Regardless of various comments and opinions throughout this thread, I’d just like to say “Amen to this”.
Spoilers Should Star Trek be "our future" or an alternate timeline?
- Thread starter eschaton
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Regardless of various comments and opinions throughout this thread, I’d just like to say “Amen to this”.
Well, given that Star Trek is entertainment for people like us, from our place in time... it only makes sense that we'd have the occasional episode set there.
In fact, I'm not even sure the English we hear Our Heroes speak is the language they actually use. Why would they be using a form of English that is 300, 400 years old by that point? Languages change over time and will keep doing so in the future.
If we watch a series about the present-day navy, we won't expect them to speak Shakespearean era English either.
That's largely my feeling too. In those moments it's the Trek characters interacting with present day, literally in The Voyage Home's case.
Star Trek is an alternate timeline and always has been. It doesn't need to line up with real life history or technological development nor should it have to.
I trust there will be no further discussion on the matter and now consider it closed.
So let it be written.
As I said in the other thread, this video should make us all grateful that Star Trek is indeed an alternate timeline and not our own.
Although I prefer retconning to keep Trek as basically our future, I’m unfortunately forced to admit that with the Shenzhen Convention, Picard subtly but clearly makes it alternate. (I doubt we’re supposed to expect a vast new agreement about genetic engineering in the next two years, so it sounds like a specific response to the Eugenics Wars.)
They'd have to be to do what they do in many episodes. The Menagerie and Metamorphosis both come to mind.
Some TOS shuttles aren't warp capable while others clearly must be otherwise the episode makes no sense.
Be a drag to steal the wrong type.
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"Daddy, the nacelle blew off."
"NO SHIT."
"NO SHIT."
“This Shuttle Burglar Protected”
While contemplating the matter of alternate timelines and paging through the old Trek starflight chronology, I was struck by an idea for a Trek show that embraces the Prime Timeline as an alternate one extrapolated from TOS and the expectations of the 1960's.
Namely, an anthology show in a similar vein of "From the Earth to the Moon", in which various cusp events that diverge significantly from our timeline are handled on a single or two-episode basis.
For instance, a limited series could handle the following occurrences, either documentary style or as a standard narrative like a typical TV episode of Trek:
1. The evolution of the space program from Apollo through the OV shuttle series (Including the launch of the Voyager probes, and the mysterious loss of Voyager-6)
2. The colonization of the moon and Mars, and the contributions of Jackson Roykirk
3. The Eugenics Wars of the 1990's
4. The Sleeper Ships, the secrecy surrounding them, and why the program failed
5. Strangers from the Sky (The secret tale of actual Vulcan first contact) Salute, M.W.B.
6. Col. Green, World War III, and the post-atomic horror
7. Earth's recovery and political unification after the holocaust
8. First Contact with Alpha Centauri
9. Zephram Cochrane and the advent of warp drive, and the first interstellar round-trip to Alpha Centauri.
10. Official Vulcan First Contact
Could be epic, right?
EDIT: I forgot about Sean Christopher's Saturn mission and Rene Picard's Europa mission. Those would fall in the first third of the series, obviously.
Namely, an anthology show in a similar vein of "From the Earth to the Moon", in which various cusp events that diverge significantly from our timeline are handled on a single or two-episode basis.
For instance, a limited series could handle the following occurrences, either documentary style or as a standard narrative like a typical TV episode of Trek:
1. The evolution of the space program from Apollo through the OV shuttle series (Including the launch of the Voyager probes, and the mysterious loss of Voyager-6)
2. The colonization of the moon and Mars, and the contributions of Jackson Roykirk
3. The Eugenics Wars of the 1990's
4. The Sleeper Ships, the secrecy surrounding them, and why the program failed
5. Strangers from the Sky (The secret tale of actual Vulcan first contact) Salute, M.W.B.
6. Col. Green, World War III, and the post-atomic horror
7. Earth's recovery and political unification after the holocaust
8. First Contact with Alpha Centauri
9. Zephram Cochrane and the advent of warp drive, and the first interstellar round-trip to Alpha Centauri.
10. Official Vulcan First Contact
Could be epic, right?
EDIT: I forgot about Sean Christopher's Saturn mission and Rene Picard's Europa mission. Those would fall in the first third of the series, obviously.
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Sweeet. Epic or not, I would watch the hell out of it. If done right, you have an anthology, video game, and book tie in. Do it quite right and it could span several media forms.While contemplating the matter of alternate timelines and paging through the old Trek starflight chronology, I was struck by an idea for a Trek show that embraces the Prime Timeline as an alternate one extrapolated from TOS and the expectations of the 1960's.
Namely, an anthology show in a similar vein of "From the Earth to the Moon", in which various cusp events that diverge significantly from our timeline are handled on a single or two-episode basis.
For instance, a limited series could handle the following occurrences, either documentary style or as a standard narrative like a typical TV episode of Trek:
1. The evolution of the space program from Apollo through the OV shuttle series (Including the launch of the Voyager probes, and the mysterious loss of Voyager-6)
2. The colonization of the moon and Mars, and the contributions of Jackson Roykirk
3. The Eugenics Wars of the 1990's
4. The Sleeper Ships, the secrecy surrounding them, and why the program failed
5. Strangers from the Sky (The secret tale of actual Vulcan first contact) Salute, M.W.B.
6. Col. Green, World War III, and the post-atomic horror
7. Earth's recovery and political unification after the holocaust
8. First Contact with Alpha Centauri
9. Zephram Cochrane and the advent of warp drive, and the first interstellar round-trip to Alpha Centauri.
10. Official Vulcan First Contact
Could be epic, right?
Also, don't forget the cryosatellites.
Star Trek is fiction, and therefore it should respect is own timeline and canon. It does not need to align with real life and should not make its canon fluid with how real life changes.
Yah
I'll have some more thoughts to post about this once the six-month spoiler rule expires on Picard Season 2. There are some things I want to add, but I'll wait.
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