Origins of the Terran Empire

[EJA]

I think I posted a similar piece a while ago on a different forum here, but I thought I'd bring it out again to find out what people think. See, I have a theory that in the mirror universe, the Terran Empire was formed sometime in the few years after World War Two as a reaction to the conflict. The leaders of the Allies thought that a new, stronger power was needed to maintain peace in the world and to protect it from potential future threats. To this end, all of America, Western Europe, Australia and the Pacific was united under the brand new empire composed mainly of the Allied nations and most likely ruled from what had been the USA before it was dissolved and reformed into the new order. They would have used strong coercion in consolidating their power, e.g. join us or suffer. One thing I'm not so sure about is how relations with the Soviet Union would have gone. With virtually the rest of the planet under the thumb of the empire, would the USSR have immediately surrendered and allowed itself to be subsumed, or would it have come to some sort of arrangement with the empire only to collapse in the early 1990s, as in the real world? I'd like to hear opinions and suggestions.

 

[Sisu]

I see the key point being Edith Keeler. Without her, the world developed as it should - with her, the Germans won, and then subsequently became the Terran Empire.

The other difference is the guy that shot himself with his phaser on kill. He was a scientist who was having a tough time during the Depression. Without the pollution of the timeline by McCoy, he survived the Depression, went on to develop human genetic engineering, which lead to the Eugenics Wars. With his death, our timeline was ruined, and Star Trek will never grow to be.

But on the plus side, neither will Enterprise!

 

[EJA]

Yeah, but what do you think of my theory though? Could it work? Please, I'm dying for some opinions!

 

[JD]

EJA said:
I think I posted a similar piece a while ago on a different forum here, but I thought I'd bring it out again to find out what people think. See, I have a theory that in the mirror universe, the Terran Empire was formed sometime in the few years after World War Two as a reaction to the conflict. The leaders of the Allies thought that a new, stronger power was needed to maintain peace in the world and to protect it from potential future threats. To this end, all of America, Western Europe, Australia and the Pacific was united under the brand new empire composed mainly of the Allied nations and most likely ruled from what had been the USA before it was dissolved and reformed into the new order. They would have used strong coercion in consolidating their power, e.g. join us or suffer. One thing I'm not so sure about is how relations with the Soviet Union would have gone. With virtually the rest of the planet under the thumb of the empire, would the USSR have immediately surrendered and allowed itself to be subsumed, or would it have come to some sort of arrangement with the empire only to collapse in the early 1990s, as in the real world? I'd like to hear opinions and suggestions.

I think it's a very good possability.
But I also see two others, one could be that perhaps the Roman Empire never collapsed, and then went on to take over the entire world. My other theory is that what was left of the US went on to take over the world after they got the Vulcan tech from Zefram Chocrane(sp) and co.

 

[Anwar]

Archer said that the Empire had existed for Centuries, and Phlox remarked that Earth literature as far back as Shakespeare had been influenced by the Empire.

I think that the Terran Empire either is just an evolution of the Roman Empire if it never fell, or if Alexander the Great had created one big Empire and had heirs that continued to rule it and the world.

 

[Vanyel]

Anwar said:
Archer said that the Empire had existed for Centuries, and Phlox remarked that Earth literature as far back as Shakespeare had been influenced by the Empire.

I think that the Terran Empire either is just an evolution of the Roman Empire if it never fell, or if Alexander the Great had created one big Empire and had heirs that continued to rule it and the world.

Or maybe the British Empire never fell. However, considering the barbarity of the Terran Empire it could have been Rome or the Huns.

Also, maybe China used its technological advantages it developed before Europe and created an Asian-European Empire that eventually conquered the Americas.

My final thought on the idea is that throughout this parallel Earth's history, things were almost always the opposite of the Star Trek Universe and it could have been a series of possibly 20th century wars that formed the Terran Empire. Wars between a United States Empire with the Washington Family line ruling; the British Empire where King John never signed the Magna Carta thus keeping the Sovereign as the head of government; Stalin seizing power away from a living Lenin or even killing him to take control and a Hitler controlled Germany. All of these major powers waring over and over with each other until only one empire remained. Kinda of like a real life version of Risk.

Do I make sense? I hardly got any sleep last night because a friend of mine is sick with the flu and couldn't sleep because of congestion and coughing and asked me to stay up and play Yahoo pool with him until he was to exhausted to stay awake. Luckily his doctor does have Saturday hours so he'll see him again today.

Edited to add:

Archer's line about the Empire existing for centuries could still be true. It just may not have become a globe spanning empire until much more recently, in relation to his time period.

 

[Anwar]

True.

I've always been of the mind that the Mirror Universe has always been a different place than ours, and that there's no "divergence" point in our two timelines. IE, it's always been the way it is, and there was never a time where we were the same.

 

[Unicron]

One origin was given in DC's Mirror Universe Saga, which I've always liked personally. The mirror Earth was very similar until the war with the Romulans in the 2150s, which they lost. Earth was annexed into the Romulan Empire for a decade or so until an armed resistance forced the Romulans off. The planet was now free, but the resistance didn't simply disappear. They forged a political party dedicated to ensuring that Earth would never be conquered again. Thus the Terran Empire was born.

This origin makes the Empire not too unlike the militant Bajorans seen in one universe in "Parallels."

 

[TheMurph]

I think these are all great theory's. My favorite one though is the German WWII victory.

 

[Anwar]

But in "City on the edge of forever" we saw that in the German victory timeline, the Enterprise never existed.

Wouldn't that imply that as a result of a Nazi victory, humans never advanced to the point they developed Warp Drive technology?

 

[Unicron]

Not necessarily, although that is one possiblity. Certainly a militant future society is not one which the Vulcans would have wanted to contact. But it is also possible that the humans in the altered timeline still developed warp or some other FTL system; just not in the same form as the Enterprise. Perhaps even the Enterprise still existed, but was no longer in orbit. It was somewhere else in the galaxy.

 

[Braxton]

The Terran Empire is the direct descendant of the British Empire. With the mirror universe being our opposite-self, it would make sense for the British Empire to have conquered the planet instead of declining as it did in the real universe.

I see the two world wars happening something like this...

WWI: The British Empire succeeds in conquering all of Europe and portions of the middle east. Both Europe and North America are now under their total control.

WWII: This war would see the British further expand their Empire by taking control of over 80% of Asia, if not all of it. Any country that is still independent after this war will fear the British Empire and either join them or resist, which would ultimately end up in them being crushed and subjugated.

The Eugenics War still occurs in the 1990's.

At some point the British Empire is renamed the Terran Empire. This may take place shortly after the moon landing as their focus now changes to what's out in space.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

No Napoleanic theories?

Ottoman?

Hapsburgs?

Islam?

Christianity?

Militant secular dehumanisn?

Admiration for STARSHIP TROOPERS gone amok?

 

[serdogthehound]

I like Roman or Nazi idea if we look at mirror,mirror we see Roman/Nazi style salue further most of the bridge officer are white or Japanese which could strongly incat a Axis victoru further the Roman and british were alot more hands off the the terran Empire seems to be

 

[Vanyel]

MeanJoePhaser said:
No Napoleanic theories?

Ottoman?

Hapsburgs?

Islam?

Christianity?

Militant secular dehumanisn?

Admiration for STARSHIP TROOPERS gone amok?

Ok, the Akkadian Empire never fell and conquered Asia, Africa and Europe. Then Christianity rose to power under the ever increasingly powerful Popes. Pope Urban II led a crusade in the name of Christ, a religious leader who led a revolt against the Akkadians over a 1000 years before, to overthrow the Akkadian Emperor. It wasn't until Pope Gregory VIII that the Crusaders were able to capture Akkad and execute the Royal Line.

Various Popes Ruled until Martin Luther and King Henry the VIII led a revolt that forced Rome to hand over power to London. A Joint Monarchy was established until Henry had Luther killed. London ruled the Empire and was able to consolidate power in Africa and Asia.

In the New World, the Inca and Aztec Empires are warring. The Aztec's win the long war and expand their empire from pole to pole. The Aztecs were able to make several technological innovations and discovered and killed the crews of unknown ships that washed upon their shores after hurricanes. It wasn't until 1492 when Columbus landed on San Salvador and his crew were captured and killed did the Aztecs learn of the European Empire.

In 1545 an Aztec fleet was destroyed off the coast of Spain. War continued off and on for the next 200 years. It wasn't until the Aztec's conquered the Island of Japan that the tide of war began to turn.

In a desperate bid to maintain the main island of Japan, the Aztecs committed a large percentage of their forces to fight off the Chinese forces under their European commanders. It turned out that the Aztecs committed so much of their forces they left their Atlantic fleets vulnerable. The Europeans used their superior numbers to force the Aztecs to continue to commit to Japan. Then combined their entire Atlantic fleet and destroyed the Aztec fleet.

The war fell apart quickly for the Aztecs after that, and in less than 25 years most of the Aztec Empire was conquered. The Aztec Emperor and his sons were all killed and the eldest Princesses was taken by the European Emperor as his bride. Their child became the first Terran Emeror.

 

[Sci]

I would tend to suspect that the Terran Empire's origins would extend back to the colonial period of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. My inclination would be to think that the various colonial powers of Europe, along with Japan and the US, instead of fighting one-another, unified somehow, and that this eventually evolved into the Empire.

 

[EJA]

The above theories are all interesting. But assuming my version is what happened, and the Empire formed from a merging of the victorious Allies (USA, Great Britain, Soviet Union) after WW2, then what would have become of Nazism? If people in the MU were so morally introverted by this time, wouldn't the Allies have admired the Nazis to a degree? Of course, admiration for their methods probably wouldn't have stopped them going to war with Germany once they so brazenly defied the Treaty of Versailles. Opinions, anyone? I'm going by the assumption that WW2 happened in the MU based on it being mentioned briefly in "Age of the Empress" (which I know isn't canon, but provides a very insightful look at the MU).

 

[Hobs202]

The Terran Empire seems to be very Nazi-like with some Roman Empire features (the dagger-symbols). Maybe what happened is that the Roman Empire survived in some form or another, and then merged or were conquered by the Nazis in World War II. Another theory of mine is that the United States went fascist and subsequently joined the Axis.

If anything, I'll bet that most of the initial events that lead up to the Terran Empire's birth occured during the age of Imperialism.

 

[Hobs202]

MeanJoePhaser said:
Admiration for STARSHIP TROOPERS gone amok?

Hey that's an idea.

I assume the Empire won in the MU's version of "Star Wars."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I had to check the date to make sure this wasn't an old thread because we discussed this before (around August or so?)

I'm still going with the theory that Edith Keeler screwed up WWII and the Nazis won. America being much more of an economic powerhouse than Germany soon took over the fascist world empire. Note how the Terran Empire, with its free-wheeling capitalistic/entrepreneurial nature is much more American than the repressed, gray totalitarian empires that the Nazis or even Communists would have created.

The Terran Empire are more space pirates than fascists, really. Closer to being libertarian in their embrace of individualism, which fascists are certainly not big on. And the fact that non-Aryans and even aliens were given roles of importance in the Empire suggests that the racist philosophy of the Nazis had long since given way to a "whatever works, go for it" creed.

The USSR was probably devastated by the Nazi victory long before the Terran Empire evolved - the Nazis were intent on genocide of the Slavs. So that explains what happened to the USSR, the people were simply exterminated.

Admiration for STARSHIP TROOPERS gone amok?

That's pretty close to my vision of it - or maybe Firefly's libertarianism run amok. The Browncoats win the civil war and then things really go straight to hell because I don't reckon all those folks holds to the same prissy moral code that Mal Reynolds does.