Did Future's End Wipe The Eugenics Wars Timeline?
- Thread starter hux
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The Eugenics Wars are still mentioned in Enterprise and Into Darkness. They probably could have mentioned them in Future's End but since it was not part of the plot it didn't need to be.
^ It could be rationalized that way, yes.
Eugenics isn't genetically augmenting someone, it's a breeding program. Given its history in our timeline, the real surprise is that Khan turned up in the Indian subcontinent, as opposed to south America...Though I suppose some Nazi types could have decided to hide out in the area using financial resources to take advantage of the tumult following the end of the raj etc....I daresay something like the caste system and the religious strife would even have been useful to them.
After that...There's no reason why a 'secret' wa r doesn't make sense, and Khan as a 'prince' doesn't necessarily make him a ruler in somewhere involved in the Eugenics war (it may even have simply been something like an arms race 'cold' war...India has its genetic Superman as soldiers and tacticians, so then of course Pakistan has to have some too etc etc)
Ironically it means Cumberbatch is a more technically feasible piece of casting for Khan than Montalban, despite the outcry.
Of course, our timeline is totally different and the Eugenics War was in fact just the London Mayoral election instead.
Khan won.
After that...There's no reason why a 'secret' wa r doesn't make sense, and Khan as a 'prince' doesn't necessarily make him a ruler in somewhere involved in the Eugenics war (it may even have simply been something like an arms race 'cold' war...India has its genetic Superman as soldiers and tacticians, so then of course Pakistan has to have some too etc etc)
Ironically it means Cumberbatch is a more technically feasible piece of casting for Khan than Montalban, despite the outcry.
Of course, our timeline is totally different and the Eugenics War was in fact just the London Mayoral election instead.
Khan won.
I do think futures end very neatly tied up why it is our tech now and then was getting more advanced than Trek.
Throw in a Dark Age after the third world war, making Trek style in a sort of future Renaissance, and it all dovetails very neatly and means any new prime stories don't have to worry in the slightest about not being futuristic enough...gene had that covered in 87, and Michael Piller etc just neaten up the stitching.
Throw in a Dark Age after the third world war, making Trek style in a sort of future Renaissance, and it all dovetails very neatly and means any new prime stories don't have to worry in the slightest about not being futuristic enough...gene had that covered in 87, and Michael Piller etc just neaten up the stitching.
It's stated that Kahn controlled 25% of the planet but he was forced off earth. Stands to reason that there would need to be a force behind that defeat. Given that humanity doesn't really change until after Cochrane's flight and even then it takes us 90+ years to do so. That doesn't make the episode implausible. Braxtons bad intro does that. His ship being damaged would have been better. Could end the into with him say oh no its meeeee.
In 99.9 percent of the time when someone in Star Trek gives an Earth date they do not mention which calendar they are using. Why should anyone assume that all Star Trek characters always use the same calendar, or if they did that it would be our Gregorian calendar?
As for different depictions of the 1990s in Star Trek, there were already several different and contradictory descriptions of Earth in the 1990s and the late 20th century before "Future's End", so it was already obvious that Star Trek characters were referring to at least 2 different eras as the 1990s by using at least 2 different calendars.
As for the calendar used in "Space Seed", Kirk & co. believed that Khan had left Earth in the early 1990s (from 1990 to 1993 SS) when they told Khan he had been sleeping for 2 centuries or for 200 years. Assuming that with typical vagueness they meant somewhere between 100 and 300 years, "Space Seed" should be about 2090 SS to 2293 SS.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, set fifteen years (14.0 to 16.0) after "Space Seed", Khan says:
KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?
and:
On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.
Khan was a prince or ruler from 1992 to 1996 SS. So Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan must be about 2092 SS to 2296 SS. Since "Space Seed" must be at least 14.0 years before Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "Space Seed" must be in the period 2090 SS to 2282 SS and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan must be about 2104 SS to 2296 SS.
When the admiral said the Eugenics Wars were 200 years earlier he may have meant sometime between 100 and 300 years in the past, thus dating DS9 to sometime between 2096 SS and 2296 SS. If "Space Seed" should be about a century before DS9, it should be before about 2196 SS. If you believe in the official dating of "Space Seed" to AD 2267 (I don't) , the year one in the SS calendar must be in or after AD 71.
Of course people in the Next generation era use years with several different lengths in stardate units, so the admiral may have been using a longer year than most people use to say that the Eugenics Wars were 200 years earlier.
As for different depictions of the 1990s in Star Trek, there were already several different and contradictory descriptions of Earth in the 1990s and the late 20th century before "Future's End", so it was already obvious that Star Trek characters were referring to at least 2 different eras as the 1990s by using at least 2 different calendars.
As for the calendar used in "Space Seed", Kirk & co. believed that Khan had left Earth in the early 1990s (from 1990 to 1993 SS) when they told Khan he had been sleeping for 2 centuries or for 200 years. Assuming that with typical vagueness they meant somewhere between 100 and 300 years, "Space Seed" should be about 2090 SS to 2293 SS.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, set fifteen years (14.0 to 16.0) after "Space Seed", Khan says:
KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?
and:
On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.
Khan was a prince or ruler from 1992 to 1996 SS. So Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan must be about 2092 SS to 2296 SS. Since "Space Seed" must be at least 14.0 years before Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "Space Seed" must be in the period 2090 SS to 2282 SS and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan must be about 2104 SS to 2296 SS.
When the admiral said the Eugenics Wars were 200 years earlier he may have meant sometime between 100 and 300 years in the past, thus dating DS9 to sometime between 2096 SS and 2296 SS. If "Space Seed" should be about a century before DS9, it should be before about 2196 SS. If you believe in the official dating of "Space Seed" to AD 2267 (I don't) , the year one in the SS calendar must be in or after AD 71.
Of course people in the Next generation era use years with several different lengths in stardate units, so the admiral may have been using a longer year than most people use to say that the Eugenics Wars were 200 years earlier.
A hat covers all the pertinent portions. Ideally, doctors like to avoid medically unnecessary procedures, but any changes have to pass the "touch it and see it it falls off/smears/comes out" test.
Keep in mind that when Vulcans go undercover on Earth, it's usually their past/our present or past. Humans, on the other hand, generally wind up in the present. Of all the places/times when aliens are likely to be found out on Earth, our past isn't the most likely. ("Little Green Men" being the exception, but remember who found them - the US military, who were searching. Nobody walks down main street San Fran circa 1996 looking for space aliens. Unless they wind up going in for 20th century medical treatment, they'll never be discovered.
Obviously it's a 'shame' the Eugenics War never came to pass in the 90s. Or perhaps it did and I was too busy watching Star Trek? Either way, it's part of Trek history, even though it sticks out like a sore thumb in our real history.
Embrace the craziness.
Embrace the craziness.
Imagine Khan as an Osama bin Laden type character. Imagine that even the eugenics aspect is something only known after the war. Think of the 'ethnic cleansing' that has been a tragic feature in actual wars in our actual recent history and present. That in itself is an aspect of eugenics (don't confuse eugenics with genetic engineering. The real icky factor of Khan is that he implies eugenics can actually be in some way successful.)
Suddenly, futures end not having a war torn LA doesn't stick out so much. America hasn't really been on the front line (as in attacks on American soil on a regular basis) as part of a war in a very long time indeed.
I think Future's End made the Eugenics war smaller scale--as in the books.
In the TOS timeline, I can see post Saturn NOVA rockets advancing after Apollo, true TSTO shuttles.
Kirk wouldn't have been looking for these things in Voyage Home, around the time--maybe a little before Futures End.
Future's End--even more so than Narada or the Xindi--is what explains the big leap in warp tech--leading to NX-01 and the Kelvin timeline.
In the TOS timeline, I can see post Saturn NOVA rockets advancing after Apollo, true TSTO shuttles.
Kirk wouldn't have been looking for these things in Voyage Home, around the time--maybe a little before Futures End.
Future's End--even more so than Narada or the Xindi--is what explains the big leap in warp tech--leading to NX-01 and the Kelvin timeline.
It's possible the real Eugenics War was not fought with guns.
If the aim was to improve the species, until it was worth ruling, rather than ruling mankind in order to facilitate improvements, then it would have been supermen with condomproof sperm, knocking up as many women as possible with abortion proof foetuses, so that 12 to 15 years down the track he had an armed cult really upset about how dumb normal humans are.
Khan needed an army.
Manipulating spermbanks, and fertility clinics would be a faster use of resources, but never mind, but that would mean that Khan had fathered maybe 10s of thousands of babies before ww3 killed 60 million people.
If the aim was to improve the species, until it was worth ruling, rather than ruling mankind in order to facilitate improvements, then it would have been supermen with condomproof sperm, knocking up as many women as possible with abortion proof foetuses, so that 12 to 15 years down the track he had an armed cult really upset about how dumb normal humans are.
Khan needed an army.
Manipulating spermbanks, and fertility clinics would be a faster use of resources, but never mind, but that would mean that Khan had fathered maybe 10s of thousands of babies before ww3 killed 60 million people.
I think it's pretty much impossible to make sense of Star Trek's timeline these days. I wanted to pretend for the longest time it all somehow made sense but I was deluding myself.
In 2016, they wouldn't even need to bother given their ears would pass as a piece of increasingly common body modifications.
Something else just came to mind: CRISPR
This could be a way the war was fought on the down low.
Zika was the first shot. Kill off a lot--and replace....
Why build a huge genocidal war machine when all you need is a glove-box?
Davros: Yes... Yes... To hold in my hand, a capsule that contained such power... To know that life and death on such a scale was my choice... To know that the tiny pressure of my thumb - enough to break the glass - would end everything... Yes! I would do it! That power would set me up above the gods!
Khan was Trek's Davros
Do you know Colonel Green?
His deal in human history was sterilizing/murdering the genetically deformed from the radioactive fallout of wwiii so that future generations would have healthy, pretty babies.
Khan's deal was that he ruled %25 of the Earth for 4 years.
His deal in human history was sterilizing/murdering the genetically deformed from the radioactive fallout of wwiii so that future generations would have healthy, pretty babies.
Khan's deal was that he ruled %25 of the Earth for 4 years.
Never mind that.
Spock and Nero go back in time, Vulcan is destroyed, history is changed.
Does Voyager still send Braxton back in time, thus triggering the computer revolution as we know it?
Does the Enterprise E still come back in time to help with First Contact?
Oh no, now I've gone cross-eyed.
Spock and Nero go back in time, Vulcan is destroyed, history is changed.
Does Voyager still send Braxton back in time, thus triggering the computer revolution as we know it?
Does the Enterprise E still come back in time to help with First Contact?
Oh no, now I've gone cross-eyed.
If it's one timeline which changes it's future every time the past fidgets...
The act of time travel is a prophylactic to the changes on a time exacted by alterations to the past. Sometimes that prophylactic does not last for ever, or is not as strong as one would hope, as inconsistent history becomes too in-congruent.
If it's branch theory, that time splits in two every time a traveller arrives...
Many, many, many futures share a common past, but as a traveller arrives in the past, a new time line created where they did not arrive in the past (or the other way around), which means that an arriving traveller is both there and not there. The problem with branch theory is that after your adventure, when you travel forward in time, a traveller might split upon reaching a branch, so that upon leaving 1963, you could become a thousand different the same person arriving in a thousand different 2016s.
The act of time travel is a prophylactic to the changes on a time exacted by alterations to the past. Sometimes that prophylactic does not last for ever, or is not as strong as one would hope, as inconsistent history becomes too in-congruent.
If it's branch theory, that time splits in two every time a traveller arrives...
Many, many, many futures share a common past, but as a traveller arrives in the past, a new time line created where they did not arrive in the past (or the other way around), which means that an arriving traveller is both there and not there. The problem with branch theory is that after your adventure, when you travel forward in time, a traveller might split upon reaching a branch, so that upon leaving 1963, you could become a thousand different the same person arriving in a thousand different 2016s.
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