Khan question

[MichaelJCO]

Ever heard of suspension of disbelief? Trek always travelled back to the/our (relative) present, not some alternate version.

They came back to a 20th century that was very similar, but not identical to ours.

In their 20th century there was a Eugenics War in the 1990s, advanced spacecraft like the SS Botany Bay, and some software/computer guy named Henry Starling, just to name a very few examples of the differences.

In our 20th century there was no Euguenics War, the best spacecraft we came up with was the space shuttle, and we had Bill Gates and Steve Jobs instead of Henry Starling. Oh, and we had the fictional adventures of Star Trek.

Agreed again. The most frustrating thing about the Eugenics War is that ,in part,due to mistakes in episodes of DS9 and Voyager people are forever trying to retcon them into the 21st or even 22nd century!
TOS and Enterprise both make it crystal clear they were in the 20th century and were overt and were not the same thing as WW3. With Enterprise's focus on the WW3 era if the two wars were one and the same surely they would have told us that!

 

[MichaelJCO]

In that same way, we're supposed to forget about the Eugenics Wars (or pretend they were fought in secret, as the novels did)

No, No, No! The canon info about the Wars from both TOS and Enterprise is that the Wars were overt and well known in the 22nd century. Devestating wars would also make much more sense about the strong taboo on Earth against genetic engineering lasting into the 24th century.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^But if real life and Trek are different universes because of a few mentions of the Eugenics wars in the 90's, then there's no way ENT and TOS are in the same continuity, due to a many, many more continuity errors. Ditto TOS with it's ultra fast, galaxy-spanning warp drive vs. Voyager's ultra slow one.... and so on...

 

[MichaelJCO]

^But if real life and Trek are different universes because of a few mentions of the Eugenics wars in the 90's, then there's no way ENT and TOS are in the same continuity, due to a many, many more continuity errors. Ditto TOS with it's ultra fast, galaxy-spanning warp drive vs. Voyager's ultra slow one.... and so on...

Im not saying that there arent any contradictions in the canon.The ones that you mention are whoppers. But it just seems to me that when it comes to canon material about an event that gives a specific date for the event and certain information about it you have to give priority to that description and disregard whatever differences or mistakes come up later.
TOS and Enterprise provide great bookends by establishing the Eugenics Wars as from 1992-1996 and overt. Whatever else said in between thats contradictory was a misprint. Although I think far too much is made of the fact the Futures End doesnt mention them. The wrong date given in DS9 was directly quoted by Ron Moore as being a mistake.