Agreed. Trek isn't part of our universe. It's always had its own separate timeline with a history that branches off from ours around the late 20th-Century or so, IMO...
Khan question
- Thread starter EJA
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But if you had to reconcile what TOS and ENT establish about Khan and the Eugenics Wars with real history up to the present, how would you go about it? (Sadly, Greg Cox's interesting ideas in his EW novels, while they were good for a while, no longer work with what the ENT episodes said about the period, e.g. tens of millions of casualties, hundreds of Augment embryos, etc) 9/11 was a truly momentous day for the entire world, and IMO, to say that it and everything that happened because of it doesn't happen in the Trekverse would be as wrong as saying something like the Vietnam War never happened in the Trekverse. Could we have the War on Terror follow on from the Eugenics Wars?
There is of course the Eugenics Wars novels which explain how the Eugenics Wars happened within actual history of the 1990s, and therefore likely still the history of the 2000s from being the same as well.
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I never read the Eugenics Wars novels. If you look at what was going on in the area of the world that Khan supposedly ruled, Afghanistan was still recovering from the Russian withdraw 1989 and had a series of weak coalition governments. And the Taliban didn't take power of the southern two-thirds until 1996. About the same time period Khan was driven from power.
Iraq, 1992 was right after President Bust kick Saddam Hussein testicles up between his shoulder blades, for Khan to take that country in it's weaken state could have happened.
Saudia Arabia, the ruling royal family has never been popular with the general population, they maintain their position of power through a strong police and military force, a exploitable situation.
India was being governed by a shaky minority government in 1992.
Burma, would anybody (even today) mind terribly if the government there was replaced? In this one case Khan easily could have possessed international (if secret) approval.
Iraq, 1992 was right after President Bust kick Saddam Hussein testicles up between his shoulder blades, for Khan to take that country in it's weaken state could have happened.
Saudia Arabia, the ruling royal family has never been popular with the general population, they maintain their position of power through a strong police and military force, a exploitable situation.
India was being governed by a shaky minority government in 1992.
Burma, would anybody (even today) mind terribly if the government there was replaced? In this one case Khan easily could have possessed international (if secret) approval.
When it comes to the Eugenics War, TOS and ENT match up. Archer has an ancestor who fought in the war in the time period Khan was the ruler of a quarter of the globe.
As I said, it was never intended to be an fictional alternate history. GR and Co. were projecting a possible future for our world, with a history that more or less matched. ( with allowances for some drama here and there.)
But could Saddam have returned to power after Khan was overthrown?
I suppose one question we could ask is whether Khan's empire ever included Iraq? It's not as though it's the only nation in the Middle East, after all.
Oh, and Archer states that his ancestor fought in North Africa during the Wars. I assume this would've been against another Augment dictator besides Khan.
There's the short story "Assignment:One" in one of the Strange New Worlds anthologies, that deals with 9/11 happening in the Trekverse. I think the same author wrote "The Rules of War", a Eugenics Wars story, for a later anthology. In the former, the EW are mentioned briefly as having occured prior to 9/11; and the latter appears to take place within a late 20th century setting (The chronology in Voyages of Imagination gives the date as 1994). Anyone read these?
Then you retcon it again, until it's such an unworkable concept--because in real life our "augments" probably won't be ruthless warlords, and will still be quite stoppable, even if they are--that it has to be abandoned.
Anyway, I figure the upcoming generation of Augments was elected, and base this on the future being run and the history being written by ridiculous bigots.
There are only a few obstacles in the way of the EW and WW3 being completely identical; ENT "Demons" states that WW3 ended when several of Earth's governments met in San Francisco to declare a ceas-fire, whereas the EW ended with Khan being violently overthrown; ENT's Augment Trilogy has it that records of the EW in the 22nd century are fragmentary and contradictory (i.e. Soong's "No one really knows how the Wars started..." speech), but "Home" states that a major movie about WW3 was made in 2153, so they must have known enough!; According to the Augment Trilogy, some 30 million deaths occured in the EW, and First Contact gives the number of casualties in WW3 as 600 million.
If there was a way to reconcile all this, while ignoring the 1990s date for the EW, it would simplify a great deal.
If there was a way to reconcile all this, while ignoring the 1990s date for the EW, it would simplify a great deal.
One possible solution, Enterprise's Hatchery has Archer talking about his great-grandfather who served in the Eugenics Wars. In order for this statement to be accurate, the Eugenics Wars would have to have ocurred somewhere around 2030.
Of course, this was contradicted by the Augments trilogy which did establish in dialogue the Eugenics Wars were indeed in the 20th century.
That's one way of looking at it, I'm not saying you're wrong. But what Dr Phlox says to Arik Soong is something like "This is quite sophisticated work for 20th century Earth." This could mean the Eugenics Wars occured in the 1990s, but on the other hand, it could just mean that the technology that created the Augments was first developed in the 20th century, but the Augments themselves didn't emerge into power until well into the 21st century.
Hatchery was set in January 8, 2154 when Archer was 41 years old, so figure that Archer's great-grandfather was born in (approximately) 2060, and that ancestor's African adventures were in (again approximately) 2085 or so. Over 20 years after Cochrane's first warp flight. Over 30 years after Data said the third world war ended.
Arguably McCoy was correcting a verbal mistake on Spock's part.
Just as there have been more that one world war, it possible that there was more than one eugenics war.
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Speaking of misspeaking, "great-grandfather" or "great grandfather" may well mean the father of the mother of the father of the mother, or some other relative even farther removed; that is, great-grandfather and everything beyond. Few people would bother to include the "necessary" additional "greats" to accurately describe a distant relative.
By that token, Archer's grandfather-much-removed might have fought Augments in the Punic Wars for all we know.
Generally, we know that the 1990s are a known quantity in UFP/Earth history for the most part. Records may be "fragmentary", but only insofar as the exact shipping schedules of interplanetary flights do not fully survive, making it difficult for Spock to track down every single last DY-100 to his satisfaction. Records on the Augments may be incomplete, but only insofar as their motivations and early years are left in the dark; like "Space Seed" sez, they became public figures when they took over those 40 countries, and their subsequent actions are probably well known for the most part. Soong's speech (to children!) didn't indicate the wars that made Augments feared were "unknown" - it only indicated that there was disagreement of interpretation. People disagree about well-documented wars all the time, especially over the issue of who started it.
Timo Saloniemi
By that token, Archer's grandfather-much-removed might have fought Augments in the Punic Wars for all we know.
Generally, we know that the 1990s are a known quantity in UFP/Earth history for the most part. Records may be "fragmentary", but only insofar as the exact shipping schedules of interplanetary flights do not fully survive, making it difficult for Spock to track down every single last DY-100 to his satisfaction. Records on the Augments may be incomplete, but only insofar as their motivations and early years are left in the dark; like "Space Seed" sez, they became public figures when they took over those 40 countries, and their subsequent actions are probably well known for the most part. Soong's speech (to children!) didn't indicate the wars that made Augments feared were "unknown" - it only indicated that there was disagreement of interpretation. People disagree about well-documented wars all the time, especially over the issue of who started it.
Timo Saloniemi
Besides, the year 1996 is pinned down pretty specifically in both "Space Seed" and TWOK... it's kind of hard to ignore that bit of evidence.
The year 1996 is when Khan's reign ended, that much is certain. Doesn't mean the Eugenics Wars would necessarily have ended at that date, though. There could have been a temporary lull at the time, or perhaps a temporary heightening of violence due to the last, relatively benevolent dictator disappearing. Fighting as such could still have well been going on in the 21st century, though - perhaps as part of WWIII, perhaps as a separate event or sideshow.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
And who knows how old Archer's ancestors were when they had kids. That alone makes any attempt to nail down a passage of time (by simply counting 'greats') extremely variable.
This isn't entirely dissimilar to my own ideas. I always wondered if the Eastern Coalition in the 2050s was created decades earlier by Khan, but by the time of the final nuclear exchange between it and the Western powers, had come to be governed by ordinary humans following Khan's disappearance.
