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.

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.

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.

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.

---

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:
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Spock: The last such vessel was built centuries ago, back in the 1990's.
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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.
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Kirk: Oh, I'll need somebody familiar with the late twentieth-century Earth...
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Scotty: Definitely Earth-type 20th century vessel. Old-type Atomic power. Bulky solid... I think they used to call them transistor units.
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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?
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Scotty: ...they're all mixed types: Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental.
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Kahn: How... long?

Kirk: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries, we estimate.
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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.
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Spock: The DY-100 was designed for simple interplanetary travel only.
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Spock: Whole populations were being bombed out of existence.
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Kahn: English. I though I dreamed hearing it.
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Kahn: I remember a voice. Did I hear it say I had been sleeping for two centuries?

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

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.