The Optimum Movement was a political movement that came about during the mid-21st century on Earth, and spread to a number of nations—including Great Britain and the United States of America. They are believed to be one of the instigators behind the Third World War, and the following post atomic horror.
Colonel Phillip Green was reportedly affiliated with the Optimum Movement (ST novel: Federation); his theories of human genetic purity (which he himself attempted to carry out after the war) were definitely in line with general Optimum policy. (ENT episode: "Demons")
- In the novel, Green was referred to as head of "countless analytical committees" which decreed official Optimum policy on genetic purity.
History
In the 2060s and 2070s, Colonel Adrik Thorsen ascended to lead the international Optimum Movement, with the organization centered on a belief in the survival of the Human race by removing those individuals who were weak or deformed in some way. In the years following Earth's first horrible era of nuclear weapons, radiation had indeed created a sizable percentage of the living Human race afflicted by some form of deformity, cancer, or disease, especially as World War III led to the Post-Atomic Horror. Thorsen was a fervent believer in strengthening the Human race by euthanizing those he considered burdens and sterilizing those considered unfit to create superior offspring. In some ways, Thorsen's Optimum Movement had a similar agenda and methods when compared to Khan Noonien Singh's Great Khanate, which was also an international organization that sought political control of Earth by congregating nation-states through uprisings and surgical attacks on their leaders, but Khan's lot intended to use science to create a superior ruling class, rather than improving the race as a whole as Thorsen believed he could. Thorsen's methods were likened to those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis due to his use of propaganda, control and extermination, although Thorsen was not practicing the Nazis' choice racism in promoting or terrorizing individual ethnicities.
In the era of Zefram Cochrane's first warp drive experiments, Thorsen clandestinely assaulted New United Nations forces protecting scientists that developed spaceship technology in an orbital space station, acquiring an experimental inertial dampener test vessel that could speed him to v in a short amount of time. At Christopher's Landing on Titan, Cochrane was being honored after returning to the Solar system after his first use of the warp ship
to visit Alpha Centauri, where Cochrane became the first human to visit an extrasolar planet at Alpha Centauri B II.
Thorsen, under the pretense of representing the Optimum during Cochrane's reception, intended to force Cochrane to give him all the warp drive development materials so that Thorsen's Optimum Movement could have exclusive use of the transportation applications and possible military uses of the superimpellor prototypes. Cochrane found out from Micah Brack that Thorsen intended to meet with him and left Titan, because of his dislike for the Optimums.
Thorsen's Optimum ended up gaining a majority in the United Kingdom, leading the country to reform and giving Thorsen national leadership of the Optimal Republic of Great Britain in 2075. Optimal forces had overthrown the British monarchy, capturing Queen Mary and holding her prisoner in London. Other members of the Royal Family were in hiding in Britain or abroad, Victoria Station was renamed the Thorsen Central Hub, and the Emergency Measures Act of 2076 put arrest powers in the city in the hands of drug-addled "zombie" mercenaries hired by the Optimum party. Travel was heavily restricted, the city's power supply was cut. In the United States, the Constitution of the United States of America was suspended by the Optimal government, and only the 15 states under Optimal control were permitted to send Representatives to Congress.
Years later, Thorsen still hungered to best Cochrane and have the rights to his research. In the aftermath of the Kashishowa Station wormhole disaster, Thorsen had taken on the belief that there was the possibility of a warp bomb that could clear whole sections of Earth without radiation or combustion side effects affecting the environment. All of Thorsen's later encounters with Cochrane would center around his desire to have Cochrane develop the warp bomb for him.
By 2078, Cochrane had begun the development of a colony on Centauri B II from his facilities on Titan. While visiting a conference on Luna, Cochrane risked a visit to Earth before he left the system to return to Centauri. On his agenda was a visit with an old colleague, John Burke, in London. To carry out this visit, Cochrane obtained false credentials from UN Intelligence. During their travel, Cochrane's car was stopped by zombies, leading John's granddaughter Monica to pilot through a checkpoint. Thorsen was aware of their travel, and intercepted them at their rendezvous point in the abandoned Battersea Stadium. John and Monica used concealed weapons to disable Thorsen and his team. John Burke was killed and Thorsen confronted Monica and Cochrane. In the fight, Cochrane fired a laser at Thorsen, blinding him in one eye.
Thorsen's wounds made him ineligible to be part of the Optimum Movement, even as that organization's control faltered over the subjugated nations. As the Optimal nations fell apart, Thorsen fled into hiding, with a burning hatred for Cochrane over the attack. (ST novel: Federation)
Legacy
Q's courtroom and drug-addled guards were modeled after the Optimum agenda of trial and condemnations in the Post-Atomic Horror. The guards were referred to as Fourth World mercenaries. (TNG episode & novelization: Encounter at Farpoint; ST novel: Federation)
