[trek] Unintended consequences

[cmdr_zoom]

Let's say that the elder Arne Darvin's plot succeeds, and Captain James T. Kirk is killed by an exploding tribble... along with those standing next to him in the storage room (his first officer, the station manager, and the Federation Undersecretary of Agriculture). What happens?

It seems that at the very least, we get the Borg conquest described by one of the novels - Kirk doesn't exist in the Nexus for Picard to team up with to stop Soran, and without Picard the Borg take over Earth in the next movie 2061, and most of the Alpha and Beta quadrants by the 24th century. (Oops. So much for that statue in the Hall of Heroes.) But can anyone suggest other, less obvious results of removing Kirk and Spock from history as of "Trouble with Tribbles"?

(Actually, wouldn't Earth have been scoured clean of all life by angry super-probes at least twice in the late 23rd, "before" the Borg ever showed up? (Though it would serve a certain pushy admiral right if Will Decker managed to resolve the first of those crises just fine without him.) Maybe instead of post-WW3 Earth, they go assimilate Vulcan during the similarly chaotic time of Surak. Wouldn't that be fun.)

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Don't worry. Most Federation citizens will have starved to death by then anyway. You think the Federation can get along without its undersecretary of agriculture? Ha.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that we're all falling into the same fallacy here, too. Starfleet is full of intrepid adventurers whose exploits we don't get to see. It's entirely possible that any given thing Kirk and the Enterprise did, someone else would have stepped up for in their absence.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

And yet how many times, out of all of Starfleet, is the Enterprise "the only ship in the quadrant"?

One thing I've always disliked about David Brin's "Star Wars is the myth structure of the tyrant god-kings, while Trek is democratic and populist!" rant is that he seems to ignore that in every era of Trek, it's the same dozen people who seem to do everything important. And usually they're bridge crew of ships named Enterprise. Anointed heroes, much?

The real issue is that, with a few exceptions like Apollo 13 (and even that cut some corners), it's really hard to present a huge team effort in a dramatic story. Especially when you have only an hour or two to do so.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

And yet how many times, out of all of Starfleet, is the Enterprise "the only ship in the quadrant"?

Well, sure, but that's metastructural (as you point out a bit further down). It's simply because the tagline is "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise." Anyway, that kind of thing is hardly unique to Star Trek. I mean, are we really meant to believe that there are only five crime scene investigators in the entire Miami-Dade Police Department? Or that Superman is seriously the only superhero in the entire DC universe who can handle Lex Luthor? Lex Luthor doesn't even have superpowers, for crissake.

But I digress. You get the idea. :)

[thekitsune.livejournal.com]

The Earth would have been rendered uninhabitable/destroyed since Kirk and Spock don't go back in time to get humpback whales, and the probe messes up Earth's apmoshpere and destroys its oceans.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would be the second super-probe incident I mentioned above.