Assignment: Earth and the rest of Trek history

[Gotham Central]

Assignment: Earth seems like a bit of an anomaly in Trek history. For starters it has the Enterprise going back in time for research purposes. That seems like a rather dubious assignment from Starfleet. In fact, at no other point in Trek history (prior to the 29th century) does Starfleet seem to condone the casual use of time travel.

Secondly, Gary Seven's mission seems a bit odd given everything that we know about Earth history. They prevented the launch of an orbital weapon's platform but to what end? Spock talks about orbital weapons being a "problem"....why? Why does no one mention the fact that the Eugenics Wars are only 30 years away (and world war III is almsot a century later? This begs the question of what exactly was the Enterprise doing in 1968 anyway? The 60's are not a particularly traumatic moment in world history given everything that happens at the end of the 20th century and the middle of the 21st.

 

[Wonderlust King]

I think your looking a little to much into it man. They wrote it in the 60's not knowing what would happen in the future. The rest of trek just seemed to sort of ignore the episode. Fans dwelling on minor inconsistencies like this is what i think drives a lot of people away from trek.

 

[Borg451]

I think your looking a little to much into it man. They wrote it in the 60's not knowing what would happen in the future. The rest of trek just seemed to sort of ignore the episode. Fans dwelling on minor inconsistencies like this is what i think drives a lot of people away from trek.

He is right tho.. dont make sense..

 

[Carpe Occasio]

TOS was just trying to stay on TV. They didn't really know where the show was headed. "Canon" didn't exist yet (sorry about using a bad word). TOS was full of throw away episodes like Assignment: Earth.

 

[Mistral]

Also, Ass Earth (did I do that?) was s'posed to be a pilot for another series with Trek hopefully tying in viewers. If you want a "canon" explanation of Gary Seven go read "the Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh Vol I & II" . It pretty well puts ol' Gary into his place.

 

[Michael]

TOS was just trying to stay on TV. They didn't really know where the show was headed. "Canon" didn't exist yet (sorry about using a bad word). TOS was full of throw away episodes like Assignment: Earth.

"Throw away episodes" in what way?

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Also, Ass Earth (did I do that?) was s'posed to be a pilot for another series with Trek hopefully tying in viewers. If you want a "canon" explanation of Gary Seven go read "the Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh Vol I & II" . It pretty well puts ol' Gary into his place.

Yes, I thought I remembered reading somewhere (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... oh wait, wrong franchise) that a spinoff series was planned. It would have fit in well with TV of the era like The Invaders, The Prisoner, etc.

 

[erastus25]

Also, Ass Earth (did I do that?) was s'posed to be a pilot for another series with Trek hopefully tying in viewers. If you want a "canon" explanation of Gary Seven go read "the Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh Vol I & II" . It pretty well puts ol' Gary into his place.

Yes, I thought I remembered reading somewhere (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... oh wait, wrong franchise) that a spinoff series was planned. It would have fit in well with TV of the era like The Invaders, The Prisoner, etc.

You are correct. That is a well-known piece of Treklore. There's even a fanmade Assignment:Earth opening theme floating around youtube.

 

[Nerys Myk]

TOS was just trying to stay on TV. They didn't really know where the show was headed. "Canon" didn't exist yet (sorry about using a bad word). TOS was full of throw away episodes like Assignment: Earth.

"Throw away episodes" in what way?

I assume he mean it was just a TV show back then. It was a job to the writers. actors and crew, not the world wide phenomena that would launch four other series, a score of movies, BBSs and a ton of merchandise. The episode in question was made as a backdoor pilot not as a cog in a vast over arcing fully thought out continuity.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

TOS was just trying to stay on TV. They didn't really know where the show was headed. "Canon" didn't exist yet (sorry about using a bad word). TOS was full of throw away episodes like Assignment: Earth.

"Throw away episodes" in what way?

I assume he mean it was just a TV show back then. It was a job to the writers. actors and crew, not the world wide phenomena that would launch four other series, a score of movies, BBSs and a ton of merchandise. The episode in question was made as a backdoor pilot not as a cog in a vast over arcing fully thought out continuity.

What Nerys Myk said.

 

[Michael]

"Throw away episodes" in what way?

I assume he mean it was just a TV show back then. It was a job to the writers. actors and crew, not the world wide phenomena that would launch four other series, a score of movies, BBSs and a ton of merchandise. The episode in question was made as a backdoor pilot not as a cog in a vast over arcing fully thought out continuity.

What Nerys Myk said.

Ah, okay then. I just think it sounds so negative.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

I assume he mean it was just a TV show back then. It was a job to the writers. actors and crew, not the world wide phenomena that would launch four other series, a score of movies, BBSs and a ton of merchandise. The episode in question was made as a backdoor pilot not as a cog in a vast over arcing fully thought out continuity.

What Nerys Myk said.

Ah, okay then. I just think it sounds so negative.

I've noticed that often times on forums what is posted as descriptive, or simply as fact (IMO), is often interpreted as negative. I was just trying to explain the non-sequitur nature of Assignment: Earth in the context of TOS.

 

[Michael]

^ You know, it could be because English is not my mother tongue.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

^ You know, it could be because English is not my mother tongue.

It's all good. No worries.

 

[Biggshow]

This begs the question of what exactly was the Enterprise doing in 1968 anyway? The 60's are not a particularly traumatic moment in world history given everything that happens at the end of the 20th century and the middle of the 21st.

Well, let's see. A president is assassinated, a brush war in Asia threatens to bring the world into its third world war, a civil rights leader is assassinated, the previously mentioned president's brother (now a presidential candidate himself) is assassinated, there is a cultural revolution going on (something about a summer of love?), and at the end of the decade, man walks on the moon.

You're right. Nothing worth mentioning.

Yes, that is sarcasm you smell.

 

[Timo]

It doesn't seem particularly big in the, you know, big scheme of things. Assassinating luminaries is a common pastime in the United States; brush wars are a constant rather than an event, and not especially hot in 1968 as opposed to, say, 1954 or 1975; and man didn't walk on the moon in 1968 yet, not even in the Trek universe, so Kirk was one year too early. As for cultural revolutions, the one of any significance was in China, and had been ongoing for two years already - but Kirk wasn't observing China.

However, we know that 23rd century records of the 20th century are fragmentary to a degree. Kirk might have been trying to patch annoying if random holes, such as how the isograted circuit revolution in computer technology really got started. Or he might have argued with Starfleet that the Khan and Nomad incidents prove how crucial it is to regain detailed information on the late 20th century, as Earth would already have reached into interstellar space at that time, with lasting consequences.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Biggshow]

It doesn't seem particularly big in the, you know, big scheme of things. Assassinating luminaries is a common pastime in the United States; brush wars are a constant rather than an event, and not especially hot in 1968 as opposed to, say, 1954 or 1975; and man didn't walk on the moon in 1968 yet, not even in the Trek universe, so Kirk was one year too early. As for cultural revolutions, the one of any significance was in China, and had been ongoing for two years already - but Kirk wasn't observing China.

However, we know that 23rd century records of the 20th century are fragmentary to a degree. Kirk might have been trying to patch annoying if random holes, such as how the isograted circuit revolution in computer technology really got started. Or he might have argued with Starfleet that the Khan and Nomad incidents prove how crucial it is to regain detailed information on the late 20th century, as Earth would already have reached into interstellar space at that time, with lasting consequences.

Timo Saloniemi

Well, I respectfully disagree. Assassinations may seem commonplace in today's jaded world, but in 1968 it seemed like the world was falling apart. Also, if you don't think the cultural revolution in the 60s and in particular, 1968, was significant then I would suggest that you simply don't know your history. It can be argued that the summer of love changed the American (and to some extent the world's) cultural landscape to such a degree that the polarization taking place in the country over the past few years merely looks like an after dinner dispute over who's going to pay the check. The country was in a generational war and we are still coping with the fallout 40 years later. The divisiveness over Vietnam was palpable and led to the riots at the Chicago Democratic Party Convention that year. Johnson did not seek re-election that year because of how badly the war was going.

The cold war was also at one of its most heated times. We were always on the brink of the nuclear holocaust that, thank God, never happened (although it came within a hair's breadth of happening in Oct. of 1962).

I included the other events of the 60s because the original poster said the 60s were not a particularly dramatic moment in world history. I listed mostly American events but all kinds of craziness was going on all over the world. I would contend that it was one of the most turbulent decades of the 20th C., maybe second only to the late 30s-early 40s.

Even if you want to hook it into the ST universe only, yeah, the scientists engaged in the Eugenics Wars were just getting started, NASA was still riding high and putting into motion programs that would lead to Nomad and V'ger, and somehow an American TV network was getting hold of Starfleet log entries.

So there.

 

[Timo]

I must argue that I still agree with the original poster that 1968 is not a particularly spectacular year in comparison with any other arbitrarily chosen year of the 20th century. Perhaps it's not less interesting than, say, 1967 or 1969, but it doesn't really stand out as a year of "surviving desperate problems" that Kirk or Starfleet or Federation historians would be keen on observing.

That is, it doesn't stand out like that in our universe. No conflict escalated to a breaking point and then failed to break. However, it may well be that 1968 was a crucial year in the Trek universe, featuring a fictional superpower crisis that put the 1962 Cuban troubles in its shadow. What Gary Seven did with the space nuke thingamabob, and no doubt continued to do with other related things, may have been elemental in defusing that crisis, in some counterintuitive way that has left 23rd century historians beduffled.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

And yet every documentary series on the sixties singles out 68 as the climax of the decade, socially, politically, culturally.

Look at Tom Hanks' series "From the Earth to the Moon." The whole 13 hours was about the moon program itself, the people involved, the hardware, the adventure - except the episode about the first cirumlunar flight (Apollo 8?), which juxtaposed it against the societal upheval going on in America. That episode was simply titled "1968."

 

[Mistral]

I must argue that I still agree with the original poster that 1968 is not a particularly spectacular year in comparison with any other arbitrarily chosen year of the 20th century. Perhaps it's not less interesting than, say, 1967 or 1969, but it doesn't really stand out as a year of "surviving desperate problems" that Kirk or Starfleet or Federation historians would be keen on observing.

That is, it doesn't stand out like that in our universe. No conflict escalated to a breaking point and then failed to break. However, it may well be that 1968 was a crucial year in the Trek universe, featuring a fictional superpower crisis that put the 1962 Cuban troubles in its shadow. What Gary Seven did with the space nuke thingamabob, and no doubt continued to do with other related things, may have been elemental in defusing that crisis, in some counterintuitive way that has left 23rd century historians beduffled.

Timo Saloniemi

A lot of noise was/is being made about 1968. Tons of cultural references to the year. In Kirk's time its possible that is what they have- references- with a dearth of hard facts. That would make 68 appear to be crucial to Earth history and justify its being targeted by a Stafleet research mission