I know that I am going to get a lecture from TSN for this, something to the line that I should be curing cancer with the energy I spend here. Considering the number of threads he has here to my number of threads, I think maybe he should cure cancer. Oh, well.

Here is the proof.
For this exercise in pointlessness, I will look at the original, which I will call 'Ancient' Trek, and the four series, which I will call 'Modern' Trek, as two separate entities.

'Ancient' Trek
Set in the near future
Key:
0="Where No Man Has Gone Before".
-=number of years approximately before 0.

-235 Zephram Cochrane is born on Earth. He will invent warp drive. ("Metamorphosis")
-203 to 199 Eugenics War. Last global war on Earth. Period of the DY-100 Class interplanetary transport/scout. ("Space Seed")
-200 SS Valiant, a warp ship, leaves Earth for deep space exploration. ("Where No Man Has Gone Before")
-177 Sleeper ships, which included the DY-100, are retired by advances in impulse drive. ("Space Seed")
-148 Zephram Cochrane, a resident of Alpha Centauri, vanishes. In his life time, he knew Vulcans and, possibly, created new battle techniques utilizing warp drive. ("Metamorphoses", "Wink of an Eye")
-98 USS Archon, which was destroyed by the mega-computer Landru in the C-111 Star System, is the oldest known starship. ("Return of the Archons")
-11 "The Cage
0 "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

'Modern' Trek
Set between 2363 to 2378 and, now, 2151 to 2158
Key:
0="Encounter at Farpoint"

2053 World War III concludes.
2063 Zephram Cochrane flys the Phoenix, the first warp powered ship. He greets Vulcans as an Earth representative. ("First Contact")
2067 Friendship One. ("Friendship One")
2105 First colony on Mars. ("The 37's")
2123 Flight of the SS Mariposa, DY-500 Class, NAR-7678. ("Up the Long Ladder")
2151 'Enterprise'. Enterprise NX-01 is first starship and is property of Starfleet. (Series-Enterprise)
2161 Charter of the United Federation of Planets. Starfleet Academy is founded. ("Friendship One", "The First Duty")
2173 Eugenics War. ("Dr. Bashir, I Presume?")
2200 to 2233 Sleeper ships in operation. ("11:59")
2265 to 2270 'Ancient' Trek's placement in this timeline. ("Q2")
0 "Encounter at Farpoint". This is the start post for 'Modern' Trek.

Since the second series, the timeline for 'Ancient' Trek has been revised and redacted by the scribes of 'Modern' Trek. 'Enterprise' will, for better or worse, continue this process of change.

I feel the legitimate issues with the new series will be the writing, acting, and directing.
 

Last time I checked there was still nothing wrong with the 1992-1996 date...
 

My point is to show how the history changed from one set of historical facts to the next set.
 

Anyway, while the 1996 date is certainly the most blatant timestamp for the Eugenics Wars, the "two hundred years ago" line, as I'm assuming you're working with, certainly contradicts this when one considers the mid-23rd century placement of TOS that has been locked in since the show went off the air. Doesn't "Dr. Bashir I Presume" also cast something of a shadow over the 1996 timeframe, too?

I like to think of the show being forced to balance authenticity and continuity. And while 10% of the audience might be quite willing to ignore authenticity ("well, Trek's in a parallel universe...") in favour of a rigid continuity-fundamentalism ("The bastards didn't show the Eugenics Wars in 1996!") the vast majority of people are more likely to pick out authenticity errors than continuity ones. Even Sternbach and Okuda, I'd venture, fall into the latter camp -- for example, Ares 4 reflects how we see technology behaving 30 years from today, not 30 years from the DY-100.
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by The_Tom:
Anyway, while the 1996 date is certainly the most blatant timestamp for the Eugenics Wars, the "two hundred years ago" line, as I'm assuming you're working with, certainly contradicts this when one considers the mid-23rd century placement of TOS that has been locked in since the show went off the air. Doesn't "Dr. Bashir I Presume" also cast something of a shadow over the 1996 timeframe, too?

---

Yes and no.

quote:

---

Originally posted to the AOL Message Board by Ronald D. Moore:
This is my personal screw-up. When I was writing that speech, I was thinking about Khan and somehow his dialog from "Wrath" starting floating through my brain: "On Earth... 200 years ago... I was a Prince..." The number 200 just stuck in my head and I put it in the script without making the necessary adjustment for the fact that "Wrath" took place almost a hundred years prior to "Dr. Bashir." I wrote it, I get the blame.

---

So, on the one hand, Moore does say that he screwed up and the Eugenics Wars were not two hundred years before "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?" On the other hand, he doesn't dispute the idea that it is only two hundred years before The Wrath of Khan.

Incidentally, in my own research, I divide dates into three categories, generally prioritized in the following order:

(1) Gregorian date directly given ("1996").
(2) Relative date directly given ("two hundred years ago").
(3) Relative date approximately given ("about two hundred years ago").

I also consider who says what. In this case, given that Khan is from the era of the Eugenics Wars, it seems likely that he would know better than anyone else what the date was when he left.

quote:

---

I like to think of the show being forced to balance authenticity and continuity. And while 10% of the audience might be quite willing to ignore authenticity ("well, Trek's in a parallel universe...") in favour of a rigid continuity-fundamentalism ("The bastards didn't show the Eugenics Wars in 1996!") the vast majority of people are more likely to pick out authenticity errors than continuity ones. Even Sternbach and Okuda, I'd venture, fall into the latter camp -- for example, Ares 4 reflects how we see technology behaving 30 years from today, not 30 years from the DY-100.

---

I agree. Personally, I'd prefer if they just avoided mentioning any events prior to 2050 or so, just so that anyone watching the show will be old enough to not care anymore when things don't come to pass.
 

quote:

---

Normal people watching Voyager, that is, the 99% of the audience who have better things to do with their time, would watch an episode based around a manned Mars mission in 2001 and laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

---

Not if it were written well.

Oh.

Shit.

Seriously though, there would obviously have to be some sort of exposition explaining why it was such. But that's a given.
 

First, lets think here. Khan is of Indian (India the country) descent, correct? Now, from what I remember, Khan was to have taken over about 1/3rd of the world during the war. Now, seeing as how Khan was from India, what area of the world do you think he MIGHT just be taking over? Asia and Africa seem like the logical places to me. Heck, he could have been starting after Europe, and that's what got the rest of the world ticked off. Now, seeing as how the war WASN'T taking place in America, Los Angeles wouldn't be ravaged.

And if you think that America might still look like crap because of being involved in the war, maybe they aren't in the war, and even if they are, it still wouldn't affect America. Not only that, but we knew that "Future's End" took place AFTER Khan left, since Rain Robinson had a picture of the Botany Bay's launch in her office. Therefore, America would be getting "back to normal".
 

And that doesn't have to be a model of the Botany Bay in Robinson's office. It could be any DY-100.
 

Now, let's do some simple maths to point out the HUGE hole in this argument.

Your argument: Space Seed and TWOK "expicitly" state that the Eugenics War occur in 1996.

For Space Seed, that is correct.

But, let's look at TWOK. Specifically, the dialogue so kindly posted above:

"On Earth... 200 years ago... I was a Prince..."

Now, TWOK is set in 2285. Two hundred years before that would be... 2085!

How is that "explicitly" stating that the Eugenic Wars occured in 1996? Call me crazy, but that seems to indicate they took place almost a hundred years later.

Could this mean that *gasp* continuity was changed! This must mean that TWOK is the worst of all Trek films! How can we ever watch this abbomonation again? Fucking Berman and Bennet!
 

I was just wondering about the 2285 date for TWOK. Is that from Okuda or is it from some other source. I know that Okuda's dates are all offf by a little because he didn't include the Animated series in the Chronology.

In reference to the Eugenics Wars, perhaps they were just that: WARS. Not one war, but an extended period of several wars. Just because Khan left in '96 doesn't necessarily mean that other genetic criminals weren't still around that took longer to deal with. And I still say that they were probably mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere.

About the model in RR's lab, it WAS the Botany Bay. The model was constructed for the Chronology by Greg jein or somebody. It was probably labeled by okuda as well.
 

...Masao will know, probably.
 

The arguement is about continuity being changed. It is logical to assume we mean Okuda's continuity. If we start throwing in FASA and everything else, then NOTHING will make sense.
 

a/ 1996 is wrong
b/ two hundred years ago is wrong
c/ Kahn's an idiot, and thinks that he's actually in the year 2196.

Personally, if they redo TWOK like they are redoing TMP, I'd delete the 1996 line. But then I'd be eaten alive by angry continuity freaks, so it's a good thing I'm not in charge of that project.
 

Has anyone thought of the fact that Khan is a stark-raving-mad psychopath, and may not always be right ont he dot with his dates? We have more evidience for 1996 than anything else. Khan pobably just lost track of time while marooned for all those years, or he was going by the inaccurate figures that Kirk gave him in "Space Seed," or something on that order. But the E.W. definitely WERE going on in 1996. That doesn't mean they started in 1996, that doesn't necessarily mean they ended in 1996, but they were going on at that time, and that is when Khan and co. left earth with the Botany Bay.

And for God's sake don't bring FASA into this!

[ July 16, 2001: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]

Megalomaniac? Yes. Machivelian? Probably. Stark-raving-mad psychopath? No.

I still say time-travel explains everything. I think I'm going to get out my videos and get the EXACT QUOTES for what we're arguing about.

Oh, here's a theory: 1996 isn't 1996 by our calendar. Perhaps Kahn, during his reign, rewired the calendar so that it started in a different year than the Gregorian calendar, and decreed that anyone who even mentioned another calendar was to be beheaded. Spock, knowing this, stated that the Eugenics Wars took place between '92 and '96 because he knew Kahn would fly into a homicidal rage and kill everyone in the room if he did otherwise.

[ July 16, 2001: Message edited by: Omega ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Omega:
I still like my theory about Kahn trying to slingshot around the sun whenever the Eugenics Wars were, ending up time-warping to 1996, and then leaving for the depths of space. It's the only theory I've seen proposed that seems to fit all the facts.

---

It fits all the facts except one: according to Spock, the last DY-100 was launched in the mid-1990s... and when the decade came up, people immediately thought of the Eugenics Wars.
 

Ha ha!
 

Perhaps, during TOS, the Federation was experimenting with a different calendar. There were no references to year numbers at any time that I recall except during ST2, with the reference to a bottle of wine. Supposedly, 2283 was an old vintage, though according to the Chronology, that movie took place in 2286 or so. Maybe we adopted the Vulcan calendar or something. Surak supposedly was born around the time of Christ, wasn't he? Remember, Kirk told Gillian Taylor that BY HER CALENDAR he was from the late 23rd century. Implies that they were using a different one. Of course, we have to wonder when exactly they were using which calendar. Are we even sure that they switched back to ours by TNG? It seems so, but I'm not sure.

All the lines that I can find in "Space Seed" relating to the date, and a few other bits of interest:
----------
Spock: The last such vessel was built centuries ago, back in the 1990's.
----------
Spock: Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid 1990's was the era of your last so-called World War.

McCoy: The Eugenics Wars.

Spock: Of course. Your attempt to improve the race through selective breeding.
----------
Kirk: Oh, I'll need somebody familiar with the late twentieth-century Earth...
----------
Scotty: Definitely Earth-type 20th century vessel. Old-type Atomic power. Bulky solid... I think they used to call them transistor units.
----------
McGivers: Captain, It's a sleeper ship.

Kirk: Suspended animation

McGivers: Uh-huh. I've seen old photographs of this. Necessary because of the time involved in space-travel until about 2018. It took years just to travel from one planet to another.

Kirk: Is it possible they're still alive after centuries of travel?
----------
Scotty: ...they're all mixed types: Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental.
----------
Kahn: How... long?

Kirk: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries, we estimate.
----------
Kirk: A group of people dating back to the 1990's. Discovery of some importance, Spock. There are a great many unanswered questions about those years.
----------
Spock: The DY-100 was designed for simple interplanetary travel only.
----------
Spock: Whole populations were being bombed out of existence.
----------
Kahn: English. I though I dreamed hearing it.
----------
Kahn: I remember a voice. Did I hear it say I had been sleeping for two centuries?

McCoy: That is correct.
----------
Kirk: Our heading is Starbase 12, a planet in the Gamma 400 star system.
----------
Kirk: What was the exact date of your liftoff? We know it was sometime in the early 1990's--
----------
Kirk: Yes, I understand. You have 200 years of catch-up learning to do.
----------
Kirk: This Kahn is not what I expected of a 20th-century man.
----------
Spock: In 1993, a group of these young supermen did simultaneously sieze power in over 40 nations.
----------
Spock: From 1992-1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia to the Middle East.

McCoy: The last of the Tyrants to be overthrown.
----------

Since we KNOW that a World War occured some time in the mid-21st century, then the last World War could NOT have occured in what we call the late twentieth century. I say the calendar was displaced by fifty or sixty years at some point. I see no other way out of the apparent contradiction, unless we assume that records were more fragmented than even Spock thought.

Is there a real system called Gamma 400? 'Cause then we can figure out just how far Kahn could possibly have gotten, and how fast.
 

I've always theorized that the Eugenics wars were part of WWIII. Since we know that WWIII ended circa 2053, it makes sense that the EWs were maybe just a catalyst that left the world in chaos, and after the supermen were overthrown, the atom bombs began flying which became the main conflict that led up to Cochrane's time, and left it in ruins. Very interesting...

[ July 16, 2001: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]

I also think Kirk just screwed up by saying "two centuries" and "two hundred years". Maybe he was just having a bad day and couldn't think straight, so he kept making the same mistake. And Khan never bothered to ask what the actual year was, so he always kept "two hundred years" in his mind until ST2.

BTW, the thing about the Romulan ale... Kirk reads the label date and looks surprised. McCoy says something to the effect of "Hey, it takes a while for this stuff to ferment.". Obviously, he can't really mean that. Otherwise, ST2 has to be pretty long after 2283, which pushes it out of the twenty-third century. If 2283 hadn't happened yet, what McCoy said wouldn't make sense at all. So, the only option left is that 2283 was in the very recent past, and McCoy was being sarcastic (which is what we would expect from him, anyway). Therefore, the 2285 date makes perfect sense. All it screws up is Khan's/Kirk's "fifteen years" lines, which should really be closer to twenty years. But, if we assume fifteen is a rounded number, anyway, it's okay.
 

And in your calendar, we still have the problems with the Eugenics wars.
 

Perhaps there was a whole metric/non-metric argument going on in the late 23rd century. It would also explain why they switched between Kilometers and Miles every episode, and often in the same scene.

Perhaps our TV's universal translator was trying to convert their mad new measuring systems to one we were familiar with, and just got confused. This also neatly ties up every length problem ever. Because I said so.
 

The Botany Bay, even if we disregard the artificial gravity, is much more advanced than anything such as the Charybdis, the Ares IV or even the Phoenix. Sleeper ships would be required to reach the outer planets of our solar system. Why is almost 40 years later a travel to Mars still such a great endeavor in a small tin can? What kind of progress (the original intention may have been that it was the warp drive) could have taken place in 2018, but starships still can't leave the solar system for another 30 years? Why the heck should a ship from 2123 (Mariposa) look like one from 1996?

I know that it contradicts several facts, but my technically and historically plausible solution is that WW III and the Eugenics Wars are identical and take place about ten years before FC. It was a time when mankind had just attempted to leave the solar system (with old-style propulsion), and Khan may have used one of these ships to escape. The design of sublight ships was further developed, and some of them, like the Mariposa, were designed as warp-capable and used until 70 years later.
 

Regarding the Eugenics Wars: It's pretty obvious that TPTB just said "Hey, it's 1996 - do you hear any bombs going off or news broadcasts of the new Khan in town? NO." The ST Chronology also admits that this prediction was off by a long shot. So what could they do for "Future's End"? They weren't going to show an event that anyone could refute just by looking out the window; showing the Eugenics Wars would stretch believability, so they ignored it. I personally believe that the Botany Bay model was not intended to be taken seriously, rather it was just an in-joke or a homage to Space Seed.

I highly doubt that the Eugenics Wars will even be mentioned in Enterprise.
 

Personally I think it's GOT to have something to do with alternate timelines. There's a million different things that have happened in Trek, with time travel and what-not, that could have changed the timeline of historical events. That's my new pet excuse for just about any and everything on Enterprise. It's an alternate history caused by the mishaps of modern Trek's heroes and villains.

There's no problem with TPTB mentioning the Eugencis wars, but they have to keep the time vague, or most viewers will just be confused.
 

Or, there's the X-Files... can't get through that show without falling out of your chair

Or, there's Earth: Final Conflict, according to it we should be in the middle or at the beginning of the SI War.

Or, there is the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of disaster films which have destroyed New York, LA, London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, and other cities the world over time and again.

Or, there is the X-Men which claim extreme mutations are currently occuring which give people incredible abilities.

IIRC, Farscape takes place when a modern day astronaut encountures a wormhole on a test flight.

There are thousands of examples of modern day being more advanced in the movies... even those movies which are being filmed now. That's why we call it fiction.
 

Maybe people, whether it's correct or not to, assign Star Trek with being a realistic interpretation of the future. Some, both fans and non-fans, see this as the future of humanity and not as some alternate reality. To many, Star Trek takes place in our reality and not in an alternate reality where our universe and the Star Trek universe diverged in the 1930s or so. So, to show a event happening at the present would damage the credibility of Trek in some people's eyes. The same goes for showing a 1990's era with DY-100 sleeper ships and cryogenic pods in orbit of Earth.
 

There was a big drive lately to "dispose of" the World War I & World War II terms, since most historians now agree on it being one large conflict from 1914 to 1990 with only the players changing. So we have that war, we have the Eugenics Wars....& both are considered "world wars", so then World War III in the 2050s.
 

[Edit: I really hate it when my mind outruns my friggin' hands.]

[ July 17, 2001: Message edited by: Siegfried ]