Thus the divergence must have been before 1966, decades, centuries, or millennia before 1966.

But there are also a number of reasonably correct historical references in TOS.

And if the alternate universe of Star Trek was a normal alternate universe, the correct historical references would be to events wh ich happened before a specific date, and the incorrect historical references wuould be to events which happened after another specific date. And the date when the two universes diverged would be sometime during the period between the two dates.

And once the two universes diverged, they would never rejoin. Instead each would diverge again and again into more and more different alternate universes.

However, in the case of various Star Trek productions, one or more accurate historical references will be followed by one or more inaccurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more accurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more inaccurate historical references, which will be followed by one or more accurate historical references, and so on and so on, with periods of accurate historical references and periods of inaccurate historical references alternating.

Alternate universes will naturally drift farther and farther apart over time. They will never come together again. Therefore some "mysterious unknown force" as they used to say in Space 1999, must be acting from time to time to make the two alternate universes resemble each other more. And this "mysterious unknown force" is probably some unknown powerfull intelligence or intelligences working to make events in the two alternate universes happen as similarly as possible.

So the goal of this hypothetical intelligence might be:

1) to make events in the Star Trek universe happen as closely as possible to events in our universe.

or:

2) to make events in our universe happen as closely as possible to events in the Star Trek universe. I all that the "God is a Star Trek fan Theory".

Or:

3) To make events in our universe, and events in the Star Trek universe, and maybe also events in many other universes, happen as closely as possible to events in some third universe.

I have always been of the opinion that branching universes will branch together again, just on the principle of conversation of energy. The multiverse is ball shaped. And full of bubbles.
Universe a splits off when I don’t put sugar in my coffee. By the time I finish my coffee, no noticeable difference of effect is present anymore, so the two timelines quietly merge back again.
It just takes longer for larger events.

Edit: conservation. Slightly different concept to nattering electrons.

 

[MAGolding]

I have always been of the opinion that branching universes will branch together again, just on the principle of conversation of energy. The multiverse is ball shaped. And full of bubbles.
Universe a splits off when I don’t put sugar in my coffee. By the time I finish my coffee, no noticeable difference of effect is present anymore, so the two timelines quietly merge back again.
It just takes longer for larger events.

Edit: conservation. Slightly different concept to nattering electrons.

Your coffee example is wrong. If you do or do not put sugar in your coffee, the atoms and molecules in that surgar will be in different places in the two different alternate universes. That is a physical difference between the two universes.

An example of correct conservation of alternate universe may be in a block of radioactive material. Each atom of a radiaoactive element in the block could emit radiation at any moment, and the moment when it will actually emit radiation is pretty random. So every split second, each and every radioactive atom will either emit radiation or not, and a new alaternate universe will split off for each radioactive atom in the block.

But there may also be a constant process of merging different alternate universes back into one universe. If after a certain amount of time, the exact same set of atoms have emitted radiation, and the exact same set of atoms have not emitted radiation, in several alternate universes, those alternate universes might merge back together The number of subatomic particles in each atom would be a result of whether that atom emitted radiation. But it would not be an indication of when that atom emitted that radiation. So alternate universes where the same atoms emitted radiation at different times can merge back together when a time arrives when all of those atoms have emitted the same radiation and no others have emitted anyradiation.

That analysis ignores the effects that the emitted radiation might have outside the block of radioactive material, and whether some of those effects would be physically possible to date.

But in your coffee example, the two alternate universes would be different, with the atoms and molecules in the sugar being in diferent locations and thus haveing different travels and experiences in the future. The fact that you might not remember the difference in taste is immaterial.

Suppose that someone put poison in the suger. So you might notice the difference between an alternate universe where you put the poisoned sugar in your coffee and suffered agonizing pain and the alternate universe where you didn't put the poisoned sugar in the coffee and didn't suffer.

But the physical differences betweenthe conditions of thw two alternate universes in your example of non poisoned sugar would be just as large as in the example with the poisoned surgar. Those physical difference would be just as real, making the two universes separate and alternate, whether you would be capable of detecting them or not.

 

[jaime]

Your coffee example is wrong. If you do or do not put sugar in your coffee, the atoms and molecules in that surgar will be in different places in the two different alternate universes. That is a physical difference between the two universes.

An example of correct conservation of alternate universe may be in a block of radioactive material. Each atom of a radiaoactive element in the block could emit radiation at any moment, and the moment when it will actually emit radiation is pretty random. So every split second, each and every radioactive atom will either emit radiation or not, and a new alaternate universe will split off for each radioactive atom in the block.

But there may also be a constant process of merging different alternate universes back into one universe. If after a certain amount of time, the exact same set of atoms have emitted radiation, and the exact same set of atoms have not emitted radiation, in several alternate universes, those alternate universes might merge back together The number of subatomic particles in each atom would be a result of whether that atom emitted radiation. But it would not be an indication of when that atom emitted that radiation. So alternate universes where the same atoms emitted radiation at different times can merge back together when a time arrives when all of those atoms have emitted the same radiation and no others have emitted anyradiation.

That analysis ignores the effects that the emitted radiation might have outside the block of radioactive material, and whether some of those effects would be physically possible to date.

But in your coffee example, the two alternate universes would be different, with the atoms and molecules in the sugar being in diferent locations and thus haveing different travels and experiences in the future. The fact that you might not remember the difference in taste is immaterial.

Suppose that someone put poison in the suger. So you might notice the difference between an alternate universe where you put the poisoned sugar in your coffee and suffered agonizing pain and the alternate universe where you didn't put the poisoned sugar in the coffee and didn't suffer.

But the physical differences betweenthe conditions of thw two alternate universes in your example of non poisoned sugar would be just as large as in the example with the poisoned surgar. Those physical difference would be just as real, making the two universes separate and alternate, whether you would be capable of detecting them or not.

I was picking it as an example of a small difference where the end result no longer applies after a set period and the two could converge again. That could be a long time. Or short, or might even be two different universes converging because they have become identical through random chance.

Two people meet sake hands in universe a, in universe b, they meet but don’t shake hands. Twenty years down the line, they both die, in both universes, which are otherwise identical in every way. The multiverse doesn’t need two identical universes, and now no inhabitant remembers that event, the two universes are literally identical, and can converge.
Now we can say that a bunch of universes split off after that handshake, or lack thereof, but any two of them that were functionally identical would have no reason not to converge. An planet vaporised by one group of its inhabitants in universe a is functionally the same as one vaporised by the other side in universe b. To the multiverse, they are now identical, and can converge. As a kind of natural event.

But hey, I’m a writer, not a quantum physicist. The shit I make up needs to make sense

 

[FederationHistorian]

Then again, "Space Seed" is extremely specific about the 1990s, while "two centuries ago" is subject to rounding ambiguities in most of the cases we hear it used. It's pretty natural to think of the "Dr Bashir" utterance as a character-made error and nigh-impossible to think of the multiple "Space Seed" ones as such, at any rate.

And moving the Eugenics Wars (or at least one of them!) to the 21st century doesn't help much with Admiral Bennett's figures, which would still be off by a century. Having the last of these Wars conclude in the 22nd century might be doable, though. Sure, World Wars would be over with the Third, and Khan would be gone in the 1990s already, but we know Colonel Green did Eugenics well after WWIII, and he may have had followers later on.

Of course, even that doesn't help Bennett out of the pit, since the statement specifically refers to the experimentation that gave the world Khan. But it might be a partial solution. Just not necessarily preferable to the "he said 200 when meaning 400" one.

Timo Saloniemi

My headcanon to get around Khan’s statement that he ruled “two hundred years ago” suggests that Khan maintained a very strong cult of personality throughout the 21st century, and was the spiritual ruler of the ECON in the sense of Mao or the Kim Dynasty. Except his followers would actually go the distance to replace those images with Khan himself. And for the sake of the argument, let’s say these followers in the ECON (who would likely be the official leadership) held control over the same forty states Khan and the Augments controlled, from China & Southeast Asia to India & Central Asia to the Middle East & North Africa in an effort to recreate the Khanate of the 1990s.

So, eugenics in the form of the augments was popular for every aspect of life in the territory controlled by the ECON, but it did not spiral out of control like the Eugenics Wars of the ‘90s; they might be more like Dr. Bashir or even Udar/Smike than Khan. And then these augments died out during the nuclear winter, along with the the cultish devotion to Khan as the 21st century progressed.

Remember that Kirk, Scotty and McCoy all fawn over Khan when they found him, and they are all intelligent men in the more advanced 23rd century. Imagine how the “primitive” 21st century perceived someone like Khan.

 

[Timo]

Khan wouldn't know much about things that happened after 1996, though, so the statements about "200 years ago" would be odd if coming from him yet referring to a persisting cult...

The easy out for Khan's own statements is that for him, 1996 is less than 250 years before 2285. Which would be true if he indeed traveled in a sublight spacecraft that nevertheless managed to put a great distance between herself and Earth, i.e. went relativistic... Doing 0.45c for a good portion of the trip would suffice for reducing those 300 years to <250 nicely enough. (Just give the engine a relatively low acceleration so that it doesn't excel in interplanetary travel yet!)

It is a separate issue that Admiral Bennett thinks 400 years is 200, or that Jonathan Archer's "great-grandfather" fought in the Eugenics Wars. The latter is probably best covered by accepting that "great-grand" is shorthand for any number of generations going beyond "grand", much as it is in standard speech. The former then remains a standalone outlier, and possibly just a character-made error.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

For me, it's harder to ignore specific dates and easier to ignore generalizations.

Space Seed

SPOCK: There is that possibility, Captain. His age would be correct. In 1993, a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over forty nations.

KIRK: Name, Khan, as we know him today. (Spock changes the picture) Name, Khan Noonien Singh.
SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.
MCCOY: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
SCOTT: I must confess, gentlemen. I've always held a sneaking admiration for this one.
KIRK: He was the best of the tyrants and the most dangerous. They were supermen, in a sense. Stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring.

These are hard, specific dates.

KHAN: How long?
KIRK: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries we estimate. Landing party to Enterprise. Come in.

TWOK

KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. 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?

These are both vague and specific. 2 centuries and 200 years ago are generalized. When we refer to something 200 years ago or 2 centuries ago, we don't always mean exactly. We might say slavery ended 200 years ago when it was really 156 years ago.

But an exact date like 1996... is not a generalization.

 

[MAGolding]

I wrote a very long post detailing why I think that the Eugenics Wars in "Space Seed" and the Third World War in Star Trek: First Contact must be the same conflict. Their apparently conflicting dates are given in different calendars or at least different calendar eras about 50 to 60 years apart. However, I lost that post.

A calendar era is the moment in time that the year count in any calendar counts the years from. There have been tens or hundreds of different calendar eras used in Earth hsitory, and future humans might use new calendar eras.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_era

It is common for readers of science fiction to assume that years mentioned in stories are years dated in the Anno Domini calendar era. But they should always remember that it is possible that some dates are given in other calendar eras.

Probably hundreds of dates are mentioned in various Star Trek productions. And as far as I remember, there is one date BC in "Requiem for Methusaleh", and one or two dates AD each in "The Big Goodbye", "The Royalle" and "Up the Long Ladder". Between all and none of the hundreds of other dates in Star Trek might be giving using the Anno Domini calendar era so far as direct statements in the episodes go.

And if the dates in Star Trek productions were consistent, chronologists could get away with assuming that all Star Trek dates are given in the Anno Domini calendar era. But many inconsistencies force me to deduce that some of the dates in some Star Trek productions are given in different calendar eras from the dates in other Star Trek productions.

The Eugenics Wars in the 1990s in "Space Seed" and the Third World War in the 2050s in Star Tek: First Contact are both said to be the last world war in Earth history. Whole populations were bombed out of existances in the Eugenics Wars and in the Third World War most of the major cities were destroyed and 600 million people died.

So it is logical to deduce that the Eugenics Wars in "Space Seed" were the same conflict as the Third World War in Star Trek: First Contact, and that the calendar era used in "Space Seed" should be about 50 to 60 years after the calendar era used in Star Trek: First Contact.

I also note that the lists of Earth's world wars used in history books should be different in the era of TOS and in the era of TNG. In "Bread and Circuses" Spock implies that Earth had at least four world Wars, so the Third ( and probably last) World War listed in the TNG era should be the same as the Fourth World War listed in the TOS era. Thus one conflict is included as a world war in the TOS era lists but not in the TNG era lists.

If the Third World War listed in the TNG era was the same as the Fourth World War listed in the TOS era, that would explain why the Third World War on the TNG era list had 600 million dead, about 16 times the 37 million killed in the Third World War in the TOS list, which would probably be the Second World War in the TNG list.

This is the most logical explaination for the contradictions about Earth's world Wars.

And there is no reason to assume that either "Space Seed" or Star Trek: First Contact uses the Anno Domini calendar era.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I’m not sure it makes sense to refer to “Bread and Circuses” here, since the statistics Spock gave for the first two world wars were historically wrong, even if they are confined to the US. And the statistic for the third world war was retconned.

Six million casualties for WW1 is only applicable if referring exclusively to the Allied powers (military only), or exclusively about the Central powers (both military and civilian casualties).

Eleven million casualties for WW2 is only applicable to the losses of the USSR military, or the total victims of the Holocaust.

Thirty seven million casualties for WW3 likely related to the post-atomic horror and Colonel Green, who operated in the 21st century as a militia leader. Since its unlikely the number of 600 million casualties given in FC is wrong.

Its also possible that the Eugenics Wars was a world war involving nation-states in alliances like the first two world wars (i.e. Khanate vs NATO/UN) and not simply a nuclear exchange (i.e. the cliché idea of WW3), and that’s what Spock meant by the “last” world war.

 

[Timo]

I’m not sure it makes sense to refer to “Bread and Circuses” here, since the statistics Spock gave for the first two world wars were historically wrong, even if they are confined to the US. And the statistic for the third world war was retconned.

Which makes it logical to assume that Spock was giving figures for every one of the three wars with the exact same sort of bias.

We can assume WWI and WWII did not radically differ from ours, although of course we can also assume the opposite (for all we know, in WWI H.Y.D.R.A. fought against the Alliance of Highly Enlightened Monarchies, since nothing to the contrary has ever been told). What can we assume about Spock's bias? Well, he spells it out for us: the deaths he mentions in "Bread" were specifically of people who were familiar with "slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism".

Slavery played a fairly big part in both WWI and WWII, but there would have been little time for it to affect WWIII much unless said war dragged on beyond the initial nuclear exchange of 2053. Gladiatorial games were not at the focus of either WWI or WWII. But despotism is common, and neither of the first two wars would really have happened (at least not to the eventual extent) had it not been for warmongering despots who had the power to mobilize their respective nations.

So include those who died in slavery and those who died due to the despotism. The former won't yet exceed the figures Spock quoted. But beyond this, it becomes a game of keeping the numbers down. So what to make of the latter? Soldiers killed fighting for the despots but not those fighting against them? All people killed by the despotic players but not those killed by the enemies of the despots? People killed specifically by despotic acts?

If we go by holocaust (plus slavery) victims for WWII, we can refer to ethnic purges in the other two wars, too. Makes it all the easier for Spock to think of WWIII as an "eugenics" war - WWII certainly was the very thing, for at least three major players! The question then becomes, how to squeeze exactly 6 million dead out of WWI as being due to ethnic purges. And it's a simple game of picking and choosing: there's no difficulty in coming up with at least 6 million dead from that...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

"Space Seed" didn't go into detail about exactly how Khan and his fellow superpeople were produced. The terms "controlled genetics" and "selective breeding" were mentioned. And then TWOK said Khan was "a product of late twentieth century genetic engineering." Late, as in, the whole program took place in the last thirty years of the century? The wording is vague enough for some wiggle room.

Anyway, I think it's not out of the realm of possibility that Khan could have been physically mature beyond his actual chronological age. I mean, look at his crew in TWOK. They were obviously not of the same generation as the crew he had in "Space Seed," so they must have been born during the exile on Ceti Alpha V. But no normal humans look like that when they're fifteen and under!

Kor