In the latest episode of Enterprise, we are given a glimpse into American history, Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, there were 30 presidents.
Some questions: 1. Are there elections for president in the 2150's? 2. When Zefram Cochrane flew his warp ship, was there a president in the White House?
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Well, ten from Eisenhower to Dubya over the course of 45 years, so that would give us an rough figure of 2092 for president number 63, which could well have been Trip's deduction of Mestral's upper age limit rather than the end of the USA.
Then again, I'd submit that it's highly unlikely that U.S. presidental history will be particularly well-known in the Trek 2150s to the point where engineers can make bang-on predictions. And that nuclear holocausts may well have the habit of creating understable states where presidents are zipped through relatively quickly.
Posted by newark (Member # 888) on :
Do we have evidence that the universe of Star Trek had the same exact presidents as our universe from 1957 to 2002?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
I think that if we got a closer look at some of the bogus headlines about arms talks and other 20th century horrors in that ST4 scene, we'd find out that the President of the mid-1980s had a strangely unfamiliar yet strangely familiar face...
(No, I don't really think the prop people went to that much detail. But "2010" did have ACC smiling at us from a position of power on the cover of Time.)
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Technically, thirty presidents could last up to 2197, if they each served two full terms.
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
Okay then, where does Trek History start diverging from real world history? (Just for the Earth, anyway, leaving out Alien Contact and so on)
You've got the Eugenics War in the nineties. Which must have been prefaced by some stuff in the eighties and seventies. (Possibly the war originated over the introduction of Velcro? Hmmm)
Things obviously have taken a very strange turn by, say 1989 or so, considering that Trek 4 seemed pretty much like our world. No hint of genetic super-men running around, anyway.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Did I miss the paragraph in my World History textbook about the United States launching an orbital nuclear platform from a Saturn V rocket around 1968 or 1969, which went wildly off course and detonated in space over Eastern Europe?
We also have a technical end date for the USA, based on a couple of TNG throwaway lines -- IIRC they once said there were fifty-two states in the union between 2033 and 2079. Given that 2079 is post-First Contact, I'd venture that the USA ceased to exist at that time in favor of the slowly developing world government. (And as for Q's lovely "post-atomic horror" scenario -- well, not all of the world recovered evenly. Some places were still in anarchy for a while until a decent infrastructure could be built.)
Of course, that doesn't take ENT's blatant Ameri-centricism into account... I wouldn't be too surprised if ENT showed that the US and other countries still existed.
However, you can also say that Trip wasn't that well-versed in American presidents from 1957 to 2079. That's a period of 123 years. Round that up to 124, divide by 4, and you get... 31 terms. Just about right for a casual estimate in conversation.
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
the dissolution of the U.S. isnt the only logical conclusion that could be drawn from that line though.
i believe the novel 'Federation' put forth the idea that WW3 was a big internal problem for a lot of countries, politically and militarily, with a movement springing up that caused the secession of some states from the Union. (this was tied to a reference to Colonel Green also, people from within national militaries betraying or overthrowing their governments)
i think thats a more tasteful solution.. basically, the US government was forced to divide along certain lines, leaving one or more states out of the Union (although with the possibility that they would reform later)
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
I think building a grandiose theory of divergent timelines is a little silly, really, considering the analysis of every other work of fiction out there isn't wrapped up in temporal theory. People don't wonder how the timeline changed so that someone named Rachel Green (who looks a lot like Jennifer Anniston) lives in New York, or how in the alternate timeline blatantly depicted in Tarantino films that "Fruit Brute" cereal is still around. They, being blessed with the gift of sanity, chalk it up to a fictionalized universe, where everything we don't see is assumed to be the same and its perfectly OK to show all sorts of minor details to differ from "our world."
So, uh, to get the Trek universe, take our time, and fictionalize it here or there with the odd detail like the existence of a character's ancestors or small towns like Labarre or Carbon Creek or aquariums in Sausalito (but not fundamental changes, like a massive nuclear war), and then fast-forward 400 years. The fact that the fictionalized present that served as the root for TOS (where a toddler named Khan is running around and is thirty years away from interplanetary flight) differs from the fictionalized present that serves as a root of Voyager (where Chronowerx exists in LA and Mars missions are twenty years away), shouldn't be relevant, really. I don't let it bother me, because being bothered by a television show is a pretty useless exercise.
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
Why do you come to this forum, then?
Jesus. I couldn't care less about the starships or the phasers aspect of trek which dominates huge sections of this board, but you don't hear me bitching about how people talking about it is silly. Different tastes is all it is.
If you're going to call it silly, well, you're right. It is. But it's also fun, which I thought was the entire point.
You do know what fun is, right?
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Different tastes indeed, sure. But I'm tired of people thinking that the anal-retentive must..explain...everything can't..treat..it..like..TV..show is the only way one can have fun with Trek.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
The difference is that "Friends" and Tarantino's films aren't science fiction. Sci-fi (at least the sort that Trek is) is supposed to extrapolate the future from the present. Which means that Trek's "past" should be identical to our present and past. But it isn't.
Besides, "Friends" never did an episode involving parallel timelines.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Well in a parallel universe... "Friends" would be funny.
The orbital weapons platform/Saturn V/Gary 7 thing could have been covered up.
I think divergence occurred on December 19th 1975. The day Apollo 17 left the moon. We never went back... Star Trek did.
Missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn's Moons. Money spent on Space and not on Social problems? WWIII. Infrustructure and knowledge in place for Zephram Cochrane to be able to invent Warp Drive.
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
The seeds of the Eugenics war were planted in 1974 in the Trekverse, with the development of the program that made little ub�rmensch Khan.
Though that's from the books, and not the show, it sounds about right. Khan was around thirty subjective years old in TOS.
So the tech for genetic engineering was readily available in the early seventies. Meaning that at least the tech world was more advanced than in Reality by then, so there were subtle differences even before the Apollo missions.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Well it might fit - cause I made a boo boo in my date... it was 19th December 1972
not 1975. D'oh!
Posted by newark (Member # 888) on :
Which postulates the Eugenics Movement was carried past the collapse of the NAZI regime in the 1940's.
For me, the Earth of Star Trek is a different place entirely. Though there are similaties in names, places, and events, overall their Earth is not our Earth. What is the line at the end of movies? "Any similarity to names or events is coincidental and not intentional." Are those the correct words? Anyway, I think you get at what I am saying.
Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Welcome to the world of legalese.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by O Captain Mike Captain: the dissolution of the U.S. isnt the only logical conclusion that could be drawn from that line though.
i believe the novel 'Federation' put forth the idea that WW3 was a big internal problem for a lot of countries, politically and militarily, with a movement springing up that caused the secession of some states from the Union. (this was tied to a reference to Colonel Green also, people from within national militaries betraying or overthrowing their governments)
i think thats a more tasteful solution.. basically, the US government was forced to divide along certain lines, leaving one or more states out of the Union (although with the possibility that they would reform later)
That's a possible theory. The only problem: World War III ended in 2053 according to "First Contact" -- and that's a hell of a lot more canon than any old novel. It's improbable in the extreme that the United States would hold together for nearly 30 years after a nuclear holocaust, and THEN decide to break up.
Plus, since 2079 is post-First Contact, we have to extrapolate based on the premise that the Vulcans helped "unite Humanity in a way no one thought possible." Does that sound like there would be ANOTHER major world conflict afterwards?
My belief is that after First Contact, there was slow improvement at first, centered around a few of the major remaining cities where the Vulcans would provide initial aid. Things would spread out from there, but since Earth would basically have to rebuild most or all of the planetary infrastructure, reconstruction was probably uneven -- which would explain Q's raucous courtroom scene from "Encounter at Farpoint." Although there were a few types of people there, remember the distinctly Chinese official there... which probably implies an East Asian area which was still in essential anarchy by that time; and there'd probably be others too. The Vulcans would've been willing to help, but they either wouldn't or couldn't expend the massive effort required to completely restore the entire planet so quickly -- and it'd require the cooperation of the locals anyway, which probably wasn't always a given.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Heh - this thread is about US history, and the next Trek film is the tenth. What does this give us? American History X. . . 8)
I'll get me coat.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
quote:Originally posted by Free ThoughtCrime America: Okay then, where does Trek History start diverging from real world history? (Just for the Earth, anyway, leaving out Alien Contact and so on)
You've got the Eugenics War in the nineties. Which must have been prefaced by some stuff in the eighties and seventies. (Possibly the war originated over the introduction of Velcro? Hmmm)
Things obviously have taken a very strange turn by, say 1989 or so, considering that Trek 4 seemed pretty much like our world. No hint of genetic super-men running around, anyway.
Read the book "The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh", parts 1 & 2 by Greg Cox. Everything will be explained. Oh and BTW, have guys seen the latest info on the Saturn mission? Oh, and does anyone here know whether or not I can still get tech support for my Chronowerx PC, because it is starting to do some wierd stuff?
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
"I have no knowledge of the events of the timeline you describe" Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I agree with The_Tom in this respect. Star Trek is not unlike other fiction in depicting a slightly different world than we know it. Making a difference between fiction and science fiction doesn't really help here, maybe only one between satire and "serious" fiction.
So we have to neglect facts like persons or streets that don't exist. Maybe the orbital platforms in the Trek Universe of 1968 may still be reconciled with our real world (they were only mentioned, and it was a lot of cold-war propaganda anyway). But anything surrounding Khan definitely didn't take place. We have to draw a line somewhere.
In this respect, it may be seen as a rather insignificant question if the presidents are identical to those in our world. On the other hand, as I know B&B, they clearly intend the Star Trek world up to our present to be identical to our real world, which has become always more evident in recent episodes. We may have to wait until 2151 if their prediction of the presidents is correct.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Doesn't the very fact that modern Trek has differed with TOS (and themselves) about "present-day" stuff tend to make this all slightly pointless anyway?
quote:Originally posted by TSN: Besides, "Friends" never did an episode involving parallel timelines.
Wrong.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
To nitpick the nitpicker, if I'm thinking of the same episode you are, actually, that was a "What If?" episode in the same vein as Futurama's Anthologies of Interest, and not strictly another timeline.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Malcolm in the Middle did a great alternate timeline episode once.
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
Did Janeway ever state the year when part of the California coast sunk? That would be a particularly noticable occassion for divergence...
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
i think that the Trek world and our world diverged with Gene Roddenberry started writing a TV show that was kinda like Wagon Train, but only in the stars. you might have heard of it...
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Except I'd call it a fair bet to say there wasn't an Edith Keeler in the Depression, or a union-organizing ancestor of O'Brien's gunned down in turn-of-the-century Boston, or a genetic superman named Khan born in 1965.
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
but there were, because Roddenberry had this magical pencil that would change history whenever he wrote. it's kind of like this episode of Eerie, Indiana where this kid had a magical pencil, and whatever he drew with it became real. i wish i had one *yowza*. my bed wouldn't be cold tonight...
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Well, uh, what makes pre-1966 stuff subject to magic pencils and post-1966 stuff "a divergent timeline?" Surely we can just invoke the pencil for everything, the same way any other show does.
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
the pencil only changed history, not the present. the changes that happened after Roddenberry started writing caused a divergent timeline.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Semantics, surely?
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
no, not at all. semantics are just as real as rock. as one person said, welcome to the world of legalese .
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
"Surely we can just invoke the pencil for everything"
Is "invoking the pencil" a euphamism for getting an erection!?! LOL!
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