I've actually never noticed that before. Which I guess has something to do with the fact I've only watched 11:59 a total of three times.
Yeah, this post doesn't really serve a purpose other than trashing 11:59.
Spoilers Does moving the Eugenics Wars into the 21st century fundamentally change things?
- Thread starter Citiprime
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Yeah, this post doesn't really serve a purpose other than trashing 11:59.
Yes, but that was a war America was directly involved in. There have been many wars in modern history that America didn't fight in. America is only 5 percent of the world. Not everything is about us.
In the real life 1990s, Africa was racked by massive civil wars, and Americans barely noticed, because the American news media rarely bother to report about anything elsewhere in the world unless it involves us, or at least involves white people. So it is entirely, entirely plausible to me that the Eugenics Wars could've racked Asia and Africa on a massive scale while Americans mostly ignored them.
Given when it was written and by who, coupled with Spock calling it "the last of your so-called World Wars" I think the intent was for a global conflict involving major powers, like the previous World Wars. Khan's territory is Asia and the Middle East. So aggressors would have to come from outside his Khanate. From the 39 other "supermen" who seized control elsewhere and began to fight among themselves. Russia? Europe? Africa? the Americas?
Yeah, the USA often turns a blind to events in Asia, Africa, South America and even parts of Europe Especially if there no advantage to be had. But the EW don't sound like something that could be dismissed as "local trouble". More akin to the Nazi pushing through Europe and the Japanese through East Asia.
Obviously, but intent is one thing and what ends up onscreen is another. The point is that nothing in "Journey's End" is incompatible with the Eugenics Wars going on simultaneously elsewhere in the world. Given that no wars in the past century have been fought on continental US soil, it makes no sense not to realize that the same could easily have been true of the Eugenics Wars. I'm not arguing intent, I'm just saying it's unreasonable not to acknowledge that the possibility exists. It betrays either a staggering ignorance of real history or a staggering ethnocentrism to assume that a war that wasn't fought on US soil must not have been happening at all.
This is more or less my impression, though I'll confess to keeping track of international politics more than perhaps is average.
I think that there is an argument to be made that Americans, or LA, simply ignored the last world war though that begs the question what caused the post atomic horror and shanty town for Cochrane.
Yep. It's a feature now.
Those are bold assertions. I mean, I hope they won't happen, but that is far from assured.
I will riot if CBS Paramount changes that when I am an old man. I dislike the SNW retcon as it is.
Trek has always been a projection out from whatever the present is at the time of production. Writers make dates and events up that relate to our near future. Often these events are cautionary - Eugenics, World Wars, Sanctuary Districts, and so forth. As time marches on, the unfolding of the real world comes into conflict with the made-up one. The writers have quite rightly given priority to Trek's past being our present over in-Universe consistency.
I don't see why so many people bother being intentionally obtuse about it.
I don't see why so many people bother being intentionally obtuse about it.
I don't know as I'd say rightly, mainly because I don't think there's any particular need or importance for the world of Star Trek to match up with ours.
There are plenty of fictional universes that take place in the future that paint their own version of history.
But they've done it, so they've done it and that's that. It doesn't bother me.
Well, obviously nobody can ignore a global nuclear war. The thing is, though "Space Seed" asserted that the Eugenics Wars and WW3 were the same, after "Encounter at Farpoint" bumped WW3 to the mid-2000s, most of us assumed that the EW and WW3 were actually two different wars decades apart -- which allowed for the possibility of 1990s Los Angeles in "Journey's End" being unaffected by a contemporary EW happening elsewhere in the world. It wasn't until SNW came along that they were reintegrated into a single war that took place in the mid-2000s, which compels a new interpretation of "Journey's End" in which, indeed, the EWs weren't happening (and the DY-100 ship depicted in Rain Robinson's office was not used as an exile ship in this version of history).
You're entitled to think that, but you're just one person. The creators of a work of popular fiction have to make it appeal to a wide range of tastes, not just a single person's tastes. The goal is to make it easy for new viewers to get invested, to build on-ramps for them instead of barriers. And making the show's version of the present more familiar to the viewer is such an on-ramp. It smooths out what could be an obstacle to entry for some, even if not for others.
I agree, I like it being a weird universe that's slightly like ours but with Sanctuary Districts, the Millenium Gate, united Ireland, and you can hop a DY-500 to Mars or something. Also there's that huge Delphic Expanse taking up a quarter of the sky but maybe that's a Northern Hemisphere problem.
Yes, thanks, I do know that.
Never did I say they should tailor anything to me. I just said that in my individual opinion, it wasn't necessary. Doctor Who appeals to a wide range of tastes, whilst making no attempt (or at least little more than a cursory attempt) to align itself with the real world.
General audiences are quite used to accepting fictional things as being fictional.
But it happened, I'm not too fussed about it, life goes on. C'est La Vie.
Having a gun trigger tied to a heroin tap feeding into your private parts (I exaggerate a little) so that killing the enemy makes you high, sounds like a slave or a drone, and hardly a Superman.
Although?
If this however is what the US Government was sending into battle against the Supermen, it's possible that who had the moral high ground in this war, is unclear... Poet citizen (super) soldiers vs. Junkies.
General audiences, by definition, have a wide range of different reactions to things. The challenge creators have to tackle is appealing to that wide range of different audience tastes. Which is why there's no simple answer to how to do that, and why different creators try different things with different degrees of success. If it were actually possible to reduce this to a one-sentence generalization, it would be easy.
"Drugs tried to the firing mechanism" must have been from a Star Trek novel I read, because the text from Encounter at Farpoint is not so exact about how they were conditioning soldiers like they are animals.
We're not certain when these TNG pilot drug soldiers are from in time, but we know Reed's family has been in the Royal Navy for generations and we know Archer's great grand father fought in the Eugenics war.
Maybe a decade of intense drug control by the US Government junked the next several generations of Archer DNA, and that is Clarke's Disease? Or if this Eugenics War era Archer was an officer, he was left to fight with only his own wits and natural strengths, as he maintained the free flowing supply of drugs, probably meth, to his soldiers, like a Vorta?
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I was addressing the OP's question and nothing else.
There were signs within Future's End itself that life in 90s America wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows;
If there are wars overseas, and the threat of nuclear attacks (a sentiment felt in America in the cold war era and the 80s), it makes sense to show groups like this in play.
If there are wars overseas, and the threat of nuclear attacks (a sentiment felt in America in the cold war era and the 80s), it makes sense to show groups like this in play.
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