No Chronowerx corporation...
No Dixon Hill novels on my shelves.
No Dixon Hill novels on my shelves.
What year does the Trek timeline stop resembling ours?
- Thread starter Xerxes1979
- Start date
I always assumed that Khan and his people were created with accelarated ageing, meaning they could've been concieved in the early 80's and maturing to there 20's in the space of a decade? Not sure where I might've got the idea but it's always what I assumed.
Anyone seen the latest Captain Proton remake? Who's been picked to play Arachnia this time?
Does anyone own Chicago Mobs of th 1930's? I think it was published in the 90s
Although arguing about Roddenberry's intent is pointless, I've always assumed that Roddenberry intended Trek's past to be our past. Some counterfactual historical events, such as the death of Edith Keeler, were inserted to serve various stories, but I don't think this is much different from what's done in most other fictional stories.
I guess the biggest practical difference would be that the Trek Earth's space program moved fast, thereby making a spaceborne future a realistic prospect, while the real space program eventually stalled. But while this is hugely important in terms of the fictional universe, the audience will see it as fairly irrelevant in terms of whether the Trek timeline could be interpreted as ours. Roddenberry certainly would have loved to see history pass as it really did, with the minor modification that humans conquered the Sol system in the 1980s and sent people to the stars in the 1990s.
In sharp contrast, the Trek timeline features glorious and gruesome wars: the Eugenics War, the WWIII, nuclear horrors, oppression, riots, disasters. Those set the Trek timeline apart from ours in dramatic terms, yet in terms of the fictional universe they are fairly irrelevant, contributing little to the overall story of mankind. We are a warlike species, and the fictional events described could just as well have been factual. In that, they really tie the Trek timeline into the real one, rather than distancing it... Advanced spaceflight is unrealistic and unreal but seemingly allows history to proceed so that the audience isn't alienated, whereas horrible wars are realistic and indeed close to reality but the audience gets the impression that they somehow represent significant changes in history.
Really, whether we have four space shuttles or ten in 1984 is crucially important to how the Trek universe steers away from ours. Whether we have Eugenics Wars or the Bosnian War in 1994 is fairly irrelevant in that respect. But the audience at large is unlikely to see it that way.
Timo Saloniemi
In sharp contrast, the Trek timeline features glorious and gruesome wars: the Eugenics War, the WWIII, nuclear horrors, oppression, riots, disasters. Those set the Trek timeline apart from ours in dramatic terms, yet in terms of the fictional universe they are fairly irrelevant, contributing little to the overall story of mankind. We are a warlike species, and the fictional events described could just as well have been factual. In that, they really tie the Trek timeline into the real one, rather than distancing it... Advanced spaceflight is unrealistic and unreal but seemingly allows history to proceed so that the audience isn't alienated, whereas horrible wars are realistic and indeed close to reality but the audience gets the impression that they somehow represent significant changes in history.
Really, whether we have four space shuttles or ten in 1984 is crucially important to how the Trek universe steers away from ours. Whether we have Eugenics Wars or the Bosnian War in 1994 is fairly irrelevant in that respect. But the audience at large is unlikely to see it that way.
Timo Saloniemi
That's why I was always opposed to prequels, because it brings Trek back closer to our time, and creates unneccessary problems.
If they do a Khan reboot in the next movie, he will certainly not be from 1996.
You either need to erase the false historical facts from the Trek canon or acknowledge that Star Trek is a fully fictional franchise that had a big war and sleeper ships in 1996, etc...
If Trek ever makes it into 2063, people will be fairly disappointed, I guess.
If they do a Khan reboot in the next movie, he will certainly not be from 1996.
You either need to erase the false historical facts from the Trek canon or acknowledge that Star Trek is a fully fictional franchise that had a big war and sleeper ships in 1996, etc...
If Trek ever makes it into 2063, people will be fairly disappointed, I guess.
Anyone who isn't doing that already is mental.
I prefer option "A" erase the false historical facts Not because I'm mental, but because if I send my characters back to the "present" it gonna look like the world outside my window for the simple reason the audience is gonna expect it. Treks 2009 should be their 2009. The 1960s of "Assigment Earth and Tomorrow is Yesterday or the 1980s of STIV was pretty much our version. No blah blah blah about alternate realites eating up screen time.
Yep, Q contaminated life on Earth by scooping up a handful of primordial goo and letting it fall back. So it's obviously his fault.
Actually, somebody wrote an excellent essay in Best of Trek, explaining why there is no Star Trek the TV show in Star Trek. It's because of the milk-stealing bum in "City on the Edge of Forever" accidentally killing himself with McCoy's phaser. None of the crew knew about this, so it's nothing they could have corrected. And the Guardian said nothing about it, so presumably it was meant to happen.
The essay speculates that the bum's death set a series of events in motion that led to his son (feeling abandoned by his father when he doesn't return) taking to a life of crime to support the rest of the family, and many years later ending up in Los Angeles where he shoots and kills Gene Roddenberry (who used to be a cop) before he created Star Trek. So this timeline divergence would be in 1930.
Actually, somebody wrote an excellent essay in Best of Trek, explaining why there is no Star Trek the TV show in Star Trek. It's because of the milk-stealing bum in "City on the Edge of Forever" accidentally killing himself with McCoy's phaser. None of the crew knew about this, so it's nothing they could have corrected. And the Guardian said nothing about it, so presumably it was meant to happen.
The essay speculates that the bum's death set a series of events in motion that led to his son (feeling abandoned by his father when he doesn't return) taking to a life of crime to support the rest of the family, and many years later ending up in Los Angeles where he shoots and kills Gene Roddenberry (who used to be a cop) before he created Star Trek. So this timeline divergence would be in 1930.
Even before that, when Quinn brought Voyager to the Big Bang.
If we're simply talking an alternate timeline for the Abramsverse vs. the prime timeline, they don't diverge until 2233 (Kirk's birth), so Khan would be the same in both.
Unless you believe - as I do - that the black hole didn't simply lead into the past, but an entirely separate universe. In which case I would agree with you about Khan.
(Note that some people believe that alternate timeline means the same as alternate universe. I don't.)
Yeah, you didn't see a bunch of Augments running around in TVH, although surely they'd have to have existed at that point to have gained power just a few years down the road.
Maybe the punk on the bus was genetically engineered.
I'm all for simply retconning the Eugenics War to be sometime later than the 1990s.
Since Roddenberry was obsessed with doing a timetravel story to save Kennedy, I'm going to say his assassination. Or MLK's.
The odd thing about this episode was I think the producers expected the viewers to be outraged and horroified at the very concept of the sacutuaries, after the show ran the first time alot of people around the country (america) thought they were a great idea.
When I show that episode to non-trek fans today, many say we could use something like that in Seattle.
So when Voyager travels to LA in the mid 1990's, they're in a world with no eugenics war? Not just a case of, like today, where the country is in a major war, with troops in other places too, but the populace goes about their day?
After Spock uses his phaser to assassinate Kennedy in November of '63, the Enterprise travels forward to September of '01 to finish off the trade center.
Because, of course, what's wrong with the idea of urban concentration camps for the poor, mentally ill, and unemployed? Ah, class warfare. I do so love it when people seek to punish their fellow citizens for not being born privileged.
ETA:
I'm not bitching at you, T'Girl, I'm just bitching at the general idea that anyone would find urban concentration camps for the poor to be a good thing.
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Ack! Didn't mean for it to seem that way. Thanks for pointing it out.
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