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Khan and the Eugenics War

If we buy in to the idea presented in this latest episode, that the timeline is constantly in flux because of shenanigans in the Temporal Wars, whose to say that what was true previously is true at later points in the continuity? I was joking when I posted the USS New Jersey, but there's nothing that would prevent Matalas from saying Picard season 3 and Legacy is in the original timeline or that Temporal Investigations went back and fixed the Romulan incursions.
Another reason we need Legacy... especially should it be running longer than a series directly linked to SNW...
 
TREKMOVIE: You have moved the Eugenics Wars into the 21st century, acknowledging they didn’t happen in the real ‘90s.

MYERS: This is the hard thing about trying to be true to canon...But yes, the Eugenics Wars were supposed to happen in the 1990s and most people’s experience was that is not what happened. You don’t want to get mad at reality for not comporting with Star Trek, but we sort of push things forward.
I find this quote hilarious because it implies that some people DID experience the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. :guffaw:
Our universe and the prime universe diverged maybe in the 1960's. No need to recon dates to try to realign the PU.
The folks who continually insist that the Trek Universe must be our future always conveniently forget that "Assignment: Earth" established the U.S. and other nations were launching nuclear warhead platforms into orbit in 1968:
KIRK: Mister Spock, historical report.
SPOCK: Current Earth crises would fill a tape bank, Captain. There will be an important assassination today, an equally dangerous government coup in Asia, and, this could be highly critical, the launching of an orbital nuclear warhead platform by the United States countering a similar launch by other powers.
KIRK: Weren't orbital nuclear devices one of this era's greatest problems?
SPOCK: Most definitely. Once the sky was full of orbiting H-bombs, the slightest mistake could have brought one down by accident, setting off a nuclear holocaust.
Obviously, this never came to pass in the real world because of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. So the Star Trek Universe hasn't been the same as our future since 1968 at least. :)

And since whatever program that gave birth to Khan would have to start in the 1960s at the latest for him to reach maturity by 1992, the divergence probably happened even sooner.
 
It would be easier to ignore the 1996 thing if Khan himself hadn't said it. If anyone knows for sure when the Eugenics Wars are supposed to happen, it would be Khan! :lol:
Well, Kirk and Khan both say in TWOK that it's been 15 years since the events of "Space Seed," but the official Okuda Timeline puts the gap at 18 years for... some reason.
My mind is fucking blown that they acknowledged that Strange New Worlds (and Discovery) is a heavily modified timeline from TOS.

I never, ever thought they'd have the balls to do it.
I've honestly been regarding SNW as an alternate timeline since the beginning. I drive myself less crazy that way.

In my mind, maybe some things happened the same way there as they did in the TOS universe, but not necessarily. So I'm taking as a sort of Broad Strokes Continuity.
So. We have ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, PIC. Then the Temporal Wars happen and we have Discovery and Strange New Worlds, which has a 100% confirmed moving of the Eugenics Wars from the 1990's to the 2020's.
Doesn't PIC tie in with DSC too, though?
If they delete Star Trek: First Contact just for not being like the real 2063, I will riot.
Eh, then we can just go back to the Strangers in the Sky version of first contact with the Vulcans. ;)
Tony Stark's origin I think has been re-retconned again to take place during the Siancong War ( https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Siancong_War ), a fictional generic war against a fictional Asian country that Iron Man's origin, Professor Xavier's and Punisher's Korean War and Vietnam War service, and Reed Richards and Ben Grimm's WW2 service have now all been lumped into.
Yes, that was a retcon Mark Waid came up with in his recent History of the Marvel Universe series to prevent Marvel from having to update the wars various characters were in every 10-20 years of publishing time.
Oh and my favorite superhero group's origin (the Fantastic Four) would work real well today - I mean we haven't sent anyone into space or successfully landed on the Moon (Reed and Ben were trying to be the first to do BOTH - oh, and they were WWII vets), so how would Reed Richards have ANY idea about Cosmic Rays...oh, wait...
I'm going to put on my pedantic comic book nerd hat here and point out that the first issue of the FF from 1961 doesn't say anything about landing on the Moon. Ben Grimm says Reed Richards is flying to the stars. (And okay, yes, we also have Sue Storm expressing concern about "The Commies beating us to it." It's not perfect. ;))
That works for some characters, but there are others where I would argue "updating" their history is both problematic and would undermine their characterization. For example, Magneto being a Holocaust survivor is a fundamental aspect of that character which informs his viewpoint. If and when Marvel Studios gets to the X-Men, I'm curious as to how they'll handle it.
X-Men writer Chris Claremont LOOOOVED tying his character backstories to real world events, even when they would inevitably get screwed up by the sliding timeline Marvel uses. Uncanny X-Men #102 (Dec. 1956) originally established that Storm's parents were killed in the Suez Crisis in 1956. That was retconned away over time, as it would've made Storm older than the stories implied.

So yeah, they've jumped through all sorts of hoops to make Magneto still be a Holocaust survivor, even though it doesn't really make sense anymore, timeline-wise.
Oh, I just thought of a textbook example of a movie series bumping the timeframe up just to modernize things.

The first two Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were, appropriately, set in Victorian England, complete with Hansom cabs, gaslights, etc. But then Pearl Harbor happened and the setting was shifted to the present-day (i.e. the 1940s) so that Holmes & Watson could do their patriotic duty by fighting Nazi spies and saboteurs. As I recall, this was "explained" by a title card stating that Holmes was a timeless character who could therefore join the war effort in these crucial times.

To be clear, there was no "in-universe" attempt to explain this: no time-travel, suspended animation, or suggestion that these were the descendants of the original, Victorian Holmes and Watson. The whole series was just relocated, kit and kaboodle, from Victorian times to the modern era, complete with Moriarty, Mrs. Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, etc.

And the Rathbone/Bruce movies stayed in the 1940s thereafter.
Yes, perfect example. Although they walked that back a bit later in the series and kept the time more vague, didn't they?
(Another war-related retcon: The Green Hornet's sidekick, Kato, was Japanese -- until Pear Harbor happened, at which point he became Filipino for the duration. Or so I understand.)
It's a bit more complicated than that. According to the Wikipedia article on Kato, they changed Kato's description at the beginning of the radio show from "Japanese valet" to "faithful valet" in 1939 after Japan invaded China. So they played it vague and he was just generically Asian. Kato was first referred to as Filipino on the June 21st, 1941 episode of the radio show. But before that, the 1940 movie serials said he was Korean (while he was played by a Chinese-American actor, Keye Luke :rolleyes:). The 1960s TV show with Bruce Lee playing Kato had him as Chinese, the same as his actor (The episode "The Preying Mantis" makes this clear).

The first issue of the 1989 Green Hornet comic series from NOW Comics said that the Japanese Kato pretended to be Filipino to avoid being sent to an internment center during WWII. Writer Ron Fortier came up with that explanation. In the recent multiple Green Hornet comic series published by Dynamite, I think they've had both Japanese and Chinese versions of Kato, depending on who is writing the series.

And this is all before we even get into the question of who had the Green Hornet's love child! ;)
I think the temporal agents still ensured that major players like Pike, Spock and Kirk (for example) still existed, otherwise the timeline would shift too drastically.
I am now picturing a DTI series with Dulmur and Lucsly trying to make sure that everyone's parents still hooked up at the right place and right time, Back to the Future style. :guffaw:
 
I've considered all of Trek to be in its own multiverse. (Orbital nuclear weapons in 1968, yeah, there's yet another point of divergence, right along with all the extra nebulae and whatever caused them...) Therefore, I didn't and don't see the need for this "fix". It was fun to watch, and the thinking behind the changes still worries me.
 
Oh and my favorite superhero group's origin (the Fantastic Four) would work real well today - I mean we haven't sent anyone into space or successfully landed on the Moon (Reed and Ben were trying to be the first to do BOTH - oh, and they were WWII vets), so how would Reed Richards have ANY idea about Cosmic Rays...oh, wait...
My retcon would be making Reed and his team a private company launching a commercial spaceflight venture ala Bezos, Musk and Branson. Reed Richard, tech bro. :p
 
Reed Richards actually has the wits and skills to make it happen without being a fraud.
Back to our topic.

Two Khans. The outfit in Toronto working with Adam Soong to try again what failed in 1996? And the second one grew up to be worse than the first.
 
Probably an intentional joke on Meyer's part. :lol:
I'm sure.
My retcon would be making Reed and his team a private company launching a commercial spaceflight venture ala Bezos, Musk and Branson. Reed Richard, tech bro. :p
Yes, I've been saying the same thing for months. The FF's origin is now more topical than it's been in years. Heck, even the uniform Shatner wore on his space flight looked like the classic FF uniform. And the crew breakdown was three men and one woman! :lol:
 
It never did.

Don't understand why this is so hard to understand.

If the showrunners had simply said, out of universe, that the wars had been moved, it would have removed TOS from continuity. It would never have happened.

Making it an IN-universe event solved that problem, since it means that TOS once DID happen.

Don't understand why this is so hard to understand. ;)
 
I mean, they are.
If that was truly the case, then there would be no need to shift dates. It wouldn't matter.
I mean, I don't. Because I don't think continuity fidelity strictness is a virtue.
Continuity is not a bad thing. It can even be used to tell new stories.
So, create a little confusion and a barrier for most viewers in order to satisfy some nitpickers?
I think most people can tell the difference between the real world and a fictional one.
 
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