In The Voyage Home, the scriptwriters took great pains to point out that Scotty and McCoy were not changing history by giving Transparent Aluminum to Dr. Nichols, since he "invented" it anyway. Makes me wonder how and why they were so careless for the rest of the movie. The Bird of Prey was at least partially decloaked in front of a couple of trash collectors, plus a whaling ship (granted they may not have been believed if they'd spoken up in public.) But then: during the rescue scene in the hospital, Kirk openly fired a phaser to melt a lock in front of an entire 20th Century medical team -- and McCoy proceeded to cure Chekov's head trauma in front of the same team (those folks were watching *very* closely) using the whistly forehead device. In escaping the same hospital, the entire group ended up disappearing from a supposedly closed elevator. After all that hilarity ensued, I'm sure somebody also put two-and-two together about the dialysis woman and her miracle kidney. Not to mention Chekov leaving a couple of pieces of future technology in the hands of the United States Navy. Granted it wasn't functional at the time, but after all the other magic that happened around Chekov in the hospital you'd think they would pay a little closer attention to those pieces. Finally: I've always wondered whatever came of Bob, Dr. Taylor's colleague at the Cetacean Institute. From his perspective, Taylor slapped him, ran away from him in a rage -- and then completely dropped off the grid. Never even went back home to wherever she lived, never came back to work... the most they could have discovered was that her pickup truck was abandoned in Golden Gate. Poor Bob!
The wife and I were just talking about this last night while watching on HDNet Movies. Poor Bob, probably ended up in San Quentin or worse for the disappearance of Taylor. As far as the transparent aluminum goes: I don't believe Scotty even believed what he was shoveling Bones. He just didn't have any other way to acquire the material needed to construct the tank. Even with the formula, there's no guarantee that Dr. Nichols would be able to develop transparent aluminum, even with the formula. Essentially, Scotty rolled the dice. There's also the fact that they left a Klingon communicator, phaser and a Federation ID badge aboard the Enterprise. For all we know, Klingon technology may be the basis of Earth subspace communications and weapons technology So much mayhem in the timeline with this one!
Plus, the City of San Francisco had to buy a new trash can! That could have lead the way to the California budget crisis of the early-21st century! EDIT: Or, it could be that we're looking at a Nero-like scenario here. The changes created by Kirk and Company formed a new branch of the timeline, Spock was simply able to send them back to their own timeline. In their own timeline, George and Gracie did get poached in 1986 and Gillian Taylor grew old and died. The ones that arrived in the 23rd century are duplicates created by the incursion of the Bird of Prey.
It was my understanding that in the original timeline (presumably foregoing the idea that they managed to not create a new one) Gillian Taylor disappeared and was presumed to have committed suicide. Perhaps by jumping off the bridge. This is how she can disappear the way she did, and not make any changes to the timeline.
Technically, it’s still looks like a paradox, because it’s a closed loop and eventually the formula for transparent aluminum appears literally out of nowhere inside the loop. Better to assume that the formula presented by Scotty was eventually lost somehow and re-discovered independently at a later time. This was a major issue at the end of “A Piece of the Action” when McCoy realized he had forgotten his communicator in Oxmyx’s office containing that crucial Federation transtater technology. Hopefully, Starfleet designed some kind of fail-safe, i.e. a chemical reaction that would eventually dissolve the hardware components unless recharged by a legitimate power source (but, apparently, this hadn’t been done prior to “The Omega Glory”). Bob
Wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey.... Hey, if they're in 1987, that means Khan Noonien Singh is out there with his magical healing blood, which surely would have cured that old lady's kidneys. But I guess a syringe of that isn't covered by most people's insurence...
It is interesting how, even though Dr. Nichols only works with polymers, AND it would've taken "years to understand the dynamics" of its "matrix," his company was still, somehow, equipped to take on aluminum-related tasks, without any conversion delays, or proof of concept trials, or anything else along these lines. In fact ... I suspect Scotty and Bones didn't even leave the building that afternoon without their Transparent Aluminum - still warm, no doubt, from the first pressings. It would've been cute, though, if - when Dr. Nichols told Madeline "NOT NOW!!!" - she piped up, instead of just tip-toeing out the door, like she did. Maybe she was his lover and wasn't about to be barked at and treated like a dog in front of two Grumpy Old Men. She should've started arguing with him and calling him all the "F's," while Bones and Scotty looked on, wide-eyed and slack-jawed! But that's the movies for you. Got to keep the story moving along ...
SCOTT: Ah, what else indeed? I'll put it another way. How thick would a piece of your plexiglass need to be, at sixty feet by ten feet to withstand the pressure of eighteen thousand cubic feet of water? NICHOLS: That's easy, six inches. We carry stuff that big in stock. Sounded to me like they used the formula in exchange for plexiglass panels they otherwise couldn't afford to pay for. Bob
My guess is Nick Meyer brought attention to some of the time travel consequences and then made fun of them because he doesn't really give a crap about time travel consequences and he was letting us know that he doesn't take it too seriously in this film so neither should we. Just my guess though.
This. Scott acquired the plexiglass he needed for the whale tank by bartering the formula. They didn't actually make any transparent aluminum.
The evidence was probably hushed up by the United States government, which already had classified evidence of some of this stuff since "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". I choose to believe that the few that were allowed knowledge of things like this, that, and "Little Green Men" (DS9) probably formed the basis for things like Section 31 and the DTI, later, and thus caused no problems, because they always happened that way to begin with.
But the whole plot of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" revolved around destroying the evidence. Apparently the individuals from the 20th Century fortunately all had some kind of amnesia upon their return, possibly due to a Vulcan mind meld we never saw. And Kirk and Spock made certain in "Assignment: Earth" they would not leave any evidence behind. Bob
Cue "Indiana Jones" mystery music...pan over boxes and trunks and pallets full of indistinct stored items...all marked with various U.S. Government seals and stamps...as we zoom onto a shadow figure of a man, we hear Bob Johnson's voice say, "Good Morning, Mr. Crusher...members of a future organization known as "Star Fleet" have left traces of their future selves here in 20th Century North America...your mission, should you choose to accept it..." It is either this, or he really was the dweeb we saw on the bridge...hmm...wonder who he would pick for the team...that is another thread...
I half suspect that Temporal Invetigations was formed in the aftermath of the Kirk era. Perhaps even well into the 24th century. Thus is seems likely that they can't interfere with time travel events that happened before they existed. They can't go back and correct events that were started from 22nd or 23rd century Starfleet crews, as that is part of their existing history already. Unless history mentions interference from the future I suppose. Captain Archer getting frequent visits from the future and all that. Even in the 24th century, they miss things, or are forced to keep them temporally changed, as the time travel events caused a paradox that they can't safetly remove. The Bell Riots in 2024 for instance with Captain Sisko taking the place of a "known" hero. Funny that prior to this Ben Sisko never noticed that he looked like Gabriel Bell. It is likely that he caused the events, rather than replacing them. Temporal Investigations never seemingly getting involved.
I always figured that at the end of First Contact, Picard and Company go to the future but not exactly the one they left, since they altered the past a bit. The problems people had with the idea of ST:ENT can be explained away such as, "Why had we never heard of Archer or the NX-01 Enterprise?" In just a few lines in an early episode, Archer might have told one of his staff how his father planned to name the first warp 5 ship Constitution (or whatever) but Cochrane, who worked alongside Henry, had suggested Enterprise and the elder Archer followed that advice. IIRC, Archer told a story about Cochrane in ENT's Borg episode in which the scientist/inventor occasionally spoke of cyborgs who tried to interfere with humans meeting Vulkins, and some future astronauts who helped him. As an homage to the E-E, he convinced Henry to use the name Enterprise.
Agreed. Also, remember that Nichols says that their plexiglass would have to be 6 inches thick to do the job, while Scotty mentions that an equivalent piece of transparent aluminum would only be 1 inch thick. Later, when they're installing the tank, it looks to me like the material they're installing is much more than 1 inch thick, further supporting the idea that it is standard 20th century plexiglass, not transparent aluminum. Harve Bennett once addressed the time travel issues. I believe it was on the DVD interviews or commentary, but I'm not sure. Basically, he says that the "how do we know he didn't invent the thing" line was their throwaway nod to the time travel issues but that, basically, they decided that in this movie they were just going to have fun and not worry about things like that.
I wonder if Chekov's phaser (disruptor? was it from the bird of prey's small arms inventory?) started working once they took it away from the Enterprise's reactors
I'm actually sort of surprised that the Klingon weapon would fail near eight fission reactors. You'd think the Klingons would make weapons that can work anyplace. Or maybe that's why they like their blades so much. Faulty disruptors.
Christopher's novels explain the origin of the DTI. It was created in the early 2270s following a series of temporal incidents that took place during the 2260s, several of which involved the Enterprise and her crew. --Sran