Does Trek take place in an alternate timeline from ours?

Yes, I think it's definitely an alternate timeline from ours. We weren't launching nuclear platforms into Earth orbit in 1968, and we didn't have the Eugenics Wars/World War III in our 1990s, thankfully.

And now that I think of it, the casualty numbers that Spock lists for World Wars I & II in "Bread and Circuses" don't jibe with ours, either. I don't think that Roddenberry & co. intended TOS to be an alternate history from ours, but that's what it's turned into.

 

Yes since none of the critical post TOS events happened.

 

Every piece of fiction does.

 

Then there was Edith Keeler having a hairstyle from three decades in the future, and wanting to go see a Clark Gable movie before Clark Gable was a well-known leading man.

Kor

 

Perhaps we are living in the alternate timeline and Trek is the real one. Personally, I find it hard to believe that we got all the way to the moon and then just gave up...

M.

 

You and me both, brother!

 

The television programmes of the sixties and seventies didn't want to mention real life nations or get into any trouble for mentioning or operating in their countries at the time! But if you know the era and style of country I think we could all guess which ones they mean!
JB

 

Well perhaps but Texas city was a human construction of the 22nd century on earth in the episode Journey To Where and the atmosphere was heavily polluted according to Dr.Thomas Logan of the complex! Maybe The Apes came later or were hidden from Logan's sensors?
JB

 

I'm pretty sure even MASH took place in an alternate reality, where the Korean War lasted 12 years.

 

Didn't a bunch of events from Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine have events that no one can affirm that the dates already past, like the Bell Riots?

 

Bell Riots is in the near future.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bell_Riots
The Bell Riots were a pivotal series of events on Earth that took place in September of 2024. Started in San Francisco's Sanctuary District A, they were named after protest leader Gabriel Bell. One of the most violent civil disturbances in all of American history, the riots and subsequent crackdown resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Sanctuary District residents. (DS9: "Past Tense, Part I", "Past Tense, Part II")

 

Oh sorry, I thought it took place in 2010... my memory is bad...

 

2010 was the year we made contact. There's a documentary about it.

 

I think it's clear that Trek is not our future. That's why I think instead of trashing the franchise with every incarnation, it should try to be a reasonably consistent story on its own. Go ahead in depict the 90's with Eugenics wars and sleeper ships. Trek doesn't loose value just becasue it's not our future. it doesn't have to be our future to inspire us. It's about humanity, and can encourage us to be better; even though we may never travel aboard a faster than light ship with the name Enterprise. Many other franchises inspire us without being in "OUR universe."

 

They kept retconning the dates so that everything was crammed into the proper timeframe.

Kor

 

It was created as an extrapolation of our present It works best as such. Just about all the journeys to the 20th/21st Centuries have been to an approximation of our present. The one percent of viewers who need to keep every anachronism in "continuity" out of some misguided notion that it makes the show better or believable need to let it go. Ignore the anachronisms and more forward. Create a show based on a future based on the present not the past.

 

Alternate Realities. I never watched 'West Wing', but had a good friend who was a big fan. I remember vaguely having a very interesting and engaging conversation with her in the early 2000s, asking her how that series did (or did not) integrate 911, recent events, recent Presidents, etc., into its storylines. We talk about alternate timelines in science fiction, but most of these TV shows that involve government intrigue (House of Cards, 24, Madame Secretary) must be taking place across the fictional expanse, over in the realm of alternate realities. Pretty sure that that is also where we would find McHale & Parker piloting the PT-73.....

 

MAN FROM UNCLE tended to do that as well, as I recall. You'd have generic Eastern European countries or South America dictatorships or whatever that were stand-ins for real counties of that sort.

 

Sorry, but consistency is criteria I use to judge a story by. Errors, and inconsistencies take me out of the story and make it less enjoyable. I'm not going to claim Star Trek is perfect. And there are plenty of stories that would be better if they were tweaked to make the more consistent. But that's just my preference. I'm not going to change it just becasue you would prefer an inconsistent approach.

If find your "extrapolation of our present" approach to be unsustainable. What do we do when we really do reach the 23rd century and there is no Captain Kirk and no U.S.S Enterprise? Retcon the entire franchise? To me that seems like a dog trying to chase its tail. You're never going to get Star Trek to match reality. So I think that letting it stand as it's own thing rather than perpetual retconning/rebooting is a much more sustainable and enjoyable model.

 

If a new version of Trek was really based on the latest understandings of science and technology, it would be radically different and no longer recognizable as Star Trek.

Here's an interesting article on this: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5906586/its-time-to-move-past-star-treks-anachronistic-vision-of-the-future

Kor