Given what we know of Andorian culture, and the importance they place on fighting and military prowess? I'm sure it would be.
It sure looked like one. And let's face it - after a nuclear war, how could it not be?
Earth - 2063 Onwards - No Vulcans
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Given what we know of Andorian culture, and the importance they place on fighting and military prowess? I'm sure it would be.
It sure looked like one. And let's face it - after a nuclear war, how could it not be?
With Andorian help. But so what? The fact that Earth survived -- again, with Andorian help -- does not mean that helping Earth did not represent a significant planetary security risk for Andor. And one seemingly undertaken for almost entirely altruistic reasons!
That just depends on their underlying premises. A Vulcan chauvinist might well argue that it is illogical to help a species that has proven itself so immature and self-destructive, as such a species may pose a danger to the outside universe.
I'm sorry, but if there's one thing the survivors of World War III must have had, just to be survivors, it's courage. That along could significantly impress the Andorians.
And most of what you just listed describes Klingon culture far more accurately than Andorian culture. I agree that the Andorians value courage -- but they also seem to place a high premium on loyalty; surely there would be plenty of inspiring examples of loyalty in a post-WW3 Earth.
I see no evidence whatsoever that the Andorians place an unusual level of importance on "prowess in battle" or "strength." Any culture will place some importance on these traits, just as a matter of ensuring survival, but that doesn't mean it's the foundation of Andorian culture the way it is Klingon culture. I really think you're projecting your attitudes about Klingons onto the Andorians.
We know they describe themselves as violent; we have no evidence about what form that violence takes, how it is channeled. Perhaps, for instance, the Andorians place a premium on the idea of fair violence -- violent competition between parties with an equal chance of winning. They may also have a propensity to channel violent impulses into competitive behaviors. A concern with the idea that violence or competition must be mediated through fairness could lend itself to a compassion, to a concern that unfairness be curbed and levels of fair competition be guaranteed. Weaknesses seen as resulting from structural inequalities rather than personal faults would thus be subject to reform.
Another way of looking at things:
The Andorians land at Bozeman, Montana, and shake hands with Zefram Cochrane. They learn of a vast and destructive war, ordered foolishly by self-interested politicians, yet waged with courage and honor by the loyal soldiers of the nations of the world. Seeing in this willingness to sacrifice for their respective nations a common nobility to all of the soldiers of humanity, the Andorians endeavor to teach Humans about the nobility and selflessness of all of Earth's nations, to understand that their violence devolved from a manifestation of fair competition to a manifestation of self-destructive power lust. Seeing a hostile universe in the Klingons and the Tellarites, the Andorians, impressed by Humanity's courage and resilience even in the fact of nuclear winter, vow to help Earth rebuild to the point where it can hold its own against hostile alien worlds and become a valued ally of Andor in future conflicts.
See? I've put all these concepts through the lens of a preoccupation with some form of violence, but I've also shown how that preoccupation can be mediated by compassion, a concern for certain levels of equality, a desire to feel empathy with others, etc.
Which is not to say that that's necessarily how it would go down. But it's perfectly consistent with what we know of Andorian culture.
Sure. But it still doesn't tell us anything about Andorian policy towards less-powerful worlds.
Maybe. Or maybe the Andorians are more enlightened than you're giving them credit for.
Heck, in the books, Andor had been unified under the Parliament Andoria by, IIRC, Thalisar the Last, for around 200 years at the time of ST:FC. They were already a liberal democracy at that time.
So you're saying that the Andorians could have...competitive sports teams? I like where this is going.
Let me put it this way: I fully expect that the Federation-era NHL is dominated by Andorian players.
We hardly saw what Earth looked 10 years after the war, just a few acres worth of wooded area outside Bozeman.
The West coast looks very green and lush from orbit. Beautiful sunset for Seattle! And Central Canada appears to be populated, judging from the night lights.
Spain and Morocco looks like they have been having good rain lately.
And the trees looked great to me.
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It's sights like this, that leads me to believe that either the United States was completely uninvolved in WW3, or was at most involved in a peripheral way.And the trees looked great to me.
Geordie is standing on top of a missile silo, on the grounds of a military base. This should have been a prime target, yet the trees (as mentioned) show no signs of having been knocked over, stripped of their foliage or burned ten years before. None of the living trees behind Geordie should be more than twenty feet tall, and they would be sparse.
Instead the forest is lush and tall.
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So the trees grew back so quickly because they had wild unprotected tree sex?
As for other races, and what things would have been like if they had been the ones to make first contact:
Tellarites: After initially struggling through the opening diplomatic functions ("What kind of a name is 'Zefram Cochrane'? Did your mother not like you?" "Oh yeah? Well YOUR mother was on my breakfast plate this morning!"), they'd have the most wild party you can imagine.
Klingons: Would have immediately turned the population of Earth into slaves.
Romulans: Probably would have simply obliterated the survivors (given what we know of how xenophobic the Romulans of that era were) and occupied Earth for themselves.
Cardassians: This one's a bit tricky. We don't really know if the Cardassians of 2063 were as fascist and militaristic as the ones of 300 years later, do we? So if a Cardassian ship had somehow managed to stumble across Earth, the result could be anything. Maybe they'd simply ignore it? Or, if they're more the familiar types of Cardies, would exterminate the survivors and take what resources post-WW3 Earth had left, like the Romulans would.
What they should have done in Enterprise is a soft reboot/retcon of the Star Trek back story and have it be a bacteriological war that Earth had and not a nuke war, as in the movie version of V for Vendetta, or have a pulse war that would wreck nations and cities, as seen in Dark Angel (people would still die as electronics would be affected enough for airliners to crash, subs to sink, people on life support to stop being supported, trains to be stranded, ships to sink, systems to be erased, people to freeze to death because heat is not on or swelter to death because there's no air conditioning, etc.)
I think it's pretty clear from ST:FC that even if nuclear weapons never reached Montana, the United States government has collapsed. The U.S. Air Force isn't in the habit of letting eccentric alcoholic scientists (whose employees have to scrounge for six months to find enough titanium for a small cockpit) take over their missile silos and refurbish their ICBMs.
Between that and Riker's and Data's lines at the start of the film (levels of nuclear fallout in the atmosphere, 700 million dead, most major governments collapsed), it's pretty clear that World War III contained a limited nuclear component, and the implication seems to be that either the United States government has collapsed or that it is simply no longer has the capacity to control important governmental installations.
Also, the townsmen of Bozeman looked more like refugees than like people having a fine and dandy day in Montana. It's pretty clear that the economic infrastructure of the continental U.S. has largely deteriorated.
Between that and Riker's and Data's lines at the start of the film (levels of nuclear fallout in the atmosphere, 700 million dead, most major governments collapsed), it's pretty clear that World War III contained a limited nuclear component, and the implication seems to be that either the United States government has collapsed or that it is simply no longer has the capacity to control important governmental installations.
Also, the townsmen of Bozeman looked more like refugees than like people having a fine and dandy day in Montana. It's pretty clear that the economic infrastructure of the continental U.S. has largely deteriorated.
Actually the USA is one of the few nations that survived the war. ST:FC puts the war in 2053 (and takes place 10 years later), but a 52-star US flag seen in TNG is said to date anywhere from 2033 to 2079. And you'll notice, Riker says "very few governments left". He doesn't say NONE are left. "Very few" implies that there are some.
(Besides, if you don't believe my theory that the Vulcans helped in the cleanup, there must have been some government left to help the others...because otherwise, like I said, there'd be no possibility of recovery, certainly not in only 50 years.)
There could have been any number of reasons why Cochrane had that silo. Hell, maybe the US government itself was paying him to develop the warp drive! He did say he was in it for the money. I find it likely that the government - any government - would be one of the few entities with enough financial resources left to make sure Cochrane is well paid for his work.
As for the condition of the people working there? Maybe they're just all drunks like Cochrane was.
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So? People would probably still use the then-current flag after the government collapses -- it's not like their sense of national identity would cease just because the government does. And it's entirely possible that a new U.S. government was reconstituted some years after First Contact.
I do believe the Vulcans helped. I just think the Andorians would have helped if they had been the ones to land, too.
I don't buy it for one second. Why were there no USAF personnel at the silo base? No USAF personnel working on the project? Where was the base commander? Why did Cochrane have such a small staff? Why were they so underfunded? If it were a government project, why retrofit an ICBM in a destitute part of Montana, instead of building a proper launch vehicle down in Florida?
Let's face it: As of 2063, the U.S. government has collapsed. It may have been reconstituted between 2063 and 2079 -- in fact, I think it must have, since several Trek novels have featured 23rd and 24th Century U.S. presidents and since the ENT episode "Divergence" has an onscreen address that includes the line "U.S.A." on it -- but it's clearly not there in ST:FC.
With all this talk of WW III, I'm duty bound to point out the most excellent TBBS fan fiction (and, from what I hear, soon to be adapted into an actual Trek novel):
Star Trek: The Iron Horse
Think "Star Trek meets Damnation Alley."
Star Trek: The Iron Horse
Think "Star Trek meets Damnation Alley."
As for the condition of the people working there? Maybe they're just all drunks like Cochrane was.
I believe that Cochrane and Co. were all suffering from radiation effects and general poverty relative to how the infrastructure of the USA was after WWIII (although where they were getting food from, I don't know.)
I always understood "Desert Crossing" to mean that the U.S. survived the war:
The number of surviving American cities seems to suggest that as well. In addition to San Francisco, there are references to:
- Anchorage (Trip visited there as a child)
- Atlanta (McCoy's birthplace)
- Bloomington (Jameway was born and raised there)
- Boston (Harkins had a sister-in-law visiting from there)
- Chicago (one of Clare Raymond's descendants was born there after first contact)
- Dallas (an interstellar embarkation point)
- Duluth (Sergeant Kemper's hometown)
- Indianapolis (home to another of Clare Raymond's descendants)
- Juneau (reported weather conditions during the Whale Probe crisis)
- Madison (transporter tests were mentioned there while Hoshi was hallucinating)
- Mobile (Trip planned to take his parents there shortly before he was killed)
- New Orleans (Sisko's Creole Kitchen was in the French Quarter)
- New York City (birthplace of several more of Clare Raymond's post-first contact descendants; Trip knew the city in the 22nd Century; Harry Kim went to Julliard)
- Oakland (Archer was going to have his portrait painted there)
- Pensacola (several Trip-related references)
- Portland (Judith Sisko lived there during DS9)
- Riverside, IA (home to Kirk's family)
- St. Louis (where Beverly studied dance)
It's possible that any or all of these places (except maybe the very-intact San Francisco) survived in a manner similar to Britain in WWII (i.e. badly off during and shortly after the conflict, but not generally devastated), or perhaps even Paris or Berlin, which are not totally unrecognizable in comparison to their pre-war selves.
That said, I think Zefram Cochrane's formulation of his vision as "dollar signs" is indicative of an at least somewhat functional United States government. (As is his statement that he built the Phoenix in order to retire to a tropical island.)
Your thread necro game is strong. In any event, I don't think the line from "Desert Crossing" is incompatible with the idea of the U.S. government collapsing prior to First Contact; cultures don't cease to exist just because their governments do. Other surviving nations may well be wary of Americans making first contact with Vulcans if they fear the Vulcans will empower a potentially hostile regime to re-assert control over the U.S., for instance.
I mean, the number of surviving cities across the world period seems incompatible with the idea of a nuclear war so awful that it led to the near-collapse of human civilization and the collapse of most major governments. We just kind of have to accept it as a conceit of Star Trek that humanity came to the brink of extinction but magically also didn't lose its major cities.
Who?
Possible.
I don't agree at all. The collapse of major governments would not mean that people wouldn't still be engaging in commerce and trying to get rich. Barter would be common in economically devastated areas, sure, but anyone trying to create something like warp drive would no doubt be thinking about selling it to the highest bidder -- in other words, areas where governments still function and use currency. It's entirely plausible, for instance, that Cochrane knows there's no functional U.S. government, but intends to sell it to, say, the Brazilian government, or the Australian government.
And, again, we run into the basic question of why the United States Air Force has apparently abandoned a missile silo and is letting an eccentric drunkard with next to no staff have his way with an intercontinental ballistic missile, if the U.S. government has not wholly or partially collapsed.
Thread necro: Not in this forum.
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