Possibly the same way the war broke out between Skynet (post-Judgement Day) and Sarah Connor's resistance (pre-Judgement Day) (as opposed to John Connor's post-JD resistance).
Except that if it were always that easy, why isn't it still being done a century later? Why was Picard never sent back in time on a historical scouting mission? And if it were that easy, why aren't the Romulans or the Cardassians or the Dominion sending back timeships to wipe out the Federation every week? Despite what we were shown in TOS, the preponderance of evidence in the TNG era is that time travel is still only a rare, generally accidental occurrence. So maybe there was something unusual going on with Kirk's Enterprise... Sarah Connor was the resistance.
Maybe, but the fact remains that Starfleet sent him on that mission, and they had absolutely no trouble traveling back and forth in time. As to why it wasn't used later...well, blame that on the writers.
Did they really have no trouble? We didn't actually see them travelling back and forth in time in "Assignment: Earth," so we have no basis for drawing any conclusions about the ease or difficulty of the undertaking in that instance.
I do realize Sarah was a resistance in and of herself - just the way it was worded threw me (and I didn't watch the show)
Christopher, maybe you could answer this for me: We know Nero's from the prime reality, and his temporal incursion created the alternate one, correct? But wouldn't he have landed in the 2233 of the prime reality, and split the alternate off from there?
Sure, why not? That's pretty much exactly what happened. But the very fact of the time warp's incursion was itself sufficient to trigger that schism, so it's a moot distinction. There was never a moment when Nero and the Narada were not in an alternate 2233, because the alternate branch began the moment the time warp opened, just before the ship came through.
I read a post on another forum recently where a poster postulated that there was no altered or "Prime" reality because Ambassador Spock clearly recognized himself and the other younger versions of his friends and assumed they were the same versions from our timeline. I always wondered why the writers didn't take a couple of extra minutes to explain why the younger selves were different in appearance. Spock acknowledges Scotty first and even is able to input his equation for transwarp beaming. Interesting observation.
I don't follow that logic. Why would they look different just because the timeline diverged? Same reason they didn't explain why Saavik, Zefram Cochrane, DaiMon Bok, Tora Ziyal, T'Pau, or any other recast character was different in appearance -- because, in-universe, they weren't different in appearance. They were the same characters, simply played by different actors. It's fiction, after all. Sometimes that means accepting that what we see onscreen is only an approximation of an imaginary reality. If we recognize that the Romulan cloaking device is a mix of Nomad's head and Sargon's globe, that doesn't mean the Romulans actually built it from those pieces; it means the prop department built it from those pieces and we're supposed to accept the fictional conceit that they're actually unrelated pieces of technology. In a case where a character is recast and yet still recognized as the same character, we're expected to accept the fictional conceit that there's been no change in their appearance.
I didn't come up with the post so I couldn't explain the logic...but it's not the same timeline is it? It's an entirely different reality. I would assume that was where this particular poster was coming from. Everything and everyone was altered.
What's Paramount's/CBS' official take on the realities, if you know it? Is it "official" canon that there are two, or has the prime one been "rebooted" into the "alternate"? I ask because I doubt we'll see any canon stuff from the prime universe again.
It could well be. The Abramsverse could be more than just a different timeline, it may be a different *universe* as well. It would explain why the change in history did not wipe out the prime timeline, and also why the Kelvin looks so much more advanced than anything in TOS.
^ I don't agree. I view them as different. A universe is a physical location, a timeline is a sequence of events. Not the same thing.
i prefer to make it even easier. it didn't happen. LALALALALALALALALALALA NOT LISTENING!!!! [/fanboy rage]
That's not true. The filmmakers' intent was that this was an alternate timeline that branched off from the original because of Nero's time travel. I mean, come on, that's why they cast Leonard Nimoy in the film -- to make it clear that this was a direct continuation of the same reality, merely a different offshoot of it like the ones in TNG: "Parallels" or the Mirror Universe or the Myriad Universes books. If they'd intended it to be an unconnected reality, a wholesale reboot like Battlestar Galactica, they wouldn't have cast Nimoy -- or had him quote canonical Spock dialogue like "I have been and always shall be your friend," proving that this is the same Spock we saw in TWOK and TSFS. His presence was meant to be the throughline that tied this film in to the rest of Star Trek and established it as part of the same whole. I guess some people didn't get it. The filmmakers based their approach on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Their intent is that different timelines coexist in parallel rather than replacing one another. The Prime timeline and the Abrams timeline both exist. The creators of the film wanted to create a new version of Star Trek that grew out of the original and did not invalidate the original. Since Star Trek: Online is set in 2409 in the Prime timeline, it should be clear that CBS has no objection to the idea of the Prime timeline continuing to exist after 2387. And of course Pocket and IDW continue to publish new fiction set in the Prime timeline in multiple eras. There is no intent for the Prime timeline to be "erased" in any way. Technically speaking, that's true. However, it is routine in fiction to use "universe" as a synonym for "timeline" -- e.g. "Mirror Universe" rather than "Mirror Timeline." It leads to much confusion. In physics terminology, a "timeline" would more formally be called a measurement history. MWI postulates that the universe can have multiple measurement histories that are causally isolated: an observer in one cannot perceive or be affected by any of the others. Which means they might as well be separate universes, even though they're actually just quantum states of a single universe. That doesn't need to be explained any more than the difference in the characters' faces and voices needs to be explained. It's simply a difference in the interpretation of the fictional reality of Star Trek. If the makers of TOS had had more money and technology at their disposal, their Enterprise would've looked more "advanced" too. Star Trek is a simulation of a hypothetical world. The only difference in advancement is in the resources applied to creating the simulation. But differences in the sophistication of the simulation shouldn't be taken literally as differences in the "actual" in-universe sophistication of the technology. (By analogy, consider a long-running video game series. Do you think of the rather crude-looking Lara Croft of the first Tomb Raider game as inhabiting a separate universe from the much more lifelike Lara of the most recent game? Or do you assume that the earlier version was simply a less accurate, more figurative rendering of what Lara Croft has hypothetically looked like all along?)
Christopher I was just pointing out an alternative theory that someone else came from. I'm well aware of the reasons Orci and Kurtman came up with for creating the alternate reality and JJ recasting the roles. Again I assume this was that posters rationale for why things were different in universe. A legit and interesting theory but one I disagree with. It was merely interesting.