: Wait, what are you talking about for Star Trek? They've never tried
: explaining it, it's clear it's a completely different universe from ours,
: because right now we'd be in the middle of a world war. They did some
: stupid time-travel stories that forced modifications to the whole blanket
: Eugenics Wars of the 1990s idea presented back in the 1960s, but they've
: never said "There was a prophetic series about where we'd be and we
: suppressed it."

I could have sworn I'd read it somewhere that they classified the series when it started looking too realistic. Maybe it was a different series...it was a while ago.

: I think it's basically a given that any fictional universe does not within it
: contain the work of fiction described. This is fine because that's
: irrelevant metafictional nonsense anyhow. The only place is starts
: actively hurting the story are genre films where, for instance, people
: don't recognize a zombie apocalypse, because that's essentially arguing
: that an entire category of media never existed.

Yes, it is irrelevant metafictional nonsense. But it's fun to theorize about.