Memory Alpha

World War III

  • View history

World War III was the last of Earth 's three world wars , lasting from approximately 2026 to 2053 . The conflict involved nuclear cataclysm as well as genocide and eco-terrorism . The post-atomic horror in the aftermath persisted as late as 2079 .

The war was preceded by the Eugenics Wars and the Second Civil War , all of which were sometimes regarded as parts of a single escalating conflict. It resulted in the deaths of some 30% of the Human population, at least six hundred million people, and the extinction of six hundred thousand species of animals and plants . By the end, most of the major cities had been destroyed and there were few governments left. ( TOS : " The Savage Curtain "; TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint "; Star Trek: First Contact ; VOY : " In the Flesh "; ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II "; DIS : " New Eden "; SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

  • 3 Aftermath and legacy
  • 4.1 Background information
  • 4.2 External links

Prelude [ ]

Prior to the war, in 1968 , when a time-displaced Captain James T. Kirk was trying to reason on whether or not he should trust Gary Seven to stop a nuclear weapon , Seven warned Kirk that if he didn't allow Seven to stop the weapon, World War III would commence then. ( TOS : " Assignment: Earth ") The Eugenics Wars of 1992 - 1996 in which thirty-seven million died were also, at times, referred to as World War III. In fact, the conflict most likely directly linked to World War III, because in 2024 , only two years before the third world war began; Doctor Adam Soong examined a file called " Project Khan ," which dated back to the era of the Eugenics Wars. ( TOS : " Space Seed ", " Bread and Circuses "; PIC : " Farewell ")

The Eugenics Wars also seemed to share some relation with the Second Civil War . This might have been because of the formerly mentioned Adam Soong using Project Khan, as Starfleet history has made clear that the war resulted due to the issue of the manipulation of the Human genome . ( ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ")

In 2259 , Captain Christopher Pike described the period following the Second Civil War as the "Eugenics War," which in turn led directly to World War III. ( SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

History [ ]

Soldiers, 2053

Soldiers during a nuclear attack in Indiana in 2053

Q 21st Soldier

Q , dressed as a soldier of one of the armies of World War III and using a retractable stimulant dispenser

World War III was fought in an era where various factions were known to control their military with narcotics . ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ") Among the parties involved was the Eastern Coalition (also referred to as "the ECON"), whose direct attacks included those against the United States of America . ( Star Trek: First Contact ) In 2026, at the start of the war, Colonel Phillip Green led a faction of ecoterrorists that was responsible for the loss of thirty-seven million lives. Green continued to be active several years after the war ended. ( TOS : " Bread and Circuses ", " The Savage Curtain "; ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ", " Demons ")

Phillip Green, 2269

Colonel Green as recreated by the Excalbians in 2269

Colonel Green's activities during the war were often cited as "genocidal" and treacherous. He and his troops personally killed hundreds of thousands of individuals affected with radiation sickness and other "impurities," using as a rationale that it was necessary in order to prevent their passing on such traits to later generations. ( ENT : " Demons ", " Terra Prime ") He was notorious into the 23rd century for striking at his enemies in the midst of negotiating with them. ( TOS : " The Savage Curtain ")

Despite an escalating and ongoing global conflict, manned space exploration continued at least into the 2030s , for example the Ares IV mission to Mars in 2032 and the launch of the Charybdis in 2037 , Humanity's first mission to leave the Sol system . ( TNG : " The Royale "; VOY : " One Small Step ")

World War III

People seeking refuge in a church in Richmond, Indiana during a nuclear attack in 2053

In 2053 , jets dropped nuclear bombs near Richmond, Indiana . A group of people that took refuge in the East Fork Presbyterian Church located there were saved, along with their church , when it was transported to Terralysium by a time traveling Gabrielle Burnham using the Red Angel suit. The rescued built a colony called New Eden and thought that they were saved by extraterrestrial angels , a belief they passed on to their descendants. ( DIS : " New Eden ")

Aside from Richmond, many other cities were bombed during the nuclear war . These included Washington , New York City , Paris and others. ( SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

Aftermath and legacy [ ]

The war ended with a cease fire . ( ENT : " Demons ") This began the era known as Post-World War III . ( LD : " Grounded ") Earth's atmosphere continued to contain radioactive isotopes indicative of the conflict a decade later. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Phillip Green, 2056

Colonel Green in 2056

Three years after the cease-fire, Colonel Green was recorded giving an impassioned speech, asking for the impure to be purged from society. ( ENT : " Demons ")

Approximately ten years after the end of the war, in 2063 , First Contact was made with the Vulcans. The realization that Humans were not alone in the universe united Humanity in a way no one ever thought possible, and within fifty years, less than two generations after the post-atomic horror, Humanity was finally able to eliminate poverty , disease , war , and hunger . Along with poverty, a lot of other things disappeared from Humanity, including hopelessness, despair, and cruelty. ( TNG : " Time's Arrow, Part II "; Star Trek: First Contact ; ENT : " Broken Bow ", " Demons ")

PostAtomicHorrorTrial

A trial during the post-atomic horror

When news of the Vulcan contact reached Vulcan , some Vulcans, including V'Lar , were fascinated by Humanity, but also worried, believing the idea that Humans had deemed themselves ready to join the interstellar community, so soon after the war, seemed premature. ( ENT : " Fallen Hero ") Indeed, for several years after first contact, various parts of Earth were still affected by what became known as the " post-atomic horror ." In 2079 , one such culture reverted to a state of near-barbarism that followed the credo " kill all the lawyers," and "guilty until proven innocent." ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ") Due to these and other factors, parts of Earth continued to be in – as Captain Jean-Luc Picard put it in 2365 – "chaos" well into the early 22nd century . ( TNG : " Up The Long Ladder ")

Terra Prime logo

Terra Prime's philosophy drew on Colonel Green's views

The legacy of the war was felt in many ways during the hundred years after its conclusion. It was the subject of many movies during that time and, in 2153 , one of these epics swept the awards . ( ENT : " Home ")

In the early 22nd century, the Neo-Transcendentalist movement was founded by Liam Dieghan ; he advocated " a return to a simpler life " in response to the war's carnage. ( TNG : " Up The Long Ladder ")

The war additionally influenced a powerful xenophobic movement of mid-22nd century Earth known as Terra Prime . Led by John Frederick Paxton , the organization drew inspiration from the war through adoption of Colonel Green's goals and teachings concerning a "pure" Human race. It also blamed the Vulcans for not stopping the war with their superior technology, and thereby saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people. This blame was then channeled into a general distrust of all non-Humans. ( ENT : " Demons ", " Terra Prime ")

During the war, a group of scientists had launched seed pods into space in an effort to preserve some of Earth's forests . By the time Humans went to retrieve them, the forests had grown too large to be returned to the surface, and thus they were incorporated into the construction of Starbase 1 . ( SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

In 2372 , Admiral Leyton described the threat of the Founders of the Dominion infiltrating Earth and its facilities as being "maybe the greatest danger it's faced since the last world war." ( DS9 : " Homefront ")

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

Like the Earth-Romulan War , very few details have been presented in Star Trek on World War III. In 1996 , this event received a Trekker's Choice Award for the ' Oft Heard but Never Seen ' Award, as being "the favorite historical moment only alluded to in Star Trek ."

References also circumstantially linked to this war were that of the multiple nuclear winters Earth was said to have seen in its 21st century in " A Matter Of Time ".

Furthermore, in " Judgment ", Archer talks about thousands of years of Human conflict, and its three world wars in specific, saying that whole generations were nearly wiped out. However, he does not make it explicit that this happened in World War III.

In DS9 : " Past Tense, Part II ", following Kira Nerys and Miles O'Brien 's visit to San Francisco during an alternate 2048 (where the Bell Riots had not occurred), O'Brien noted that that was " not the mid-21st century that [he] had read about in school, " adding, " Earth history had its rough patches, but never that rough. " It might be interesting to know what O'Brien saw that was more "rough" than a nuclear war responsible for six hundred million casualties.

World War III flag

A flag seen in the mirror universe

According to the 40 Years of Star Trek: The Collection auction catalog, during the middle of ENT Season 4 , plans were in place for an episode to feature Colonel Green. It was planned to link Q 's World War III uniform to the colonel by having the emblem on Q's hood appear on flags representing Green. Such a flag was created for " In a Mirror, Darkly ", and seen in the briefing room aboard the ISS Enterprise . When Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled, plans for the episode fell through and all that remains of the link between Q's uniform and Colonel Green is the flag seen in the mirror universe .

During development of TOS : " The Corbomite Maneuver ", World War III was alluded to as a potential result of the Sino-Western trouble . Although not referred to in the final draft of the script (dated 3 May 1966 ), the war was addressed by NBC executive Stanley Robertson in a letter he wrote about the first revised final draft of the teleplay and sent to Gene Roddenberry on 17 May 1966. In that letter, Robertson stated, " As we discussed, a suggestion would be that on Page 48 of this draft, it be made pointedly clear that there was no 'World War III' between the Sino-Western powers. Let's keep emphasizing with our writers, as we know you have been, that this is a topic we'd like to avoid. " In the second revised final draft of the script (dated 20 May 1966) and a deleted scene from "The Corbomite Maneuver", World War III was referred to as having been averted, in the outcome of the Sino-Western trouble. ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features) In an early script of Star Trek: First Contact , upon seeing Beverly Crusher 's new more advanced scanner , a doctor wondered if it was Japanese .

External links [ ]

  • World War III at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
  • World War III at Wikipedia
  • World War III in popular culture at Wikipedia
  • 1 Kenneth Mitchell
  • 3 Kol (Klingon)

MovieWeb

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Info, Potential Plot, Cast, and More

Star Trek has been one of the most iconic sci-fi properties in entertainment for more than half a century. Since 1966, viewers have boldly gone where no viewers have before on board the Enterprise and other starships. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the eleventh and most recent full-length series in the franchise. It tells the story of Captain Christopher Pike, the captain of the Enterprise and immediate predecessor to James T. Kirk, in the decade preceding The Original Series .

Its critical and fan success led to a third season's order in March 2023, months before the second launched. Filming was scheduled to begin in mid-2023 before the dual WGA and SAG strikes pushed production back. Now, with things up and running again, what do we know? How will the new season continue the story of the first two? Which main cast members will return, who might not, and will any new faces join them? What else do we know about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Returning Cast Members

Star trek: strange new worlds.

Release Date May 5, 2022

Cast Ethan Peck, Rebecca Romijn, Christina Chong, Anson Mount

Genres Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure

Studio CBS Television, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout, Paramount+

Trekkies should rest assured that every main cast member from the second season is set to return in Season 3. Anson Mount is back in the lead role as Pike, a role he originated in Star Trek: Discovery . Ethan Peck portrays the younger version of Spock , memorably brought to life by Leonard Nimoy in The Original Series . Spock originally worked under Pike before later joining Kirk. A young Christine Chapel is played by Jess Bush, succeeding Majel Barrett – wife of creator Gene Roddenberry – from the original.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Best Moments

Younger versions of Uhura, played by Celia Rose Gooding, and Number One, played by Rebecca Romijn, will return. The late Nichelle Nichols played Uhura, while Majel Barrett also played Number One in The Original Series ' unaired pilot. Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas, and Babs Olusanmokun as Joseph M'Benga round out the rest of the returning main cast.

Paul Wesley will return again as the younger James T. Kirk, alongside another famous face from the original run. Scotty, now played by Martin Quinn, was beamed up in the Season 2 finale and will return to the show in the upcoming batch of episodes. Currently, there's no additional information on any new characters or other returnees from the first two outings. We should expect more casting news to come out as production continues.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Plot Details

While we have no concrete information about what we might see plot-wise, it's safe to assume that Season 3 will pick up right where the second season finale left off. Season 2 ended with the arrival of the Gorn after their appearance was teased all season. The Enterprise crew attempts to rescue colony survivors under the Gorn's siege, but it appears that the Gorn beat them to it. Complicating matters was the fact that the Gorn attacked a colony where both Marie Batel and Christine Chapel were visiting. No one can for sure say what happens to the colonists by the end of the episode, though it's safe to say we haven't seen the last of them.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Biggest Surprises and Twists in Season 2

Earlier in the season, Spock was accidentally turned into a human for a brief time, which led to him and Chapel accepting their feelings for one another. Characters dealt with their own personal and interconnected traumas, and La'an and Kirk even formed a romance in an alternate universe, modern-day Toronto. The finale also introduced us to young junior officer Montgomery Scott. In an interview with Variety , executive producer and writer Henry Alonso Myers and showrunner Akiva Goldsman explained the decision to feature another original series veteran,

"It just sort of came up as we were talking about the story. Initially, it had been someone else completely. And then Akiva and I were talking, and I was like, “Well, what about Scotty?” And then we both fell in love with the idea."

A Celebration of the Franchise

Myers and Goldsman also teased that we could see more characters from The Original Series return if the show's run continues for a few more years. Season 2 took risks; who would have thought Star Trek would put on a full musical episode ? The animated Star Trek: Lower Decks also received the live-action treatment in a praised crossover episode. This show is so much more than just a prequel to The Original Series . It's a celebration of all things Star Trek and how the franchise still has life after 55+ years. We should expect those same innovative storytelling techniques in Season 3.

However, there will be a longer than usual wait for Season 3. Production is slated to run from December 2023 through July 2024, delayed by the Hollywood strikes . However, if it follows the pattern of the first two seasons, it should be well worth the wait. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Info, Potential Plot, Cast, and More

The Eugenics War And World War III In The Star Trek Universe, Explained

Space Seed

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" reaches deep into "Trek" canon. You don't need to know about the Eugenics Wars and World War III to enjoy the mostly standalone show, but ... has a little extra knowledge never hurt? Especially when the first episode of the new Paramount+ series references these past events so heavily.

When "Star Trek" was first conceived in the mid-1960s, the '90s still seemed like a far way off. It was far away enough that the writers of "Trek" felt completely comfortable extrapolating a future history that would begin as early as 1992. "Star Trek" did not predict Boyz II Men's " The End of the Road " being the biggest album that year, but they did predict the eventual rise of Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced ruler who would, thanks to his ambition, enhanced intellect, and increased strength, take over the world. 

Although none of the extant "Star Trek" canon has depicted it directly, there are two major world conflicts in the "Star Trek" timeline that were necessary to bring about Gene Roddenberry's peaceful vision of the future: The Eugenics Wars and World War III. Roddenberry, after all, created "Trek" in the mid-1960s, a time when he could look out his window and see a great amount of turbulence that likely didn't leave him feeling hopeful. Racial segregation was on the books, greed was corrupting the world, and the Vietnam War was raging. It was not an optimistic time. Roddenberry seems to have sensed — or at least feared — that a collapse was imminent. That is, if the future built into the history of the "Star Trek" universe is any indicator of Roddenberry's attitudes. 

As such, the world — to Roddenberry's eyes — would need the Etch-A-Sketch treatment before a better future could begin. Shake up the whole planet, erase the picture, and begin drawing again. Humanity, by Roddenberry's assumed estimation, needed to nearly collapse under its own destructive hubris before it realized that looking up to the stars was preferable to killing one another en masse. 

While the timeline has shifted around a lot as the decades have passed (the latest season of " Star Trek: Picard " takes place in 2024, and the Eugenics Wars are not in full swing), they still seem to hang heavily over the near-future of "Star Trek." Indeed, genetic engineering is a large part of the second season of "Picard," one of the main villains being Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) a geneticist who wants to enhance humanity for the better ... and for the worse. 

The Eugenics Wars

The first time audiences heard of The Eugenics Wars was the during the "Star Trek: The Original Series" episode " Space Seed ," which first aired on February 16, 1967. In it, the Enterprise discovers a seemingly deactivated "sleeper ship," the S.S. Botany Bay, wherein a small group of human beings have been in cryogenic sleep for 200 years. Of the 84 people frozen, 72 are still alive. The Enterprise rescues and resurrects their leader, finding him to be none other than Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán), the onetime dictator of Earth. "Space Seed" offers a good deal of exposition regarding Trek history: In the 1990s, humans were subjected to breeding experiments, resulting in arrogant and powerful superbeings who took over much of the world. 

Although "Star Trek" is ultimately a show centered on pacifism, there is a lot of dialogue in "Space Seed" to describe how awesome Khan is as a warlord. Several characters describe him as a benevolent dictator — reminiscent of Plato's philosopher kings — who didn't engage in genocide and who didn't start a war until he was attacked. The episode's writers, Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilbur, seem torn between writing a show that touts a philosophy of pacifism, and their own Nietzsche-like admiration of a powerfully willed man. 

The actual catalytic event that kicked off the Eugenics wars has never been made explicit in "Star Trek," although from "Space Seed" we know that augmented human beings were taking over the world as despots. Khan wasn't as despotic as others of his generation, but he was still a dictator. Indeed, Khan eventually tries to take over the Enterprise. Kirk convinces him that a greater challenge would be to begin society fresh on an uninhabited planet. Khan accepts the challenge, and he — along with all the other augmented people — are dropped off on a planet called Ceti Alpha V. Anyone who has seen " Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan " knows that a major environmental disaster left Khan stuck on a planet that had become a desert. He was stranded there for 20 years. Hence his titular wrath. 

Borderland, Cold Station 12, and The Augments

Additional ex post facto details about the Eugenics Wars were filled in during the fourth season of " Star Trek: Enterprise ." In a three-part episode ("Borderland," "Cold Station 12," and "The Augments"), audiences were introduced to Dr. Arik Soong (Spiner again), who was on the run for developing a race of generically enhanced people, a few of which were running amok among the Klingon Empire. Recall that "Enterprise" takes place nearly a century before the events of the original "Star Trek," so this was long before Khan was resurrected. 

The Augments in this three-parter talk about how Khan was considered their grandfather. There is also a lot of dialogue devoted to the long-held ban of genetic enhancements in the world of "Star Trek." The ban is mentioned multiple times throughout " Star Trek: The Next Generation ," and it will be considered something of a scandal when one of the main cast members of " Star Trek: Deep Space Nine " was secretly an augment since the start. The idea of shaping human history via genetic manipulation has largely been taboo in Trek, seeing as it draws from similar evil ideas of genetic purity often parroted by white supremacists throughout history. Two different Soongs will be responsible for carrying this idea forward: Arik and Adam from "Enterprise" and "Picard."

The three-part episode ends with a cute twist: Arik, having been apprehended, is convinced that genetics is not the path to making perfect people. But maybe cybernetics is. He says to himself that he could likely create a realistic humanoid android, provided he pass the project down a few generations. Boom. This is how we got Data on "Next Generation."

World War III

The details of World War III are often left vague by canonical dialogue. Here's what Trekkies do know:

That World War III was fought from 2026 to 2053. That the war was kicked off by arguments about genetic manipulation left over from the Eugenics Wars, very much the way much of the damage left by World War I led frighteningly directly into World War II. We know from the original series episode "The Savage Curtain" — an episode that sees the resurrection of one Colonel Phillip Green (Phillip Pine), one of WWIII's nastiest dictators — that World War III will involve nuclear attacks, and the utter waste of the Earth's surface. The nuclear apocalypse was also alluded to in "The Next Generation," as well as an episode of "Star Trek: Discovery," wherein a character describes how bombs were being dropped as late as 2053, leading to the devastation that cause all sides to lose. According to dialogue in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" pilot, "Encounter at Farpoint," World Ward III's ancillary conflicts would continue to rage until the 2070s. 

Viewers also know from "Encounter at Farpoint" that soldiers were controlled by addictive drugs — we see Q (John De Lancie) wearing the uniform of a World War III soldier — and that deliberate acts of eco-terrorism were par for the course. Humanity was bombing one another to no end and deliberately destroying the planet, all while high on drugs. Additionally, humanity would be overrun by brutal, miniature dictatorships, overseen by medieval-style kangaroo courts wherein people would be judged and executed with very little evidence; Q would also put on the garb of the judge seen in these courts. What a pleasant time.

This was the Etch-A-Sketch moment, Roddenberry seemed to feel, that humanity required. In the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact," the crew of the Enterprise-E were sucked back to the year 2063, after the bulk of Earth's carnage had ended, and our species was struggling to survive. It was during this time that Zefram Cochran (James Cromwell) would invent the world's first faster-than-light engine. While testing the engine, it would attract the attention of a passing Vulcan vessel, giving them license to come visit. Making First Contact with the Vulcans was a wake-up call for all humanity, and people began to unify, realizing that we weren't doing so well on our own, but might improve if we see ourselves as neighbors in a broad, cosmic community. 

Humanity may be in a dark tunnel now, but there will always be a light at the end.

Den of Geek

Star Trek and the Shadow of World War III

Star Trek's fictional WWIII casts a long shadow over its timeline, and now Discovery and Picard are exploring how hard-won the show's utopia was.

world trek iii

  • Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on email (opens in a new tab)

Star Trek Paramount CBS Logo

It is set in a distant, utopian future, but ever since the original series Star Trek has sought to hold a mirror to contemporary political and moral dilemmas.

In documentary series The Center Seat: Celebrating 55 Years of Star Trek , now available in the UK on IMDb TV, director Brian Volk-Weiss looks at how the show commented on issues such as the Cold War, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the issue of euthanasia, among others. But as Volk-Weiss points out, there is one issue that has loomed over the Star Trek universe since its inception.

“We talk about this in Center Seat a little bit, all Trekkies know the foundation of Star Trek, in canon, the Federation and Starfleet, everybody’s known since the original series the foundation of those organisations is World War III,” Volk-Weiss says.

Your Last So-Called ‘World War’

It’s true that World War III has cast a shadow over Star Trek from the start. In ‘Space Seed’, the episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh, Spock describes the Eugenics Wars as “the era of your last so-called ‘World War’”. Later, the episode ‘ Bread and Circuses ’ sees Spock mention that 37 million people died in Earth’s World War III.

Ad – content continues below

Even when not referenced directly, we see it reflected in episodes like ‘The Omega Glory’, set in a nuclear wasteland that is mysteriously similar to a post-nuclear Earth, right down to the text of the US Constitution.

Star Trek is, whichever way you cut it, the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth. It made sense as a piece of backstory when the show began. Nuclear war was a constant, real and immediate threat, the Cuban Missile Crisis a recent memory. In the sixties a World War III must have seemed like an inevitability – if you give something a sequel people are automatically going to expect a trilogy. That it might not strike until the 1990s or the 21 st century must have seemed as optimistic as anything else in the series.

Even when the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot aired, only two years before the Berlin Wall came down, nuclear Armageddon was considered such an inevitable part of our future history that it made up a significant portion of the plot of ‘Encounter at Farpoint’. We see Q dressed up as a World War III soldier, and the crew of the Enterprise put on trial in a post-apocalyptic, lawyer-free trial in the age of “nuclear horror”.

From Future History to Canon Lore

Then the Berlin Wall came down. The international stage shifted. A lot of sci-fi future histories started to seem pretty silly in an age where Gorbachev was doing adverts for Pizza Hut .

“People kind of glossed over and don’t think about it too much,” Volk-Weiss tells us. “Even in First Contact , in a weird way it’s glossed over a little bit.”

Star Trek: First Contact is set in 2063, in the aftermath of World War III, and while everyone’s dress is fairly scrappy looking, the lush pine forests that surround Zefram Cochrane’s laboratory are hardly the result of a nuclear winter.

Star Trek: First Contact Zefram Cochrane

Star Trek: Enterprise references the war a few times, particularly in its closing episodes, but it already feels like Canon Lore rather than a future event that we’re supposed to believe will happen.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

While various source across Star Trek canon agree that World War III starts sometime in the mid-2020s (I know, we’ll get to that) and carries on until the 2050s, we see plenty of stories and references that talk about space colonies, interplanetary and even interstellar missions taking place during that time. Most of this is the simple result of TV writers not paying as much attention to continuity as Memory Alpha editors, but it also reflects the fact that World War III simply wasn’t at the forefront of everyone’s minds the way it has been.

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , when O’Brien sees a mid-21 st century altered by time travel, he remarks “And that wasn’t the mid-21 st century I read about in school. It’s been changed. I mean, Earth history has been through its rough patches, but never that rough.” Which must have been pretty grim given it was a period of nuclear war.

A Deadline Approaches

That story was ‘Past Tense’, an episode set in a dystopian 2024 where the homeless were rounded up into camps and forgotten about. If that seems prescient, it’s only because it seemed equally relevant at the time.

“We weren’t being predictive. We were just looking out our windows in the 90s,” Deep Space Nine producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe has said .

2024 gets one other mention in the Star Trek canon, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, ‘ The High Ground ’, when Data refers to “the Irish reunification of 2024”.

Like World War III, this is a prediction that seemed dated following the Good Friday Agreement, but the chaos around Brexit has suddenly made it a lot more plausible. Brexit is only one of a number of frightening and dramatic events that have occurred over the last decade, and once again, Star Trek is responding to them.

Star-Trek-Deep-Space-Nine-Past-Tense

“Every ten years there’s a new Bond, a new Batman, to a certain degree now a new Star Trek, and sometimes they resonate with their time and sometimes they don’t and sometimes it’s in the middle,” Volk-Weiss says. “I feel like DS9 is a great example of that. I feel like the greatest example of that of all time is Battlestar Galactica . That whole thing was about 9/11 and the War on Terror. Sometimes it works, as with Battlestar Galactica , sometimes it doesn’t work, as with Enterprise . The problem with what Enterprise did is there were already so many bad things going on you didn’t need to create a brand-new character to cut Florida in half. There was already enough to talk about, while in Galactica it organically fit into the storyline. I think what Discovery and Picard are doing is more on the organic side.”

Star Trek has shown us a potential utopia, and with Deep Space Nine and the use of the black ops Section 31 of Starfleet in Enterprise , Star Trek: Into Darkness and Discovery , it has shown us the potential dark side of that utopia. But new Star Trek seems to be doing something new that even Enterprise didn’t – showing us how we get there.

“I think Discovery and Picard , in their own ways, are slowly but surely showing us, no it was a rough start, it took a lot to get to replicators,” says Volk-Weiss. “It took a lot to get to the Prime Directive. We didn’t get here by accident, and we didn’t get here easily. I think, as the onion peels more and more both shows are showing the underbelly of what would be the future of Star Trek.”

Star Trek: Discovery was the first to remind us of the effects of World War III in the second series episode, ‘ New Eden ’. Here Star Trek returned to another of its favourite tropes – humans transposed from Earth history and set up as an independent colony on another world. This time, the transposed humans were the congregation of a church rescued from a nuclear blast.

Later, Discovery would encounter its own apocalypse in the form of the “the burn”, which destroyed galactic civilisation as we know it and forced the Federation to rebuild from scratch, and rediscover its values along the way.

Star Trek: Picard season 2 episode 3 Assimiliation

And Star Trek: Picard ? We know that the history of the Federation has changed, and the early impression suggests this will be a darker and more fascistic future for humanity. And to fix it? Picard and friends go back in time to 2024 . From what we know of Trek canon, World War III is supposed to begin in 2026.

Star Trek obviously doesn’t predict the future. The show has never been about telling us what will happen, only finding new ways of talking about what is happening now . There are no easy answers in science-fiction to the fears a lot of us currently have, whether about hypothetical conflicts or the very real violence happening in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. Once again though, people are scared and seriously talking about the threat of another world war. Perhaps what Star Trek can and has always offered fans is the hope that the same humans who commit world-ending atrocities might one day be capable of building a utopia.

Star Trek: The Center Seat is available to stream now in the UK on IMDb TV.

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell is a freelance writer and the author of a novel, an anthology, a Doctor Who themed joke book and some supplementary RPG material. He…

'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 3 Resumes Filming With New Set Image

Everyone is excited to get back to set, even Princess Runa!

The Big Picture

  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 is now filming in Toronto.
  • The series may not return until 2025 due to extensive post-production.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 resolved Una's arrest (a cliffhanger from Season 1), and featured unprecedented episodes like an animated crossover and a musical episode.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is finally ready to begin its latest voyage. The third season of Paramount+'s sci-fi hit is now filming in Toronto, Ontario. The news comes from the Instagram account of Runa Ewok , the adorable dog of Strange New Worlds star Christina Chong . Chong, who plays the USS Enterprise 's security chief La'an Noonien-Singh in the series, posted a picture of Runa in the Enterprise 's ready room set, indicating that filming is now underway.

Collider previously had the exclusive news that Strange New Worlds had set a post-strike production window from December 2023 to June 2024. Given the series' extensive special effects and post-production time, it is unlikely that the series, which chronicles the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike ( Anson Mount ) and the Enterprise before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series , will return this year. Star Trek fans do have the upcoming fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery to look forward to; Strange New Worlds was spun off from that series after a well-received guest stint by Mount and fellow Enterprise crew members Spock ( Ethan Peck ) and Una Chin-Riley ( Rebecca Romijn ) in its second season. Discovery will take its final bow starting April 4 , with Strange New Worlds likely to air in 2025.

What Happened in Season 2 of 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'?

Season 2 of Strange New Worlds resolved Season 1's shocking ending — when Una was arrested by the Federation for concealing her genetic enhancements. Pike won a court battle to have her freed and reinstated. Over the course of the season, the show traveled back in time to 21st-century Toronto, crossed over with the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks , and featured the franchise's first-ever musical episode . The season ended with a cataclysmic cliffhanger — the Enterprise is under attack from the hostile reptilian Gorn aliens, and Pike's fellow captain and lover Marie Batel ( Melanie Scrofano ) has been implanted with a Gorn embryo, spelling her doom. It hearkened back to the legendary cliffhanger of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's season-ending " The Best of Both Worlds " — and unfortunately, fans will have a lot longer than a few months to learn the fate of all involved.

Runa has appeared in the series herself; she was featured as the pet of Princess Thalia (also Chong) in " The Elysian Kingdom ", a first-season episode in which the Enterprise 's crew is transformed into storybook characters by a mysterious space entity. Star Trek has a long tradition of on-screen animal appearances, from Data's cat Spot from The Next Generation to Captain Archer's beagle Porthos, who was a regular on Enterprise .

The third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now filming, but has not yet set a release date . Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch Collider's interview with Chong and castmates Celia Rose Gooding and Melissa Navia below. Keep up with our guide to Season 3 here .

Star Trek Strange New Worlds TV Show Poster

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Christopher Pike (played by Anson Mount) and the crew of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds throughout the galaxy in the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series.

Watch on Paramount+

Screen Rant

Star trek's mysterious world war iii ties into discovery season 2.

Star Trek: Discovery delved into little-explored Star Trek history when it revealed the mysterious Red Angel appeared during World War III - but why?

Star Trek: Discovery season 2's second episode, "New Eden", made World War III a part of the ongoing mystery of the Red Angel. The luminous, winged being directly interfered at the end of the devastating global conflict, which is a part of Star Trek history that has been referenced many times throughout the franchise. But why did the Red Angel act during this turbulent point in Earth's past?

In "New Eden", the Discovery used its spore drive to jump to the Beta Quadrant as they chased the second of the red signals in space tied to the Red Angel . They found an Earth-like planet called Terralysium which is inhabited by 11,000 humans. On an Away Mission to investigate, Captain Pike and Commander Michael Burnham learned that the ancestors of these people were teleported by the Red Angel to this planet in the waning days of World War III. The "First Saved", as the original survivors called themselves, were brought to Terralysium 200 years ago, in 2053, and believed the Earth was destroyed by a nuclear cataclysm. It's fascinating that Star Trek: Discovery  has woven World War III - a pivotal yet largely unexplored period of Star Trek history - into season 2's story arc.

Related: 9 Unanswered Questions From Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, Episode 2

World War III Happened In Star Trek

world trek iii

In Star Trek lore, World War III took place from 2026-2053. It was a devastating nuclear conflict that resulted in the destruction of the world's cities and governments, as well as the deaths of 600 million people. Star Trek history is nearly identical to real-world history until the 1990s, when wars that never happened in reality occurred in Trek canon. The 1990s saw the Eugenics Wars centering around the genetic manipulation that gave rise to Khan, the classic villain Captain Kirk faced in The Original Series and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A few decades later, eugenics was one of the subjects that sparked World War III. After 27 years of savagery, a cease-fire was signed in San Francisco in 2053 and the human race began to rebuild.

Ten years after World War III ended, the Vulcans made first contact with humanity (with help from Captain Jean-Luc Picard 's time-traveling U.S.S. Enterprise-E crew) as seen in Star Trek: First Contact . It took nearly another hundred years but with the Vulcans' help, humanity eliminated poverty, disease, and the desire for money. The United Earth Government was founded in 2150 and Starfleet was established to explore the galaxy. World War III has never been explicitly depicted in Star Trek movies or TV series but it has been mentioned throughout the franchise, especially Star Trek: Enterprise , which takes place roughly a century after the Third World War ended and culminates in the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Why Did The Red Angel Interfere In World War III?

world trek iii

In 2053, the Red Angel's direct actions saved a handful of people of different faiths who took refuge in a church, waiting for nuclear bombs to fall. Pike watched a few seconds of footage recorded by a soldier's helmet cam showing chaos as the Red Angel appeared in the church's doorway and teleported the entire church and all of its inhabitants away in a flash of light. Once the people arrived on the planet they named Terralysium, they believed they were the last survivors of World War III. They established a non-technological society and combined all of their disparate religious beliefs into one faith centering on the Red Angel as their savior. But why did the Red Angel interfere in the first place?

One theory is that Red Angel is testing the crew of the Discovery; the two red lights they've investigated resulted in two successful rescue missions. However, the Red Angel transported the First Saved to Terralysium 200 years ago - if it did this so that the Discovery could eventually save those people, does that mean the mysterious being exists in non-linear time like the Prophets in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ? Or did the Red Angel save those humans for other reasons, but only later lured the Discovery to Terralysium to save them from extinction? Whatever the answers will be, we are now certain the Red Angel impacted World War III, and this only furthers the central mystery of Star Trek: Discovery season 2.

Next: Star Trek: Discovery Makes Fun Of A Decades-Old Enterprise Problem

Star Trek: Discovery streams Thursdays @8:30pm E.T. on CBS All-Access and internationally the next day on Netflix.

Facts.net

Turn Your Curiosity Into Discovery

Latest facts.

12 Facts About Historical Landmarks In Lynchburg Virginia

12 Facts About Historical Landmarks In Lynchburg Virginia

12 Facts About Environmental Initiatives And Sustainability In Denton Texas

12 Facts About Environmental Initiatives And Sustainability In Denton Texas

48 facts about the movie star trek iii: the search for spock.

Margaret Johnsen

Margaret Johnsen

Modified & Updated: 29 Jan 2024

Published: 05 Oct 2023

Modified: 29 Jan 2024

48-facts-about-the-movie-star-trek-iii-the-search-for-spock

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a classic science fiction film that holds a special place in the hearts of Trekkies around the world. Released in 1984, this movie is the third installment in the original Star Trek film series and follows the crew of the starship Enterprise as they embark on a mission to find their beloved friend, Spock, who sacrificed himself in the previous film. Directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also reprises his role as Spock, this movie is a thrilling adventure filled with memorable characters, stunning visuals, and thought-provoking themes. In this article, we will delve into 48 fascinating facts about Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, taking you behind the scenes and providing insight into the making of this iconic film.

The Search for Spock is the third movie in the Star Trek film series.

Released in 1984, this science fiction film serves as a sequel to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Leonard Nimoy directed the movie.

Not only did Leonard Nimoy reprise his role as Spock, but he also took on the role of director for this installment.

The movie explores the theme of sacrifice.

At its core, The Search for Spock delves into the willingness of the crew to sacrifice everything to save their friend.

The main plot revolves around the Genesis device.

The Genesis device has the power to create life from lifelessness. It becomes a crucial element in the movie’s storyline.

The iconic USS Enterprise suffers destruction in this film.

Fans of the series are left shocked when the original USS Enterprise is destroyed during the movie.

The movie features intense space battle sequences.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock showcases thrilling combat scenes between starships.

Christopher Lloyd plays the antagonist, Kruge.

Known for his role as Doc Brown in the Back to the Future series, Christopher Lloyd delivers a memorable performance as the main villain.

The film explores the idea of soul transference.

A pivotal moment in the movie involves the transfer of Spock’s essence from Dr. McCoy to his regenerated body.

The original cast members return for this installment.

William Shatner , DeForest Kelley, and the rest of the original Star Trek cast reprise their roles in The Search for Spock.

The movie pays homage to the original series.

Throughout the film, there are several references and callbacks to events from the original Star Trek television series.

The Search for Spock was a commercial success.

The film grossed over $87 million at the box office, solidifying its place as a successful entry in the franchise.

James Horner composed the film’s soundtrack.

The score by James Horner adds to the intensity and emotional impact of the movie.

Klingon culture is further explored in this installment.

Klingon rituals and traditions are showcased, helping to expand the Star Trek universe.

The movie tackles themes of friendship and loyalty.

The deep bonds between the characters are tested throughout the film, emphasizing the importance of loyalty and camaraderie.

The movie was initially met with mixed reviews from critics.

While some praised the performances and emotional depth, others felt the film lacked originality.

The Search for Spock sets the stage for the next movie.

The events in this film directly lead into Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

The movie features impressive special effects for its time.

The visual effects in The Search for Spock were well-received and added to the overall cinematic experience.

The iconic line “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” is spoken in this film.

This memorable quote spoken by Spock has become synonymous with the Star Trek franchise as a whole.

The Search for Spock introduces the character of Saavik.

Played by Robin Curtis , Saavik is a Vulcan Starfleet officer who becomes a key character in the film.

The movie explores the aftermath of the events in The Wrath of Khan.

The Search for Spock delves into the consequences faced by the crew following the loss of Spock in the previous film.

The film showcases the loyalty of Spock’s Vulcan father, Sarek.

Sarek continues to be a prominent figure and plays a crucial role in the story of the movie.

The Search for Spock was filmed primarily in California.

The production took place in various locations in the state of California, including the city of Los Angeles.

The movie includes emotional scenes that resonate with fans.

The Search for Spock features moments of heartbreak and reunion that tug at the heartstrings of viewers.

The film raises questions about the ethics of the Genesis device.

The Genesis device’s creation of life sparks debates about the consequences and potential dangers of such technology.

Paramount Pictures produced the movie.

The Search for Spock is a product of Paramount Pictures, one of the major players in the entertainment industry.

The movie showcases the crew’s determination to defy orders for the greater good.

The characters’ willingness to disobey orders demonstrates their unwavering commitment to their mission and their loyalty to Spock.

The Search for Spock introduces the Klingon Bird-of-Prey starship.

The Klingon Bird-of-Prey becomes an iconic ship in the Star Trek series, making its debut in this film.

The film’s climax takes place on the Genesis Planet.

The crew must brave the dangers of the Genesis Planet to complete their mission and save Spock.

The movie explores the emotional impact of Spock’s death.

The Search for Spock delves into the grieving process of the crew and their determination to bring Spock back.

The iconic “live long and prosper” hand gesture is featured in the film.

This signature Vulcan salute makes its appearance in The Search for Spock, adding to the authenticity of the Star Trek universe.

The movie examines the concept of rebirth.

Through the regeneration of Spock’s body and the rebirth of the USS Enterprise, themes of renewal and second chances are explored.

The Search for Spock features intense character-driven moments.

The film places a strong emphasis on character development, allowing viewers to gain deeper insights into the crew’s personalities.

The movie showcases the crew’s resourcefulness in dire situations.

The Search for Spock highlights the crew’s ability to think on their feet and come up with creative solutions to overcome obstacles.

The film explores the consequences of tampering with nature.

The Genesis device’s ability to alter planets raises ethical questions about humanity’s role in shaping the universe.

The movie features memorable one-liners and witty exchanges.

The Search for Spock includes humorous moments that provide a lighthearted balance to the film’s intense moments.

The movie’s opening sequence features the destruction of the USS Grissom.

This impactful scene sets the tone for the film and establishes the high stakes the crew will face.

The Search for Spock showcases the crew’s determination to protect their own.

The unwavering loyalty and dedication of the crew to one another is a central theme throughout the film.

The movie includes unexpected twists and turns.

The Search for Spock keeps audiences on the edge of their seats with its unpredictable plot developments.

The film’s climax features a tense showdown between Kruge and Kirk.

The final battle between the two adversaries is a thrilling and intense moment in the movie.

The movie explores the bond between Kirk and Spock.

Despite Spock’s absence, The Search for Spock emphasizes the deep and unbreakable connection between the two characters.

The Search for Spock’s soundtrack was nominated for a Saturn Award.

The film’s score by James Horner received recognition for its contribution to the overall cinematic experience.

The movie features stunning cinematography.

The Search for Spock showcases visually striking scenes that enhance the narrative and create a captivating viewing experience.

The film’s conclusion sets the stage for new adventures to come.

The Search for Spock leaves fans eager to see what the future holds for the crew of the USS Enterprise.

The movie explores the lengths individuals will go to for their loved ones.

The Search for Spock delves into the sacrifices and risks the crew is willing to take to save their friend.

The iconic Starfleet uniforms are redesigned for this installment.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock introduces updated uniforms, giving the movie a fresh visual appeal.

The movie’s editing expertly combines action and emotional moments.

The seamless editing allows the narrative to flow smoothly, capturing both the intensity and heart of the film.

The Search for Spock showcases the crew’s resilience in the face of adversity.

The movie demonstrates the crew’s ability to overcome obstacles and never give up, no matter how dire the circumstances.

The film leaves a lasting impact on the Star Trek franchise.

The Search for Spock’s exploration of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice resonates with fans and contributes to the rich tapestry of the Star Trek universe.

In conclusion, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a thrilling and pivotal installment in the beloved Star Trek franchise. Packed with intriguing plot twists, memorable characters, and stunning visual effects, this film remains a favorite among fans even decades after its release.The movie captivates audiences with its intense storyline, as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on a mission to resurrect their fallen comrade, Spock. It showcases the resilience and loyalty of the crew, highlighting the power of friendship and sacrifice.Star Trek III: The Search for Spock not only delivers on the action-packed front but also delves into deeper themes such as mortality, identity, and the lengths one would go for those they care about. It is a testament to the enduring legacy of the Star Trek series.Overall, this film is a must-watch for fans of the franchise and science fiction enthusiasts alike. It continues to inspire and entertain, reminding us of the timeless appeal and impact of the Star Trek universe.

Q: Who directed Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?

A: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was directed by Leonard Nimoy , who also reprised his role as the iconic Spock in the film.

Q: When was Star Trek III: The Search for Spock released?

A: The film was released in the year 1984 as the third installment in the original Star Trek film series.

Q: Can I watch Star Trek III: The Search for Spock without having seen the previous films?

A: While it is helpful to have some familiarity with the Star Trek universe, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock can still be enjoyed as a standalone film for its engaging storyline and well-developed characters.

Q: Are there any notable guest appearances in the film?

A: Yes, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock features a cameo appearance by Christopher Lloyd as the Klingon Commander Kruge, adding an extra layer of excitement to the movie.

Q: Does Star Trek III: The Search for Spock continue the story from the previous film?

A: Yes, the film directly continues the story from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, further exploring the consequences and aftermath of the events in the previous installment.

Share this Fact:

Microlino Lite arrives as the world’s cutest, Mr. Bean-style microcar

Avatar for Jennifer Mossalgue

What’s the perfect antidote to truck and SUV bloat ? Why, the Microlino Lite, of course. Swiss company Micro has just unveiled a production version of its Microlino Lite – an even smaller version of its Microlino microcar – this week at the Geneva Motor Show. It won’t go faster than 28 mph (45 km/h), but it’s the next best thing to ditching cars altogether and getting an e-bike. And it could be coming to the US.

While the top speed is only half as fast as the standard Microlino, anyone with a moped license from the age of 14 in some European countries can get one.

world trek iii

Plus, it’s cheap, relatively speaking. Entry-level model starts at about €156, or $169, a month to lease, or a starting price of €17,999 (about $19,500). For that, you’ll get plenty of retro design directly inspired by the classic 1950 egg-shaped European microcar BMW Isetta. Pre-orders are available now with delivery starting in early summer of this year. The Microlino Lite comes in two colors, the Venice Blue and Berline Anthracite, with the EV made at the Microlino factory in Turin, Italy.

Okay, this might look a little ridiculous to the uninitiated, but Europeans are definitely more comfortable with the micro-car concept, and that is of course one of the reasons it is launching there first. But Micro cofounder and CMO Merlin Ouboter told The Verge that the Microlino Lite is eligible for registration in the US as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) . The company hopes to have the Microlinos arriving in the states by the end of this year.

Microlino Lite

The new Lite version to similar in design to its larger sibling and measures 2.5m long (8 feet 2 inches), 1.47m (4 feet 10 inches) wide, and 1.5m (4 feet 11 inches) high. Its weight is 600 kilos (1,320 lb), and its modest 6kW of power (9kW peak) classifies it as an L6e vehicle, meaning you only need an AM-class moped license to drive it in Europe.

Top comment by Not in my Backyard

Cool concept for cities. But $19,500 dollars is very high for a micro car. With that money I would rather buy a used 5 seater EV that has much more cargo space. Or I could buy a cheap E-bike and pocket the extra 15,000 dollars.

You have to make the price make sense. I'm not trying to be a downer the math isn't working for me.

Its 5.5kWh battery will go 100 km before needing a refresh – a larger 11kW battery pack will take you 177 km. The 5.5kWh pack can charge from 0 to 80 percent in about two hours from a 2.2kW Type 2 charger, while the 11kWh battery takes roughly four hours.

world trek iii

Electrek’s Take

Okay, long road trips, large families, obviously there are many exceptions to the practicalities of this type of vehicle – but this trim little number is designed for urbanites who want to zip around town for work or errands and find easy parking with no hassle. You can park three of these babies in one parking spot! It’s a two-seater that comes equipped with a sunroof and a 230-liter trunk for hauling groceries, school bags, or whatever else. Bring your dog. Bring your kid. (But probably not both at the same time.) It’s cheap, all electric, and easy to park – for any city dweller not keen on using all of the other zero-emission forms of travel available (walking, public transit, or cycling), this is a fun solution, and its lightweight frame makes it safer for bikes and pedestrians than full-size cars or SUVs, that’s for sure. Photos: Courtesy of Micro

If you’re an electric vehicle owner, charge up your car at home with rooftop solar panels. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing on solar, check out EnergySage , a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here .

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

microcar

Jennifer is a writer and editor for Electrek. Based in France, she has worked previously at Wired, Fast Company, and Agence France-Presse. Send comments, suggestions, or tips her way via X (@JMossalgue) or at [email protected].

TrekMovie.com

  • February 27, 2024 | Orchestral “Darmok,” Celebrity D&D, Ken Mitchell Memorial Rave, And More Star Trek Cruise Day 5
  • February 26, 2024 | ‘Enterprise’ Cast Talks Series “Death Knell,” Crusher Family Comedy Hour, And More Star Trek Cruise Day 4
  • February 26, 2024 | ‘Star Trek: Legends’ RPG Game Launches On PC With New Exclusive Content
  • February 25, 2024 | ‘Lower Decks’ Teased And Improvised, “Spock’s Brain” Rebooted, And More From Star Trek: The Cruise Day 3
  • February 25, 2024 | ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Actor Kenneth Mitchell Has Passed Away

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Showrunners Talk Season 3, Gorn, Scotty, And More TOS Characters

world trek iii

| August 16, 2023 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 388 comments so far

Last week’s cliffhanger ending of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds still has fans talking. Now the executive producers and co-showrunners are offering some clues on what to expect in season 3 and beyond.

More genre-hopping in season 3

Season 2 was touted for the “big swings” into different genres, which included a partially animated crossover and a musical. Apparently this genre-stretching will continue into season 3, as co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman explained to Variety :

We’re going to keep going. We genre hop. So where we haven’t been, we will try to go. Henry’s watchwords for Season 2 were, “Let’s do Season 1, just bigger and better.” That’s become the truth of Season 3. We’re always doing the thing that we do best, which is secretly just a lot of relationship stories in space. We’ll keep unfolding those hopefully in ways that are different, in the same way that the tones of our episodes will be different. But yeah, ambition will taper off only when we can’t figure out a thing to do we haven’t done before.

One of the big surprises of the season finale was that it ended on a “to be continued” cliffhanger. With the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes delaying a start on production, the third season is that much further away. Speaking to Inverse , co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers talked about how this is impacting their planning:

We knew the broad shape of this finale going into Season 2. And we knew the broad shape of what the follow-up would be. Now, there obviously have been some slight changes because it’s gonna be hard to work on things for a little while.

Anson Mount as Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

From “Subspace Rhapsody” (Paramount+)

Scotty and more TOS characters “inevitable”

Another big surprise in the finale was the introduction of Scottish actor Martin Quinn as Montgomery “Scotty” Scott. Regarding Quinn’s Scotty, Myers confirmed with TV Line “we will see him more.” He also talked about why they chose now to introduce the character:

We’ve been talking about him for a while as a general idea. As we were going into the finale, it suddenly became a weird, rare opportunity to introduce him for a lot of different reasons. What we’d like to do with the characters [from the original Star Trek series]… We don’t meet our understanding of who they are in that series, we meet who they are before. They don’t know who they will be, and they aren’t that person yet. They have some stuff to go through… We also had a great opportunity to cast someone who’s from Scotland, who can do that Scotty, but also who can go through all of the things that we want to see him go through before he becomes the person that we know.

With Kirk, Uhura, and Scotty already introduced, what about other familiar characters from Star Trek: The Original Series ? Goldsman made it clear to TV Line that we should expect more, saying “It starts to become inevitable that we start to pull in more folks that are sort of TOS-based.” And he told Variety :

The longer we stay on the air… the more likely it becomes. Given our druthers — because Henry and I are both greedy and gluttons for punishment — we’d go right into the TOS era and see what happens. So, if we’re around long enough, sure.

world trek iii

Martin Quinn as Scotty in “Hegemony” (Paramount+)

For SNW, the Gorn are “monsters”

Strange New Worlds has reimagined the Gorn, first seen in the TOS episode “Arena,” as a well-established threat to the Federation and Starfleet. Goldsman outlined his vision for the Gorn on this show to Variety :

I thought it was important for there to be real monsters in our galaxy. That doesn’t mean that 10 years, two seasons from now, we won’t be having a nice chat with the Gorn. But right now in Seasons 1 and 2 and 3, they’re the monsters. By the way, many of the other “Star Trek” antagonists began as alien, as Other — forgive the use of “alien” — but we learned to connect with them. Not so the Gorn. The Gorn are not understandable to us in this way, not relatable to us in this way. Part of our galaxy is be good, be kind, be empathetic, and also understand that evil exists, because seeing with compassion does [ sic ] mean you should be blind to horror. The Gorn are monsters.

With Inverse, Goldsman was even clearer on how they are not planning on resolving the differences between how the Gorn were depicted in “Arena.”:

You will never see the Gorn like that. This is the Gorn as we perceive them… This is our version of the Gorn. It’s an interpretation. In the same way, the transporter room on the Enterprise is never gonna look like the transporter room looked in TOS, right? It’s our interpretation of it.

world trek iii

Behind the scenes with the Gorn on Strange New Worlds in “Hegemony” (Paramount+)

All episodes from season 2 of Strange New Worlds  are available on  Paramount+  in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Season 2 is also available on SkyShowtime elsewhere in Europe. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

Related Articles

All Access Star Trek podcast episode 174 - TrekMovie

All Access Star Trek Podcast , Books , CBS/Paramount , Discovery , Lower Decks , Star Trek: Picard , Strange New Worlds

Podcast: All Access Gets Ready For MountCock+ And The Season 5 Premiere Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’

world trek iii

Strange New Worlds

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Set Pix Show The Return Of Christina Chong’s Dog And An Adorable Vulcan

world trek iii

Books , Strange New Worlds

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Novel To Explore Pike And Una’s Backstory

world trek iii

Interview , Strange New Worlds

Interview: Paul Wesley On Kirk’s Evolution Into ‘Strange New Worlds’ Season 3 And Readiness For His Own Series

Love Scotty. A pure joy. Adorable. Not sure why the Gorn sprouted a new appendage (tail) that wasn’t in TOS. This is kinda like Disco’s Klingons that miffed everyone. Why do that? It’s simply a distraction.

In Enterpise Gorn had tail too.

The Disco Klingons were an issue because we had seen them in hundreds of eps on TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT as well as loads of movies. We had two major characters in the old design (Worf and Torres). The Gorn on the other hand don’t bother me one bit.

I agree, the Klingons looked great as they were and didn’t need updating…. The Gorn however? How anyone can complain that they look too lizard like compared to the styrofoam TOS version is beyond me

Yeah I’m not bothered by the look of them at all. The WAY they are using them however…

Anyone who doesn’t like they way they are using them clearly doesn’t understand Arena.

The point of that episode is that Kirk thought the Gorn were monsters when he encounters them…

Therefore, any use of the Gorn in SNW should show them as monsters. Now we understand why Kirk was so vicious: the federation had at least some history with them, and viewed them as animal-like monsters unable to be negotiated with.

If they were to show the Gorn as being anything else, then THAT would be contradicting Arena.

It’s like the people who claim to be the most canon obsessed don’t actually understand the episodes.

Dude, the Broken Circle established Starfleet already knew Cestus III is in Gorn territory. Why does this keep getting missed lol.

I’m not even solely talking about the Monster angle. The ENTIRE canon of them even meeting makes no sense now. Everything about it is now goobly gook. The ‘monster’ angle is my least biggest issue. Just say its a REBOOT and do what you want.

I had no idea Starfleet knew that Cestus III belonged to the Gorn? I take it that it was in the final scene with April? By that point I had pretty much checked out of the episode and it was on solely as background noise.

If that’s the case and they did know…. Ugh.

Yes it’s the last scene with April in that episode. To be clear Cestus III doesn’t belong to them but the system borders their space. The point is they already know they change their borders on a whim as apparently they did in Arena. So if you already know where Gorn space is and you believe they are monsters who will attack anyone which is what Goldsman is suggesting, why would you ever make an outpost around their territory then? That’s why it’s even more ridiculous now.

Space is really, really, really big. Make your outpost some place else then where these nuts can’t attack you at anytime. It’s just dumb and make Arena feel ridiculous now.

“Dude” that’s not what people are complaining about, and you know it.

You’re deflecting because you can’t admit you’re wrong.

Go look for yourself; the complaints are about the depiction of the Gorn, not that starfleet knew about Cestus or whatever.

You’re seriously going to pretend that’s the thing people are upset about?

You have lost all credibility. It seems the new comment section after all those bannings is the same as the old one: full of dumb comments from people who just want to complain and then go on fighting like children.

Genius, I’m talking about MY complaints lol. You responded to me first and arguing over my post when you obviously didn’t even know what my complaint was about. Dude, so am I right or wrong about Starfleet knowing about Gorn space? I’m right yes? YES? So how did I lose ‘credibility’?

You’re the one acting like a child since you clearly you cant accept people who has a different opinion than you or whoever don’t like the show. And I like the show a lot.

And this site is the way its always been. No one is forcing you to be here man. Also correct, yes?

This is why it’s now so ridiculous. If A. they already knew them B. considered them monsters and C. had multiple run ins with them where they have literally destroyed other colonies and ships by being anywhere near their territory then why are you sooooo surprised Cestus III was attacked by them years later???

Why do you still have a colony there? Why is anyone so surprised and stunned they were attacked by these ‘monsters’? They already hit two colonies (and my guess will be many more by the time show is done). How could anyone not figure out it was the freaking Gorn then??? If you live near bears and wake up one day to find your car has been smashed in, are you surprised to learn it’s the bears that did it? And can you blame the bears? Well no, because they are b-e-a-r-s! Now you literally just created the same issues with the Gorn in Arena. Starfleet sees them as monsters, so why are they so shocked to find what they did with the colony? Is it the Gorn’s fault then? No, you just said it, they are monsters and you can’t negotiate with them so who is the idiot that made a colony in their space? That’s MY problem, OK?

So do you have an explanation for that or just want to keep sounding snarky any time people raises legitimate issues with this story?

Still waiting for an answer. Shocking not another pithy and snarky response yet, shocking.

I’m just speaking common sense, correct? This is my entire problem with this story line, it makes Arena either a non-factor or completely nonsensical. I really wish they just picked either a different species like the Naussican or Breen they could’ve done a similar story line with without any of the canon issues or here is a crazy idea, just come up with something new .

All Goldsman is doing is digging a bigger hole for himself.

And folks like Ralph seem to be supplying the shovel and the dirt.

This is why I wish we had an ignore button. I see this guy all the time here and just constantly wants to argue with anyone who has issues or don’t like the show as much as he does. It’s certainly OK to love the show and tell people why you disagree with certain opinions but this guy constantly acts offended that people have the nerve to even question the show at all.

And he’s certainly not going to respond to what I wrote because he knows I’m right. It’s just basic common sense and why I have a big problem with using them among other things. You are so convinced the Gorn are raging lunatics that just want to eat people but you’re going to put up a colony in their space anyway? And then the biggest kicker no one can even figure out it was the Gorn who attacked them…in their space lol. Um…what??? It just make Starfleet look completely incompetent. They would never set up a colony around Borg space, so why would do it here then??? Arena makes less and less sense every time the Gorn is mentioned on this show.

But he was ready to put me in my place and tell me how I can’t possibly understand the episode when he didn’t even know what my argument was lol. Of course it would be nice if he came back and said, “Yeah I see your point now. That’s fair.” I probably have a better chance of getting the Gorn to admit they were wrong. ;)

I really do wish Goldsman would stop talking about it. It is what it is and what is done is done. I’ve said this esp to you before my friend that I wish they used a name other than “Gorn” as well but given this was just one ep of TOS and not the abomination of what was done to the Klingons which we have had for almost 60 years and 2 main characters it doesn’t bother me as much.

Honestly since I was a kid I wished Trek would do a true Dinosaur episode or even species and this so could have been it in the way that the VOY ep totally failed to be.

Yeah Goldsman is just making a bigger mess because it just doesn’t jive with Arena at all anymore. People are splitting hairs in the craziest way but none of it make sense.

Think if you are new Star Trek and you are told SNW is a ‘prequel’ to TOS and you watch the Gorn episodes and then Arena. You would be so lost because it’s like suddenly everyone has complete memory lost on that show even though in SNW it’s gotten so bad with the Gorn they are making new weapons specifically for them now to fight them. And worse because it’s the same ship who has encountered them multiple times lol.

It’s ridiculous Kirk wouldn’t know who the Gorn are at this point because they have attacked multiple colonies and starships. EVERY Starfeet officer would know who they are now. If you have an enemy in the real world attacking countries and killing people at whim, the entire world would know lol. This is what drives me up the wall, like you lose all common sense to defend these excuses. This is Starfleets biggest villain right now. What has the Klingons to anyone in the last year? Or the Romulans? Now look at everything the Gorn has done in just the last year alone.

It’s more silly because you are talking about a species you can’t even reason with and will attack you without provocation so every star ship would be briefed on them for no other than to avoid them or what are the rules to engage them if you do meet them in space.

And in the real world we have territory disputes even today, Taiwan and China being the biggest example. Imagine if China decides to bomb that island into smithereens. China would now be the world’s pariah as Russia is right no over Ukraine. But yeah, we have to somehow pretend Kirk is completely oblivious who they are right now. It’s sooooo ridiculous and makes no sense.

I don’t know why they just didn’t come up with a new species or just put them in Picard or something if they wanted to use them again? That’s the bigger irony, they can work on any other show except SNW.

Yeah I agree Goldsman is digging a bigger and bigger hole RE the Gorn canon. Maybe it doesn’t bother me a lot because I like the show so much, but stubbornly trying to reimagine a legacy alien species was a needless violation of canon. In my post below I compared it to the reimagining the Klingons in Discovery, which of course was a dismal failure and an uphill battle they were never goung to win. Trying to reimagine the Gorn has a good chance to succeed where Discovery failed, but honestly the whole thing seems so uneccesary.

Yeah it was completely unnecessary. And as I said myself, I’m not that personally bothered by it. I get why they want to use them. But you have make up your mind, is it canon to TOS or an alternate timeline of some sort?? How is it NOT the latter if you are making wholesale changes to their behavior and history with Starfleet? It wouldn’t bother people so much if they weren’t trying to attach it to a 57 year old episode.

And also what is funny to me is how they keep moving the goalpost. A year ago before episode 9 of season one, the excuse was that no one had really seen the Gorn as La’an made clear and how Kirk and company could be surprised who he was facing in Arena, as if it’s never gotten out they are human size lizards lol but whatever. It was always a bit ridiculous but OK. Now EVERYONE knows what they look like. This is problem with these excuses, the more they develop a species or character the more they will naturally just be more familiar to everyone. That’s why today no one is even bothered everyone seems to know who T’Pring is now when a year ago people were suggesting maybe she will never even board the Enterprise and only Spock will meet her to keep it in line with canon. Now that’s no longer even a debate anymore as her family was literally brought aboard the ship this season.

By next season, don’t be shocked we get an episode where the Gorn invades Enterprise.

That is patently untrue. When Kirk first meets the Gorn in Arena, there is a voiceover of him saying that he must struggle to remember that the Gorn are an intelligent species. The one he was fighting is a ship’s captain, just like himself.

and his wording implies he’s never even heard of the Gorn:

“ I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn. ” – not “oh shit…a Gorn”

It’s funny how Kirk knows EXACTLY who the Klingons are and they are seen as pariah in the Federation because they had attacked ships and killed Federation citizens. Oddly enough the Gorn has done that and more in SNW, but in Arena Kirk seems absolutely clueless about them.

It is called a retcon. R-E-T-C-O-N

Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work which have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.

It’s a ridiculous retcon. Suddenly the ship that has been directly involved in conflicts with them has no memories of them….at all? Did Q show up, snap his fingers and tell them all to forget?

It’s dumb and unnecessary.

An incredibly poor one. Being critical of the Retcon, does not mean that we’re opposed to the idea of a retcon. ]

Kirk also never hosted animated characters on his ship nor did he ever break into song and dance numbers on the E.

Those are much bigger issues

I think the Gorn are upsetting certain people (myself included), but I don’t get the feeling it’s everyone. The Klingons are a lot different situation because there was decades of history, dozens of characters, and a whole mythos that was built around Klingon culture that a very vocal portion of the fan base saw as something that could not be messed with. There are Klingon groups with dozens (if not hundreds) of members who built their identity on everything that was established from The Motion Picture through Enterprise. The Gorn had one episode, and I think most of the frustration is turning them into mindless monsters, which goes against the point of the TOS episode. But I don’t think there are any Gorn-purists out there who are extremely frustrated that SNW didn’t feature a guy in the original Arena suit.

Ya but Klingons are MUCH bigger of a deal. Minus ENT, the Gorn only appeared in a single ep of Trek previously. They were never that big to canon other than their laughable appearance in the ’60’s The Klingons OTOH are world famous for their Worf style look.

Gorns get the tail bobbed when they make Captain.

I really enjoyed Season 1. Season 2 spent a bit too much time away from the captain of the ship. With TV for Star Trek now doing 10 episodes a season as opposed to 22 to 26 per season, when we spend more time with the nurse…who is great, not knocking her character or performance, it just takes a bit away from the point of view that I would like to see more of from this series. I like the dynamic between the trifecta of command we saw in other trek shows. I would love to see more Pike, Spock, Una episodes. It would also be nice to see Pike in the captains chair more.

The reason why Pike wasn’t in many episodes was because Mount and his wife just had a baby prior to shooting the season. He wanted to be around the family more and the producers obliged him.

Good to know. Thanks for the info

I wonder if before this series ends Uhura and Scotty will switch to the gold division to match their wardrobes in Where No Man Has Gone Before. And when Sulu is introduced, will be wear a blue uniform or a gold one?

There is much previous discussion along the lines of some sort of “in universe” (canon) reason for Uhura and Scotty wearing gold uniforms in TOS’s first episode(s), and at least some of that would account for how FEW those stories were. It has to do with how Starfleet personnel are often cross-trained in other departments, and can officially were the uniform colors of another division while in that training, and/or if ordered by superior officers to do for whatever appropriate reason(s). I have seen interviews with Nichelle Nichols where she would state, for the record, that TOS show-runners, including Gene R. himself, told her that Uhura was FOURTH IN COMMAND of the Enterprise, and that would likely also offer an “in-universe” explanation of why such personnel would be cross-trained and/or wear uniform colors of other Starfleet divisions. Also, if one watches various episodes of TOS, you will often see background cast members wearing different colors from episode to episode, which lends credence to such explanations of main characters doing the same.

I apologize for typographical errors in the above response: auto-correct would not let me change “were” to WEAR, and I also continued getting a red bar stating “You are posting too fast; slow down.”

No problem.

It occurs to me that we could end up seeing in live-action what we saw in animation with Rutherford switching divisions four times in an episode of Lower Decks.

It may possibly be that Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu were going from one division to another before they settled in the one they ended up in.

Just FYI: Scotty in Where No Man (1st Kirk pilot) and ALL the OPS division were in tan — same as with The Cage 11 years earlier. They didnt introduce red for Ops until the series w Man Trap — and even so, Uhura was in command gold for 2 eps ebfore she switche to red.

But Scotty was always in Ops— just tan, not red.

My headcanon is that some tyrant quartermaster admiral kept tryng for tan as the Ops color and he got it through twice – in 2253-54, and in 2264-65. Just a little turf battle, his own little fiefdom he could try to control. Typical political battle among the brass. And then he;d lose out, and they’d flip the synthesizer program AGAIN.

Well I find it hard to believe Sulu wasn’t 4th in command. But I’m guessing he wasn’t sleeping with Gene during that conversation.

Snark aside, if we went solely by the uniform colors Sulu should have been third in command after Spock and Kirk. But uniform colors aside, that ended up being Scotty. And, honestly, he was quite the badass when in command.

Well going back to TNG for a minute, Picard and Riker wore red. Data wore gold, but he was 3rd in command so…

Clearly, then, it’s a matter of rank and not division.

Yeah thats what I think too but sometimes it’s not even that. In TNG Crusher outranked Data but she was needed in Sickbay. Later Troi outranked him too. It’s really at the end just the position on the ship you are assigned I guess.

FYI, in the season finale, the 4th officer (after Pike-Una-Spock-Ortegas) is JENNA MITCHELL. or at least she has the captain’s chair when all others are off-bridge.

Oh I missed that, good to know.

That last name can’t be a coincidence…

Troi did get an on-screen promotion to justify her having a higher rank. Crusher may have had a higher rank than Data too. I’d have to check Memory Alpha…

I used to think DeSalle was fifth in command because it seemed like CATSPAW played a lot in syndication, where Scott, Sulu, Kirk and Spock are all planetside. Maybe this is the show Nichelle was so PO’d about where her assuming command got written out?

BTW, the actor who played DeSalle is still kicking. He quit acting, went to law school and joined the Coast Guard according to Memory Alpha.

Thing is, though, there were no red uniforms in that episode. No Uhura either, but she did start off the production episodes in gold (or green if you like) before they decided the actor looked better in red.

I think what we’ll end up seeing is that there will be episodes toward the end of SNW as a series in which Starfleet will introduce new uniforms (the ones from Where No Man Has Gone Before) to replace the ones seen so far in SNW.

Eh, no. I don’t think many people except purists treat the uniforms from the two pilots as canonical. WNMHGB was simply re-using The Cage uniforms for budgetary reasons, and when the full series order came in, the directive from RCA, NBC’s parent company at the time, was to juice up the color so they could sell color TV sets.

It wouldn’t really make sense to casual viewers to switch from the iconic red, gold and blue uniforms at this point, nor to invest a six-figure sum reworking all the costumes for the cast, guest stars and background players.

Chalk it up to Early Installment Weirdness, as they say at TVTropes.

For SNW, it would be for one or two episodes, at best. Just to set up Where No Man Has Gone Before, which is absolutely canonical.

I hope they totally ignore that. We don’t need a whole storyline to explain a single episode discrepancy.

That’s what prequels do, man. They’re supposed to fill the holes in the narrative, otherwise they become glorified fan service.

It is up to the people that make it to come up with a story that goes with why Uhura and Scotty switched divisions and then went back.

For instance, between Strange New Worlds and Where No Man Has Gone Before Uhura was promoted several times Such a promotion could have included a change in division from red to gold, which would explain her being fourth in command.

In my opinion, that isn’t a big enough narrative hole to bother explaining. In a series where the Enterprise itself seems vastly larger than in TOS (even the Shuttles are twice as big), worrying about characters wearing different color uniforms is way down on my “hey, what’s that all about?” list. Your mileage may vary.

Someone elsewhere mentioned that Pike’s crew is smaller than Kirk’s crew. Ergo, the difference in the ship’s size can be attributed to a future refit to make more room for more people. That’s why Kirk’s quarters are smaller than Pike’s (i.e., no kitchen).

That too should be the focus of an episode in the final season.

Don’t hold your breath. This is just what the ship and uniforms are now. And why would you make sick bay smaller if you have a bigger crew of people onboard now?

These are just part of the show, they don’t seem to have ‘canon’ reasons other than making a more modern show with a bigger budget.

Absolutely. As I’ve often said before, Enterprise, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds are all part of a new timeline that is being written as we watch these shows.

I believe it was Daniels who told Archer that changes to the timeline come in waves. That means that the last episode of the second season of SNW is merely the tip of the wave, which is why TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, etc., have been generally unaffected.

I just hope they don’t kill Ortegas. She and La’an are the only non-legacy (main) characters the Gorn captured, and I can’t imagine they’d get rid of La’an since she’s sort of become the female lead.

Or better yet…bring on Mott the Barber so Ortegas can 2.0 the hair. 60s beehive would be awesome.

Ortegas’ current hair is awesome. It really wouldn’t be true to a character who, in Navia’s own words, “brings a degree of queer energy,” to force them to conform to 1960s gender stereotypes. It’s the 23rd century, presumably people having short hair or wearing trousers isn’t a big deal.

I think La’an leaving is more likely than Ortegas. Christina Chong showed more range this season and was given a couple episodes to shine. With the extended break due to the strike, I wouldn’t be surprised if another project with a better payday comes calling before it’s all over. Ortegas the character – on the other hand – was just too small a piece of the puzzle this year (I know there are reasons) and not enough there that I think Melissa Navia isn’t in danger of leaving. But you just have to wonder if the potential longevity of the strike could really shake things up.

Akiva Goldsman is supposed to be a big fan of the Gorn and couldn’t resist using them here. But he seems to completely misunderstand “Arena”. The fact that he is dead set on making them monsters is frustrating. Their actions were brutal and from our standards, an overreaction to say the least. However, there is a path to better relations and understanding that is not there if all of them are monstrous xenomorph-like monsters.

I don’t think it’s misunderstanding, it’s a lack of caring and self-fulfillment. Goldsman has probably fantasized about the Gorn being the “big bad” and a monster for years and was given the keys to the candy store with no one above him to say no. I don’t think he even cares that Arena existed other than to give him a monster from TOS that he can tie into SNW. To be fair, there weren’t many non-humanoid options in TOS, so if you were going to pick one to make a monster, I think you’re down to Gorn and the Horta. The Horta storyline was too strong and iconic to destroy, so why not go for the Gorn? Sigh….

agree. Mugato maybe? lol

THOLIANS!!!!!

I’m thrilled to have Gorn fleshed out .. if you re-interpret one Kirk line from Arena to confusion about not having seen a Gorn that look ed like THIS, you can do it and give them prior contact. And have their captains (the only one seen in Arena) be elders, at the opposite end of the metabolism scale as the hyperkinetic hatchlings. The young adult Gorn fighter in EV suit even kinda resembles the ENT Gorn that got so much scorn in 2005.

Just, when you go from 0 to 60 with these guys after 50 years, give us a clue that’s what’s going on.

Go watch the Ready Room and see what he says about the Gorn. It’s ridiculous.

It seems you’re the one who misunderstands Arena.

They may not be monsters (though there’s really nothing to say in Arena that they aren’t just that their reason for the attack was somewhat territorially justified), but the federation clearly thinks they are.

SNW is establishing WHY they think the Gorn are monsters.

To my earlier point though, the fact that the Gorn slaughter an entire colony just for being in their own territory… that tells me that they are monsters. They killed hundreds of thousands of people rather than just tell the federation “move your colony please.”

Even the Sheliac gave the federation a warning.

Love how fans try to paint SNW as not “understanding” classic trek when it’s the fans who clearly don’t get it lol

Why is it anytime Akiva Goldsman speaks to the press, he takes the most defensive tone? It’s like he knows he’s pissing off fans left and right, but is determined to double down on doing so. He really doesn’t understand Star Trek, which is evident because he completely misunderstands Arena and the Gorn- or what makes Trek work.

The show would suck if he listened to the kooky old school fans.

If new fans have demonstrated anything it’s that they’ll gush over anything. And that goes back to Voyager.

Some of the reactions to the show still confuse me, but I think it has to be from a lack of understanding or lack of previous fandom in Star Trek. I get that this may be one of the better space shows available at the moment, and maybe that’s just enough to bring in people who could care less about the previous series. But I have a hard time understanding how someone could compare this to anything that came before and really feel like it’s still Star Trek. At least Voyager felt a lot more like Trek than this.

The show only exists because they listened to the kooky old school fans. ;)

They planned this spinoff the moment they casted Pike. You guys had no input.

I have always believed this, too.

You can believe it, but it’s not true. Goldsman and Anson Mount said it was due to the fans pushing for one.

I’m sure the fan push helped. But you don’t build a massive standing set for the Enterprise bridge when it’s used for basically one episode. You don’t cast Rebecca Romijn for a glorified cameo.

It was always planned for a spin-off, they may have just been waiting for fan reaction to get it going officially.

Don’t be deliberately obtuse just to try to be right. Admit you’re wrong and move on, tiger.

They literally did the same thing for In a Mirror, Darkly on Enterprise when they built the original Enterprise bridge for that story. And with Discovery, the bridge was made for two episodes, not one. Oddly enough how they justified building the Enterprise D bridge in Picard because they also used it for two episodes.

Rebecca Romijin is popular but she’s not Julia Roberts or Robbie Margot either. She guest starred in multiple TV shows where she was only in 1 or 2 episodes. She actually does ton of voice work too and only did a few episodes in animated shows as well. Look up her resume on IMDB.

I’m going to say it again. There was NO plans to make a Pike show, none. Yes Goldsman wanted it just like Matalas wants the Legacy show, but nothing was in production because they had other shows they were already producing like Section 31. Mount, Peck and Romijn signed a one year contract to do Discovery and when that was over, that was it. Mount said it over and over in every interview he knew absolutely nothing about a Pike show because there was no show at the time. If they had planned a spin off from the beginning, he obviously would’ve known about it lol. And they would’ve signed the guy to do it the second he won the role of Pike in Discovery. That’s usually how it’s done.

It wasn’t until fans pushed for it that motivated Kurtzman to make it and probably why Section 31 got cancelled because they saw the show fans actually wanted.

Oh yeah and what’s funny is A34 was the same guy back in 2019 and 2020 telling everyone there wasn’t going to be a Pike show lol. He argued over and over again a show was never going to happen because not enough fans were interested in it.

Now he has changed his tune yet again and saying a show was always planned. This is what frustrates me about message boards and when you are constantly trolling on them and changing your argument just to appear ‘right’ at the moment.

He kept saying a show was only a pipe dream and a figment of imagination in fans head. Now he’s saying it was always going to happen. This is why I try not to engage with certain people here.

I don’t remember saying that. Could you please show some evidence since you seem to know everything I do here. Do you keep a file on me or something? Man that’s creepy. Dude you need to get out more. You’re obsession with me is getting to “Fatal Attraction” levels.

A Pike show would got boring fast.

A34   Reply to  VZX  March 26, 2019 2:29 pm

Nope, a Pike show would be boring. I doubt the actor playing Pike would want to do it anyway.

A34   Reply to  Bryant Burnett  April 7, 2019 9:15 am

A34   Reply to  Tiger2 March 26, 2019 3:17 pm

No one wants to be typed casted. Just looked at most of the TNG cast.

A34   Reply to  Jack November 18, 2019 8:35 pm

Leave the Enterprise for the movies.

Reply to  MikeB  November 8, 2019 5:24 pm

I don’t want it [a Pike show]. Leave the adventures of the Enterprise for the movies.

I was right about the “Fatal Attraction” levels. I just played you to see what you would do. Wow you need help Tiger. Stop with the obsession over me. It’s not healthy.

No dude you’re a troll and I simply called you over it. And genius I asked you for YEARS to ignore me…I can pull up a dozen of those posts too.

But since you think I’m an obsessed stalker, then here is the solution . I will no longer respond to you and you no longer respond to me, yeah?

Because you know I have NO problems avoiding you at all. So ignore me completely from this point on and I promise I will you lol.

Deal? If you can’t say yes then it just proves the opposite and I’m not the obsessed one here. ;)

You’re too obsessed with me to ignore me. I’m in a hurry right now so I haven’t read many of your posts but they all seem just to be my personal opinion of the show. You obviously don’t know the difference between opinions and fact. Personally I still find the show boring and I haven’t even finished watching the first season yet and I have no idea when I’ll get around to watching season 2.

Oh please man I ignored you for years and you know it. I just started talking to you again this year and I now realize that was a mistake because you’re just here to troll and have zero integrity. All you do is lie and just bait people. I don’t want any part of it.

And you know I don’t care you hate the show lol. In fact, please do yourself and the rest of us a favor and NEVER watch it again, OK? Don’t bother ever bother with season 2. Just rewatch season 4 of Discovery instead along with the other dozen people who liked it. Somehow the world will keep spinning.

Now, will you PLEASE ignore me? Please!

I don’t have the luxury of ignoring you. You’re a stalker and I have to protect myself.

I’m not going to play this silly game. Leave me or I’ll start reporting you.

And so you DIDN’T believe a Pike show was happening before. So you admit you were just lying because you wanted to be ‘right’, correct?

This is why I don’t like you. You are a complete waste of time here. And it’s funny all you do is whine about what people posts here and yet you won’t go away. Hypocrite much?

Dave Luscombe  Reply to  JonBuck  April 19, 2019 3:53 pm

A Pike series will be great and they already have a full bridge mock up. I paid special attention to part 2 Enterprise bridge, if they don’t do a new series what a waste of the art departments time

A34  Reply to  Dave Luscombe  April 19, 2019 4:09 pm

They build and disassemble sets all the time. I’m sure that set is already packed away.

————–

I rest my case your honor. There are probably a dozen more quotes by you making it very clear you never thought a show was happening lol. This is why you’re a troll. I have no problem talking to people I disagree with. It’s another thing when you are always lying and changing your argument or worst off pretending like you never said it.

No one needs to keep a ‘file’ when you post here daily for years and repeat the same thing over and over and over and over again lol.

One last thing (sorry, we can’t edit right now, sigh), if the Pike show was always in production why would you need to make a petition for it lol.

Again, this is just basic common sense man. If there was a show at least in development, guess what, they would’ve just said that the minute Discovery’s second season ended. You know how I know that? Because they announced the Section 31 show before Discovery’s second season even started, like a week or two ahead of that season.

So why was that show announced so far in advance but the Pike show wasn’t even though BOTH actors and characters were a part of that season of Discovery? Simple, because one show was actually in development with the actor signed on and the other wasn’t at all at the time. If so they would’ve announced a Pike show at least after the season of Discovery, especially since fans was already clamoring for one IF it was already in development, right?

So stop telling me I’m being ‘obtuse’. There was no show until literally a year later and (not surprisingly) when all production on Section 31 had completely stopped.

You’re gullible if you really believe that and I don’t think you’re gullible. Their PR has been blowing smoke up the butts of the fandom for years now.

And I’m now going back to ignoring you. Once again I TRIED. But I don’t like liars and hypocrites man. My biggest pet peeve. You spent all your time telling everyone a Pike show wasn’t happening for years and now you’re trying to act like it was inevitable.

But I just outed you multiple times in your own words to show you’re a complete liar , correct? It’s funny you claim to hate Trump but you pull the same BS he pulls on these boards for years now.

So ignore me please.

Akiva Goldsman said they wanted to do a Pike show, but no show ACTUALLY existed until the fanfare and pushed for one. He has made this clear in multiple interviews.

Yes Goldsman personally wanted to do a Pike show just like Matalas wants to do a Legacy show. But TPTB had nothing on the table or any plans to make one until fans pushed for it because they already had plans to do Section 31. And that’s WHY Section 31 is no longer a show because SNW essentially replaced it as one. ;)

Again, you read all the interviews Kurtzman gave when Discovery season 2 was airing. All he talked about was Section 31 and Picard. A Pike show wasn’t even on his radar back then.

According to my sources a spinoff was never actually intended. More Star Trek, yes. Pike era Enterprise? Not necessarily, no.

Lol yeah I trust “Denny” and his “sources” lol

Anson Mount said it himself many times no one ever talked to him about a spin off show when he was making Discovery. It wasn’t until after the show aired and all the hoopla over his performance by the fans discussions about it began and that was already a year after he signed on.

Again if there was even a possibility for a spin off they would’ve signed them all on for it when they hired them for Discovery and not wait until later when he now had more power over the show.

Because there was no show at the time, period .

Actors lie for a living.

And so do you as proven. Go away.

I wish I was an actor, but I’m too shy for that kind of work.

I’m going to keep asking you to leave me alone. And then when it proves you are stalking ME I will report you. I just want to be left alone.

Your gaslighting won’t work.

Go away. All you do is troll here. You really should be banned.

I’m can’t believe I agree with you…

Can I get a hug?

Fans (and commenters) are legitimately the worst part of every show. It’s a shame that they need them in order to keep making it, but the simple fact is that they should not listen to fans at all. That they want to strip “canon” for parts and tell us they created it is their prerogative. Just proves my thesis that Star Trek (all iterations) is now just a cartoon, because “pure evil villains” is a cartoon notion to sell toys.

Trek fans are worst thing about Trek.

Undiscerning fans are the worst thing about trek fandom, because their braying voices pretty much guarantee we’ll keep getting more crap.

Well, I sure you can find a forum that will figure out an in-universe explanation for reconciling the low budget rubber suit man from 56-57 years ago with a modern TV show.

There’s a wide margin between “discerning” and “nitpicking pedantry”/”gatekeeping”.

What’s your point exactly? I have a lot more trouble with the writing being inferior on these new shows than how a man in a suit looks decades after the fact. If you couldn’t discern that from my posts … (sigh/shrug)

Like, it’s almost 57 years since ‘Arena’ and you have people in this comments cespool genuinely speculating/complaining about why this show is not aligning with a low-budget rubber suit man from when there were 3 broadcast TV channels.

At some point the in-universe explanations have to give way to touching grass.

Again, the issue here is the original and far superior dramatic content being trashed, not how they’re doing dress-up with the critter.

I’m a fan, and not pissed off. I’m really liking what they’ve done with SNW’s.

I’m a fan and I’m frustrated and annoyed and mildly pissed off. There’s a part of me that thinks if there had been another Star Trek show developed at the same time with the concept of SNW that would have followed more of the previous Trek formula, maybe it would be easier to dismiss SNW and move on. But for me, I think most of my negativity towards the show is based on the fact that this is currently the only live-action product that exists and is still slated to continue. I know there will be other options eventually, but for the time being, THIS IS Star Trek.

I’m not either. Unlike you I don’t really like what they are doing with the Gorn, but I’m not that bothered by it either. They made it very very clear they were going to go a completely different with them once one of the main characters had a tragic back story dealing with them and I accepted it then. But I can’t blame others for not liking it no more than I could blame people for not liking the Ferengi or Borg showing up in Enterprise or Discovery going to the Mirror Universe.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it seems hard for Trek prequels to stay away from certain stories or species when they are simply way too early to introduce. Why I wish they would just avoid them altogether but we are past that now. ;)

Same. OUt of everything they *could have* messed up, the Gorn are the very least of my worries. I was much more worried about La”an but they have handled her pretty well too.

All this whining make me want to watch the show now. I still haven’t finished the first season yet.

Unfortunately, viewership is giving the studio enough to allow this to continue. But I agree with you. He calls himself a fan, and you’re left to wonder what of? Because he has no understanding of the source material.

Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to be blindly devoted to it. For me TOS is just embarrassing and I would never waste my time watching it again.

That’s a very repub way of spinning things, citing blind devotion as a bad thing but inverting it so you can knock the good stuff while embracing the crap.

Having blind devotion to a show that aired 100 years ago doesn’t make sense. I just can’t take TOS seriously. Even when I was a kid watching TNG and old episodes of Doctor Who I always changed the channel when TOS came on.

106 years ago, Sherlock Holmes debuted — and he seems to have had legs, considered his devoted following. I would quite frankly be astonished if THE WIRE isn’t as revered a century from now as it is currently, because it truly is Shakesperian — only (for me at least) far more accessible.

As usual, your statistics are as wrongheaded as your premises and conclusions. And you’re only evincing your own blindness in trying to call my appreciation for the series — which is certainly not without faults — a blind devotion. But you must know that already, deep down inside, or else you wouldn’t keep lobbing these obnoxious softballs up as distraction.

I tried WHO once, when PBS first started running it … and couldn’t get through the first episode, a Tom Baker show about a very stupid looking toy tank, as I recall. But I don’t go to the DR WHO sites to lambast those who watch and enjoy it. (I did later watch a Peter Davidson one called EARTHSHOCK and found it okay, and then more years later watched the American TV movie while very sick, and found it pretty awful. There endeth my WHO experience, outside of the Cushing films, which were fine when I was 7 years old.)

He’s nothing but a rabid troll here to bait people. And he’s really really hurt people don’t love Discovery here as much as he does, so he pouts like a kid over it and acts out anytime someone says SNW or Picard is a better show. This is why this site needs an ignore button.

He complains about people here all the time and that the board has overly picky fans but yet spends every day for years here now and will never leave. That tells you everything.

And I never cared for Dr. Who either. I’m sure it’s a great show, just not for me personally.

More gaslighting I see. I’m not the one that posts 100 times a day here.

Ncuti Gatwa is the new Doctor, you should check it out.

I think he understands Star Trek, but he wants to do his own thing. And I’m 100% fine with that, but when you make a prequel there will simply be restrictions to some things and I think it bothers him that every interview now he gets asked about stuff like the Gorn questioning how they are being portrayed or used.

But what does he expect when you blatantly go against the canon of what TOS set up? This is not a ‘Star Trek’ thing, I’m guessing fans will call out any prequel show they expect it to fall in line with a previous story line and not over write it. And I’m sorry but that’s what SNW feels like its doing in many ways. And of course it’s not the only one since both Enterprise and Discovery got accused of the same thing and why there were so many complaints of those shows too.

SNW is at least perceived to be a better show than those (although I personally like Enterprise more but like them both), so it’s not getting some major backlash over it. I always remind people the overwhelming majority seems to like this show, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t point out its flaws either.

If you watch his interviews, you’ll see he completely misreads stuff from the original series. Either that or he’s talking BS that he doesn’t believe at all.. either way, it’s not good.

OK fair enough. I have read some of his interviews but not that many and most were about DIS and PIC at the time. And I don’t doubt his complete love for the franchise but that doesn’t mean he’s a great writer either, definitely as both DIS and especially Picard showed.

For the kid in the back sitting alone.

R-E-T-C-O-N

It’s a bad retcon man. That’s the point. You can still think it’s totally dumb which obviously to many people here it is.

I disagree with you on it being a bad retcon. Star Trek has always in one form or another retconned itself on multiple occassions. Rick Berman did it often when he was the steward of the Trek. It was in the Berman era where they placed the Eugenics Wars in the 21st Century and that was an error that has now become canon.

If you hate is so much then stop watching it. Kurtzman and his camp are not going anywhere anytime soon.

Stop watching Nerdorotic or the rest of those angry channels who spark outrage to pay their bills.

You guys are nitpicking and you are being intellectually dishonest. Trek has always done this.

Yeah we agree to disagree. No worries ;)

But a lot of people think it sucks, you seem to think I’m the only one here lol.

And I never said SNW was the only one. I have pointed out ENT and DIS has done it too….which is why I HATE prequels lol. But when DIS was in the 23rd century, I spent countless essays on its super bad retcons too. So I’m not being ‘intellectually dishonest’. The topic is about SNW, that’s what we’re discussing.

And I like the show, OK, it’s my second favorite NuTrek show after Prodigy. But I always hated this angle of it. It’s just dumb and unnecessary to me. But you like it, fine.

I seen one episode of Nerdorotic four years when he was discussing Discovery and I vowed never to watch that idiot again.

And I support Kurtzman. Anyone here who knows me here can you tell you that. I have said over and over again I like the direction he’s taken the franchise, it doesn’t mean I support every decision he’s made either. It’s not binary and I like more of the new shows than I don’t like, give me a little more credit.

LOL, I know your feelings over Kurtzman and most of these shows.

But you know I like most of them, including SNW. It’s just funny, a few months ago I was literally accused of bullying anyone here who hated the show and would try and shut them down if they said a single bad thing about it. Apparently that’s how much I loved it.

Now, this guy is accusing me of hating it so much I’m apparently a Patreon member for Nerdrotic’s channel and pushing for it to be cancelled.

Message boards can be a weird place sometimes.

Up until the last 15 years, Berman was the worst thing to ever happen to Trek. He marginalized it into institutionalized complacency, ticking off boxes and only occasionally letting something challenging slip through (usually because one of the true creatives aboard just pushed and pushed to get it.)

See I always loved Berman personally (but no, not everything)…and yet me and you get along great here for years now. You’re one of my favorite posters because of how much you hate everything lol. I just don’t understand why people can still be on a STAR TREK message board in 2023 and have such a hard time hearing dissenting opinions?

If you can’t hear people say mean things about Discovery, DS9, Voyager, SNW, Picard, whatever, then you just shouldn’t be here.

AGGGGH, we still can’t edit, it’s sooooo annoying. Anyway I was just going to add I don’t disagree with all your thoughts over Berman but I don’t agree he wasn’t willing to think outside of the box or we would’ve never gotten DS9 in the first place, which is my favorite show. That show proves he wanted Star Trek to be more than just people hanging out on another Enterprise. But I will admit he was scared to do anything that he thought Roddenberry wouldn’t approve of and he had to be talked into doing the Dominion war.

But I think he was so ingrained of what he thought Roddenberry wanted but then again people argued Roddenberry would’ve never liked the idea of DS9 itself and frankly I have to agree.

I don’t think I’d have come down so firmly against Berman if it weren’t for the CINEFANTASTIQUE issues dealing with TNG.

But even there, I found some oddities. I mean, Melinda Snodgrass is pretty explicit in her criticisms, especially regarding Piller, but I never found anything where Piller explainsedwhy he seemed so determined to trash her scripts (specifically ENSIGNS and, for me far more egregiously, THE HIGH GROUND, which could have been another ERRAND OF MERCY with her original concept.) Since we only get the writer’s perspective, it is kind of like reading Tracy Torme’s take on how Hurley utterly trashed his last couple of scripts (though in that case, it was Hurley rewriting Torme, not Piller ordering Snodgrass to de-ball and de-brain her own work.)

Since Piller doesn’t seem to address the Snodgrass issue or the other issues she brings up about the higher-ups causing the departures of folks like Behr and her, it falls to Berman, who dismisses her complaints as sour grapes from a writer who was not invited to return (her take is that she couldn’t wait till her contract was up in mid-3rd season to get away from what had turned into a nightmare. In support of this view of things, you can note how many years it was before they were able to lure Behr back, and that it had to be DS9 where it happened.)

And yet, paradoxically, s3 is when the show actually got pretty watchable for me, after I had given up watching completely near the end of s2. I often make the claim that s3 works because they had no time to rewrite everything down to previous seasons’ levels of mediocrity, but hey, I still think that is true. It’s just unfortunate that while they were having everybody remaining on staff jumping into YESTERDAY’S E in order to get pages to stage in time for filming, that they could have squandered time and resources messing up the aforementioned Snodgrass stories.

Between all this writing angst and the stuff we’d later hear about Berman’s musical ‘tastes’ and how he declares ‘we don’t do antennae’ to avoid portraying Andorians on TNG, and his tasteless and stupid observations about TOS’ reliance on togas, it’s pretty easy to see, now that I’m remembering more fully, why I started disliking the guy as soon as I heard two words about him.

I still see DS9 as an aberration that grew more out of Piller and then transmogrified under Behr (greatly enabled by Pete Fields, the 90s answer to Gene Coon for me), and since I couldn’t get through much of VOY and much less of ENT (which I thought would certainly have been a surefire winner, so long as Berman had just brought Moore on instead of Braga), I can’t have many good thoughts about Berman’s impact on things.

Actually I remember you talking about Snodgrass. I never knew any of that before. So I definitely see your point there. But I’m also a big TNG fan and that’s probably still my first go to show out of all of them and I still give credit helping to turn it around. Again obviously Pillar too but Berman is the guy who put him in charage. But we agree on the music lol.

As for DS9, I still have to disagree with you. I had the DS9 companion book back in the mid 90s and read it backwards and forward at the time. It went into so much detail of how the show was made and Berman actually introduce a lot of the ideas the show became. But yes, I will say Piller certainly had a lot of input as well but the concept did come Berman himself and they both developed it. But yes the show became great once Behr took over and became the show most fans loves today (for the people who loves it).

Never heard the TOS thing, although now I’m thinking about it…

But I get all your issues with Berman and with Kurtzman. I’m not as hard on either guy but I’m still critical just the same. Apparently I hate SNW so much I want Kurtzman fired over it, so there you go.

I meant the TOS toga thing.

I’ll try to find the CFQ archive website, it has most if not all of the TNG issues. There, at archive.org/details/cinefantastique_1970-2002:

https://archive.org/details/cinefantastique_1970-2002/Cinefantastique%20Vol%2021%20No%202%20%28Sept.%2C%201990%29/page/n29/mode/2up

That’s the s3 recap, should have the relevant Snodgrass and Berman comments in it someplace.

OK dude, that site is a bit wonky lol, but a cool archive place. I read most of those two pages and didn’t find it. And I flipped through a few more.

But man I forgot about how much coverage Star Trek used to get on CFQ. I probably read tons of those articles as a kid.

Oh and btw, I literally pointed out in the post you responded to me in that ENT and DIS did the same thing. This line:

 And of course it’s not the only one since both Enterprise and Discovery got accused of the same thing and why there were so many complaints of those shows too.

So you’re calling me ‘intellectually dishonest’ but you obviously didn’t bother to read my entire post. I’m not picking on SNW as I pointed out it’s not the first show to obviously have these issues. But this is currently the show we’re discussing, more so now since Enterprise has been off the air for a long time now and Discovery will be done after next season. SNW is the THIRD prequel and while I feel it’s done much better than DIS in terms of canon issues overall, it’s still making a lot of similar mistakes.

You’ve answered your own question with the last part of your post, the lack of self-awasreness is quite elegant, really.

Try looking up the word ‘rhetorical.’

Because dumb fans attack him for everything he does, even when it’s good and logical, and even when they are wrong about it.

Case in point: this comment section.

‘Good’ and ‘logical’ don’t really even come close to entering the equation with these scripts, Ralphie. If you keep shooting your mouth off this way, you might put your eye out.

May I suggest Robert Petkoff as McCoy? You know, our standard narrator for all recent Trek audiobooks. He looks a lot like Bones in most pictures and nails the character in his TOS readings…

He’s 60 years old… there’s no way they will go with someone that old.

It looks like all the goodwill from the excellent first season will be further destroyed. They’re acting as if season 1 was bad, when it was far superior to season 2.

Well, I liked S2 personally but lets say for a min that it is far inferior. With the strikes going on, they have plenty of time to read the forums and gauge fans’ reactions before they continue on when this is all said and done.

Although I don’t love everything Goldsman has done, overall I adore Strange New Worlds and love how much it feels like TOS, updated for modern sensibilities. I just wish he’d let Vulcans be actual ALIENS and not insist on turning them into pointy-eared humans.

In season 3 I hope they don’t do another Spock as human episode. I know Ethan Peck says he liked it but it did seem awfully similar to season 1. I would prefer they focus on other storylines for him. Preferably not romantic episodes with Chapel either. Then again I wasn’t a shipper. They did tease the existence of Sybok in the rehab center T’Pring worked at with Stonn. So maybe that’s a thread they could pick back up?

Yes, but since Sybok is a Vulcan who eschews logic, I’d really rather they did something else with Spock. I want Spock to be the calm and admirably controlled Vulcan scientist we know and love, not this unVulcan version.

Part of what makes Spock so interesting is that he really IS an alien, yet one who’s similar enough to us that we can relate to him. Making him too human defeats the entire purpose.

Yeah, it was weird that Season 2 completely dropped the Sybok plot.

These writers are dreadful h words and their show stinks. They’re like tech bros who think they’ve innovated (taxis, food delivery!) through their own genius, but instead they’ve created digital nightmares. This is the showrunners as I perceive them… this is my version of them. It’s an interpretation. In the same way that the writing on Strange New Worlds is never gonna be as good as the writing in The Original Series, right? It’s my interpretation of it.

If you’re trying to be sarcastic, point taken. If you’re trying to be serious, TOS had its share of stinkers, too. The cranky old white men who think the writing on TOS was the pinnacle of sci-fi storytelling definitely don’t have 20/20 hindsight.

I get a big kick out of the “because there were bad episodes of TOS it’s ok if most of the 10 episodes in a season of SNW stink” response. It’s an empty defense the person lobbing it thinks is profound. Also there’s no need to hold up TOS as the pinnacle of sci-fi storytelling (though, if one did, it would need to be in the category of “sci-fi storytelling on TV “). It’s simply better than the show that’s trying to reboot it. And a funny thing about the cranky old white man dunk — your heroes, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, are both cranky old white men.

Well, so are completely baseless accusations that most (or all, depending on who’s screaming louder about some minor violation of sixty year old canon) of SNW’s episodes were stinkers. They aren’t. I can be a cranky old white man, too, when it comes to whiny fans who feel they speak for the entirety of fandom.

Who was doing that and how?

To be honest, I prefer when you simply say how you feel instead of all the sarcastic posts you usually make about this show because I think it confuses a lot of people lol.

I don’t completely agree with it since I really loved season 1 and thought season 2 was OK at least. But it’s why we call them opinions and I respect yours.

I’m not the biggest fan of Strange New Worlds, but even I’ll say that this little rant comes across as a cranky old white man yelling at the sea.

The quality of this show, for me, oscillates wildly. For everything brilliant episode (“Ad Astra Per Aspera” for example) there are two three absolute stinkers (the magic kingdom episode, “The Broken Circle”, “Cloak of War”)- and the rest are…. fine.

Interesting…the ones you call stinkers are among my favorite episodes of the show..

I didn’t care much for the magic kingdom episode either, but I liked Broken Circle and I’m pretty sure that and Cloak of War are setting up why M’Benga is not CMO for Kirk.

I think SNW is both better and worse than TOS.

Better in that it has the benefit of another 60 years of TV drama insights and stories to learn from, better technology etc.

Worse in that, almost inherently in being a remake, it can never live up to the originality of TOS. On the other hand TOS has also sorts of glaring problems like dated values and the lack of insights into how to make TV from those 60 years.

But in terms of bringing the broad tenets of Star Trek to a new generation with slightly different sensibilities I think it’s doing a decent job.

I like Martin Quinn’s Scotty. He has a nice energy, and seems to channel Doohan well without being an impression of him.

The Gorn on the other hand, well, it’s not that I don’t like monsters in sci-fi. I love the Alien film series. Okay, I love two of the films. Anyway, the thing about the xenomorphs is that it’s been difficult to keep them scary and fresh for audiences for the past 40+ years. They’re monsters, plain and simple. However, Alien also has its fair share of human and android villains to keep things interesting. SNW doesn’t have that in connection with the Gorn. It’s just them, so far.

So, where else can you go with them as recurring villains, or “monsters”? Even the faceless Borg were only that way for one episode. Then came Locutus, Hugh, Lore’s emotional Borg pals, and later the Queen. Understandably, TNG wanted to take them in new directions to try to keep it from getting stale.

Here be monsters, yeah, but else here be, Mr. Goldsman? That’s always the question.

That should be WHAT else here be.

Anyone else having trouble with the edit feature?

Yeah, the red bar won’t actually let you edit….

yeah – quite often getting the “slow down, you’re posting too fast” or whatever it is message – even hours after the fact

Yeah, same here.

Yeah same. I hope they fix it soon. It’s getting very annoying.

Though I appreciate all the throwbacks or nods to TOS, I think that SNW is short changing its own specific identity by doing this. This is a show about the crew under Pike that have their own stories. It just seems like too much TOS foreshadowing too soon. Its OK to bump into the TOS folks now and then but the writers really seem to be pushing it hard for some reason.

Yeah I do think they brought Kirk in way too soon, not that I have an issue with it per se but he should have probably been in the later seasons

Akiva just feels emboldened at this point to keep making derivative Trek, and that he can just say the quiet parts out loud. It’s not something he’s entrusted to find the story within it.. it’s his “interpretation”. All the more reason to just admit it’s not the prime timeline. But.. it’s sad really. He basically has admitted that this is a soap opera in space, not science fiction. I hope to God he will not be the show runner for 10 seasons, because I really want to see what this cast can do with good writers.

*Precisely*.

Frankly, after reading this interview, I’m seriously considering not re-subscribing to Paramount Plus for season three, at least beyond the resolution of the cliffhanger.

It’s abundantly clear that Goldsman doesn’t want to do STAR TREK. He wants to genre-hop and write musicals and animated workplace comedies. He wants horror and monster movies. He *doesn’t* want to write thought-provoking science fiction: he wants to write — and I’m quoting verbatim — “a lot of relationship stories in space.” He’s afraid to do anything serious, because that would expose his weaknesses as a writer and producer.

So we’re going to see more nostalgia, hijinks, comedies, lighthearted cotton candy fluff episodes, Sam-and-Diane cliches, and so on. Bug-eyed Slacker Mariner (TM) is sure to make a return appearance, because why not? Occasionally some of these pet projects work, but mostly, they utterly fail.

So long as this guy is in charge, we’re never getting another “Darmok,” or “The Inner Light.”

Star Trek isn’t going to survive another decade without a change in leadership.

I am absolutely loving this series!

A lot of people are. It’s some of the best Trek I’ve seen since DS9. That it’s the only P+ show to hit the streamer ratings is an added bonus. It’s a shame we won’t see season three for a while, but getting Hollywood’s labor issues sorted out to the satisfaction of the guilds is a higher priority.

Picard S3 was in the top ten streaming shows too.

Err PIC season 3 did too, as well as the Yellowstone spin-offs.

Hi Chris, I wish you had a small role in the series too, maybe as a transporter chief for an episode. Wish you all the best and good luch.

That is “good luck” of course, the edit function is still wobly here.

I feel like the whole TOS character/element being a big end of season thing is following a template they started back on Discovery season 1. There we had the Enterprise appearing, leading to Pike. Then in S2 we had the interior of the Enterprise reveal and the NCC1701 in action for the first time in decades. The SNW S1 finale you get a remix of a TOS story and the first appearance of the Paul Wesley Kirk (albeit alt universe) and then S2 you get Scotty. Pretty sure they’ll save the next TOS character for the S3 finale (assuming it’s another batch of 10 episodes).

Honestly most of these shows are doing the same thing and why no one should be surprised Prodigy is doing the same thing with the Voyager crew and what ultimately happened with Picard in season 3.

People can certainly complain about it, but fan service works. The only reason people are upset about it with SNW is because some of it feels a bit forced canon wise, especially with Kirk. But I actually don’t have a problem with Scotty because we never knew when he joined the ship. TBH, they can all be on the ship now minus Kirk and Chekhov basically. Yeah technically McCoy wasn’t on the ship at the beginning but they can easily ignore that and just have him show up next season too.

That’s true – it’s not unique to the 23rd century based shows. I don’t mind either, really, as long as there’s enough new stuff in between. I think I would have preferred the ENT model with SNW, that of two seasons of largely fresh exploring and all new stuff, before ‘doing a season 4’ in terms of older species and known storylines being expanded upon from there onwards. Being an ENT die hard, hearing ‘temporal cold war’ in SNW S2E3 was enough for me to be at peace with canon haha, but I understand how some people feel regarding it.

It makes sense to me that SNW would depict the Gorn as misunderstood monsters. In the episode Hegemony, April says that Starfleet doesn’t understand the Gorn while Pike argues that they are only monsters. It still allows for Kirk to later understand that they aren’t just simply monsters in the TOS episode Arena.

I hope Akiva Goldsman gets his wish to continue on from SNW into TOS. I’ll be watching for sure if that happens.

Apparently the Gorn in Arena has arthritis.

It makes sense to me that SNW would depict the Gorn as misunderstood monsters.

Except that aside from April chewing the fat about how a different relationship might theoretically be possible, there’s zero evidence that the Gorn have been “misunderstood.” When we actually meet them, all they do is lay eggs in people and eat them.

Maybe they’ve got some great master plan to change this; admittedly, “Hegemony” hinted as much. But Goldsman’s comments indicate he sees absolutely nothing wrong with the series — he thinks he’s some kind of modern day Cecil de Mille — so why should they change?

I admit that I am making an assumption that they have a bigger plan to flesh out the Gorn more and present stories for the characters to learn that the Gorn are more than monsters. I’m not sure that is even needed though because it is pretty obvious that they are an intelligent species that have warp capable ships and complex communication. An adult Gorn was in an environmental suit trying to access the Cayuga’s computer.

As far as eating people, Discovery Klingons do that too, and we know they aren’t simply monsters.

Maybe they have a bigger plan, and yes, they dropped some hints along those lines with April’s scene, Pike’s musings in the diner, and the coronal mass ejection stuff.

But there’s a point at which you stop giving the writers the benefit of the doubt, and the onus shifts onto the writers to prove they deserve to be the caretakers of Star Trek.

If we’re eventually going to end up with the TOS crew in place, they could avoid navigating the inevitable minefield of revisiting the original series by instead focusing on the presumed second five-year mission that took place between TMP and TWOK…an untapped era of Star Trek.

I would love that so long as they avoind TMP era uniforms lol

“Given our druthers — because Henry and I are both greedy and gluttons for punishment — we’d go right into the TOS era and see what happens. So, if we’re around long enough, sure”

The amount of fodder that continues to be thrown out there pretty much declaring SNW is a reboot (or at minimum, an alternate timeline) without saying it directly is crazy. Trying to use this as some sort of joke or tongue-in-cheek statement by talking about being “greedy and gluttons for punishment” just to avoid the potential backlash for just coming out and saying it no longer connects to previous Trek is getting ridiculous. It’s like they are scared that people aren’t going to like SNW if they just admit this is no longer the Prime timeline or a reboot, but I don’t see how you could alienate people any more than what we just got in season 2.

As far as I’m concerned, declaring it outright and getting it over with would give them so much more latitude to do whatever they wanted and those of us complaining would just let it go. It still doesn’t feel a whole lot like Star Trek at this point anyway, and if and when a season 3 comes, it sounds like that will just get worse. Just give up, claim it as your own world, and release it from the boat anchor of TOS and the Prime timeline that is just making it that much worse for those of us who care.

I for one would like it FAR more if they just admitted it’s a new timeline. Otherwise, it irritates me to no end that book writers for 50 years have been pretty great at maintaining (mostly) a solid adherence to canon while also figuring out how to make new and interesting stories. Not sure why this group can’t accomplish that.+

Heck – amateur writers have submitted short stories and done the same thing, new ideas within existing canon and several volumes were published in the now infinitely ironically titled Strange New Worlds book series.

Not sure why this group of “professionals” can’t accomplish what Joe Bob the Star Trek fan / plumber from bumville any city could.

Goldsman comparison to the transporter room shows how much the dude is missing the point. The physical appearance of the Gorn is the least of the issue.

When remaking or reimaging a product I ‘ve truly never heard a creator speak about the removal of depth, nuance, dimensionality, and thought provocation as a GOOD thing.

The series has some great episodes and characters. That doesn’t happen without talented writers on staff. Its like their is some exec at Paramount holding a gun to their head and demanding they bog down an otherwise good show with brain dead Gorn trash.

Seriously. This guy has given us Lowest Common Denominator Star Trek, in which Spock and PIke both walk around with dopey grins on their faces, and we’re supposed to think we’re viewing the Mona Lisa.

In the same way, the transporter room on the Enterprise is never gonna look like the transporter room looked in TOS, right? It’s our interpretation of it.

Looks and depictions are two very different things. The transporter room, regardless of how it looks, always served the same exact function.

If SNW handled the transporter room like they’ve been handling the Gorn, it would be a room that had a hole in the floor with a long ladder leading all the way down to the planet’s surface.

You will never see the Gorn like that. 

Than why have them be the Gorn? Why not be a new thing that doesn’t conflict with what the Gorn were? You speak of compassion yet you deliberately changed that wasn’t a monster into a monster. What’s next? Turning the Tholians into mindless spiders who wrap up their victims with webs before eating alive?

Yeah…thank you.

Kinda getting into PLANET OF THE TITANS territory there with the Tholian line …

Jeyl, you’re exactly right. I’d argue the look of TOS was canon, up until discovery aired. So you might say that visual canon changed. I think that’s not a difficult change to accept. But when they had technological changes that didn’t make sense with what had been established, is when we started running into problems that may make some interactions obsolete or contradict the resolution to established stories (intraship beaming, or holographic communication technology for instance). That has irked me from day one. I don’t think they know or care what canon actually means in relation to Star Trek. Your point about the Gorn is the same thing I’ve been saying for awhile now. It would have been so easy to not get drug for violating canon, not to mention the distraction it creates from the story they’re trying to tell. If you say you’re subservient to the story that’s being told.. wouldn’t you rather not create such distractions? It’s unbelievable how guys like Akiva Goldsman don’t get that. I have a very hard time believing he was ever a fan of Star Trek, because he treats the source material with such disdain.

The show is dead if they go down this route. More “big wings” and the gorn as enemy

There is no “Star Trek” in this show

“Big Swings” even!! What a shame, the only Nu-Trek that had potential and they have squandered it already. LLAP

So, you are never going to watch SNW again, RIGHT?

I don’t know where “never watching again” is a logical consequence of what DMDMDMDM wrote. But I for one may stop watching, depending on how much of this drivel they actually implement.

That doesn’t mean that 10 years, two seasons from now, we won’t be having a nice chat with the Gorn

I guess he doesn’t have much hope in the strike resolving anytime soon.

Strange New Worlds is the Smallville of Star Trek.

This is perfect.

In a pretty darn good way, yes. A few SNW stars did appear in Smallville.

Smallville was producing episodes for a solid, DECADE!

I would love to see Strange New Worlds go on into TOS, but not just redo the original episodes….. Lets see the other years of the five year mission and if they’re still going after that, the years between TMP and Wrath of Khan.

If they were to redo any TOS episodes, it would be cool to expand on them, perhaps as one-off event streaming movies. There’s so much potential if the cast are up for it in the long run.

The Doomsday Machine would make a great movie.

Definitely! Feature length with modern effects – it really would.

On the Inglorious Treksperts podcast, Ashley Miller said that he and his writing partner were hired to write the script for the third Kelvin movie, and that it would have been the Enterprise crew having to team up with Romulans to fight the Kelvin Universe version of the Doomsday Machine. Their script got cancelled when Roberto Orci left the project.

I didn’t know that and it’s too bad it didn’t happen. It would have been perfect for the Kelvin timeline. A completely new story for the old one.

I am glad they never made that movie, we have already seen the Doomsday machine we do not need to see it again

Exactly. This would have been STID, with its line-for-line copying of TWOK dialog, all over again. These people are incapable of giving us anything new.

So it’s the Prime Timeline AND a reinterpretation of the Prime Timeline. Got it.

I know this will ruffle some feathers but they basically established this now an alternate timeline of some sort. I’m not trying to be ML31 lol, but when an event in a timeline is permanently changed like with baby Khan, that’s the very definition of an alternate timeline.

The problem with Goldsman is he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. One hand he keeps saying the show aligns with TOS, but then he also says his ‘interpretation’ of certain events will be different from TOS. This is what drives fans like me up the wall. You have to PICK one, either it falls in line with canon or it doesn’t. Nothing about Chapel’s back story makes any real sense to TOS other than she was a nurse and had feelings for Spock. That’s basically it. But they have completely both that dynamic and her basic back story since in TOS she joined the Enterprise because she wanted to find him since they already were in engaged. But here she hasn’t even met the guy yet.

Imagine in Solo we find out Han and Leia met earlier and a fling before they met in ANH? That’s not how a ‘prequel’ is suppose to work.

Sorry I meant Chapel joined the Enterprise because she wanted to find Dr. Korby. I really hope they fixed the editing feature soon.

She could always join *back* to find Korby?

Yeah true, but it would still a bit forced. But I am curious how they will handle Korby himself. Will he end up going missing and turn into an android like the original? I guess they have to do it but man I can’t wait to see how they do it lol.

Yup. It’s basically Goldman saying, “This is my vision of the original series era” which is all well and good but why not just firmly establish that it’s an alternate timeline? If you look at Goldman, his career is based less on original ideas than interpreting and adapting other people’s work and he’s delivering more of the same here.

That worked very well for Nick Meyer, but clearly AG is no Nick Meyer . (though the latter has had his share of turds too, but there is at least evidence of genius and supreme competence in some of his early work.)

Yes this! EP 3 this season already said baby Khan was late because of the Temporal Cold War. Great, we got it. Now top with this is the same timeline in the prime universe already and admit this is an altered one and Daniels/Archer were never able to fully fix it

I actually wouldn’t mind if they did decide to declare it an alternate timeline. The creative types are free to explore their ideas and the fans don’t have to canon nitpick as much. We can all just nitpick on other things. Lol!

I have a better idea. Paramount jettisons Kurtzman and Goldsman. A new, serious, writing team (someone like Vince Gilligan or Christopher Nolan) resurrects Star Trek in ten years. That someone ignores Disco, SNW, and their progeny, pretending they never happened, and gives us a 25th-century series that picks up 100 years after TNG/Picard. Call it “Star Trek: The Third Generation.”

This is exactly what Bryan Singer did with SUPERMAN RETURNS — he took it as picking up after SUPERMAN II, and ignore the comedy, lightheartedness, and hijinks (sound familiar?) of SUPERMAN III and SUPERMAN IV. He returned the franchise to its roots and actually expanded on it. It’s a real pity we never got a sequel with Brandon Routh.

It’s also they did with Roger Moore-era James Bond (albeit more implicitly than explicitly) when they cast Daniel Craig, and even when they cast Timothy Dalton.

There is no reason they have to stick to a decade of (mostly) flawed Trek.

How did Superman Returns work out for JJ? Seriously that is your example? I predict that when SNW is done. I imagine they will do a time jump at some point. When it is done there will be a series that is set during the original series and the stories will be told around the episodes from that era.

Book it. It is coming. The way they are trickling in the original series characters. Come on. You guys are really going to mad then.

More than likely we’ll just check it out and then check out from Trek permanently.

I am growing ever less tolerant of marginal talents traipsing over the good stuff with dirty feet and squandering the immense inherent potential in same. Instead I can marvel over the seeming perfection of THE WIRE yet again, and balance that up with fun re-viewings of MIDNIGHT RUN and THE WILD GEESE. Plus there is still a lot of Kurosawa I haven’t seen.

I can see some learning value in watching a small selection of bad KurtzTrek a single time (I remember thinking the last half of the final s2 ep of DSC was a massive lesson in bad storytelling choices reminiscent of the insanely drawn out conclusion o EXCALIBUR) … but anything beyond that is sheer masochism.

More than likely we’ll just check it out and then check out from Trek permanently.

Yeah, I’m almost at the point of saying I’m OK with the canon ending with NEM (perhaps shoehorning PICARD into that).

What I do think season one of PIC showed us is that Trek could flourish again if they really cleaned house brought in some thoughtful science fiction writers like Chabon, who would give us new ideas instead of nostalgia.

How did Superman Returns work out for JJ?

I assume you mean “how did it work out for Bryan Singer”? Critically, quite well. It got decent reviews. Financially, it was more mixed, but the Cavill movies seemingly failed to launch as well.

I tried to watch it but the seriously weak shot on digital look utterly sabotaged it. Felt more like BARNEY MILLER in a cape.

Then again, MAN OF STEEL was a dud for me as well, and except for WW, I don’t think I’ve even bothered going to the mainstream DC well since (though I did like JOKER a lot and found the recent Pattinson BATMAN to be somewhat watchable.)

They had already changed up the Bond formula for the worse with DIAMONDS, ahead of Moore’s appearance, though he definitely drove the series a lot further down during the 70s till they tried to go straight again after the buffoon-ish MOONRAKER. I just so wished Dalton had come on then, and we could have had a decade of films with him instead of just the schizophrenic pair we got. (haven’t loved a Bond movie in the post-Dalton period, or even much tolerated any of them this century outside of parts of QUANTUM.)

Yes, definitely agreed. The descent into cartoonishness began with late Connery. Personally, I wish that Lazenby had gotten to do more films. I also think they over-learned from GOLDFINGER, which, though a thoroughly fun and stylish film, shouldn’t have been a template for so many of the films that followed. My favorite Connery film is FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

I’ve liked GOLDENEYE, TWINE, and most of the Craig films. I agree QUANTUM is underrated, even if it’s not the best of the lot.

Honestly? Go with whatever interpretation works for you. I’ve mostly given up on the canon argument. It is what it is. If they’re declaring this is the prime timeline, then they’re saying that the events within it have changed, and previous stories don’t exist within this universe anymore. My rants will continue toward their stubbornness about declaring that this works within canon. As I’ve said before, I don’t think they have any understanding of what canon means within the context of Star Trek. But more maddening that that.. they also have no desire to understand it. All they do is rail against the parts of fandom that criticize them.

He wants to produce relationship drama. (No wonder they’re positioning the awful Academy show as a young adult play.) That’s why he doesn’t care about canon.

Yep. That’s exactly what it is. These are the Prime Universe characters, and this is the new look and feel for the universe. I really hated this concept at first when it premiered on Discovery, but I’ve come around to really liking it on SNW.

“ These are the Prime Universe characters, and this is the new look and feel for the universe.”

Yep, exactly. And that’s a REBOOT.

“This is the Gorn as we perceive them”

Ironic that the hyperlink then goes to wikipedia’s entry on Xenomorphs

Goldsmans’ take on the Gorn is beyond irritating.

1) It totally undermines a significant plot point of TOS’s “Arena” to make them “monsters.” 2) If you want to go this route, make them a new species. 3) If you keep them as just monsters, the Gorn are going to get boring without any added depth or nuance, since it’ll just be variations of people running for their lives every time they make an appearance.

For the people defending this by saying the Gorn were a blank slate and that “Arena” was just one appearance, so why does it matter if SNW changes their nature. Think of it this way: what if SNW were to reintroduce the Horta from TOS’s “The Devil in the Dark” but used them as “monsters” in the same way that they’re using the Gorn?

What if SNW were to say, no actually there are Horta on a lot of planets and everywhere the Pike-era Enterprise goes there are colonists being terrorized by silicon-carpet aliens that melt people and tunnel through rock?

It would totally undermine the message of “The Devil in the Dark” that the Horta’s actions in that episode were predicated on a misunderstanding to make the Horta into “monsters” in the same way Goldsmans’ viewpoint totally wrecks the point of “Arena.”

Again, making them ‘monsters’ in Arena creates the problem when you know the ‘monsters’ are in the same system but then shocked when monsters act like monsters. What did you expect then????

Forget the ‘message’ it just makes Starfleet look like bigger idiots setting up shop near these things but then want to play victim when monsters, yeah,act like monsters.

That was the entire point of the Voyager episode Scorpion when dealing with the Borg. They are not going to change and you would have to be an idiot to believe they will no matter what they say. This is literally the same situation with the Gorn now.

I don’t even understand what Goldsman is trying to get across then? So is it Starfleet’s fault for setting up a colony they knew could be attacked by these monsters? Why are you so surprised? You are the fools who set up the colony and should’ve known better then. Goldsman doesn’t seem to realize he’s making it worse, not better.

You have a very good point about the Horta as they were only one ep as well. I guess the only way I can answer that from my perspective is the way the 2 eps affected me. The way Kirk showed compassion by not just killing the Horta but healing her was truly heartfelt. And the Horta was a mother protecting her young, not a species protecting their territory. True neither are monsters but the Horta pulled on the heart strings a lot more for me. The Gorn went down in history as the guy in the plastic suit that the Big Bang Theory and other shows like to poke fun at.

I have always found ARENA to be among the most riveting and utterly rewatchable of episodes, especially the first half (before we see the thing in the uh flesh), while DEVIL, though very solid, is really slow going til Kirk & Spock get up close with the critter. In fact, I don’t remember ARENA coming in for any signficant scorn at all till Alex Winter starting peeing all over it during press for a BILL&TED movie over three decades back.

For me, the creature’s look in ARENA is not any more of a stumbling block than the way San Fran is portrayed in most old westerns (i.e., streets as clean and dry as every other western town.) It wasn’t till Shat’s short-lived BARBARY COAST series that I recall seeing oldSF as perpetually muddy streets, which given the weather in the bay area, would have been an obvious given. But I don’t reject all that programming on this basis, anymore than I reject BONANZA for its indoor exteriors. (tho the indoor exteriors on AIRWOLF always looked very ripe, given what you would expect from programming decades later.)

His interpretation of the Gorn sucks! It’s just stupid!

The unfortunately reality about this show’s premise is that they setup all these great characters, but you know it will all be short-lived for most of them and the end goal is either death or departure. That’s feels strangely ominous to me, that this show is destined to be a tragedy. It’s starting to weight on me the more they introduce the TOS crew.

Yeah, because that all never happens in real life.

I dunno. The only one that is really certain to have a trajic path is Pike. I mean just because # 1 et all won’t serve on Kirk’s ship doesn’t mean they must meet their final tragic fate. Except maybe La’an

I rewatched “New Eden” the other day. It is jarring how Pike was shown as a serious, capable leader.

It’s tonally the polar opposite of the lackadaisical incompetence we’re seeing depicted — nay, *celebrated* from Captain Neelix in SNW.

Say what you will about other seasons of DISCOVERY, but we were sold on SNW on the basis of what we saw of PIke’s superb command in season two. It’s become clear that we were sold counterfeit goods.

Also a line of dialogue in Discovery season 3 that the Gorn were one of the species working on a replacement for the warp drive problems.

Edit: solution for the warp drive problems

So right, Michael. I’m already preparing for the show’s funeral.<sigh>

Well said! Death or departure…<sigh>

Haven’t chipped in here for ages, but this whole Gorn fiasco just confirms that it’s best for me to just look on Strange New Worlds as merely a wildly differing ‘re-interpretation’ of ‘Star Trek’ to the original show’s characters and settings altogether, rather than any sort of meaningful ‘prequel’ to it which it purports to be.

Same goes for the likes of Discovery – whether it was over-powered ‘spore drive’ antics or non-Klingon-looking Klingons, the makers and writers might have well have been designing an alternate timeline/universe along the lines of J.J.’s ‘Kelvin Timeline’ shenanigans.

Sure, there were quite a few episodes of the now retro-tastic, classic Star Trek and TNG shows that were ludicrous amongst the many gems, but I just omit them altogether now whenever I have a rewatch every few years, and just curate my own collection of (production order) favourites.

So yeah, even though I’m partial to a good song and dance number, I’ll pass on taking this seriously as a show that’s meant to lead into the events of TOS, thanks. It’s just an ‘alternate timeline/universe’ to the ‘Prime Timeline’ that happens to have produced ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ movie too! ;)

I really like SNW but this quote: “We’re always doing the thing that we do best, which is secretly just a lot of relationship stories in space.“ gives me pause

Good, I’m not the only one.

What I don’t understand the most is how this is supposed to be the show closest to the concept of TOS and yet it’s the farthest from Roddenberry’s vision.

Well, I think the first episode of Season 1 captured the feel of TOS, but after that things started to go downhill, and by mid-season it was an avalanche out of control. Can’t really comment on Season 2, so I’ll return to this topic in December [you won’t distract me that easily!!!)

That’s pretty much describes every successful sci-fi show in television history. I don’t know what you’re going on about.

On a personal level, I’m concerned that SNW will accomplish what The Mandalorian season 3 did for me: lose interest in a franchise I’ve been a lifelong fan of.

Yet that is the lesson learned they took TMP, and is thus what they got back to in WOK.

TOS ran for 3 seasons on TV. Fans grew to love the characters AND the sci-fi storylines each week. TMP comes out, and it’s like welcoming your family back home, but then it turns into a very long, slow, and boring get together that you can’t wait to end. Then TWOK brings the family back for a fun evening of Guess Who and Battleship. But without the games, it would have been another boring evening.

The truth is, the “relationship stories in space” would have gotten old in TWOK just as much as some feel it has in SNW if there wasn’t a good story to drive it. There was a lot of season 2 that I didn’t care much for, but I actually enjoyed a good amount of the finale because there was a STORY that was more important than the relationships. The same can be said about TWOK. The story of Kahn getting revenge was more interesting than Kirk discovering he has a son or contemplating how old he is getting. But those stories are still interesting in context of the bigger story, and the bigger story drives the plot.

When you only have relationships driving the story, it can get boring or it at least falls in a different genre than what we’ve come to expect in Star Trek. It’s the reason my Mom could watch hundreds of hours of soap operas while I was growing up, but I could barely make it through one hour to get to the afternoon cartoon block.

I agree with this. On a recent rewatch of season 1 of Discovery (which I liked a lot more this time around – first time I’ve seen it since 2017/18), the times I found my mind wondering off were mainly when the sci-fi story had filtered out, and it was just the relationship side of things left. For the most part, DISC S1 seems to get a balance, but from memory, the latter end of DISC S2, the sci-fi story either filters out or is very weak, and I remember struggling with it big time. Soap is the right word. And S2 of SNW felt like it was creeping further in that direction to me. That’s just a great example with the soap opera, I couldn’t have put it better myself. And that’s why Trek held my attention (and kept it) and I couldn’t care less about soap opera XYZ. Perhaps though, this is why, the general audience are loving it wholeheartedly? If people are coming from a casual fan or general TV soap/drama fan angle, it would make sense.

TMP has aged extremely well. Each time I see it, I think more of it. It was a serious character study of Spock and his decision to embrace his human side, unlike the Sam-and-Diane hijinks of SNW.

TWOK was a serious character study of Kirk, the nature of aging, the struggle to remain relevant, the lust for revenge, etc. It wasn’t “who is hooking up with who,” which was one of the flaws of season two of ENT (which you purport to hate).

The two are not remotely comparable.

You just made my point for me. Thank you!

By the way, I love the motion picture. But it’s not character relationship driven Star Trek. It’s more like Arthur C. Clark meets Star Trek.

TMP is for me more like Trek as seen through a very different lens, that of a police procedural (much like Wise handled ANDROMEDA STRAIN, psuedo-doc feel at times.) That approach doesn’t quite jive with the way the VFX are handled, since you don’t spend huge stretches looking out the windshield of a squad car.

The attempt to do Kirk is a more mature fashion is hitNmiss, but the exchange that concludes with ‘I stand corrected’ is actually pretty good character drama even if it doesn’t feel like ‘trek.’

Yeah all I hear with that line is more CW based stories unfortunately.

I definitely paused on that line as well. Then again I on the record as feeling like they spent too much time on romantic relationships this season that didn’t work or me. Some of the other episodes exploring the human condition worked a lot better.

Yeah I really hate the Spock and Christine relationship. Besides the fact it makes zero sense in canon, it’s just written in such an adolescent way. Reading some of my comments on this board I think I’m giving people the idea I don’t like this show lol. I actually like it a lot and it’s doing more good than bad IMO. But I guess the stuff I don’t like I REALLY don’t like and the romance stuff is a big part of it. Again, not because I’m a Star Trek geek who think romance is ‘icky’, I actually like a lot of the relationships on the other shows, Worf and Dax is still my favorite bar none. But on this show I just don’t like the way they been written so far although I will say the finale finally got me to care about Pike and Betal’s relationship. So progress I guess.

Besides the fact it makes zero sense in canon, it’s just written in such an adolescent way. 

SAY THAT AGAIN. That’s the problem in a nutshell. Hell, we didn’t even see them have a relationship. He broke up with T’Pring (who was portrayed as a casual hookup partner and Bridezilla, not a mysterious, never-before-seen counterparty in an alien arranged marriage), and two episodes later he was breaking up with Chapel.

What’s so disappointing about this is that the fan serious STAR TREK CONTINUES showed us a very similar idea — Spock having a tragic relationship with a human woman, which ultimately led him to embrace Kohlinar and pure logic. And it did so with grace, nuance, and poignancy. It was utterly believable.

The supposedly professional writers couldn’t outshine an (admittedly excellent) fan series. What a waste.

*fan series. Can’t edit my typo.

But yeah, ambition will taper off only when we can’t figure out a thing to do we haven’t done before.

The ambition tapering off and them returning to give us TOS-type stories could not happen soon enough for this fan.

….No more musical eps, and no more interjecting embarrassing sitcom characters into the show please.

As far as the Gorns go, I want to see a ton more, and keep doing what are doing, because I am loving the fan hypocrisy of so many whining about the Gorn changes while drooling over the song and dance numbers and middle school-level cartoon character BS…lol

What has hypocrisy got to do with it? They’re two totally different things. You can hate the Gorn for whatever reason and like the musical for totally unrelated reasons. Hypocrisy doesn’t apply. FYI I do like the Gorn, except not what Goldsman says about them being monsters. They can be monstrous without being monsters. This opens the way to a change of perception from a greater understanding but to him there’s no understanding the Gorn… I also liked the musical, in a way. You really have to take yourself out of the box and take it for what it is. If you’re expecting serious intellectual Star Trek (like you always do) then you’ll hate it (same with LDS). You gotta be a kid again. The musical is like the sun coming out after a week of rain! But no, it’s not Star Trek per we.

That’s per se, not per we…

no need to point typos, especially when the site is known to be having errors with the editing of existing posts.

I don’t usually do this, but there’s a need when my typo can make my sentence unclear. And not everyone knows the site is having problems.

When you criticize one element a sizable group considers is dumb, while gushing over another element that a sizeable group considers is dumb, sure, that is hypocrisy.

I think you just don’t like this because by this definition it makes you one…lol

Hypocrisy would be if someone were to publicly say they hate the SNW musical for being a musical, while secretly loving it, or vice versa.

Having different issues with different subjects can’t be hypocrisy, as there requires some common thread, some direct opposite of one another. Now if there was a Gorn musical episode where they sing about their lizardly love for lettuce and that person said they loved it while hating the other SNW musical, then that might be hypocrisy.

Lol, riiiiiight!

First of all they can be two distinct sizeable groups. Secondly the two elements have nothing to do with each other. This is not what hypocrisy means even if you keep using this twisted logic every time.

I just think you’re being passive-aggressive because you can’t get over your failure at English comprehension class and you had to take it in Summer school, missing the best months of surfing in SoCal…

Or instead of that convoluted lengthy essay on why I’m wrong, perhaps the answer is that you could just be being a hypocrite here.

Occam’s Razor, my friend

No, it’s just that you don’t know what the word means.

Assuming, of course, that the groups making the accusations consist of the same people.

I have no problem with the *visual* reboot of the Gorn; the lizard suit belongs in the same room as the styrofoam rocks from the 1960s. But the lesson of “Arena,” about perception and misperception in international crises, and about decisionmakers mitaking tragedy for evil, is forever timely. Serious academic work has been written about it.

Now we’re being told it really is about evil after all.

That’s not hypocrisy, it’s…taste?

Hypocrisy is you whining in every Picard story about season 3 being a Star Wars ripoff, while at the same time gushing over this which is a Alien/Predator ripoff.

I will admit that.

That’s the difference between us — I’ll admit when I’m being a hypocrite here

That’s…also not hypocrisy (necessarily.)

Sorry, I thought from your above comments regard TWOK that you thought many of Goldsman’s points were valid? Apologies if I misinterpreted, as a wrote a short rebuttal on that basis!

No worries, I figured that knowing your view. Like you, I love the motion picture

I hear ya’. Agree 100%.

“Genre-hopping” comes dangerously close to flirting with “gimmicky”.

That was basically the musical lol. It couldn’t feel anymore gimmicky. Now I’m starting to wonder if they have something crazier than that in season 3?

Where do you go after an animated crossover and a musical episode? Cross over with Yellowstone or Halo?

My concern is that they’re starting to lose focus.

The Enterprise crossing over with Harrison Ford in 1923 would be EPIC! lol

there was a fun Star Wars one-shot where the Falcon was flung across time and space, crash-landed on Earth and Indiana Jones came across the wreckage

Actually, it would…

The crew are turned into bunnies obviously, as presaged by La’an.

Just beating a dead-horse here, but they’re already crossing the line to gimmicky. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not the first time in Star Trek history. But when you only have 10 EPISODES I just don’t think you can get away with it and not expect it to get old. With 20+ episodes, a couple gimmicks like “Trials & Tribbleations” or “Bride of Choaotica” or “In A Mirror Darkly” can be enjoyed or excused and just move on. SNW season 2, in my opinion, had 3 out of 10 gimmicky episodes (Charades, Those Old Scientists & Subspace Rhapsody), leaving only 7 options to try and do solid Star Trek. And of those 7, I’m not sure more than 2 or 3 really delivered.

2 or 3 delivered? Honestly, I think you’re being too kind to what was essentially a pale parody of Season 1.

“Genre-hopping” comes dangerously close to flirting with “gimmicky”.

“Dangerously close”? They’re practically exchanging DNA!

<g> Where’s a smiley face when you need one.

Hopefully the writers and producers wont continue to thumb down the original TOS like they have done to Spock and Pike. I know Pike is just starting to get fleshed out in Trek lore, but no need to make him less the decisive and unsure of him self. I know Spock is being Spock from those “old” days of him starting out, but I hardly think he would be an idiot. Yes I know todays culture likes to feature woman and ethics as being superior, but what happened to making them equals across the board? Wasn’t that the point of Star Trek from the beginning? I mean they already started the thumb down with Scotty as being a less then average student. Hints at things to come with him I’m afraid. I’m afraid what they will do with McCoy, Sulu and Chekov at this point.

The Pelia storyline about grading people is wearing thin. There are bound to be better lines for her than constantly having her discuss grades. It’s almost like they know they’re supposed to have an engineer character which is why she exists. However, they don’t know what to do with her. When they do figure it out she is mostly serving as a support to the main character’s idea. Rather than it being solely hers.

I am curious about the comment about men and women being equal in the show. Do you feel the male characters are being written too “weak?” Or not being given enough “voice?” I only ask because I personally think some of the women characters aren’t that well written. So for me it’s less of a men vs women thing and more of a creative issue.

As a woman, I like strong female characters, but too many is just that — too many! Uhura and Ortegas; those two would have been plenty.

Scotty and the rest would be cool. I think the characters I want to see the most are the ones that die early. Give me Gary Mitchell and Doctor Elizabeth Dehner and Garth of Izar. Let’s flesh out these blank slates.

or Kodos. You could have long term arc with either Kodos or Garth. Not necessarily Picard 10 episode movie arc but a small thread weaving through all the episodes.

Kodos would have happened long ago, well before the cloud creature, let alone any of this stuff.

Alternatively, how about no more lousy prequels and giving us something fresh?

Fresh…now *there’s* a concept I can embrace, although I confess I loved S1 of SNW. Fresh characters with great personalities…oh, wait, they’re dumping all that for re-hashes of the old gang. What a pity.

Funny how Goldsman is sticking to his guns on reinterpreting the Gorn.

They tried this with the Klingons in Discovery and it was a dismal failure. A) Because the writers wrote bad stories with unlikeable characters and B) the Klingons were deeply entrenched in Trek lore in all series and many movies. It was an uphill battle they were never going to win, no matter how hard they tried.

With SNW, despite stubbornly wanting to reimagine aanother legacy alien villian, Goldsman was much smarter. A) They chose a more obscure alien that appeared only once in TOS and in the mirror universe on Enterprise. B) They hired a talented writers room that wrote good stories and the characters are genuinely likeable. Therefore fans are likely to be more forgiving, simply because the show is good and the ratings are good.

Just my two cents worth.

my two cents is I disagree with every word of this:

“ A) They chose a more obscure alien that appeared only once in TOS and in the mirror universe on Enterprise. B) They hired a talented writers room that wrote good stories and the characters are genuinely likeable.”

now we have four cents which still don’t really add up to much lol

Agreed on the DSC / kling part, cannot possibly disagree more about SNW. The writing is, I’m sad to say, excement.

Instead of characters evincing cool professionalism that frays at times but maintains, we have 902-10-forward in Space.

exc r ement, sorry. Lots of letters dropping out of posts lately, is it my keyboard or the site?

Hey, I re-read all my own stuff a dozen times, but those insidious little typos still ambush my thoughts. We’ll figure out what you mean…<g>

Uh, I guess I’m too old to understand your numerical reference, but I agree SNW is getting a bit “woke”. However, it’s still not as horrible as DIS, where the characters pause before every decision to examine their “feelings” about it. IMO (which I’m guessing is a minority based on its longevity) that show should have vanished years ago; as Trek, it’s drek!

Original ideas, well written …four simple words the SNW ptb can’t seem to comprehend.

I’m 100% in support of them showing their interpretation. But it is certainly a reinterpretation and not consistent with what has gone before. Changing what’s gone before isn’t inherently wrong, but for something important to many people, you hopefully have good reasons. That remains to be seen. Seems though like they could have created “new” monsters if all they are is trying to show the bleak reality of monsters.

It seems smart to me not to procrastinate too much over the introduction of the TOS characters if that’s where they want their story to end, since they don’t know how long they’ll get to set things up.

That said, we really, really need more stories for this to grow and develop – ten episodes a season every now and again is going to make that difficult.

Yeah, ten episode “seasons”. Bunch o’ wusses. I’m old enough to remember when a season was 34 1-hour episodes (with fewer commercials, too), and just a few years ago the number was 22. If they want to save some $$$, they could demote some of the dozen or so “producers” on their staff. Isn’t there an old saying about “too many cooks spoiling the broth”? Too may producers result in self-replicating bobble heads. Somebody…somebody help the Captain, or at least have someone with a creative bone in his body steering the creative ship! An idea that worked for Mork and Mindy isn’t going to work here!

I thought the scene where Scotty is re-introduced to Pelia clutching the appliance that he’s built was in some ways one of the best gags of the series. The situation was *dire*, but it was also just intrinsically funny that this brilliant engineer apparently cannot do anything simple or orthodox – it wasn’t the characters getting sidetracked from their predicament.

In general I thought that ‘Hegemony’ did a better job of incorporating side talk etc between characters than the previous episodes, even when Pike is praising Ortegas on the shuttle it feels organic rather than a diversion at a crucial moment.

It did all feel quite organic, that’s a great thing to point out.

I want to see Enterprise characters cameo in S3. So I guess T’Pol or maybe Phlox (I don’t think they established Denobulan lifespans)

I quite like to see a Xindi featured or a story about them, just to see where they are at in 23rd century. Denobulans have appeared in both Lower Decks and SNW, which was nice to see. I don’t remember their lifespan being established, either.

*I’d (ahh the slow down glitch got me too)

I am really worried about Goldsman’s Gorn-related comments as it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Star Trek. Star Trek fundamentally has always put out the message that there aren’t monsters. Maybe sometimes individuals who have really gone bad, bu Regen the Borg had their point of view and Star Trek made it clear that genocide wasn’t an option with them. I also get that the Gorn are very alien to us, but part of Star Trek’s optimism is showing us that we can ultimately always overcome this alien-ness and always find some common ground.

So far, I think the SNW/Disco casting of legacy characters is very, very good with some exceptions. Even though no one asked for it, I’m going to compare the SNW/Disco casting to the JJ casting and state which is better, IMHO:

Pike: SNW/Disco Jim Kirk: JJ Spock: SNW/Disco Uhura: SNW Scotty: SNW

For me, only Chris Pine’s Kirk is better than the SNW Kirk, but I prefer the SNW casting over JJ for the rest. Zach Quinto does a good Spock, but Peck’s is more nuanced and just, better. And this new Scotty kid REALLY sells being an engineer much better than Simon Pegg. I really like him.

I hope to see this new Scotty next season. He could be promoted to Chief Engineer quickly, even though he is only a junior grade LT. There is precedence in Trek: Geordi was LTJG during TNG’s first season, and got promoted to full LT and Chief Engineer season 2 (he did not rank up to LCDR until the following season).

I absolutely hated Pine’s Kirk until the third film, BEYOND. Could not stand him in the first 2 films. He played Kirk as a buffoon.

Yeah I hated Kirk in the first movie, he just came off like an arrogant whiny brat and why promoting him to captain in such a ridiculous way made it more eye rollling. I will say I liked him more in STID but he still came off as a kid doing very dumb things like taking your star ship under water, seriously??? I’m trying to imagine the original Kirk, Picard or Janeway taking their ships under water and in a pre-warp society at that. Sigh

But by Beyond he at least felt like an adult and came off more like a captain.

And also like the new Scotty as well. Pegg’s Scotty was OK, but they turned him into a clown most of the time. The original Scotty certainly came off comedic at times but not ALL the time either.

Completely agree. I just found that the way the portrayed the characters in the JJ films were off. They finally got it in BEYOND. And that story was more Star Trek to me as well.

I think that is why I love the casting and the way the actors portray the characters. I find that Paul Wesley’s version of Jim Kirk is more on par with what we know. And I think the depth that they are giving the characters, such as Chapel, to be wonderfully done.

Completely agreed. BEYOND was easily the best Kelvin film, and the only one that did justice to its source material. In fairness, I don’t think the Kirk-as-buffoon was an acting decision by Pine; it was probably more a problem with the writers, who are basically still around and writing NuTrek.

@ Tiger2 – Indeed. I found Pine himself to be very watchable in the ‘Kirk’ role. It’s just that after a highly effective introduction to him being born while his father experienced a noble demise, things then went downhill overall as J.J. and co. were content to dumb down their big-budget TOS-inspired 2009 movie and follow-up with juvenile dialogue and ridiculous antics in too many scenes, which made certain characters act very unlike their ‘Prime Timeline’ TOS personas. ‘And ‘revenge’ storylines didn’t hold my interest enough to allow for the new ‘characterizations’.

I was mainly concerned about Pegg’s casting before the 2009 movie came out, as I feared his ‘Scotty’ was going to be be turned into more of a ‘comedy’ role overall than what Doohan portrayed during the TOS episodes. And so it turned out…as he then proceeded to be ridiculously sucked through various water tubes at some point. And don’t even get me started on his moments with his oyster-faced ‘Keenser’ sidekick.

Yes, J.J. can certainly churn out some glossy-looking visuals and set-pieces at times, but it’s mainly ‘fast-food’ entertainment with little in the way of satisfying substance overall. And yes, after his underwater shenanigans with the Enterprise, it didn’t surprise me one bit when he showed a buried fleet of Stardestroyers emerge from the ground during his ludicrous Star Wars saga finale. I bet all those Stardestroyer Admirals and crewmembers really enjoyed their extended spell underground beforehand….

And just for the record, my own ‘Star Wars saga’ re-watch will only ever consist of the ‘Despecialized’ versions of the original trilogy, period. ;)

Not that this excuses it, but the Crazy Scotsman has been a Hollywood trope for a while (e.g., Fat Bastard in Austin Powers). I blame the SNL “if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” skit, which was funny in and of itself, for launching this stereotype.

Yeah, third time was the charm for me as well. I think a lot of it may have been due to Lin wanting callbacks to TOS, like the CORBOMITE speech this kirk echoes as they fly into the problem area, and of course the Kirk/McCoy birthday.

Based on the sum total of each of their careers, I have no problem putting that on Abrams and not Pine.

I will say that despite my other issues with S3, they nailed it with the casting of Scotty.

I’m glad we finally got a Scotsman playing the role; that helped. And somehow, they resisted the urge to portray him as a Zany Scot (TM), in the mould of “if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”.

I’m starting to get a sour taste at times when I hear Akiva Goldsman talk (read what he says). I still remember how he mangled Picard season 2 when Terry left to start on season 3. And that same sort of ‘arrogance’ is showing up in SNW now.

I absolutely loved season 1 (of SNW), so I thought, well maybe this is a better fit for him than Picard was, but after having seen season 2 (of SNW) I’m getting the same “I’ll do whatever I want, whether it makes sense or not” vibe again.

I wish they would let go of that obsession of having to do big swings and ‘just’ make good Trek, resulting in a more cohesive season of episodes, focussing more on the captain than a rather pushed-onto-us Kirk. Still not feeling him, party because of the way they have been forcing him on us.

Granted, he CAN do whatever he wants, but it wouldn’t hurt the show to listen to the fans once in a while. I feel that’s not happening with him.

Yes I agree. I think they’re going for the big swings because they don’t have better ideas for “good Trek”, either because the writers lack the ability or experience to write good sci-fi or they simply don’t have adequate Trek knowledge or understanding.

I actually had no issue with Season 2. I thought it was a very solid season and well done. Anyway, that is what THIS fan thinks. And I have been a fan of all versions of Trek.

This fan had no issue with season 2 either. Well maybe one issue. It wasn’t long enough.

I actually didn’t say I didn’t like season 2. I loved a lot of the episodes. But on the whole I liked 1 better. By ‘more cohesive’ I mean in season 2, at times, the contrasts between episodes were just too big imo. It felt like achieving ‘big swings’ was more important than other aspects of creating a solid season of storytelling.

Considering that SNW is episodic like everyone wanted. Remember the demands of people fed up with season long plot arcs?? With episodic, they are able to carry a season long underlying theme but have stand alone episodes where they can try new things. I found that each episode was strong in terms of character development and story telling. Letting each character shine. Since Anson Mount and his wife have a new born and wanted to spend more time with family, this was the perfect way to focus on the rest of the crew instead of being background characters like in TOS and early seasons of TNG. For me, season 2 had a great variety of episodes and storytelling.

Considering that SNW is episodic like everyone wanted….

Who’s this “everyone”?

Go back and read comments from Discovery… and Picard. For the posts here from “fans” tired of season long arcs and wanting to go back to episodic.

Ah, but episodic plots take creativity…a plot has to unfold in 42 minutes or thereabouts…an arc can be slow, giving the writers time to figure out just what sort of corners they’ve written themselves into. Wasn’t one of the Dallas arcs just a bad dream (for the writers as well as the viewers!)? Continuing threads can help maintain continuity in a season, but they should never be the main impetus. Clearly, SNW ran out of ideas early on, thus the TOS re-boot.

I’d argue that it actually is more serialized than it is episodic. That’s mostly because they remain more character focused than plot focused. It’s more soap opera than sci-fi/action/adventure. This is what you get when you have a Showrunner that’s past work is not action or sci-fi, but more young adult.

I think it started a lot more episodic in season 1 but then they really fell more in the serialized mentality this year. When the final episode includes a quip by Pike about being glad he’s not singing his thoughts anymore, I don’t see how anyone could watch that as a stand alone episode and not be completely confused if you hadn’t seen Subspace Rhapsody. And with the relationships playing a huge role this season, it would be hard not to watch in order – especially the La’an storyline with Kirk or the Spock and Christine love affair.

Arrgh! Spock and Chapel, the besotted lovers. Cringe-worthy horror show!

The physical depiction of the Gorn doesn’t bother me, it’s just this bent that they need to all out monsters. That’s not very Star Trek. Klingons, Romulans, Jem’Hadar, Founders, Species 8472, Cardassians, Borg, Xindi Insectoids, Hirogen… they’ve all been given moments where we saw glimpses of their complicated nature, times when we could see how humanity could find common ground with them and connect. The only time that didn’t really happen with a Big Bad was the Xindi Reptilians (is this a pattern with hating on lizard aliens?).

So to take the position of, “The Gorn get less monstrous later, so we can make them quasi xenomorphs now” doesn’t really sit well with me. If there’s no plan to give them any depth and shades of grey, it’s just not great writing or great Star Trek.

Haven’t read all the comments but I’m thinking the reason they brought back the Gorn is because they ran out of ideas, got a bit lazy and were trying to tie SNW to TOS. Same as the reboot with Chris Pine bringing back Khan, an English white guy. Lack of imagination or lazy writing instead of developing a new species. But that’s my opinion.

Yep, fresh and exciting characters, but for the writers to run out of ideas so early in Season 2 just shows a lack of imagination. Oh, and TOT, anyone know why the Hemmer character was killed off? After Pike and Ortegas, he was the best thing in the show. I hope it was the actor’s choice (all that makeup!) because he was a wonderful counterpoint to the other characters, much as I like a few of them. The show has become an all-girl band, and while I like a *few* strong female characters, I’d also like my own fair share of manly eye candy, please! I may come to view SNW as a 1-season series unless the absurdly copious number of “ producers ” can agree on an approach.

Do you remember that time when everyone on trekmovie.com kept making typos that couldn’t be fixed due to an editing glitch?

Picard: “Those were the days” :)

Season 2 was inconsistent. The musical and lower desks crossover were a waste of two episodes.

To each their own. Those two episodes were my favorites of the season, maybe the series.

I mean, I agree the season was inconsistent, but…yeah, both of those episodes were at least very good (and I don’t care for either Lower Decks or musical episodes of non-musicals).

To be honest I thought they were so awful, most of the season was just bang average writing. They weren’t the poorest episodes for me me of SNW. The Spock body swap the Spock becomes human. Though the awful pop music in the musical where Spock sings about being the EX is so f’ing bad. This is crap and I am sorry, they can do better. Just go to Apple as a streaming service the sci fi shows there are superb.

“Just go to Apple as a streaming service the sci fi shows there are superb.”

I’m good. My time’s not infinite, nor is my money.

Agree about the Spock body swap…that episode is perhaps the most cringe-worthy of an overall bad season. Personally, I think having 20 or more “producers” is just a way to portion out the blame; no show needs more than one person to schmooze the money folk and another one or two to keep the show on course. With so many opinions in the mix, the whole thing is just a jumble of second-rate, re-hashed ideas, each bad proposal having an origin point and then a whole chorus of “Oh, and then they could…” and, “we could build on that by adding a purple unicorn…” until even mediocrity looks creative. Too many back-slapping, chattering people building themselves a tower made of fog…it’s gonna collapse, and then each one can happily blame someone else for the fall.

Yep, we each have our favorites. One of mine, previously unmentioned, is the episode where the child’s book characters come to life. Everyone had such a good time with it (especially Anson Mount) that I had a good time, too. I wouldn’t want to see this sort of diversion all the time, but as a one-off, I thought it was pretty dang amazing.

Wasn’t the whole concept of this show to be different each week?

But not just different in a bad way each week.

This is why I prefer Disco. An awesome new story arc every season.

Arc is an interesting word, isn’t it? Suggesting a sub -orbital trajectory, like the first two Mercury spaceflights. Not so much a full mission as a stunt flight.

kmart: 10 words is all it took to describe SNW so eloquently. I salute you!

What constitutes a waste of an episode? If one thinks a story is godawful, then that’s that, but every season of every Trek show is at least a little uneven. To each their own.

But from the POV of fulfilling SNW’s mission statement, these were unique inventive standalone outings which forwarded ongoing character arcs. The musical episode memorably sits alongside dozens of anomaly of the week episodes, and the Lower Decks episode fostered the kind of franchise interconnectedness which has served us well oh so many times, including before Marvel made it mainstream. I see no waste on SNW beyond certain characters getting the short shrift.

From a purely personal standpoint, another problem I have with the series is its poor sound. I admit I’m getting on in years, but I haven’t found another show where it’s just so difficult for me to understand the characters. Anson Mount, my favorite among the cast, whispers low and intensely…and rapidly, at times, and he’s not the only one. Even the gal playing La’An mumbles her way through some scenes, as if she has marbles in her mouth, and she’s usually understandable. It’s as if the director says “this scene has to be told in 53.2 seconds, and you’ve got 3 minutes of dialogue to deliver, so step it up folks!” Most of the characters seem to suffer from this occasionally, although I can understand the characters of Hemmer and Uhura just fine all the time.

Just rewatched the crossover, only one I bothered to do so with this season. Still really liked it, but when I tried to watch LOWER DECKS afterward ( third try!), still couldn’t get into it. Can’t say I didn’t make an effort, though.

Although I’ve never seen Lower Decks (and don’t plan to), I thought the episode was kind of cute, certainly better than other offerings in the season. Agree about the musical…it was just a waste. The great ensemble cast of interesting and original characters is what makes the show work for me, although some of the lame plots of S2 just turned me off. Considering how dreadful S2 was, I have no expectation for anything original to occur in S3, and turning it into TOS: The Younger Generation is just pitiful.

I hope SNW talks about Scotty’s drinking problem. Scotty obviously had a drinking problem in TOS.

You mean he’s just Scottish.

Really? Because he got purposefully drunk in one episode? Or because he enjoys scotch? Stop trolling for attention. Get a dog.

Scotty has problems. Don’t be an enabler.

Ok drama Queen.

He also got plastered in that TNG episode.

Honestly, the “familiar characters” I would really most like to see pop up in “Strange New Worlds” are (former) Yeoman Colt, Jose Tyler, and Dr. Boyce. It’s too bad this series just missed on the opportunity to have Laurel Goodwin make some type of a guest appearance on this program.

“Talk with the Gorn in 10 years time”. I suppose Kirk sort of talks with them…

Star Trek Takes Place After an Apocalypse on Earth - Here's What Happened

After a nuclear war that cost millions of lives, the genocidal aftermath laid a foundation for both xenophobia and utopia in Star Trek.

From its first episodes, Star Trek has been a franchise about humanity, and its potential to evolve into a better version of itself. Gene Roddenberry's passion project set out to explore new worlds, and the ethical and moral outcomes of often painful decisions. But buried in Trek 's lore is the secret key as to why its utopian standards are so important to its civilization. World War III had scorched the Earth, and the scars of the post-atomic horror were still fresh when the United Federation of Planets was founded.

The roots of that final World War are slightly confusing. The original 1966 Star Trek series introduced the Eugenics War in "Space Seed," a conflict that burned through the 1990s as an army of genetically engineered humans tried to overtake Earth. The tyrannical Khan Noonian Singh was arguably the most peaceful of these superhuman warlords, but millions of lives were still lost. Though Spock calls this the Third World War, 1969's "The Savage Curtain" introduces a figure that later becomes the architect of a "true" world war in the mid 21st century, Colonel Green.

RELATED:  Kate Mulgrew Explains Exactly Why She's Returning to Star Trek

Peter Weller plays the xenophobic Paxton in Star Trek: Enterprise

Colonel Phillip Green is described in "The Savage Curtain" as the leader of a genocidal war. Star Trek: Enterprise followed up on Green's history, with an infographic seen in "In a Mirror, Darkly," naming him responsible for thirty-seven million deaths. The fourth season Enterprise episode "Demons" would then offer a stark new clarity to Green's actions. Obsessed with human genetic purity after years of radiation exposure due to a world war he engineered, Green continued to call for genocide to purge undesirable genetics from the human race. Green is the architect of a horror that continued for decades after the atomic war.

Despite Green's demand for further slaughter, humanity slowly began to recover. Less than a decade after his gruesome speech, scientist and inventor Zefram Cochrane would make first contact with the Vulcans in 2063. It was a watershed moment for humanity, the first step towards that better future and its network of allied worlds. But it didn't change the world overnight. Pockets of irradiated land and genetic mutants would persist into the 22nd century and, with them, chaos and distrust would continue to mar Earth.

RELATED:  Star Trek: The Next Generation - Why Denise Crosby's Tasha Yar Left After Season 1

Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987 with the feature-length two-part story "Encounter at Farpoint." Fan-favorite character Q ( John de Lancie ) makes his introduction virtually alongside the new crew, and the omnipotent alien is here to put humanity on trial. He uses a post-World War III tribunal hall to do it, providing the franchise's first glimpse of the fallout and the chaos that laid the foundation for today's Federation. Among Q's throng are drug-addled soldiers, mutants and poverty-stricken rabble, who care more about entertainment than actual justice. As Picard notes, the hall appears as it would have been, and Troi, the Betazed empath, remarks on its lack of illusion.

world trek iii

Set a century prior to Captain Kirk's era, Enterprise  would reveal that the war and its ghastly aftermath had already become fuel for award-bait films. Yet the trials of the post-atomic horror had one last challenge to offer mankind, rooted in all-too-familiar xenophobia. The 22nd century saw the Terra Prime terrorist movement attempt to echo similar real-world attempts to gin up the hate, expulsion and murder of those deemed "other." Terra Prime and its founder, John Paxton, not only believed in the genocidal purity ethics of Colonel Green but held the Vulcans directly responsible for not intervening earlier, preventing the war and its horrific aftermath.

RELATED:  Star Trek's Most Iconic Technology Exists Because of Budget Constraints

Terra Prime's extremist views came to include seeing all non-human life as a threat, and they engaged in a series of attempts to destroy the Federation. The crew of the NX-01 Enterprise managed to corner Paxton and arrest him. Paxton's attempt to build a separatist Earth by humans and for humans ultimately failed. By Picard's era, the horrors of WWIII and its aftermath had at last become fodder for the history books, an era to learn from and to never repeat.

With series creator Gene Roddenberry a veteran of the last world war, the warnings of the outcome of another great and terrible war is more than window dressing. Like fellow creator Rod Serling, buried inside Roddenberry's most famous work is the never-ending plea to humanity to be better. And with more than words, Star Trek has shown its audience horrific but useful glimpses of what the consequences should be if humanity ever fails its greatest test.

KEEP READING:  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Why the Christopher Pike-Led Series Is Long Overdue

Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!

Star Trek: Discovery tackles General Order One, World War III, and the Prime Directive

New eden startrek discovery

Credit: CBS 

For old-school fans of Star Trek , the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery ,  “New Eden,” puts a subtle twist on a very old idea. So if you’re brand new to Trek or a little hazy on the history of Starfleet and all their rules, you might have been wondering why Captain Pike was constantly talking about “General Order One.” Why couldn’t Burnham, Owosekun, and Pike reveal their awesome 23rd-century tech to the pre-warp humans living on this planet? And what the hell is this World War III that’s only like 20 years in our future? Here’s what it all means.

**SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers ahead for  Star Trek: Discovery  Episode 2, "New Eden."**

In “New Eden,” the USS Discovery accidentally rolls up on a planet populated by people (not aliens!) descended from humans who were mysteriously whisked away from Earth in the year 2053, during “World War III.” In Star Trek canon, characters have been referencing “World War III” since the original series, but there’s a tiny bit of confusion as to when, exactly, it happened. In the 1966 classic episode “Space Seed” (that’s the one with Khan), Spock referred to the Eugenics Wars on Earth as being “the last of your last so-called World Wars.” And, because Trek was written in the ‘60s, this future war — involving genetically enhanced dictators — was said to have taken place in the 1990s.

Since then,  Trek canon has grappled with this detail, since, as far as anyone knows, there wasn’t a World War III in the ‘90s involving genetically engineered crazy people. However, there is a series of non-canon Trek novels called  The Eugenics Wars ,   by Greg Cox, that convincingly retcons Khan and this war as a “secret war” taking place outside the awareness of the American population. These books rock, and they even reconcile the faux ’90s of old-school Trek with the "real" ‘90s as seen in the  Star Trek: Voyager episode “Future’s End.”

In any case, even though Spock calls the '90s Eugenics Wars the “last of the World Wars,”  Star Trek subsequently created a different World War III, and that’s the one that’s being referenced in the new Discovery episode. In the 1969 episode “The Savage Curtain,” Kirk and Spock team up with a simulacrum of Abraham Lincoln to duke it out with historical villains, including Genghis Khan and the Klingon messiah, Kahless the Unforgettable. But one of the other historical villains is a guy named Colonel Green, who Spock identities as a major jerk from World War III. Here’s the rub, though: This time World War III is said to have happened in the 21st century. From that point on, Star Trek canon stuck with the idea that a major world war happened in the 21st century.

In the very first episode of The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint,” Q mocks Captain Picard by confronting him with simulacrums from World War III as proof that humanity sucks. (This happens a lot in Trek , aliens recreating historical figures or, more relevantly to “New Eden,” transporting humans from the past to distant planets. In the 1995 Star Trek: Voyager episode “The 37‘s,” the USS Voyager finds a bunch of humans from 1937 on an alien planet, including Amelia Earhart.)

Right now, Trek canon has World War III lasting from 2026 to 2053. In “New Eden” the crew discovers the far-flung humans are from 2053, which means the mysterious “Red Angel” aliens transported them across the galaxy the same year that war ended. In the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact , Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise  travel back in time to 2063, which Riker establishes is 10 years after the end of World War III. Funnily enough, the episode “New Eden” is directed by Jonathan Frakes , who is not only famous for playing Riker in The Next Generation series and films but also directed First Contact.

Speaking of “first contact,” the central conflict of “New Eden” is Pike’s insistence that the landing party can’t reveal that they are really humans from a contemporary Earth with advanced technology. Pike says that because the displaced humans didn’t get to the planet in a starship “that makes them pre-warp, subject to General Order One.” In all of Star Trek lore, General Order One is more commonly known as the Prime Directive, which basically states that Federation starships can’t interfere with the natural development of cultures on planets that don’t have interstellar travel. Basically, once a society achieves the ability to travel through space at speeds faster than light, it’s fair game to talk to them, but before that, it's forbidden to introduce advanced technology to a “lesser-developed” culture, even if it means saving a bunch of lives.

There are countless examples of people talking about — and debating about — the Prime Directive, in literally all versions of Star Trek, from the original series' “The Omega Glory” to the film Star Trek: Insurrection.

Obviously, like most fictional rules, the Prime Directive/General Order One exists only to be broken, in a variety of dramatic ways. In the 1989 Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers,” Captain Picard tries to avoid breaking the Prime Directive after a group of villagers on a pre-industrial world believe he is a god and the Enterprise runs on magic.

In the 2013 movie Star Trek Into Darkness, the entire prologue of the film centers on the crew of the Enterprise trying to save a hunter-gatherer alien society from a volcano eruption, but of course they’re not supposed to show their faces or reveal the Enterprise while doing it. But because Kirk wants to save Spock, they do it anyway, and those aliens also seem to start worshiping the Enterprise as a deity. ( Into Darkness was co-written by Alex Kurtzman, the current showrunner of Discovery. )

picard star trek who watches the watchers tng

Picard has to prove he's NOT a god after General Order One/The Prime Directive gets violoated in 'The Next Generation.' (Credit: CBS)

In “New Eden,” Pike and Burnham quote science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke: “Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” a sentiment that obviously informs the entire plot of the episode. To a culture without advanced science, the things that the people on Discovery can do seem like magic.

Clarke is probably most famous for co-writing the screenplay for  2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick, but this Trek episode is subtly referencing one of Clarke’s novels:  Childhood’s End .  In a sense, that Clarke novel is like the reverse of a Star Trek plot. Instead of trying not to interfere in the development of a lesser developed culture, advanced aliens called the Overlords actually just show up on Earth in the middle of the Cold War and take over the planet, albeit peacefully. Like “New Eden,” the novel also ruminates on the places where religion and science intersect, and even suggests that the Overlords could have inspired biblical demons. 

The newest season-long mystery for Star Trek: Discovery is connected to the mysterious “Red Angels,” which, like many Trek s before it, seems to be speculating on the place where faith and interference from advanced aliens might intersect. But, as “New Eden” demonstrates, sometimes people doing the divine intervention aren’t angels, they’re actually just humans from the 23rd century with their phasers on stun.

  • Star Trek: Discovery
  • Star Trek: Discovery Season 2

Related Stories

Resident Alien Season 2 Episode 13

How Resident Alien Made That George Takei Cameo Happen

world trek iii

Nathan Fillion's Resident Alien Cameo Explained

(from left) Nicholas Hoult and Awkwafina in Renfield (2023)

Nicholas Hoult's Best Sci-Fi and Horror Boyfriend Roles

Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo) wears a suit and tie in The Purge: Election Year (2016).

Everything We Know About The Purge 6

Actor Will Smith

I, Robot Screenwriters Reveal Unmade Sequel Ideas

Deja Vu & Tenet header GETTY & WB YT

Denzel Washington Basically Made Tenet Before His Own Son Did

Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing (2004)

Before the Dark Universe, Van Helsing Was a Wild Remix of Universal's Monsters

Will Smith in I, Robot (2004)

I, Robot Doesn’t Adapt Isaac Asimov ... At Least Not Directly

(from left) OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) in Nope (2022)

Nope Costume Designer Breaks Down '80s-Era Influences

Jurassic World Dominion Alan Grant

Where Could The Jurassic World Franchise Go Next?

Denzel Washington on a hospital bed next to Angelina Jolie in The Bone Collector (1999)

How Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie Were Cast in The Bone Collector

Tom Cruise in Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion Director Joseph Kosinski Reflects on 2013 Sci-Fi Film's Origin

Recommended for you.

Cillian Murphy looks to the sky in Oppenheimer (2023).

Why Oppenheimer Doesn't Include the Deadly "Demon Core" Accidents

Resident Alien

A Guide to Resident Alien Shooting Locations

Adaline (Blake Lively) stands near a cinema projector in The Age of Adaline (2024).

Highlander, Age of Adaline, Ray Bradbury and Immortality

Memory Beta, non-canon Star Trek Wiki

A friendly reminder regarding spoilers ! At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the finale of Picard and the continuations of Discovery , Lower Decks , Prodigy and Strange New Worlds , the advent of new eras in Star Trek Online gaming , as well as other post-56th Anniversary publications such as the new ongoing IDW comic . Therefore, please be courteous to other users who may not be aware of current developments by using the {{ spoiler }}, {{ spoilers }} or {{ majorspoiler }} tags when adding new information from sources less than six months old . Also, please do not include details in the summary bar when editing pages and do not anticipate making additions relating to sources not yet in release. ' Thank You

  • Memory Beta pages needing citation
  • Memory Beta articles sourced from novels
  • Memory Beta articles sourced from short stories
  • Memory Beta articles sourced from reference works
  • Memory Beta articles sourced from novelizations
  • Memory Beta articles sourced from comic adaptations
  • United States of America
  • Earth conflicts

World War III

  • View history
  • 1.1 The war
  • 2.1 Alternate timelines
  • 3.1 External links

History and specifics [ ]

The possibility of a third global war following the first and second was feared for decades, particularly during the Cold War , when geopolitical tensions between Earth's nuclear-armed nation-states were at their height. Part of the mission of Aegis agent Gary Seven was to prevent these tensions from erupting into full-scale warfare. ( TOS episode : " Assignment: Earth "; TOS - Assignment: Earth comic : " Too Many Presidents ")

The war [ ]

Historians traced the earliest phases of the war as far back as the early 2020s , starting in the United States as homelessness, environmental degradation, and violent clashes between competing political groups caused a Second Civil War . The conflict spread throughout the world, becoming known as the Eugenics War before finally turning into the global conflict historians called World War III. ( SNW episode : " Strange New Worlds ")

In 2026 [ citation needed ] factions of eco-terrorists [ citation needed ] launched attacks responsible [ citation needed ] for as many as 37 million deaths. In addition, it is possible that a further root cause of World War III lay in the political destabilization of several European nations [ citation needed ] , including France , which was torn between the Neo-Trotskyists and the Gaullists, circa 2024 . ( ENT episode : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II "; DS9 episode : " Past Tense, Part I ")

When war broke out, Optimus Prime ordered his troops to leave Earth, their launch being witnessed by Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloane . Unbeknownst to Prime, Megatron and his forces followed the Autobots. ( TAS - Star Trek vs. Transformers comic : " Issue 2 ")

At the time of the final conflagration in the 2050s , one side was composed of the New United Nations , including the United States and the European Union ; the other side was an alliance known as the Eastern Coalition . The war's origins went back decades, but by the year 2051 , Lee Kuan had emerged as a general in the military hierarchy of the Eastern Coalition, helping to overthrow the emerging democratic movement within the government of that political bloc. This ultimately helped to cement the ECON's hard line opposition-stance to the United States's policies, bringing it into direct military conflict within two more years.

The final catalyst-events for World War III were a series of confrontations between the New United Nations and the ECON over oil fields located in Antarctica and Taklamakan , a few months before the first major nuclear salvos were launched. Rioting breaks out in several major American cities during the days immediately leading up to the war, with fires and looting prior to the nuclear strikes as people attempted to flee the impending target zones with their lives.

At precisely 0230.26 hours Eastern Standard Time, on 1 May 2053 (an event later known as the "May Day Horror of '53"), the Eastern Coalition launched a first strike comprised of intercontinental ballistic missiles , bomber attacks, and portable nuclear weapons, against major North American and European cities, combined with a simultaneous Interface viral assault against the New United Nations computer infrastructure ( The Immortality Blues ). Much to the surprise of the ECON political leadership, the New United Nations immediately retaliated with nuclear launches of their own, as well as bomber and satellite-based attacks against targets in the Middle East and Asia . Many Pacific nations sided with the Eastern Coalition against the United States when fighting finally breaks out. Other political groupings, such as the Muslim Bloc , were likewise hit extremely hard during the nuclear exchanges, despite being non-aligned with either side during the war. [ citation needed ]

The detonation of nuclear weapons over cities (in the multiple-megaton range) such as Washington, D.C. , London , Moscow , Berlin , New York City , Boston , Dallas , Mexico City , Paris , Rio de Janeiro , Tel Aviv , Jerusalem , Mecca , Riyadh , Samarkand , Karachi , Singapore , and New Delhi killed nearly half a billion people instantly. Smaller detonations occurred over Hong Kong , Beijing , and Ho Chi Minh City . Un-detonated or failed nuclear devices were discovered in or around targets such as Denver , Madrid , Rome , and Istanbul . Of the hundreds of ICBMs and bombers launched by the United States and allied forces, only one in five made it into the air, due to EMP weapons and viral attacks against the military computer networks — of these, only a fraction detonated properly. ( SNW episode : " Strange New Worlds "; TLE novel : The Sundered )

Near Richmond, Indiana , several jets dropped bombs. A group of people took shelter in the East Fork Presbyterian Church . As the bombs dropped, the group and the church was save when the church was transported to Terralysium . The group started the New Eden colony and worshiped the Red Angel who was in actuality a time traveler, Dr. Gabrielle Burnham . ( DSC episode : " New Eden ")

Conventional military forces on both sides were quickly moved into offensive position against their respective foes — on 3 May 2053, the First, Eighth, and Sixteenth Fleets under New United Nations command carry front-line troops into the Bay of Bengal , and the ECON launches a massive invasion of the North American continent, sending troops and military aircraft southward through Canada . Targets in New England (including Massachusetts ), Minnesota , the Rocky Mountains , and the Midwest are hit hard by ECON forces, the U.S. military's defenses along the Canadian border failing utterly. The United States Air Force and United States Army both fought back against the invaders, but lose many fighters and ground soldiers to the enemy. [ citation needed ]

Certain military units were abandoned in enemy territory during the war, including a New United Nations brigade under the command of Colonel Green in Kashmiristan in late May. Finally, the Eastern Coalition's governing palace was destroyed by American forces, killing ECON founder Lee Kuan . [ citation needed ]

The post-atomic horror that followed severely destabilized global civilization; terrorist organizations and rogue states often detonated small-scale "suitcase nukes," while toxins and biogenic weapons were released. Drug-addled soldiers were often sacrificed in conventional battles on the ground after much of the planetary computer systems failed; numerous small-scale conflicts created chaos throughout the globe as warlords fought over the scraps of civilization. As a result of the ICBM detonations, an enormous dust cloud enveloped the Earth, resulting in several nuclear winters. [ citation needed ]

Sovereign nations, including the United States, essentially ceased to exist following the war, the country falling into barbarism, carved up into fiefdoms controlled by competing warlords (including Colonel Green's despotic reign over the Pacific Northwest ). Without federal resources to fall back upon, most local governments are unable to feed their own people; chaos and anarchy would reign for generations afterward, well into the late 21st century . The President of the United States , President Mendoza , survived the initial days of the war, but finds herself in command of very little afterwards. ( TNG episodes : " Up the Long Ladder ", " A Matter of Time "; TLE novel : The Sundered ; TOS - Fortunes of War novel : Dreadnought! ; ST short story : " Mestral "; ST short story : " The Immortality Blues "; ST reference : Federation: The First 150 Years )

The Siege of Las Vegas was a significant battle in the war, with American forces battling ECON troops for control of the city. The forces of the US troops would eventually prove victorious, defeating the ECON troops there.

In the initial nuclear exchange of World War III, Washington D.C. was completely destroyed, along with three surrounding U.S. states. Some major cities, such as Montreal , were actually spared from nuclear hits during the first rounds of ICBM exchanges. ( TNG novelization : Star Trek: First Contact , TOS novel : Spectre )

During fighting in Paris during the war, the Eiffel Tower was destroyed. Additional combat took place in San Francisco , resulting in the destruction of the Coit Tower , among many other structures. ( DS9 novel : Trapped in Time , TNG novel : A Time for War, A Time for Peace )

The U.S. state of Arkansas would be devastated by nuclear weapons at the start World War III, owing to the many military installations in the region. Even into the 23rd century , some portions of the state would remain uninhabitable. ( TOS novel : Elusive Salvation )

In 2054 , one year following the outbreak of hostilities, Colonel Green surprised the surviving United States government by turning up in Alaska at the head of a massive army comprised of both New U.N. and ECON soldiers. President Mendoza ordered Green to stand down, but is refused; Green slaughters his way across the continent, culling the "weak" and "impure" and those afflicted with radiation sickness from humanity's gene pool, killing millions, until finally meeting his demise in Montana from an orbital strike launched by Flint the Immortal . ( ENT episodes : " Demons ", " Terra Prime "; ST short story : " The Immortality Blues ")

Humanity eventually turned over a new leaf when a few courageous people began to realize that they could make a difference. Early in the war, weather-control satellites developed by Flint the Immortal begin modifying Earth's ozone layer in an attempt to regenerate it, along with raising the planetary temperature enough to mitigate the effects of the harsh nuclear winter. This proved successful, ultimately reducing the number of potential casualties from the war.

Adrenaline regimens were discovered to be useful in treating radiation sickness after the war; this would later be supplanted by the even more effective Hyronalin therapies in later decades, after the end of the Atomic Age . The philosophy of Neo-Transcendentalism was founded by Liam Dieghan in response to the war's horrors, seeking to redress the pains of World War III by "returning [humanity] to a simpler life." ( ENT episode : " Judgment "; TOS episode : " The Deadly Years "; TNG episode : " Up the Long Ladder "; ST short story : " The Immortality Blues ")

The war culminated circa 2053 , when several of Earth's governments met in San Francisco to declare a cease-fire, effectively ending the war. ( ENT episode : " Demons ")

In the end, most of the world's major governments collapsed, and over 600 million people had died just from the immediate combat. ( TNG movie , novelization & comic adaptation : Star Trek: First Contact )

Aftermath [ ]

Despite the end of actual hostilities, the after-effects of the war referred to as "the post-atomic horror"—lingered for decades to follow. Rule of law broke down in many places, and legal systems were abolished, with the suggestion to "kill all the lawyers" from Henry VI being taken literally in some places. Asia was particularly devastated. ( TNG episode : " Encounter at Farpoint ")

The year 2073 was considered part of this conflicted era and saw a number of Humans abandon the planet whereupon they settled on the world of Okeanos . ( TOS novel : From the Depths )

Much of the United States economy was ruined, with the population reduced to standards of living less than that of the victims of the Great Depression a century earlier. So great were the horrors that human genius Zefram Cochrane had himself implanted with a pain-inhibiting chip in order to cope with the world around him. Nonetheless, his Project Phoenix was able to secure backing, and led to first contact only ten years later. ( TNG novelization : Star Trek: First Contact )

In the 22nd century , movies depicting World War III were common. ( ENT episode : " Home ")

Captain Christopher Pike used imagery of World War III to convince the people of Kiley 279 that they were about to head down the same self-destructive path that humans did in the 21st century . He later justified to Starfleet Command they had little choice but to do so since the people of Kiley had witnessed the battle between Control and the Enterprise and adapted the technology to develop weapons to wipe each other out. ( SNW episode : " Strange New Worlds ")

In later years, a monument honoring the hundreds of millions dead during the war was erected in San Francisco, on the former site of the Coit Tower. The monument continues to stand into the late 24th century . ( TNG novel : A Time for War, A Time for Peace )

In 2370 , Jake Sisko could not recall if Dresden had been fire bombed during World War III or World War II . ( DS9 novel : Fallen Heroes )

Alternate timelines [ ]

When the USS Enterprise crossed over into George Taylor 's reality, Spock suspected that this Earth's pre-industrial state, even in the year 3978 , was the result of the planet never having recovered from World War III. ( TOS - The Primate Directive comic : " Issue 1 ")

Appendices [ ]

External links [ ].

  • World War III article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
  • 1 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel
  • 2 Odyssey class
  • 3 Yeager class
  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Kenneth Mitchell, Known for ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ Roles, Dies at 49

Mr. Mitchell, a Canadian actor who appeared on “Star Trek: Discovery,” had A.L.S.

A man with blond hair and stubble, wearing a blue suit with no tie and a Star Trek pendant.

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

Reporting from Los Angeles

Kenneth Mitchell, a Canadian actor known for his roles on the series “Star Trek: Discovery” and the film “Captain Marvel,” died on Saturday. He was 49.

He had lived with the neurological disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., which causes paralysis and death, for more than five years, according to a statement from Mr. Mitchell’s family posted to his social media.

In “Captain Marvel,” he played the father of the superhero, Carol Danvers. He was also known for portraying Eric Green on the series “Jericho,” Joshua Dodd in the series “Nancy Drew,” a hockey player in the film “Miracle,” and appeared in several other film and television series.

Mr. Mitchell played the Klingons Kol, Kol-Sha and Tenavik, as well as Aurellio, on “Star Trek: Discovery,” and voiced several characters in an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”

In a 2017 interview with StarTrek.com , he said he hoped to make viewers think differently about Klingons, the humanoid warriors whose role in the Star Trek universe has shifted over decades.

“Whether someone is good or bad is all about perspective, and it’s about understanding that culture,” he told StarTrek.com in 2017. “You’ll get to know the Klingons on our show, and then people can decide if we really are the villains.”

Mr. Mitchell lived with his wife, the actress Susan May Pratt, and their children in Los Angeles. He was born on Nov. 25, 1974, in Toronto to Diane and David Mitchell.

In 2018, Mr. Mitchell was diagnosed with A.L.S., according to a statement posted to his social media in August. He revealed his diagnosis in an interview with People Magazine in 2020, saying that from the moment he found out, it was “like I was watching that scene where someone is being told that they have a terminal illness.” He added, “It was just a complete disbelief, a shock.”

Mr. Mitchell said he focused on spending more time with his family and rejected a lead role in a television series that required moving back to Canada. The makers of the series “Nancy Drew” also accommodated for his illness, he told People, using a stunt double when needed. Other roles were created for him that allowed him to be seated, he added.

“This disease is absolutely horrific,” Mr. Mitchell said in the post last year, which accompanied a photo of him watching the sunset from a wheelchair on the beach. “Yet despite all the suffering, there is so much to be grateful for,” he added.

Mr. Mitchell is survived by his wife, their children Lilah and Kallum, his parents and other family members, according to the family statement.

Livia Albeck-Ripka is a reporter for The Times based in California. She was previously a reporter in the Australia bureau. More about Livia Albeck-Ripka

World War III

  • Edit source
  • View history

World War III was a global, and ultimately nuclear, conflict on Earth in the mid- 21st century . Over 600 million people died in the war, and human civilization nearly collapsed, resulting in a period known as "the post-atomic horror " that lasted into the early 22nd century . ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", Star Trek: First Contact )

  • 2 Aftermath, first contact, and the legacy of WW3
  • 3.1 Dragon Ball Z vs. Star Trek: The Way of Infinity
  • 3.2 Federation Spaceflight Chronology
  • 3.3 Missing Link
  • 3.4 Star Trek: 001
  • 3.5 Star Trek: The Adventures of Argus
  • 5 External links

History [ ]

World War III flag

The flag of Colonel Green and the Optimum Movement.

Historians of later centuries had varying opinions on the exact nature of the war and its origins. Some linked it to the Eugenics Wars of the late 20th century , and while the seeds of the conflict may have been planted then, most scholars agreed it really began with Colonel Phillip Green 's ecoterrorism in 2026 which resulted in 37 million deaths. Green and his troops executed hundreds of thousands of people with "impurities" like radiation sickness , claiming that their deaths were for the good of future generations. ( TOS : " Space Seed ", " The Savage Curtain ", VOY : " In the Flesh ", ENT : " In a Mirror Darkly, Part II ", " Demons ", " Terra Prime ")

Among other parties in the conflict were the Eastern Coalition ("ECON"), which fought against the United States of America and the European Union . Various factions, including Green's cadre and possibly the ECON, used drugs to control their military. ( Star Trek: First Contact , TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", TNG novel: Federation )

Even during this period of global turmoil, the New United Nations worked for peace, and in 2036 declared that "no human being would be held accountable for the crimes of their race or forebearers". However, the group's efforts met with failure. ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ")

The Mind Control Revolts of 2043 - 47 occurred during this period. ( TOS novel: Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

Sometime before the war's peak, parts of New York City were mostly abandoned and was invaded by a faction of the Eastern Coalition. ( Star Trek: 001 : "When It Rains..." )

World War III reached its peak on 1 May 2053 , when nuclear weapons were detonated over London , New York City, Tel Aviv , Jerusalem , Mecca , Beijing and other cities. Asia was hit hardest, followed by the United States. Nearly half a billion people died in the initial blasts; Washington, DC and the surrounding three states were "blown off the map", and Earth was plunged into a nuclear winter that lasted most of the next decade. The post-atomic horror that followed severely destabilized civilization all over the world as governments fell and terrorist groups and rogue states detonated "suitcase nukes" and released biological weapons . The drug-controlled troops were used as cannon fodder in conventional ground battles after many global computer systems were sabotaged. Numerous small-scale conflicts erupted across the globe. The economy of the United States was devastated, and most of its citizens were reduced to living conditions worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s . ( Star Trek: First Contact ; The Lost Era novel: The Sundered )

For two months following the "outbreak" of World War III, Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas served as the operational command center for Colonel Amber's Regimental Volunteers and was the site of the final battle of the Siege of Las Vegas. ( DS9 novel: The Lives of Dax : "Second Star to the Right...")

When the extent of the devastation became clear, the remaining governments gathered in San Francisco to sign a peace accord. Even so, some wished to keep fighting, like Colonel Green and others of his ilk. After Green's death, one of his lieutenants, Colonel Adrik Thorsen , continued terrorist strikes in the name of the Optimum Movement , and by the 2070s , gained control of Great Britain . ( ENT : " Demons "; TNG novel: Federation )

Aftermath, first contact, and the legacy of WW3 [ ]

First Contact with the Vulcans in 2063 inspired new hope in humanity and aided in recovery from the war's effects in some areas. Nonetheless, the post-atomic horror raged on in Asia, the Middle East, and the "new third world" sunk into total lawlessness. According to Jean-Luc Picard , these areas remained in "chaos" well into the early 22nd century . ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", " Up the Long Ladder ")

Gradually, as the post-atomic horror declined, new attempts at unified global alliances sprung up, including the European Hegemony c. 2123 . These alliances eventually formed the genesis of the United Earth in 2150 . ( TNG : " Up the Long Ladder ", " Attached ")

World War III's legacy was far-reaching, and continued to be felt a hundred years later. The war eventually became a popular subject in the recovered film industry. The philosophy of Neo-Transcendentalism was founded to advocate a return to a "simpler life" in response to the devastation advanced technology had brought humanity. Other less-benign schools of thought emerged, including the xenophobia exemplified by the Back-to-Earth movement and its more aggressive "cousin" Terra Prime , an outgrowth of Green and Thorsen's "Optimum Philosophy". ( ENT : " Home ", " Demons ", " Terra Prime ", TNG : " Up the Long Ladder "; Star Trek novels: Final Frontier , novel )

Ultimately, World War III and first contact marked a turning point for humanity. In the aftermath, humanity came together, putting aside the differences of race and culture, and unified in a way never before seen. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Dragon Ball Z vs. Star Trek: The Way of Infinity [ ]

During World War III, Kyoto was destroyed by three hydrogen bombs . After World War III, it was rebuilt.

The Vulcans were able to remove most radioactive material in Earth's atmosphere, but small, harmless amounts of radioactive particles remained in the atmosphere. In many big cities on earth, devices were installed to remove as much of their particles as possible. These devices were still in use during the 24th century .

Federation Spaceflight Chronology [ ]

In this continuity, World War III took place from 2026 to 2047 , ending with the Day of Fire , in which 600 million beings on Earth died within 20 minutes. ( Federation Spaceflight Chronology , vol. 3)

Missing Link [ ]

In this continuity, neither the Optimum Movement nor the Eastern Coalition was involved -- in fact, neither political entity is mentioned. Economic upheavals in 2008 and 2013 are referred to, as is climatic change resulting in the average sea level rising by as much as two feet. A conflict of over 25 years ended with the near destruction of the United States of America , Russia and China by each other's nuclear weapons in August of 2053. San Francisco was one of the cities destroyed in a nuclear strike.

Star Trek: 001 [ ]

In 2752 , the crew of Starbase 001 became trapped within a holographic simulation of World War III, where they were forced to protect themselves from the holographic invading forces of the Eastern Coalition. One of the Coalition's strategies was to invade an abandoned city so that they would attain much of what was left, including possible technologies, intact. A corrupted Starfleet Command had claimed the simulation was intended as a time travel test for the crew, but in reality, was a plot to kill off those who would oppose them. ( Star Trek: 001 : "When It Rains..." )

Star Trek: The Adventures of Argus [ ]

In 2026 the Optimum Movement detonated a series of nuclear devices in 25 major cities of the United States of America , killing 30 million people and fracturing the country. In retaliation, what was left of the US government launched their own missiles at those they thought were responsible, killing a further 7 million and igniting the conflict.

Following the opening attacks there was a six-month lull, during which the eastern states America had attacked unified into the Eastern Coalition Of Nations . A quarter of a century's worth of tension between eastern and western nations and hatred of the US and its allies fueled the ECON with a seemingly unending supply of troops that allowed them to initially steamroller their way forwards. With their most powerful member crippled and facing overwhelming numbers, the western nations, under the organisational banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation , used small tactical nuclear strikes to slow the advance.

The virtual stalemate continued for several years, draining resources on both sides and causing unrest to grow in the western nations, which the Optimum Movement used to promote their philosophy of survival of the fittest. By 2033 the USA had been reformed under the Optimum, with Great Britain, United Ireland, Spain, Germany and Italy joining it by 2047 and all withdrew from the New United Nations , effectively disbanding the organisation for a second time.

In 2053 the Optimum finally put its philosophy to the test, launching a massive nuclear strike on the ECON to end the war. Unfortunately for them, the ECON managed to launch a counter strike and the result was the effective crippling of either side's ability to make war and leading the signing of the San Francisco cease-fire, but the cost was high. Almost every major city on earth had been destroyed and 300,000,000 people killed, a death toll that doubled that of the entire conflict up to that point and that made the attack that had begun the war pale in comparison.

Despite the signing of the cease-fire, small conflicts continued to erupt over the next two decades as the Optimum and ECON governments continued to collapse, with the final Optimum stronghold, Great Britain, falling in 2079 . (" Nuclear Time ")

See also [ ]

  • Optimum Conflict

External links [ ]

  • World War III article at Memory Alpha , the canon Star Trek wiki.
  • World War III article at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek wiki.
  • 1 Excelsior class
  • 2 Star Trek: Of Gods and Men
  • 3 USS Webster (NCC-4104)
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links

world trek iii

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorldWarIII

World War III

Edit locked.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/world_in_conflict_soviet_assault1.png

"World War III lasts in our heads, in our cities, on the streets, in our homes! World War III — everyone against everyone! Line up and don't ask why!" Click for the original Polish  "Trzecia wojna światowa trwa w naszych głowach, W naszych miastach, na ulicach, i w naszych domach! Trzecia wojna światowa — każdy przeciw każdemu! Stawaj w szeregu i nie pytaj czemu!" — Grupa Operacyjna , "III wojna światowa"

Some psychologists believe Humans Are Warriors and naturally predisposed towards violence . For almost the entire 20th century , it seemed like humanity was teetering on the brink of self-destruction: both World Wars , the Cold War , and then the threat of terrorism , nuclear proliferation , and biological warfare ... and all that after World War I was going to be " The War to End All Wars ". Luckily for humanity, World War III has been in Development Hell for more than half a century now — and long may it stay there (indeed, it's not a sequel anyone is looking forward to, we hope). So it's probably only natural that the next great global conflict is a popular subject in Speculative Fiction .

Weapons of Mass Destruction are probably going to get used, often recklessly , causing massive casualties. note  In fiction, anyway; in Real Life , it's possible that it might just be another very destructive conventional war, if it ever happens, due to the sheer suicidal nature of the usage of nuclear weapons. Then again, if a conventional war is actually fought, escalation to nuclear war is quite likely. A commonly used Gallows Humor joke is about this war's length ; somewhere around an hour . If the destruction gets too out of hand it might result in The End of the World as We Know It , causing an After the End situation set on a Scavenger World . If not, the winner might set up a One World Order , in which our heroes fight against The Government in a dystopian Cyberpunk type environment. Of course, it's entirely possible for the war to kill everybody , and have it center on the attendees to Humanity's Wake . If the show was made before Christmas 1991, Communists are involved, even if the war is supposedly set years after 1991. A more modern take on WWIII is that it begins somewhere in The Middle East ; Israel , Iran , India and Pakistan may be involved. Other times, it involves a resurgent Russia and more recently, North Korea . China also gets used when the work's creator isn't so worried about the consequences for that. Scenarios which have China, North Korea and/or Middle Eastern powers as the antagonists may actually involve Russia joining the Western side .

It's rare to find a piece of fiction set 20 Minutes into the Future that could resist the temptation to slap a global war into the middle of the twenty minutes. Wiping out a third of humanity must just be too much for writers to resist. (Though since the end of the Cold War , this has lessened; writers wanting to do away with a third of humanity usually go for a plague or Global Warming -related chaos.) A common way to establish the otherness of a future or Alternate History setting is to have a throwaway remark about World War III having occurred in the past.

NATO vs. Warsaw Pact

There are some associated sub-tropes with this setup in particular:

  • Gorbachev Must Die: Any scenario written after c. 1987 must find some way to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from the Soviet leadership. The 1991 coup attempt succeeding is a popular choice for this.
  • Nukes, or No Nukes: In many fictional accounts, nuclear weapons are not employed straight off for political reasons. Sometimes they're not used at all. This is based on NATO's assumptions about probable Warsaw Pact actions during the Cold War. However, actual Warsaw Pact plans put on display after the end of the Cold War revealed that the Soviets were planning to open the war with a sizeable nuclear bombing campaign.
  • Backfire Raid: a large-scale attack on a U.S. carrier group with Tu-22M "Backfire" and Tu-16 "Badger" bombers armed with conventional missiles, resulting in the group having to shoot down over 100 incoming missiles. This is basically a battle of awesome, with supersonic bombers and cruise missile launching subs on one side versus F-14s and a rapid-fire SAM system on the other. Macross Missile Massacre ensues.
  • Even for the informed public and many governments, the byzantine internal politics of the USSR made it extremely hard for outside observers of the Soviet system and its policies to judge what they were thinking. This wasn't helped by the way policies by different government departments tended to clash - something of a holdover from the Imperial Russian system, these clashes were the inevitable product of the epic three-way struggle between the Party, the Military, and the KGB.
  • Third Battle of the North Atlantic: Attacks on convoys bringing troops and supplies from the U.S. to Europe by Soviet submarines, ships and aircraft. It will often include a Backfire Raid.
  • Alternatively, the Soviets may start the conventional war by invading West Germany, but NATO use tactical nuclear weapons against them to save a failing defense — and it escalates from there. (That was the scenario in The Day After ). NATO initially intended on retaliating with nukes in the "Massive Retaliation" doctrine, but from the 1960s to the end of the Cold War "Flexible Response" dictated that nukes be used in case conventional defense failed. By the 1980s, NATO began to give their conventional options more viability by developing weapons to attack Warsaw Pact tank formations well before they were committed to battle in the Follow On Forces Attack (FOFA) plan.
  • Warsaw Pact Rebellion: Members of the Warsaw Pact (often Poland or East Germany) rebel against the Soviets. Explored by Hackett and a few other authors.
  • Status Quo Ante Peace Treaty: In many literary World War III stories, if it doesn't end in a total nuclear exchange, it ends in a rough draw, with millions dead, but no real political changes, unlike every real European war on this scale. Instead, the Cold War then resumes.

Classic Examples:

    open/close all folders 

  • Apparently, L from Death Note stopped World War III when he was just a little boy. Also, Mello threatens the POTUS with this, saying he'll write down the President's name in the Death Note and cause him to launch nukes and start a world war if the President fails to comply with Mello's demand to fund the Kira investigation. (It isn't known if Mello really meant it, or if he was just bluffing.) Note that it likely would not have worked even if he had tried it, because one of the rules is that you cannot use a Death Note to kill someone indirectly.
  • Future War 198X : Based loosely on The Third World War , it chronicles Japan's contributions (and consequences: Tokyo takes a Nuke ) to a NATO/Warsaw Pact was sometime in the 1980s
  • Part of the backstory of Ghost in the Shell includes WWIII in the mid-1990s, followed by WWIV in 2019.
  • In Heat Guy J , humans appropriated the technology of the resident Superior Species (which sounds an awful lot like nuclear power the way it's described) . Originally, they used it for peaceful purposes like energy production, but eventually started using it as a weapon of war. Although the war is long since over by the time the series begins, most of humanity has been obliterated, except for seven city-states (with a few small villages/towns clustered around them). Some people still mistrust the Celestials and their technology, and/or mistrust other people.
  • Red Eyes : The Third World War is fought against the USA after they managed to effectively conquer the world. The war starts when the US Kill Sat network are set to only intercept ICBMs and unable to attack strategic targets like cities.
  • Blake and Mortimer : The Secret of The Swordfish (and its animated adaptation ) starts off as a repeat of World War II: An Asian empire (the fictional Yellow Thibet, headed by Basam Damdu) launches a simultaneous raid on just about every world capital (and Pearl Harbor) including Washington and Moscow. Fortunately, the British have an Elaborate Underground Base from which they can launch nuclear powered superplanes (the titular swordfish), and as things get worse for Damdu he decides to fire off all his nukes before an entire squadron of Swordfish blows them up before they can launch.
  • When the Wind Blows features an elderly couple preparing for the war. They believe that it will be like World War II (i.e., survivable). They are wrong . Also adapted for film and radio.
  • The Big Bad of Watchmen saw World War III coming and determined that the world would not survive. He ended up stopping said war before it began by tricking NATO and the Warsaw Pact into thinking Earth was being scouted for an Alien Invasion .
  • In Grendel , World War III is ignited in 2120 when the US President and the Premier of the USSR are simultaneously assassinated at a summit. It ends up causing permanent damage to human civilisation.
  • In Letter 44 , World War III resulted from the US President revealing the existence of the "Builders" that was kept secret by America.
  • In "Texan Apocalypse", World War III happened when the Cuban Missile Crisis went nuclear. Unfortunately, the Soviets were unaware the US had something like three times as many nukes as them, so while parts of what's left of the U.S. are still inhabitable (if split into multiple autonomous regions), the U.S.S.R. is completely destroyed (and Japan isn't doing too well, what with receiving a lot of fallout), leaving France and the UK as the only nuclear powers left.
  • Oddly enough, averted in "Red Dragon", where nuking the Vietnamese forces when they were still only fighting the French doesn't trigger a world war. That said, the U.S still gets its land war in Asia- against China this time.
  • Judge Dredd : American President Robert L. Booth is single-handedly responsible for unleashing the Atomic Wars in the setting. An insane, jingoistic lunatic who murdered his way to the White House, Booth declared that the entire world was living off America's back and proceed to send American troops to occupy key industrial sites all around the globe. When the UN demanded a cease of operations, Booth gave them an ultimatum: either back off or he'd personally order every city in the world to be nuked. Which he did. Once the ultimatum expired, Booth unleashed all the nuclear arsenal of the USA into the world and was hit with a massive counterattack. The subsequent wars reduced the entire planet to a smoldering, radioactive wasteland.
  • 52 has the World War III incident which pit Black Adam against the remaining heroes following Infinite Crisis , who went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when his wife and her brother are killed.
  • In the Grand Finale of The New Universe titled The War , tensions between the US and the Soviets, thanks to no one knowing who caused the events of The Pitt , come to blows. They try to use nukes to destroy each other, only for The Starchild, the main holder of The Star Brand, to deactivate them. When they decide to use conventional weaponry, he steps in again, revealing its power was behind both the Mass Empowering Event known as the White Event and the destruction of Pittsburg , the so-called Black Event. It also urges them to stop fighting and live in peace and if they don't, he's not saving them a third time. Thankfully, that one sticks.
  • World War III broke out in an arc in Conchy . Being on a remote island, the characters only learn about from television. However, the war ends almost as soon as it begins when the supercomputers in charge of launching the missiles put them in orbit around Pluto instead of launching them at enemy powers.
  • Rock and Rule ended up having this in the Backstory . Mok specifically cited it in his Theme Song ('I'm the biggest thing since World War Three!').
  • Ernst Stavro Blofeld 's Evil Plan in You Only Live Twice is to spark a world war between America and the Soviet Union by stealing their spacecrafts and tricking them into thinking the other side is doing it, all for his own material gains.
  • Karl Stromberg ( who was originally supposed to be Blofeld ) in The Spy Who Loved Me attempts to provoke a civilization-destroying war between America and the Soviets so he can restart human civilization in the ocean.
  • Elliot Carver 's evil scheme in Tomorrow Never Dies is to cause a world war by kickstarting a conflict between Britain and China, with the intention of it toppling the government of the latter. His reason? So he can get broadcasting rights from the new government of China .
  • Red Dawn (1984) has World War III break out between a rudimentary alliance between America, Britain, and China vs. The Soviet Union, Nicaragua, and Cuba. By the time lines have stabilized, The Reds control Texas, a frontline covering an undefined portion of the Mississippi River, and most of the Rocky Mountains at least up to Denver, as well as Alaska and possibly a part of western Canada. Additionally, it's mentioned that the Americans were unable to use nuclear retaliation as the Russians used tactical nuclear strikes to destroy their silos in the Dakotas and Wyoming. The only cities mentioned to have been nuked are Washington, Omaha, and Kansas City. note  Washington is obvious, and Omaha makes sense because the Strategic Air Command headquarters was at nearby Offutt AFB. Kansas City is close to Whiteman AFB, which used to be a major SAC Base and is home to the B2 stealth bomber fleet, and Central-West and South-West Missouri are home to 165 old Minuteman II Silos. It's implied that areas of China were nuked as well after China allied with the U.S. and Britain. Jed Eckert: ...Well, who is on our side? Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen. Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen. Col. Andy Tanner: There were . [throws alcohol on the campfire]
  • In The War Game , World War III occurs when the United States authorizes the use of nuclear weapons against China when they invade South Vietnam, resulting in the Soviet Union invading West Berlin in retaliation. America launches its nukes against China and the Soviets, the latter of whom nuke Britain in response.
  • Threads is an interesting twist to the "Soviets Started It" scenario: the conflict kicks off when the US backs a coup in Iran against supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini (whose politics were both anti-American and anti-Soviet), leading the USSR to invade in an attempt to install a pro-Soviet regime. The two superpowers can't come to an agreement over the country, leading to conventional military attacks that quickly escalate into nuclear war. The narrative is deliberately vague as to which side used nukes first (a Soviet base was destroyed by a US nuke and US carrier group in the Persian Gulf is destroyed by Soviet nuclear weapons), but the timing of the all-out attack in the wee hours of the morning Washington DC time (when the President will most likely be asleep and NATO response will be slowest) suggests that the Soviets launched their ICBMs first.
  • The Day After depicts World War III as the result of a Warsaw Pact blockade of West Germany that quickly escalates over the course of a few days, but is ambiguous regarding which superpower launches the nukes first. This ambiguity was put in by Nicholas Meyer, the director and writer of the movie, on the belief that assigning blame to either side was pointless — millions would be dead no matter who struck the first blow. This cost the movie a chance to be Backed by the Pentagon , as the Air Force was fine with lending resources to film the movie only as long as it was made clear that the first strike was a Soviet strike.
  • Testament is another example from the same era. Unlike other examples, the film is set on the outskirts of a nuclear war, with the drama stemming from the influx of fallout and the collapse of outside society, showcasing how Mutually Assured Destruction impacts everyone , not just the people in the superpowers' crosshairs.
  • The HBO movie By Dawn's Early Light from The '90s isn't exactly a cheerful story, either.
  • Countdown to Looking Glass is another '80s World War III movie, told as a series of breaking news stories.
  • Sebastian Shaw in the film X-Men: First Class intended to provoke both superpowers into causing World War III via the Cuban Missile Crisis, in order to wipe out humanity and allow Mutants to reign supreme over the planet.
  • Andrei Tarkovsky 's film The Sacrifice features a small group of family and friends in Sweden awaiting their death by nuclear holocaust. But as par for the course with the director, all is not as it appears .
  • The 1998 mockumentary World War III , made by German broadcaster ZDF , recounts a classic Gorbachev Must Die scenario in which fictional hardliner General Soshkin seizes power in 1989 and the Soviet military brutally suppresses the Autumn of Nations, escalating into the eponymous military conflict when East German border troops fire on West Berliners across the Wall.
  • An earlier scene refers to World War III directly. When McKittrick tells David what his playing with their computer nearly did, McKittrick mentions that if they hadn't caught him, DEFCON 1 would have been declared. McKittrick: See that sign up here - up here. "DEFCON." That indicates our current defense condition. It should read "DEFCON 5," which means peace. It's still on 4 because of that little stunt you pulled. Actually, if we hadn't caught it in time, it might have gone to DEFCON 1. You know what that means, David? David: No, what does it mean? McKittrick: World War III.
  • An even earlier scene has Paul Richter directly referring to the WOPR as "spend[ing] all of its time thinking about World War III."
  • The Time Machine (1960) : George arrives in London on August 19, 1966 immediately before the city is struck by a nuclear bomb. He later learns from one of the Talking Rings that this marked the beginning of the war between the East and West which lasted for 326 years. After the last remaining factory for the production of oxygen was destroyed, the survivors split into two factions with one living underground and the other taking their chances on the surface. This eventually gave rise to the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks.
  • In Blast from the Past the main character and his parents spend decades in a subterranean fallout shelter because his paranoic father though that a minor exchange between the US and the USSR caused World War III, and when the father goes outside after confuses 90s society with a post-apocalyptic world.
  • Ocelot and Rahmat from Expend4bles try to start World War III by stealing a nuclear weapon and then loading it onto their ship to detonate it off the coast of Russia in an attempt to get America and Russia to fight and so Ocelot and Rahmat can gain profit from the war .
  • Several thrillers starting in the late 1970s had a hypothetical third world war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. All of them ended with either no or extremely limited nuclear exchanges, ending with a status quo ante peace treaty: a few million people die, but not one border or significant political change happens, unlike every other major war of such scale in European history.
  • Well, it wasn't the airman's fault so much as the missile's guidance system going haywire: It was heat-seeking and flying toward a spy plane, which were fair game on both sides during the Cold War, but it wound up going haywire when the plane cut off its engines and eliminated its heat signature, which caused the missile to plummet into a Soviet ammo depot in Latakia, Syria. (Syria was a Soviet client state throughout the Cold War.)
  • Patrick Tilley's The Amtrak Wars features the "War of a Thousands Suns". A thousand years in the past, a global nuclear war initiated by the U.S. and its allies against the Soviet Union devastates the world.
  • Though it's a restricted kind of nuclear exchange: after a lot of saber-rattling, the U.S. bombs empty parts of Siberia and the USSR aims for somewhere in Alaska. This proves to other powers that they're not joking and shouldn't be messed with.
  • Chieftains (Robert Forrest-Webb, 1982) is Team Yankee from the British perspective, focusing mainly on the adventures of a Chieftain tank crew near Hannover, though other characters include a US Abrams crew, an SAS stay-behind unit and a British colonel. The Soviets Start It. The author acknowledged that, like Team Yankee, it's inspired by Hackett's Third World War, but it does deviate from that book's plot everyone dies in a nuclear strike on day 3 of the war; unlike Team Yankee, not one character is left standing by the end .
  • In David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series, China conquers the world without use of WMDs after the West disintegrates. Many in the West actively support the Chinese in their efforts to restore order after years of economic and political instability. The war to do this is not gentle, but it does not involve global nuclear conflict.
  • The 2015 novel Ghost Fleet , features a Third World War with China starting it. The Chinese actually invade and occupy Hawaii at the start. It centers on different characters playing different roles in the war. From La Résistance in occupied Hawaii, to the conventional military, to hackers that have become cyber warriors. The title comes from the U.S. reactivated some of it's decommissioned naval ships it had mothballed, pitting them against the Chinese.
  • The Giver , Gathering Blue , and The Messenger are set in some time after what is only known as The Ruin. Little is known about it, but Gathering implies it was a combination of warfare and environmental disasters.
  • The "Wet Firecracker War" is alluded to in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress . Judging from the name, it wasn't quite as devastating as some other versions of WWIII, though it evidently went nuclear. ("Sovunion" used megaton nukes , but seems to have lost anyway; while America was hit badly and ended up becoming a "directorate" of the subsequent world government, of which "Great China" seems to be the hegemon, with India a close second.)
  • Heinlein was fond of this scenario: Sixth Column was set in the United States conquered by the Yellow Peril in the war (and we're actually treated to the radio announcing that the States couldn't fight any longer), while Starship Troopers has the war happening in 1987 between the Chinese Hegemony and the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance, causing the collapse of the previous nations and paving the way to the Terran Federation to replace it.
  • Farnham's Freehold takes place in the aftermath of a version of World War III which utterly wrecks Western civilization.
  • Part of Between Planets takes place in New Chicago since Old Chicago was destroyed during a limited nuclear war.
  • Tunnel in the Sky makes reference to World War III having happened, but the world seems largely to have recovered. The narration does specify that the war was fought out of necessity for resources due to overpopulation, rather than any ideoligical motivations. China is stated to have taken over Australia, but it's unclear if that was part of the war or a separate action. The hydrogen, germ, and nerve gas horrors that followed were not truly political. The true meaning was more that of beggars fighting over a crust of bread.
  • While he did write some more apocalyptic or even full-on "The End of the World As We Know It" stories featuring a nuclear war, Heinlein often included some version of World War III merely as part of the backdrop of his stories, where the war did involve the use of nuclear weapons but was evidently relatively mild (as nuclear wars go), with Western civilization carrying on and only a few mentions of New Chicago or of all the futuristic new buildings in Washington, D.C. "off to the east, where the Bomb had landed" ( The Puppet Masters —in that one, both the United States and the Communist bloc survive the war). Such a limited World War III (which the U.S. won) is a major part of the backdrop to The Door into Summer —on the one hand, the U.S. capital is now in Denver, but on the other hand, Los Angeles apparently came through unscathed. There's a brief mention of the Fourth World War in The Star Beast .
  • In contrast to the "limited nuclear war" scenarios found in some stories by Heinlein and other authors, other science fiction writers realized very quickly that a war fought with weapons of mass destruction would utterly devastate modern civilization. The short story "Tomorrow's Children" by Poul Anderson and F.N. Waldrop shows the aftermath of a war involving nuclear, radiological ("dust"), and biological weapons: Much of the United States is a wasteland, its "capital city" an obscure town in Oregon—there are no more real cities—and with a "government" that struggles to maintain even the most nominal control over what's left of the country; the rest of the world is even worse off. The story was written in 1947.
  • The Last Ship is set after a very brief World War III that consisted of nukes wiping out most of humanity.
  • William Golding's Lord of the Flies : It is mentioned that Britain is at war with Russia and London is destroyed by an atomic bomb.
  • Brian Aldiss ' Moreaus Other Island has a shipwrecked soldier surviving on an island where a Dr. Moreau copycat is repeating his experiments. World War III is in full with NATO and China fighting the USSR and its Middle Eastern allies.
  • The short story "The Answer", which may not be in Terro-Human future continuity: The Soviets Start It - but by destroying Auburn, New York, and then threw away any advantage gained by a first strike. The story opens years later in South America, when the scientist protagonists - an American and a Russian - briefly discuss the incident, and the Russian swears that the Soviets didn't do it. Ultimately subverted, as in fact, the Soviets Didn't Start It - the incident was actually a Colony Drop , and the effects of an antimatter meteor were mistaken for a first strike.
  • The short story "The Edge of the Knife", which is in Terro-Human future continuity, is set just before World War III.
  • Ralph Peters's Red Army depicts World War III from the perspective of several Soviet soldiers and officers, the novel notable for being a more grounded approach to the war as opposed to being a dramatic political thriller as was common in the eighties ( we never even find out what caused the war ) and a Soviet victory.
  • Tom Clancy 's Red Storm Rising , albeit a more limited one than the more common portrayal. Nukes aren't used, nor chemical weapons after East Germany makes their objections very clear, and for the most part the Pacific region doesn't get involved, but it's still more than a relatively local conflict, started when the Soviet Union suffers a major terrorist attack on its primary oil refinery that leaves them critically short of useful petroleum products.
  • The Alternate History novel Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois had the Cuban missile crisis turn hot. The Soviet Union has been obliterated, while only a comparatively few nuclear detonations is enough to turn the United States into a third world country, dependent on aid from Britain and shunned by all other nations.
  • Andre Norton 's Sea Siege (1957) is set on a small island in the Caribbean. They survive World War III (between NATO and the Warsaw Pact ) at about the midpoint of the story, but have only sketchy information from radio broadcasts about what happened (mainly a list of major cities around the world that had been nuked early on). They eventually help rescue the survivors of a Soviet submarine because by then, both sets of survivors have bigger problems than worrying about who was responsible for the war.
  • Sex Drugs And Violence In The Future is set in a world where North Korea launched nuclear missiles in 2013 at the peak of the international tension, triggering a World War that "officially" lasts until 2027.
  • The Sprawl Trilogy several times mentions "The War", which is implied to have been WWIII, although it was only a few weeks long.
  • Andre Norton 's Star Kaat has the titular race of alien beings, who have been living among us disguised as pet cats, leave Earth because they predict World War III is imminent; and they take two orphaned human children with them. This book (for young readers!) may induce Fridge Horror , because the children (the point of view characters) pay very little attention to talk of war on the radio, and leave their unhappy homes without much regret — so the implied destruction of the human race is quite casually dismissed (the Ka'ats certainly don't care about us).
  • Edgar Pangborn 's Still Persist In Wondering is set after a World War III, which lasted half an hour and (with the help of The Plague ) wiped out civilization.
  • The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern , set in a United States occupied by Soviet forces. The Soviets invade Pakistan, then when faced with a US ultimatum decide to launch a first strike attack.
  • Team Yankee The story is centered around an American tank platoon in the Battle for Germany. The Soviets Start It.
  • General Sir John Hackett's The Third World War : August 1985 . Birmingham (UK) is nuked, Minsk is nuked back and that leads to the collapse of the USSR in a very violent manner. This is a two-book series, written in a mock-history book style. The first was written in 1978, with the second in 1982 making additions and changes to the story to reflect RL developments (especially in Iran, where the Shah's regime had fallen in 1979).
  • Set in the same scenario is Harold Coyle 's Team Yankee from 1987, about a U.S. armor company in that war - it was made into a video game, a comic book (with the script by David Drake ) and an Origins Award-winning board game.
  • In William Prochnau 's Trinitys Child , features a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States, with both sides trying to limit their strikes to each other's nuclear forces. A Succession Crisis in the U.S. sees an unknowingly illegitimate presidential successor trying to escalate the war, forcing the SAC Looking Glass plane to ram his to prevent a full scale, end-of-life-as-we-know-it exchange. Notably, the book takes into account the other nuclear states, with the Chinese striking Russia, India and Pakistan going at it, and the Isrealis nuking just about everyone else in the Middle East.
  • Warday (1984) by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka was somewhat unusual in that it depicted the resulting world after a "limited" nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the USSR.
  • The Wingman novels by Mack Maloney mostly take place after WWIII. In this continuity, the U.S. has an impenetrable missile shield, so WWIII involves a massive air and ground war in Europe involving "one man knifing another in a foxhole, satellites dueling in space, and everything in between." The conflict is ended with a U.S. victory, after which the Vice President murders the President, becomes President, and shuts down the Star Wars system, allowing a disarming first strike.
  • The Zone series of action novels by James Rouch . After the initial conflict the war is (mostly) restricted by mutual agreement to an irradiated, chemical-poisoned strip of land across Western Europe to prevent escalation. This is politically and militarily convenient for the major powers - not so for the soldiers and refugees caught in The Zone itself.
  • In the Left Behind series, World War III is triggered by the former heads of world powers who, eighteen months after the formation of the One World Order called the Global Community, decide to rebel against the authority of that order's supreme leader Nicolae Carpathia to regain their own national autonomy. This results in major cities such as London, New York City, and Washington, DC being destroyed in the process, and Carpathia setting up economic sanctions against the global regions responsible to punish its citizens for the rebellion of the former heads.
  • Bernard Wolfe 's 1952 novel Limbo has World War Three involving vast airfleets ranging across Europe and Africa, destroying cities with H-Bombs and radioactive dust. The protagonist deserts from the military hospital he's working at and returns years later to a rump United States inhabiting underground cities in the centre of the country. Ironically, he returns right when another war is about to break out with what's left of the Communist bloc.
  • " The Gentle Vultures ": Since the Hurrians first built ships capable of Faster-Than-Light Travel , the races they've encountered have always engaged in a world war with nuclear weapons. They've made it their duty to wait until the end of the war and then "rescue" the survivors .
  • " Spell My Name with an S ": Humanity is on course to destroy themselves with nuclear war , when a pair of Energy Beings get involved to prove they can avert worldwide nuclear holocaust by simply changing one person's name . The second one points out that yes, the first one won the bet... but they're both going to be in trouble when their boss comes back and the humans are still around. They immediately triple the bet, and the first one goes back to recreate the nuclear war with another subtle change .
  • Harry Turtledove 's Hot War trilogy has an Alternate History version breaking out in 1951 during The Korean War . The Chinese counter-attack at the Chosin Reservoir successfully destroys three U.S. divisions leading President Harry S. Truman to authorize the use of atomic bombs on Chinese logistic centers. The Soviets retaliate in defense of their ally and World War III is on. It is mostly fought with conventional weapons with the USSR invading West Germany and NATO trying to halt their advance.
  • Dolphin Trilogy : In Destiny and the Dolphins , China and India engage in increasingly violent border disputes while Russia eggs China on. Then, while China is occupied with the fighting in India, Russia invades China. The war gradually spreads across the whole world. Unlike most examples, the war never turns nuclear - everyone worries it will, but the real devastation turns out to come from biological warfare . Someone releases genetically modified strains of typhoid fever and bubonic plague, which wipe out most of humanity.
  • Delete : The US plan risks this, since China says it will regard any nuclear blasts above them as an act of war.
  • Maggie Beckett's world in Sliders is a dystopian nightmare where the Cold War got hot. If atomic bombs were used, however, a nuclear holocaust did not result.
  • Defied Invocation in the Stargate SG-1 episode " Full Alert ". The Goa'uld manage to infiltrate elements of the Russian military and attempt to start a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. The SGC spends most of the episode scrambling to head it off, finally convincing the Russian president of the infiltration and restoring normal relations.
  • Buck Rogers in the 25th Century : World War III broke out on November 22, 1987, only six months after Buck was frozen, when the Soviet Union launched an all-out nuclear attack on the United States, destroying all of its major cities. The US counterattacked, devastating the Soviet Union, and a second wave of missiles was launched against it. Millions of people were killed in the war and millions more died of radiation poisoning in the coming months. Many humans and animals were mutated by the radiation. Society very quickly broke down. The only man made structures to survive the nuclear holocaust were the Egyptian pyramids, various Aztec ruins in Mexico and Mount Rushmore.
  • In " A Little Peace and Quiet ", a nuclear war breaks out between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1985.
  • In " Quarantine ", 80% of the world's population was wiped out in a nuclear war in 2043. The authorities of the time considered it a limited engagement as only six missiles were fired by each side.
  • In " Profile in Silver ", John F. Kennedy 's assassination is averted by Professor Joseph Fitzgerald, a time traveling historian from 2172 and one of Kennedy's descendants . This creates an Alternate Timeline in which Soviet troops invade West Berlin, resulting in World War III. In order to restore the proper timeline, Fitzgerald takes Kennedy's place and allows himself to be killed. Kennedy is transported forward in time to 2172 .
  • In "Shelter Skelter", Harry Dobbs and Nick Gatlin see and hear reports about an escalating crisis in the Middle East and the US preparing to take any means necessary to defend itself. Harry witnesses an immense explosion and concludes that the nearby Wakefield Air Force Base has been destroyed and World War III has begun. They enter the fallout shelter in Harry's basement to protect themselves from the high levels of radiation. It turns out that a nuclear cruise missile detonated while a B-1 bomber was preparing to take off from the base, destroying much of the surrounding area. The outbreak of nuclear war was avoided as the destruction of Dunston, Kansas illustrated the folly of war to the entire world.
  • Logan's Run : Earth was devastated by a nuclear war in 2119. In "Man Out of Time", it was revealed to have started as a result of the Eastern Bloc launching a preemptive strike on the United States out of fear that it would use its newfound access to time travel as a weapon of war and alter the past. The US responded in kind.
  • The Barrier : In the series, it started in 2020 and ended in 2025. It's already going on in the Distant Prologue set twenty-five years prior to the proper beginning of the plot, while announcement made in the present day mentions it ending twenty years prior.
  • "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)", from That Was the Year That Was is a parody of a jingoistic "soldier off to war" song from World War I, updated for changing circumstances and featuring the stinger "I'll look for you when the war is over ... an hour and a half from now". Lehrer: I feel that if any songs are going come out of World War III, we'd better start writing them now!
  • "We Will All Go Together When We Go", from An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer , offers the mock-optimistic consolation that if World War III wipes the entire human race out in one go, nobody will have to deal with grief or go to the trouble of rebuilding civilization.
  • Dimension X : In " episode eight ", an adaptation of Ray Bradbury 's " The Fox And The Forest ", a devastating atomic / bacteriological war is being waged in 2155. William Travis says that half the world is dead and the other half is dying.
  • Some Christians believe that a World War III is inevitable as is predicted in the Apocalypse. This is more common among pre-millennialists who believe that the Millenium (Jesus ruling the Earth for a thousand years) would happen after Jesus' Second Coming (whilst postmillennialists believe that Jesus would return only after the world is ruled according to Christian principles for a thousand years). The exact nature of this conflict might depend vastly on what interpretation the particular church or pastor abides, from a war between Israel and the entire world ruled by the Antichrist, Israel against all or some of its Islamic neighbors, sometimes also Russia, sometimes a "confederation" of (usually Islamic) nations lead by the Antichrist, etc. This all depends on the difference interpretation on whether the Antichrist is going to be a Muslim leader resurrecting the Caliphate as some pastors believe, a Roman leader, a Russian leader, the Pope, an American President, a Jewish leader and so on. Also might depend on whether the interpreter is talking about the War of Gog and Magog and the Armageddon which are also different conflicts.
  • Islamic eschatology also believes in a future world war between Muslims and its enemies.
  • Some racist religious groups like the white supremacist Church of the Creator and the Christian Identity theology Churches believe that the third world war would be a racial war. For the Christian Identity churches the Armageddon would be a war between the Western white nations (who they consider are Israel) and all its enemies (the non-"Whites").
  • Twilight: 2000 is set in the aftermath of a limited nuclear World War III between NATO and the Soviet Union. It started in 1995 with a war between the Soviets and China. When Soviet forces were transferred out of eastern Europe to support the Chinese war in '96 West Germany decided it was time to re-unify, opening the war in Europe. By '97 the Soviets started using tactical nukes, which escalated to using enough strategic strikes to destroy the world's infrastructure. The second edition written after Soviet collapse changed this to something much less plausible; suffice it to say the action that triggered World War III was not dissimilar to World War II .
  • Car Wars has this in the background, too. ABM is a bit more successful here; the only actual cities hit in the U.S. were Poughkeepsie, New York and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (home of Steve Jackson Games ' competitor TSR ).
  • In Chrononauts , you can alter the time line so that the Cuban Missile Crisis went hot, destroying all civilization. A couple of cards actually require this as part of a secret win condition. Notably, World War III has an extra effect: once someone plays that patch, everything after it on the timeline effectively ceases to exist until it's undone.
  • Team Yankee features a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1985, under the premise of a Stalinist hardliner becoming the Soviet premier instead of Gorbachev, and a naval skirmish in the Middle East providing the pretext to war. The sourcebook Oil War explores how the Iran-Iraq War would've developed if NATO and the Warsaw Pact got more heavily involved.
  • The ZX Spectrum Turn-Based Strategy wargame Theatre Europe (1985) begins with the Warsaw Pact invading West Germany and, at hardest difficulty level, usually ends with the nuclear destruction of human civilisation and the game telling you where your cyanide capsule is.
  • From what history you can learn, the Americans took back Alaska and were pretty much on Beijing's doorstep. It's possible that the Chinese fired first, knowing that they were screwed and intending to bring the Americans down with them. In Fallout 2 the leader of the Enclave, a faction made up of the descendants of high-ranking government officials, outright states this was the case with later games corroborating this claim at various points.
  • The Fallout series itself is set between 25 to 210 years after the nuclear exchange depending on which game you are playing. The post-war United States is a Polluted Wasteland populated with roving gangs of raiders , malfunctioning military robots , mutated animals and honest folk trying to get by scavenging for food and technology. Amazingly, if what the little insights you gain about the pre-war United States are true, the pre-war world was actually worse . For example, the United States forcibly annexed Canada to access better pathways to Alaska and engaged in a bloody war with every other country to secure the last oil field in the Pacific. The world itself was embroiled in the Resource Wars, a series of conflicts over shrinking oil fields that left Europe and the Middle East in ruin as the oil fields dried up and left the U.S. and China as the remaining powers.
  • Frontlines: Fuel of War takes place in 2024 and has the Western Coalition, composed of the NATO countries and a few nations taken into the European Union, against the Red Star Alliance, mostly composed of former Warsaw Pact members.
  • The original Harpoon game and expansion packs focused on the naval theater of a NATO-Warsaw Pact war.
  • Cold Waters : Command a U.S. submarine during the Second Battle of the Atlantic as war breaks out in Europe in either 1967 or 1984, or in the South China Sea in 2000.
  • Tom Clancy's EndWar is based on World War III where the United States , European Federation , and Russia go at each others' throats for what appears to be a European Kill Sat shooting down a US spacecraft carrying the final components for a US military space station without warning. This provokes the US into declaring war on the Federation, shortly followed by Russia declaring war on the Federation as well to "liberate the oppressed states of Eastern Europe"... only for the US to declare war on them as well in response to their sudden expansionism. What actually happened is that when the US and Europe jointly created an orbital missile shield that automatically eliminates any and all ICBMs in flight (thus making a nuclear war kinda problematic), Russia perceived it was only a matter of time until the two superpowers team up to get Russia's oil and natural gas supplies. Therefore, they hired a bunch of terrorists to attack all three factions and planted false evidence that the Federation did it. The US bought the bait alright and the last spark was provided by Spetznaz commandoes disguised as terrorists uploading a virus into the missile shield that made it mistake the US spacecraft as an ICBM targeting Paris. The rest is history - and logically, neither side wanted to needlessly escalate the situation so the missile shield was left in place to make sure no one nukes the others. The whole game is fought with conventional warfare.
  • Amusingly, if Himmler's plan to annihilate the world to institute his own Aryan state over the ashes succeeds , Himmler still fails by virtue of everything going as planned ; the Aryan civilization is similarly cremated equally alongside all the old world, and the emergent, chosen "scions" from the Burgundy bunkers, uneducated as they often are to become more easy to control by virtue of Burgundy's hyper-authoritarian ethics , assumed anyone else on the surface was an Aryan like them, ensuring his plan's outright failure from the word go to create an ethnically pure nation state . Yes, you read that right : the world of The New Order is so openly hellish that thermonuclear war is explicitly an improvement .
  • In World in Conflict , the setting is a conventional conflict in 1989. Missions largely take part in the US, where the Soviets have landed in Washington State. Some missions do take place in Europe though (Southern France and the Kola peninsula for NATO, and the capture of West Berlin for the Soviets).
  • Wasteland features this as well. Nukes do fly, too. You're in a bit that didn't get worked over too much, although fallout radiation still hangs out in a few spots.
  • Seawolf: SSN-21 casts the player in the role of the Captain of the USS Seawolf fighting a naval campaign against Russia. Nuclear escalation doesn't occur until the final mission, and it occurs only if the player fails to destroy the enemy boomers.
  • A variant occurs in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . The Big Bad orchestrates a fake US-sponsored terrorist attack on a Russian airport, which leads to Russia declaring war on the U.S. and managing to invade the East Coast. Russia isn't the USSR at the time in the game, but it is controlled by Ultranationalists, who are essentially militant Soviet supporters. However, tie-in materials state that this was not WWIII proper, but simply the Russo-America War — it didn't involve enough countries to truly count as a World War.
  • The events of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (appropriately enough) put World War III into overdrive, with Ultranationalist maverick Vladimir Makarov taking over Russia in a coup and proceeding to launch a full-scale invasion of Europe, made possible by simultaneous chemical attacks on all major European capitals carried out by his terrorist cronies. Interestingly, it never becomes a full-blown nuclear war, most likely because all sides know that crossing that line would effectively end the world. Makarov wanted to get control of Russia's nuclear arsenal from the President, but was unable to extract it from him before he was rescued.
  • Metal Gear series: Volgin , Gene , and Coldman each nearly caused World War III to occur, with Coldman being the one who came the closest to succeeding in achieving it.
  • Although there is speculation that one of the four scenarios takes place in a post-nuclear exchange Europe .
  • The scenarios are based around real incidents (the defection of NVA soldier Werner Weinhold in 1975, Solidarity and Martial law in Poland, the Able Archer incident and the last one, which does indeed feature a nuclear-ravaged wasteland and is obviously fictional.
  • Unlike the other two games, were each campaign is set in its own timeline, all four of the campaigns in Airland Battle depict parts of the same war.
  • Scenarios in Red Dragon include a Soviet invasion of Japan in 1984, a Sino-Soviet conflict in 1979, and a Second Korean war in the 1992, featuring South Korea, NATO, Japan, and Australia versus North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union, in a timeline where the attempted coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin succeeded note  There is another Second Korean War campaign set in 1987, but it is limited to the US and South Korea versus North Korea. There is also a campaign featuring the British Commonwealth defending Hong Kong from the PRC, but doesn't really fit this trope due to it being completely regional .
  • An unofficial Japanese port of the game to the Sharp X68000 computer was even subtitled The World War III.
  • Many of the Steel Panthers games typically include a number of scenarios revolving around NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact. Since they're tactical wargames, nukes almost never come into play, being outside of the games' scope.
  • The early 80s Apple II/C64 game Raid Over Moscow involves the Soviets launching nukes at major American cities, and the U.S. sending orbital space planes to take out their control centres. The very limited scale of the nuclear strikes is Hand Waved by a fictional treaty where both sides were supposed to have completely eliminated their nuclear arsenals, so the Soviets had to hide theirs.
  • Star Ocean: The Last Hope kicks off with the clash between the World Republic Federation and its foes causing this. The conflict quickly resulted in WMDs launching and the eventual devastation leads to the search for a new home planet in space.
  • Singularity is one where the USSR wins hands down, by dropping what amounts to a continent-buggering 'roided-up nuke on America, after assimilating all of Europe with the help of their E-99 weapons .
  • The RTS Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath , which is about a conventional war in the aftermath a nuclear exchange resulting from the Cuban Missile Crisis . A big part of gameplay is exploiting fallout zones (either by dodging them or cleaning them up).
  • World War III breaking out in 1989 forms the backstory for the scenarios in Flashpoint Campaigns .
  • The eponymous World War 3 , made by The Farm 51. It's set Next Sunday A.D. , focusing on a European war between NATO and Russia. Interestingly, they avert the usual focus on the US vs. Russia or the US and Western Europe vs. Russia, not just in having the war set almost exclusively in Central and Eastern Europe note  Though other locations are coming, with a map set in the Arctic Circle coming soon. Currently, Berlin is the farthest west the maps go , but also by having the initial three armies in the game be the Heer , the Polish Army , and the Russian Army , with the options of playing Russian Partisans actually being added one update before they added the ability to play the USMC Expeditionary Force , and plans to add non-Russian Partisans before they add the British and the French . In addition, Year One Roadmap also hints for further plans to implement Chinese , South Korean , Japanese and Turkish factions, maps and weapons in the future.
  • Mission: Impossible (Konami) : This is the end goal of the main villains in the game. (Released in 1990) Their plan is to force the launch of US nuclear missiles, and trigger the likely worldwide response.
  • Protect and Survive: A Timeline : A Spiritual Successor of sorts to Threads . Detailing the geopolitical effects of a nuclear war on the world.
  • In New Deal Coalition Retained , the Cold War starts to heat back in the 80s after hardliners seize control from reformers throughout the Warsaw Pact, straining relationships with the West, with both sides spreading alliance networks around most of the world. Finally, in 1988, a Pretext for War comes after a brief firefight on the inter-German border triggers a series of events that leads to the outbreak of war — the Soviets and Warsaw Pact invade Western Europe, their Latin American allies tie up the US and their own allies in that part of the world, and pro- and anti-Communist nations in Africa and the Middle East begin invading each other. The only exemption is Asia, where Moscow's allies (like China and India) choose instead to declare neutrality.
  • Norman Podhoretz claimed that the Cold War could be considered World War III, just that it was fought by proxies and not directly between the superpowers. He also describes the War on Terror as World War IV. This thought is popular among many scholars.
  • On that sense, the War on Terror was also described as World War III by some analysts, but also as IV.
  • Both King Abdullah II of Jordan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari described the War against ISIL as "World War III" due to ISIL's goal of world domination. This, however, was debunked by Barack Obama himself.

Non-Classic / Undefined Examples:

The After the End scenarios that aren't "Oh no, we accidentally invented a supervirus/ oxygen-destroying chemical / pie so delicious it kills you ."

  • Tokyo was wiped out in 1988 as part of the backstory to AKIRA , inciting World War III.
  • Appleseed from the creator of Ghost in the Shell also features a World War III in its Back Story . Notably, it also includes a World War IV , which was said to be conventional (after WWIII exchanged a number of cities for suspiciously round lakes).
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex , a nuclear war was fought... somewhere... Tokyo was leveled again , and America has split into at least two nations , but the Japanese managed to save the world by inventing machines that could could remove radiation from the environment. The series also contained World War IV a series of several guerrilla conflicts and minor land wars six years before the start of the series around 2030. As in Nuclear World War III, World War II, but not World War I, Berlin was leveled over the course of the conflict, but has since been rebuilt.
  • Mazinger Z : In the New Mazinger spin-off, the action begins one hundred fifty years after World War Three between USA and Soviet Union at the start of twenty-first century. Nuclear weapons and nuclear winter wiped out ninety percent of humankind turned the planet into a radioactive, barren wasteland, and the survivors realigned in northern and southern superpowers and kept fighting. One century and half later, they are still fighting over whatever is left of Earth.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion blends this with a conventional After the End scenario for its Backstory , with the combination of the Second Impact and a nuclear war killing half the world's population.
  • The Death Note tie-in novel L: change the WorLd mentions that L's first solved case was that of the Winchester Bombings, the solving of which averted World War III. He solved it at 8 years old and met Watari shortly afterwards. The date is unclear, but is unarguably between 1987 and 1988.
  • It's all but stated that a nuclear war happened in the not too distant past of Fist of the North Star due to the presence of radiation and part of Toki's backstory involving saving people from a nuclear strike by closing them into a fallout shelter. There's also the Colonel, one of Kenshiro's foes, whose superiors are implied to have started the nuclear war. It's never explicitly called a World War, but the implication is that the whole world is an After the End -type Scavenger World wasteland as is seen during the show and manga, so if it wasn't a full blown World War, it's a civilization-ending nuclear war that manages to come pretty close.
  • In Future War 198X , World War III starts after A Nuclear Error made by Americans.
  • Other nations involved were the Elizalina Alliance (a group of secessionist states from Russia, whom Russia was just dying to have an excuse to invade), England (AC side) and France (Catholic side), and it is briefly mentioned that China and India are supporting Academy City, though their armies never make a direct appearance. The only world power to sit the war out is, ironically , the United States.
  • Macross has the "Unification Wars" (which we get to see a bit of in Macross Zero ), a series of conflicts between a strengthened, militarized United Nations and anybody who didn't want to join together with them to fight the coming Zentraedi invasion . It's mostly settled by the time the aliens arrive in that version, though. The sides are not well-defined: it's known that the USA, Japan, most of Europe, and at least part of Russia were on the UN side, but the composition of the Anti-UN forces is mostly unknown (and the side material actively wonders just how the last remnant of the Anti-UN got their hands on cutting-edge Russian-made mecha, as the Russian government was on the UN side).
  • In Robotech , the Global Civil War is raging in the 1990s, basically a non-nuclear WW III, though everyone expects it to escalate, when the arrival of Zor's starship puts a sudden stop to it.
  • The "Thirteen Day War" happened in 2039 in Legend of the Galactic Heroes , well over 1,000 years before the start of the series. However, its effects are still felt in the form of a very strong taboo against the use of nuclear weapons against planets.
  • Saikano takes place during what is eventually revealed to be a global war. Though it is never called "World War III", Chise states that Japan is actually better off compared to all other countries—and Japan has lost all of its cities to firebombings, communications have been cut off, hospitals are no longer able to adequately treat the wounded, civilians are starving, and the SDF is reduced to drafting teenagers and old men, to say nothing of turning an innocent schoolgirl into the ultimate weapon . The action never leaves Japan, but it's clear that there are no alliances or neutral countries . It all ends with the extinction of the human race, after Chise finds out that the governments of the world did something just before the war started that made the planet no longer able to support life, making the whole thing even more pointless .
  • In a case of them using this for a title twice, there for two stories titled World War III : the first being the finale to Grant Morrison 's time on JLA (1997) (which the entire population of the Earth got superpowers to battle the ancient weapon of the Old Gods, Mageddon) and the second was a tie-in series for 52 (detailing a week-long war fought against a single person, Black Adam ).
  • In Wonder Woman (1987) Wonder Woman was first sent to Man's World to stop Ares, the God of War, from igniting a third World War.
  • Judge Dredd had nuclear war in the Backstory , which was essentially America vs everyone else. This had severe ramifications, including the abolition of democracy. Then there was the Apocalypse War between Mega City One and East Meg One (a Soviet Mega City) that was actually depicted in the comic. This has also been referred to as World War 4 on certain occasions, though the fighting only involved two Mega Cities—even the other American and Soviet city states were neutral. There's also the events of "Judgement Day", a global Zombie Apocalypse that resulted in several overrun Mega-Cities being nuked off the map to deny Sabbat more zombie soldiers.
  • In Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , World War III is waged by the United States and China against Russia after a powerful Reality Warper neutralizes the world's entire nuclear arsenal.
  • Marvel 2099 didn't feature World War III, but did include the line "Minor disturbance? What's major, World War IV?", suggesting it had happened.
  • World War III is the setup for the Terminator series of films, in the form of a Robot War : it was Skynet that started it. Kyle Reese says that nobody even knew who'd started it (i.e. at the time the bombs began falling), then reveals that "the machines" were to blame. Kyle Reese: Nobody knew who started it. ... It was the machines, Sarah. Defense network computers. New. Powerful. Hooked into everything. Trusted to run it all. They say it got smart... a new order of intelligence. That it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. It decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.
  • Reversed in The Matrix movies, where it was the humans using nukes against the machines in an effort to stop them.
  • Whether the Mad Max series takes place after World War III, and if so, what type of war it was, depends on which movie in that series you're watching .
  • Lingers as a background threat in both Escape from New York , and Escape from L.A. . In the former, there was a conflict between the USA and the USSR-China that already became hot—Snake Plissken is mentioned to be a veteran of the "Leningrad and Siberia campaigns". In the latter, a coalition of Latin American countries led by the Shining Path are poised to invade the United States. Notably, at the end of the latter film the Anti-Hero averts it by EMP-bombing the entire world in a classic Omnicidal Neutral scene.
  • The hyperspace-capable Earth of the movie Dark Planet is still trying to blow itself up. They're on World War VI now , but it'll be the last because a chemical weapon from one side induced a mutation in a bioweapon from the other side.
  • The Book of Eli is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war that, at the very least, brought about the collapse of the United States.
  • Pumzi is set 35 years after World War III, which started because of water conflicts.
  • In Star Trek: First Contact , the Enterprise travels back in time to a period shortly after World War III. See the Star Trek entry under the "Live-Action TV" tab for more information.
  • In David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series, this is how China conquered the world.
  • World War III occurs a year before the setting of Z for Zachariah , causing a Class 2/borderline Class 3 Apocalypse How .
  • The Robert McCammon book Swan Song opens just before World War III causes Class 1 Apocalypse How , thanks to lots of deadly mushrooms .
  • The Final War in the Drakaverse is that setting's World War III. It goes badly for the good guys. It turns out later that the name is a bit of a misnomer .
  • Joan Vinge's Fireships had as backstory that the big devastating nuclear war was fought between the Soviet Union and Red China. The United States stayed out of the matter completely. For some reason, many people from other countries seem to regard this as being unfair , and call Americans "backstabbers" for not getting their society shattered and millions of their people killed along with the Russians and Chinese.
  • Animorphs has the Yeerks attempt to start WWIII between the U.S. and China. They get pretty damn close before the Animorphs stop it.
  • Mortal Engines is set after WWIII...and IV...and V... and VI... It is implied that the war that really destroyed civilization, however, occurred when an "American Empire" fought a thermonuclear war with "Greater China", and that most of the world except for Africa was involved.
  • In Ape And Essence by Aldous Huxley, the great powers, acting on the fatal motives of Progress and Nationalism, obliterated each other's civilizations with not only atomic bombs but also Synthetic Plagues and plant diseases of all kinds. Some areas of the world, including New Zealand and Equatorial Africa, survived due to being too remote to be of any strategic importance; elsewhere, the increasingly mutated survivors refer to the catastrophe only as "the Thing."
  • The Books of Ember are set 200 years after World Wars III, IV, V, and VI. If The Prophet of Yonwood is anything to go by, the first of "The 4 Wars" was between the USA and a group called the Phalanx Nations, and went nuclear pretty fast. These wars, combined with The 3 Plagues , are what knocked civilization back to pre-industrial levels.
  • In Rainbow , World War III acts as the most major historical event which forms the backstory of the setting. The "International Revolution" is a worldwide conflict that occurred over one thousand years before the events of the novel. It was initiated by a coalition called the "Atheistic State," who were reportedly Well-Intentioned Extremists who believed that they must impose enforced atheism on all civilization before religion could cause humanity to destroy itself. The Atheistic State easily won, established the World Hegemony , and has since maintained an uncontested rule over the entire Earth since then until the events of the novel.
  • In the fourth novel, another global conflict happens when the (European-controlled) Confederation attempts to force the United States of North America in line. However, the Confederate use of illegal weapons (and then, of course, disavowing giving any such orders) and the unprovoked destruction of the North American capital causes Russia and North India to secede from the Confederation and ally with the USNA. The Chinese Hegemony and the Islamic Theocracy (both non-members) offer to ally with the USNA if the latter supports their petition to join the Confederation after the war. At the same time, Mexico and Honduras secede from the USNA to ally with the Confederation.
  • Though it's implied that the wars are deliberately kept limited, both to give the population a foreign enemy to hate instead of their own leadership, and as a justification for the crapsackworld the rulers have created.
  • The backstory of the Shannara series always alluded to "The Great Wars" which brought our civilization to an end and then the magic comes back and the high fantasy setting unfolded. After a Retcon and Canon Welding with Brooks' Word and Void series, this was shown to be World War III, taking place sometime in the early 22nd century. Although supernatural forces were pulling the strings, nuclear and chemical weapons, deployed in several steps, were responsible for wiping out the vast majority of humanity.
  • in The War of the World , historian Niall Ferguson says that there was a Third World War, and that it was fought in the Third World. Millions died in a long series of proxy wars between governments and insurgents which were ultimately backed by the USA and the Soviets.
  • In We Are Legion (We Are Bob) , World War Three technically happens in the 117 years since Bob was hit by a car, although it's pointed out that it was more of a series of brushfire wars, most evidently in the Middle East, in large part caused by the development of controlled nuclear fusion, instantly devaluing the main Middle East commodity. The latter has turned that entire region into a nuclear wasteland. A more proper global conflict happens shortly after the Von Neumann probes are launched by the superpowers. It's "civil" at first, with only tactical nukes employed against military targets, but quickly devolves into all-out chaos when China decides to nuke all of Brazil, signaling that cities are now fair game. The remains of the Brazilian Space Navy obliterates all Solar System objects and then starts dropping asteroids on Earth as part of a scorched earth tactic. By the time two of the Bobs return three decades later, there are about 15 million people left alive on the planet out of over ten billion. The planet is rapidly cooling and will become uninhabitable for millennia.
  • In the short story " Time and Time Again " by H. Beam Piper , the Third World War began in or before 1975. A transpolar invasion of Canada led to the fall of Ottawa. As such, the US forces in Canada were forced to retreat but they made their stand at Buffalo, where Allan Hartley was killed. It is never specifically stated what country or countries the United States and Canada were fighting.
  • In In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove , Nazi Germany and Japan defeated the United States and Canada in World War III in the 1970s. Nuclear weapons were extensively used with Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia being completely destroyed. Before its defeat, however, the US inflicted significant damage on Germany. After the war, millions of Jewish-Americans and African-Americans were murdered in concentration camps, reducing the United States population by one third from its pre-war levels. In the 2010s, the US still had to pay war reparations to Germany on an annual basis.
  • In the Crosstime Traffic series by Harry Turtledove , the titular organization is aware of alternate universes where China and Nazi Germany started World War III, which destroyed human civilization. The sixth book is set in an After the End LA where the Soviets and Americans nuked each other in the 1960s.
  • Isaac Asimov 's Pebble in the Sky : Schwartz assumes that Earth's radioactive crust is due to a war fought with atomic bombs.
  • In Asimov's The Stars, Like Dust (written after Pebble in the Sky but a very distant prequel, set thousands of years earlier) the numerous radioactive areas of Earth's crust (which literally glow in the dark) are explicitly said to be the places where nuclear weapons had been detonated "a full generation before the force-field defense against nuclear explosions had been developed so that no other could commit suicide in just that fashion again".
  • The Irregular at Magic High School has WW3 break out after an unexpected drop in global temperatures from 2030 triggered a global food crisis, and in turn led to a subsequent dispute between Russia and China over the former's forceful deportation of refugees from the latter, escalating to worldwide conflicts over resources erupting in 2045 and lasting until 2064. In the aftermath, the world population was reduced from approx. 9 billion to less than 3 billion, much of Africa and South America suffered extensive balkanization (with only Brazil remaining more or less intact from the latter), the European Union splitting into Western and Eastern blocs along the Franco-German border, much of the rest of the world conglomerated into sprawling superstates (the major ones being the United States of North America , the New Soviet Union, the Great Asian Union, and the Indo-Persian Federation), and most importantly the ascension of Magicians as a potent political, military, and economical force in world affairs.
  • 24 loves teasing the idea of World War III whenever Jack Bauer or the President has to make a decision or causes a situation that could threaten America's shaky relations with other countries such as Russia and China.
  • The 100 has a nuclear war in its backstory to set up the After the End situation, though who fought war and why is not delved into until the Season 2 finale, when an artificial intelligence called ALIE is implied have been involved. It is eventually revealed that ALIE was programmed to save humanity/the world, and decided the problem was "too many people". Her solution was to launch nuclear missiles at everyone, triggering a counterattack to reduce the number of people on the planet.
  • The RPG gives more information. It started as a war between Pakistan and India, escalated when both sides' allies tried to break the stalemate, went nuclear when Pakistan nuked advancing Chinese troops, and became a World War after China's collapse and the invasion of Russia from some of the Chinese warlords, at which point US, NATO and the European Union stepped in to try and stop the fighting. Amazingly, widespread devastation was avoided: the US had in place Earthshield, a network of satellites equipped with lasers to shoot down missiles, so only tactical nukes were exchanged. At the end of the war the political situation had returned to pre-war status quo (except for a divided China occupying North Korea), and the US called for disbanding the United Nations and the creation of what would become Earth Alliance, including a military capable to enforce its decision (to which they pledged both Earthshield and the national military forces).
  • Deadliest Warrior showed a highly likely 'what if scenario' of North Korea and South Korea redeclaring war in the episode US Rangers vs NKSOF. The allies of both nations would most likely assist them, causing this trope. United States of America, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, France, Great Britain, and South Korea vs China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And these are only the most likely ones to join the war, more nations could join most likely.
  • "World War Three" actually depicts a near miss. As part of a cosmic business venture, the Slitheen plan to bait humanity into waging WW3 to reduce the Earth to ruin so they can sell the remains for fuel.
  • "Dalek" mentions another, as former child genius Adam boasts about how at age eight he breached the U.S. Defence System.
  • Implied by the Doctor mentioning World Wars Five and Six (in "The Unquiet Dead" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" , respectively).
  • Subverted in "The Pyramid at the End of the World" . An expected alien invasion begins in the fictional Central Asian country of "Turmezistan", where American, Russian, and Chinese forces are confronting each other, and it's assumed that the aliens are intending to take advantage of the imminent World War III to invade while human civilisation is being trashed. It's then revealed that the location is a distraction, and the real threat to human civilisation that the aliens have foreseen and want to take advantage of is the accidental creation and release of a Synthetic Plague .
  • In Outcasts the colonisation project is to escape the destruction of Earth by World War III. Not much detail is given, but there is a reference to tension over Taiwan, suggesting that the war may have been primarily between the USA and China.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series equated World War III with the Eugenics Wars, which supposedly took place during the 1990s. In Star Trek: The Next Generation , a Retcon moved the setting of World War III to sometime in the mid-21st century. Thus, the Eugenics Wars and World War III became separate conflicts, even though the Eugenics Wars apparently took place on a global scale. Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds pushed the Eugenics Wars into at least the 2020s, essentially retconning the Eugenics Wars back into being the same conflict as World War III. They also established that they were spun off by the Second American Civil War. Ultimately, it’s revealed that meddling time travelers lead to the timeline and events being altered so that certain events still happen, but are pushed up further and further.
  • World War III was incredibly devastating, with a death toll higher than that of World War II (according to SNW, a third of the world's population was wiped out). Nuclear weapons were used and most governments did not survive the war, leading to an After the End Dystopia described as "the post-atomic horror". In Star Trek: First Contact , the Enterprise crew travels back in time to this "post-atomic horror" period in order to ensure that humankind's First Contact with aliens takes place. The movie explains that it was this first contact which caused the Earth to rise from the ashes of World War III and become a Utopia .
  • The war featured genetic engineering and genocide on a massive scale. Star Trek: Enterprise establishes that Colonel Phillip Green was involved in this.
  • Information about the factions involved is extremely scanty. From First Contact , we know that something called the "Eastern Coalition" was an enemy of the United States, vaguely suggesting that the war was fought between the West and an alliance of Asian countries. (Early scripts for First Contact explicitly said "China", but later drafts replaced "China" with "Eastern Coalition" .)
  • According to the EU novel Star Trek: Federation , the war happened largely due to a fascist movement called the Optimum gaining control over much of the planet. Much of the novel was later Jossed by Star Trek: First Contact , however.
  • During the war, a small group of civilians and soldiers hiding out in a church was rescued by a strange angelic figure that transported them to a habitable planet 51,000 light years away. The planet (Terralysium) wouldn't be visited again until the 23rd century, when the USS Discovery used the spore drive to cross the distance. Even though its inhabitants are human, Captain Pike insists on invoking General Order 1 (the term Prime Directive wasn't invented yet) since they have no knowledge of the warp drive.
  • A non-Earth version is prevented in the classic Battlestar Galactica . There are two superpowers on Planet Terra (which isn't Earth): the fascist-like Eastern Coalition and the democratic Western Coalition. Despite signing a peace treaty with the Coalition, the Alliance launches an all-out nuclear strike, trying to kill two birds with one stone: wipe out their hated enemy and alleviate their overpopulation problem by not warning their citizens about the retaliatory strike. The Coalition launches its own missiles in return. Fortunately, the Galactica arrives and intercepts all missiles in the air. The Alliance assumes it's a secret Coalition defense system and decides to sue for peace.
  • In " Resurrection ", humanity was wiped out in a biological war on July 24, 1997.
  • In " Bits of Love ", billions of people were killed in a nuclear war on November 3, 2046. Aidan Hunter managed to survive in a special bunker. He believes that he may be the last living person .
  • In " Lithia ", the Great War, which began in or before 2015, killed seven billion people (99% of the population).
  • In " Final Appeal, Part One ", a nuclear war, known as the War of 2059 or the New Holocaust, killed 80% of the world's population (6.8 million people).
  • In " The Human Factor ", everyone on Earth, with the exception of several high-profile political figures and their families, is killed in the war between the Free Alliance and the Coalition of Middle Eastern and Pacific States on April 23, 2084.
  • In " Time Enough at Last ", a nuclear war breaks out. Henry Bemis survived as he was reading in the bank vault when the H-Bomb that destroyed his city was detonated.
  • In " Elegy ", Professor Kurt Meyers tells Jeremy Wickwire that Earth was devastated by a nuclear war in 1985 and it has taken 200 years for humanity to rebuild.
  • Played with in " Two ". The man and woman appear to be American and Soviet soldiers respectively who are still alive five years after the war devastated the world but Rod Serling's opening narration leaves the time period vague, even stating that the story could have taken place two million years ago.
  • In " The Old Man in the Cave ", a nuclear war devastated Earth in 1964. Millions of people were killed and the world is contaminated with radiation .
  • Grupa Operacyjna : "Trzecia Wojna Światowa", as the name implies. It is described as a war to survive, a war on the streets and in homes, between everything and everyone. But when you look deeper into the song's lyrics, it actually describes a crappy everyday scenario.
  • Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele's earlier Thrash Metal band, Carnivore, had a song about World War III (and IV), even called World Wars III and IV.
  • Front Line Assembly 's Artificial Soldier and Fallout albums.
  • KMFDM 's appropriately named WWIII .
  • This is the theme of the "Ruiner" table in Ruiner Pinball ; the player must raise the threat level to DEFCON 1 and start a nuclear war.
  • The Fall in Eclipse Phase was a combination of this and Robot War , resulting in the sterilization of Earth .
  • In 1968, a tongue-in-cheek game, Nuclear War was made, where missiles and bombers fly to nuke fictional countries (your fellow players), prompted an early Memetic Phrase : "Have you got change for 25 million people?"
  • The Shadowrun universe has the planet on the brink of a nuclear war in the 2010s, but it is averted by the advent (or return) of magic. In the following decades, there is no direct World War, but we get the Eurowars in the 2030s, including an Islamic Jihad 32-37, so History Repeats as the Turks once more stand before the gates of Vienna. Two cities get nuked: Damascus and Tripolis (if memory serves).
  • While the truth may not be known, the rulebook does give a "suggested" history that could be used, or at least subverted to surprise those people who already know it. Of course, the rulebook is ULTRAVIOLET clearance, so if you aren't ULTRAVIOLET clearance, don't highlight this spoiler: After the end of World War III, the 'Polity' (a One World Order ) was formed. Many Alpha Complexes were built in that time period, including one located in the city of San Francisco, controlled by The Computer. Everything was fine and dandy, until an asteroid the size of Sheboygan made its way to Earth, causing the Big Whoops. A Russian missile silo mistook the asteroid for a nuclear attack, and The Computer mistook that counter-nuclear attack as an attack by Communists (its information records were damaged, and it could only retrieve 1950's cold war propaganda at the time). The San Franciscan Computer challenged the Polity and the rest of the Alpha Complexes, declaring them all traitors working with the Communists...and the resulting confusion and chaos caused all the other Complexes to view themselves as the 'one true Complex' and every other Complex as being subverted by traitors. So, technically, PARANOIA takes place during World War IV...
  • In Rifts , World War III started with nukes being hurled at each other. It ended shortly afterwards. Not because of the nukes themselves, but because they happened to land during a total summer eclipse, on a solstice, during a planetary alignment. The Ley Lines flared up and everything went to hell.
  • Twilight Struggle features World War III as a Nonstandard Game Over : Trigger it, and your superpower loses immediately.
  • All Flesh Must Be Eaten , the zombie tabletop rpg system, features a splatbook so that you can set your campaign in the middle of WWIII (where zombies want to Take Over the World ) as well as post-apocalyptic settings.
  • DEFCON is basically a World War III simulator. Typical games last about two or three hours in real time.
  • BattleTanx features a massive nuclear war which was actually precipitated by something more horrible, a plague which wiped out 99.9% of the female population , with the war being caused by the fight over the surviving women. Predictably, the majority of the surviving women were killed in the conventional/nuclear conflicts that followed.
  • Then there is the nuclear holocaust that happened some time after Unity left for the eponymous star system.
  • The Pandora Directive reveals that the war was a pretty short nuclear exchange with a bunch of countries in Middle East, when the U.S. military decided to test their new anti-matter missiles against them. The geniuses didn't consider the ramifications of blasting bombs this powerful in a region known to dabble in bio- and chemical weapons. Much of that stuff, not to mention all the radiation, got spread throughout the world. Your goal in the game is to stop the NSA from getting their hands on an even bigger supply of anti-matter from an alien mothership .
  • The Bad Company subseries depicts what is most likely the same war, with the focus shifted towards fighting between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, who is allied with the MEC. By the time of Bad Company 2 , Russia has taken over vast swathes of Europe and South America, and is advancing on the U.S. from the north and south.
  • Battlefield 3 appears to show what might be the beginning of that World War occurring on the Iran-Iraq border.
  • Battlefield 4 depicts the same war in Battlefield 3 after an indeterminate amount of time. China has entered the war. In the campaign, they're mostly allied with Russia, but the multiplayer suggests that it broke down and became a Mêlée à Trois between three of them.
  • 2142 has World War IV (assuming nothing happened between Battlefield 2 and 2142) between a futuristic European Union and the Pan-Asian Collation. No word on what the rest of the world is doing. Supposedly , the whole conflict is over a dwindling number of global resources and the two hemispheres are vying for whatever's left. One of the expansion packs also adds a third wheel to the war, meaning it truly is a new World War.
  • Red Alert 3's Challenge mini-campaign pits you as working for Private Military Contractors Future Tech, pitting you against commanders from all three factions all over the world.
  • World War III basically happens in Command & Conquer: Generals expansion Zero Hour , but is downplayed. In the original game, an N.G.O. Superpower known as the GLA (Global Liberation Army) takes control of most of Central Asia, the eastern half of the Middle East, and parts of North Africa, including Somalia. The People's Republic of China takes over the the parts of Central Asia that aren't GLA-occupied (including a lot of Kazakhstan). Apparently in retaliation to Chinese and American imperialism, the GLA nukes Beijing (using a nuke they stole from China), establishes a presence in western China, and attacks American-held Iraq. This leads to a a struggle across Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western China, with the GLA and a faction of Chinese military defectors on one side and China and America on the other. Eventually, American and Chinese forces decimate the GLA and capture their capital. Then Zero Hour happens, where the GLA is revealed to be Not Quite Dead , and the game becomes this proper, featuring major battles across Central Asia, the Middle East, West China, North Africa, the Eastern United States, and Europe. The United States is forced to withdraw, leaving the nations of the world to turn to China for help. They eventually drive the GLA out of Europe and become the new world superpower.
  • From the same developers came World War III: Black Gold which has the Middle East deciding to stop oil exports to the west. Naturally, the US decides to step in with military force... but somewhere around the way, the once-again Soviet Russia decides that the Middle East is in their sphere of influence and steps in. And to drive the point even further, some of the game's cutscenes were included in Earth 2160 's trailer which heavily implies that this game is actually a prequel of sorts to the Earthverse and shows how the world seen in Earth 2140 came to be.
  • The backstory of how the world got the be in the state it is in 2062 in Girls' Frontline involves a stated World War III. It takes place after a semi-apocalyptic event, where an alien chemical cloud was released from a Precursor facility, contaminating and rendering uninhabitable most of the world around the equator. In the massive humanitarian crisis and rush to evacuate the affected areas, old political and military borders dissolved, and a new world with new superpowers and a drastically reduced population emerged. The major players in the Third World War are never made clear, as the political landscape is alien to our modern one, but the stated reason for the war was tension over control of uncontaminated land.
  • World War III is mentioned in the Backstory for Ground Control as the reason for war being abolished on Earth (but not everywhere else). Too bad the Draconis Empire doesn't agree with this policy.
  • The later games in the Tekken series are set against a massive global war between the Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation, which Jin Kazama instigates after taking control of the Zaibatsu. The war, in essence, is an evolution of the long-raging family feud within the Mishima family, with Kazuya Mishima, Jin's father, siding with G Corp, while Heihachi, the Mishima patriarch, fighting to regain control of the Zaibatsu. The characters in the series consist of those aligned with the Zaibatsu or G Corp, in addition to those caught in the middle.
  • Another World War was part of the backstory for Youju Senki AD 2048 . The player is never given the details, just that a lot of nukes were used and most of the world is now completely uninhabitable for normal humans.
  • Depending on the player's decision at the end of Killer7 , Japan may attack the US and trigger WWIII. The alternative is having Japan nuked off the face of the planet .
  • Averted in Star Control , where the closest thing is the Small War Of 2015, a short nuclear exchange in the Middle East which killed 1 million people and led to the world's nuclear weapons being sealed in the Peace Vaults.
  • An enormous thermonuclear war occurred in the Backstory of Shin Megami Tensei IV , twenty-five years prior to the game's setting to be specific. It was caused by the sudden appearance of demons throughout the globe, with every country blaming practically every other country and ending with all of them except Japan as bombed-out wastelands. An NPC implies at one point that the Archangels may have started or at least helped this war along somehow, in order to whittle humanity's population down to a handful of Chosen Ones , though Lucifer was also a player.
  • Jonathan Irons of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare instigates a world war against his own Private Military Contractor organization "Atlas Corporation" by openly threatening the UN with a superweapon . As he already controls the world's global security infrastructure through some manipulation of world events , the other nations struggle to match him. Even by the end of the game, the only goal that gets accomplished is the death of Irons himself. Everyone knows that Atlas's efforts will continue with or without Irons in command and the war isn't over .
  • In the Civilization Series , the AI is coded to declare war on the perpetrator of the First Strike with Nuclear Weapons on any other Civilization. When getting into a late game war with India, Ghandi will nuke you, no questions asked.
  • This is what the main villains, the Sinister 7 want to achieve in Mission: Impossible (Konami) . They programmed a supercomputer to launch nuclear weapons, aiming for a short but quick World War III which will herald The End of the World as We Know It .
  • Phoenix Point : In this universe, World War III began (around 2032) because China and the USA were unhappy that they were crossing each others territory while researching the Pandoravirus. The exact details of the war are not covered, but the aftermath is clear in-game and side-stories: the USA divided due to economic collapse, cities around the world damaged from the war, and the whole world left venerable to the Pandoravirus onslaught.
  • Ketsui is set in 2054 after World War III is started due to climate change — global warming in particular — causing the polar ice caps to melt, leading to rising sea levels, an increased rate of natural disasters, and nations going to war over increasingly scarce resources. EVAC Industry is found to be supplying weapons to all sides of the war to line their pockets , but they are impossible to negotiate with as they're wealthy enough to even maintain a standing army of their own, and it takes a covert operation by the United Nations disguised as a rebellion within the company to stop them from maintaining the war with their constant arms dealing.
  • The Steins;Gate 0 covers the World War III part.
  • In The Bottom of the Well , the start of a nuclear war (apparently between the United States and Russia) is the cause of the story. The city in which the protagonist lives is hit by nuclear detonations, and she needs to survive both these and the aftermath — radioactive ash, looters, and such. There's no background as to how it happened — there's brief early warning of the attack, but no explanation of it.
  • Book 4 of Harry Potter Comics takes place during World War III. Besides nuclear weapons, magic is also involved, as well as hybrid tech (including invisible missiles and beam-spamming wand/guns that even muggles can use.)
  • Kiwi Blitz takes place after World War III, though things have largely settled down by the time of the story. The Frohlich family originally made its fortune building war machines.
  • The "Eye in the Sky" story from the Transformers Mirror Universe of Shattered Glass mentioned a World War III as having occured in the 1980s.
  • The Chaos Timeline has one, appropriately at the end of the story. It doesn't last long (less than one day, in fact), but afterwards, the world will never be again as it was before.
  • It is mentioned that when using SCP -2000, which can reset humanity to a certain time in the event of a Apocalypse How , one can't set it any further back than twenty years, or they'd be liable to trigger this. After all, that's how World War 2 happened. Another interpretation is that the SCP Foundation fabricated World War 2 to explain away the massive destruction and loss of life caused by whatever incident led to the activation of SCP-2000 .
  • The Innocent is set during a war between children and adults that turns into this and ends with the children winning and creating a Teenage Wasteland .
  • Timeline-191: After the End : After Timeline-191 ended WWII with the US, Germany, and Japan as the major superpowers of the world, Japan and the US enter an extremely destructive Fourth Pacific War in the 1960s.
  • There's also the world the Justice League is pulled into in Legends where it seems World War III happened and killed the Justice Guild of America.
  • Metalocalypse : Dethklok nearly starts this when they double-book a gig on the same day with Israel and Syria. The two countries threaten to start a third global war and the only way to stop it is to put on a giant holographic show that can be seen in space over the two countries and snow cones.
  • The Simpsons : In the 1995 episode " Lisa's Wedding ", set in 2010 , Moe says to Lisa's English fiancé " You know, we saved your ass in World War Two! ". He responds "Yeah, well, we saved your arse in World War Three!". Moe concedes the point.
  • A sight gag in Futurama references the page quote when the characters visit a war museum and pass by a spear in a display case. It's noted to come from the 22nd century.
  • Pinky and the Brain : "Brain of the Future" involved a possible future where the United States ends up in a nuclear war against not Russia, not China, but against.... Canada in 3502. The war begins with an argument between the Canadian Prime Minister Warren Mapleleaf (who wears a space helmet with the Canadian maple leaf painted on it, apparently because this is how Canadian leaders dress in the far future) and the President of the United States: Bill Clinton , who is still alive thanks to being preserved as a head in a jar Futurama -style and is somehow still President. He is described as the United States' first 377 term President.
  • One episode of Phantom 2040 makes a reference to "World War IV" suggesting that World War III had already happened.
  • Implied: in an episode of The Flintstones , a member of the loyal order of Water Buffaloes suggests staging a beauty contest for their wives: Fred: I've got a better idea. How about World War III? ( everybody laughs )
  • Inside Job (2021) : Among the many screwed-up things Cognito is up to is planning out and casting for World War III, where the Americans will be the villains.

Video Example(s):

Captain pike's speech.

"Strange New Worlds". After a first contact operation goes badly awry due to faulty intel, Captain Pike makes a second attempt. He lays out to the Kileans the violent history of Earth that led up to World War III (which uses stock footage of civil unrest from the 2010s and early 2020s), and tells them that's where they're headed if they can't put aside their differences. But they have another choice: be better, and join the United Federation of Planets.

Example of: Patrick Stewart Speech

World in Conflict

Alternative Title(s): World War Three , WW 3 , Third World War , World War 3

  • Why We Are Bummed Communism Fell
  • UsefulNotes/Cold War
  • Ultimate Defence of the Realm
  • Who Shot JFK?
  • Alternate History Tropes
  • World War Whatever
  • We Will Wear Armor in the Future
  • We Will Not Use an Index in the Future
  • Worked Shoot
  • TimeImmemorial/Tropes T to Z
  • Worst News Judgment Ever
  • World Sundering
  • Apocalypse How
  • WeAreNotAlone/Tropes Q to Z
  • The Worm That Walks
  • The World Is Always Doomed
  • Apocalyptic Index
  • Wooden Ships and Iron Men
  • Military and Warfare Tropes
  • Grupa Operacyjna
  • QuoteSource/Music
  • Free-Fall Romance
  • Speculative Fiction Tropes
  • ImageSource/Video Games (M to Z)
  • World of Warplanes

Important Links

  • Action Adventure
  • Commercials
  • Crime & Punishment
  • Professional Wrestling
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Sports Story
  • Animation (Western)
  • Music And Sound Effects
  • Print Media
  • Sequential Art
  • Tabletop Games
  • Applied Phlebotinum
  • Characterization
  • Characters As Device
  • Narrative Devices
  • British Telly
  • The Contributors
  • Creator Speak
  • Derivative Works
  • Laws And Formulas
  • Show Business
  • Split Personality
  • Truth And Lies
  • Truth In Television
  • Fate And Prophecy
  • Edit Reasons
  • Isolated Pages
  • Images List
  • Recent Videos
  • Crowner Activity
  • Un-typed Pages
  • Recent Page Type Changes
  • Trope Entry
  • Character Sheet
  • Playing With
  • Creating New Redirects
  • Cross Wicking
  • Tips for Editing
  • Text Formatting Rules
  • Handling Spoilers
  • Administrivia
  • Trope Repair Shop
  • Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

How well does it match the trope?

Example of:

Media sources:

11,241--> Report

Captain Pike's ...

world trek iii

Star Trek: Pendragon Wiki

World War III

  • View history
  • 2 Aftermath, first contact, and the legacy of WWIII
  • 3.1 Background
  • 3.2 External links

History [ ]

Optimum Movement flag

The flag of Colonel Green and the Optimum Movement.

Historians of later centuries had varying opinions on the exact nature of the war and its origins. Some linked it to the Eugenics Wars of the late 20th century , and while the seeds of the conflict may have been planted then, most scholars agreed it really began with Colonel Phillip Green 's ecoterrorism in 2026 which resulted in 37 million deaths. Green and his troops executed hundreds of thousands of people with "impurities" like radiation sickness , claiming that their deaths were for the good of future generations. ( TOS : " Space Seed ", " The Savage Curtain "; VOY : " In the Flesh "; ENT : " In a Mirror Darkly, Part II ", " Demons ", " Terra Prime ")

Among other parties in the conflict were the Eastern Coalition ("ECON"), which fought against the United States of America and the European Union . Various factions, including Green's cadre and possibly the ECON, used drugs to control their military. ( Star Trek: First Contact ; TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint "; ST novel : Federation )

Even during this period of global turmoil, the New United Nations worked for peace, and in 2036 declared that "no human being would be held accountable for the crimes of their race or forebearers". However, the group's efforts met with failure. ( TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ")

The Mind Control Revolts of 2043 - 47 occurred during this period. ( TOS novel : Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

World War III reached its peak on 1 May 2053 , when nuclear weapons were detonated over London , New York City , Tel Aviv , Jerusalem , Mecca , Beijing and other cities. Asia was hit hardest, followed by the United States. Nearly half a billion people died in the initial blasts; Washington, DC and the surrounding three states were "blown off the map", and Earth was plunged into a nuclear winter that lasted most of the next decade. The post-atomic horror that followed severely destabilized civilization all over the world as governments fell and terrorist groups and rogue states detonated "suitcase nukes" and released biological weapons . The drug-controlled troops were used as cannon fodder in conventional ground battles after much of the global computer systems were sabotaged. Numerous small-scale conflicts erupted across the globe. The economy of the United States was devastated, and most of its citizens were reduced to living conditions worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s . ( Star Trek: First Contact ; Star Trek: The Lost Era novel : The Sundered )

For two months following the "outbreak" of World War III, Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas served as the operational command center for Colonel Amber's Regimental Volunteers and was the site of the final battle of the Siege of Las Vegas. ( DS9 anthology : The Lives of Dax : " Second Star to the Right... ")

When the extent of the devastation became clear, the remaining governments gathered in San Francisco to sign a peace accord. Even so, there were those who wished to keep fighting, like Colonel Green and others of his ilk. After Green's death, one of his lieutenants, Colonel Adrik Thorsen , continued terrorist strikes in the name of the Optimum Movement , and by the 2070s , gained control of Great Britain . ( ENT : " Demons "; Star Trek novel : Federation )

Aftermath, first contact, and the legacy of WWIII [ ]

First Contact with the Vulcans in 2063 inspired new hope in humanity and aided in recovery from the war's effects in some areas. Nonetheless, the post-atomic horror raged on in Asia, the Middle East, and the "new third world" sunk into total lawlessness. According to Jean-Luc Picard , these areas remained in "chaos" well into the early 22nd century . ( Star Trek: First Contact ; TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", " Up the Long Ladder ")

Gradually, as the post-atomic horror declined, new attempts at unified global alliances sprung up, including the European Hegemony , circa 2123 . These alliances eventually formed the genesis of the United Earth . ( TNG : " Up the Long Ladder ", " Attached ")

World War III's legacy was far-reaching, and continued to be felt a hundred years later. The war eventually became a popular subject in the recovered film industry. The philosophy of Neo-Transcendentalism was founded to advocate a return to a "simpler life" in response to the devastation advanced technology had brought humanity. Other less-benign schools of thought emerged, including the xenophobia exemplified by the Back-to-Earth movement and its more aggressive "cousin" Terra Prime , an outgrowth of Green and Thorsen's "Optimum Philosophy". ( ENT : " Home ", " Demons ", " Terra Prime ", TNG : " Up the Long Ladder "; Star Trek novels : Final Frontier , novel )

Ultimately, World War III and first contact marked a turning point for humanity. In the aftermath, mankind came together, putting aside the differences of race and culture, and unified in a way never before seen. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Appendices [ ]

Background [ ], external links [ ].

  • World War III article at Memory Alpha , the canon Star Trek wiki.
  • World War III article at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek wiki.
  • World War III article at Star Trek Expanded Universe , the fanon and fanworks Star Trek wiki.
  • 1 Coridan (species)
  • 2 Phalanx class
  • 3 Shackleton Expanse

IMAGES

  1. WORLD TREK III

    world trek iii

  2. world trek 3

    world trek iii

  3. 『WORLD TREK English Communication III New Edition 【コIII 348】』書籍詳細ページ

    world trek iii

  4. Star Trek III

    world trek iii

  5. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

    world trek iii

  6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

    world trek iii

VIDEO

  1. TREK WORLD

  2. TREK S 6

  3. Trek 6 Pictures

  4. TREK S 4

COMMENTS

  1. World War III

    World War III was the last of Earth 's three world wars, lasting from approximately 2026 to 2053. The conflict involved nuclear cataclysm as well as genocide and eco-terrorism. The post-atomic horror in the aftermath persisted as late as 2079 .

  2. Strange New Worlds Solves Star Trek's World War III Mystery

    Published May 7, 2022 World War III is largely a mystery in Star Trek but Strange New Worlds gave the biggest info download on what happened in the 21st-century global war. Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1, Episode 1 - "Strange New Worlds"

  3. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

    Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a 1984 American science fiction film, written and produced by Harve Bennett, directed by Leonard Nimoy, and based on the television series Star Trek.

  4. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Info, Potential Plot, Cast ...

    Star Trek has been one of the most iconic sci-fi properties in entertainment for more than half a century. Since 1966, viewers have boldly gone where no viewers have before on board the Enterprise ...

  5. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is an American science fiction television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet for the streaming service Paramount+.It is the 11th Star Trek series and debuted in 2022 as part of Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe.A spin-off from Star Trek: Discovery, it follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the starship Enterprise in the ...

  6. The Eugenics War And World War III In The Star Trek Universe ...

    The Eugenics War And World War III In The Star Trek Universe, Explained Television The Eugenics War And World War III In The Star Trek Universe, Explained Paramount+ By Witney Seibold /...

  7. Star Trek Adventures Second Edition To Launch With Strange New Worlds

    The Star Trek Adventures Second Edition Core Rulebook will debut at Gen Con 2024, which kicks off on August 1st. The Star Trek Adventures Second Edition Starter Set is scheduled to launch in the fall.

  8. Star Trek and the Shadow of World War III

    It's true that World War III has cast a shadow over Star Trek from the start. In 'Space Seed', the episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh, Spock describes the Eugenics Wars as "the era of...

  9. Star Trek Franchise-Changing Timeline Fix Has Retconned World War III

    In Star Trek: First Contact, the decades-long World War 3 was stated to have begun in 2026, which is only three years away. With that in mind, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was right to push back the dates and combine these conflicts into one future war.

  10. 'Star Trek Strange New Worlds' Season 3

    Adventure Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Christopher Pike (played by Anson Mount) and the crew of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) in the 23rd century as they explore new...

  11. 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 3 Resumes Filming ...

    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 is now filming in Toronto.; The series may not return until 2025 due to extensive post-production. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 resolved Una's ...

  12. Star Trek's Mysterious World War 3 Ties Into Discovery Season 2

    In Star Trek lore, World War III took place from 2026-2053. It was a devastating nuclear conflict that resulted in the destruction of the world's cities and governments, as well as the deaths of 600 million people.

  13. 48 Facts About The Movie Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

    Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a classic science fiction film that holds a special place in the hearts of Trekkies around the world. Released in 1984, this movie is the third installment in the original Star Trek film series and follows the crew of the starship Enterprise as they embark on a mission to find their beloved friend, Spock, who sacrificed himself in the previous film.

  14. Microlino Lite arrives as the world's cutest, Mr. Bean-style microcar

    Its 5.5kWh battery will go 100 km before needing a refresh - a larger 11kW battery pack will take you 177 km. The 5.5kWh pack can charge from 0 to 80 percent in about two hours from a 2.2kW Type ...

  15. Timeline of Star Trek

    Eugenics Wars and World War III. When the original series of Star Trek was produced, the 1990s were several decades away, and so various elements of the backstory to Star Trek are set in that era, particularly the Eugenics Wars. The references to the Eugenics Wars and to a nuclear war in the 21st century are somewhat contradictory.

  16. 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Showrunners Talk Season 3, Gorn, Scotty

    Last week's cliffhanger ending of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds still has fans talking. Now the executive producers and co-showrunners are offering some clues on what to ...

  17. Star Trek Takes Place After World War III

    World War III had scorched the Earth, and the scars of the post-atomic horror were still fresh when the United Federation of Planets was founded. The roots of that final World War are slightly confusing.

  18. Star Trek: Discovery tackles General Order One, World War III ...

    Right now, Trek canon has World War III lasting from 2026 to 2053. In "New Eden" the crew discovers the far-flung humans are from 2053, which means the mysterious "Red Angel" aliens transported them across the galaxy the same year that war ended.

  19. World War III

    At precisely 0230.26 hours Eastern Standard Time, on 1 May 2053 (an event later known as the "May Day Horror of '53"), the Eastern Coalition launched a first strike comprised of intercontinental ballistic missiles, bomber attacks, and portable nuclear weapons, against major North American and European cities, combined with a simultaneous Interfa...

  20. Kenneth Mitchell, Known for 'Star Trek' and 'Captain Marvel' Roles

    Mr. Mitchell, a Canadian actor who appeared on "Star Trek: Discovery," had A.L.S. By Livia Albeck-Ripka Reporting from Los Angeles Kenneth Mitchell, a Canadian actor known for his roles on the ...

  21. World War III

    World War III was a global, and ultimately nuclear, conflict on Earth in the mid- 21st century. Over 600 million people died in the war, and human civilization nearly collapsed, resulting in a period known as "the post-atomic horror " that lasted into the early 22nd century. ( TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", Star Trek: First Contact ) Contents

  22. Eugenic Wars and World War III : r/startrek

    Because between this time period where they traveled back to circa 2024, and April 4, 2063 First Contact Day (10 years after World War III), they would have about 30 years for both to occur and where 600 million people die. (ST Memory Alpha says that it happens from 2026 to 2053). Archived post.

  23. World Trek III Lesson 2

    Other Quizlet sets. Finance 450 Final (Ch. 12, 13, 14) 134 terms. luckylefty33. Questions realed to hematologic problems. 20 terms. justicehodges. BIOL 2510 - Lectures 7 & 8: Respiratory Part…. 98 terms.

  24. Star Trek: Earth's World War 3 EXPLAINED

    Star Trek: Earth's World War 3 EXPLAINED - YouTube 0:00 / 26:25 • Intro Sign in to confirm your age This video may be inappropriate for some users. Sign in Star Trek: Earth's World War 3...

  25. World War 3 in Star Trek (WW3) (The History of Star Trek 112)

    World War III was a global, and ultimately nuclear, conflict on Earth in the mid-21st century. Over 600 million people died in the war, and human civilization nearly collapsed, resulting in a...

  26. World War III

    Here is what we do know about the World War III of the Trek Verse: Star Trek: The Original Series equated World War III with the Eugenics Wars, which supposedly took place during the 1990s. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, a Retcon moved the setting of World War III to sometime in the mid-21st century. Thus, the Eugenics Wars and World War ...

  27. World War III

    World War III was a global, and ultimately nuclear, conflict on Earth in the mid-21st century. Over 600 million people died in the war, and human civilization nearly collapsed, resulting in a period known as "the post-atomic horror" that lasted into the early 22nd century. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"; Star Trek: First Contact) Historians of later centuries had varying opinions on the exact ...