Does ST4 contridict ST2 and Space Seed?

DocHorror · Post by **DocHorror** » 2004-05-30 05:23pm

We all know Khan was exiled in 1996, but the events in ST4 show that Khan wasn't even known about.

Does this create a paradox with ST2?

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-05-30 05:24pm

ST4 took place in the 80s.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2004-05-30 05:27pm

1987 to be exact. Khan's rise to power was in 1992, IIRC.

DocHorror · Post by **DocHorror** » 2004-05-30 05:30pm

True, but surely it would have taken Khan a few years to rise to power. Was hs growth accelerated or did he mature naturally.

I have a really old star trek book, written years before canon rules where set in place that documents Khan's rise. sadly I haven't read it in years and its 200 miles away. I thinks its pretty much just published fan fiction.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-05-30 05:32pm

If the recent Greg Bear "Eugenics War" series is taken as a fairly accurate timeline of Khan's activities on Earth up to his exile, then it makes perfect sense that Khan would have been anonymous in the '80s... because he was only a teenager then. He didn't become a conscipious public figure till about the late 90's, early 2000's, and even then wasn't all that public (despite all the attention given him in Federation histories and so forth), preferring to work behind the scenes.

In any case, I would be quite willing to wager that (given the book series' showing that Khan was relatively unknown during his time on Earth) the Federation focus upon his activities during the so-called "Eugenics War" is primarily to discourage further experimentation into creating genetic supermen, a policy which makes sense considering Khan and his peers' attitude towards ordinary humans (for example, he was perfectly willing to wipe out much of Yugoslavia with an atmospheric destruction weapon merely to kill a rival superhuman).

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-05-31 12:42am

It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-05-31 12:50am

evilcat4000 wrote:It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.

Not necessarily. As I've previously stated, most of the Eugenics War was covert-- in the books, it's mainly just Khan and his fellow superhumans trying to take each other out so they can rise to their "rightful" position of power above the commoners (namely, us). IIRC, the Voyager crew was in like San Francisco-- none of the superhumans were there, so they wouldn't have seen a thing.

Even if something of the sort had happened, it would most likely have been thought to be a terrorist action-- most of the events of the Eugenics War, when they made it into the papers, were labeled as such (an explosion in London, for example, was ascribed to the Irish Revolutionary Army).

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-05-31 01:06am

The larger contradiction is that ST4 is accurate to real-life late 1980s technology, which means that the ST universe's timeline does not have the greatly accelerated pace of technological development subsequent to the 1960s that would be necessary for Khan's sleeper ships to have been developed and built by the mid 90s.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-05-31 01:13am

Elheru Aran wrote:
evilcat4000 wrote:It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.
Not necessarily. As I've previously stated, most of the Eugenics War was covert-- in the books, it's mainly just Khan and his fellow superhumans trying to take each other out so they can rise to their "rightful" position of power above the commoners (namely, us). IIRC, the Voyager crew was in like San Francisco-- none of the superhumans were there, so they wouldn't have seen a thing.

No offence or anything, but Evilcat has a point - while the idea of a Eugenics War being covert seems... plausible at first, remember Spock's description of those events - he referred to it as "the last of *your* World Wars" and "populations were literally being bombed out of existence." Admittedly continuity in ST is haphazard at best, but Spock was rather specific in those two paraphrased quotes.

Now, perhaps he was wrong or misinformed. I believe he goes on to say that "records were sketchy at best" or something to that effect. Regardless, when Voyager came to Earth there should have been mention of something about the Eugenics wars. Even if it was a throw-away line, say a minute or so of news footage about wars taking place in other parts of the globe. I can accept that Spock read the wrong history text, and that the EW was actually a 'covert' or terrorist war, but not to the point that no-one knew what was going on at the time.

I mean, even today - we have no idea where Osama bin Laden is, yet every second or third news report features some kind of 'update'. A scrap of dialogue was all that was necessary; 5 seconds. Just a bone to throw to the fans.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2004-05-31 01:16am

Darth Wong wrote:The larger contradiction is that ST4 is accurate to real-life late 1980s technology, which means that the ST universe's timeline does not have the greatly accelerated pace of technological development subsequent to the 1960s that would be necessary for Khan's sleeper ships to have been developed and built by the mid 90s.

ah but you forget the magic future tech that voyager showed existed in the mid 90s thanks to time travel.

voyager..

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-05-31 01:32am

Darth Wong wrote:The larger contradiction is that ST4 is accurate to real-life late 1980s technology, which means that the ST universe's timeline does not have the greatly accelerated pace of technological development subsequent to the 1960s that would be necessary for Khan's sleeper ships to have been developed and built by the mid 90s.

Perhaps Khan managed to build his sleeper ship by the 90s using technology reverse engineered from the 29th century timeship Aeon.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2004-05-31 05:02am

evilcat4000 wrote:Perhaps Khan managed to build his sleeper ship by the 90s using technology reverse engineered from the 29th century timeship Aeon.

How would he ever have got hold of it? As far as I remember, that guy that owned the computer company (and presumably a few of his tech guys) was the only one who ever saw it. And that's leaving out the fact that Khan reverse-engineering 29th century technology is roughly analogous to asking a 12th century man to dismantle and adapt a modern-day freezer to be powered by a horse.

Super-Gagme · Post by **Super-Gagme** » 2004-05-31 07:15am

evilcat4000 wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:The larger contradiction is that ST4 is accurate to real-life late 1980s technology, which means that the ST universe's timeline does not have the greatly accelerated pace of technological development subsequent to the 1960s that would be necessary for Khan's sleeper ships to have been developed and built by the mid 90s.
Perhaps Khan managed to build his sleeper ship by the 90s using technology reverse engineered from the 29th century timeship Aeon.

...

How in the hell did you draw that conclusion?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-05-31 07:28am

Evilcat has a tendency to guess, assume, or just make shit up, whether they make any damn sense or not.

teleguy · Post by **teleguy** » 2004-05-31 07:30am

kojikun wrote:
ah but you forget the magic future tech that voyager showed existed in the mid 90s thanks to time travel.

voyager..

evilcat4000 wrote: Perhaps Khan managed to build his sleeper ship by the 90s using technology reverse engineered from the 29th century timeship Aeon.

That was an alternate timeline. At the end of that episode the timeship didn't end up in the 20th century.

DaveJB wrote: And that's leaving out the fact that Khan reverse-engineering 29th century technology is roughly analogous to asking a 12th century man to dismantle and adapt a modern-day freezer to be powered by a horse.

The guy who owned the computer company did exactly that.

teleguy · Post by **teleguy** » 2004-05-31 07:48am

As I see it there are two possibilities :

1. The Eugenics Wars took place in the 90s
based on the dates given in "Space Seed" and ST2

2. Spock somehow got the dates wrong and the Eugenics Wars happened in the mid 21st century because

they were the last world war ("Space Seed") and WW3 ended in 2053 ("First contact")

Captain Archers grandfather fought in the Eugenics Wars ("Hatchery")

they took place about 300 years before 2370 ("Doctor Bashir, I Presume?")

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2004-05-31 09:14pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Evilcat has a tendency to guess, assume, or just make shit up, whether they make any damn sense or not.

He could be of good use in the CIA.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-06-01 02:19am

Super-Gagme wrote:
evilcat4000 wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:The larger contradiction is that ST4 is accurate to real-life late 1980s technology, which means that the ST universe's timeline does not have the greatly accelerated pace of technological development subsequent to the 1960s that would be necessary for Khan's sleeper ships to have been developed and built by the mid 90s.
Perhaps Khan managed to build his sleeper ship by the 90s using technology reverse engineered from the 29th century timeship Aeon.
...

How in the hell did you draw that conclusion?

Henry Sterling was commercialy marketing technology reverse engineered from Aeon. Perhaps he sold some of it to Khan.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2004-06-01 02:53am

If we're going to start speculating, then we might question whether scotty's introduction of transparent aluminium didnt provide some vital clue for some odd piece of technology that made genetic supermen creation possible - Kirk creating Kahn and hence killing his own son and spock in the long run... at the least there's a fanfic there...

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-06-01 04:28pm

Stofsk wrote:
Elheru Aran wrote:
evilcat4000 wrote:It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.
Not necessarily. As I've previously stated, most of the Eugenics War was covert-- in the books, it's mainly just Khan and his fellow superhumans trying to take each other out so they can rise to their "rightful" position of power above the commoners (namely, us). IIRC, the Voyager crew was in like San Francisco-- none of the superhumans were there, so they wouldn't have seen a thing.
No offence or anything, but Evilcat has a point - while the idea of a Eugenics War being covert seems... plausible at first, remember Spock's description of those events - he referred to it as "the last of *your* World Wars" and "populations were literally being bombed out of existence." Admittedly continuity in ST is haphazard at best, but Spock was rather specific in those two paraphrased quotes.

Now, perhaps he was wrong or misinformed. I believe he goes on to say that "records were sketchy at best" or something to that effect. Regardless, when Voyager came to Earth there should have been mention of something about the Eugenics wars. Even if it was a throw-away line, say a minute or so of news footage about wars taking place in other parts of the globe. I can accept that Spock read the wrong history text, and that the EW was actually a 'covert' or terrorist war, but not to the point that no-one knew what was going on at the time.

I mean, even today - we have no idea where Osama bin Laden is, yet every second or third news report features some kind of 'update'. A scrap of dialogue was all that was necessary; 5 seconds. Just a bone to throw to the fans.

True enough... perhaps Spock is confusing it with a later war? IIRC, Khan left Earth sometime in the 2000's, upon a secretly built gov't sleeper ship (Botany Bay-- yeah, i know, the whole "secret government spacecraft" thing is kind of a stretch...). Perhaps a war broke out shortly after?

There's another explanation as well... perhaps Spock is using a different definition for "world war". Pared down to simplicity, a world war is one that covers an entire world in its scope; but could it not be regarded also as a war that involves most of the world's nations in some way? Take the Iraq situation right now; if more nations suddenly sent troops for whatever half-baked reason (either supporting or against the States), it would have become, more or less, a world war by that definition.

And about the populations being bombed out of existence-- doesn't necessarily have to apply to entire countries. And one has to remember that the Federation has rather dumb standards of what constitutes "acceptable losses"-- they always bellyache about losing one or two crew members on an away mission, wouldn't be too surprised if they'd be even worse about "having unnecessarily, bloodily lost entire populations on Earth during our late, tragic Eugenics War yada yada yadddya-ya..."

Of course, I realize this is kind of a LONG stretch of the imagination and not exactly the best solution... but I've always considered the books rather better than the series (heck, they should hire him to write ENT-- might start making sense then... although to have any success with it he'd have to more or less erase B&B's fuckups!).

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-06-02 04:03am

"Lost in space since the year 1996"

No 2000s.

Enola Straight · Post by **Enola Straight** » 2004-06-02 11:23pm

evilcat4000 wrote:It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.

So?

Most likely the EWs were fought in the mideast (Kahn was a Sikh, wasn't he?) without any battles being fought on American soil.

If you were walking around LA during the 40s and 50s would you find any obvious evidence of WWII at first glance?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-02 11:31pm

Enola Straight wrote:
evilcat4000 wrote:It is interesting that there was no sign of the Eugenics war or Khan when Voyger visited 1996. Bad continutiy.
So?

Most likely the EWs were fought in the mideast (Kahn was a Sikh, wasn't he?) without any battles being fought on American soil.

If you were walking around LA during the 40s and 50s would you find any obvious evidence of WWII at first glance?

Well,by the 1950s it would be over. And I dare say during most of the years the war was being fought you'd see a good deal of evidence if you paid any attention at all.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-06-03 02:31am

Even if the Eugenics war did not rage on the North American continent it would have been on the news. Even small wars like the second Persian Gulf war get a lot of news coverage so a global conflict of great importance like the Eugenics war should get a lot of attention in media.

In "Futures End" Neelix was given charge of monitioring all of Earths TV channels using Voygers advanced sensors. Even though he picked up News channel reports of a UFO(which was actualy Voyger) there was no sign of the Eugenics war in any of the TV channels.