It is my belief that
Star Trek happens in an alternate universe which diverged from ours before TOS was produced.
The writers of various
Star Trek productions occasionally referred to future historical events happening after their stories were produced, and occasionally referred to various past historical events that happened before their stories were written.
And when writers of scripts mentioned past historical events, sometimes their references were accurate mentions of real historical events that actually happened according to the best knowledge of historians then and now, and sometimes they were inaccurate, describing popular ideas about history which were not accurate.
When writers for TOS mentioned inaccurate historical beliefs, sometimes they may have been corrected by Kellam de Forest, who checked the scripts for factual accuracy and other possible problems. And sometimes Kellam de Forest's corrections were made to the shooting scrpt and got into the filmed episode, and sometimes they did not for various reasons, and other times de Forest might not have noticed those historical inaccuracies.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kellam_de_Forest
And if inaccurate popular ideas were mentioned in various TOS productions, and were never corrected in later TOS productions, they became accurate in the fictional universe of
Star Trek. And so
Star Trek should be in an alternate universe which diverged from ours sometime between the accurate historical reference with the latest date and the inaccurate historical reference with the earliest date. Because once something happens differently and two different alternate universes branch off, they will continue to get more and more different as time passes.
But shockingly, that is not the case with the alternate universe of
Star Trek productions. There is not a date, such as 1900, or 1800, or any other date, that all the accurate historical references are before, and all the inaccurate historical historical references are after. Instead, both the accurate and the inaccurate historical references are distributed randomly through history, so that one or several accurate historical references might be followed chronologically by one or more inaccurate historical references, then one or more accurate historical references, and then one or more inaccurate historical references, all through history.
And that should not happen if two alternate universes develop naturally after the diverging moment. They should get more and more different over time.
So therefore, I deduce that some intelligent purpose is working against the natural drifting apart of our universe and the
Star Trek universe. From time to time some intelligence checks how the two universes are developing, and if they are becoming more different forces similar events to happen within both universes and so make them more similar. And this intelligence may be working to make not just two universes, but countless gazillions of alternate universe develop in similar ways.
The goal of this intelligence might be to make all the universes as much like ours as possible, or it may be to make all the universes as much like that of
Star Trek as possible, or it may be to make all the alternate universes, including both our universe and the
Star Trek universe, as close to some third universe as possible,
In "Mirror, Mirror" the people of the alternate Mirror Universe seem to think that the Terran Empire has existed all their lives and possibly for generations before they were born. But if the social and political situations in the two alternate universes were already different, the parents of the characters should probably have had sex at different times and dates, if they were even together at all. And so different parental sperm would have fertilized different eggs and any children which the parents would have had would have different genes and be different persons.
So that indicates that the divergence should have happened after the youngest regular was born.
I note that the alternate universe Chekov seemed to be the same age as the regular Chekov, who said he was 22 years old in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Sulu and Uhura should be a few years older than Chekov, Kirk should be about 12 years older than Chekov, Spock a little older, and McCoy and Scott should be two decades older. So if the two universes diverged after Chekov was born, the Terran Empire should be something new to the other regulars, who should have memories of the time before the Terran Empire, instead of acting like the Terran Empire is the only form of government conceivable.
And the same thing is true in Mirror Universe stories set in the era of TNG, about a century after TOS, and in the era of ENT, about a century before TOS. The mirror universes in those stories should have diverged after the births of the yougnest regular characters who have alternate selves in the alternate universes, so they should be three separate alternate universes.diverging from the main s universe at three different points spread out over 200 years. But instead they are allegedly the same alternate universe at different times. Anyway, at any one time the regular characters with alternate selves vary greatly in age, and yet even the oldest think that their society has existed for at least all their lives.
Therefore, I deduce that the hypothetical intelligence responsible for making our universe and that of
Star Trek experience similar events after diverging from each other for a while, is also responsible for having people with the same genes be born in the
Star Trek universe and the Mirror Universe, years, decades, and centuries after the Mirror Universe diverged from that of
Star Trek, and thus years, decades, and centuries after such duplicate births should be possible.
Thus it may be possible that in the multiverse of
Star Trek , God is a
Star Trek fan.