Seventies audiences? The decade where even the chipper, sunny comedies ended downbeat and depressed, if you could see what was happening under the smear of industrial grime and pre-faded film stock? Pull the other one.
The next movie would have been about how Kirk and crew time-travel back to the early 1970's and influence Congress to cut funding for NASA and the Voyager program. As a result of their efforts, the Voyager program ends after the first two missions are launched, so there is never a Voyager 6 mission, meaning that... Oh wait, that actually happened in real life...nevermind.
If Roddenberry had gotten his way, the next movie would have depicted a scenario in which John F. Kennedy is somehow found to be responsible for V'Ger, so the Enterprise travels back in time, and Spock shoots Kennedy from the grassy knoll. --Sran
Never got the hate for Code of Honor. If the actors were replaced by blue, 3 meters tall Na'vi, no one would give a shit. The episode is ONLY considered racist because the actors are black.
This is utterly bizzare. Nobody and their grandmother ever talked about racial undertones. The episode sucked spaceballs for tons of legitimate reasons; including but not limited to: Poorly written. Just terrible. Imagine that one line from "Datalore" about beaming out a tree, stretched to an entire episode. Awful direction. Poorly plotted. Poorly concieved. Horrible acting. Not Godawful, but at a certain point it doesn't really matter -- you're only delineating between different steaming piles of monkey crap. And a weak and forgettable score by one time TNG composer, and famous TOS composer, the late Fred Steiner. What a fucking waste of a talented composer.
No more "carbon units" on Earth. But what does V'Ger do after that? It will have failed its mission and its creator will not answer unless some other starship or ship from another Federation world happened to figure out it needs the Voyager 6 codes and manages to get them all off before V'Ger shorts out its receiver so it can "touch the creator". In this version, did it destroy USS Enterprise? Or does Kirk just self-destruct to take out V'Ger following the loss of Earth? The Federation loses several billion on Earth, Their newest rebuilt heavy cruiser, At least one major shipyard, Starfleet Command and the Academy. As well as the already lost Epsilon Nine Station. Can it recover? Maybe. But would that be enough? The Klingons have only lost three battlecruisers in comparison. While a vital loss, the loss of Earth is probably way higher and provides an opening for the Klingon Empire to press into Federation Space. After that? Too many variables. If the Klingons can expand at the expense of the now Earthless Federation, than they likely will not have to over mine Praxis and thus it won't explode some twenty years later. Thus the Empire will not have to scale back, nor come to a peace with the Federation.
Does this then prevent the Romulans from rising to power again in the TNG era? Where's that darn psychohistory when we need it?
Too many variables. I can only get about 20 years ahead of the V'Ger incident with any sort of guesswork. After that the variables become too unknown. No telling of Starfleet would even continue refitting ships or making new ones with the new engine style, or just make due while they attempt to rebuild a new center of the Federation and new structure on both the political front and the chain of command. The Genesis Project might not come about at all. The Klingons wouldn't need to increase their paranoia about the humans. There's be no "Great Experiment" unless the Federation was seriously having problems with the Klingons or Romulans to justify the Excelsior. That is assuming the design teams and technology behind it were not lost when V'Ger removes the humans from Earth. The thing with Sybok might still happen, but it will be up to the Klingons to deal with it. If the Klingons and Romulans expand due to a weakened Federation, they might have more issues with each other than they already do. Or the newfound expansion room into Federation space have the two of them maintain their alliance since it works against this Federation. Possible war with the Federation, or at least incidents. If the Klingons can exploit Federation worlds, or at least other worlds that they could not take due to the Federation curbing their expansion, than Praxis probably won't be over-mined and won't explode...as early anyway. Post-Kirk era is very difficult to predict since we don't know a lot of details of the era to begin with, and the alterations become more and more unknown the farther down the line you go. Most of TNG and DS9 humans crews are from Earth and thus were probably not born, thus making any of that very difficult to predict, much less the political standing of the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire 90 years after Earth has its human infestation removed.
Very good points. I have some thoughts on each. I think this is bigger than Earth, while progress may have slowed, progress is progress, and I think an argument can be made for perhaps speeding up the refits, just as the Nero incident in NuTrek has been used to justify technology being ahead of where it should be. Genesis feels like a backwater project, so I do not think Earth's destruction would have any impact. Check that. Khan would still take over Reliant, but find no Kirk to avenge himself upon. How disapointing! Kruge would then come for Khan. So we get Khan vs Kruge. I think Khan wins, but Starfleet ultimately takes Khan down. Excelsior on the other hand, presumably would be utterly lost. Unless as you say this would have been backed up in other locations, which at the concept and design phase is very rare. The whale probe would be sorely disappointed, buy might track down V'ger and disable it. Whale Probe vs V'Ger... has this been discussed before? I still think the Federation would be involved, perhaps even a Starfleet starship. Many years would have transpired betwen the V'Ger incident and TFF. Just no Enterprise. Maybe, but I maintain that both the Federation and Starfleet are bigger than Earth. Both take a huge hit, but I don't see the critical compromise that allows or to make significant gains in ground. No, this still happens. Klingons will be Klingons no matter who they are fighting. The conspiracy also still happens. It's just not our heros in the mix. Have to agree with you there. GEN just don't happen. Soran is not pulled from the Nexus by ENT-B since that ship if it even exists would launch from somewhere else and not be in a position to 'rescue' the Lacul. Without Kirk and Scotty on board, the 'rescue' wouldn't be successful anyway. End of film. Roll credits. From there, the deep dark. We can't say what happens...
It also depends on how important Earth is to the Federation and just how much of its starship development and engineers are on Earth at that time. As well as how many people of the people being "removed" would harm the Federation on an economic level as well as just on the level of workers for the various shipyards and such in the Sol System. It seems there were no other major ships in Sol at the time. Or at least none in a condition to intercept V'Ger. So the current Starfleet is intact in terms of ships and non-Earth bases. But how about the command structure, both Starfleet Command and the Federation Council? Just how important is Earth to the Federation? What does losing all the people on Earth in 2273 do to the Federation? This could have a similar question for the newer films with the loss of Vulcan, in what does that do to the Federation? The loss of billions of Vulcans and the whole planet. At least with Earth, it is possible V'Ger leaves all the technology and ecosystem in place...just removed the humans, gets disappointed and is destroyed by a self-destructing USS Enterprise. The wreckage probably will do a number on Earth, though.