… or we are not the Bell Riot Timeline
… we are also not in the Bad Timeline
… we are probably in the Worst Possible Timeline and never venture beyond our solar system let alone our planetary system.
The Vulcans are sitting just outside our solar system and see what’s happening and are saying to themselves ‘yeah, we’ll pass, these guys are doomed anyway’
Maybe this timeliness is where the first aliens we meet are The Borg
Maybe this is the timeline where we start the Borg…
Don’t give Elon more ideas.
We’re teaching it how to think as we speak.
No, this is the timeline where we are the Borg. But than a Borg queen, each ship gets a QEO (queen executive officer).
We are the Terrans.
Not to mention, these Vulcans have… goatees!
Evil goatees.
The worst timeline is that there are no Vulcans
Not sure if it is also worst for there to be no Borg.
“The Federation is gone, my beard is everywhere!”
Wait… what episode is this?
Parallels (s7e11).
It was the best of timelines, it was the worst of timelines…
You win the Back to Reality award. Congratulations, I guess.
A variant would be that we’re on the Third Body Problem alternate timeline, where everyone in the Dark Forest already knows about us and don’t do anything simply because we are our own worst enemy and will take care of ourselves.
Dystopian future, 90s style: People have to stand in line for their free food. The living space provided isn’t nice. Social workers have viable careers but are stressed out.
What the hell happened.
You mean when the economy collapsed due to corporate greed and we rewarded them by bailing them out?
Late stage capitalism. Back in the 90s the corpos didn’t want to squeeze every last drop out of you like they do today. Might be nostalgia, but it feels like this kinda started ramping up around the 08 collapse…
They absolutely did want to squeeze every last drop out of you. They’ve never not. The only difference is that we’ve had decades of regulatory capture, unrestricted corporate mergers, and lower tax rates for the rich. So now they’re free to squeeze much harder than they have previously.
Past Tense was ‘90s Star Trek writers’ best guess at what late stage capitalism might look like.
Our current actual reality is literally worse than they could imagine.
Reagan.
Ironically, the Department of Temporal Investigations never saw Abed’s dice coming.
I forget. As a woman, is the tape-on goatee provided or do I have to manufacture one myself?
They’ll be in your onboarding packet. But only three. After that, you’ll have to grow your own.
You mean, as opposed to gestures broadly
That’s the point. Instead of things being shitty and we do something about it it just gets worse.
Are we the mirror timeline?
Unfortunately/Fortunately, those events divert around the time of Zefram Cochran. At least, as was depicted at the beginning of “In a Mirror Darkly”
The opening credits of Enterprise shows the Terran Empire landing on the Moon after winning what would be WW2 for us. I think the point of divergence is well before Zephram and even the 20th Century.
I think it was depicting the Empire retaking the moon after WWIII (and then fighting over who did the retaking), not a replacement for the original moon landing.
What happened in A Mirror Darkly shows the divergent point from the primary Star Trek timeline, which diverged from our own timeline in the 1960s or 1970s.
Hadn’t considered the credits montage. But that makes it much less likely for Cochran to even exist, let alone still develop warp drive post WWIII.
Everything in the Mirror timeline makes it highly unlikely that the same people would exist as in the Prime timeline. There’s just something about that universe that makes such extreme improbabilities happen regardless.
That plot stupidity is part of why I low-key hate all the mirror universe stuff.
I think it’s explained as the Mirror Universe somehow being specially connected to the Prime one. But yeah, it’s really just an excuse to show known characters being assholes.
Tbf, the real year to be worried about is 2026, when WWIII: Nuclear Edition kicks off
which we seem to be right on target for.
Delightfully exactly 250 years from the US’s Declaration of Independence!
As bad as how conditions were shown in the Bell Riots, conditions now are a lot worse.
If this is true, we get Kira in skin-tight leather. So, it’s not all bad.
Make em say uhhh uhhh nana na na
Long after you’re dead, so is it really all that worth it?
They said what they said
What We Leave Behind…
We hit the bad timeline when we missed the eugenics wars.
Bell was killed, and another person filled in the role. I believe that we’ll have our moment, but it isn’t now. Bell isn’t going to save us, we need to save ourselves.
So what happens now? Are they going to retcon the Bell Riots like they did with WW3 and the Eugenics Wars? Will they wait a little bit more so they can also retcon the Irish reunification in the same story arc?
Can it also mean we are safe from memes about it?
I thought trek was scifi, some of you seem to think it’s scifa(ct).
