ENT - Damaged

[BlackoutCreature2]

I always felt the first story they should've done in season four (after wrapping up that whole time-traveling alien Nazi's mess) was Archer tracking down these aliens and surrendering to them. I thought there was potential in a story about that, although maybe it would've undermined the message from this episode.

[clearspira]

Its actually even more ridiculous than that. Troi in First Contact reckons that we went from the aftermath of WW3 to ending all war, poverty and disease within 50 years. AND we set up a stable world government during that time. That is an insane timescale. Its such a short timescale in fact that, theoretically, the same people who dropped the bombs during WW3 may have still been alive.

Well, I did a bit of research:
2053 - WW3 Ends
2063 - Warp Drive
2079 - Post-Atomic Horror Courts
2103 - Mars Colonies
2113 - War, Poverty, Etc. Eliminated on Earth
2150 - Earth Unified
2161 - Federation

So yeah. Assuming the bailiff from Encounter at Farpoint had an average life expectancy and was the same age as the actor at the time, he'd have lived for a decade after Mars Colonies and one year after poverty is eliminated.

Seems a bit unlikely that Enterprise season 1 is set one year after the unification of Earth as it never really comes across like that on the show. This is the most extreme political jump in human history - the end of the nation state - and yet everyone seems perfectly comfortable with it just one year later? Where's the dissent, the outliers, the granddad who wants the old days to return?
Would have been a fun thing for a prequel to explore though...

[Fianna]

I assume the transition to a unified Earth was more of a gradual process. Like, the decade or so before the official unification of Earth, the various nations were probably all functionally organized as a single state, just with some nominal autonomy.

[TGLS]

2150 was the date quoted as the unification of the last few states, a process beginning with the European Hegemony (!). And apparently "United Earth" is a thing beginning in 2036, so nobody really knows. I mean, it seems like the Eugenics Wars are getting merged in with WW3 so who knows.

[CharlesPhipps]

I always felt the first story they should've done in season four (after wrapping up that whole time-traveling alien Nazi's mess) was Archer tracking down these aliens and surrendering to them. I thought there was potential in a story about that, although maybe it would've undermined the message from this episode.

If Ron Moore wrote it, they'd all be dead, and, honestly, that's my headcanon.

2150 was the date quoted as the unification of the last few states, a process beginning with the European Hegemony (!). And apparently "United Earth" is a thing beginning in 2036, so nobody really knows. I mean, it seems like the Eugenics Wars are getting merged in with WW3 so who knows.

Time travel!

Yeah.

The problem of Archer is the fact that for the first two seasons they don't really have an idea what they want to do with Archer and when they do have an idea, it goes over with the fans like a lead balloon. Well before Michael Burnham, Archer irritated people with his Vulcan racism and belief humanity was being held back. Which, bluntly, given they rebuilt from Mad Max in a century, sounds ridiculous.

Oddly, Samuel Beckett acts much more like a Starfleet captain in many ways.

Damaged reboots him and he's much more tolerable from then on.

Its actually even more ridiculous than that. Troi in First Contact reckons that we went from the aftermath of WW3 to ending all war, poverty and disease within 50 years. AND we set up a stable world government during that time. That is an insane timescale. Its such a short timescale in fact that, theoretically, the same people who dropped the bombs during WW3 may have still been alive. No wonder the Vulcans may have been a bit reticent to just give us the secrets of anti-matter interstellar travel.

It also puts a lot of our recent Prime Directive discussions into perspective but I digress.

I think it gets a little more ridiculous because they try and imply the Vulcans didn't help with the rebuilding but humanity did it all ourselves, which was part of ENTERPRISE's weird relationship with the Vulcans. They don't want to feel like humanity "owes" anything to anyone but is so awesome that it it proves better than everyone else by our force of American...err, Earth exceptionalism.

[Frustration]

One of the concepts of TOS is that intractable real-world problems are easy to solve once technology is sufficiently advanced and humanity actually puts its back into solving them.

It's the sort of utopian thinking common to communistic propaganda, that a "heaven on earth" was not only possible but inevitable.

[CharlesPhipps]

One of the concepts of TOS is that intractable real-world problems are easy to solve once technology is sufficiently advanced and humanity actually puts its back into solving them.

It's the sort of utopian thinking common to communistic propaganda, that a "heaven on earth" was not only possible but inevitable.

It's also capitalist propaganda of the United States because the goal was not to ensure the wealth disparity forever but that everyone would be rich if they worked hard. The idea was that liberal democracy would lead to paradise.

And it can be if we just strangle some people.

[McAvoy]

Yeah.

The problem of Archer is the fact that for the first two seasons they don't really have an idea what they want to do with Archer and when they do have an idea, it goes over with the fans like a lead balloon. Well before Michael Burnham, Archer irritated people with his Vulcan racism and belief humanity was being held back. Which, bluntly, given they rebuilt from Mad Max in a century, sounds ridiculous.

Oddly, Samuel Beckett acts much more like a Starfleet captain in many ways.

Damaged reboots him and he's much more tolerable from then on.

Its actually even more ridiculous than that. Troi in First Contact reckons that we went from the aftermath of WW3 to ending all war, poverty and disease within 50 years. AND we set up a stable world government during that time. That is an insane timescale. Its such a short timescale in fact that, theoretically, the same people who dropped the bombs during WW3 may have still been alive. No wonder the Vulcans may have been a bit reticent to just give us the secrets of anti-matter interstellar travel.

It also puts a lot of our recent Prime Directive discussions into perspective but I digress.

50 years is still alot of time. That's basically talking 1995 when we talk about the end of WW2.

I could buy it if the United Earth thing predates First Contact and WW3. Like we really dont have a true grasp on what was going on with Earth in the movie.

We got what Riker said and small things through out the movie.

Though 21st century Trek timeline has always been murky. Especially with the Eugenics Wars.

[Fianna]

One of the concepts of TOS is that intractable real-world problems are easy to solve once technology is sufficiently advanced and humanity actually puts its back into solving them.

It's the sort of utopian thinking common to communistic propaganda, that a "heaven on earth" was not only possible but inevitable.

I'd say that improved transportation and communication technology (particularly the universal translators seen in Trek) would do a lot of the work in dissolving national borders.

Nations as we know them exist because people's beliefs and values are determined largely by the environment they've grown up in. Ergo, a bunch of people who live in the same region, rarely leaving it, and rarely having contact with outsiders, will grow to have highly similar beliefs and values, because they're all in a feedback loop. This makes them a distinct group from people who live in other regions and thus have a different set of beliefs and values, which often leads to conflict between them.

But when technology advances to the point where flying around the world is as easy as taking the bus downtown, and where you can instantly communicate with anyone in the world at the press of a button? And we throw in some miraculous tech that eliminates language barriers? Then what region we live in no longer has much bearing on what beliefs and values we're exposed to, and so the link between geographical location and cultural identity begins to break down.

[Frustration]

National borders are irrelevant once material technologies make basic needs trivial to guarantee. That's the implausible part of Star Trek's utopian dream, not the speed. Actual communist societies always had major problems managing basic needs, much less luxuries.