Star Trek: TNG - Hive already has continuity flaw

[Luminus]

Spoilers... I think.




I just finished reading the first issue and it states that the borg of the 29th century have assimilated the entire galaxy. However, there were several stories dealing with the 31st century in Enterprise and Voyager (here).

Also, the story seems to copy and paste the same plot from Voyager's Scorpion I & II. I'd say the story is okay, but these 2 issues stood out to me. Anyone else reading this?

[Therin of Andor]

Luminus wrote:

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it states that the borg of the 29th century have assimilated the entire galaxy. However, there were several stories dealing with the 31st century in Enterprise and Voyager (here).

And Star Trek has only ever shown one version of the distant future.

Also, the story seems to copy and paste the same plot from Voyager's Scorpion I & II.

You think? I haven't seen too many parallels yet. It's way too early to start guessing what Braga's new story is doing.

[rahullak]

I'm 20 pages in, and I can see the parallel with Scorpion. Its not exact, but there are similarities.

[Luminus]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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And Star Trek has only ever shown one version of the distant future.

Star Trek HAS only shown one version of the distant future. All other futures get wiped out and they never intersect, as far as I remember. For example, there's never 2 contradicting stories about the same distant future.

[Sci]

Luminus wrote:

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Star Trek HAS only shown one version of the distant future. All other futures get wiped out and they never intersect, as far as I remember.

And what, exactly, makes you think that the distant future seen in Hive will not similarly be wiped out by the time Hive ends? What makes you think the future of Hive is going to last any more than the futures seen in "All Good Things..." or "The Visitor" or "Endgame?"

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

There was a tiny bit towards the end of Watching the Clock, where some doubt is cast on whether the 29th and 31st century time cops represent the same future. Amusingly, it seems as if they themselves weren't entirely sure.

And you only have to look at "Shockwave", "Twilight" "Azati Prime", "All Good Things", "The Visitor", "Future's End", "Storm Front" etc. to see how easily the future of Trek shifts and changes. How many Trek stories about the distant future take place between blasts of Annorax's weapon, where entire species that play a pivotal role in one timeline are deleted from existence?

[Christopher]

Luminus wrote:

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Star Trek HAS only shown one version of the distant future. All other futures get wiped out and they never intersect, as far as I remember. For example, there's never 2 contradicting stories about the same distant future.

Think about it. Star Trek is a franchise created by many different writers and producers. Nobody writing one story is going to know for sure what some future writer or producer may want to do in a later story -- or what they themselves might want to do a couple of years down the road. So there's a built-in pressure to avoid imposing limits on the future, to leave things as open-ended as possible so there won't be anything restricting what future stories can do. So Trek episodes that give a glimpse into the future tend to make a point of leaving things ambiguous. "All Good Things..." ended with the crew specifically saying that now that they knew about that future, it wouldn't necessarily unfold the same way -- and of course it didn't.

So it's one of the core assumptions of Trek time travel that the future is absolutely not fixed, that there are many different directions it could take. Not only because it's necessary to avoid restricting future storytellers' choices, but because it's necessary to maintain a sense of danger and high stakes. All these stories about fighting to save the Federation or the galaxy don't carry as much weight if the future is already predestined. So since ST is a fictional franchise and the needs of drama and storytelling dictate its rules, one of those fundamental rules is that the future is always mutable. (Which is further reinforced by "Parallels," which showed that the timeline naturally, spontaneously diverges into many paths even without time travel being involved.)

And just because we haven't seen overt contradictions between our glimpses of the far future, that doesn't mean there aren't any. We really haven't seen enough of any distant future to jump to such sweeping conclusions. There may not be any proof that Braxton's Temporal Integrity Commission and Daniels's Temporal Agents aren't in the same timeline, but there's no proof that they are either. They're entirely separate agencies, one Starfleet and one civilian. They could be part of a common history -- I proposed how one could've led to the other in Watching the Clock -- but there's hardly any proof that they are.

[Cartoonist]

Luminus wrote:

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Star Trek HAS only shown one version of the distant future. All other futures get wiped out and they never intersect, as far as I remember. For example, there's never 2 contradicting stories about the same distant future.

Think about it: We've seen literally thousands of alternate universes on screen (in that TNG episode where thousands of Enterprises were showing up in the same area - and there were several other episodes dealing with multiple alternate universes/timelines/realities as well).

Unless you're saying all of those alternate universes converge into that one distant future we've seen... then that means there are an equally large number of alternate futures.

What's more, once Locutus succeeds in altering the past, this future won't even exist anymore.

[Luminus]

Well, looking at it that way, I see your points. My mind is just stuck on TV trek, so when there's a discrepancy.... you know.

[Christopher]

^But it's TV Trek that gives the clearest evidence that the future is far from fixed, that any potential future is tenuous and easily changed.

[Luminus]

^No. TV trek NEVER contradicts its future by showing 2 different versions of the same future century. There's only 1 instance of the 29th century. 1 instance of the 31 century. 1 instance of the 26th century and so on. Source: Memory Alpha

So anytime someone comes back from the future, it has to be a time we've never seen or heard of. And if they do come back from one of the as seen futures, it must be the same as depicted before (see Voyager's "Relativity" and "Future's End"). Those futures only change because of the altered events happening in the present.

[Hartzilla2007]

Sci wrote:

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And what, exactly, makes you think that the distant future seen in Hive will not similarly be wiped out by the time Hive ends? What makes you think the future of Hive is going to last any more than the futures seen in "All Good Things..." or "The Visitor" or "Endgame?"

Honestly I get the feeling that this is what the plot will revolve around.

[Christopher]

Luminus wrote:

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^No. TV trek NEVER contradicts its future by showing 2 different versions of the same future century. There's only 1 instance of the 29th century. 1 instance of the 31 century. 1 instance of the 26th century and so on.

That's not true. We've seen multiple conflicting versions of the late 24th and early 25th century, timelines that have clearly been wiped out -- "All Good Things...," "The Visitor," "Timeless," "Shattered," and "Endgame."

And like I've said, lack of contradiction is not proof of consistency. Those various far futures may not explicitly conflict with each other, but they don't explicitly reference each other either. So you're jumping to a conclusion that can't be proven, and that doesn't even make sense in the broader context of a universe where the mutability of time has been explicitly demonstrated almost from the beginning.

So anytime someone comes back from the future, it has to be a time we've never seen or heard of.

No, it really, really doesn't. Admiral Janeway in "Endgame" came back from roughly the same time as adult Alexander in "Firstborn," the first decade of the 25th century. And we've seen four distinct versions of the 2390s: in "Timeless," in "The Visitor" (the portions set in Jake's mid-30s), in "Shattered" (with grown-up Naomi stuck in Astrometrics), and in "All Good Things...". Plus Trek literature has given us yet another alternate version of the same era in Millennium: War of the Prophets.

And if they do come back from one of the as seen futures, it must be the same as depicted before (see Voyager's "Relativity" and "Future's End").

Ahh, but those aren't necessarily the same future! Remember, at the end of "Future's End," Captain Braxton's own history had been changed so that he had never been thrown back in time and had to live on 20th-century Earth. Yet the Braxton of "Relativity" remembered living on 20th-century Earth and had a grudge against Janeway because of it. They contradict each other, which is really just sloppy writing, but it certainly doesn't support your case that they're the same unalterable future. (The fact that Braxton was played by a different actor doesn't help either, though that doesn't prove anything.)

Those futures only change because of the altered events happening in the present.

You're making the mistake of thinking of this as though it were something real instead of what it really is, a story. Since it is only make-believe, the "laws" of time travel are only what the writers need them to be for the sake of the story, and it's important to keep that in mind. As I've already explained, there are very good story reasons why Trek writers have always made a point of portraying the future as a mutable thing, so that they won't unduly restrict the storytelling options of future writers, themselves included. Your assumption just doesn't fit with either the in-story evidence or real-world common sense.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Luminus wrote:

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^No. TV trek NEVER contradicts its future by showing 2 different versions of the same future century. There's only 1 instance of the 29th century. 1 instance of the 31 century. 1 instance of the 26th century and so on. Source: Memory Alpha

So anytime someone comes back from the future, it has to be a time we've never seen or heard of. And if they do come back from one of the as seen futures, it must be the same as depicted before (see Voyager's "Relativity" and "Future's End"). Those futures only change because of the altered events happening in the present.

From "Future's End" ...

BRAXTON [on viewscreen]: Do you know me?

CHAKOTAY: Yes, unfortunately.

JANEWAY: You tried to destroy our ship in the
twenty-fourth century and the next time we saw
you, you were an old man, homeless, in 1996.

BRAXTON [on viewscreen]: I never experienced that
timeline.

Two different versions of the 29th century in the same episode

[Therin of Andor]

Luminus wrote:

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^No. TV trek NEVER contradicts its future by showing 2 different versions of the same future century. There's only 1 instance of the 29th century. 1 instance of the 31 century. 1 instance of the 26th century and so on. Source: Memory Alpha

I'm not seeing how that particular link backs up your assertion.