Yesterday's Enterprise Alternate Universe

[jmampilly]

The alternate universe created by a wormhole in Yesterday's Enterprise, in which the Federation had been at war with the Klingons for 20 years, is an interesting one. However, I find it hard to believe, because it seems like all canonical evidence outside of said episode would indicate a Federation victory...

What do you guys think? Is the alternate universe believable, or can it only be explained through such radical events as a surprise attack early on that devastated the Federation?

 

[F. King Daniel]

STVI seemed to completely ignore and undermine YE's story, presenting a Klingon/human peace decades earlier than what "Yesterday's Enterprise" established. The Voyager episode "Flashback" tried to fix it by calling STVI the first Klingon/Federation treaty, but it's still a mess trying to reconcile an essentially defeated Empire ("Quite frankly, Mr. President, we can clean their chronometers.") with one utterly dominating the Federation. Perhaps in that AU they found some new WMD with which they tipped the balance?

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

It's also possible that the events of The Undiscovered Country are themselves indicative of an alternate reality that came about as a result of the events of "Yesterday's
Enterprise." Please allow me to explain.

We know that the deterioration of the peace treaty between the Klingon Empire and the Federation happened because of the alleged inability of the Enterprise-C to defend Narendra III. This timeline was avoided- for lack of a better term- when the Enterprise-C returned from the future and prevented the outpost's destruction by Romulan ships. Similar to the events of "Yesteryear," it would seem that the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise" were in fact necessary in maintaining (restoring?) the history that we're familiar with.

But suppose that didn't happen.

What if an agency such as the Temporal Integrity Commission was monitoring the events in question and decided to ensure a lasting peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (and an avoidance of a war that would cripple the Federation and drive it to the brink of surrender) by orchestrating the explosion of Praxis- a moon known to be unstable due to poor safety precautions taken by the miners who used it (as pointed out by Spock)- but making it appear to be an accident, thus forcing Chancellor Gorkon's hand?

The TIC's intervention would make peace between Earth and Qo'nos possible at an earlier time, thus avoiding the Narendra III incident altogether. The incident is never mentioned following the events of "Redemption," which aired before TUC was released. Commander Sela appears in "Unification," which also airs before the film's release. Thus, it could be argued that TUC's events constitute an entirely different reality due to the TIC's involvement.

--Sran

 

[Ethros]

I always think its funny how it does kinda devalue STVI quite a lot 'continuity wise.'
As the 2293 Khitomer Accords or no, relations would have broken down leading to war either way without the Narenda III incident.

The Voyager episode "Flashback" tried to fix it by calling STVI the first Klingon/Federation treaty, but it's still a mess trying to reconcile an essentially defeated Empire

There's a line in Insurrection too where they say the use of subspace weapons were banned in "the Second Khitomer Accords" so I guess there was more than one over the years.



EDIT: Hey I never knew the planet in ENT: Judgment was meant to be Narenda III
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Narendra_III

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I love these complicated off-script explanations for continuity problems between series.

The simplest explanation is that the peace established in Star Trek VI was not a very stable one. Maybe the chancellor at the time was in favor of it but Km'Pec thought it was stupid and he's the one who wanted to invade the Federation, and that was either politically advantageous or not depending on the Ent-C defending that outpost. So the Klingons in that timeline allocated their resources for a major war against the Federation, perhaps being less aggressive on other fronts to be able to do so.

But it doesn't need to be more complicated than 'The scripts contradict each other', particularly meddling time travelers have no reason to be further involved than they already are.

 

[-Brett-]

Believable is a relative term.

If that strictly refers to the Klingon Empire potentially defeating the Federation, sure, I could believe that.

50 years between The Undiscovered Country and Narendra III is more than enough time for the empire to rebuild from Praxis and for it's relationship with the Federation to deteriorate to the brink of war again.

 

[Armored Saint]

STVI seemed to completely ignore and undermine YE's story, presenting a Klingon/human peace decades earlier than what "Yesterday's Enterprise" established.

No, in TNG, the Federation and the Klingon Empire are allied, not simply at peace.

In TOS, the Organians impose a peace treaty to them, but they stay enemies. So, it's not a real peace. During STIII, they are trying to negociate for peace, a real one in this case, not something imposed by a third party.

In STVI, they're establishing peace and a formal partnership. It's approximately fifty years before the Narendra III events. During this gap, they had time to find an unexpected solution to save the Qo'noS atmosphere. It was also enough time to allowed the deterioration of this relationship.

We learn in TNG that the Klingon regime is not very stable. After the resolving of Praxis disaster, a radical Chancellor could have decided to almost forget the Khitomer treaty.

 

[Lance]

The episode Aquiel (TNG, sixth season) established that as little as within a decade or so before the events of TNG, there were still skirmishes between Klingons and Starfleet.

This is even in the 'peaceful' version of the 24th century.

Even in the TNG/DS9 era, it's an uneasy alliance... not an easy thing for either side... in Heart Of Glory Riker and his away team react with suspicion of the three Klingons, while later Klingon stories would see the Empire being openly scathing of humans (Gowron virtually dismisses Picard's legitimacy as Arbiter Of Succession, until he figures out a way he can make it an advantage of course ).

So, the potential for conflict was always there... even after the so-called "peace accords" established in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

My suspicion is that in the Yesterday's Enterprise universe, the gradual mothballing of the fleet after the Khitomer accords resulted in Starfleet being unprepared for a Klingon assault. The Federation was left impotent after the events of STVI. Klingon ships are more seat-of-your-pants in their construction anyway, so even if the Klingons had to similarly "disarm" after STVI, they could probably have built up a credible fleet again much faster than Starfleet. Chances are good that by the time the alternative Federation actually realized they were at war with the Klingons again, and scrambled to put ships into action, they had been (metaphorically) caught with their pants down, and struggled to play catch up. No doubt there was a while where diplomatic solutions were sought as well, which probably gave the Klingons even more chances to stockpile a battle fleet on the sly.

In short: the Starfleet didn't know what him 'em.

 

[dub]

I used to get so excited when that episode would come on in re-runs because I just LOVED the Enterprise C, I thought the whole thing with Yar was awesome, Guinan sensing things not being right, the alternate D set and uniforms...I just loved the whole episode. Whether things matched up exactly with TUC? That never once crossed my mind. And now that you mention it, I couldn't care less.

 

[Lance]

To be completely fair... Yesterday's Enterprise was first by a couple of years.

It was the producers of TUC who ignored the events of the episode. Fair do's if they want to, but YE established itself first.

Although if we want to reconcile it, we might assume that it took quite a while (and a few different encounters) before peace -- or an uneasy alliance, at least -- became solidified. Possibly Narendra III was simply the incident that made it real for the Klingons?

There's an irony is the isolationist Romulans, who presumably hoped to play both sides against each other concerning Narendra III (and probably did in the alt timeline), instead serving to bring the Klingons and the Feds finally to an accord with each other.

 

[Ethros]

This thread makes me wanna dig out the Lost Era novel Star Trek: The Art of the Impossible, which covers a lot of this ground (and is also my favourite Trek book tbh)

 

[Nightdiamond]

That is a hard to explain contradiction. But the movie had its own internal contradiction.

The Klingons also wanted to attack first and claimed they could 'take by whole' instead of sharing.

That sounded like they believed they could win too.

One theory I have --

The Klingons already invested in a huge military that lasted long enough to outfight the Federation in a 20 year war.

They've been probably building it for decades--it looks like they don't waste any ships.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I always think its funny how it does kinda devalue STVI quite a lot 'continuity wise.'
As the 2293 Khitomer Accords or no, relations would have broken down leading to war either way without the Narenda III incident.

The League of Nations didn't manage to prevent World War II,
yet forming the League is still considered an important historical event. Because conceptually, it did pave the way for the UN later on.

 

[USS Excelsior]

In Flashback it was said that the Praxis destruction would ultimately lead to the first treaty. TUC established a cease in hostilities.

Also that 2nd Season episode when Picard was in the shuttle with Wesley it was suggested that they were still enemies with the Klingons when he graduated from the Academy.

 

[E-DUB]

Yes, it's believable. An early pre-emptive strike, Pearl Harbor style, at a crucial Federation facility, might have put the Feds on the defensive from the beginning. Then, to borrow a Risk metaphor, the Klingons rolled a lot of sixes.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

The alternate universe created by a wormhole in Yesterday's Enterprise, in which the Federation had been at war with the Klingons for 20 years, is an interesting one. However, I find it hard to believe, because it seems like all canonical evidence outside of said episode would indicate a Federation victory...

What do you guys think? Is the alternate universe believable, or can it only be explained through such radical events as a surprise attack early on that devastated the Federation?

The most implausible aspect about the episode is that after 20 years of war with the Klingons, the Enterprise still had basically the same crew as in our timeline, working at the same positions with the same rank (sans Troi and of course Worf).

So everybody decided to join Starfleet as in OTL, everybody took the same career path as in OTL, everybody ended up on the same ship as in OTL, and despite being at war everybody is still alive.

No Jean-Luc Picard, profesor of archeology. No Lt. William Riker, killed in action in 2358. No Dr. Georgi La Forge, chief medical officer. No Cmdr. Data, first officer of the USS Farragut.

This makes it all the more ironic that Tasha Year was still alive in that alternate - and arguably much more dangerous - timeline.

 

[USS Excelsior]

And plus that Enterprise was in service 2 years longer where Tasha joined straight out of the academy, so she wasn't always security chief.

 

[Lance]

They could have spiced things up by, maybe, putting Geordi back at the Conn on the bridge again, and putting Wesley down in engineering. To imply different career paths for those two characters. 'Real' Wesley was always hanging around the engine room messing about with some experiment or other anyway, so it wouldn't have stretched credibility to have seen him as chief engineer.

 

[trevanian]

One theory I have --

The Klingons already invested in a huge military that lasted long enough to outfight the Federation in a 20 year war.

They've been probably building it for decades--it looks like they don't waste any ships.

It would be no surprise at all to me to find Chang had STiD-style secret shipyard churning out BoPs, or perhaps simply rebuilding and rearming decommisisoned vessels.

Even if the government was going broke, somebody like Chang could broker arms deals in exchange for illegal stuff or stolen goods, so there'd be a way around for him re: the political situation ... so long as you didn't have Fed peace issues in the way.

I particularly like the 'hide in plain sight' notion of a mothball fleet that is anything but mothballed ... I actually used it in a script I wrote for a zero-budget space pic I almost got to make.

I absolutely LOVE the YE universe, especially the lighting. I have always said I wished they spent an arc or season over there. One of my biggest problems with BermanEraModernTrek is how 24th century has magic box tech up th wazoo, so nobody can run out of bullets or be unable to recrystalize dilithium ... without those limits it is hard to see drama in some of the situations, yet the YE verse seemed to have had supply issues, which I can believe a lot easier than most 'real' TNG.

 

[Kemaiku]

Insurrection mentions the "Second Khitomer Accords" and that those were more of a mutual disarmament talks with one of the main points of order being Subspace weapons.

So obviously the first talks, Kirk's mission, brought only a temporary peace until the Klingons were back on their feet.