this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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The big temporal shift took place when TNG’s premiere ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ was written to place WW3 and first contact into the mid-late 21st century.
TOS was very specific in saying that the Eugenics War was a precursor to WW3.
Roddenberry wanted to ensure that the franchise’s optimistic future was always a future possibility for viewers. So he insisted that TNG reset the date of WW3.
At the time TNG appeared, there were die-hard gatekeeping TOS fans that argued that this time shift broke canon and meant TNG was in a different universe despite McCoy’s appearance in the premiere.
SNW just confirms the physics of temporal slippage in the Prime timeline as the consequence of all the various intertemporal incursions over the history of the franchise.
I actually did not know that they shifted it. Are the eugenics wars still part of the shifted timeline or were they cut when moving ww3 back?
TNG and all the 90s shows finessed their way around the date of the Eugenics War.
The writers at the time (e.g., Moore & Braga) would rationalize in response to fan questions that the Eugenics War was going on but we just weren’t aware. Or something. But they assiduously avoided dealing with the issue onscreen despite trying to write around other inconsistencies like Klingon foreheads.
So, it was left to SNW’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to spell it all out, including moving Khan’s birth back by decades. It’s worth putting a priority on seeing that episode just for that clarity.
Thanks for the insight, guess I'll go and watch SNW now :D