• @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    394 months ago

    It’s not well explained, but Humans were actually spacefaring for a while before WWIII bombed Earth back into the Stone Age.

    And Humans agreed to a ceasefire then achieved warp-flight before they found out that there were other bipedal races flying around out there.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
      link
      fedilink
      English
      104 months ago

      There’s a whole movie that focuses on the events leading up to First Contact with the Vulcans, it’s called Star Trek: First Contact.

    • Flying SquidM
      link
      fedilink
      63 months ago

      And Humans agreed to a ceasefire

      Not true. Cochrane and his people were armed to the teeth and ready to fight in First Contact.

      • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        133 months ago

        From the movie, when Picard was leading Lily to the egress port:

        Lily: “Why did you break the ceasefire?”

        Picard: “We didn’t attack you.”

        Lily: “Who did?!”

        Yeah, they were armed to the teeth. After a nuclear war, I can’t blame them even years after the fighting had stopped.

        There was also probably a shit ton of looting and roaming gangs even through the military action had ended.

        • Flying SquidM
          link
          fedilink
          13 months ago

          I don’t think that she meant a global ceasefire. That wouldn’t have made sense when it came to a local firefight between a handful of people. The implication to me was it was a ceasefire between themselves and other local groups now that society in North America had broken down.

          And North America, that specific part of North America, is literally all we know about in that time period.

          • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            13
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            cracks knuckles

            During the first scene in 2063:

            Lily: “It’s an ECON!”

            Cochran: “After all these years?”

            ECON = Eastern Coalition. As in the majority of the Asian countries why allied against the West in WWIII. It wasn’t a local skirmish, it was a Borg Sphere in low-Earth orbit that anyone under nightfall in the Northern hemisphere would have seen just as clearly as Lily did.

            Since it was something up in the sky, her first thought was an ECON satellite bombarding America again. Cochran immediately expressed shock at the idea since there hadn’t been an attack like that in “years.”

            While society had broken down, I think there was some form of communication that got news from one part of the world to the others. And I think every major power had stopped fighting - largely because there was almost nothing left to fight with. Exhaustion forced the world into a ceasefire. And any new fighting on that scale would have been seen by a lot of people and gotten whispered through makeshift rumor mills.

            All that was left was domestic altercations between disorganized bands of desperate people. So peaceful groups like the one living in the missile complex in Montana still had to arm themselves. But the war proper ended some time ago.

            • Flying SquidM
              link
              fedilink
              -23 months ago

              ECON = Eastern Coalition. As in the majority of the Asian countries why allied against the West in WWIII.

              We don’t know what Eastern Coalition means. For all we know, that meant people from the Eastern half of the former United States. It could mean a coalition of survivor groups to the east of them.

              We know almost nothing about WWIII. We know that it killed millions of people, although the number keeps changing. We know that it was not the same as the eugenics wars. We know that in some places, society breaks down and soldiers are controlled with drugs.

              We really don’t know much other than that. We certainly don’t know that it was a war of Asia against the West.

              • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                93 months ago

                We don’t know what Eastern Coalition means.

                Audio commentary for First Contact confirms that it means an unspecified alliance of Asian nations. Early version of the script simply said “China”. But that was changed to the more vague “ECON” for obvious reasons.

                Extra fun fact: In beta canon, the ECON was the same group of Asian nations formerly controlled by Khan.

                • Flying SquidM
                  link
                  fedilink
                  -13 months ago

                  Sorry, audio commentary is not what is on screen, nor are early versions of the script. Only what is on the screen has been determined by TPTB to be canon.

                  Which is the same reason why Saavik is canononically not half-Romulan despite that being scripted and a line even being filmed. The line was cut, so she’s not half-Romulan.

                  They may have intended that to be the case when they made the film, but the very fact that they did not make it explicit opens it up to new possibilities. For the first time ever, in SNW, we hear about a “Second Civil War.” Maybe the Eastern Coalition was one of the two nations that was the result.

                  There are many examples in the past of things that were intended to be mentioned on-screen which are then contradicted later on specifically because they are never mentioned on-screen.

                  • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    83 months ago

                    You don’t have to be sorry, because I don’t have to agree with you. :)

                    Creator’s intention is absolutely valid, and only when and IF it is directly contradicted by (as you described) on-screen canon, is it no longer a factual aspect of the fictional universe.

                    There’s a difference between an early draft of lore being canonically changed (Valares was suppose to be Saavik, but the actor wouldn’t come back. So the lore was changed to make a new character,) and artist’s intention that didn’t get explicitly demonstrated or spoken aloud and to date nothing has been canonized to the contrary (The bloody Cadet that Scotty brought to the bridge was his nephew.)

                    How do you feel about the novelizations of movies and episodes?