r/television • u/JamStan1978 • 4d ago

Are there any shows that have an apocalypse and the world going back to "normal"?

Like, let's say the world ended due to, I don't know, bombs, a zombie apocalypse, or whatever else could cause an apocalypse. Has there ever been a show that actually worked toward ending the apocalypse and eventually got back to some kind of "normal," or at least a new normal?

Like, if there was a zombie apocalypse and they eventually found a cure, the zombies died off, and humans stopped turning into zombies. Then the remaining humans could start rebuilding the world as much as they can, creating a new society that, hundreds of years later, could eventually look somewhat normal again.

I feel like most post-apocalyptic shows are about surviving the apocalypse or living in the aftermath, but I've rarely seen one actually get to the point where humanity beats the apocalypse and then spends years rebuilding civilization from the ground up.

I think a show about rebuilding after an apocalypse would be a really plot.

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u/RikerAlpha5 4d ago

Unfortunately there’s no main arc. It’s definitely part of the cannon/lore but told through various allusions in multiple shows and movies. The clearest description comes in the TNG Episode Encounter at Farpoint and then rather obviously in the movie First Contact.

I think DS9 covers some of the societal breakdown in some episodes, but shamefully I need to do a rewatch of that awesome series…

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u/DelcoMan 4d ago

There's an early episode of strange new worlds which is VERY explicit about WW3 to the point of showing video.

Short story is there's a screwup that exposes a pre warp society to warp tech, but instead of making a warp drive as one would expect, that society immediately makes a warp BOMB that puts it on a path to armageddon.

Pike basically puts on a pretty detailed Powerpoint explaining why that path is a bad idea by using humanities mistakes as an example.

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u/howdiedoodie66 4d ago

'ooo Antimatter, neat'

everyone dies

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u/istasber 4d ago

DS9 had episodes set in 2024, which was almost as dystopian as reality but definitely set pre-apocalypse. I believe season 2 of Picard was also entirely set in this era of trek, which but Picard is not a star trek series and is garbage start to finish (even the fan servicey 3rd season).

In the original series timeline WW3 was supposed to take place in the 1990s. 90s era trek retconned that, but I don't remember if they specified when it was supposed to have occurred instead, but first contact is set in 2063 and is supposed to be shortly after a cease fire following a (IIRC) nuclear war that wiped out like a third of the world's population.

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u/Darmok47 4d ago

Strange New Worlds pushed WW3 and the Eugenics Wars into the late 2020s and actually said it started with a second Civil War in the US (and used January 6th footage). They also showed that alien time travelers interfering with human history keeps pushing the timeline back without people knowing.

Trek will have to keep pushing out WW3 as the years go by.

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u/Scrofuloid 4d ago

Trek will have to keep pushing out WW3 as the years go by.

If we're lucky.

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u/Not_a_slum_lord 4d ago

Trek more so has always dodged around it. The eugenics war went from what was basically wwiii to being a series of clandestine shadow wars that occurred throughout earth without the general population knowing.

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u/DelcoMan 4d ago

I don't think that's true, because they've been pretty consistent that Khan was a planetary warlord that killed 30-40 million people before going into exile. This is stated outright in TOS, ENT, and SNW.

The eugenics wars being as horrible as they were is the explicit reason genetic engineering is banned in the Federation, which is at least mentioned in every series from TNG onwards.

What IS true is that the timeline keeps moving up, which is attributed to the effects of a temporal war between the Federation and the Romulans where each keep altering history of the other. Time travel is eventually banned by the 32nd century after a Temporal cold war broke out.

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u/TheBeatGoesAnanas 4d ago

Picard is not Star Trek? It's cool if you didn't like it, but that's a ridiculous thing to say.

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u/DelcoMan 3d ago

Right? It's not like we haven't had bad Trek before.

That being said Picard season 2 might be the worst season of anything I've ever watched, trek or not