Hello all!
Ric here covering a major lore bomb that was dropped in the last episode of Strange New
Worlds.
Episode three of season two, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” has aired and as
of writing this, I literally just got done watching it.
Well I made a cup of tea first, then got to writing this.
One line caught my attention and sort of gives a soft confirmation or at least draws attention
to the continuity of Star Trek as a whole.
Spoilers ahead for that episode because I need to discuss these potential ramifications
in full.
The situation is that La’an Noonien Singh is sent back in time by a temporal agent to
prevent the assassination of Khan in 2022 thus preserving the formation of the United
Earth in the aftermath of World War 3.
These dates already contradicted the original history of Khan and the Eugenics Wars as mentioned
in the original Star Trek episode “Space Seed” where research into Khan’s history
reveals him to be a despot from 1992 to 96.
This was the formation of Khan’s empire over one quarter of the globe and the whole
reason for the Federations’ reluctance to pursue genetic augmentation in its later years.
Captain Pike has since confirmed on screen that the Eugenics wars basically bled into
the Third World War as he lectured in the first episode of Strange New Worlds.
Now originally I (and many others) hand waved away this change as an actual retcon of events
because quite simply, 1992 has been and gone and it would be a little strange to refer
to this grandiose event in the history of Earth that hasn’t happened.
So they changed it to be an unconfirmed time in the late 21st century.
Still it represented a retcon of the lore.
So, on La’an’s mission, she encounters the assassin, a Romulan Temporal Agent, who
seems to be operating from an unknown time, but has awareness of the Temporal War.
Her mission is basically to slow down the progress made by Humans in order to stall
the formation of the Federation, Starfleet and weaken the overall state of the UFP.
Honestly, the exact kind of interference that the Time Agencies and Temporal Accords were
created to stop.
However, a throw away line of dialogue from the Romulan agent immediately caught my attention
and that was that “All this was supposed to happen in 1992” and that she has been
trying for 30 years to forestall mankind’s technological development.
This means that originally, the Project to create Khan was begun in 1959, as it was in
TOS, but halted for some reason, leading to the project to be shelved until Doctor Adam
Soong of Soong Dynamics delved back into genetic research and dug up the old Khan project that
was being overseen by the Noonien-Singh Foundation.
This project had finally picked up the research from a prior point and created Khan and a
group of others, the first Augments that would lead to the Eugenics Wars and eventual World
War in the 21st century.
This represents a now canon alteration to the timeline between The original Series and
Strange New Worlds, a confirmation that the timeline between those two shows has shifted
slightly.
So what does this mean for the continuity of Star Trek in relation to the older series?
Well, it is still the Prime Timeline, and I doubt the events of The Original Series
are going to be consigned to irrelevance, that seems like a dumb decision to make.
However it does provide an opportunity to hand-wave away some of the inconsistencies
in-universe and ties into the whole notion that whenever time travel is done in Trek,
most of the time, it results in a permanently altered timeline anyway.
Personally, I have long since accepted that the only approach to an overall timeline is
to simply take what is said at face value because trying to map it all out is a complete
mess, believe me I have tried several times.
As for in-universe lore?
The agent mentions that the time to which she was assigned has been the target of numerous
other alteration attempts before from other factions and that to her, it even seems like
time itself is trying to reassert itself, despite all her changes.
While she has delayed Khan by 30 years so far, the Third World War still happens, Zephrma
Cochrane’s flight and first contact with the Vulcans happens on April 5th, 2063, and
the Founding of the Federation in 2161 all still occur.
This is no doubt the result of the efforts of the Temporal Accord allied Time agencies,
undoing alterations and restoring the flow as best they can, but alterations are bound
to occur, the ripples add up.
The eventual result is that you end up with a timeline that has been substantially altered
in some ways, but the end result is still the same.
Ultimately there needs to be a Eugenics crisis of some sort, involving Khan, to maintain
the continuity of the Federation and this was preserved.
So can you now technically say for sure, that the original series takes place in a different
continuity?
Yes.
Also valid is the approach that the TOS series would unfold as is anyway in the continuity
of Strange New Worlds because why would you want to overwrite what came before?
Alternatively, if you want to get super literal about it, you can say that the episode Space
Seed takes place before an alteration was made, as that is the only episode that references
the 1992 date (I think, despite background info).
On a personal level, this does not change how I approach Star Trek, the Prime Timeline
is still the Prime Timeline and events shown in the shows still unfold pretty much as is.
For support of this, just see and of the previous times that Star Trek did something similar,
the Gabriel Bell Riots in 2024 being one example I can think of, where Bell existed but ended
up being replaced by Sisko.
While the overall timeline was preserved, it represented a change between a timeline
where Bell lived, and a timeline where Sikso impersonated Bell.
This is the same thing, just on a bigger scale.
So the discussion of whether X series is in continuity with Y is kind of irrelevant, although
fun.
I instead would ask a different question, do all retcons like the changing of the Eugenics
Wars have to be addressed with an in universe lore reason?
This brings to mind the whole Enterprise era human-DNA infused Klingons to explain the
original series look of them, whereas if that was never drawn attention to in the shows,
it would have been simply ignored as a limitation of the 60s.
For example, I don’t need a temporal incident explaining why the dates for the Cardassian-Federation
Border Wars are so hard to pin down, or another story explaining why the Discovery-era Klingons
look so different.
I’m happy to chalk that up to just, plot convenience and design choices.
Saying that, I really to appreciate it when Trek attempts to tidy up its lore too, so
I’m in two minds about this.
The line about the original fate of Khan being displaced was also delivered in such a way
that it could simply be there as an easter egg or reference to TOS, but even then, it
was still brought up in canon.
Again, like Worf’s remarks as to the Klingons looking different between eras, a reference
but affirming a change in-universe.
So there we go, I thought I should cover this reveal in the lore and give my take on it,
I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you next time for another lore video, thanks again and goodbye!