The REAL kick in the head is going to be when they start writing about how the United States won the revolutionary war in 1778 by assassinating King George III and then using the might of the British Empire to annex France.
Because if a fictional global war in 1996 is on the table, why stop there? It doesn't have to be OUR history.
World War III in the 1990's doesn't fit. (And yeah, the spaceflight stuff in season 2 was stupid. But that's probably redundant.)
Like I said, there are "near future" events from most of Star Trek that aren't coming true (Shaun Christopher has to be in his forties or even fifties by now and he hasn't gotten to Saturn yet). But none of them are on the same scale as World War III.
For some reason Star Trek keeps coming back to that.
^^this
In relation to our world, our world from the eyes of people who wrote it in 1966, or in the self-contained-and-not-directly-in-ours Star Trek universe that was first written in 1964 and fleshed out for decades since?
It isn't our history. It's Earth's history as described in
the TOS universe. Like with the movie "
Demolition Man", the future history set up is a couple decades too soon and the writers are using arbitrary numbers at random because it's the future... - but it's usually easier to swallow the show and its claims before the (real life fact*, such as the year/date) told is met in our real-life world. After that, anyone digging into the show might be able to separate their universe from ours, or laugh at it. And/or reactions.
* One "real-life fact" is that we know sound cannot travel in the vacuum of space. Hearing a ship go "zappety zap" doesn't take us out of it. For at least two reasons (it's their universe/physics, and because it's drama and those audible cues can have a point...) Granted, other episodes that whip out the timer regarding radiation exposure start to get a little woolly, and the "dermal healer" with its pretty blue glow has me rolling my eyes every time because it's utter codswollop. Thankfully it's not used often and it's the visual equivalent of crap lines like "we cured the common cold and headaches are a thing of the past", but before I digress in two directions simultaneously...
The show is simply in its own universe first and foremost. It has to sell the audience, to get them to suspend their disbelief, and to explore
the show's universe, and IMHO that's when the fun begins. Get us to believe
their world, using superficial scenarios ours has experienced as a point of reference when characters themselves might not because we're not 24th century people and based on real life history, if 24th century people are just like us then that's a new can of worms, but before I digress into blap about "21st vs 17th century humans", I'll reel myself in... ...but that's what good sci-fi does, it works to get us vested in and to explore
their world and it's not going to be ours.
Fun side note: It could be argued that sci-fi is honestly not that much more "out there" than any general drama or sitcom - before a certain point involving location and scenario. For example, many people can suspend disbelief and enjoy beeploads of episodes of
The Golden Girls, even though there's no way any of them could have enough closet space for their massive and equally luxurious (and equally eighties) clothing collection. Indeed, one could make corny jokes about their wardrobes being TARDISes in order to even begin to fit their impressive and awe-inspiring range of ensembled (and eighties!
) outfits as well. Now that's a crossover nobody was expecting to ever read...
But plenty of sitcoms and dramas that have absolutely nothing to do with sci-fi also have some batbeep-crazy underpinnings, which aren't any less "out there" just because they're not on a ship in space.
