Forgive me if I do not use quotes.  I am pulling this from memory and would have it listed as general statements instead of direct quotes. In Space Seed, Spock does say that in the late 1990's a group of these young supermen took control.  But in the same seen he also says records of that time period are sketchy at best.  Adding would you reveal to a war weary world that some 80 or 90 of these young supermen were still unaccounted for. With the statement that the records of that time period are sketchy at best, could allow the actual time for Khan to be shifted about 100 years from the 1990 stated in the TOS episode after further research. Within the _frame_work of TOS, certainly. But the sketchy records in the later shows prove to include near-complete family records for the cryo-stored not-quite-celebrities from the 1980s in TNG The Neutral Zone ; the complete works of Dixon Hill; and just about every little detail of the Bell Riots, including (misattributed) photos. So sketchy either has to mean that the material existed in great detail but had simply not been sorted out by the time of Space Seed , or that there were real lacunae in it but those only affected very short periods of time, not an entire century. To be sure, all these detailed historical records we hear about are from the time after Space Seed . Perhaps time-travel missions like the one Kirk pulled in Assignment: Earth were crucial in getting the sketchy records clarified? Perhaps there was nothing sketchy about the past after these missions? A whole century's worth of history or more could have been completely rewritten, and the rewrite accepted as the uncontested truth from there on. Timo Saloniemi

Maybe it was a limited exchange of nukes, plus some bio-tech warfare a la The Stand that wiped out many urban populations.  The safest place was in the rural mountains until either a cure was developed or, if it was an organic disease, the virus or bacteria all died out due to lack of hosts. Would explain the intact cities with all the familiar pre-21st century landmark buildings. Then again, there's a concept for the war that would leave the cities completely untouched, even by bioweapons. If we bundle up WWIII and the Eugenics Wars, we have a source of sorts for the motivations of the conflict, and for its nature. Proponents of eugenics would surely target the unworthy , perhaps killing millions or poor people in remote areas while deliberately protecting the worthy in their gleaming cities. The weapons used would be hunger and disease and adverse weather and pollution, with bullets and bombs only applied in countries that did not matter internationally. Such a massacre could even remain clandestine for the most part, leading to confusion about the actual death toll or the timespan of killing. People who opposed the eugenics proponents would perhaps abandon the cities and run for the hills, but would have limited means to fight back. The conflict could then perhaps culminate in somebody getting fed up with the slaughter and giving the city-folks their own medicine, leveling a limited number of cities with nuclear weapons. Hence, a neat 37 million dead, a short not a nuclear holocaust period of combat, but only from a certain point of view. This could work dramatically in the Trek context - the use of hunger and disease as weapons in the late 20th and early 21st centuries would sound semi-plausible to those who want to see Trek as taking place in our timeline/universe. Eco-weapons would also be a fashionable subject for the early 21st century audience. And the sinister workings in the background would be classic scifi material for all audiences. The final catharsis of a fair-and-square nuclear shootout would be good for drama as well. Best of all, none of it would have to affect the adventures of our Trek heroes, unless they happened to live in the brief years (months? minutes?) of the actual shootout part. They'd see nothing amiss in 1996 or 2015... Timo Saloniemi

What was the status of th Eugenics Wars in the Voyager episode, where the crew travels back to the 1990's? Not being fought on the beaches of California as of 1996 AD. We didn't really get to see any newsstands, though. (Would have been cool to see a fake CNN piece on the wars when the Voyager crew monitored Earth TV transmissions!) The briefly glimpsed model of a DY-type ship in Rain Robinson's room suggests that this tech actually existed in the 1990s, or was about to exist in the next few years. It would be *really* odd for a project represented by this model to come to fruition only a hundred years later - one would assume that all the aesthetics of the craft would change even if the century-old concept was retained. Timo Saloniemi

Maybe it was a limited exchange of nukes, plus some bio-tech warfare a la The Stand that wiped out many urban populations.  The safest place was in the rural mountains until either a cure was developed or, if it was an organic disease, the virus or bacteria all died out due to lack of hosts. Would explain the intact cities with all the familiar pre-21st century landmark buildings. Then again, there's a concept for the war that would leave the cities completely untouched, even by bioweapons. If we bundle up WWIII and the Eugenics Wars, we have a source of sorts for the motivations of the conflict, and for its nature. Proponents of eugenics would surely target the unworthy , perhaps killing millions or poor people in remote areas while deliberately protecting the worthy in their gleaming cities. The weapons used would be hunger and disease and adverse weather and pollution, with bullets and bombs only applied in countries that did not matter internationally. Such a massacre could even remain clandestine for the most part, leading to confusion about the actual death toll or the timespan of killing. People who opposed the eugenics proponents would perhaps abandon the cities and run for the hills, but would have limited means to fight back. The conflict could then perhaps culminate in somebody getting fed up with the slaughter and giving the city-folks their own medicine, leveling a limited number of cities with nuclear weapons. Hence, a neat 37 million dead, a short not a nuclear holocaust period of combat, but only from a certain point of view. This could work dramatically in the Trek context - the use of hunger and disease as weapons in the late 20th and early 21st centuries would sound semi-plausible to those who want to see Trek as taking place in our timeline/universe. Eco-weapons would also be a fashionable subject for the early 21st century audience. And the sinister workings in the background would be classic scifi material for all audiences. The final catharsis of a fair-and-square nuclear shootout would be good for drama as well. Best of all, none of it would have to affect the adventures of our Trek heroes, unless they happened to live in the brief years (months? minutes?) of the actual shootout part. They'd see nothing amiss in 1996 or 2015... Timo Saloniemi   There is some logic in this, especialy when you consider that the tactic of starving the undesirables has been underway in Africa for some time.  What you thought people starved over there because not enough food aid is sent?   They starve because the warlords won't alow food to be sent to the undesirables (that is those of whatever tribe the warlords tribe has a hereditary grudge with) and also burn down their feilds and destroy their farm equipment.  But enough of my soapbox,  while this idea makes sense I don't think it's what TPTB have in mind.   I think the earlyer coments about the Temporal Cold war are probably closer to the truth.  While I doubt they'll eliminate the whole TOS TNG timeline they may say it's the result of lots of temporal manipulation, perhaps even integrating several diferent timelines. This might explain why late 20th century records are fragmented they come from more than one history but 23rd century historians still don't know that so they try to make it fit together (like trying to turn pieces of two puzzles into one picture).  This would have the virtue of explaining inconsistencies like the Eugenics wars hapening in the 90's but no evidence of them when Voyager visited the period and the no neuclear holocaust/post atomic horor confusion.   On the other hand perhaps the temporal cold war is intended to change Trek history, as the earlyer post suggested.  I have heard that TPTB have chafed under some of the restrictions that Rodenbery's estate placed on future Trek productions and set Enterprise earlyer in the timeline to work around them.  Perhapst the temporal cold war is a sneaky way to create a timeline that eliminates the restrictions entirely.  Though if that's their intent I hope they 're braced for the audience response.  After all who'se going to want to see the show's they've loved for 30 odd years declared part of a negated timeline?   Whatever they do it should be interesting.

I have heard that TPTB have chafed under some of the restrictions that Rodenbery's estate placed on future Trek productions and set Enterprise earlyer in the timeline to work around them. You've heard wrong.  Roddenberry and his estate have no ability to place any restrictions at all on Trek, it's owned lock, stock and barrel by Paramount.  The only influence Roddenberry ever had on Trek's development after he sold the concept was what he did with it when he had active control of production and what influence his pronouncements had on what the fans would or would not accept.  To a great extent TPTB made an effort to avoid offending him when he was alive because if he'd gone direct to the fans over something he opposed it could have been financially harmful to the franchise, but he's gone now, and all we can do is theorize about what he might think and say about something if he were here.  It's *possible* that there's still enough fear of how Trek's fan _base_ would react to a major revision of Trek that TPTB might try to finesse it in the way you suggest, but I can't say that anything they've done so far makes me think they're very worried about that. GeneK

very worried about that. I think Roddenberry, while he was still active in the show, had a lot of pull over what happened with TNG too.  But once he stepped down he probably lost it. As for TPTB and fear