What did the Enterprise-C look like in the real TNG universe?

I suppose the difference here is that no character ever declares the rear wall of the observation lounge to have always been that way.

Compared to...let's say, the wall of main Engineering (the bit which is a corridor plug) that was open in early S1, then closed for the rest of the Tv series, then open again in ST-Generations. In one episode (I forget which) one of the ship's designers came on board and stated that he remembered running a conduit behind that very wall. Now THERE's a mystery!!!

 

It did pop up in "All Good Things"? Now that's what I'd call continuity! I don't remember it, but it's nice you mention it, because like in "All Good Things" I'll be returning to the lounge wall at the end of this post.

I presented my theory in post # 23:"On the other hand it’s entirely possible that Picard had simply become fed up listening to alien visitors (especially someone like Gul Macet or Dukhat) waiting in the conference lounge of the “D” wondering “Ain’t that the proud Enterprise that was defeated by the Romulans?!” – that could also be an in-universe explanation why the sculpture wall was removed at the beginning of Season Five and a new theme chosen for the “E”."

Or it's still the same theme, depending how average or stupid Romulans had been in 2344, so here we go:

Part IV - Tasha Yarn?

Trent Christopher Ganino’s original screenplay proposal for “Yesterday’s Enterprise “featured the appearance of an Enterprise from the past in the TNG time period, and Picard having to face the resultant dilemma of whether to return the ship and its crew to their indigenous time period. In this version, the ship did not cause any changes in the future. Picard was forced to decide whether or not to reveal the crew's fate before sending them back.” (All cited quotes from memory-alpha.org unless otherwise specified).

Not only would this have been a nice example of “Novikov’s self-consistency principle” but we would have gotten an irrefutable confirmation how the “real” Enterprise-C looked in “our” universe - and maybe during the production process someone would have had the flash of genius of going to the conference lounge studio set to get an approximation what the Enterprise-C was supposed to look like because other reference materials no longer existed. But that didn’t happen, the past is the past.

The idea to bring Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar character back from the dead determined finally the location of the episode – and the only credible way to do it was, of course, in an alternate reality where her character had not died on Vagra II in “Skin of Evil”.

I think most of us will agree that this was a good decision because if benefitted the “meaningful death” theme of this episode. The other Picard asks Captain Garrett to sacrifice herself and her surviving 124 crewmates because it’s possible it will avert a war and save 40,000,000,000 lives, Tasha is willing to sacrifice herself because probability seems high that she won’t even somehow be there in the real TNG universe.

Michael Piller said: “The script was not one of the best scripts we wrote that season. Conceptually, it was marvelous, coming out of the heads of some people here...There are little holes in the episode that we couldn't fix.”

One of these, the way I feel about it, must have been the premise that the protagonists in the alternate reality were accepting rather fast that their personal memories and even their whole existence (!) could be somehow erased as a result from the Enterprise-C finishing what she had started in the past.

Picard: This time line will cease to exist and a new future will have been created. Crusher: If [Guinan] is right, we may not even be in an alternate time line.
La Forge: Yeah, who knows if we're dead or alive. (Yeah, let’s do it? )

Just like the lack of uniform insignia shifted unduly attention to Castillo’s TMP phaser, so did Tasha’s line in Picard’s ready room: “I've always known the risks that come with a Starfleet uniform. If I'm to die in one, I'd like my death to count for something”.

The risks that come with a Starfleet uniform? Especially the risks when you travel to the past in one?!?



If the costuming choice for the Enterprise-C hadn’t been a strange one already, the one for Tasha Yar assuming her new position as tactical officer of the Enterprise-C definitely is, and leaves much more to be explained (and that’s not the last costume oddity, by the way)

Apparently, during the making of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, everybody felt that there was no way the Enterprise-C could possibly survive a battle with four Romulan warbirds and the only thing to be expected was her inevitable destruction.

Ron Moore: "We brought Denise back to kill off Tasha Yar a second time. It was a great opportunity to send the character off in a big heroic sacrifice because nobody was really happy with the way she left the series in the first season. Nobody on the show really liked it, the fans didn't like it, I'm not sure even she really liked it. So 'Yesterday's Enterprise' was a chance to kill her right."

“Romulans don’t take captives” (Sulu in “The Deadly Years”) probably was on the producers’ minds, but already “The Enterprise Incident” made it clear that they wouldn’t mind getting their hands on a Federation starship and/or Starfleet intelligence. Therefore the other Picard, from an in-universe point of view, should have vehemently objected to a) sending his tactical bridge officer with a considerate amount of Starfleet intel knowledge b) in her “universe at war” uniform into the past! (Of course, had Tasha Yar been the ship’s counselor in the alternate reality there probably wouldn’t have been much the Romulans could have gained – sorry Deanna – but then she would have been of no use on the bridge of the Enterprise-C).

“There was a fierce volley of photon torpedoes. We were hit. A bright light, and then here.” (Captain Garrett). “It is possible that this exchange of fire was the catalyst for the formation of a temporal rift.” (other Picard) From the Romulan point of view the Enterprise-C must have miraculously vanished without a trace, so it had to be expected they would take captives to find out what happened! If making wrong decisions is a trademark of captains in this alternate reality, it’s no wonder that this Federation was loosing the war.

According to the changed premise of “Redemption, Part II” Tasha Yar “was among those few who survived. They were all to have been executed after the interrogation.” I think it stands to reason that these interrogations were conducted by the Tal Shiar and they found out that the ship had come from the future (too many witnesses among her survivors) and Tasha’s uniform would have undoubtedly revealed her to be a human from that future with extensive knowledge of the yet-to-come next 22 years and in particular the “future” Galaxy Class design.

The way I see it we are looking at these scenarios / in-universe explanations:

• There was nothing to worry about because when the Enterprise-C crossed the threshold her “universe at war” uniform somehow transformed into a uniform of 2344
• Tasha realized that fatal oversight prior to crossing the threshold, got undressed, grabbed Castillo’s phaser and vaporized her uniform and combadge (they were still about to engage the Romulans, not the Ferengi). [Although this image does exist in our reality, I guess it would be inappropriate to illustrate it here] Tasha’s daughter Sela would later state “a Romulan general saw her and became enamoured with her”. No more questions.
• The Romulans didn’t care and just thought that Tasha Yar had a fancy tailor
• … maybe the other Picard should have been listening to the other Riker, his own instincts (“Every instinct tells me this is wrong, it is dangerous, it is futile”) and Igor Novikov instead of Guinan…
• This Enterprise-C went back in time, but got diverted into a similar parallel universe “at war” where it got destroyed but where its actions saved a lot of people so that in total the war in that parallel universe cost less than 40 billion lives and La Forge and Guinan could have a nice conversation about Tasha at the end of a day (while the scene apparently takes place in “our” universe, Geordi’s “universe at war” sleeves retain an interesting touch of ambiguity)

I think that the idea of a Romulan general simply taking Tasha under his wing and away from the Tal Shiar (in “our” universe) rather sounds like a fairy-tale than an authentic story. Tasha’s return to our universe must have been meticulously prepared to provide her with a cover that wouldn’t blow the minute the first survivor was interrogated and none of what we saw in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” did remotely suggest that.

Explanation A – Average Romulans (only Probert “C” is canon)

The story of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” took part in an alternate universe, but the space phenomenon affected and connected several parallel universes and events simultaneously. The Probert Enterprise-C travelled to the future of yet another reality where Tasha Yar was also still alive. Here, however, the assisting teams of the “D” were dressed and equipped with mid 24th Century technology pretending to be from the same time. Captain Picard persuaded Captain Garrett of the necessity to return; Tasha fell in love with Castillo and volunteered to make sure history happened as it did happen. The ship records were modified to pass her as an official member of the crew (she had already been dressed in a corresponding uniform all that time). The ship returned and eventually Tasha was among the captives but her cover story held up. “They were all to have been executed after the interrogation, but a Romulan general saw her and became enamoured with her. So a deal was struck. Their lives would be spared if she became his consort.”
Assuming that the Romulans could have gathered vital information of the Probert design through the survivors, Starfleet stopped building this type of starship, which would explain why we haven’t seen this design in any episode other than on the conference lounge wall.

Explanation B – Stupid Romulans (both “Cs” are canon)

Tasha did return with the Sternbach Enterprise-C to “our” reality (naked or not) but neither the Klingons nor Starfleet actually saw the returning ship, assumed to be Probert’s Enterprise-C. There had been no communication whatsoever with the Romulans since the Tomed Incident, 30 years before and 19 years after Narendra III. After the Federation had finally learned (somewhere between “Redemption, Part II” and ST VIII-FC) that it had been this Enterprise-C that got destroyed near Narendra III, Starfleet decided to honor the sacrifice of the alternate universe Enterprise-C on behalf of ours on the conference lounge sculpture display of the Enterprise-E.

To be continued in Part V (Guinan and the Wrath of Q?)…stay tuned

Bob

 

I always thought that Enterprise-C looked good and was well done.

 

People kept complaining about the missing Enterprise NX-01.

 

Or, in keeping with the issue of starship design. Why does the D appear to change appearance every so often? (between the four-footer and six-footer)

 

Not large enough to qualify as a "starship" or its 20th Century equivalent (CVN-65)

Bob

 

Not me. I'm glad it's not there.

 

Part V - Guinan and the Wrath of Q?

After the observations featured in Part IV, I would usually think that it shouldn’t be necessary to still play the “Q Card”. But what I tried to accomplish here was also to present alternate interpretations and matters of perspective (which ironically and, of course, entirely coincidental is the name of the episode separating “Déjà Q” from “Yesterday’s Enterprise”) and these would not be complete without the Q interpretation for a couple of good reasons.

Guinan and her species remain a mystery. The “universe at war” Data speculates “Perhaps her species has a perception that goes beyond linear time.” Regardless whether we are dealing with an alternate time or an alternate universe, what we can observe is that Guinan must share some connection with her “counterparts” in the alternate reality, even if that exists only on an unconscious level to which she apparently has access to the point enabling her to draw clear conclusions.
Tapping into some kind of collective consciousness and experience would undoubtedly make her a hell of a counseling bartender which she undoubtedly is (to quote Dr. Boyce from “The Cage”: “Sometimes a man'll tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor”).

For all we know that might have been the reason why the Q got interested in her, because according to “Q Who” there must have been interaction with her and other Q (“Some are almost respectable”). It’s obvious that Q and she don’t get along. Guinan does have Q-like-powers and apparently she can sense his presence (“I knew it was you”) and realize when he is up to no good (“Q!”).

In “Déjà Q” her relationship took a drastic turn. Stating that he had been deprived of his Q powers Guinan instantly tested his claim by suddenly stabbing the hand of the (previously) omnipotent Q with a fork who cried out in pain and agony.

Would the almighty Q, after he had regained his godlike powers, let this frivolous and vicious assault go unanswered?

The other party which had assaulted Q in this episode was the Calamarain and near the end of the episode we saw that he was about to retaliate (“If you think I tormented you in the past, my little friends, wait until you see what I do with you now”) but the other Q interfered. Undoubtedly Q was elaborating on some kind of payback for Guinan, but one the other Qs would be okay with (“almost respectable” didn’t sound as if Guinan had any “Quardian Angels”).

Is “Yesterday’s Enterprise” the sequel to “Déjà Q”?

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” features a couple of moments that look like these could suggest Q pulling the strings behind the events in this episode

• Guinan looked at the phenomenon and says “No!” Her reaction suggested that she “knew” that nothing good was about to be happening next (just as her “Q!” reacting to Q’s “We'll just have to see how ready you are.” in “Q Who”)
• Captain Garrett of the Enterprise-C reported that the last thing she remembered was “a bright light, and then here”. A bright light indicating a sudden change of the environment happened to be one of Q’s trademarks.
• At the end of (what would have been the shortest TNG episode had events in “our” TNG reality been edited together) Guinan calls the bridge and asks “Captain, this is Guinan. Is everything all right up there?” Interestingly, the last time she called the bridge with the exact same words “Is everything all right?” was in “Q Who”, moments before Picard and Q materialized in Ten Forward.

While this may seem as if I were reading too much into small things, a look at Larry Nemecek’s Star Trek TNG Companion (page 114) commenting on the early draft for “Déjà Q” reveals that this isn’t the case: “The script originally told the story of a looming Klingon-Federation war that was actually caused by Q, who faked his loss of powers and then later rushed in to become a hero.”

The entire background setting of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (two episodes later!) is a Klingon-Federation war, so it stands to reason that fragments and Q elements from that early draft found their way into the teleplay, “written by committee and rushed to final draft in just three days” and eventually ended up in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”.

Indeed, given the implausibility of a Klingon-Federation war with the Klingons emerging as the winning side (especially after ST VI), the whole “universe at war” alternate reality could have been a stage deliberately created by Q and decorated with requisites from various realities.

Q has shown to have a soft spot for dressing in costumes and creating weird environments (e.g. “Hide and Q”). His stage setting in the first season episode was obvious for the participants (and the viewing audience) to understand it wasn’t real. But for somebody probably as advanced as Guinan’s species the stage setting was somewhat more elaborate, but more difficult for viewing audiences to decide whether it’s real or fake, although the episode – as I’ve tried to show in the previous parts of this treatise – is plastered with inconsistencies which would beg for many explanations, assuming everything we see is the “real” thing:

• The strength of the Klingon Empire which apparently defeated the Romulans, first, and next turned onto the Federation. Unlikely.
• While the “universe at war” protagonists must have experienced 20 years of battle duty (opposite to our protagonists exploring the galaxy), they still exhibit the exact same personality traits as their counterparts in the “real” universe which is rather unlikely, too. The fact that even Picard is incapable of making up his mind whether they are restoring or changing the past looks like a joke.
• The appearance of the Enterprise-C which doesn’t match the one on the sculpture wall of the conference lounge of the Enterprise-D. The TMP hand phasers, apparently state-of-the-art technology in 2344, look hopelessly outdated.
• The whole notion that you could travel to the past and unchange what happened. In Part II of this treatise I had already hinted that we might be dealing with Q when I wrote “The sudden transformation of solid materials, Tasha Yarn’s return from the dead, a completely new history with 22 years of events preceding the episode (unless the protagonists’ memories were implanted), it’s brief and short-lived existence in spacetime (apparently ending the moment the Enterprise-C had returned to its time) would imply the existence of some cosmological mechanism with some form of awareness capable of intelligent design which is usually attributed to our definition of God or an omnipotent being like Q.”

(Insofar I’d like to alter my response to an earlier post: I can’t exclude that William of Ockham would be facepalming reading what I wrote in Part II. Because - from a theologian point of view - the mere theoretical concept of going back in time and being able to alter history could have been interpreted as a valuable hint for the existence of God, then. Possible he would be facepalming, thinking “Why didn’t I think of that?”

)

In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” the other Guinan is the lead character because it’s her actions that influences the decision making (Picard, Tasha). How she “knows” what our Guinan knows remains enigmatic, but the “No” of our Guinan could indicate foreknowledge that Q was about to set something up for her (counterpart) as a challenge.

The “universe at war” could be one of worst alternate universes where Q deliberately relocated Guinan (or some part of her consciousness) with the task to persuade the “universe at war” Picard to trust her and send the ship back, but in a manner that Picard wouldn’t think she had suddenly lost her marbles. And of course, Guinan had to persuade Picard to sacrifice at least 125 survivors from the past. Not likely a scenario Guinan would have been too happy about and no telling what might have happened to her had she failed (maybe she was in one giant penalty box?).

The very end of the episode suggests she passed Q’s test but the “universe at war” sleeves of La Forge’s uniform leave an interesting element of ambiguity.

Was Guinan merely a pawn to ensure history would happen exactly as it did?

Admittedly unlikely (but from a storytelling perspective shattering and IMO worth mentioning): Q put Guinan in an alternate universe with Novikov’s Self-Consistency Principle (Part II) intact! Thus it would have been her recommendations to send the Enterprise-C back that actually caused the death of 40 billion people and eventually the Federation in this alternate reality!

The information we gather from the episode doesn’t contradict this interpretation:
· “The Enterprise C was last seen near the Klingon outpost Narendra III”. This statement from the other Data apparently suggests that the Klingon outpost saw the ship and reported her presence in that sector
· “We were responding to a distress call from the Klingon outpost on Narendra Three. The Romulans were attacking it. We engaged them, but there were four warbirds.” Captain Garrett’s report doesn’t tell us if the Klingon outpost actually received the response or even saw the Enterprise-C defending it, which doesn’t seem to be the case, because according to the other Riker: “There's no record of the Romulans ever assaulting the Enterprise C”.
· Worse, re-introducing the Enterprise-C into its own time and her subsequent destruction by the Romulans gave these exactly what they otherwise couldn’t have hoped for: The wreckage of a Federation ship to make it look as if the Federation had attacked the Klingon outpost at Narendra III but perished in the subsequent mutual exchange of fire! With no survivors left and with a little meddling from the Duras family, the Klingons would have declared war on the United Federation of Planets.

And this wouldn’t be the first and only time Q put somebody between a rock and a hard place – because he would do the exact same thing again later at the end of TNG with Captain Picard! (“There you go again, always blaming me for everything. Well this time I'm not your enemy. I'm not the one that causes the annihilation of mankind. You are.”)

Of course, the ending of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” suggests otherwise as did the “Love Conquers All” version of “Brazil” to appeal to audiences expecting a happy ending.


Alright, as far as I am aware of, none of the production notes suggests these interpretations and this has apparently been the essential criticism of those that object this treatise.

However, if we accepted the possible in-universe conclusions from this episode (in combination with “Redemption, Part II”) at face value, we’d have to conjure up rationalizations like Tasha Yar au naturel and/or Romulan warbird commanders tanked up with Romulan Ale and/or an utterly bumbling and incompetent Romulan Tal Shiar intelligence service to make it work to fill and cover up the plotholes.

I think Jonathan Frakes, in a noteworthy case of congruence with his character in this episode, summed it up concisely: "To this day I do not understand 'Yesterday's Enterprise'. I do not know what the fu** happened in that episode. I'm still trying to understand it – but I liked the look."

Whether these production oddities I observed were last-minute deliberate changes, accidental production screw-ups or just coincidence is irrelevant for any in-universe rationalization debate here at the BBS as I have come to understand it.
Suffice to say that the visual and dialogue information provides the opportunity for alternate interpretations and I have made use of that. Whether these alternate interpretations provide a better explanation for what transpired onscreen and in this particular episode or not is up to the reader to decide.

I definitely enjoyed the experience, looking at “Yesterday’s Enterprise” from different perspectives, and I believe any truly open-minded Star Trek (TNG) fan would rather appreciate than condemn such a mental exercise.

Summary

During TNG we have seen two different versions of the Enterprise-C

• one is a sculptured model on the conference lounge wall of the Enterprise-D (faithfully reflecting the correct proportions and design by Andrew Probert) in our “real” TNG universe
• the other one is a VFX model (designed by Rick Sternbach, built by Greg Jein) featured exclusively (as the Enterprise-C) in the alternate reality or universe seen in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”

Given the variables and uncertainties concerning the phenomenon in space, the inconsistencies of the screenplay and the impossibility to exclude Q’s interference in all of this because of the aforementioned “Qlues”, there is no reliable and solid evidence that Sternbach’s Enterprise-C in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is the only one that left “our” reality and returned to it.

The one thing that is reliable evidence in our universe is the look of the Enterprise-C designed by Andrew Probert and displayed on the conference lounge wall of the Enterprise-D, the conference lounge of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

And what does Captain Picard cherish above all things?

“The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based.”

Therefore, the mere thought that Captain Picard would tolerate an inaccurate or falsified and misleading reproduction of the renowned predecessor of his Enterprise in his conference lounge, a reception place for alien guests and delicate negotiations, would reduce this principle of truth to absurdity.

I think now would be a good time to free the Enterprise-C from her golden shell in which she had been encased for so long and take a better look at her.




Click HERE to make her fly and take a step into larger worlds

(animation courtesy of Tobias Richter & The Light Works, more still images here)

Thanx for your attention and patience.

Bob

 

In the end, the real reason why the Enterprise C looks so different...

Comes down to the fact that the extremely bowed, curved lower hull down there was just too complex. It was too time consuming to build as a large filming model, even though they wanted it. So they had to simplify it, and we got what we got.
The Trek designers ran into similar problems with one of the shuttlecraft designs, too- they loved to make them bowed and curvy, and the designs were just too costly for the production staff to build.

 

Although it doesn't explain everything (her fingers of doom in "Q Who", for example), I figured Guinan's paranormal abilities came from her time in the Nexus. When you're connected to a place where time has no meaning, you're gonna sense when the timeline changes and timeless-you suddenly won't be making those Picard/Kirk introductions.

(I suspect they originally planned for Guinan to have Q powers herself, but chose never to use them. Then someone probably realized that once the secret was blown she'd have to leave the ship for any further episodes to have any peril. That, or she was a Time Lord.)

She was not very happy when the timeline was altered in YE, and I doubt she'd have let something big slip by like sending the wrong ship into the past.

 

You're right, King Daniel-

I always felt like they intended for Guinan to be mysterious and wise (hence her interaction with Q in "Q Who"). Her hundreds-of-years lifespan and how she refers to her relationship with Picard solidifies this.
Unfortunately, I kind of think they ruined her species when they brought out Mazur in that one DS9 episode. He certainly didn't have any special powers- unless extra-strong sleaziness counts as a power.
Having the only OTHER El-Aurian we see be Soran didn't help matters much.

 

So Picard has special powers now that he's been in The Nexus?

 

Maybe that explains his ability to access the slo-mo cheat code in Insurrection...

 

Okay, it looks like the discussion I was looking forward to didn't take place in this thread but the correspondingly themed thread in the fan art section (if you seriously want to call that a discussion because it never moved beyond the first part of my treatise ).

I'm probably the only one to blame for not having chosen the alternate thread heading (i.e. "How to see Yesterday's Enterprise from different angles").

One constructive criticism of the treatise had been how I could even propose that the events took place in an "alternate universe" while everybody is talking about an "alternate time line" (in "our" universe).

I found this comment from director David Carson, the director of "Yesterday's Enterprise" and its 'sequel' "Redemption, Part II" rather interesting:

“I particularly liked the challenge of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” because we were creating the Enterprise in a different and parallel time line: An Enterprise at war.” (Starlog ST-TNG magazine Vol. 19, Spring 1992).

A "parallel time line" is not "our" time line, it's parallel to ours (which was my suggestion at the end of Part II of the treatise), and as such it is practically indistinguishable from an alternate universe.

David Carson also said that he took part in the concept meetings. The two original concepts for "Yesterday's Enterprise" were entirely Novikov self-consistency principled, i.e. in one the Enterprise-C did show up in our universe and Picard needed to persuade the crew to go back and fulfill history, in the other one Sarek had to fulfill history by taking Surak's place.
Possible that David Carson understood the paradigm shift when Tasha Yar became a part of the story (apparently no longer self-consistency principled, i.e. the present somehow miraculously changed), hence his "parallel time line" remark instead of "alternate time line".

How did the screenwriter Ronald Moore feel about the issue in retrospect?
It had been recorded that the scriptwriters were unhappy about their screenplay for "Yesterday's Enterprise" because it had been rushed.

I'd say that "Redemption, Part II" would have been an opportunity to fix some of the existing plotholes from "Yesterday's Enterprise" but what did Ronald Moore do?

GUINAN: I know that. But I also know she was aboard that ship and she was not a child. And I think you [Picard] sent her there.

GUINAN: You can't just dismiss this. If I'm right, then you are responsible for this whole situation.

SELA: Yes, she was on that ship twenty four years ago. She was sent there by you from the future.



Unless I own a censored and shortened version of "Yesterday's Enterprise", I do not recall that Captain Picard ever ordered Tasha Yar to go back in time aboard this Enterprise-C, on the contrary he opposed the whole idea of sending someone from the "present" back in time (with knowledge of the future ).

And if anybody was ever "responsible" for Tasha Yar getting this idea of travelling back in time and being "responsible for this whole situation", it would definitely not be Picard but Guinan herself (or Q).

On the other hand, if everything stated in "Redemption, Part II" is correct, than the Tasha Yar that arrived in "our" universe was ordered / sent by Captain Picard (of an alternate universe), but not the alternate reality of "Yesterday's Enterprise".

Bob

 

Very interesting to hear David Carson's viewpoint on the matter! A parallel universe is certainly easier to comprehend than the not-quite-Novikov super-imposed self-fulfilling alternate history we seem to get otherwise!

As for the events in Redemption, I suppose it depends on how much weight and we give our two witnesses:

1) Sela, a half Romulan from a Romulan society, trained since birth to hate humans and who got her own mother killed! Not exactly the most reliable source

2) Guinan's testimony is based solely on her feelings or intuition of events which she (in this timeline at least) didn't even personally witness. Exactly how certain is Guinan of her "facts"?

 

Well, Star Trek has shown exmples where you can change history and where you can't (because of the Novikov self-consistency principle), and thus we'd be having a major contradiction in our hands (either 2+2=4 or it doesn't, we can't have both). The elegant way out is apparently that changing / altering the past (in contrast to make sure it happened) actually occurs in a parallel time line or universe but doesn't affect "ours" and therefore the self-consistency principle isn't violated.

Good points, please indulge me to address Guinan, first. Although we don't know how she does it, she must share some connection with her “counterparts” in the alternate realities, even if that exists only on an unconscious level to which she apparently has access to the point enabling her to draw clear conclusions.

We did see in "Yesterday's Enterprise" how the Guinan of the "universe at war" did it and I believe we can all agree that those reactions were those that "our" Guinan would have had, reacting to such a change of the environment.

And it was rather clear that Tasha Yar wasn't supposed to be there (since "our" Guinan had never met Tasha, her counterpart in the alternate reality must have felt "I don't know this person" even up to the point "This person has died"). I think we all agreed that Guinan's conclusions were impeccable (while she didn't seem 100% certain that Tasha had died in "our" timeline or universe, we all knew for 100% sure).

So it stands to reason that "our" Guinan (in "Redemption II") had the same capabilities drawing clear conclusions what happened in the other timeline or universe (but didn't saw the need to talk about what she "knew" until Sela showed up).

I'd say of all the people aboard the Enterprise-D Guinan is the one person, Captain Picard trusts blindly (Guinan in BoBW: "Our relationship is beyond friendship, beyond family") and just two episodes later ("Ensign Ro") we see an illustration of that, when Guinan vouches for Ro (Guinan to Riker in BoBW: "I guess I'm just used to having the Captain's ear." - quite an understatement ).
Given the reliability of her statements (e.g. "Yesterday's Enterprise") it stands to reason that those in "Redemption II" were equally reliable, add to this the earnestness of her statements.

And those, like it or not (then blame it on Ron Moore), make it abundantly clear that the Tasha Yar that actually travelled back in time to "our" universe can't be the one we saw in "Yesterday's Enterprise"!

The one that returned to "our" universe (apparently from yet another parallel timeline or universe) was "sent" (asked, ordered or else) by Captain Picard, which definitely is not the case in "Yesterday's Enterprise".

From a scriptwriting point-of-view Sela corroborates Guinan's statement. From an in-universe point of view, however, I concur that she is not a reliable witness. How does she know that a) Captain Picard b) sent her mother back in time? Did Tasha tell her when Sela was four years old (and why)? Had the Romulans found out she came from the future and the Tal Shiar still let her go?

Probability is high that she knows that "our" Captain Picard doesn't have a clue what could have happened in any of these parallel timelines or universes, so she merely bluffs to highlight her message along the lines of "You are responsible for the death of my mother so how many more deaths do you want on your human conscience" in order to discourage him from going through with this blockade thing.

While Sela is indeed not a really good and reliable witness to prove that the Tasha Yar returning to our universe came from an alternate reality other than the one in "Yesterday's Enterprise", Guinan undoubtedly is, and she is the one that matters.

Picard trusts her blindly, therefore I do, too.

Bob

 

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but I just finished rewatching First Contact, and the gold Enterprise-C model (and then it's secondary hull and nacelles) are very visible in the conference room when Lily reams Picard over his pretentious "evolved humanity" talk.

 

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=9231244&postcount=25

Yes, it was mentioned before.

 

We could continue our enjoyable game from another thread (at least you strike me as someone with humor who likes the “n” to stay in “fun” ).

You are obviously referring to this scene from ST VIII-FC against which I would raise this scene from “Best of Both Worlds” (a very popular TNG “movie” unless I’m mistaken). I’d also add the sheer amount of onscreen time we had seen the conference lounge wall in the first four seasons of TNG (and past “Yesterday’s Enterprise”). I’m currently assembling a screencap compilation to illustrate the issue (and also so that one poster’s complaint in the other thread that I was “pasting large photos of the sculptures ad nauseum” gets a late justification).

But, for argument’s sake, I had already proposed an in-universe explanation for both sculptures of the Enterprise-C earlier in this thread, nobody wanted to talk about (my proposal to have cake and eat it, too):

To the Romulan warbirds the disappearance of the Probert Enterprise-C could have looked like the ship had activated a yet unknown cloaking device. The re-appearance of the Sternbach Enterprise-C could have made the Romulan attackers wonder how many (cloaked) Federation ships had actually come to the rescue of Narendra III and maybe they broke off their attack but took the “other” Enterprise-C survivors captive to learn WTF they had been dealing with.

The one thing we know as a fact from our witness Guinan is that the Enterprise-C that returned to “our” universe is not the one we saw in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. It comes from an alternate universe or timeline where Picard asked or ordered Tasha Yar to travel to the past (probably because in this alternate universe Picard realized the absolute necessity for the Enterprise-C to succeed and sacrificed his best tactical officer for this kind of job – Tasha Yar). So “Redemption II” established that we were looking at an event taking place in several parallel universes where in some the Enterprise-C did look like the Sternbach design and in others probably like the Probert design.

The ship that left “our” universe, however, is the Enterprise-C designed by Andrew Probert – because it is featured on the conference lounge wall of the Enterprise-D and apparently reflects her “last seen” and known configuration before visual contact was lost during the Battle of Narendra III.

Bob