What we see on the screen. (Subject to change at the whim of the IP holder)
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Even if they contradict themselves many times?
Well, it’s kind of worked for the Catholic Church for over 1,500 years, more or less. So, I think we can make do. 
Just them. Everyone else are real sticklers.Well, it’s kind of worked for the Catholic Church for over 1,500 years, more or less. So, I think we can make do.
Except the Catholic Church has done things like Vatican II, where when your canon gets too complicated and doesn’t exactly work as well as time passes, they basically did a quasi-reboot and the equivalent of a Paramount executive saying:Well, it’s kind of worked for the Catholic Church for over 1,500 years, more or less. So, I think we can make do.
“You know, we’re just not gonna sweat all of this stuff in continuity over here. You can take it as apocryphal parables instead of events that actually occurred within the Prime Timeline. We’re gonna offer a new interpretation of some of these other events. And you can leave out these rules about concepts that we once said were important.”
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Oh, can I give my theory on this? I think they had just seen a science-fiction movie where, to establish the power of the bad guys, they conquered Vulcan. Spock spent the whole time complaining about how illogical that was, so it became an inside joke among the senior staff.
North America. North America was depicted as peaceful on those multiple shows. I do not recall a single Trek time travel episode set in the Eugenics Wars region of conflict.
During both WWII and WWII North America looked as peaceful as ever. The only signs the world was engulfed in war were various drills, more people in uniform due to the draft, and news reports about conflicts on the opposite side of the globe. A time traveler arriving in Manitoba or Minneapolis or even LA or NYC in 1942 would see no visible signs of WWII. No armies, no battles, no death camps. All they would see is peaceful conditions.
The idea that peaceful conditions in Trek 90s time travel episodes proves the Eugenics Wars could not be happening is a flawed idea.
I do wonder what the DY-100 model in Rain Robinson's office was supposed to represent within the universe itself. Im not talking about why the production team put it in the show, im thinking about a valid reason why a model of that vessel exists if everything was pushed forward.
To me, this explains all of our time confusion:
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SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
Their records are simply wrong. The massive EMP's destroyed most electronic data. Another factor, later "politically" reconstructed records say the Eugenic Wars and WWIII started in the 1990's, but in reality, no such wars occurred in the 1990's, rather they occurred later in the 2000's. The Federation historians have weaved a tall tale of Earth crawling out the destruction of war into the era of peaceful exploration of space. After all, rewriting history is the one of the first elements of Marxism... YMMV .
And Khan is just gaslighting us when he himself says that he was "lost in space from the year 1996".To me, this explains all of our time confusion:
SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.Their records are simply wrong. The massive EMP's destroyed most electronic data. Another factor, later "politically" reconstructed records say the Eugenic Wars and WWIII started in the 1990's, but in reality, no such wars occurred in the 1990's, rather they occurred later in the 2000's. The Federation historians have weaved a tall tale of Earth crawling out the destruction of war into the era of peaceful exploration of space. After all, rewriting history is the one of the first elements of Marxism... YMMV
He does "know something of those years".
I'm already happy.
Well, it’s kind of worked for the Catholic Church for over 1,500 years, more or less. So, I think we can make do.
Let's not go down this road...
If you go with the idea that the Eugenics War was a limited conflict that was confined to Europe and Asia? Sure. You can believe that life in North America would be mostly unaffected.
The problem with that is we have multiple things showing us that The Eugenics Wars were also World War III, a Nuclear conflict that wreaked havoc across the globe and would have certainly been noticeable in 90's L.A. or early 2000's Detroit.
The whole argument comes down to whether the Eugenics Wars and World War 3 were the same conflict. TOS supports this statement, but has the war taking place in the 90's. SNW explicitly ties them together and places them in the 21st century. Every other production, besides TOS and WoK, support or explicitly shows us the war being a 21st century conflict.
I choose to support the side with the most evidence behind it. I can easily ignore the dates presented in Space Seed as simply being one of the MANY inconsistencies that existed in during the early years of the franchise.
Why others are perfectly willing to ignore the various other inconsistencies, but are determined to cement the Eugenics Wars into the 90's, is beyond me.
By strict interpretation, TOS is around the year 2200. If we go by current timeline convention of 1966 + 300 years, Space Seed is occurring ~271 years after the launch of the Botany Bay. I guess standard practice in the future is to round down.
Someone catch me up: Are the only two explicit references to WWIII in TOS from Space Seed and Bread and Circuses?
Space Seed explicitly calls the Eugenics Wars as World War III and says the Botany Bay has been lost since 1996. Bread and Circuses at least only refers to WWIII and only by death count not by time. I see no evidence that Colonel Green's War is connected to either conflict. (No evidence that it's not, sure.)
So yeah, if 50% of your references link the EW to WWIII and the other 50% is silent, that's pretty compelling.
The Wrath of Khan does not refer to the war as such but only that Khan was a ruler and was frozen in 1996.
The next time we hear of any of this is in Encounter at Farpoint and we learn of the Post Atomic Horror in the late 21st century. (2079, right?) Which, yeah, in 1987 given what we "knew" of Star Trek's "history" of our near future was a head scratcher.
Now we know that the War will start in two years (!) and will be an outgrowth of the protests of the early 2020's which... lead into the Eugenics Wars? Which then becomes WWIII?
SNW insisted on "fixing" it with time war shenanigans. But if the Apollo program had not been successful (certainly a possibility) I'm sure TNG would not have insisted it was.
I guess my controversial opinion (and I don't think it should be) is that Star Trek's history is our history.
Space Seed explicitly calls the Eugenics Wars as World War III and says the Botany Bay has been lost since 1996. Bread and Circuses at least only refers to WWIII and only by death count not by time. I see no evidence that Colonel Green's War is connected to either conflict. (No evidence that it's not, sure.)
So yeah, if 50% of your references link the EW to WWIII and the other 50% is silent, that's pretty compelling.
The Wrath of Khan does not refer to the war as such but only that Khan was a ruler and was frozen in 1996.
The next time we hear of any of this is in Encounter at Farpoint and we learn of the Post Atomic Horror in the late 21st century. (2079, right?) Which, yeah, in 1987 given what we "knew" of Star Trek's "history" of our near future was a head scratcher.
Now we know that the War will start in two years (!) and will be an outgrowth of the protests of the early 2020's which... lead into the Eugenics Wars? Which then becomes WWIII?
SNW insisted on "fixing" it with time war shenanigans. But if the Apollo program had not been successful (certainly a possibility) I'm sure TNG would not have insisted it was.
I guess my controversial opinion (and I don't think it should be) is that Star Trek's history is our history.
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Absolutely!
Lessee... The Council of Nicaea was in 325 AD and Vatican II ran from 1962 through 1965. So, it took them around 1,640 years to unravel the canon from its initial establishment.
I calculate we have about 1,580 years to go before Trek Fandom II gets their chance.
This will go well...Absolutely!
Lessee... The Council of Nicaea was in 325 AD and Vatican II ran from 1962 through 1965. So, it took them around 1,640 years to unravel the canon from its initial establishment.
I calculate we have about 1,580 years to go before Trek Fandom II gets their chance.
Maybe this is controversial...
Possibly the biggest mistake of the current era of shows is trying to match STAR TREK history with our own.
There's no need.
Possibly the biggest mistake of the current era of shows is trying to match STAR TREK history with our own.
There's no need.
Lazenby brought heart to Bond, something the majority of the other Bond actors failed to do. Lazenby's Bond felt like a real person coming to terms with his life, rather than one stuck only in the spy mold, or being a stale piece of wood like certain actors in that role.
Saavik was not one of the TOS characters who cast their versions in eternal stone, so it was not a real issue.
It probably would've been ok if we hadn't seen/heard so much about the present.
Just as Futurama has predicted:Absolutely!
Lessee... The Council of Nicaea was in 325 AD and Vatican II ran from 1962 through 1965. So, it took them around 1,640 years to unravel the canon from its initial establishment.
I calculate we have about 1,580 years to go before Trek Fandom II gets their chance.
Congregation: (said in unison) "All power to the engines!!!"
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