The Star Trek Grand Unifying Theory: Why Starfleet's Own History Books Can't Be Trusted

Star Trek has been contradicting itself for 60 years, and my theory is that the show has been telling us all along that its own history books can't be trusted. The characters say it themselves on screen, in episodes you can go pull up tonight.

The Klingons have smooth foreheads for three full seasons of the original series, and then in 1979 they turn up in the motion picture with big ridges down the middle of their heads, and nobody on screen says a word about it. For almost 20 years, the fandom's official policy was basically don't look directly at it. And that's just the famous one. Khan remembers Chekov from an episode Chekov isn't in. The Eugenics Wars were supposed to happen in the 1990s, and I was around for the 1990s, and I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed. We all know the show contradicts itself. What I didn't expect when I started lining it all up is how often the show admits it.

I've been calling this the Star Trek Grand Unifying Theory, which I'll admit is a huge name for it. But if you're going to have a theory about 60 years of television, you might as well go big.

Spock admits Earth's records are a mess in Space Seed

We'll start where the show starts, with Space Seed in 1967. The Enterprise finds an old sleeper ship drifting out in space, the SS Botany Bay, and Kirk tells Spock to check the registry. Spock comes back with this: "No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary." A few minutes later, he goes even further. He talks about a great many unanswered questions about those years and says he can find no record whatsoever of the ship.

This is Spock, the guy with the library computer and the memory of an elephant, telling his captain that Earth's own history has holes in it. Then Khan wakes up and we find out he was absolute ruler of more than a quarter of the planet from 1992 through 1996. So think about that for a second. The very first time Star Trek put a date on its own future, the same episode tells us the records from that stretch are a mess.

I doubt the writers meant it as cover. Probably they didn't. But it's sitting right there in the episode, and the franchise is going to need it later, badly.

Deep Space Nine's Trials and Tribble-ations winks at the Klingon foreheads

Speaking of the 1990s, this episode sends Sisko's crew onto Kirk's Enterprise, where Bashir and O'Brien are staring at a bar full of smooth foreheaded Klingons. The speculation turns to some kind of genetic engineering or a viral mutation, and Worf makes it clear it isn't something Klingons discuss with outsiders. That's the writers winking at us. They knew. Everybody in the building knew. They just weren't going to fix it that year.

The same episode opens with a couple of fan favorites around here: two agents from the Department of Temporal Investigations. When Kirk comes up, one of them cites "17 separate temporal violations, the biggest file on record," and the verdict is "Man was a menace." As a Kirk fan, I'm choosing to take that as a compliment.

But hold on to that one, because it tells us the Federation has an entire department whose whole job is keeping the timeline straight, and they're keeping files.

Enterprise leaned on the record to explain the Ferengi and the Borg

Enterprise had the biggest problem of anybody. It's a prequel set a hundred years before Kirk, and it's full of things Kirk's crew aren't supposed to know about yet. The fix the writers reached for over and over was the record.

In Acquisition, Archer's crew runs into the Ferengi. The Ferengi walk away knowing our name, and nobody on Enterprise ever learns theirs. Which means when the Enterprise D makes what the history books call first contact with the Ferengi in The Last Outpost, the history books are wrong.

Then there's Regeneration. Archer's crew fights Borg drones in 2153, 200 years before Picard ever hears the word, and they never get a name. All they get is "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." At the end of the episode they work out that the drone sent a message home to the Delta Quadrant, and Archer does the math out loud: "Sounds to me like we've only postponed the invasion until what? The 24th century." They knew exactly when the bill was coming due, and somehow none of that ever made it into the history books.

Discovery puts a Starfleet cover up in canon, signed off by Spock

Spock has an adopted sister named Michael Burnham, and in 50 years of Star Trek he never mentions her once. The Discovery season 2 finale, Such Sweet Sorrow Part Two, answers that directly. Starfleet's official line is "The destruction of Discovery was tragic." Except Discovery wasn't destroyed. It went to the future.

Then Spock himself recommends that everyone who knows the truth be ordered never to speak of Discovery, its drive, or her crew again under penalty of treason. Starfleet wrote a false entry into its own history on purpose and then made it a crime to correct it. That's a cover up in canon, signed off by Spock.

Strange New Worlds tackles the 1990s problem head on

Strange New Worlds finally deals with the 1990s problem in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. A time traveler who's been stuck in our century for 30 years explains that people have been trying to delay Khan's rise. In the episode's telling, so many people have tried to influence these events, to delay them or stop them, that whole temporal wars have been fought over them, and it's almost as if time itself is pushing back, with events reinserting themselves. All of this was supposed to happen back in 1992.

Then Temporal Investigations shows up at the end and tells La'an she can't share any of it, not even with Captain Pike. That's the same department that keeps Kirk's file, and they're sealing the record again.

Every Star Trek contradiction lands in one of three columns

So here's the theory. Every contradiction in Star Trek lands in one of three columns. The first column is fixed: the show put an actual repair on screen. The Klingon foreheads are the big one. In Enterprise's Affliction and Divergence, a Klingon experiment with human Augment DNA goes wrong. It mixes with a strain of the Levodian flu, and suddenly Klingons all over the Empire are losing their ridges. By the end, Phlox is joking that he might switch specialties to cranial reconstruction.

The second column is admitted: the show knows, says so on screen, and doesn't fix it. That's Worf's line. Nine years before Enterprise explained the foreheads, Deep Space Nine had already put up a sign that said, yes, we see it too. The third column is unanswered: nothing on screen at all, and the only answer lives behind the scenes.

Here's the rule. Nothing goes in fixed or admitted unless I can name the episode and quote the line. If I can't, it goes in unanswered, no matter how much I like my theory.

Khan remembering Chekov and the Eugenics Wars date are just mistakes

Some of you will say that "the records were wrong" is a cop out, that you can say it about anything. And you'd be partially right. Some of this is just a mistake. So let's put two in the unanswered column right now, on day one.

Khan remembering Chekov is a mistake. Chekov isn't in Space Seed. Walter Koenig didn't even join the show until season 2. There's no line anywhere that patches it. Unanswered.

In Deep Space Nine's Doctor Bashir, I Presume, an admiral says, "200 years ago, we tried to improve the species through DNA resequencing. And what did we get for our trouble? The eugenics wars." That episode is set in the 2370s. Two hundred years back is the 2170s, which is somehow almost two centuries off from what Khan himself told us. Somebody in that writers' room needed a calendar. Unanswered.

Every contradiction gets two answers, including the Klingons

That's the other half of this. Every contradiction gets two answers: what the show says happened, if it says anything, and what actually happened behind the scenes.

Take the Klingons one more time. The original series didn't have the materials, the budget, or the time for elaborate alien makeup, and Roddenberry had wanted them to look more alien all along. In 1979, they had a movie budget, and the makeup designer, Fred Phillips, asked to do really alien Klingons, and Roddenberry said yes. So the real answer is that in 1967 they had a TV schedule, and in 1979 they finally had the money. Both answers are true, and I think both are more fun than either one on its own.

My prediction: more contradictions will land in fixed or admitted

Here's my prediction, and you can hold me to it. I think when we're done, more of the big contradictions are going to land in fixed or admitted than in unanswered. I think this show has owned up to more of its own mess than it ever gets credit for. We'll keep a running record the whole way through, and if the count goes against me, I'll tell you.

Which Star Trek contradiction has been bugging you the longest, and does it belong in fixed, admitted, or unanswered?