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

[Christopher]

Because it's tacky. In the case of "explaining" why the version of Christine from TOS is a personality-less cardboard cutout whose only trait is passively pining over a man who has rejected her and the version in SNW has an actual personality, actual goals, and actual agency? It is incredibly distasteful to treat the decision to depict a woman as an actual person as some sort of "problem" that needs a Watsonian explanation, as though the horrible misogynistic writing of TOS was something that ought to be preserved.

All true enough, but I don't see that as the issue here. Chapel had little enough characterization in TOS anyway that there isn't necessarily an inconsistency in personality, especially since there's a time difference of about 6 years. TOS's Chapel could've been just as effervescent in 2260, then gotten sadder and more subdued after falling in love with Roger Korby and then losing him.

But, since it's now an explicit fact that this isn't quite the same timeline as TOS, that could explain more basic continuity differences, like Chapel already knowing T'Pring when she didn't seem to in "Amok Time." And, far more importantly, it opens the door for the writers to develop Chapel's character and experiences (and everyone else's) in directions that aren't entirely bound by what TOS established. It's good for writers to have that freedom to tweak things as the story requires, with Chapel or any other character.

Now, an interesting question might be which timeline Spock Prime came from in ST09. That could clean up some of the different details regarding the supernova, although as Nimoy was playing his Spock, I'd be cautious in pulling that wire.

It shouldn't matter. Again, the idea here is that it's the shows' past that's different, not their present. This was done to reconcile Trek's version of the 20th-21st centuries with our own, but it was stated that history (or temporal cold warriors) had a tendency to correct back toward the same future, so the 23rd and 24th centuries are still mostly the same, as are the people in them. They can functionally be considered the same people with some altered memories, sort of like the DS9 cast after the Prophets restored Akorem Laan to history in "Accession."

Also, what different details regarding the supernova? The Picard version is essentially consistent with what was actually onscreen in ST '09. It only conflicts with the non-canonical elaboration on it from the comics and STO. And the PIC version makes considerably more sense than the comics' "Hobus" version, e.g. by not requiring the supernova to travel faster than light or to be predicted only a short time before it happened. (In reality, you can see the signs of a star's impending supernova millions of years in advance, but 5-6 years is certainly more plausible than a matter of weeks.)

 

[Sci]

All true enough, but I don't see that as the issue here.

Well, that's the thing I'm referring to in particular. I find the impulse to look for a Watsonian explanation for stylistic differences mildly irritating but not important enough to react to most of the time, but I really, really object to the idea that we need to "explain" the differences between Christine's personality in SNW vs. TOS. TOS's writing of Christine was just bad and misogynist, and we should no more try to "explain" why she has a personality in SNW than we should try to "explain" why the Enterprise looks different in "The Trouble with Tribbles" than it does in "Trials and Tribble-ations." We should just accept that TOS was written in a different era and that women are written differently (and better) today.

Chapel had little enough characterization in TOS anyway that there isn't necessarily an inconsistency in personality, especially since there's a time difference of about 6 years. TOS's Chapel could've been just as effervescent in 2260, then gotten sadder and more subdued after falling in love with Roger Korby and then losing him.

True. Also -- just, in general, a personality is such a ephemeral, dynamic, elusive thing that I find the idea of trying to nail down most personality traits as "settled" canon the way we would a character's date or birth or a starship registry number very strange. People can change. Moreover, people can have a lot more layers to them than others realize. I think we should just assume that the Christine of the TOS era had just as much of a personality, just as much agency, just as much spunk and fight as her SNW version; we just happen not to have seen it because TOS was shown from the "wrong lens."

But, since it's now an explicit fact that this isn't quite the same timeline as TOS, that could explain more basic continuity differences, like Chapel already knowing T'Pring when she didn't seem to in "Amok Time." And, far more importantly, it opens the door for the writers to develop Chapel's character and experiences (and everyone else's) in directions that aren't entirely bound by what TOS established. It's good for writers to have that freedom to tweak things as the story requires, with Chapel or any other character.

That's a good point. It opens up the door to using TOS characters in new ways that aren't fully constrained by TOS trivia points.

They can functionally be considered the same people with some altered memories, sort of like the DS9 cast after the Prophets restored Akorem Laan to history in "Accession."

Excellent comparison. No one claims DS9 S4-7 was a different timeline than DS9 S1-3 after all.

 

[fireproof78]

Excellent comparison. No one claims DS9 S4-7 was a different timeline than DS9 S1-3 after all.

It used to be that finding nitpicks and such to be fun but ultimately the stories were regarded as continuous. Now? Any differences must mean a new timeline, no wiggle room. It's strange.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The "Second Civil War" might just be another name for/part of one of the other conflicts.

January 6?

 

[Turtletrekker]

I see it as being akin to Marvel's sliding time scale, but in Star Trek's case it's more of a layered timeline. In TOS, we're seeing the original unaltered timeline before the Temporal Wars. Everything from the Next Generation on is the timeline after the temporal wars. It's all the prime timeline, just different layers.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At least...

Spoiler

SNW moved the Eugenics Wars in-universe. That makes it easier for me to deal with.

Does sort of beg the question, why doesn't the DTI change them BACK, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

 

[Christopher]

It used to be that finding nitpicks and such to be fun but ultimately the stories were regarded as continuous. Now? Any differences must mean a new timeline, no wiggle room. It's strange.

As I've said, I've never subscribed to the idea that every difference requires a new timeline. No sense trying to use the same tool for every job. But now that it's explicit canon that there is more than one onscreen timeline, I find that useful up to a point for resolving some of the major, global discrepancies that can't be resolved in any other way. I'm not positing a different timeline for every contradiction, but just two or three distinct ones corresponding roughly to the three distinct eras of Trek on TV.

And I actually find that kind of liberating, because now, if an SNW episode differs from a detail of a TOS episode, I no longer have to worry about how to reconcile it. I can just shrug it off because the two shows are in different versions of the timeline already. The same broad events still happen, but with room for variations in detail.

I see it as being akin to Marvel's sliding time scale, but in Star Trek's case it's more of a layered timeline. In TOS, we're seeing the original unaltered timeline before the Temporal Wars. Everything from the Next Generation on is the timeline after the temporal wars. It's all the prime timeline, just different layers.

I think that, by the very nature of time travel, it's impossible to define an "original" timeline or a "starting" point to the temporal wars. Given how ubiquitous time travel is in Trek, and given how many super-ancient civilizations there are like the Organians, Talosians, Metrons, Iconians, Tkon, etc., I'm sure the timeline has been under frequent revision all along. And even temporal warriors from the future could go back any distance into the past, so presumably the past was already shaped by time travelers from the future, whether TCW combatants or somebody from a different era of future history altogether.

And TOS/TAS itself was always a timeline affected by time travel, because Spock would not have lived through his kahs-wan if not for his time-traveling future self saving him. We didn't know about that until "Yesteryear," but it was the case all along.

 

[Tuskin38]

This is the argument Ex Astris Scientia and Trekyards have been making for years. And, the strategy a potential Legacy would likely take as well, assuming Terry Matalas, Dave Blass, Doug Drexler, etc are all involved and free from executive interference in that area.

Now, an interesting question might be which timeline Spock Prime came from in ST09. That could clean up some of the different details regarding the supernova, although as Nimoy was playing his Spock, I'd be cautious in pulling that wire.

Except Picard also moved the Eugenics wars to the 21st century. SNW didn't start it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Except Picard also moved the Eugenics wars to the 21st century. SNW didn't start it.

Agreed on the latter, not the former.

Besides, if anything, ST:FC got there first.

 

[Lord Garth]

What I'm not too thrilled about -- and this doesn't have anything to do with Canon -- is that SNW said that America had a Second Civil War. My thought was, "Please! Please don't give the January 6th insurrectionists legitimacy!"

 

[Shawnster]

I think it's quite the reach to attribute every little stylistic difference between TOS and SNW to time travel shenanigans

Whatever helps me sleep at night, my good being.

 

[Christopher]

What I'm not too thrilled about -- and this doesn't have anything to do with Canon -- is that SNW said that America had a Second Civil War. My thought was, "Please! Please don't give the January 6th insurrectionists legitimacy!"

How does that give them legitimacy? The Civil War was illegitimate, an act of base treason and an attempt to destroy the United States in the name of slavery and the oligarchy of the rich. Saying the insurrectionists' actions could lead to another Civil War is not legitimizing them, it's calling attention to the threat they pose. Because that is what they're hoping to achieve.

Heck, even the generations of fiction that glossed over the slavery thing in favor of the sanitized "Lost Cause" narrative, the idea that the South was just fighting to preserve its elegant, pastoral way of life in the face of Northern cultural imperialism, tended to paint the Civil War as a period of tragic madness when brother turned on brother for no particularly good reason. They didn't romanticize the war, though they sure as hell romanticized the status quo that preceded it.

 

[UssGlenn]

At least...

Spoiler

SNW moved the Eugenics Wars in-universe. That makes it easier for me to deal with.

Does sort of beg the question, why doesn't the DTI change them BACK, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

No one changes things back if the result is your own personal timeline. Tons of time travel is left alone because it results in the existence of the uptime agencies.

And TOS/TAS itself was always a timeline affected by time travel, because Spock would not have lived through his kahs-wan if not for his time-traveling future self saving him. We didn't know about that until "Yesteryear," but it was the case all along.

I thought in the original timeline his sehlat survived, or am I miss remembering?

 

[Lord Garth]

How does that give them legitimacy? The Civil War was illegitimate, an act of base treason and an attempt to destroy the United States in the name of slavery and the oligarchy of the rich. Saying the insurrectionists' actions could lead to another Civil War is not legitimizing them, it's calling attention to the threat they pose. Because that is what they're hoping to achieve.

Heck, even the generations of fiction that glossed over the slavery thing in favor of the sanitized "Lost Cause" narrative, the idea that the South was just fighting to preserve its elegant, pastoral way of life in the face of Northern cultural imperialism, tended to paint the Civil War as a period of tragic madness when brother turned on brother for no particularly good reason. They didn't romanticize the war, though they sure as hell romanticized the status quo that preceded it.

My hope is what they do doesn't lead to a Civil War. My hope is that it leads to nowhere, and certainly not the scale of actual war. I think saying that there will be actual war because of the Culture Wars going on right now is encouraging fear that it will happen.

I guess we'll see how much trouble they'll cause (or not cause) if Trump loses again in '24.

 

[Shawnster]

Because it's tacky. In the case of "explaining" why the version of Christine from TOS is a personality-less cardboard cutout whose only trait is passively pining over a man who has rejected her and the version in SNW has an actual personality, actual goals, and actual agency? It is incredibly distasteful to treat the decision to depict a woman as an actual person as some sort of "problem" that needs a Watsonian explanation,

Ouch.

Actually, my comments take into account TOS Chapel as a person and not a cardboard cutout. TOS Chapel is my mother-in-law, and a few other women from the Boomer generation that I know.

SNW version of Chapel is more like Rand, in my opinion. Had they made her Rand instead of Chapel, I'd have been fine from the start. In fact, the way Janice has a mischievous glint in her eye when dealing with Spock in episodes like "Charlie X" could really fit with a previous romance that ended with them still friends)

This builds upon the original intent that Chapel's attraction was unrequited, instead of the SNW version which looks to head toward something much more intense.

Again, if it helps me sleep at night by headcannoning TOS Chapel had a peaceful past but SNW Chapel has been through the fire because of the Klingon war or other things that TOS Chapel didn't, then what of it? This has been how Trek Fandom operated since the 60s/70s.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

TOS Chapel had a peaceful past but SNW Chapel has been through the fire because of the Klingon war or other things that TOS Chapel didn't

This is assuming that the Klingon war didn't happen in the original timeline. I'm not sure that's so.

 

[Citiprime]

What I'm not too thrilled about -- and this doesn't have anything to do with Canon -- is that SNW said that America had a Second Civil War. My thought was, "Please! Please don't give the January 6th insurrectionists legitimacy!"

I think that's another problem with trying to "align" Trek's history with our timeline. If you go back and watch DS9's "Past Tense," they didn't produce that episode as a prediction of sanctuary districts in our future. The ending of part 2 almost explicitly asks the audience to think about the issues and avert it.

They no more wanted sanctuary districts to align with our timeline than TOS writers wanted the Eugenics Wars and World War III to be future events.

Excellent comparison. No one claims DS9 S4-7 was a different timeline than DS9 S1-3 after all.

Because it's explained in the episode that it isn't a different timeline because of the Prophets' manipulations and their control of time. At the end of "Accession," Kira, Sisko and everyone else are unchanged and are aware that there was a point Akorem didn't finish poetry in the past and now there's finished poetry. Sisko didn't come back from the Wormhole to a station where events had moved 20 years into the future.

SISKO: The Prophets work in mysterious ways.​

I've always wondered about the aftermath of that episode in a different way. Akorem and Sisko go into the wormhole together and only Sisko comes out. Does Sisko go to the Bajorans and say: "Yeah, I'm the real Emissary and I want you to stop with that caste system bullshit," and the Bajorans who are depicted as having upended their society to comply with Akorem's wishes just do a 180 and accept it? I have to believe there were at least a few Bajorans, especially the ones who were suspicious of Federation involvement in their affairs, that questioned the whole thing.

It used to be that finding nitpicks and such to be fun but ultimately the stories were regarded as continuous. Now? Any differences must mean a new timeline, no wiggle room. It's strange.

I have 2 problems with the current direction. One is that I think it creates a narrative mess. And the second issue is that I think if you like Strange New Worlds and Discovery, it makes it easier to dismiss them.

Changes to Khan and the Eugenics Wars goes beyond just a "nitpick." Both "Space Seed," Wrath of Khan, and Spock's death are major inflection points for the franchise as a whole. When you start changing aspects of those events, then it opens a barrel of worms, and basically argues that everything is in flux. And if everything is changeable then every event within the larger story of Star Trek is transitory and subject to being fiddled with, and arguably has no meaning beyond what current showrunners think about them. It's part of the reason I think time travel as a concept is overused in Star Trek.

For example, since TOS and the TOS films come later in the timeline than SNW, does that mean their version of Khan as well as their version of the Enterprise overwrote the SNW version at some point if they don't exist in a separate timeline? Especially, since later in the timeline, both Prodigy and the final season of Picard show versions of the Enterprise bridge and Constitution-Class that don't match Strange New Worlds.

HOLO-JANEWAY: Computer, load Constitution-Class holo-console, mid-23rd century.​

Their changes and perspective are as legit as the ones offered up by Strange New Worlds, and moreover when you posit the idea that everything is fungible with something slightly similar, you set up the circumstances for some later showrunner to write your version out of existence. Meaning that, in a narrative sense, you would end up with the same problem that the major powers in the Star Trek universe experienced with the Temporal Wars; a tangled mess that gets out of control.

 

[Shawnster]

This is assuming that the Klingon war didn't happen in the original timeline. I'm not sure that's so.

Or happen quite how DISCO portrayed it

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think there was a war in TOS. The war that Garth and Kirk talk about, Why can’t it be a war with the Klingons?

 

[Christopher]

I thought in the original timeline his sehlat survived, or am I miss remembering?

That's the contradiction that's always bugged me about "Yesteryear." On the one hand, Spock always had to go back in time and save himself, so it's a self-consistent loop; yet on the other hand, it makes a change. But despite the I'Chaya issue, the episode was very clear that replaying the history without Spock's time travel led to young Spock's death, so he only made it to adulthood because his adult self saved his child self. And the only way he knew he had to go back in time was because he saw the alternate timeline that resulted when he didn't. So if his going back was what always had to happen, it doesn't make sense that he changed something anyway.

Although... I think I just thought of a fix. Quantum time travel theory says that an object traveling through time would be required to follow every possible path. So any given time travel would result in multiple possible outcomes simultaneously. Spock only lives to adulthood in those versions of the time loop where he succeeds in saving his younger self, but there could be several parallel iterations of the loop where other aspects of the event are different. It's not a perfect fix, but it's something.

My hope is what they do doesn't lead to a Civil War. My hope is that it leads to nowhere, and certainly not the scale of actual war. I think saying that there will be actual war because of the Culture Wars going on right now is encouraging fear that it will happen.

But that's the whole point of cautionary tales -- to warn that something bad could happen in order to alert people to the danger and hopefully prevent it from happening. Look at The Voyage Home. It warned that humpback whales were heading toward extinction in the future. And the movie helped raise awareness of the issue and promoted conservation, and now humpback whales have resurged and are no longer endangered. Predicting the bad future helped, at least a little, in bringing about a better future.

Fiction should encourage fear that bad things will happen when there's a serious threat that they will. That's how you motivate people to notice the threat and act to prevent it. People write cautionary tales in hopes of making sure they don't come true.

This builds upon the original intent that Chapel's attraction was unrequited, instead of the SNW version which looks to head toward something much more intense.

I looked over Chapel's dialogue from TOS recently, and it actually works surprisingly well with a scenario where Spock and Chapel have a romantic history that Spock is ashamed of and trying to put behind him, as opposed to the one where she just had an unrequited crush from a distance. Like in "The Naked Time" where she tells Spock "I know how you feel. You hide it, but you do have feeling." That line takes on a whole new meaning in the context of "All Those Who Wander." (Although there's no salvaging "The men from Vulcan treat their women strangely.") I think it makes Chapel a lot less pathetic as a character if her feelings are based on their real history and baggage rather than just her lonely fantasies.