This Changes Everything | Strange New Worlds S2E03 Lore Drop 

So the time ship from Voyager crashed, introduced future tech, superpowered computer research and choked investment in genetics, the Romulan went back to 1992, but it was after Voyager changed the past so she ended up in a non-Khan 90s and worked to reduce the influence of the future tech until Picard knocks Soong into reactivating the Khan program. Kinda fixes a LOT of time travel consistency issues.

All I can say about this delayed introduction and its impacts on the timeline is: "KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN !!"

Keep in mind, in Voyager, it was discovered most of Earth's technological advancement in the late 20th century was the direct result of time travel and that was never corrected. The timeline is most likely damaged beyond repair, if there even was a "starting state" considering how time travel works. It's been pointed out the players in the temporal war, including the Federation, are mostly trying to defend their own history, but it's likely even they know permanent changes have occurred.

When the story for Space Seed was written in the summer of 1966, who could have possibly envisioned there would still be television productions referencing it 57 years later?

The thing I find most fascinating is this both confirms that Enterprise and SNW are slightly different timelines, but also simultaneously asserts that it doesn’t matter. “It’s like time is resisting, pushing back, stuff happens anyway”. And this reaffirms that the long-established small changes (such as Sisko becoming Gabriel Bell, Spock’s Sehlat dying early, Voyager in the 90s) don’t matter so long as the general shape of the path is the same. It’s like the flow of a river, it may meander significantly in one location but the overall course to the ocean stays fairly consistent. The temporal investigations department even has a measurement of the magnitude of the timeline change: “0.02 variance” for Seven of Nine’s shenanigans in the episode which introduced TCARS (I was happy to see its return). So presumably any changes under a certain amount are considered fairly safe. I note the agent’s “this was never meant to happen” speech mirrors Daniels’ to Archer after their shuttle blew up a mining colony. These examples are thus probably the biggest “temporal variances” the timeline can sustain without significantly fracturing.

My only real concern with this approach is what if star trek is still showing in the 2060s? Will they just keep retconning time to a smaller and smaller timeframe to make sure it stays "in the future"? Its a problem that will never have a solution, so they are going to have to decide when they want the star trek timeline to divert from reality.

Our timeline simply isn't the prime star trek timeline, that's why events don't match our world. It's a similar world, a fictionalised version that mirrors some events of ours.

We saw the Krenim fiddle with the timeline in Voyager to get a desired outcome. I'd imagine the Department for Temporal Investigations and the others are doing something similar, but aim to keep the timeline like 99% the same. Moving the Eugenics Wars to mid 21st Century is a shift, but must have the same outcome as a 99% threshold. The real story is in the 1960s 30 years ahead seemed so far away, and 30 years before it Eugenics was a big thing Nazis and the like were into. So put the two together and you get "the future". Best not to think about it too much!

Another cute nod to lore; in spite of the fact that Sara is smaller then La'an, she is shown to be _significantly stronger._ I love when the show remembers that Vulcans are stronger than humans and therefore, it follows that Romulans probably would be as well. And when Romulans get shot, the blood squibs should be green not red.

I'm guessing how temporal mechanics in the Star Trek universe works is kinda like a spring. You can compress and bend it (the timeline) but it'll eventually form back to its original shape either naturally or artificially. But if the spring breaks you can weld the pieces back together, it won't look entirely the same but depending on the weld it may look nice or messy. You could also shave the metal off along the spring to get splintering timelines like the Kelvin universe.

To borrow a phrase, it's a bunch of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff. For instance, I don't think there was an NX-01 Enterprise until the events of First Contact and Cochrane seeing the Enterprise-E. He suggests to Henry Archer that their first Warp 5 ship should be named Enterprise. Not to mention the Borg Cube wreckage they found in the Arctic.

The book trilogy that works through The Eugenics Wars says that the war was covert, with the augments working behind the scenes. The covert war was an intentional decision so they could still fit it withing our existing history. It also had Gary Seven in it.

That line confirms it for me that SNW takes place in a different timeline.

Tbh I would have always been fine with Star Trek just being alternate history, the Eugenics Wars happen in the 90s and that's it. It doesn't need to mirror real world events beat for beat, important things can still happen in the time line around our real world history regardless of the alternate stuff if they want to reference it.

To me this episode kind of implies that time is similar to in Doctor Who. While there still needs to be those that prevent certain changes as some things are in flux, there are also Fixed Points in Time where time itself tries to correct things. The difference is that unlike Doctor Who, the universe is not destroyed if Fixed Points are not met. It also reminded me of: "wibbly wobbly timey wimey". Edit: Come to think of it, another similarity is that Star Trek has the Temporal Cold War and Doctor Who has the Last Great Time War. In both things ended up corrected as much as possible, but not everything was able to be corrected as there was simply too much changing for that to be possible.

i loved the sweet irony that La'an had to save the life of the man she hates more than anything in the universe to insure the Federation and Star Fleet would be formed

It’s Einstein’s Theory of Relative Continuity. The eugenics wars do not happen at a specific date. They always happen a few decades after the story is written.

Personally I love when they add in-universe explanations to stuff. And I’d consider this a splinter timeline, but like you said, it’s unimportant but fun to discuss and map

The way I took that line is that time is squishier and more adaptive than previously portrayed. Like the romulan agent was working to get the big change to pivot the timeline, but when she failed it all kinda mushed back to the correct thing.

One thought that did occur to me regarding this is that it would definitely explain how Khan seems so much more well known that he was originally. If the original timeline had Khan leaving Earth far earlier, perhaps even prior to the worst events of WWIII, records of him might have been far scarcer and more attention given to subsequent events. With his creation having been delayed, it's likely he was far more involved in later conflicts of the war, resulting in far greater notoriety.

Just makes me feel like timetravel is getting a little overdone in the universe.

I think the force that's trying to fix time is Sam Beckett.

The War was never really well established in the shows. I always went with the theory, that the records before the war were not reliable anymore because of the war and missing transparency during it. After all those time travel episodes in Star Trek, I think the timeline is patchwork at best right now. At the time an event was mentioned, it happened at that mentioned time, but a season or show later it could have changed, without anyone realizing. But the ripple effects were weakened as best as possible, so the big events, the fix points, still occur. Maybe not in the same years or months, but they did. The answer is in the episode. The Romulan said, that time corrects itself. Every time she tries something, something fights back. Those are the time agents, and she doesn't even realize it, because she already went native in that timeline. She is into deep a part of the causality, of the prime timeline. It would be a great episode, that the Crew fights such correction and is so good at it, that the time agents have to come clean and tell them, that they have to let something happen, to fix a mistake, or else something way worse would happen. Maybe they have to let an attack happen or a death, or someone else is going to be captain of the Enterprise during Wolf 359 and the Borg win. One episode and all the time and canon problems go away. But also, they're maybe doing a soft reboot of Star Trek. Still prime timeline, but small changes.

Concerning the Eugenics Wars starting in '92, i think the reason its been kept this relevant in universe is that, maybe, this war starting this early was probably a "temporal sweet spot" of sorts for it to occur. The Nazis could've started the Eugenics stuff to make a supersoldier program, but got scrapped when the Allies won and starting poaching the scientists they didnt kill, then gets rebooted in 1959 to create Khan and his fellows, away from Westerm eyes. After all, Eugenics Wars occur in a time where, if irl history is more or less concurrent, the Gulf War or Iraq War happens and America invades the Middle East leading a coalition force around this time, meaning that US/NATO forces are already engaged somewhere else and a few other crises are going on, and that assumes that the USSR is still dissolved in 1991. Khan's war could've been another brushfire conflict that turned into an inferno while nobody was looking especially hard and they paid the price for it. Not to mention that when Space Seed was written and the OG timeline given, 1992 could've been a plausible time frame for a grown supersoldier in his prime to start a planet wide war. We went from Wright Bros. prototype to Space Shuttle in around 60 years, who's to say we couldn't go from discovering genomes' existence to mass produced clone army in 20, especially when the research required starts in a state where some of its population are considered disposable or unwanted already and are prime experiment fodder?

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan also references the year 1996, so it's also been "Ret-Khanned"

I like the Idea that the Star Trek timeline splits from our reality already in 1966 (the year the first episode aired). And to be honest. The Star Trek-tech only would be possible to achieve in just 200+years if the technology-optimism of the 1960s would have becom reality. Von Braun timed the first Mars-landing at the end of the 1980s. Fusion and intersolar travel would be possible in the 1990s or early 2000s... Therefore I like the idea that Star Trek is fiction since 1966 and that the timeline runs differently since then.

i suspect that you are right on all accounts, but i wonder if the force that the romulan agent was referring to isn't something more.... known? as there is a documented faction that would seem to be the one working to correct things in the form of Wesley Crusher post Traveler situation. maybe somebody delayed khan, and wesley or one of his operatives, knowing that it was a sad necessity to avoid a more terrible fate, put in action the series of events that forced the whole thing anyways... just a random thought i had. Love the videos and have a great one everyone who reads this!

We don't have the time to argue about time . . . . . .

Two thoughts on this issue. The first is that they can now justify changes to the timeline as butterfly-effect consequences of that delay in Khan's birth. For example: this episode teased a major attraction between Kirk and La'an. In the original TOS timeline, obviously Kirk and La'an never became a couple, but _if_ they wanted to make them one here, they could -- I am not saying they will or should, but if they want to, now they can, among other changes. The second thing is something that has always frustrated me. Sci Fi movies or shows _always_ seem to make huge technological advancements come waaaaaaaaay too early. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Star Trek (TOS), Space: 1999, et al. I suppose 2001 is the least egregious offender here, since _most_ of the technology seen in that film was probably achievable by 2001, if we had had the will to keep funding space exploration at the level we did in the 1960s, but we didn't. So instead of having permanent bases on the moon by 2001, we're nearly a quarter century beyond that date now, and we still haven't gone back _at all._ But think about Blade Runner: 2019 was just 37 years after 1982, and the film mentioned off-world colonies that are implied to be preferable to Earth as a place to live by 2019, which almost certainly indicates interstellar travel, given the unsuitability of any planet in our solar system for human habitation. Blade Runner also featured, not just mapping of the human genome, and genetic engineering, but production of _entirely_ manufactured human beings from _scratch._ And these synthetic humans are physically superior to real humans to boot. 37 years was _ludicrously_ early for us to have reached this level of technology. They should have set the movie in the 2080s at the absolute earliest -- and that's probably still way too optimistic. Star Trek TOS, imagining the Eugenics Wars in the early 1990s was similarly bad: that was almost 30 years exactly from the date Space Seed was filmed, and the idea that we would have developed the knowledge to overhaul human genes that thoroughly, and that competently, in that short an amount of time, was also much, much too optimistic. Likewise for space travel -- when Khan is defeated, note he and his closest followers also escaped Earth in an interstellar (though sublight) spacecraft, before the end of the 20th century. They should have put the Eugenics Wars well into the 21st century.

this was very terminator and interesting. makes me wonder if the temporal investigations division will be a recurring part of this show.... i'm here for it!

In Space Seed when Spock is referencing Khans records he says something like that era of history records are spotty which could be because of the time incursions messing with it.

Just a theory of mine: If you look at the tech of TOS and then Enterprise, Discovery and now SNW, it seems to be more advanced each time. I think this is due to time line incursions where something in the timeline is altered, but then fixed by a time agent, but not 100%, but the events still play out mostly as they original occurred. Take for example a change of tech, in Star Trek The Motion Picture when you see a wall of Enterprise ships, the fist starship has the Vulcan like ring, obviously inspired by Vulcan ships. But after the First Contact movie where ZC saw the Enterprise through the telescope, it altered the inspiration for the design of the first start ship and thus the timeline and thus what we have in the series Enterprise and so forth.

This seems to indicate there isn’t only one prime timeline, but prime timelines

So much time traveling stuff has happened in Star Trek that you have temporal incursions within temporal incursions that it gets more confusing. Khan Noonien-Singh was supposed to have caused the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, as pointed out in the Original Series by Khan Noonien-Singh himself. Then Star Trek Picard shows Adam Soong pulls out a file called Project Khan in 2024 in Los Angeles. Star Trek Strange New Worlds recent season 2 episode has La'an time travel to 2022 and meets her ancestor Khan as a child in Ontario, Canada. The Romulan Sera, who was trying to kill Khan, mentioned that the timeline changed when she time traveled to the 1990s to originally kill Khan but then had to wait 30 more years. So the events that were mentioned in the Original Series were supposed to happen, but because of time travel and the Temporal Cold War that has been mentioned again, it was delayed. They showed the 90's in Star Trek Voyager when Voyager ended up there because of Captain Braxton but there were no signs of Khan or the Eugenics Wars had happened during that time, this might have been due to Braxton's timeship crash landing in the 1960's and that Henry Sterling found it then made his company which it caused the initiating the computer revolution as Janeway puts it. This could have caused the delay. So the Eugenics War did happen in the 90's but then didn't and happen later as part of the Second Civil War and World War 3 as Pike described it in the first episode of Strange New Worlds. No wonder Temporal Investigation gets annoyed when someone messes and #@%$! with time. Even they wonder if they are living in an alternate timeline like when they asked Sisko about his time travel event that involved meeting Kirk on Deep Space K-7 and on his Enterprise when dealing with a Klingon who put a bomb in a tribble. Also Odo did a Star Trek IV the Voyage Home move when he brought a tribble back with him so the tribbles were brought back from extinction since Worf mentioned that the Klingons wiped them out when they found the Tribble homeworld. The Klingons most likely wiped out the reptilian predators that eat Tribbles too when they bombarded the planet since Dr. Phlox from Star Trek Enterprise mentioned that the Reptilian predators on the Tribble homeworld keep the Tribble population in check so that they don't overpopulate even Spock mentioned these predators when the tribbles first showed up after he and Kirk asked Cyrano Jones where he got the tribbles. Although, in Star Trek the Animated series, the Klingons created a predator called a Gloomer to deal with the tribbles after their encounter in the Original Series but it got scared after seeing a huge tribble created by Cyrano Jones which he made so that they don't ruin ecosystem when they eat because these ones don't breed when they eat but got bigger and for some reason they were pink. (There is actually a production reason why they were pink.) Although later in that episode, McCoy found out that these big Tribbles were colonies of tribbles bunched together into these big ones. He injected them with a drug compound called neoethylene, which separated them and made them eat at a slower rate. (But then that stupid Short Trek episode decided to contradict that say that they breed slow instead of fast and only start to breed fast because of a Starfleet Officer who experimented on them with his own dna because he was obsessed with wanting to eat Tribbles. Why would you want to eat a tribble, you sick bastard!? Especially ones that have his DNA in them. He is basically eating tribbles that are part human and technically would be his children and so on. In other words: TRIBBLES ARE PEOPLE!!! TRIBBLES ARE PEOPLE!!! ( Being hauled away while saying this) (Okay, not really being hauled away. I wanted to reference the ending scene of the Soylent Green movie.) Me then: At least Tribbles aren't dangerous or cannibals. Later in Star Trek Picard: Riker: A Mighty Klingon taken aback by the even Mighter Attack Tribble. Me: Why Section 31!? Why would you make that and give it three mouths!? Later in Star Trek Online: Introduces cannibal tribbles. Me: Why would you make it a cannibal and give it sharp teeth!? And is it on offshoot of that Attack Tribble?

This makes me think of Bat-Keaton talking about the multiverse in The Flash where the past is changed as well as the future. They are more subtle changes, but they are still changes to the past.

6:40 IDEA: when timeline got too messed up. someone decided to go back and speed up the Khan project and push it back to 1992

Space Seed wasn't the only one that mentioned the 1990s dates, Kahn himself in TWOK claimed to have ruled until 1996

Somebody else I follow has suggested that the Romulan agent, or possibly another such agent, has already eliminated the "first" Khan back in 1992, and this Khan that we see, the child from the episode, is a second Khan, one created by Dr. Sung. That still doesn't explain why Dr. Sung was looking into Project Khan, or whatever it was called, in 2024, as seen in Picard season 2, while already having produced an augment child in 2022.

Literally as the line about 1992 was being given I was thinking that the Eugenics Wars originally happened in the 90s. Then that line dropped. I appreciate you bringing up the question about about timelines being altered. You're right about it being quite the mess to put together. Especially if you consider different universes existing, which would mean even if a timeline is "preserved", in one way or another the "bad timelines" somehow still exist anyway.

Great video. Glad to see someone not being salty, and enjoying lore.

Star Trek: Prodigy executive producer Aaron Waltke has previously offered a similar explanation for the confusing placement of the Eugenics Wars, saying that "the ripples of the Temporal Cold War shifted the Prime Timeline in Enterprise."

I mean from TOS all the way up to current Trek series I think it's been psudi-estabkished that the prime timeline of the star Trek universe has been a battleground for time agents, temporal soldiers and tinespace wanderers - especially between the late 20th century untill the 22nd century. Scotty gives someone the formula for transparent alluminum. Tech salvaged from a 29th time ship jump starts the tech industry in North America by the late 1990s. Sisko takes the place of bell in 2024. The timeline of project Kahn flips from ending in 1996 to beginning in 1996. The Borg collective attacks earth in the 2060s, displacing Cocrans co-pilots so that gerody and Riker have to take their place (with enterprise crew also taking in the roles of ground controll oersonell). Temporal interference to ignite a Klingon civil war leads to first contact with humanity and the launch of the NX-01. (Plus all the other temporal war hijinks that were told in enterprise "that shouldn't have happened"). A presumed dead bajiran poet is returned to his time and doesn't affect the history of bajor. By this point I'm surprised that the prime timeline isn't just referred to as the paradox timeline XD Although, and this was a twitter discussion from last year from the creatirs of prodigy, as well as the time ripples caused by the temporal cold war they also throw out their head-cannon that emp weapons used during ww3 destroyed/erased a lot of earth's 21st century records covering a rough span if 75 years, so solid evidence for events taking place from 1990-2060 are murky and contradictory (which also feeds the TNG era view if earth's savage 21st emcentury - a literal digital dark age)

At 05:55 the ST:TOS episode "space seed" happens so far into the future (over 300 years) that a 30~50 year difference in exactly when Khan creates his empire, is defeated and escapes in the SS Botany Bay, doesn't really matter that much. There's still plenty of time for them to float around the cosmos as human-popsicles and eventually be stumbled upon and accidentally revived by the crew of the USS Enterprise. It also doesn't matter that James T Kirk dies during this temporal mission, because his United Earth Empire version gets over-written when the Romulan agent is foiled, Kahn has his reign of terror and WW3 happens, ensuring that the rest of the foundational events of the United federation of Planets all occur as they should have.

I’d add that SNW is in line with Voyager which showed the 90s with no eugenics wars

I may be in a minority, that does not see a reason to change things just because we in are past dates of fictional dates. I was happy to accept that the eugentics wars occured in the 1990. The issue only beacme a problem on screen when time travel was introduced where character traveled to our time past the 1990's, such as Voyager's "Futures end." Now they are using time travel again to change the dates.

Man, I'm pretty sure Trek-timelines are being changed on at least an hourly basis. There's a secret cabal of historians just...drinking. All the Drinks.

I don't mind when the writing tries to clarify or piece together stuff that doesn't quite make sense but has real world reasons (why do Klingons in TOS have smooth heads but TNG+ don't? oh, a virus that has potential lore complications that further cements why they'd hate humans in particular, that's neat actually) But when they do stuff like push WW3 or the Eugenics Wars further off it doesn't feel right to me, cause it feels like they're pushing them off so they are in The Future rather than just accept that after a certain *purposefully vague* point in Earth history it just stopped being OUR future. It only seems to complicate things rather than pull together loose ideas and then leave it a bit open to explore. Personally I think the Prime Timeline converged from ours with ENT's Carbon Creek cause velcro butterfly effect lol

takes Admiral Janeway advice "It's less of a headache if you just ignore it."

I’ve always considered each series to exist in its own separate quantum reality. And I’ve lived unbothered by continuity this way for thirty years.

Matches Picards timeline Soongs Khan project.

This reminds me so much of how timestream changes worked in the Back to the Future trilogy. Basically, Marty being from one timeline, but the changes made by ensuring the Enchantment Under the Sea dance between his parents could occur, had ripples into his own time period. Kinda like in BTTF2, when they burn the sports almanac, the headlines on the newspapers changing. Seems like in a way, the same kind of thing is happening here in Trek's timeline(s).

I agree with your statement at 3:36 regarding the continuity between TOS and Discovery and SNW. Another point of divergence can be found in the Star Trek Discovery episode "if memory serves" where we learn that Michael Burnham should have died as a child, but was saved due to her mother warning about her death using time travel. This led to her growing up to becoming star fleet's first mutineer. This is something Spock confirmed never to have happened in the TOS episode "The Tholian Web." Ever since then I have understood that this show takes place in its own continuity. Paramount has also gone on record saying that Discovery is a "reboot" of Star Trek.

The easiest headcanon for the 1992-1996 issue is that they were using a different calendar, do they ever say for certain that its the Gregorian calendar?

I believe there's no point in trying to merge the fictional history of Star Trek after 1969 with our real history - it becomes impossible anyway as dates mentioned in the show come and pass and there are no Eugenic wars in 1992, no Bell Riots in 2024 (next year), the Ares IV won't be swallowed by a subspace anomaly in 2032, etc. Star Trek is fiction, just let it be that and don't try to retcon it into oblivion by trying to adjust it to our real history.

It makes sense seeing as how Kirk and crew went back in time a few times in the original series and then in Star Trek IV mid 80s whalers got to see a Klingon Bird of Prey decloak, the US Navy become aware of a remote compact device that could drain a nuclear reactor, and someone was given the secret for transparent alloy. Garry 7 threw a wrench in things too. I noticed the Enterprise in SNW was a little different and it makes me to think that the prime timeline has been modified.

I've long just mentally replaced Spock's 1992 - 1996 with 2092 - 2096 in my mind whenever I watch Space Seed. Moving it up a century just makes sense to me. We'd met the far more advanced, relatively super strong Vulcans that were allies but didn't share their tech, maybe had run ins with the Kzinti in, say, the 2070s/2080s that they melodramatically called wars...I could see the human race being up for proposed super strong "saviors" to catch us up to these other races, and it certainly adds to the Vulcans continued reticence in regards to humanity (that some Romulan agents were able to take advantage of). It fits with Archer saying that his grandfather was in the Eugenics War. The bitter aftertaste of the war may have contributed to Mars' independence in 2105. It also means there'd be warp capable ships available on Earth explaining how the Botany Bay was out in deep space. I don't subscribe to the notion that this is an altered timeline or that it has anything to do with the set design on Discovery and Strange New Worlds (the Enterprise has long been modular and easily alterable); it's just a minor adjustment needed because the writers of the show in the 60s never expected it to keep going anywhere near this long. The group that started it all may have been around in secret in the 1990s (fitting the date on Soong's file in Picard season 2, and their involvement in the death of one of the unfrozen people from the TNG episode Neutral Zone that was in one of the Khan novels), but I just view the "it was supposed to happen in 1992" line as a fun easter egg, like how The Doctor's time with UNIT keeps getting confused between the 70s and 80s in Doctor Who. Personally I don't put much stock in the 1992 + 30 years from the time agent's line to place this in 2022 either, as it just adds a non-existent bridge explosion in lue of the (admittedly far harder to overlook) non-existent Eugenics War. I see this story as taking place in the late 2040s/early 2050s, during the build up to the second American Civil War Pike mentioned (I see this as the war in which some soldiers were controlled by drugs) that led to WWIII in 2053. Then we have the post atomic horror in the most heavily irradiated areas (which, along with the drug controlled soldiers, was glimpsed in Encounter at Farpoint), then first contact in 2063. That seems to fit pretty well with Khan's age in Space Seed. I can hand wave away the Millenium Gate as an overhyped publicity stunt no one cared about, and even if they never officially have sanctuary districts the homeless problem in L.A. is by all reports bad enough that I buy Past Tense. Any inconsistencies in Picard season 2 can be ignored by the fact they're in the past to set an altered timeline right (as demonstrated by Guinan not remembering meeting Picard in the 1800s while the timeline was wrong), so to my mind it all fits together very well.

Well, we already knew that Secret Hideout shows take place in a different timeline than classic Star Trek, just by virtue of how events appear to play out differently in them from classic Trek. For example, Picard S1 establishes that the episode "Measure of a Man" either did not happen or the outcome was that Data IS property. Picard's case in the episode was explicitly that studying and replicating Data would result in android slavery, and on that basis it was ruled that Data is a sentient being with human rights... But a slave race of androids is EXACTLY what we saw in Picard S1, so it has to be a different timeline. There are many, many examples of these sorts of continuity problems. This episode actually provides something of an explanation of when the timeline break between Star Trek and Secret Hideout took place: a butterfly effect from the displacement of the Eugenics Wars by 30 or more years, resulting in a universe KIND OF like Star Trek, but not ACTUALLY Star Trek. We can call it the STINO Timeline.

Khan being Canadian is terrifying imagine genetically modified maple syrup super humans

You probably missed this because you wrote the script so fast but the episode also explains the stark inconsistencies from early season 1 TOS episodes and the later ones where originally the Enterprise was a United Earth ship and later a Federation ship. It never made much sense that Earth alone was at war with the Romulans. The Federation is basically EU + NATO rolled up into one interstellar organization with a mutual defense pact.

I'm fine with accepting a retcon that explains a discrepancy if it's done so in a way that's funny, which both the line in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" and the bit about 23rd century Klingons looking different in "Trials and Tribble-ations" did successfully. It gave me a good laugh and I was like "yeah okay fair enough" and carried on as normal.

I personally only considered TOS as soft canon as the 24th century shows often Contradicted it. Also is this a hint the temporal war becomes a semi important plot point

At first I thought the child was a resurrected clone of Khan. If this is an alteration then the Botany Bay needs explained. Why Khan would be drifting through space in a 40 - 50 year old ship. By this new age difference anyway.

What I love about SNW is that it willing to acknowledge that hey all this time travel stuff continues to alter Trek as we knew things. The interesting thing about SNW is that it is totally aware that in some ways it is a prisoner of the inevitable. Pike leaving Enterprise and Jim Kirk becoming Captain is a fixed point. Even is the last ep of season 1, Pike's future self tells him that Spock dies in every timeline. Some things you can't escape. That it is the one show where the conclusion while inevitable isn't as important, it is the journey and what these characters learn along the way that is far more important.

The timeline seen on the gadget in this episode shows the timeline split and merge again, I assume that shows the two branches leading to khan happening in different years but both still leading to the original future.

I myself don't necessarily mind retcons, so long as they are done with care and preferably explained to some extent in canon. This change felt a bit haphazard to me, but that's just my opinion. I get that new people are going to make changes in Star Trek over time, but I also believe it is important to respect the already established canon as much as possible.

Khan mentions in TWOK that he left earth in the year 1996. I've been a Trek fan my whole life, and I have no problems with retcons or any differences in. If you get different writers in they will want to put their own mark on it, and you can't expect the set designers and VFX team to just recreate Kirks Enterprise from the 60s if its possible to create something so much more detailed for the HD era. I, for one, just want to enjoy a good story.

These sorts of time ripples was my head canon as to why the NX-01 was not one of the Enterprise lineage ship models on the Enterprise-D. In the original timeline the NX-01 and most of Archer's exploits existed but the ship was not named Enterprise. Then First Contact happens and Zefram Chochrane suggests the name during work on the Warp 5 project.

Trouble is that Soong went to Project Khan in 2024 according to Picard Season 2. This episode happened 2 years prior to that.

With things like the Klingon depictions in various treks, I like to picture them as how each protagonist viewed them. Kirk was never scared of a Klingon so to him they were nothing but aggressive humans, for Burnham Klingons were the murderers of her family, and for Sisko and Picard Klingons were intimidating but never frightening. It's not tied to any real lore but its a fun way to explain the differences in each trek with many issues

The entire enterprise series and std series proves that they have no issue with destroying the prime timeline and throwing away the original series. If it doesn't match TOS it causes canon issues. Therefore enterprise is a different timeline that flows into STD. Enterprise/std timeline known changes: •there was never any Borg wreckage on earth •early Birds of prey •Earth/Romulan war was fought with phase cannons and torpedoes instead of lasers and nukes •they know what Romulans look like •the federation didn't know about cloaking devices •Romulans having cloaking devices •NX never existed in the first place •there has never been a mutiny before kirks time •there was no Klingon/federation war •burnham never existed •the Borg like entity never existed •klingons never had cloaking technology before kirk's time There are so much more but this post is already long enough. I will close by saying all the changes has created a beta timeline leaving the alpha(prime) timeline intact and explains everything away easily.

Great explanation!

I noticed this too. Right away. I didn’t consider it throw away dialogue but you had to be paying attention to catch the full scope of what she was saying. Reminds me of Stephen King’s 11/22:63. But the big question for me is: will this alter Kahn’s future? Will we see the finding of Kahn moved up in the timeline? Like in Into Darkness. Would be cool to see a new version of Space Seed. And surely Kahn will remember La’an.

The mention that other temporal parties are also trying to mess with human history pretty much gives them an out for any retcon, doesn't it? As long as major story beats still make sense they can always handwave any retcon as 'a time agent did it'.

There's no reason that they can't keep referring to it happening in 1992 since Abrams went and threw away all canon and did his own thing and the CBS Trek shows have screwed around with timelines enough that the franchise is a complete mess (and ruined). They can do whatever they want and real fans will just continue to ignore everything past 2009. 🤷

There is one other spot where they mention the timeframe of Khan. The Wrath of Khan when Chekov and Terrell beam to Ceti Alpha 5 and Khan captures them. Chekov says he's a product from late 20th century genetic engineering. He said they were picked up from the Botany Bay launched in 1996. Plus the Eugincs wars happened in Asia and the Middle East. It's plausible that since this was set in 2022 16 years after those wars that things picked up, but the other explanations for what happened with Voyager going back and changed things is very solid.

So uhh... which interior is that? Awesome video. Thanks for making me think.

Maybe they'll use the alternative timeline to help Pike escape his fate?

How is shiftig events 30 years (which shouldn't even be possible) bringing you to the exact same outcome 200 years later? The more you think about it, the more nonsensical it gets.

The net result is that the date referenced in the TOS event is different, so really it matters little - events tend to get drowned out in the background noise of history. I mean just look up a historical figure, even an important one, and you'll see that the farther back you go the less there really is to say about them. Often times if you change a small detail or move it around a little bit, history will work itself out to be approximately the same anyway. Doctor Who pretty much said it. In the end, little wrinkles tend to not be very noticeable when you zoom out to the bigger picture. There are of course exceptions, big ones in fact, and these are divergence points between timelines. So I take a semi-flexible approach when it comes to time travel. As long as the result ends out basically the same, the little details don't end up mattering too much.

A nice little bow around it would have La-an (who was protected from the time line) simply to have a conversation about the Eugenics wars with a member of the crew and there be a disagreement about when they took place, La-an would remember history of 1992 but Mebenga would now say a later date, throw away line. Space Seed happens as we the outside observer sees it pre-change. Now in the episode space seed spock reads the record as mid 21st century. Khan taking off late in the Botany Bay doesn't affect when Kirk finds him later

I dont see why the timeline has to mirror our reality, I always look at what happens in the prime timeline as an outcome of events in the 1960s. The writers need to follow the KISS practice, Keep It Simple Stupid. Stop mucking around with time.

I am so happy that I am enjoying the ST universe for more than 60 years already without the need to have it all being 100% consistent. 😊

In my opinion, this is the greatest episode of Star Trek yet.

honestly i loved this. it "fixed" one of the main problems with star trek being the future of "our" world which of course is that time has caught up to some of the lore and now this actually fixes that by allowing it up be bumped perpetually forward based on the temporal war. kinda cool little tweak that gives a lot of freedom for the writing and the future of the franchise without throwing out key elements of the past lore

I like that they're trying to tidy up bits of lore when they have the chance, but I had always just assumed that Star Trek takes place in an alternate future with the Eugenics Wars in the 90s being the diverging point.

The thing that caught my attention was that the bridge was blown up by meddling future people. Yet, it is confirmed by Laan that it was part of the "proper" history. That means that the "proper" timeline is the result of uncorrected meddling in time. Working on the assumption that the Romulan lady was telling the truth as she said, that means that things like Chernobyl and the Kennedy assassination (pre-khan) were also meddling. My assumption has always been that the time agents only make fixes when it benefits in the grand scheme and this seems to line up with that but I do wonder what it would look like with absolutely no meddling future people.

I'm just glad that Khan's empire was never called the Dominium. Because then a quarter of the world's population would have had to say that they live in the Khan Dominium.

We know that they go back before 2022, because where they "spawn" in, theres a sign that says "Ryerson University " in 2022, Ryerson changed to Toronto Metropolitan University

It's the same timestream, just with some past factors that were tweaked slightly and somehow changed the ship designs slightly.

In the wise words of Miles O'Brien, "I hate Temporal Mechanics".

Khan did always say "200 years before you were born" in Wrath of Khan... so reknitting that old continuity divergence feels like a good thing. May I suggest that your parallel timeline map is in error only because the episode really seemed to suggest a mono-time-stream that gets retconned everytime they make changes. I prefer the parallel timeline approach, but the show plays it both ways time and time again.

As a fan of StarTrek an a Canadian never thought I would see Toronto or Kirk eat Poutine.😊

I love this little detail. It's kinda fun.

I remember an episode of ( the other limits ) with a time traveller sent back in time to eliminate an infant Hitler.

Spock says in Space Seed that records were fragmented. They could pretty simply say that the Romulan had the wrong date and the wars in fact happened later due to the inconsistencies in records. You could really go down rabbit holes with alternate timelines and continuities. Hell, one could argue Scotty giving out a formula for transparent aluminum in Star Trek 4 altered timeline. It just need to be taken with a grain of salt in that nobody in 1966 thought the universe they created would still be around in 2023. I kind of like the idea that minor alterations don’t usually effect the timeline much since events re-insert themselves. Only a major event being changed can really lead to complete alteration

Voyager, DS9, and Enterprise all mentioned how Earth looked different form the what would have been post Eugenics Wars

Fabulous episode

This also at least addresses how a character like La'an can go walking around the Enterprise with virtually the last name of a certain Mr Mustache and no one asking why she never just changed her last name - it seems as if in the 'new' timeline, the Noonien-Singh family were an established dynasty before Khan, having entire Foundations dedicated to their 'philanthropy'.

The in canon explanation would be all those time travel episodes inadvertently creating diverging timelines similarly to how Spock Prime created a new timeline.

So here's a real interesting thought. What if all these incursions from outside factions affected Khan negatively to the point he decided to try and unify Earth under him so he had a base to go after the factions that were attacking him? And the action of leaving him alone would have stalled or stopped the federations forming all together.