Pop Culture Timelines Go-To Thread

In universe I do not think they would have killed Picard, he would have had his Heroic moment to overcome the Borg programming and tell Data how to defeat the Borg. Afterwards he would have been retired from the Enterprise to head up an 'anti-Borg taskforce' so they can use Picard again at some point. Probably allows Shelby to take the XO position when Riker steps up as Captain.

TNG would retool for a Riker Captaincy, but most the stories could do ahead. Maybe more Picard orientated episodes like The Chase would not happen or be changed. There might be a quality drop off without Stewart, but the show will probably work that out, maybe becoming more 'actiony' than OTL?

Steward himself would have come back to Britain and done RSC stage work, and probably TV/movie as they interested him. Portraying Xavier is still highly likely imho. I certainly do not think his career would have suffered. It seems likely he would be back on Trek in one way of another before the end.
Maybe, I think that could all happen. I think there would be a lot more of the Riker-Deanna stories on TNG with a Riker captaincy and perhaps they get married earlier, maybe in the TV show's run instead of in the last TNG movie
 

Cathleen

Banned
if there’s still a transitional “bridge” between the line of TOS and TNG, would they still go for someone as skilled and gravitas bearing as Malcolm McDowell? Compared to Stewart, Frakes is… an average actor.
 
What if Atari were to use the abundant profits from the Pong family of games to make the Atari 2600 more like the portable arcade it was marketed as?
Atari spent $150 million of new owner Warner Communications money to launch the 2600 as is, they were not getting more money from them lol and Pong did not make bank at that scale
 
if there’s still a transitional “bridge” between the line of TOS and TNG, would they still go for someone as skilled and gravitas bearing as Malcolm McDowell? Compared to Stewart, Frakes is… an average actor.
Something tells me Generations will not happen in the same form here.

I can see Berman and co getting DS9 out of the door same as OTL, and then when TNG ends at the end of S7 they wait some time before the TNG movie, perhaps to secure Steward. I can see them doing a DS9/TNG crossover to boost the new shows appeal. Perhaps kicking off with something like First Contact. No TOS crew at all.

That would be a movie I could see Picard getting his 'revenge' on the Borg Queen (maybe dying) while Sisko leads the crew on the Enterprise, and Riker helps rebuild the Phoenix on the ground.
 
So I'm not sure if this thread is reserved explicitly for a single Star Trek alt-history scenario or pop culture alt-history in general but I had a pop culture alt-history idea.

What if Disney's 1979 sci-fi movie, ''The Black Hole'' was more successful? Say, it makes around 64 Million dollars at the box office instead of the 35.8 Million dollars it made in real life? This would make it the 11th highest-grossing film of 1979, placing it right below the Muppet Movie.

How do you think this would impact American pop culture?
 
So I'm not sure if this thread is reserved explicitly for a single Star Trek alt-history scenario or pop culture alt-history in general but I had a pop culture alt-history idea.

What if Disney's 1979 sci-fi movie, ''The Black Hole'' was more successful? Say, it makes around 64 Million dollars at the box office instead of the 35.8 Million dollars it made in real life? This would make it the 11th highest-grossing film of 1979, placing it right below the Muppet Movie.

How do you think this would impact American pop culture?
I can think of two scenarios right off of that...

1: Disney is more willing to spend money on Tron.
2: Star Wars wouldn't be bought by the Mouse.
 
What if DC gave Alan Moore permission to do his 'Charlton Project' but suggested he chose a different name for it?
If watchmen happen using the Charlton characthers and ideas..them the relationship with DC and Wizard Alan moore might be far better, OTL Moore feel scammed by DC and their relationship become a mess since, here they might be in far better terms
 
If watchmen happen using the Charlton characthers and ideas..them the relationship with DC and Wizard Alan moore might be far better, OTL Moore feel scammed by DC and their relationship become a mess since, here they might be in far better terms

Very doubtful that DC would let Moore have the Charlton characters, since the company spent all that money to acquire the rights. Having Moore turn around and either kill the characters or show that they were unworthy to be called heroes, means that money goes to waste.

What would make the relationship between Moore and DC better would be if DC had actually let Watchmen go out of print long enough for Moore and Gibbons to get the rights back. And then DC making a new contract so the creators got more of the money, should those two want new copies of Watchmen published. DC would also have to keep from calling the Watchmen buttons "promotional items", and give Moore and Gibbons their fair share of the royalties.
 
Sudden question, but is the model 3DO was trying to push (licensing out hardware to a variety of tech companies) viable for the video game industry? Only other console that tried this AFAIK was Pippin, which wasn't that good of a product, and 3DO itself ended up too expensive for its own good.
 
Sudden question, but is the model 3DO was trying to push (licensing out hardware to a variety of tech companies) viable for the video game industry? Only other console that tried this AFAIK was Pippin, which wasn't that good of a product, and 3DO itself ended up too expensive for its own good.
Speaking of the 3DO, I have a friend who is an expert on that. You may want to contact him.
 
viable for the video game industry?
No, Sony was loss leading with early life PS1, and PS3 was too damn expensive even over his price tag, the same Microsoft, videogames use the razor and blades model when the razor when not cheap, is just the vehicle for the blades( ie software) so we could see more 3DO, overpriced consoles as the hardware makers need to recoup their investment
 
At one point, Namco was working on a home console based around System 21 board. No one knows how far ahead they went through, there isn't even any sort of design for it, but NEC and Hudson Soft were involved at some capacity. After SNES rolled around, Namco decided that whatever they were working on could not compete with it.

This has been on my mind for a while. There are several ways this could turn out, to be honest.
 
At one point, Namco was working on a home console based around System 21 board. No one knows how far ahead they went through, there isn't even any sort of design for it, but NEC and Hudson Soft were involved at some capacity. After SNES rolled around, Namco decided that whatever they were working on could not compete with it.

This has been on my mind for a while. There are several ways this could turn out, to be honest.
A Namco home console, you say? That is interesting!
 
At one point, Namco was working on a home console based around System 21 board. No one knows how far ahead they went through, there isn't even any sort of design for it, but NEC and Hudson Soft were involved at some capacity. After SNES rolled around, Namco decided that whatever they were working on could not compete with it.

This has been on my mind for a while. There are several ways this could turn out, to be honest.
A Namco home console, you say? That is interesting!
Pretty easy they shallow their pride and join PC engine early and talk with Hudson for a successor using CD and backwards compatibility
 
Sudden question, but is the model 3DO was trying to push
Absolutely not.

Nintendo priced their consoles for tiny profit launch outside black swan events and profitable basically instantly if successful. The GameCube $99 was IIRC the first time a Nintendo console was ever sold below cost, and even then not for that long really.

Meanwhile Sony sold their consoles well below cost, using eventual royalties on games to cover it (versus pure profit Nintendo) but for launch expenses simply they were a way bigger corporation.

Remember in that era the CD drive was $50 bucks, only reason Nintendo could compete on price with Sony while still making money per console.

Even if 3DO was a year later and so on par with PS/SS the companies making the hardware need to turn a real profit, not Nintendo couple-twenty at launch marginal we won’t lose money profit.

You go into the store. PlayStation has the most games and is the same price as N64. Saturn by now same price (bleeding Sega badly) as well but not so many games. Then there’s 3DO for a hundred bucks more with less games than the Saturn.

You just can’t make real money on the hardware against competition willing to go to one dollar or negative hundred dollars profit—especially when they have the hit games and you don’t.

If 3DO was structured so royalties from third party games were divided between hardware makers based on hardware sales… maybe? You’d force the companies to compete and reward them for selling more games which means lower prices, but that’s just OTL except with multiple companies working together as one group versus single corporation competitor.
 
Another pop culture alteration idea.

What if ''The Black Cauldron'' ( 1985 ) was successful?

In the real world, TBC is commonly considered to be ''the movie that almost killed Disney animation''. Costing 40 million, it was the most expensive animated movie of its time but the movie only made back 21 million. Having a dramatic effect on Disney animation, hence the aforementioned title.

Let's say in an alternate timeline, TBC makes some $60,100,000 at the box office, replacing ''Spies Like Us'' as the 10th highest-grossing film of 1985, just below ''The Goonies''. How do you think this would affect Disney, pop culture, and American animation as a whole?
 
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