Spoilers New Picard TV Series and Litverse Continuity (may contain TV show spoilers)

You would think a group of showrunners making a sequel to "Assignment: Earth," a TOS episode which postulated multiple nations launching orbital nuclear platforms in 1968, would be more comfortable with the idea that this franchise's version of the present day has always been different from our own timeline.

 

I don't dispute that. But I'm just talking about what we've seen in prior Star Trek episodes, like "Encounter at Farpoint" when we learned drugged up soldiers are used. That suggests that there was some conventional warfare involved.

Just because many people assume WWIII would be nuclear Armageddon doesn't mean Star Trek has to go that same route for WWIII in story.

I think they'll continue to keep the Eugenics Wars vague in canon. There is some evidence to suggest WWIII also had something to do with genetics and genetic purity of some sort. So it's possible some of that may be a lead up to WWIII and not necessarily about the Eugenics Wars.

The showrunners continue to stress this is all part of the prime timeline as we've previously seen (at least from the perspective of the unaltered original timeline, which I assume Picard will eventually get back to by the end of the season). I don't see the showrunners retconning the timing of the Eugenics Wars explicitly. They'll either keep any mentions vague enough to let the viewer make their own conclusion, or they won't mention the Wars at all.

 

Perhaps. But note that the 1968 we saw in that episode, aside from the unseen space platforms, looked indistinguishable from the present-day reality of the viewers of the time. It was all about Kirk and Co. visiting "our" time, not just some strange alternative timeline where the Nazis won or whatever. There were phonebooths, taxis, typewriters, hippy chicks, etc.

And, honestly, it was pretty standard for genre shows in the sixties or seventies to throw in one or two pieces of advanced sci-fi tech without postulating any radical changes to history, just so you could have the occasional evil computer, laser death-ray, killer robot, and so on. But the conceit was always that this was set in "our" present-day, where secret agents and superheroes occasionally ran into tech that edged into sci-fi territory.

"Assignment: Earth" is very much a product of the sixties spy-fi boom: Our Man Flint, The Avengers, The Man from UNCLE, etc. and should perhaps be viewed in that context.

 

Not that I disagree, but this is essentially saying, "Aside from the things that were different, everything was the same!" Well...yeah.

All this is basically a variation on the classic "Why would a superhero universe share our popular culture?" complaint/nitpick/observation. The "real" answer is that it wouldn't, and that goes for any fictional world where significant historical events differ from ours. (It doesn't make much sense on Doctor Who, either, for instance.)

I also understand the impulse to make "the present" seem like our sense of what that means. When Independence Day: Resurgence came out, it depicted a 2016 with super-tech and moonbases, which make perfect sense for a world where an alien invasion happened twenty years ago but aren't recognisable to the audience--more plausible, but far less relatable.

Fortunately, the creators of fiction get to craft their world(s) and thus choose which relatable elements remain and which don't, and many things would realistically be around in any event. (After all, would a world in which the Eugenics Wars happened really not have taxis?) The makers of Picard are already depicting a world with Sanctuary Districts and crewed missions to Europa and drones with sunlight-blocking force fields, all of which are two years away from not happening.

I'll think about all of this some more the next time I visit the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito.

 

Spoiler: Picard 2X10 Spoiler

Looks like Picard took a cue from the Litverse and ignored Nemesis by keeping Wesley Crusher a Traveler.

 

Trek literature didn't ignore

Spoiler: Spoiler Spoiler

Wesley being in Nemesis, they had a couple of explanations for why he'd be there in uniform - my memory is fuzzy but i think one story had that he'd showed up without attire and was provided with dress whites, and another where he impersonated an officer in the course of doing his traveler stuff.

 

And just like that, Coda became pointless. Canonical Trek now has fundamental differences with the Litverse. Making it a split a handful of years in the past completely defeated the purpose of providing an explanation for any differences in the first place.

 

Exactly what differences are you referring to?

 

I feel Alan Moore's famous quote about comic book continuity should always be kept in mind: "This is an imaginary story but then, aren't they all?"

I accept the Litverse as an Alternate Universe, the same as the Autobiography verse, and so the same for comic books and previous book iterations.

 

As do I, especially after today. Which just reinforces that the purpose behind giving us what we got in Coda was pointless. At the the way it ended up being executed.

I’m just frustrated with Trek today. I’m getting closer and closer to done.

 

I feel they probably felt it would be a fun story as much as anything else. If you recall Destiny, I've always felt they've had a fondness for big disaster movies.

However, in my case, I'd have preferred a "happy ending" novel.

Things I'd like to see Book-Wise:

(Note: I release any and all ideas presented here--I accept any fiction done about these questions came about without me)

* I'd like to see a book about Seven encountering Jurati's new Borg and see how she reacts. That writes itself. Maybe find out if she's leading a faction of the Borg or has taken over the Borg.
* Finding out whatever happened to the Ex-Bs living with the Soong androids.
* A follow up to what happened post-Picard season 1. Is Admiral Oh now considered the equivalent of Osama Bin Ladin? What is going to happen to the Romulan faction she belongs to? I mean, destroying Mars is a pretty huge act of war.
* A book about Narek and what happens to him after the events of Picard.
* Another Rios novel during his time as a smuggler.

 

Well, that is one interpretation of the term.

 

I haven't had the chance to watch PIC "Farewell" yet, but I seem to recall reading Coda and thinking that the authors had left the door open for the canonical Prime Timeline in future ST productions to end up with some differences from the First Splinter Timeline that antedated 2373. I seem to remember interpreting the Devidians' tech as having the capacity both to cause timelines to splinter off from others and to cause timelines to be altered retroactively. So if the canonical Prime Timeline going forward has some differences from the First Splinter that antedate 2373, I don't at all agree that that somehow invalidates Coda as a story or causes a continuity problem.

Also, y'know, the merits of a story lie in the story, not in continuity bullshit.

 

Why?

 

AFAIK, we don't know which faction Nedar - according to closed captioning, that's Oh's real name - belonged to. Could be the Romulan Free State (they did, after all, have the backing of the Tal Shiar), could be some other group. In any case, I see civil war brewing among the different factions. Especially when the truth about the attack on Mars comes out.

And as for Nedar herself, it would definitely be in her best interests to get captured by the Federation before her own people (never mind which faction) get ahold of her. At least the Federation would give her a fair trial; if any Romulan faction manages to capture her, she'll be sorry in ways she can't even imagine.

 

Sooooooo the Gary Seven backstory just took an interesting turn which affects much of Greg Cox's Trek portfolio...

 

I mean, she's got a massive Romulan fleet behind her but you have to wonder what SOME of them think that she blew up the evacuation fleet that could have saved a billion or so Romulans before they all died. I am hoping a novel will cover at least that one particular plot point.

 

Spoiler: Spoiler Spoiler

Yes, he shows up naked assuming he's attending a betazoid wedding.

 

I find it very likely that most of Nedar's forces were in the dark. I doubt any of them knew that she was behind the attack on Mars, and if any of them did find out, they'd turn on her in a heartbeat.

 

Very probable and I would have liked to have seen that episode. I would have added a two part opener to the series and an epilogue.

13 rather than 10.