• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Does moving the Eugenics Wars into the 21st century fundamentally change things?

Do you prefer...

  • Moving the Eugenics Wars to fit within a possible version of our timeline?

    Votes: 27 36.5%
  • Or keeping it in the 1990s and just accepting that as Trek's version of the 1990s?

    Votes: 47 63.5%

  • Total voters
    74
^ The arc of Enterprise that explained away the smooth-headed Klingons of the original series was a correction for a problem that didn't exist. Welcome to Star Trek.
 
^And to this day, I still wish they had kept Worf's ambiguous non-answer as the official answer.
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
This is the scene I want to see sometime in a 31st century Star Trek show. A scene set on a Klingon world and in that scene you see every iteration of Klingon that has ever existed in the continuity -- the smooth heads, standard head ridges, JJverse Klingons, Discovery Klingons, and any version of Klingon that I might be forgetting, and just for the hell of it, some variations of Klingon that we haven't seen yet.

And then I want a Starfleet officer to inquire to a Klingon about the various types of Klingons before them, and then have that Klingon answer, "we don't speak of it to outsiders" and leave it at that, which would finally bring it right back to where it should have been left in the first place.
 
Last edited:
I mean what's the fundamental difference between creating a narrative with an Earth that has manned space flight throughout the solar system in the present-day, and having to live with a 56-year old story about a fictional war in 1992?
Because the former is not what Star Trek was created to be.
Khan escaped to space in 1996 is like saying Doctor Who fans can't make a connection because the Daleks didn't invade London in the 1960s.
Different things. The London of the Doctor Who is still more or less the London of our world. They weren't creating an alternate Universe there either.
 
I just disagree with Goldsman's justification and find it really lacking.

Okay, but that's an opinion. The fact is that Goldsman is the one making the shows and this is the decision he made. Whether we agree with the reasoning or not is irrelevant, because it's a done deed. It's a waste of time to relitigate a decision that's already in the past.

I've often disliked the choices Trek creators made and disagreed with their reasons for making them, but they still happened. You have to cope with reality as it exists.
 
^ The arc of Enterprise that explained away the smooth-headed Klingons of the original series was a correction for a problem that didn't exist. Welcome to Star Trek.
DS9 made it a problem when they explicitly called out the difference. They should have just put Michael Dorn in TOS-style Klingon makeup and called it a day.

But eh, I like the goofy ENT explanation for it all, so it's fine.
 
Voyager arrived in the 90s and there wasn't any overt evidence of the Eugenics Wars going while Neelix and Kes were watching TV.

But remember Braxton arrived earlier than that in like the 1960s. So maybe he messed up the timeline a bit. The Romulan waiting for the wars might have thought it was all over with when Voyager showed up but then they left pretty quickly so she just continued on waiting.

Rain Robinson had a model of the Botany Bay in her office, which could have been a prototype that Henry Starling was working on and then maybe his research was taken over by Soong for his Khan project.

So to me, SNW lines up with VOY pretty well since they both have issues with TOS version of events.
 
DS9 made it a problem when they explicitly called out the difference. They should have just put Michael Dorn in TOS-style Klingon makeup and called it a day.

Which would've been a cute joke for the knowledgeable fans, but confusing as hell to the viewers who didn't know TOS. Basic rule of writing: Always write for the least knowledgeable member of your audience. The goal is to include everyone, not to build barriers for the people who aren't already in the club.


Voyager arrived in the 90s and there wasn't any overt evidence of the Eugenics Wars going while Neelix and Kes were watching TV.

Which doesn't prove anything. In the real-life 1990s, you'd be hard-pressed to find American TV coverage of the massive civil wars that ravaged Africa, because American news media tend to ignore anything that isn't about Americans or white people. "Space Seed" suggested that the Eugenics Wars were fought largely in Asia and other parts of the world, and no wars were fought on continental US soil since the early 20th century, so it would've been consistent if America had had little or no involvement in the EW.

Of course, now we have another explanation, but it was never an inconsistency to begin with.
 
Yes, it does change my relationship to the various series for the Trek management to try to keep "correcting" various things to match actual history as it happens. I've also noticed that they're somewhat selective about what to "correct" and what to keep as is, and that it varies from series to series.
 
Voyager arrived in the 90s and there wasn't any overt evidence of the Eugenics Wars going while Neelix and Kes were watching TV.

But remember Braxton arrived earlier than that in like the 1960s. So maybe he messed up the timeline a bit. The Romulan waiting for the wars might have thought it was all over with when Voyager showed up but then they left pretty quickly so she just continued on waiting.

Rain Robinson had a model of the Botany Bay in her office, which could have been a prototype that Henry Starling was working on and then maybe his research was taken over by Soong for his Khan project.

So to me, SNW lines up with VOY pretty well since they both have issues with TOS version of events.
Plus Valtane died in "Flashback" when he's alive at the end of STVI. Alternate timeline!
 
Yes, it does change my relationship to the various series for the Trek management to try to keep "correcting" various things to match actual history as it happens. I've also noticed that they're somewhat selective about what to "correct" and what to keep as is, and that it varies from series to series.
How does it change your relationship? Does it reduce enjoyment?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sci
Ok all they need to do is this. Have a super smart God like alen like Q state to a character on a show that there are literally trillions of alternate realities in existence. Then simply state there's even a reality out there that depicts their lives on a show called " Star Trek" creared by a man called Gene Roddenberry. Call it a day and stop trying to parallel the real world. Or at least , trying to parallel it too closely.
 
Last edited:
Wow. That poll astounds me.

*Looks around* - I think i kinda follow world events. I missed World War III?

Star Trek is about humanity reaching an optimistic future.

Star Trek first speculated there would be Eugenics Wars at the end of the 20th century and WWIII at the beginning (to middle) of the 21st. Since that did not happen as speculated, Star Trek has decided to adjust the timeline so those events are still in our future.

I thinks that's rather pessimistic to feel such events must happen or should be treated as yet to happen. It's much more optimistic, in my opinion, to say "Look! Humanity avoided this fate!"

So I'd rather Trek be in an Alt reality.
 
Ok all they need to do is this. Have a super smart God like alen like Q state to a character on a show that there are literally trillions of alternate realities in existence. Then simply state there's even a reality out there that depicts their lives on a show called " Star Trek" creared by a man called Gene Roddenberry. Call it a day and stop trying to parallel the real world. Or at least , trying to parallel it too closely.
So
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Visit_to_a_Weird_Planet
or
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Visit_to_a_Weird_Planet_Revisited
or something like it...
 
@Shawnster exactly my point! Every good thing we make happen ahead of these series' shared "schedule" of history, every bad thing we manage to avert and avoid altogether from the same "schedule", we can credit to these series' joint inspiration. Let's make sure the powers that are understand that.
 
@Shawnster exactly my point! Every good thing we make happen ahead of these series' shared "schedule" of history, every bad thing we manage to avert and avoid altogether from the same "schedule", we can credit to these series' joint inspiration. Let's make sure the powers that are understand that.
So Star Trek future is not the goal any more? But to avoid calamity through ideas shared in the inspiration?

I'm going back to philosphy school if this keeps up.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top