2

Beginning with the 1967 episode Space Seed, we start seeing references to the Eugenics Wars which, according to Memory Alpha, took place on Earth between 1992 and 1996 and led to World Ward 3.

References to both conflicts are peppered throughout the remainder of Star Trek canon including Enterprise.

From TOS through DS9, the time travel plots seem to take special care to avoid dealing directly with that era. They either travel to a time period already in the past at the time of Space Seed (City on the Edge of Forever or Times Arrow for example) or they deal with a time period that had not been addressed canonically at that point (Past Tense-arguable since it didn't mention the Eugenics Wars but World War 3 hadn't started yet).

Beginning with Voyager, the time travel plots seem to get slightly murkier. In Futures End, Voyager travels back to Los Angeles in 1996 as we knew it (without the Eugenics Wars) and in Carpenter Street, Archer and T'Pol are sent to Detroit in 2004 as we Knew it.

Since these conflicts seemed to be absolutely necessary for the birth of the Federation, (Eugenics Wars lead to World War 3 leads to Cochran building a warp drive leads to First Contact leads to space exploration leads to the Federation), has there ever been any canon explanation for the apparent lack of these conflicts in the later shows especially considering that Enterprise ignores the plot point in one episode (Carpenter Street) but mentions it in another (Borderland)?

geewhiz
  • 5,191
  • 1
  • 23
  • 42
  • Short answer, nope. – Valorum Feb 16 '15 at 18:37
  • @Richard You are correct, I missed it. Go ahead and vote to close. – geewhiz Feb 16 '15 at 18:42
  • Done and done... – Valorum Feb 16 '15 at 18:43
  • Are novels a valid answer to your question? There was some attempt to deal with this in a series of books. I know some one who read these books. If you wish, I could ask him what they were called. – amalgamate Feb 16 '15 at 18:47
  • @amalgamate the novels generally aren't considered canon so I appreciate the attempt but they wouldn't fall into the bounds of what I was looking for. – geewhiz Feb 16 '15 at 18:51
  • 1
    @amalgamate - I think you are talking about the Eugenics Wars series by Greg Cox. I haven't read them either, but reading some plot descriptions I got the impression they turned them into a series of "covert wars" going on behind the scenes, which were the secret causes of various known events like an underground nuclear explosion which in reality is thought to just be a nuke test. – Hypnosifl Feb 16 '15 at 18:53
  • Yep, that sounds right. There you go. – amalgamate Feb 16 '15 at 20:32

0 Answers0