Eugenics Wars.

[Christopher]

An odd thing about the historical files Kirk reviews in the two EW novels is that they apparently contain detailed information regarding the development of the Botany Bay, and its theft by Khan. But in ENT and "Space Seed", Khan's escape and the existence of the Botany Bay was little more than a vague myth. Heck, when Kirk meets Gary at the end of the second book he says "My condolences regarding your cat", implying the files even mentioned the fact that Isis died just prior to Khan's escape, which I find a bit hard to swallow.

Didn't the books imply (or even state outright) that Gary had added those detailed files to the records so that Kirk would have access to them?

Also according to the books, Khan would have only been in his early 20s when he rose to power. How old were all his siblings active at that time?

They would've pretty much all had to be around the same age. As I recall, "Noon" (Khan) was one of the oldest Chrysalis children. All three books indicated that the Augments (to use an anachronistic but convenient label) matured faster than baseline humans.

 

[EJA]

^I think the only ones to mature at a much faster rate were the ones born on Ceti Alpha V. Didn't Khan and his siblings age normally? I ask because I find it a little unlikely that so many of those dictators and terrorists could've been around twenty years old.

 

[Timo]

Twenty would have been par for the course back when most dictators were the brawny type and united people by force of steel (or even bronze). And twenty would again be quite appealing to our youth-worshipping 20th/21st century world.

And one characteristic of "superman" could well be that he or she looks mature at an early age, and stays so till advanced age. It doesn't mean he or she "matured fast", in terms of the cells doing something faster than "normal" cells. It just means he or she had a good body and built that body with muscle mass in an efficient manner, skipping the scrawny-skinny phase of the teen years thanks to lifestyle choices supported by a body malleable to such a doctrine.

Still, "Space Seed" originally spoke of eugenics in the sense of selective breeding, so I find it a bit objectionable to think of Khan and pals as a "modern" project initiated only in the 1960s-70s or so. A likelier backstory would be some sort of a centuries-old Illuminati project finally coming to a conclusion in the 1980s when advancing technology combined with the mounting wealth of this Illuminati organization and somebody lost patience.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

And one characteristic of "superman" could well be that he or she looks mature at an early age, and stays so till advanced age. It doesn't mean he or she "matured fast", in terms of the cells doing something faster than "normal" cells. It just means he or she had a good body and built that body with muscle mass in an efficient manner, skipping the scrawny-skinny phase of the teen years thanks to lifestyle choices supported by a body malleable to such a doctrine.

One of the young-Khan segments mentions that at 14 or so he already had a surprisingly muscular build.

 

[EJA]

What's interesting is that, according to Greg, the DY-100 was designed with technology reverse-engineered from Quark's ship that crashed at Roswell in 1947 in DS9 "Little Green Men." Now we don't know exactly what J.J. Abrams and co. are going to do with the movie series in the future, but if they ever do bring back Khan, that would mean that the Roswell Incident as depicted on DS9 also took place in the Abramsverse, despite the big differences in galactic history that make it doubtful those events in the 24th century will ever happen in the new timeline.

And I'm sorry, but I just cannot see those 1,800+ Augment embryos at C12 being created by Chrysalis and then hidden away from the main facility. If the EW books are taken as accurate, then it couldn't have been Khan or any of his siblings either. Hence my hypothesis that they were made by an entirely separate group many years later (Although Phlox does indicate in ENT "Borderland" that they originate in the 20th century). But why weren't these incubated? What became of their makers? I imagine there's an interesting story to be told there......

 

[Sci]

I ask because I find it a little unlikely that so many of those dictators and terrorists could've been around twenty years old.

Why not? Most of the ones who rose to power did so in politically unstable countries like Somalia or the fracturing Balkins. Heck, right now, the U.S. has to deal with Afghan warlords in real life who are only in their twenties and thirties yet control entire provinces.

 

[EJA]

Right now I'm more concerned about how the DY-100 will ever be built without the Ferengi crash-landing in Roswell in '47.

 

[Sci]

Right now I'm more concerned about how the DY-100 will ever be built without the Ferengi crash-landing in Roswell in '47.

Is there any particular reason to think that the chain of events leading to the Ferengi Roswell crash wouldn't happen in the JJverse timeline?

I mean, the relevant sequence of events is, the Cardassians build Terok Nor, Quark opens his bar there, the Cardassians withdraw from Bajor, Bajor invites Starfleet to operate the station as a starbase, Nog interacts with Starfleet and decides he wants to join it, Nog applies for Starfleet Academy, Quark's cousin Gaila sends him a sabotaged shuttle in repayment of debt, Quark transports Nog to Earth on sabotaged shuttle, shuttle gets knocked back to 1947, Roswell crash occurs, everyone escapes from Area 51 back to the 24th Century.

None of those events are rendered implausible by the events of ST09. That entire chain of events could happen, potentially in a modified form, in the JJverse timeline.

 

[Christopher]

And I'm sorry, but I just cannot see those 1,800+ Augment embryos at C12 being created by Chrysalis and then hidden away from the main facility.

Why not? It seems like a reasonable precaution to me.

Right now I'm more concerned about how the DY-100 will ever be built without the Ferengi crash-landing in Roswell in '47.

Ahh, but who's to say it didn't? Both the Prime and Abrams timelines coexist as branches off the same original timeline, like a road forking. So it stands to reason that people coming back from either timeline would arrive in the same past. Thus, events in one timeline could be influenced by travellers from the other one.

I mean, heck, we've seen plenty of precedent for that in Trek -- episodes where someone has come back from the future and had an influence that created a timeline separate from their own future. Like Kes in "Before and After," coming back from her original timeline and making changes that spawned a different timeline. Or Picard coming back from the "All Good Things..." future and giving people information that let them create a different future. In both cases, events in one branch of the timestream were brought about by causes originating in a parallel branch. Indeed, the movie itself is an example, since Nero and Spock Prime both come from the Prime timeline and are responsible for events within the Abrams timeline.

 

[Timo]

The Eugenics Wars were over in 1996

Says who? (In canon, that is.)

Khan was kicked out at that point. But he was apparently created by the proponents of eugenics, and those proponents wouldn't necessarily go away with the downfall of the last of the dictators. Augments might still serve in their armies and laboratories, even if not as leaders of nations. And even if they didn't, wars over eugenics (i.e. whether to have Khans again) could go on for decades.

None of the wording in "Space Seed" dictates that the wars would have ended with Khan leaving. Nor do the episodes necessitate the wars starting with the rise of the Augment leaders in 1993. All we know is that the mid-1990s were during the Eugenics Wars - not that the Eugenics Wars would have been during the mid-1990s, which might be a more suggestive wording for the idea that the Wars did not span the 1980s or the 2000s.

Just sayin'. Cox' take on things is pretty clear-cut as such. But in canon, the Eugenics Wars could easily have spanned several decades, and since they are referred to in plural on occasion, there would probably have been intermissions, too.

(Or then Spock saying "World Wars" and McCoy saying "Eugenics Wars" means that McCoy thinks WWII was an Eugenics War, too. Which wouldn't be off the mark, I guess. Perhaps WWI will one day be seen as one, too.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EJA]

And I'm sorry, but I just cannot see those 1,800+ Augment embryos at C12 being created by Chrysalis and then hidden away from the main facility.

Why not? It seems like a reasonable precaution to me.

Remember Dr. Williams, the Chrysalis scientist who went to work for Khan? He was one of the senior scientists on the project, surely he would've known about any hidden embryo caches. But he never brought them to Khan's attention, which IMO he would've done to further cement his good standing with the dictator.

Right now I'm more concerned about how the DY-100 will ever be built without the Ferengi crash-landing in Roswell in '47.

Ahh, but who's to say it didn't? Both the Prime and Abrams timelines coexist as branches off the same original timeline, like a road forking. So it stands to reason that people coming back from either timeline would arrive in the same past. Thus, events in one timeline could be influenced by travellers from the other one. [/QUOTE]

Hmmmm....I have to say, I'm more the opinion that once the timelines diverged (whether due to Nero's appearance or not, though I'm more inclined to believe it was already different), events in the past caused by events in the future would no longer occur, because that future no longer happens in the new timeline. So you wouldn't have things like the Ferengi crashing at Roswell in '47, Kirk and co. appearing in 1986 in a Klingon BoP and rescuing two humpback whales, the Borg attacking Earth in 2063, etc, etc.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If the EW books are taken as accurate

Do you cosider TOS's "Balance of Terror" accurate? Star Trek: Enterprise featured cloaking devices on Suliban and Romulan ships a hundred years before Spock was amazed at the "theorectical possibility" of an invisible ship. Spock's description of the technology of the era is entirely inconsistant with what we see on the NX-01 (no matter how hard fans and writers try to knock out fanwank excuses). There are many similar instances throughout Trek, like Picard's description of Klingon first contact, which doesn't jibe with what we see in "Broken Bow".

Why hold the novels to a higher standard than the television show on which they're based?

 

[Christopher]

Remember Dr. Williams, the Chrysalis scientist who went to work for Khan? He was one of the senior scientists on the project, surely he would've known about any hidden embryo caches. But he never brought them to Khan's attention, which IMO he would've done to further cement his good standing with the dictator.

Maybe he was hedging his bets by keeping them secret. Or maybe he didn't know about them because they were a secret Dr. Kaur kept from the rest of Chrysalis. There are many possible explanations.

And King Daniel's right. There are plenty of contradictions already extant within Trek canon, and the only way to reconcile them is by not obsessing over every exact detail. That's the nature of any lengthy, evolving narrative, especially one created by multiple people. Sometimes you just have to accept that a new work requires reinterpreting things from an earlier work, and you can't do that if you're unwilling to ignore a few details here and there.

Hmmmm....I have to say, I'm more the opinion that once the timelines diverged (whether due to Nero's appearance or not, though I'm more inclined to believe it was already different), events in the past caused by events in the future would no longer occur, because that future no longer happens in the new timeline. So you wouldn't have things like the Ferengi crashing at Roswell in '47, Kirk and co. appearing in 1986 in a Klingon BoP and rescuing two humpback whales, the Borg attacking Earth in 2063, etc, etc.

This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of logic and physics. What does "no longer occur" even mean in this context? "No longer" means "after a change." But "after X" means "in the future of X." How can the past be in its own future? It's a contradiction in terms to say that the past "no longer" happened the way it happened. From the time traveller's subjective viewpoint, it may appear that a single moment can come before or after itself, but that's an illusion caused by the traveller doubling back on one's worldline.

The only way there can be two versions of a single moment in time, by definition, is if they are simultaneous, in parallel timelines. But in this case, we're talking about a single timeline that forks into two branches in March 2233. Anyone in either of those branches travelling back in time to a date before 2233 will end up in the same timeline. And therefore it follows that either one could affect events in the other. And as I explained, we have multiple canonical examples of exactly that happening.

 

[kkozoriz1]

The only way there can be two versions of a single moment in time, by definition, is if they are simultaneous, in parallel timelines. But in this case, we're talking about a single timeline that forks into two branches in March 2233. Anyone in either of those branches travelling back in time to a date before 2233 will end up in the same timeline. And therefore it follows that either one could affect events in the other. And as I explained, we have multiple canonical examples of exactly that happening.

Which would allow Spock to return to the Prime timeline should he choose to.

 

[EJA]

Travelling back in time and altering established events does not result in a branching of timelines, no matter what the writers of XI say. From the perspective of the time travellers, after they've changed their past, their present ceases to exist; it now never happens. If you want the Prime timeline to still exist after XI, then you have to assume that Nero and Spock Prime didn't just travel back in time, they travelled into an entirely separate quantum reality. Logically, the DY-100 shouldn't exist, as the events in the future which lead to its creation in the past do not occur. It's a matter of cause and effect.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Travelling back in time and altering established events does not result in a branching of timelines, no matter what the writers of XI say. From the perspective of the time travellers, after they've changed their past, their present ceases to exist; it now never happens. If you want the Prime timeline to still exist after XI, then you have to assume that Nero and Spock Prime didn't just travel back in time, they travelled into an entirely separate quantum reality. Logically, the DY-100 shouldn't exist, as the events in the future which lead to its creation in the past do not occur. It's a matter of cause and effect.

You're acting as if Trek has followed a consistent set of time travel rules until now. It hasn't.

Besides, who's to say that every alternate universe seen in "Parallels" wasn't created by a time traveller? Even in journeys that won't happen (from Worf's perspective) for hundreds of years? And in each universe a duplicate may make a similar journey, creating more...

 

[EJA]

When McCoy went back in time and altered history in "City on the Edge of Forever", the timeline he came from was erased. When Picard returned to his present in "All Good Things", the future he had seen was erased. When the Borg went back in time in First Contact, the Ent-E actually saw their timeline being erased. The "doubling effect" never occured; it was always a single quantum reality that changed internally, with no "branching."

 

[F. King Daniel]

When McCoy went back in time and altered history in "City on the Edge of Forever", the timeline he came from was erased.

Yet in "Yesteryear", Spock wishes Thelin prosperity in his timeline before he leaves.

When Picard returned to his present in "All Good Things", the future he had seen was erased.

We never saw it erased. We just know the history we see in TNG won't follow that path, just as Voyager's timeline didn't follow the alternate future of "Endgame", and STXI's timeline won't follow the path of TOS.

When the Borg went back in time in First Contact, the Ent-E actually saw their timeline being erased. The "doubling effect" never occured; it was always a single quantum reality that changed internally, with no "branching."

True, many of the old writers saw things differently, but there is prior precedent for this retcon.

ENT's Daniels said that tine travel's "beyond [our] understanding". That's good enough for me.

 

[Christopher]

Travelling back in time and altering established events does not result in a branching of timelines, no matter what the writers of XI say. From the perspective of the time travellers, after they've changed their past, their present ceases to exist; it now never happens. If you want the Prime timeline to still exist after XI, then you have to assume that Nero and Spock Prime didn't just travel back in time, they travelled into an entirely separate quantum reality. Logically, the DY-100 shouldn't exist, as the events in the future which lead to its creation in the past do not occur. It's a matter of cause and effect.

Well, you're clearly not open to considering alternative points of view, so there's no point in trying to persuade you further. All I'm suggesting is that people other than you -- who also read Trek literature and participate in this board -- might be open to seeing things in a different way, and I'm offering them an interpretation that would let them reconcile the existence of the DY-100 in the Abramsverse's history. An interpretation that is grounded in real quantum theory and basic logic, and that isn't as incompatible with prior Trek continuity as you assume. Anyone who wants further explanation can read DTI: Watching the Clock when it comes out.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When McCoy went back in time and altered history in "City on the Edge of Forever", the timeline he came from was erased. When Picard returned to his present in "All Good Things", the future he had seen was erased. When the Borg went back in time in First Contact, the Ent-E actually saw their timeline being erased. The "doubling effect" never occured; it was always a single quantum reality that changed internally, with no "branching."

The difference is, in ST XI, the 'time travel' occurred by means of a black hole. That alone makes this situation unique. Assuming that Nero and Spock Prime were spit out into the past of an alternate universe, then what has happened in this film is entirely consistent with how time travel has been previously depicted.