Why doesn't Spock Prime go back in time to save Vulcan?

Technically speaking, the movie should stand on its own and make its intent clear. We should not have to fall back on the writers to explain what they were trying to do. The movie itself should adequately convey the intent of the writers. That is the definition of good writing. Something this movie sorely lacked.

 

That, as already pointed out before, breaks cause-and-effect, and is thus impossible. The Grandfather Paradox, which makes linear timetravel impossible, thus lending itself to MWI. There is no getting around Causality.

If the damage is fixable, then fine, fix it and move on.

But if the damage is NOT fixable, then, YET AGAIN, cause-and-effect comes into play.

One possible scenario:
- Ships grow larger for longer duration missions, as technologies and needs grow.
- Ships are equiped with a large number of shuttles to allow for large scale planetary surveys.
- Over the years, Sensor technology improves to a point where visiting planetary surfaces is not needed anywhere near as much, so fewer shuttles.
- As previously manual operations are automated, less officers and crew are required on starships.
- Improvements in processes and technology lead to smaller components performing the same job, and more components can be hidden behind panels, etc.
- Thus, ships got smaller, simpler in appearance and more advanced.
- Escape Pods are added in lieu of the generally oversized shuttles.

One, there has never been anything to establish that the "decimalized gregorian" system did NOT occur, and it provides a natural logical progression.
Two, this is correct, and was a mistake on the part of the writers. I also may have been done deliberately so that an uninitiated audience would get a good idea as to the timescales involved. It was done under dramatic license.

I again refer to the scene where Uhura's reply that they were in an Alternate Reality, coupled with Writer's Intent, as well as the simple fact that Spock observed irreversible changes.

 

In terms of what was needed for the movie to be understood in and of itself, it presented all of the information on the subject it needed to.

 

If that were the case, we would not be having this discussion.

 

Yet it was the case, but the discussion exists.

Curious.

Just that and logic. From the perspective of a hypothetical observer, Picard for example, who could be in a position to watch Spock enter the black hole, why should the universe simply cease to exist at that moment?

 

This discussion exists in this reality. There are many others where it does not.

 

Because for some, it is insufficient for the greater continuity.

The film is self-sufficient. What is needed to be understood for the story is already there.

The real issue the writers face with regard to this solution is this: There is really no way to confirm, in-universe, 100%, in an organic fashion (and this is important), that they are in an Alternate Reality.

It is important to US FANS, and we can be served partially by their assurances, but for general viewing, the fact that history has been changed in-universe is enough to explain why many things don't match up to TOS.

Again, without difinitive evidence for a completely new universe (which ignores the recognized similarities) or an Alternate Reality, or time overwriting itself (which violates cause and effect), I defer to the writer's intent.

 

I just treat the line about 800+ crew on the Kelvin as a mistake, and pretend Pike said a lower, more reasonable figure. It's similar to that moment in an episode of DS9 where a character says that the Eugenics Wars happened 200 years prior to that story, which would put Khan in the 22nd century, clearly an error.

As for the Kelvin being slightly larger than the Enterprise, I admit that's never really bothered me all that much. Take ships such as the Oberth-class in the TOS films; they were clearly a newer, presumably more advanced design than the Constitutions, and yet they were considerably smaller. I think the Sovereigns were smaller than the Galaxies, too.

 

It seems to me that there has to be some reason that they don't go back and try to change the past all the time. If not our heroes than just anybody with a starship capable of slingshotting around a sun.

How many Klingon ship captains would go back and save Praxis? Romulans to save Romulus prime? Humans to stop Wolf 359? On an on. The loss of a single person is enough to send countless people going back. Or to creating alternate universes if that's the only way to get somebody back...heck, YOU would be getting them back, and creating an entire duplicate universe in the process.

So there must be more to temporal mechanics that the character know but we don't that's beyond the issue of changing/creating an alternate universe or predestination paradoxes or a temporal prime-directive and its time-cop enforcers. The Defiant was saved by excessive chroniton particles in "Past Tense" and the E-E by being caught in a temporal wake in FC.

 

It probably has to do with the danger and unpredictability of time travel. Depending upon whether we are talking aboout linear (Yesterday's Enterprise) or dimensional (STXI) time travel, that is. Then you have that butterfly effect to worry about. And if they were constantly going back and "fixing" things, history would become meaningless. I've always maintained that time travel should only be used as a plot device if all other options have been exausted.

 

Has anyone brought up the possibility that Spock sorta-Prime doesn't know how to time travel?

It just occurred to me while on another thread that Spock sorta-Prime's uncharacteristic actions and knowledge could just mean he isn't who we thought (or was sold as) was.

Just saying

 

Nah, he's who the writers say he is.

 

It has to do with resetting the way time travel stories are told in ST - Spock "suddenly" doesn't "remember" Single Timeline Preservation because it's a reboot.

It's just that simple.

 

Maybe Spock has realized he has no way of reliably distinguishing time travel within his own timeline from visits to an alternate reality that is very similar to his own reality, and it's dawned on him that while travelling within your own timeline sets up impossible self-negating paradoxes, cross-reality travel doesn't set up any paradoxes at all.

Therefore, logic dictates that the Vulcan Science Academy was right all along: time travel doesn't exist. Time travellers have actually been travelling to very similar parallel realities, and their fixes to the timeline not only don't have any impact on their own timeline, but the problems they think they are fixing never were in their own timeline to begin with.

Once Spock realizes the comical futility of it all, he'll just hang out on Risa drinking mai tais and let the kids knock themselves out battling timelines and parallel universes and space ameobas and whatnot.

 

I just imagined Old Spock ranting about Giant Space Ameobas and Starfleet shaking their heads and chuckling.

 

LOL, and Doomsday Machines and that pesky Guardian of Forever. Could you imagine the note he leaves behind for NuSpock? "Don't be late... and make sure to ask for that Romulan Commander's twitter account!"

 

Because the movie's not a stupid episode of a TV series that employs arbitrary story logic, that's why Spock didn't do something nonsensical that had no dramatic relevance to this movie.

Not one out of a thousand people who would watch and understand a movie like this would ask a question like that.

 

Whatever. Spock and that Romulan Commander made a good looking couple. Sigh

 

Yeah, wait until they get to the parts about Vaal, and the Nazi planet, and Apollo...

Star Fleet Intelligence will have to conclude "Look, either this guy is simply nuts or the alternate universe he comes from functions on the logic and physics of a comic book."

 

^Or worse, a series of episodes of a 50-minute long tv series.