Spoilers Does moving the Eugenics Wars into the 21st century fundamentally change things?

Grandfathering in is a common thing. The one consistency with fan expectations is the dramatic inconsistency and rose colored glasses around continuity.

This is my experience as well. Trek is change. It won't be any different because TV shows change a lot as development goes on, much less multiple series across the decades.

Hell, my favorite show of all time is MASH and it gets character details wrong. It's funny to me to watch Season 1 all the way to 11 and see how Hawkeye's backstory changes. Is that show somehow lesser for it?

 

The one and only indication that 23rd century Klingons had some concept of 'honor' was when Kruge told his lover Valkris that she would be 'remembered with honor' right before he blasted her to smithereens. Perhaps that line was a holdover from the earlier stages of story development when the antagonists were supposed to be Romulans instead of Klingons. And it wasn't exactly the type of honor that we as viewers would consider noble or admirable. But then TNG and DS9 progressively made their culture more and more obsessed with notions of honor, practically to the point of caricature, and in a form that was generally more palatable to us as viewers as we were supposed to like the character of Worf.

Kor

 

Like I've said in other fandoms/franchises - use the lore to change the lore.

How many times in all the shows/movies have we seen people go back in time? Whelp, they changed something when the did that. Its really is that simple. For example, the last episode I watched was "Little Green men", and it would make prefect sense if they took samples of Ferengi blood (they were giving Quark injections, after all). Having that blood could have lead Soong down a different path altogether, postponing the Eugenics wars by a few decades.

Or conversely, it could have been one of the other hundred times they time traveled, or someone else did. I mean, Enterprise referenced the Borg from the movie, and that was a change - the Federation found out about Borg WAY too early. You can make changes to continuity, so long as they explain those changes within the continuity.

 

Now one little trick DC merged versions of Hawkman into one being. I was hoping something similar could be done here multiverse wise…explaining the exhaustion of the Q

 

According to the writer of that episode, that was in fact the way it was always meant to be. The idea being that transmission to the Delta Quadrant the Borg sent in that episode which T'Pol speculated wouldn't reach until the 24th century is the reason there was a Borg cube in System J-25 in Q Who.

 

In my amalgaverse project, I had to add a century in between ST canon 21st and 22nd. I could have squeezed the Eugenics wars, WW3, and Zephram Cochrane into one century like they did, but considering how much slower we are moving in RL than Rodenberry and team predicted we would be, they haven't left themselves an ounce of wiggle-room, and in just a few more years their timeline will be screwed again.

Had they just addressed this in TNG, they could have fixed it easily, the same way I plan, but in-universe - just say that after the Federation was formed, we started using the 'galactic standard years'* for our calendar, which just so happens to be off from our Gregorian calendar by a century. It would have been that easy. There may have been a a few snafus with TOS, but we already have those aplenty, and they really would have only come into play when Kirk's crew traveled through time. But nope, they insisted on keeping everything the same, even though they knew the Eugenics wars were only a few real years away, and they continue to compound the error by continuing to compress the timeline.

+Simply create a fictitious moment in time that would have been 'momentous' to several important species, and it would have to correspond to our year 100 BC. Why exactly one hundred? Its just easier for writers and fans to 'do the math' that way. Hmmm... a super-nova precisely 100 LY away that many species saw! That would even tie into our own calendar system! (The 'star' the three wise men followed)

 

You literally just proved my point...

The lore WAS CHANGED, but in such a way that we wouldn't notice, or rather, care. Thats how it should be done.
Doctor Who runs into these problems far more than ST does, and they use the 'we have new information since then ' approach, which is a variant of the "unreliable 3rd person" narrator/witness. What people 'saw' (and what we then see in the storytelling) isn't really what was going on. DW got around a 'Fixed Point' in time wherein the The Doctor was seen to have been murdered, simply by saying he had gone back and setup an android duplicate to take his place. Thus, everyone saw what they saw, history recorded it, but it was wrong... which we learn later.

 

If only Star Trek had a century-long temporal war which could explain everything.

Oh wait.

 

Surely you won't find out until 2023 when they get snapped back into existence?

 

I don't think the exterior visuals would look great on modern TV sets, but if they were to do it I don't think it would put me off.

If they tried to do the interiors exactly as shown in the originals then I know it would look bad.

Fact it, our technology has outstripped 90% of TOS in real life and it needs to reflect that.

Or do we expect people to still be carrying pads and pens around for people to sign? Or to have minidisks for data that have to be transferred from adjacent stations to be read?

Some things just have to move with the times

 

I find it very likely that a LOT of Pike's speech before the leaders of Kiley 279 was embellished for their benefit. I don't see any reason to take what he said literally.

I mean, I'm not suggesting that he's flat out lying, just...BSing a little bit. Kiley 279 was on the verge of war, so it makes sense that Pike would intentionally ramp up the rhetoric to calm them down.

So, IMHO, nothing of what he said to Kiley's leaders should be taken as some kind of proof that any major historical events have been moved, retconned or eliminated.

 

I saw it as someone who isn't a historian but knows that the three conflicts were distinct, but somewhat connected in that the aftermath of each created the social conditions for the next to occur simply painting a picture rather than doing a lecture.

Either way, the same spirit as what you are saying

 

The data slates in TOS were meant to be the equivalent of a modern tablet computer and stylus, although they used a simple electrostatic-sheet writing toy to simulate it. We still do use such things pretty regularly today, like when signing for deliveries or credit card payments. So that's a bit of futurism that's actually held up pretty well.

 

I agree that they did some great work in terms of setting the stage for a lot of tech we use now but, not to go full Deks on it, it simply doesn't stack up as tech that would be used 300ish years from now

 

Well, the real video screens they're using now will probably look just as dated in 50 years. But yeah, it was never meant to be a perfect depiction of the future, just the best approximation they could manage at the time. So of course it should be updated for new productions.

 

Agreed - that is the key to the point I was making regarding production updates and we seem to be agreed that doing a visual update it to be expected, maybe even desirable.

 

It always struck me as very reasonable to update the tech with the growing knowledge of technology, rather than remaining with a 60s interpretation of the future.

 

Honestly, I feel there are a few details in Strange New Worlds' tech design that are a little too faithful to TOS, existing alongside the more modern touchscreens and such. Like, there are a bunch of "jellybean" control buttons on the bridge consoles, sort of bordering the touchscreens and looking more decorative than functional. And the intercom on M'Benga's desk is pretty much an exact recreation of the TOS intercoms, right down to the '60s-style rocker switches and the texture of the speaker grille.

On the other hand, in "Ghosts of Illyria" when we saw a close-up of M'Benga surreptitiously switching the sickbay lights back on, the switch he used was a very 2020s-vintage computer power switch with I/O symbols.

 

Why assume all dates are in Common Era year/Anno Dommina?
In terms of Data graduating it would be equally possible that Starfleet Academy dates it class based on its founding(lets say Federation year so from 2161) this would mean that Data graduated in federation year 278 or 2339 (note that Memory Alpha list his grad year as 2344 so the referance date would be a year ending in a 66),

I personally just like to shift data up three years and say Starfleet Acdemy use the Tranquility Calendar and Data graduated in AT 378 or 2347 CE/AD

In terms of Khan the Indian Calendar which has it reference date of 22 March CE/AD 79 almost works since 1992-1996 on that calendar would be CE/AD 2070-2074 which is about 20 years to late to fit with WWIII ending in 2053 . It too bad because it would make sense that Khan could be thinking on the Indian Calendar when he says 1996

 

Because Star Trek is rarely imaginative enough to provide any date rather than Common Era or a stardate. I mean, hell, even aliens use Common Era dates, and you think it's possible there are humans in the Trekverse who don't?