Exactly why I mentioned in my OP that I wanted to stick with major, historical events and not individual people.
Earliest divergence of Trek from "our" reality??
- Thread starter FordSVT
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Exactly why I mentioned in my OP that I wanted to stick with major, historical events and not individual people.
That's what they want you to think.
Threads like these are such a treat for me! 
As to explaining Flint's existence in the first place... welcome to the first instance of Star Trek doing a crossover episode with a TV series that would not be thought of until 20 years later!
I refer, of course, to Highlander. Flint is obviously an Immortal (for those of you who are not familiar with Immortals, they can only be permanently killed by having their heads cut off). And while it's not part of the Game to be too conspicuous in public, there have been Immortals (in the Highlander series) who took the risk. And since the series never addressed the issue of Immortals leaving Earth (do not tell me about the sequel movies. There can be only one!), that would fit in with what McCoy said about Flint: he was dying because he had left Earth and the planetary environment that had allowed him to stay alive.
There is an article in one of The Best of Trek books (#15, I believe) entitled "The Disappearing Bum." It's an essay on why there is no Star Trek TV series in the Star Trek movies -- in other words, how come Kirk and crew weren't immediately mobbed by adoring fans when they went back in time to 20th c. San Francisco? (by extension, the same for the Voyager crew in the 1990s, although the Voyager series did not exist at the time the essay was published)
The answer: The disappearing bum. The guy who found McCoy wandering around 1930 New York, dazed and crazy and paranoid.
The guy who finds McCoy's hand phaser and, not knowing what it is, fiddles around with it and accidentally sets it on overload and vaporizes himself out of existence. McCoy, who is at this point lying unconscious on the pavement, never knows this happens. Since the Guardian of Forever doesn't make Kirk undo that event, we can assume that in the "proper" history, the bum is meant to die.
So how does this equate to no Star Trek in Star Trek? The essay gets speculative at this point. The author suggests that the bum is a family man, with a wife and children to support -- not an easy task in the Depression era. It's hard enough on the family at the best of times, but one night the breadwinner simply never comes home. No body is ever found, no trace at all -- so the family never discovers what really happened. They can only wonder if their husband/father has died, been murdered, got work out of the city -- or if he simply found it too much to bear any longer, trying to support his family in a time when work was so scarce.
Naturally, the essay continues to suggest, this would likely lead the family to conclude they'd been abandoned. In order to survive, the older children would have to step up and set aside their childhood and grow up in a hurry. The essay suggests that perhaps the oldest son was forced to become the "man of the house" and found it just as difficult -- if not more, due to his youth -- as his father. Years pass, and the oldest son grows into a bitter, angry adult who can't shake the idea that his father abandoned the family and wrecked their lives. He (the son) wanders about the country, unable to settle down anywhere, and ends up in Los Angeles where one night he encounters a police officer who moonlights as a TV scriptwriter. For some reason -- who knows why -- they get into an argument and the son shoots and kills the police officer. The year is some time in the early 1960s, prior to 1964.
The dead police officer's name is Gene Roddenberry. The time of his death is prior to his selling his new science fiction TV series, "Star Trek", to NBC. Roddenberry is dead, the series never gets made...
And that's why there are no adoring fans in either 1986 or 1996(?) when the crews of the Enterprise and Voyager travel back in time to 20th century San Francisco.
BTW, the essay also suggests that Roddenberry's hypothetical death and the nonexistence of Star Trek also lead to the Mirror Universe's creation. Because Star Trek has been such a positive, hopeful influence on generations of SF fans and scientists, our own universe is unlikely to become anything at all like the Mirror Universe. But without such a benign influence, the future doesn't look as hopeful -- and First Contact would be far less friendly as a result.
I'm not in favor of nuclear weapons, but it's a shame about the Orion project.
But we did begin in a pool of goo.
Stupid test audience. Subtitles would have been cool.Fun fact: The whalespeak heard in the film was originally going to have English subtitles. The studio wanted them, but Nimoy objected. The subtitles were removed after test audiences indicated they didn't like them.And all they basically said was "we're cool...now fuck off!"
Okay. Show us a photo/DNA analysis that proves Bill Gates and Ed Begley Jr. are identical twins.
Regarding Flint: First of all, the novel Federation does a superb job of addressing the question of Flint, Cochrane, First Contact, and the Eugenics Wars. If you have not read that novel, you are missing one of the best Trek stories ever.
As to explaining Flint's existence in the first place... welcome to the first instance of Star Trek doing a crossover episode with a TV series that would not be thought of until 20 years later!
I refer, of course, to Highlander. Flint is obviously an Immortal (for those of you who are not familiar with Immortals, they can only be permanently killed by having their heads cut off). And while it's not part of the Game to be too conspicuous in public, there have been Immortals (in the Highlander series) who took the risk. And since the series never addressed the issue of Immortals leaving Earth (do not tell me about the sequel movies. There can be only one!), that would fit in with what McCoy said about Flint: he was dying because he had left Earth and the planetary environment that had allowed him to stay alive.
As I was re-reading the Eugenics Wars trilogy and got around to the part where Khan's people are barely ekeing out a sweaty existence on their dying planet and Khan is congratulating himself for the eleventy-gazillionth time on his superior genetics keeping him alive, it occured to me to wonder why he didn't just use his superior abilities to invent the stillsuit and save his people from the worst ravages of dehydration? After all, Khan was still on Earth when Frank Herbert's novel Dune was published; Khan or one of his people would surely have read about a garment that recycles a person's perspiration and wastes so they can live more easily in arid environments.
Ohmygod, so that's why crucial systems go down exactly when they're needed most! Starfleet runs on Windows!
Strictly speaking, McCoy originally prevented her from becoming roadkill.
There is an article in one of The Best of Trek books (#15, I believe) entitled "The Disappearing Bum." It's an essay on why there is no Star Trek TV series in the Star Trek movies -- in other words, how come Kirk and crew weren't immediately mobbed by adoring fans when they went back in time to 20th c. San Francisco? (by extension, the same for the Voyager crew in the 1990s, although the Voyager series did not exist at the time the essay was published)
The answer: The disappearing bum. The guy who found McCoy wandering around 1930 New York, dazed and crazy and paranoid.
The guy who finds McCoy's hand phaser and, not knowing what it is, fiddles around with it and accidentally sets it on overload and vaporizes himself out of existence. McCoy, who is at this point lying unconscious on the pavement, never knows this happens. Since the Guardian of Forever doesn't make Kirk undo that event, we can assume that in the "proper" history, the bum is meant to die.
So how does this equate to no Star Trek in Star Trek? The essay gets speculative at this point. The author suggests that the bum is a family man, with a wife and children to support -- not an easy task in the Depression era. It's hard enough on the family at the best of times, but one night the breadwinner simply never comes home. No body is ever found, no trace at all -- so the family never discovers what really happened. They can only wonder if their husband/father has died, been murdered, got work out of the city -- or if he simply found it too much to bear any longer, trying to support his family in a time when work was so scarce.
Naturally, the essay continues to suggest, this would likely lead the family to conclude they'd been abandoned. In order to survive, the older children would have to step up and set aside their childhood and grow up in a hurry. The essay suggests that perhaps the oldest son was forced to become the "man of the house" and found it just as difficult -- if not more, due to his youth -- as his father. Years pass, and the oldest son grows into a bitter, angry adult who can't shake the idea that his father abandoned the family and wrecked their lives. He (the son) wanders about the country, unable to settle down anywhere, and ends up in Los Angeles where one night he encounters a police officer who moonlights as a TV scriptwriter. For some reason -- who knows why -- they get into an argument and the son shoots and kills the police officer. The year is some time in the early 1960s, prior to 1964.
The dead police officer's name is Gene Roddenberry. The time of his death is prior to his selling his new science fiction TV series, "Star Trek", to NBC. Roddenberry is dead, the series never gets made...
And that's why there are no adoring fans in either 1986 or 1996(?) when the crews of the Enterprise and Voyager travel back in time to 20th century San Francisco.
BTW, the essay also suggests that Roddenberry's hypothetical death and the nonexistence of Star Trek also lead to the Mirror Universe's creation. Because Star Trek has been such a positive, hopeful influence on generations of SF fans and scientists, our own universe is unlikely to become anything at all like the Mirror Universe. But without such a benign influence, the future doesn't look as hopeful -- and First Contact would be far less friendly as a result.
But major historical events and individual people involved in major historical events are inextricably bound. You can't have one without the other.
The time when I said to myself that it had actrually happened, the divergence, was in that Voyager one about Janeway's ancestors, since they threw it in our faces that Trek was now and forever disconnected with real life in the most blatant way, by having that Millennium Gate happen in our present when we all knew no one was biuilding one.
With other events, the events remained but the dates were fudged. The Eugenics Wars were revalidated on DS9, presumably with the years changed. The First Contact film rescheduled WW3/Eugenics War certainly, but it still happened. Even they set it far too early in the future, though.
I agree that the treaty Gary Seven talks abouit could be secret. There is a great deal we don't know about the space race yet. There was an equal and parallel space program then, the purpose of which was to launch orbital spying platforms in the 60s. Right now, the air force has another parallel and equal space program. The Pentagon had its own Moon probe, Clementine... who knows what else went on as regards space?
Berman said Trek history was altered by the Borg sphere in the First Contact film, and that "Enterprise" followed this new timeline.
With other events, the events remained but the dates were fudged. The Eugenics Wars were revalidated on DS9, presumably with the years changed. The First Contact film rescheduled WW3/Eugenics War certainly, but it still happened. Even they set it far too early in the future, though.
I agree that the treaty Gary Seven talks abouit could be secret. There is a great deal we don't know about the space race yet. There was an equal and parallel space program then, the purpose of which was to launch orbital spying platforms in the 60s. Right now, the air force has another parallel and equal space program. The Pentagon had its own Moon probe, Clementine... who knows what else went on as regards space?
Berman said Trek history was altered by the Borg sphere in the First Contact film, and that "Enterprise" followed this new timeline.
OTOH, we haven't yet seen any clear differences between the supposedly "Borg-altered" timeline and the supposedly unaltered one. For all we know, the events described in ENT lead directly to TOS and then TNG, all part of a single timeline.
As for the Millennium Gate thing, everybody knew there was no real skyscraper matching what was shown in Towering Inferno or Die Hard, yet those movies were still readily taken to depict "our timeline", as the events were perfectly plausible in the real world and would not have altered world history noticeably. I'd think the exact same logic would apply to Millennium Gate.
Really, entire fictional countries can be invented for the purposes of drama, and still be considered "part of our reality" for said dramatic purposes. Expanding this to scifi, entire star systems, galaxies and universes can be made out of whole cloth and still be considered "part of our real future".
However, IMHO Trek has typically always chosen to portray the events of its fictional future in such a way that they are clearly part of an alternate path, not something that would ever occur in our history. Roddenberry didn't postulate a WWIII for real, or eugenically bred supermen who'd have been born before the episode depicting them even aired; he readily went with a parallel history where such scifi elements could be exploited to their fullest, in terms of make-believe drama and allegory alike.
Timo Saloniemi
As for the Millennium Gate thing, everybody knew there was no real skyscraper matching what was shown in Towering Inferno or Die Hard, yet those movies were still readily taken to depict "our timeline", as the events were perfectly plausible in the real world and would not have altered world history noticeably. I'd think the exact same logic would apply to Millennium Gate.
Really, entire fictional countries can be invented for the purposes of drama, and still be considered "part of our reality" for said dramatic purposes. Expanding this to scifi, entire star systems, galaxies and universes can be made out of whole cloth and still be considered "part of our real future".
However, IMHO Trek has typically always chosen to portray the events of its fictional future in such a way that they are clearly part of an alternate path, not something that would ever occur in our history. Roddenberry didn't postulate a WWIII for real, or eugenically bred supermen who'd have been born before the episode depicting them even aired; he readily went with a parallel history where such scifi elements could be exploited to their fullest, in terms of make-believe drama and allegory alike.
Timo Saloniemi
He can say it. But I don't have to accept its validity.
In my opinion, the best Trek story from that time period was told in the novel Federation. I wish they'd make that into a movie -- it certainly was more faithful to established canon (Roddenberry's canon) and tied characters and events together more plausibly.
Possible, if not provable or probable. One, alternately, could take as an article of faith (and thus from that perspective unassailably true) that Flint is monumentally full of shit on the Solomon point, since the Biblical account contradicts his assertions. The scholarship concerning Alexander is currently in flux, so ... one may believe as one wishes. We have a man claiming to be an eyewitness in opposition to the historical record.
It's also just as possible, though, that Flint is a grandmaster forger, employing tech (some sort of replicator variant?), talent and technique to precisely duplicate the skills and styles of DaVinci, Brahms and others to the point that Spock cannot differentiate—as an exercise in curiosity/amusement or a genuine homage to men he knew. Considering that his knowledge base is, it would seem, at the very least centuries and perhaps even millennia superior to that of the 23rd century Federation, and that he's shown to be a liar if it suits his purposes during the episode, well ...
Considering how often fakes hold up for quite some time (and, in other cases no doubt, forever) in the face of superior tech brought to bear on them, it's plausible that Flint simply gave Kirk and company a story that would satisfy them, while concealing his true origins.
If you're thinking of "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" - that was a typo. It is ignored.
It didn't retcon the Eugenics Wars at all. It perhaps did that for WW3, but we now know those were not the same wars. In any case, up until that film was made, we really had no idea when WW3 took place (I think it was TNG that first said WW3 != Eugenics Wars).
Although it could be ignored, it works very well with Arik Soongh and the Augments arc.
The Ent-E crew returned to the same reality they left, so it seems clear that ST:FC never altered the timeline in any way. It merely established itself as part of what was supposed to happen. A classic predestination paradox.
I've never been comfortable with the assertions that the events of Enterprise and FC and Voyager necessarily had to "change" the past or be apart of that "change" in any way. Some use dialogue from "Q Who?" to support their assertions that the Federation knew nothing of the Borg before the crew of the Enterprise encountered them. That's making a pretty big assumption, being that Picard is somehow privy to all of Starfleet's most closely guarded secrets. It's further supported by the fact that the events in season 1's "The Neutral Zone" foreshadow the Borg and show that they've been closer and interacting with alpha/beta quadrant species. So I don't think things like the Hansen's study of the Borg violate continuity, they simply provide a deeper understanding of it.
Q introduced Picard and the Enterprise to the Borg with a specific intention that went beyond just warning them about what "dangers" are out in the galaxy, I believe. He wasn't introducing humanity to the Borg, he was introducing the crew and the man who would be essential in fighting them in the future (which he had probably already witnessed himself).
Q introduced Picard and the Enterprise to the Borg with a specific intention that went beyond just warning them about what "dangers" are out in the galaxy, I believe. He wasn't introducing humanity to the Borg, he was introducing the crew and the man who would be essential in fighting them in the future (which he had probably already witnessed himself).
actually the dialog in q who directly link the borg to what happened in the neutral zone.
and we know that picard isnt privy to everything.
i think we find out that more then once but the one that springs to mind is pegasus.
he didnt have a clue about what what really happened and that is with having will as his first officer for years.
it took knowing something was probably wrong and calling in a lot of favors was he able to find out just a little but not the whole story.
and we know that picard isnt privy to everything.
i think we find out that more then once but the one that springs to mind is pegasus.
he didnt have a clue about what what really happened and that is with having will as his first officer for years.
it took knowing something was probably wrong and calling in a lot of favors was he able to find out just a little but not the whole story.
And given that Seven of Nine's parents were sent out (most likely by Section 31) with the express purpose of observing the Borg - this was before "Q Who" ever happened, of course - that must also be taken into consideration.
FC and ENT's events would also explain why the "Q Who" Borg cube was already headed in Earth's direction to begin with: it received the distress call that ENT's Borg sent out in "Regeneration".
FC and ENT's events would also explain why the "Q Who" Borg cube was already headed in Earth's direction to begin with: it received the distress call that ENT's Borg sent out in "Regeneration".
Well, I'm still partial to the time loop. Insted of death, the guy is from the future, and obviously returns there having laid a fictional framework for the future development of starfleet and so on. Possibly, there would be a "Futurama's Fry" scenario, but that would be somewhat speculative.
But here's a rather obvious flaw -- the essay deals with why there is no trek in the actual trekverse, so the mainstream events lack trek so the mirror events can't be created because of the lack of something that doesn't exist. There are no parallel universes that exist because Jack Sparrow unreal in them. Jack Sparrow is fiction, and so having him not exist changes nothing.
In other words an event that doesn't happen can't affect another universe by not happening there either.
==========
Maybe we could try something different in the two universes.
==========
imagine the timeline for our universe.
BB ------------------------------------------------ BC
(BB = Big Bang and BC = Big Crunch)
From every observers' perspective, the events closer to the BB are the past and every event closer to the BC are the future. Pretty simple so far.
But let's complicate things a bit by adding the McCoy event
Start with the Universal Timeline
BB -------------ED-------------------------------BC
(ED is where Ethyl dies.)
But with time travel you could change things
______________________
| |
BB --------MA--ED------------------GOF----------BC
(MA is where McCoy arrives in the Past, GOF is the Gaurdian of Forever encounter)
The ED event is still in McCoy's future, yet it's also in his past -- he's not going to be born for a couple hundred years. And he hasn't yet changed anything. He's simply a part of past events.
Now he changes things by saving Ethyl:
BB ------MA--EL-------------------GOF----------BC
But this changes all future events. There is no FED, no starships, all of that is gone (though it appears that the PEOPLE still exist). So enter the rescue team.
__________________________
| |
BB --RT--MA--EL------------------GOF----------BC
The future is still changed. Ethyl still survives.
But Kirk and Spock manage to stop McCoy, thus restoring the original timeline.
BB--RT--MA--ED------------------GOF----------BC
The only difference is that all of the time travel is actually part of the TU. All of it has already happened, yet it hasn't happened yet (speaking from a 2008 perspective). This seems to imply a conclusion -- you can't alter the past, because you are already a part of past events. I can't travel to the past and shoot hitler as a baby, because if it were possible, that event would already be a part of the timeline (assuming of course people try, which would seem a likely test). So the conclusion is that past events are more or less set in stone, because any attempt to change them is already a part of the past.
So having an assination in the past doesn't seems to fly. If the assasination occurred in the past, then there would never have been a starfleet, which would prevent anyone from travelling through the GOF and causing the assasination to begin with. You end up requiring the failure of the time traveller to have the time traveller able to make the trip in the first place.
But I think the case could be made that a person from the future could travel to the past and cause and event that is already a part of the past. So if I were to travel to the past and create Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the timeline would always say that I created Buffy.
So the assasination theory doesn't fly. I think the most likely reason that few people watch trek in SF in the 1990s is that it was supplanted in the public's mind with Reality TV, and Game Shows.
And Fleet Captain GR and Cop Gr are the same person. It's all a strange Zen Koan designed to give people headaches.
But here's a rather obvious flaw -- the essay deals with why there is no trek in the actual trekverse, so the mainstream events lack trek so the mirror events can't be created because of the lack of something that doesn't exist. There are no parallel universes that exist because Jack Sparrow unreal in them. Jack Sparrow is fiction, and so having him not exist changes nothing.
In other words an event that doesn't happen can't affect another universe by not happening there either.
==========
Maybe we could try something different in the two universes.
==========
imagine the timeline for our universe.
BB ------------------------------------------------ BC
(BB = Big Bang and BC = Big Crunch)
From every observers' perspective, the events closer to the BB are the past and every event closer to the BC are the future. Pretty simple so far.
But let's complicate things a bit by adding the McCoy event
Start with the Universal Timeline
BB -------------ED-------------------------------BC
(ED is where Ethyl dies.)
But with time travel you could change things
______________________
| |
BB --------MA--ED------------------GOF----------BC
(MA is where McCoy arrives in the Past, GOF is the Gaurdian of Forever encounter)
The ED event is still in McCoy's future, yet it's also in his past -- he's not going to be born for a couple hundred years. And he hasn't yet changed anything. He's simply a part of past events.
Now he changes things by saving Ethyl:
BB ------MA--EL-------------------GOF----------BC
But this changes all future events. There is no FED, no starships, all of that is gone (though it appears that the PEOPLE still exist). So enter the rescue team.
__________________________
| |
BB --RT--MA--EL------------------GOF----------BC
The future is still changed. Ethyl still survives.
But Kirk and Spock manage to stop McCoy, thus restoring the original timeline.
BB--RT--MA--ED------------------GOF----------BC
The only difference is that all of the time travel is actually part of the TU. All of it has already happened, yet it hasn't happened yet (speaking from a 2008 perspective). This seems to imply a conclusion -- you can't alter the past, because you are already a part of past events. I can't travel to the past and shoot hitler as a baby, because if it were possible, that event would already be a part of the timeline (assuming of course people try, which would seem a likely test). So the conclusion is that past events are more or less set in stone, because any attempt to change them is already a part of the past.
So having an assination in the past doesn't seems to fly. If the assasination occurred in the past, then there would never have been a starfleet, which would prevent anyone from travelling through the GOF and causing the assasination to begin with. You end up requiring the failure of the time traveller to have the time traveller able to make the trip in the first place.
But I think the case could be made that a person from the future could travel to the past and cause and event that is already a part of the past. So if I were to travel to the past and create Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the timeline would always say that I created Buffy.
So the assasination theory doesn't fly. I think the most likely reason that few people watch trek in SF in the 1990s is that it was supplanted in the public's mind with Reality TV, and Game Shows.
And Fleet Captain GR and Cop Gr are the same person. It's all a strange Zen Koan designed to give people headaches.
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