If this wasn't Space Opera I would object to the whole notion of
interstellar imperialism; Earthlike worlds are too self‐sufficient
for centralised “empires” to be likely, however FTL your
drives. At least the UFP is federated, albeit ruled from
Earth (Sector Zero Zero One; so where is Sector Zero Zero
Zero?). Or to be precise, from San Andreas City; which
explains why the entire galaxy keeps a 24‐hour day and Pacific
Standard Time!
Let me point out some facts, all of which were readily available
in the 1960s, and should be no obstacle to writing good Space
Opera plots:
-
Even if the universe were infinite you'd have to travel insanely
far before you could expect a coincidental “duplicate Earth” to
turn up.
-
Weirdness doesn't correlate with remoteness of origin;
intergalactic invaders need not be especially alien (but see
5.1 on panhumanism).
-
The galactic core is 30,000 light years away; the
rim is 20,000 light years the other way; but the nearest
“Galactic Edge” is the extraplanar fringe –
only 500 or so light years from Sol, travelling axially. If
Monty Python songs get these details straight as a matter of
routine, why can't Star Trek?
-
The universe is three‐dee – frontiers are surfaces,
not lines. Nor are any of those assorted “Galactic Edges”
clear‐cut or permanently fixed.
-
Space (asteroid belts included) is very empty. Random
encounters are unlikely, and you'll never pass close to two
asteroids at one time. On the other hand, there's enough
dust to be awkward for Faster‐Than‐Light travel.
-
Famous‐name stars are all gigantic (like Rigel, 1000 light years
away) and/or near Sol (like Tau Ceti, only twelve light years),
and thus unlikely places for the Enterprise to find inhabited but
unexplored “strange new worlds”. By the way, how many
inhabited planets are there in the Rigel system?
-
The universe is very old. If empire‐building is simple and
popular, the galaxy should belong to somebody already.
Picture a race of Borgoids as powerful as the Organians… ruling
ever since the Triassic.
4.1 GALACTOGRAPHY (PHYSICAL) [see
postscripts]
The Federation's scale is very hazy. If they're really at
the edge of known space when they meet Romulans at Tau Ceti
(“Whom Gods Destroy”, ST:TOS3), Klingons at Capella
(“Friday's Child”, ST:TOS2), and Apollo at Pollux (“Who
Mourns for Adonais?”, ST:TOS2) it is only dozens of light
years wide. Yet in “Miri” they were exploring hundreds of
light years out; in other ST:TOS1 plots they were “thrown
500 parsecs” (in “Arena”) or “at the other end of the galaxy”
(“The Menagerie”). Vagueness is all very well, but this is
ridiculous. Even ST:TNG4's “Best of Both Worlds” puts
the Federation's outermost colony only one day's travel from
Earth, while Saturn is about half an hour away!
As for the Galactic Edge Energy Barrier… even charitably assuming
that this means the extraplanar fringe, not the distant galactic
rim, and pretending that the stars run out there at some abrupt
boundary, any mere glowing fence (as this is shown) could be
simply hopped over! And see “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
(ST:TOS0); who built those robot mining bases, restocked
“every twenty years”, beside an uninvestigated Barrier?
It would be pleasant to get some inkling of where the Bajorans,
Borg etc. live, relative to each other or to the galaxy. All
we know is that the Romulans, Federation, and Klingons have common
borders, each with a Neutral Zone. The Klingon one was set
up by the Organians (“Errand of Mercy”,
ST:TOS1) – who seem to have vanished between
ST:TOS3 and ST:TMP1; maybe the Klingons' added
prosthetic foreheads are Organian repellent? Regardless, all
the rules about trespassing in Neutral Zones seem rather biassed;
when the USS Enterprise does it, it is always legally in the
wrong – even when their incursion is met by a welcoming
committee of previous intruders.
And how big is the Romulan–Federation border? By the
ST:TNG era the two empires have been expanding
competitively for some 200 years; the frontier has to be millions
of light years squared. So how can Starfleet stop cloaked
Romulan Warbirds infiltrating, nuking Earth, and blaming the
Klingons? One story (“Redemption”, ST:TNG5) even
showed a Federation blockade of the Romulan–Klingon border,
with “a net of active tachyon beams” strung between a fleet of 23
ships – that's at most 253 narrow connecting lines,
many parsecs in length, leaving no gaps big enough for
any vessels to sneak through!?
4.3 GALACTIC PALAEONTOLOGY [see
postscripts]
The Star Trek Universe is notable for its lack of historical
backdrop; all it's got are the unexplained Romulan/Vulcan split,
some little‐known Preservers (see 5.1), and
dozens of purely local, empireless Godlike Beings. But…
something seems to have synchronised the development of the main
local races, so humanity didn't run into ST:TNG Romulans
prior to developing the impulse drive. An explanation would
be reassuring to pedants like me; and if done in terms of ancient
wars and relics of dead empires, it would also add
atmosphere. Perhaps (improvising wildly) the local
superpower recently collapsed in civil war, leaving scattered
humanoid ex‐slaves?
The “stardate” system kept the ST:TOS dateline cleverly
obscured, whilst giving the impression of accounting for
relativistic problems like the impossibility of a universal
standard of simultaneity. The fans based their own estimates
on circumstantial evidence such as the following:
-
“Miri” (ST:TOS1) has a parallel Earth where the 1960s were
300 years ago – but on the one in “The Omega Glory”
(ST:TOS3) they were millennia ago!
-
“Tomorrow is Yesterday” and “Space Seed” (ST:TOS1) imply a
twenty‐second‐century dateline, as do Flint's birthdate plus age
in “Requiem for Methuselah” (ST:TOS3).
-
“The Squire of Gothos” (ST:TOS1) watching Earth by
telescope from 900 light years away (!) adopts Regency (1810s)
fashions, making it at least 2710.
Somehow the consensus developed that it was the twenty‐third
century, and in “The Neutral Zone” (ST:TNG1), Data finally
specified the date as 2364 (“old calendar”). Working by such
benchmarks as McCoy's ST:TOS and ST:TNG ages, and
disregarding seventies novelisations etc., fans can now produce a
tentative series chronology:
- 2250?
-
Federation of Planets founded thanks to Garth of Izar (“Whom Gods
Destroy”, ST:TOS3).
- 2254
-
Original pilot episode, “The Cage”: NCC1701 under Captain
Pike.
- 2267!
-
Start of the ST:TOS “five year mission”. Kirk is 34
(as of ST:TOS2 = 2268?).
- 2275?
-
Beginning of the Motion Picture era: ST:TMP1
(NCC1701 refitted).
- 2285?
-
ST:TMP2 (Kirk fifty), ST:TMP3 (NCC1701
destroyed), ST:TMP4 (NCC1701A built)
- 2290?
-
ST:TMP5 (?) and ST:TMP6. Original crew are
reaching their retirement age.
- 2345?
-
NCC1701C destroyed by Romulans (“Yesterday's Enterprise”,
ST:TNG3).
- 2364
-
Start of ST:TNG (introducing NCC1701D); McCoy turns
up aged 137.
- 2370
-
ST:TNG6; Scotty turns up aged 72 (plus 75 in a transporter
beam).
There were a range of fundamental flaws in the ST:TOS
“future history”, most of which the ST:TNG “Scriptwriters'
Bible” inexplicably retains.
-
Foolish twentieth‐century predictions – too
big, too specific, and too early. For example:
- 1968!
-
Orbital‐nuke silo explodes on launch (“Assignment Earth”,
ST:TOS2).
- 1992!
-
Khan (born in a 1950s genetics lab!?) attempts world conquest.
- 1996
-
End of Eugenics Wars; Khan flees in an interstellar (!)
vessel.
- 1999?
-
Voyager six falls into a black hole (returning in ST:TMP1
as V‑ger).
-
Inconsistent pessimism. Twentieth‐century “nuclear
and biological holocausts” are followed by twenty‐first‐century
“genocidal wars” (as in “Encounter at Farpoint”,
ST:TNG0). All known ethnic stereotypes survive this
feeble apocalypse intact, as do the works of Raymond Chandler,
Golden Gate Bridge, ozonosphere etc.; but does this really (as
Trekkies always claim) count as “optimism”?
-
Impossibly fast interstellar expansion.
Suspended‐animation vessels are obsolete by 2018, and ships have
reached the Galactic Edge by 2070 (thus the 200‐year‐old debris
in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, ST:TOS0). Some
twenty‐first‐century colonies aren't rediscovered until
ST:TNG, proving Faster‐Than‐Light drives are easily
available. Zefram Cochrane “of Alpha Centauri”, who
“discovered the Space Warp”, disappears aged 87 in 2120ish
(“Metamorphosis”, ST:TOS2). Yet the Romulan War
(“Balance of Terror”, ST:TOS1) is fought circa 2170 on
sublightspeed impulse drive only; and “The Cage” places the
invention of warpdrive between 2236 and 2254. None of which
makes any sense at all.
-
The whole thing being set too soon. Time has to be
allowed for the recovery from World War III; for
space‐travel to develop; for known space to grow (at colony ship
rates) without fragmenting, while derelict craft drift
light‐centuries; and for humans to encounter and grow accustomed
to dozens of alien races. Space Opera is more safely, and
more frequently, given a dateline well beyond 2500; Dune, for
instance, is set in 29,391 AD!
1993 Footnotes
- 4.0
-
All right, San Francisco. The Python song I'm
thinking of is in “The Meaning of Life”. And if you really
want scenes set in cobbled space, don't use asteroid belts, use
planetary ring systems!
- 4.2
-
“Prosthetic foreheads” is a wilfully obscure reference to a
“They Might Be Giants” lyric (“We Want a Rock”).
- 4.5
-
Technophobia‐inducing conflicts (Clone Wars, AI Wars, etc.) are
a popular trick for Space Opera backgrounds. But they make
me wonder how things are going in the alternate histories where
the good guys won…
1997+ Postscripts
- 4.0
-
The parochialism of the star names in Babylon 5 “known space”
clashes somewhat with the scale of Morden's galaxy‐carving
proposal, and there are still cobbled‐space asteroid belts, but
JMS does relatively well.
- 4.1
-
The “quadrants” stuff is all late ST:TNG
revisionism. Naturally, it's even rubberier for DS9, which
appears to be next door to everyone; but B5 could do with some
exposition on life in the colonies, too.
- 4.2
-
While it might be nice to see proper starcharts, B5 has the
hyperspace excuse to hand; who says these empires occupy a
continuous volume in normal space?
- 4.3
-
The B5 Universe has a backplot, measured both in years and in
aeons. Nobody ever explicitly asked Kosh whose handiwork
the panhumanism and Level Playing‐Field are, but…
- 4.4
-
Compare the B5 timeline, which fades in smoothly from a vague
twenty‐first century to a well documented twenty‐third.
- 4.5
-
Star Trek continues to confirm and contradict previous
historical references at random…
-
Do you think perhaps Federation historians meant Imran
Khan?
-
…And we've still got a holocaust or two to fit in before
2001! But that never stops the Trekkies burbling stuff like
“
it's within all of us to hope that our future is as bright as
what we see on ST
”! (Yes, that's my March 1999 correspondent
again.)
-
“First Contact” (ST:TMP8) and its twenty‐first‐century
warpdrive conflicts with stories as recent as “A Matter of Time”
(ST:TNG5).
-
B5 is set rather early too, but makes it clear that Earth's isn't
a very widespread empire.
