What are your opinions regarding Star Trek that are, shall we say, unorthodox?

[Starflight]

No, it was a moment that started building towards something better when betterment was recognized not to be in a test tube. We also had the Saturn mission, the invention of warp and alien contact. It's all pivitol.

None of these things are connected in the script to Space Seed. The Eugenics Wars are said to have ended around 1996 - Khan, whose rule ended that year, was "the last of the tyrants to be overthrown".

Thing is, the glimpse of the Post-Atomic Horror we see is from 2079 — sixteen years after the first contact in 2063.

That's interesting, I never knew that. I wonder if they botched the date in First Contact.

 

[fireproof78]

None of these things are connected in the script to Space Seed. The Eugenics Wars are said to have ended around 1996 - Khan, whose rule ended that year, was "the last of the tyrants to be overthrown".

Right. That's the fun of TOS. Seemingly unconnected events gradually led to improvements.

ETA: what I enjoy about Star Trek in TOS is the fact that positive growth was not assumed. It had to be worked on, developed and improved. It didn't have this destiny idea that TNG put forward that growth was inevitable as a infant moving forward in to childhood.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Thing is, the glimpse of the Post-Atomic Horror we see is from 2079 — sixteen years after the first contact in 2063.

YATI

 

[FredH]

None of these things are connected in the script to Space Seed. The Eugenics Wars are said to have ended around 1996 - Khan, whose rule ended that year, was "the last of the tyrants to be overthrown".

That's interesting, I never knew that. I wonder if they botched the date in First Contact.

Maybe. But it’s also reasonable for things to have gone back and forth for decades, (Just like real life.)

 

[FredH]

YATI

?

 

[Starflight]

Right. That's the fun of TOS. Seemingly unconnected events gradually led to improvements.

I don't think the script does anything to suggest it's seen as a stepping stone on the way to a better world, it's just a historical atrocity.

Regardless though, again, the thing I really don't like is TNG's introduction of WW3 (and subsequent attempts to fold the Eugenics Wars into that), and the backstory introduced in First Contact. TOS' worldbuilding is more fun because it's scattershot by design, and the exact route by which the future came about is very ambiguous.

?

"Yet Another Trek Inconsistency"!

 

[fireproof78]

TOS' worldbuilding is more fun because it's scattershot by design, and the exact route by which the future came about is very ambiguous.

But you can trace lines. Look at Colonel Green, Keniculus, and different events through the 20th century to TOS.

Yes, I like the ambiguity and lack of assuming a definitive outcome from one event. It's why TNG's post atomic horror rubs wrong. Its reimaging a conflict that didn't carry that weight.

 

[Shawnster]

Regardless though, again, the thing I really don't like is TNG's introduction of WW3 (and subsequent attempts to fold the Eugenics Wars into that),

How would you have handled it, based on this exchange from Space Seed?

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.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

The Eugenics Wars were the last of Earth's world wars. This means, at the very least, they were WW3.

TNG was up against a wall. They wanted a "post-atomic horror" in "Encounter at Farpoint" but with the episode airing in 1987 they were too close for comfort to 1992-1996 to suggest a nuclear exchange happened during those years, so they pushed WW3 to the early or mid 21st century sometime prior to 2079. The new UN passed a resolution in 2036 and FC is set in 2063.

Looks like WW3 being kicked down the road might have been an attempt at retconning the Eugenics Wars, even if only subconsciously.

 

[Starflight]

How would you have handled it, based on this exchange from Space Seed?

If I were writing "Farpoint", I think I'd just have skipped WW3 and the post-atomic setup entirely - it didn't add much to the episode beyond an aesthetically striking scene for the trial, which could have been achieved in plenty of other ways.

Looks like WW3 being kicked down the road might have been an attempt at retconning the Eugenics Wars, even if only subconsciously.

This is probably right; the 2036 thing is the real baffling part since apparently the "new United Nations" were going gangbusters with "United Earth" policies in that year, which - under the new unified timeline used by SNW - would be happening about forty years into the global mega-war.

I get the feeling they probably didn't have the Eugenics Wars in mind when they wrote it, and the historical timeline as of "Farpoint" was intended to be something like "things kept getting better until the mid 21st century then crashed horribly into nuclear armageddon".

 

[fireproof78]

get the feeling they probably didn't have the Eugenics Wars in mind when they wrote it, and the historical timeline as of "Farpoint" was intended to be something like "things kept getting better until the mid 21st century then crashed horribly into nuclear armageddon".

Because TOS was not important enough to reference much beyond tacit acknowledgement.

 

[Firebird]

YATI

Maybe not an inconsistency. One could reason that the Post-Atomic Horror lasted a while and drove humanity into smaller groups of varying levels of sophistication, based on how much they were directly affected by the bombing. Cochrane's batch was maybe isolated enough in the mountains of Montana to be less affected at a societal level than the vision we saw in Q's courtroom.

 

[cooleddie74]

The courtroom scene seemed to look like it might have been controlled by remnants of Colonel Green's forces and somewhere in the less developed world. Those drug-addicted soldiers were supposed to eventually get tied into Green in an ENT episode idea that was being considered when that series was cancelled, the triangular logo on their headgear representing Colonel Green's organization.

 

[Ovation]

Yellow, gold, green, avocado…TOS uniform colour parsing to that degree is…irrelevant.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe not an inconsistency. One could reason that the Post-Atomic Horror lasted a while and drove humanity into smaller groups of varying levels of sophistication, based on how much they were directly affected by the bombing. Cochrane's batch was maybe isolated enough in the mountains of Montana to be less affected at a societal level than the vision we saw in Q's courtroom.

But Zeph still benefited from the mass extinction of all lawyers?

 

[BillJ]

Because TOS was not important enough to reference much beyond tacit acknowledgement.

The second episode was a “sequel” to “The Naked Time”. With direct references to it.

What the thinking was with “…Farpoint” is anyone’s guess. Rumors have it that Roddenberry wanted the show as far from TOS as possible. The product doesn’t match the rumors.

 

[fireproof78]

The second episode was a “sequel” to “The Naked Time”. With direct references to it.

What the thinking was with “…Farpoint” is anyone’s guess. Rumors have it that Roddenberry wanted the show as far from TOS as possible. The product doesn’t match the rumors.

Fair but I think less the adventures of the Enterprise and more the historical world building.

 

[XCV330]

But Zeph still benefited from the mass extinction of all lawyers?

it makes sense. He didn't seem to have to deal with any regulatory issues. Assuming that Titan missile was like any of the other real world Titans it would have been filled with nasty hypergolic fuel and oxidizer. had something gone wrong over that little town in Montana they'd have had some horrors of their own.

 

[Nerys Myk]

it makes sense. He didn't seem to have to deal with any regulatory issues. Assuming that Titan missile was like any of the other real world Titans it would have been filled with nasty hypergolic fuel and oxidizer. had something gone wrong over that little town in Montana they'd have had some horrors of their own.

A post Atomic horror?

 

[cooleddie74]

The second episode was a “sequel” to “The Naked Time”. With direct references to it.

What the thinking was with “…Farpoint” is anyone’s guess. Rumors have it that Roddenberry wanted the show as far from TOS as possible. The product doesn’t match the rumors.

Gene was all over the map in his later years. Eschewing TOS one minute and then not only using verbal references the next but including an onscreen graphic of Kirk's ship. He wanted his colored food cubes and to eat them, too.

I love Gene (mostly), but....yeah.

 

[Uxi]

The combination of the timeline interference by Captain John Christopher, the Aeon/Henry Starling, combined with the Borg from FC, created a new timeline that bumped the Eugenics Wars and WW3 back and changed the Earth-Romulan War by introducing more advanced technology earlier and was not fought with sublight spacecraft with primitive atomic weapons and limited communications and instead both Earth and Romulus now had access to subspace far earlier than they did in the original timeline. The new timeline replaced the XCV-330 ring ship from the original timeline with the NX Enterprise at around the roughly the same time period.

Guardian of Forever/Edith Keeler incident was mostly self-correcting. as was the Gary Seven/Assignment Earth orbital weapons platform incident in 1968.

The Aeon went back to 1967 and changed that timeline indirectly created the conditions for the Temporal Cold War and caused the Sphere Builders to respond and ultimately led to the Xindi attack, which did not exist in the original timeline.