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Alternate History in Star Trek, Part 2: The Original Series
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
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This was a weird one, because I have to mention a lot of not-even-tangentially-connected-with-AH episodes just to set up later articles on how spinoff writers used the content introduced in them to tell AH stories. I should really have included "Amok Time" for how it introduced Vulcan as a setting, for instance.
The dark joke about the 90s and what wars we noticed makes me imagine a story that says the Eugenic Wars were completely public but were happening in the developing world, so 90s America, Western Europe, Japan etc went "oh that's a shame, oh well what's on TV" while the Free Mumbai Army make their last stand against Khan's legions.
The mirror universe Kirk and chums getting caught quickly is really in contrast to Discovery, isn't it? Maybe Lorca was really, really, really good at pulling it off, but when he immediately goes "BWAHAHAHAHA I LOVE EVIL" after getting back home it does raise questions about how everyone around him didn't notice anything was wrong or go "maybe he isn't just a bit morally grey due to war and we shouldn't be following our orders so blindly". Questions the show didn't seem to want to poke at!
There's something unsettling about how there's never a reason given for it. The way everyone's so happy about what's coming implies Landru has no choice, his suppression causes all this muck to build up in people and there needs to be a way to purge (ho ho) it. Though IIRC the novelisations said the Festival is a way to cull the population to a manageable size.
The mirror universe Kirk and chums getting caught quickly is really in contrast to Discovery, isn't it? Maybe Lorca was really, really, really good at pulling it off, but when he immediately goes "BWAHAHAHAHA I LOVE EVIL" after getting back home it does raise questions about how everyone around him didn't notice anything was wrong or go "maybe he isn't just a bit morally grey due to war and we shouldn't be following our orders so blindly". Questions the show didn't seem to want to poke at!
a computer system succeeding the original which has erased all creativity from the people and periodically turns their darker impulses loose in a ‘Festival’ of sex and violence.
There's something unsettling about how there's never a reason given for it. The way everyone's so happy about what's coming implies Landru has no choice, his suppression causes all this muck to build up in people and there needs to be a way to purge (ho ho) it. Though IIRC the novelisations said the Festival is a way to cull the population to a manageable size.
@Thande Regarding the issues with the Mirror Universe, I'm curious whether you single out any of the (non-canon, I presume?) books set in that universe as being esp. terrible. I'm all too familiar with the "Shatnerverse" ones (liked them in my early teens, decidedly less now), but there are a few (brought up in this thread) which I'm somewhat tempted by, if only for the sake of "how bad are they?"
Regarding "The City on the Edge of Forever", I seem to recall reading that the Vietnam antiwar movement was a big influence on how Keeler's character/views were written, with the attitude of "right ideas, wrong time," which seems (somewhat, at least to me) like it could be a backhanded compliment or subtle rebuke--or prophetic, considering how rapidly the movement would grow in the following two years. What do you think?
Regarding "The City on the Edge of Forever", I seem to recall reading that the Vietnam antiwar movement was a big influence on how Keeler's character/views were written, with the attitude of "right ideas, wrong time," which seems (somewhat, at least to me) like it could be a backhanded compliment or subtle rebuke--or prophetic, considering how rapidly the movement would grow in the following two years. What do you think?
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@Thande Regarding the issues with the Mirror Universe, I'm curious whether you single out any of the (non-canon, I presume?) books set in that universe as being esp. terrible. I'm all too familiar with the "Shatnerverse" ones (liked them in my early teens, decidedly less now), but there are a few (brought up in this thread) which I'm somewhat tempted by, if only for the sake of "how bad are they?"
Dark Mirror, by Diane Duane, is 1) decidedly non-canon now but 2) actually good, fwiw.
The premise is that Mirror!Spock did try to reform the Empire, and initially had some modest success, but the inertia of the system was just too strong and he ended up getting disappeared. 80-90 years later, the Empire, having run out of systems to conquer (as this was before the size and shape of the Federation was established on screen, Duane limited all of Trek known space to a vastly detached branch of the Orion Arm) stealth-invaded the main timeline.
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Dark Mirror, by Diane Duane, is 1) decidedly non-canon now but 2) actually good, fwiw.
The premise is that Mirror!Spock did try to reform the Empire, and initially had some modest success, but the inertia of the system was just too strong and he ended up getting disappeared. 80-90 years later, the Empire, having run out of systems to conquer (as this was before the size and shape of the Federation was established on screen, Duane limited all of Trek known space to an vastly detached branch of the Orion Arm) stealth-invaded the main timeline.
Yep, I'd heard about this one and was (morbidly) intrigued; didn't know about the Orion Arm aspect, though.
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Yep, I'd heard about this one and was (morbidly) intrigued; didn't know about the Orion Arm aspect, though.
It's such a good book, I cannot recommend it hard enough
I actually think almost all of the spinoff media attempts at the mirror universe are better than anything that appeared on screen since they decided to bring it back in DS9 - but that's not saying much. I cover the first attempt at mirror universe spinoff media, in DC Comics, in a later article. I've not read "Dark Mirror" but I may do for the sake of this series.@Thande Regarding the issues with the Mirror Universe, I'm curious whether you single out any of the (non-canon, I presume?) books set in that universe as being esp. terrible. I'm all too familiar with the "Shatnerverse" ones (liked them in my early teens, decidedly less now), but there are a few (brought up in this thread) which I'm somewhat tempted by, if only for the sake of "how bad are they?"
There's two levels to this in my view - firstly stuff that is morally questionable like the DS9 and Discovery bits, and secondly when you do media that is fine in and of itself, but I feel it still says something negative about the author that they turn to the mirror universe rather than any other storytelling possibility. By contrast, Voyager - which is usually considered one of the weaker Star Trek series, including by me - pulled this off far better in the episode "Living Witness", which lets the evil-is-cool people have fun with a dark and nasty reimagined Voyager, but it far more plausibly and meaningfully is the result of alien propaganda-tinted history and never actually existed. Rather than creating an entire evil-is-cool setting which doesn't plausibly hold together in the slightest - fine for a one-off what-if episode of TOS, but doesn't deserve to keep getting revisited.
@varyar 's point about Diane Duane is interesting, I assume this same interpretation appears in her Romulan books. Reminiscent of how Timothy Zahn saw the Star Wars galaxy - a line in "Vision of the Future" implies that only about one-quarter of it is mapped and the rest is the Unknown Regions, in contrast to how other authors saw it.
Not come across that theory before, but makes a certain amount of sense.Regarding "The City on the Edge of Forever", I seem to recall reading that the Vietnam antiwar movement was a big influence on how Keeler's character/views were written, with the attitude of "right ideas, wrong time," which seems (somewhat, at least to me) like it could be a backhanded compliment or subtle rebuke--or prophetic, considering how rapidly the movement would grow in the following two years. What do you think?
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My most niche opinion about sci-fi is that the Eugenics Wars is the most interesting idea in Star Trek and deserves more treatment.
IIRC a later retcon basically did this by tying in all the smaller 90s conflicts (Yugoslavia, the militias, Somalia) into a secret war between augments and humanity.
The dark joke about the 90s and what wars we noticed makes me imagine a story that says the Eugenic Wars were completely public but were happening in the developing world, so 90s America, Western Europe, Japan etc went "oh that's a shame, oh well what's on TV" while the Free Mumbai Army make their last stand against Khan's legions.
IIRC a later retcon basically did this by tying in all the smaller 90s conflicts (Yugoslavia, the militias, Somalia) into a secret war between augments and humanity.
Duane's Dark Mirror has a nice scene where Picard reads through Mirror-Picard's library and seems subtle differences in old literature & plays that just keep growing and growing and growing - instead of a single POD, there's growing rot.
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Duane's Dark Mirror has a nice scene where Picard reads through Mirror-Picard's library and seems subtle differences in old literature & plays that just keep growing and growing and growing - instead of a single POD, there's growing rot.
The 'Pound of Flesh' speech and its inversion still lives in my head