Story Idea: Pre ENT-plot bunny

[ladyrainbow]

I had this idea in the shower and it won't let go. ACK! (Plot bunny!)

It's connected to ENT...sort of. What if the ancestors of the ENT crew had met (briefly or otherwise) way before "Broken Bow"? I'm thinking WWIII-era, before the arrival of the Vulcans in 2063. I think what sparked it was Jon Archer's remark in "Hatchery" that an ancestor of his fought in Afghanistan(?), and Malcolm's family being in the Royal Navy for generations. Yes, some of it would involve some military action and involve Khan and the Augments in some way.

No firm plot, but a few characters that came up:

Major Steven Archer, United States Army (Jon's great-great grandfather)
Commander David Reed, Royal Navy Intelligence (Malcolm's GGG)
Commander John Tucker, US Navy, Pensacola, FL (father of Cyrus, Trip's GG)
Dr. Jisa Sangalan (Sato), University of Tokyo (Hoshi's maternal GGM)
Dr. Mestral, Carbon Creek, PA
Patrick Mayweather (Civilian Pilot)

Of course, Phlox's family wouldn't be in this one, considering the time frame. And Archer's character wouldn't necessarily have been close friends with the others...maybe he met Patrick Mayweather briefly when Patrick was hired to fly Archer somewhere, or Archer meets Reed during some sort of intelligence briefing on the Augments.

But anyway, this would probably be another epic (like I don't have a few going on already. ACK!). But I wonder what your reactions would be to a fic like this.

Opinions? Ideas? Much appreciated.

[Hummingbird2]

I say: Go for it!

[Kathy Rose]

Ooooh, I like it, too, especially since Mestral might have a part in it.

The problem with the characters not interacting much is how to make those brief connections. Were you thinking about focusing on one character in particular, with the others making brief contacts with him/her, or a series of chapters about the individual characters, with perhaps some overlap?

[ladyrainbow]

I'm thinking more of a series of chapters, with some overlap. That way I'm not stuck on just one character.

I'd have to do some research about today's military (WWIII supposedly started in what, 1996?) and extrapolate from there. There aren't a lot of fics that explores that era of ST history. And as for the meetings, yeah, it'll be tricky trying to set those up if they're brief. but I don't want it to be a "Wow, what a coincidence! What are the odds of my GGG and HIS GGG managing to know each other?!" Of course, maybe records were destroyed in that war, so certain instances may have been "forgotten" (or classified?)

Gotta think more on this.

[EntAllat]

Commander David Reed, Royal Navy Intelligence (Malcolm's GGG)

That name just tickles me, and you know why.

[ladyrainbow]

Yes, I do.

[bluetiger]

I like it also. I called Malcolm's twin sons David and Stuart Reed.

[Aquarius]

This sounds like an extremely cool idea. And even though 1996 has long since passed in real time, you could make the argument that it still started in the 90s with all the conflict in the Middle East and Africa...and things just escalated until the major powers got involved later.

[Brandyjane]

I think that would be interesting, Lady Rainbow. I don't think I've ever read a ST story set in that time period. Since your story would be a prequel, you wouldn't even have to be limited to just "Ent" characters' ancestors. You could throw in references to people from several different ST series, if you wanted.

This sounds like an extremely cool idea. And even though 1996 has long since passed in real time, you could make the argument that it still started in the 90s with all the conflict in the Middle East and Africa...and things just escalated until the major powers got involved later.

Good idea! I don't like to go outside canon, but I never quite knew how to deal with this issue. I think that's how I'm going to start thinking about it.

[Skywalker]

That does sound like a very cool idea, but I thought World War III didn't begin until 2026? I know some people link the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s to the third World War because of dialogue in "Space Seed," but I always imagined the two conflicts to be separate. Otherwise, the Eugenics Wars/World War III would have lasted for over fifty years (2063 was approximately ten years after the third World War, according to Data in First Contact).

If you want to keep the two conflicts linked, you could say that World War III began because of the after-effects of the Eugenics Wars. Maybe the Eastern Coalition emerged out of the empire Khan forged in Asia and the Middle East. Perhaps after Khan fled the planet, someone else tried to continue where he started, but other nations rebelled and sparked a worldwide conflict.

Oh, and Archer's great-grandfather fought in North Africa. That's actually one of my biggest gripes with the whole thing, to be honest. In order for Archer's great-grandfather to have commanded a battalion during the Eugenics Wars, he likely would have been a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel, which would have put him in his mid-thirties in the 1990s. Henry Archer looked to be in his early- to mid-forties in "Broken Bow," when Jon was nine years old, so Henry would have been born sometime in the late 2060s or early 2070s. That means Jonathan's grandfather would have to have been very old indeed by the time he'd fathered Henry. Which leads me to believe that either André Bormanis (the writer of "Hatchery") got his timeline wrong, or TPTB pushed the Eugenics Wars out of the 1990s and into the 21st century.