Star Trek IS an AH

Looking over the Star Trek timeline only up to when TOS (the original series) ended in 1969 it is quite obvious that Star Trek is an AH. I used the end of the show as the cut off as possible futures don't generally get the AH label.

If we exclude the immortal Flint, the ancient astronauts, and very minor events we get these divergences:

* Rome had no sun worshipers ("Bread and Circuses")

In OTL Rome, in fact, had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo and Sol from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun".

* WWI
In Star Trek's history only 6 million died in WWI. ("Bread and Circuses") In OTL over 41 million died in WWI.

* WWII
In Star Trek's history reality only 11 million died in WWII. ("Bread and Circuses") In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million.

* The Nazis were close to inventing the atomic bomb and would use the V2 rocket to deliver it. ("City on the Edge of Forever")
I explained this in detail in the Edith Keeler Lives: A brief history thread

* Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth every knew ("Patterns of Force")
Disproved in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

* 1967
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is not signed allowing the United States to launch an orbital nuclear warhead platform to counter a similar launch by other powers in 1968.("Assignment: Earth") In OTL only the USSR launched such platforms as part of the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” or FOBS.

* 1968
The United States efforts to counter FOBS is interfered with by Gary Seven to scare it and the USSR out of the arms race. Thanks to interaction with the Enterprise the US version of FOBS explodes exactly one hundred and four miles above the Earth.("Assignment: Earth") In OTL the treaty of 1967 prevented this project from even existing.
 
Challenge accepted!

Bread and Circuses took place on another planet. What happened on Earth wouldn't necessarily have any bearing on it until first contact is made. So in the (OH HOLY HELL SO TOTALLY UNLIKELY) event that they developed an ancient imperial aesthetic and mode and system of government that happened to also include sun-worshippers, well then that's fine. (GOD IN HEAVEN IT IS *SO* *NOT* FINE! THIS EPISODE DRIVES ME CRAZY!!)

I don't really have much of a rebuttal about WWI/WWII except to say that these self-absorbed nincompoop writers probably only bothered to think in terms of allied dead. He probably also didn't bother to actually look it up, just repeated something they heard at the bar.

In CotEoF itself, we don't get a timeline of how long exactly it takes for the Nazis to develop nukes. The point of departure could be decades away from payoff.

Patterns of Force, yeah, Jesus, wtf Spock. I mean how much do we think Spock actually knows about WWII? He studied on Vulcan. And come to that, how many of Earth's records survived World War 3? Maybe for all of these he's working on best available information.

Assignment:Earth. Well duh, they stopped them from launching, didn't they? :p
I assumed this was a secret launch, or did I miss something?
 
* WWI
In Star Trek's history only 6 million died in WWI. ("Bread and Circuses") In OTL over 41 million died in WWI.

* WWII
In Star Trek's history reality only 11 million died in WWII. ("Bread and Circuses") In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million.

I maintain that neither Kirk nor Spock are historians so they might simply be off in their recollections of the exact figures for casualties in two conflicts that happened centuries before their time. I doubt I could, off the top of my head, give an accurate figure for the number of people who died in the Seven Years' War or the War of the Austrian Succession.

* Rome had no sun worshipers ("Bread and Circuses")

In OTL Rome, in fact, had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo and Sol from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun".

Again, let's call that Kirk and Spock not being experts on history. Rome was not known for being patronized by any sun deity in the same way that say Troy was by Apollo or Athens was by Athena. The most important deity to the Romans was Vesta. And of course we find out in the end that they're referring to their own version of Jesus Christ. I presume that the universal translators will translate certain ideas into references that can be understood by Starfleet personnel. So it translated this planet's sky deity into Jupiter and their war deity into Mars and so on. Kirk makes a note that the whole situation gives evidence to so-and-so's theory of parallel planetary development which I take to mean that every civilization goes through historical periods similar to Earth's. Not likely, of course, but that's how the show goes.

* The Nazis were close to inventing the atomic bomb and would use the V2 rocket to deliver it. ("City on the Edge of Forever")
I explained this in detail in the Edith Keeler Lives: A brief history thread

* Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth every knew ("Patterns of Force")
Disproved in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

It could be a Fatherland-kind of scenario where Nazi Germany conquers Europe and the UK and uses the peace to develop nukes. This eventually leads to their eventual triumph over the US at a later date.

And Spock is again mistaken about Earth history. Curiously, Spock had a different opinion on the rule of Khan Noonien Singh in "Space Seed" and expresses mild disdain when Scotty confesses to having a creeping admiration of Khan. Kirk has to explain to Spock that they can be both for and against Khan and that it is an example of the many contradictions of human nature.

* 1967
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is not signed allowing the United States to launch an orbital nuclear warhead platform to counter a similar launch by other powers in 1968.("Assignment: Earth") In OTL only the USSR launched such platforms as part of the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” or FOBS.

* 1968
The United States efforts to counter FOBS is interfered with by Gary Seven to scare it and the USSR out of the arms race. Thanks to interaction with the Enterprise the US version of FOBS explodes exactly one hundred and four miles above the Earth.("Assignment: Earth") In OTL the treaty of 1967 prevented this project from even existing.

This does appear to be genuine AH and no doubt a conscious attempt by the writers to express support for demilitarization of space which was a topical concern at the time the show was airing.
 

Deleted member 94680

I maintain that neither Kirk nor Spock are historians so they might simply be off in their recollections of the exact figures for casualties in two conflicts that happened centuries before their time. I doubt I could, off the top of my head, give an accurate figure for the number of people who died in the Seven Years' War or the War of the Austrian Succession.


...Again, let's call that Kirk and Spock not being experts on history...

...And Spock is again mistaken about Earth history.

This. I never get why a character making a mistaken reference or statement is always a "blooper" (unless it's painfully explained in a piece of - almost always - awkward exposition later). Why can't fictional characters get things wrong every now and then, you know, like real people?
 
This. I never get why a character making a mistaken reference or statement is always a "blooper" (unless it's painfully explained in a piece of - almost always - awkward exposition later). Why can't fictional characters get things wrong every now and then, you know, like real people?

As an example of how weird the opposite is, check out Spectre of the Gun, where Spock knows literally EVERYTHING, including like a to-the-minute timeline, about the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I mean we've all met that guy, but is that likely to be something that fascinates our Vulcan.
 
Bloody great Saturn V IIRC

Secret as in, you know, not announced on television and maybe a state of emergency is declared evacuating that part of the coast, I don't know. I was paying attention to Teri Garr!
 
I don't really have much of a rebuttal about WWI/WWII except to say that these self-absorbed nincompoop writers probably only bothered to think in terms of allied dead. He probably also didn't bother to actually look it up, just repeated something they heard at the bar.

This Mr. 'make sure the facts are right' Spock we are talking about.

In CotEoF itself, we don't get a timeline of how long exactly it takes for the Nazis to develop nukes. The point of departure could be decades away from payoff.

The point was both the Nazi atomic bomb and V2 programs were kicked off by the US entering the war and the Nazis loosing the war respectively. The Nazi atomic bomb program was a delaying tactic as with the US entering the war the more rational Nazis knew they would loose. Their only chance was to make the fight cost in men so horrific that they could have a conditional surrender. With the US not entering the war the atomic program gets kicked down the roads a few more years.

The V2 program was another desperate move program that pushed by the Nazi actually loosing the war. Even with minimal US support the USSR was laying waste to the Nazis and would have, by itself, likely have beaten Nazi Germany by 1946 or 47. The Nazi atomic bomb in OTL wasn't going to be ready until 1948 and that was a dirty bomb.

Patterns of Force, yeah, Jesus, wtf Spock. I mean how much do we think Spock actually knows about WWII? He studied on Vulcan. And come to that, how many of Earth's records survived World War 3? Maybe for all of these he's working on best available information..

Actually it was John Gill
a Federation historian that stated that Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth every knew.

Spock's comment was: That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

Yes the last part is total garbage as even at his most deranged Hitler didn't see Germany conquering the world.

Assignment:Earth. Well duh, they stopped them from launching, didn't they? :p
I assumed this was a secret launch, or did I miss something?

Given the panic the failure of the launch caused there is no way it could have been kept secret.
 
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This Mr. 'make sure the facts are right' Spock we are talking about.



The point was both the Nazi atomic bomb and V2 programs were kicked off by the US entering the war and the Nazis loosing the war respectively. The Nazi atomic bomb program was a delaying tactic as with the US entering the war the more rational Nazis knew they would loose. Their only chance was to make the fight cost in men so horrific that they could have a conditional surrender. With the US not entering the war the V2 program gets kicked down the roads a few more years.

The V2 program was another desperate move program that pushed by the Nazi actually loosing the war. Even with minimal US support the USSR was laying waste to the Nazis and would have, by itself, likely have beaten Nazi Germany by 1946 or 47. The Nazi atomic bomb in OTL wasn't going to be ready until 1948 and that was a dirty bomb.



Actually it was John Gill
a Federation historian that stated that Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth every knew.

Spock's comment was: That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

Yes the last part is total garbage as even at his most deranged Hitler didn't see Germany conquering the world.



Given the panic the failure of the launch caused there is no way it could have been kept secret.

I'll just fall back on the fact that it could just as easily have been destroyed records thanks to WWIII that gave him the wrong facts.

One can imagine many triggers that might work on the more fickle and arbitrary aspects of Nazism to get them to work on a bomb for various reasons, and such triggers would play in Edith's TL as well as ours.

Wouldn't we inherently NOT know if bigger cover-ups had been arranged IRL? :rolleyes: (The truth is out there!)
 

This Mr. 'make sure the facts are right' Spock we are talking about.

Actually it was John Gill
a Federation historian that stated that Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth every knew.

Spock's comment was: That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

The story’s set in the 23rd century - it's all too likely that in popular culture people genuinely have lost knowledge about WWI and WWII. When you consider that now many non-historians know less and less about the conflict, plus Trek’s history involved a near-apocalyptic nuclear war so it’s very likely a lot of records got lost.

While the whole ‘Star Trek is an alternate history’ thing can be fun, it was not intended as that. Gene Rodenerry had events that happened in what he meant as the future, based on what he thought would happen. Like the nuclear launch in ‘Assignment Earth’ - he thought that might happen in the future so he put it in. Likewise his having the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s.

Myself, I tend to treat Trek as a thing set in the future and stuff that conflicts with that can be explained as ‘eh, it was the time they wrote it, they didn’t know better’.
 

Deleted member 94680

As an example of how weird the opposite is, check out Spectre of the Gun, where Spock knows literally EVERYTHING, including like a to-the-minute timeline, about the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I mean we've all met that guy, but is that likely to be something that fascinates our Vulcan.

“Set phasers to exposition!”
 
Maybe there was actual ASB helping both sides, and the ones helping the Allies were more successful. Enterprise had alien intervention on the side of the Axis, and maybe the future Federation intervened to reduce loss of life at some "later" point.
 
From the ST Memory beta

the nuclear-powered ship was developed under top secret conditions by the United States of America in the 1990s. It was named after an Australian penal colony. The technology was taken in part from the Ferengi shuttle that belonged to Quark, after it had traveled back in time and crashed on Earth in 1947. Some technology, such as the specifications for the impulse engines, were provided by Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln. (TOS novel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 2, ST website: Startrek.com)


The launch of the Botany Bay.


On January 5, 1996, Shannon O'Donnel and Roberta Lincoln launched the Botany Bay from its secret launch facility into Earth orbit. Roberta instructed O'Donnel to maintain that she was under Ferengi mind control when questioned, and then tranquilized her. On January 11, 1996, Khan and his followers were taken on-board the ship from an orbiting facility. Khan named the ship after the penal colony which had been the first permanent settlement in Australia. Following the naming of the ship Khan and 84 of his followers were put into stasis while Gary Seven placed the ship on course for an uninhabited class M world approximately 100 light-years from Earth. (TOS novel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 2; TOS - Khan comic: "Issue 4")


The book Federation: The First 150 Years gives the ship's launch date as September 17, 1996.

DY series spaceships

DY-100 ships Botany BayIbervilleLyons CreekMonticelloSalisburySan JuanSanta MariaShenandoahWacosta


So you need working nuclear impulse engines by 1996, and Stasis tech for sleepers
 
I'll just fall back on the fact that it could just as easily have been destroyed records thanks to WWIII that gave him the wrong facts.

One can imagine many triggers that might work on the more fickle and arbitrary aspects of Nazism to get them to work on a bomb for various reasons, and such triggers would play in Edith's TL as well as ours.

It was a trope in this era that the Nazis were close to inventing the bomb and was started Washington Representative John M. Coffee. By 1947 it was known Coffee was talking nonsense. Life Oct 20, 1947 talks about why the Germans were in reality no where near discovering the bomb and The Oct 1949 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said the same thing.

The key issue is regardless of that records showed Spock had scanned the presentation of the Guardian of Forever and should have gotten an accurate view of history which logically would have been studied by the Federation. Sure John Gill might of been out of the loop but Spock would have known better regarding Gill's claim of Nazi Germany being efficient.

In fact this nearly omniscient this scan via the Guardian of Forever that Spock bases his comments about the Nazis atomic bomb and them using V2 to deliver them both of which should have been impossible. So clearly the Nazi atomic bomb and V2 programs in the TOS reality were very different then our own.

Maybe there was actual ASB helping both sides, and the ones helping the Allies were more successful. Enterprise had alien intervention on the side of the Axis, and maybe the future Federation intervened to reduce loss of life at some "later" point.

As I said that Temporal Cold War just fubars the post TOS timeline. Trying to reconcile Star Trek even in the TOS era with actual history up to 1969 just doesn't work.
 
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As an example of how weird the opposite is, check out Spectre of the Gun, where Spock knows literally EVERYTHING, including like a to-the-minute timeline, about the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I mean we've all met that guy, but is that likely to be something that fascinates our Vulcan.

The RPG GURPS even has a special ability for these kinds of skills: wildcard skills.

Professor Roy Hinkley aka The Professor of Gilligan's Island: Inventor! and Science!

Spock seems to have Science! and History! (when the plot requires it).
 
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