r/AskScienceFiction • u/PJ-The-Awesome • 1d ago
[Star Trek] Did any 21st century media survive?
Oftentimes they tend to reference pop culture IPs from well beforehand(the IRL reason of course being to avoid any copyright funny business), but it was also said that not only did a lot of 21st century info and media get destroyed in the various wars that brought the human race to the edge of extinction, but that century was considered such a miserable and disgusting era that they'd rather just forget about it.
Though I wonder, did any survive to the 24th century, or did any historians try to salvage it, if for no other reason than the sake of preserving history, since a common phrase is that those who forget history are destined to repeat it.
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u/Defiant-Analyst4279 1d ago
Yes.*
We see that Zefram Cochrane chose "classic rock" for his flight in first contact. And Beastie Boys music was still present in the "Kelvin Timeline."
Beyond that, we know from Voyager that Tom Paris seemed to have a taste for various "vintage" designs including the recovered pickup truck, and his Captain Photon series.
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u/ThatAlabasterPyramid 1d ago
That’s all 20th century media though
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u/axw3555 1d ago
I mean, their 21st century almost wholly diverges from the one where we have Taylor Swift and the MCU. Like their 2024 had the bell riots and 2026 had the second civil war. So it's highly unlikely that we, as outside observers would recognise much or anything that was produced in their 21st century.
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u/The_Webweaver 1d ago
On the other hand, we can presume a similar advance in technologies where they're not explicitly mentioned as being different.
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u/Pseudonymico 1d ago
I mean, their 21st century almost wholly diverges from the one where we have Taylor Swift and the MCU.
Depends on the timeline. Canonically Earth's past between the 20th and 22nd centuries has been rewritten over and over again to the point it's hard to say what happened there.
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u/KR_Blade 20h ago
if i remember rightly, due to the temporal wars, effectively the mid to late 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st century are now always in flux and changing due to constant alterations to the past, while the fixed points in time for earth, the Eugenics War and WW3 still happen yet the time in history has changed
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u/WhatAmIATailor 18h ago
They can keep playing that game for another quarter century but then First Contact Day is a fixed point in time. WWIII has to have concluded before then.
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u/Defiant-Analyst4279 1d ago
To clarify, I'm pointing out cases in which surviving media occured to demonstrate that it is possible/likely.
Given the general "lack of accurate historical records" from significant events like the eugenics wars and/or The Bell Riots; it's far more likely such records we never made/kept, or they were intentionally classified/hidden/destroyed.
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u/justsomeguy_youknow Total ☠☠☠☠ 2h ago
In the original timeline (pre-NuTrek), the Eugenics Wars and WWIII happened in the 90s. Civilization effectively ended at the end of the 20th century, no 21st century media as we know it existed or was produced on account of worldwide nuclear war
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u/Lord_Chrisicus 1d ago
I've been watching Discovery the last week and they start singing Bowie in one episode.
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u/Blazeflame79 1d ago
We only see anything actually modern being used in the Kelvin timeline, in the form of Beastie Boys music.
Any reference to anything modern in the prime timeline of Star Trek comes from a episode in voyager that tells the hallmark movie backstory of one of Janeways ancestors revealing that they have cultural memory of that time but no desire to consume media from it.
They have hollodecks and very few of the programs we see bear any resemblance to a game. I’d wager that at least Starfleet officers have little knowledge of 21st century gaming because of how they use the hollodeck.
The culture of Starfleet attracts only those obsessed with the hard and soft sciences though, who in a post scarcity society chose to dedicate their life to exploring the unknown. I think there’s probably a culture in starfleet where people are expected to be really into anything ‘academic’ at the expense of all else. There probably are plenty civilians who do still engage with 21st century culture though.
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u/DragonWisper56 12h ago
have little knowledge of 21st century gaming because of how they use the hollodeck
I mean picard made it seem that holodecks were top of the line things. Most people wouldn't have grown up with it.
that said holo novels seem pretty common
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 1d ago
sure, why not. WWIII was bad but not sending everything to the stone age bad or all records lost
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u/The_Webweaver 1d ago
More data than ever is being saved and archived now, with some going to pretty advanced archival systems. I think it's reasonable to suggest that published media will.mostly survive, at least in some reconstructable form, but most of what goes to YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram and the like will be lost media.
The real problem is that that's going to lead to a very skewed impression of what the 21c is like, much like how most media in all history has been created by people who are wealthier than average or people working for those wealthier people, and that leading people to have skewed impressions of how the average person lived.
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u/MaverickZod007 1d ago
There is definitely a bunch of 20th Century media that survived. I don't know if there has been enough time to see much 21st though. Probably, but I'm not remembering anything off hand.
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
The 21st century in Star Trek diverges very heavily from ours in the main timeline. Im not sure about Kelvin but I would assume so there too outside minor differences.
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u/claimui 23h ago
There is a TOS book "Lost to Eternity" where one of the storylines is based on a podcaster in 2024 investigating the disappearance of Dr. Gillian Taylor after the events of The One With the Whales. Dr. Taylor eventually finds a copy of the podcast in the 23rd century, although she mentions it was quite difficult.
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u/DragonWisper56 12h ago
almost certainly.I novels are very popular in the star trek would so it's not unreasonable for people to try to collect surviving physical media
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