The Nexus tries to make you think it's real, so it goes for the most plausible ideal scenario? Seems logical.
What are your opinions regarding Star Trek that are, shall we say, unorthodox?
I must concede that moving Khan and the Eugencis Wars up to the 2030s-2050s period and part of WW3 just works. There's just no realistic way you can have a genetic superman born out of genetic tampering with 60s-70s technology be mature by the 90s and then flee on a interplanetary ship with sleeper capability. Only one of those things might be possible by then if we really pushed for it.
Like, it took a decade of work and billions of dollars to decode the human genome at first. That required huge leaps in computer miniaturization and sophistication. To tinker with genes on a more at-will capacity took twenty, lets say ten odd years if we rush it, after that. To say nothing on Cryonics technology that can last for two hundred years after even that. We've barely even begun to work on that stuff and most of it is quackery or prayers-wrapped-in-money. The Soviets, Indians, 'Eastern Bloc' also barely dabbled in Eugenics at all, especially after WW2. So are we just to believe that somehow the Eastern bloc or a neutral power made these supermen by rolling sixes on some New Soviet Man project, enough to make Augments like we see in TOS? They'd have to be writing down the genome on paper and magnetic tape in full on cities for it to even try to start working on it, and it's not like they held the edge in computing at the time.
But by the 2030s, up to the 2050s? There's wiggle room. Genetic manipulation, cloning and engineering are taking off since the 90s. Cryonic stuff is still iffy. Interplanetary ships, if Trek went full For All Mankind with it or even just Europa Reports/2001s it could have the predecessor to the DY coming around by now as well. Or that there are DY 100s, and what the Bay was was a Dy 500 or somesuch. Computers, CRISPR, it's around now. You can't really rush these things ahead of time, they're all interconnected.
This has nothing to do with 'Oh America isn't on fire when Voyager goes there in a time travel episode', just more the logical conclusions of the technology that even a fully alternate-history Trek would realistically have by then. Interplanetary ships, I could see, but if we're moving up the war, we can move up the DY-100s a bit, too. Ares IV, after all, didn't look anything like it.
Khan, thus, logically has to be born around the 00s or 10s after some nation or group went all in on Genetic tampering of the human form. And so must his empire and followers. And so a 90s Eugenics War has to be discarded, and my opinion on it. We can chalk it up to another Spock moment of being wrong (how would he know the exact difference between a 100 and 500 anyway?) and hey. At least Kirk's two hundred years line (2050s to 2260s, than 1990s to 2260s) makes more sense!
Like, it took a decade of work and billions of dollars to decode the human genome at first. That required huge leaps in computer miniaturization and sophistication. To tinker with genes on a more at-will capacity took twenty, lets say ten odd years if we rush it, after that. To say nothing on Cryonics technology that can last for two hundred years after even that. We've barely even begun to work on that stuff and most of it is quackery or prayers-wrapped-in-money. The Soviets, Indians, 'Eastern Bloc' also barely dabbled in Eugenics at all, especially after WW2. So are we just to believe that somehow the Eastern bloc or a neutral power made these supermen by rolling sixes on some New Soviet Man project, enough to make Augments like we see in TOS? They'd have to be writing down the genome on paper and magnetic tape in full on cities for it to even try to start working on it, and it's not like they held the edge in computing at the time.
But by the 2030s, up to the 2050s? There's wiggle room. Genetic manipulation, cloning and engineering are taking off since the 90s. Cryonic stuff is still iffy. Interplanetary ships, if Trek went full For All Mankind with it or even just Europa Reports/2001s it could have the predecessor to the DY coming around by now as well. Or that there are DY 100s, and what the Bay was was a Dy 500 or somesuch. Computers, CRISPR, it's around now. You can't really rush these things ahead of time, they're all interconnected.
This has nothing to do with 'Oh America isn't on fire when Voyager goes there in a time travel episode', just more the logical conclusions of the technology that even a fully alternate-history Trek would realistically have by then. Interplanetary ships, I could see, but if we're moving up the war, we can move up the DY-100s a bit, too. Ares IV, after all, didn't look anything like it.
Khan, thus, logically has to be born around the 00s or 10s after some nation or group went all in on Genetic tampering of the human form. And so must his empire and followers. And so a 90s Eugenics War has to be discarded, and my opinion on it. We can chalk it up to another Spock moment of being wrong (how would he know the exact difference between a 100 and 500 anyway?) and hey. At least Kirk's two hundred years line (2050s to 2260s, than 1990s to 2260s) makes more sense!
Last edited:
If we really push we can get it done by the 90s?
1. Commit to inventing a time machine.
2. ???
3. (You know what.)
2. ???
3. (You know what.)
Agree completely. Now that it's been canonically confirmed that world War 3 and the Eugenics Wars were the same conflict, we can confidently place the EW between 2049 and 2053, as two different sources have had WW3 end in 2053. The 2049 date assumes that the wars had the same four-year duration in the new timeline as they did in the original timeline.
I do love how the giant, loud mess that is Section 31 still has the Eugenics Wars at the end of the 20th century, so even Paramount+ streaming Trek likes to have it both ways. I guess that makes it easier for the fans who still want the wars to happen in the 1990s, and the Romulan temporal agent in SNW does say that she'd been on Earth since 1992.
Why I just treat each show as their own thing. Just cleaner and easier that way.
Even ENT seemed to have conflicting feelings about when the Eugenics Wars take place. Phlox clearly says the Augments were a late 20th century creation of Earth science, while a season before during the Xindi Arc we hear Archer say that his great-grandfather was an American soldier in North Africa during the Eugenics Wars, math that only really works if the wars were in the 21st century.
The original version of the Eugenics Wars still happened, just on another layer of the timeline, if that makes sense.
One word: multiverse. Broad strokes are largely the same, details are different.
True. But there is a difference between an altered timeline and an alternate timeline.
If the original and altered timelines continues to exist side-by-side after the split, then it really is just a multiverse.
A difference that makes no difference…
Last edited:
If one wants to assume every piece of uttered dialogue is 100% canon and script/actor errors don't exist, Alok Sahar could have been born in 1999 it's a stretch of from the 20th century but it is technically true. Of course this level of adherence means Khan started the Eugenics Wars in the 2100s too...
I’m not sure they’re irrelevant. They were written by folks who were only twenty years removed from a world war (some of them actually fought in) and a society that sometimes bought into that stuff. So, for them, it was probably more personal.
I’m happy to just treat it as a multiverse, that way no one’s work is overwritten. YMMV.
I feel sorry for the absolute purists and the terrible headaches they must get.If it makes it to the screen, it is considered canon. James R. Kirk says hi.
Thermians.
I’m probably someone that would be considered a purist and never had any issues keeping things straight.
Similar threads
