Khan and the Eugenics War

Since no one is launching anyone to Europa in less than two years (the only thing scheduled to be launched there is a probe), I think we can finally settle the issue, Trek is its own universe, and is supposed to be so. Earth never had a Voyager 6 (or 3, or 4). If they're going to make sanctuary zones they better start now. Hopefully the 21st century doesn't get visited again, at least this part, so it will stop the speculation.

Pic season 2 put a cork in that hole once and for all. Conversely, on the same day of release, SNW drew direct information from recent events, but despite parallels, nothing in Pike's Peek Into the Future undid what was shown in Picard,

 

Shows, movies and books that take place in "our world" include tremendous numbers of significant events that don't really occur, some of them quite major.

The short , direct, accurate way of saying "It's in it's own universe," therefore, is like this:

"It's fiction."

We've always known this about Star Trek.

 

A full retcon??? Which means it is less than a normal retcon?

 

Grin doesn't stream or use a webcam. But yes he mostly makes videos focusing on continuity errors in the new shows.
He occasionally still does some videos pointing out errors in the older shows, but not as much as he used to.

 

I have no idea and less interest in what kind of hardware he bloviates into.

 

He doesn't talk either. He just makes clip montages.

 

My answer to this question:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/idea-for-a-new-anthology-show.311207/

 

I said this in another thread but I wish they would just say our universe and the trek Universe are different timelines/universes. Then they wouldn't have to worry about retconning this stuff AND the writers would be free to do whatever they want without having to pay lip service to reality.

There's a lot of stuff coming up in the next few decades that they'll have to keep retconning around if they decide to continue down this path.

 

Yeah, it's going to be harder and harder not to do that, but I understand the desire to keep it the same universe. It adds to the aspirational/hopeful aspects of Star Trek as being where we could be headed. It's one of the reasons, amongst several, that I prefer it over Star Wars.

 

Sure, I get the desire to keep the "this is our future" both for the positive ambition and the audience investment, IMO is that that ship has sailed. I think there are story options there to keep the optimism for our future while still freeing Trek from realities current day/past/next 50 years or near future.

 

I would respect the TPTB more if they had gone in full bore with creating a world where the Eugenics War had taken place in the 1990s and showing the residual damage that this caused twenty or thirty years later. The Star Trek universe is not ours and the change came in the past, as we had no real life Edith Keeler and any peace movement started by her or anyone else would have ended on Dec. 7, 1941. It's annoying as hell that Star Trek tends to ignore much of the global scale of World War II; they have the same issue as video game makers who think WWII was only fought in Europe with a brief stint in North Africa.

 

He's been making recut and comparison videos for >10 years that some people think involve webcams or him talking, and others think have something to do with improving existing footage (neither is true)

why keep writing about things you don't know about?

 

It's actually a proposal to start a web-based video library of solving math problems.

 

Why should they state something that is painfully obvious?

 

Our universe and the Trek universe are different to the exact same extent that our universe and the NCIS universe are different, or our universe and the James Bond universe are different, or our universe and the Boston Legal universe are different, or our universe and the Seinfeld universe are different.

Exactly the same thing. Our universe is real. Those are fictional narratives, not universes.

But, okay, for the sake of argument - if either the TOS universe or the SNW universe is "our universe," then guess what? Pike's current universe is the one that's our universe.

And PIke's universe connects to the Picard universe, and therefore to the TNG universe.

So now, TNG > DS9 > VOY > ENT > STD > PIC > SNW are our universe, and TOS is some alternate universe (as JJTREK movies explicitly are).

The conundrums created by pretending that this stuff is real will make your head hurt. Just don't do it.

 

This is the problem with putting full Earth years into Trek. They never should have done this, and the people who did forgot why stardates were used to begin with.

Honestly they should just de facto canonize the Eugenics Wars novels which portrayed an underground war alongside real 1990s history and move on. Moving the wars to the 2230s or whatever just adds another problem Trek has to deal with in 10 years.

When the franchise reaches 2063, the only way to keep Trek as our future is that the chaos of World War 3 was so devastating that the survivors only assumed the year was 2063--they didn't actually know what year it was or even if the war was the 3rd (maybe it was the 4th or 5th). Will this contradict a ton of time travel and even some non-time travel Trek episodes? Yes. But it's the only retcon that can keep Trek relevant post 2063 (assuming Trek is still around then). In-universe, the Trek characters should also realize that they don't know what Earth year it is and then reboot the timeline to be dated pre-FE and FE (before Federation Era and after Federation Era, the way Trek should have been dated from the start) and just leave it at that.

 

I prefer those specific novels to be a stand-alone "what if it had happened in this way?" story.

Anyway...

Trek as a whole is alt-history, has been so from day one, and it's all still relevant to everyone who cares to watch any or all of the various series anyway. I made my peace with that decades ago. I wish Doctor Who would move to that sort of editorial thinking as well. Moving along...

 

Stupid Roddenberry and Meyers. What hacks!

 

The MST3K mantra is the best way to handle it. Repeat to yourself "it's just a show, I really should relax".

 

This is the way.