I was watching the Enterprise episode " Carpenter Street " and it got me to thinking about the Voyager episode "Future's End". Both stories are based in the past when the eugenics wars were happening. Why was there never any reference? You never seen any lasting effects? Not even a DY-100 class sleeper ship. Seems like a large part of earths history was missing. Any thoughts or explanations?
eugenics wars and time travel episodes
- Thread starter Gregzula813
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There was a model of a DY-100 in Rayne Robinson's office in "Future's End", but that's more of an easter egg from the art department than anything else. I think Berman-era Trek was happy to ignore the Eugenics Wars altogether for some fear that it would confuse audiences that Trek's 1990's and ours did not mesh.
Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars novels painted them as a conflict which the American general public was largely oblivious to - but it's assumptions have been contradicted by Enterprise's Augment arc and the recent Star Trek Into Darkness (and the latter's prequel comic, which tells the story of a very public and devastating Eugenics War)
Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars novels painted them as a conflict which the American general public was largely oblivious to - but it's assumptions have been contradicted by Enterprise's Augment arc and the recent Star Trek Into Darkness (and the latter's prequel comic, which tells the story of a very public and devastating Eugenics War)
Would a casual glance of life in the United States during 1914-1918 or 1939-1945 reveal that there was a World War going on during those time periods?
They should just said that the JJverse is a mirror universe.
Just this. America probably wasn't obvious to such a large war, but if the country wasn't directly involved in the eugenics war the impact on day to day general American society would be minimal.
That America might have possessed a more neutral foreign policy.
IIRC, there is a model of a DY-100 in Rain Robinson's room.
As for the reason. The writers/producers aren't all that interested in the "alternate timeline theory" of Star Trek. When they plop the characters in the 20th or 21st Centuries they want them to interact and react to the actual modern world, not some fiction with a very different "history".
To make it all work in my head, I like to think of Khan and his ilk as the 'illuminati' from our time period - shadowy figures that are supposedly controlling the world without most of the population knowing what's going on. The Eugenics wars could simply be a sort of 'cold war' that's covered up from the general population that doesn't really change our recent history.
The whole point of these episodes is for the cast to play around in a contemporary setting. There's no point in having them go from one fantasy universe to another.
Trek's versions of the present are always gonna seem just like ours, even if (like the Marvel movieverse or the Stargate 'verse or anything else), a whole bunch of stuff has happened which definitely hasn't in our world and probably would lead to massive change.
The recent star trek: Khan comic goes into more detail about the Eugenics wars, I don't know much about star trek licensed works, but I got the feeling reading it that it doesn't gel well with other works on the subject.
Spoiler:
In it Washington dc and Moscow are nuked in 1993.
Spoiler:
In it Washington dc and Moscow are nuked in 1993.
Unless you would consider the activities of the Eugenics Records Office and its attempts to force sterilize the unfit for society while planning for a superior American race part of a World War on the weakest of society? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_Record_Office
The USA was not involved in the Eugenics Wars.
Personally, I don't need to connect the "reality" of Trek to actual reality, or even from one series to another. I like to enjoy each episode/movie/book/whatever for what it is. If there are inconsistencies or blanks left open, I can reconcile them, fill them in, or ignore them as necessary. It's not a big deal to me.
As for confusing the viewers with references to the Eugenics War in the 90s when it wasn't really happening, I don't think that would have been a problem for the general public.
As for confusing the viewers with references to the Eugenics War in the 90s when it wasn't really happening, I don't think that would have been a problem for the general public.
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