The "snag" in the City

[Phoenix219]

This is the way I've seen it for 45 years.

And the bum was most likely to have died without affecting much of anything in his life after that point, so his death didn't butterfly effect anything else notable into the timeline. Although, I am totally fine with him being the original reason Edith was trying to cross the street at that moment. Time WANTS to happen..... oh wait, wrong show....

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And the bum was most likely to have died without affecting much of anything in his life after that point, so his death didn't butterfly effect anything else notable into the timeline. Although, I am totally fine with him being the original reason Edith was trying to cross the street at that moment. Time WANTS to happen..... oh wait, wrong show....

Maybe the bum ["Rodent"] and Edith died together. Say, he was drunkenly crossing the street, she went out to help, and both of them were run down.

I'm not saying it was intended to be this way. But, it gives the milk thief a reason to be in the story, and it makes his death from McCoy's phaser more than a simple curiosity.

[Edit - As pointed out below by @Marsden, Rodent has a different reason to be in the story already, but only as one who criticizes Edith's vision of the future and who is interrupted by Kirk before he was quite possibly about to say something very improper about Edith.]

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The 10,000 terabyte drive on Spock's tricorder probably contained an offline 23rd century galactic version of Wikipedia, which had the original "Edith Gets Hit By A Car in 1930" news article on the Edith Keeler page. Spock later records the "Edith Destroys The World" story after McCoy saves her.

You beat me to it. That's the obvious way for Spock to have both versions of events in his Tricorder.

 

[Phoenix219]

The 10,000 terabyte drive on Spock's tricorder probably contained an offline 23rd century galactic version of Wikipedia, which had the original "Edith Gets Hit By A Car in 1930" news article on the Edith Keeler page. Spock later records the "Edith Destroys The World" story after McCoy saves her.

This is amusing me waaaaay more then it should right now lol.

 

[johnnybear]

Thing is I've been reading about unexplained events in books lately about time travel and some of the incidents leave you with the what if it is true scenario! A man turned up in New York in 1950 and was killed by a taxi in the street as he looked dumbfounded at what was going on around him! The man was in his late thirties and It turned out he had money and documentation in his pockets from the 1870s after finding out his identity they couldn't find him on any election registers or the like but they did find his son who was seventy five years of age when he died five years before in 1945, but they did learn from his widow that the man's Father had disappeared without a trace back in 1876! Creepy or what?
JB

 

[Marsden]

Debate-able?

Nice post!

I'm just going to add just a little to what CopralCaptain and others have said.

McCoy's first damage to the timeline is bringing the means of the mendicant's death, the second damage is then saving Edith. That guy had already said a lewd thing about Edith when Kirk told him to shut up. That could also have been a "damage" to the time line. What if the person that might have been in hearing distance was someone else who had bad intentions and thought it was a good idea to rape Edith, and encouraged rather then discouraged it. I think "Rodent" rethought his position when Kirk made it clear if he said anything like that again his next meal would be a knuckle sandwich instead of soup. But if Kirk wasn't there and the other person was encouraging him, or maybe no one hears him at all, and thus not being discouraged, he decides to go through with it when an opportunity arises, then while he's attempting that she's killed running into the street to escape.

 

[David Strickhouser]

And the bum was most likely to have died without affecting much of anything in his life after that point, so his death didn't butterfly effect anything else notable into the timeline. Although, I am totally fine with him being the original reason Edith was trying to cross the street at that moment. Time WANTS to happen..... oh wait, wrong show....

Hey, an alternate title: "The Bum and the Butterfly Effect"
Like it!

 

[David Strickhouser]

Nice post!

Thanks! Some food for thought and to "bandy" about during the 50th year. I adapted the post from another forum discussion and was curious to see responses here.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

McCoy's first damage to the timeline is bringing the means of the mendicant's death, the second damage is then saving Edith. That guy had already said a lewd thing about Edith when Kirk told him to shut up. That could also have been a "damage" to the time line. What if the person that might have been in hearing distance was someone else who had bad intentions and thought it was a good idea to rape Edith, and encouraged rather then discouraged it. I think "Rodent" rethought his position when Kirk made it clear if he said anything like that again his next meal would be a knuckle sandwich instead of soup. But if Kirk wasn't there and the other person was encouraging him, or maybe no one hears him at all, and thus not being discouraged, he decides to go through with it when an opportunity arises, then while he's attempting that she's killed running into the street to escape.

I never considered that angle before. Great post!

 

[Mytran]

No, I don't think that they exist at all, but, when a situation presents itself where some interpretations may claim predestination paradox, I just assume there were previous iterations of the timeline leading up to a time loop that exists because of the traveler's actions, but, I do not believe the traveler's actions happen or are predetermined to happen until free will creates a physical change to the timeline. I don't think unnatural actions taken by time travelers can be foreseen in a natural timeline progression until the action is physically manifested. The traveler therefore becomes the lynchpin that holds the changes together, protecting him from changes, a permanent remnant from a now defunct timeline that once existed, but is now buried and inaccessible.

Ah, the "single timeline" theory. Covers most time travel stories, although it means that the Kelvin Timeline (unless it's a pre-existing parallel universe) has actually erased the Prime Timeline :-(

But with regard to a clearly presented time loop (such as Time's Arrow), how does a single, over-writable timeline scenario explain this; after all, at the end of the episode Picard has set up the very thing (Data's head) that started their adventure in the first place!

 

[Phoenix219]

Yeah... its unfortunate, but I don't see any way the Prime Universe survived. We just really want it too, so I let it slide. The Kelvinverse could have already existed, meaning red matter opened a door between Universes, which is honestly more likely, and which explains more of the changes easier, anyways. From a logical perspective, though, everything from Yesterday's Enterprise, City, even TVH suggest otherwise. I think the show Fringe handled the differences between timelines and universes quite ingeniously.

Its been a long time since I've seen that episode, so I won't be able to go over the details until I rewatch it - I won't lie; its been over a decade since I've watched any TNG.... but I would have to assume that originally events unfolded differently off screen, with multiple temporal shenangagans going on, until a loop is formed by Picard doing so.

For instance, for The Terminator instead of believing that John Connor exists because of a predestination timeloop involving Kyle Reese, I just feel that an earlier timeline must have existed where John Connor was just a random guy that just happened to become a resistance leader. Who cares who is father was? He could have had completely different genetics, but once he became important, a time loop happened, and Reese changed history by *becoming* the father of the man who sent him. Its not like he ever got to go home to realize that its now a *different freakin guy.*

I absolutely despise predestination pardoxes. They make my brain hurt.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

For the record, the JJ-verse is the one that doesn't exist. At most, it's a parallel universe, like in "Mirror, Mirror" but with good guys.

There is no way the reboot series wipes the Shatner-and-Nimoy series out of existence. As Nu-Spock would say, and actual-Spock would never say, "That's horse sh--."

 

[Phoenix219]

For the record, the JJ-verse is the one that doesn't exist. At most, it's a parallel universe, like in "Mirror, Mirror" but with good guys.

There is no way the reboot series wipes the Shatner-and-Nimoy series out of existence.

If its really time travel, then sorry for ya, its gone. (Trust me, I don't like it either; I'm a TOS guy, PERIOD..... but time travel logic is time travel logic.)

The only hope is that Prime Spock is wrong, and red matter opens dimensional gateways. If it was really time travel, then we're f'ed in the a. lol.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

If its really time travel, then sorry for ya, its gone. (Trust me, I don't like it either; I'm a TOS guy, PERIOD..... but time travel logic is time travel logic.)

The only hope is that Prime Spock is wrong, and red matter opens dimensional gateways. If it was really time travel, then we're f'ed in the a. lol.

If it's "really" just a Hollywood reboot scavenging from better stories, then it really doesn't matter what nonsense is portrayed in the JJ films.

If the JJ-verse has a place in Star Trek at all, then the starting point of the 2009 movie, with the Kelvin, is in an alternate universe that never touches the TOS-verse. Anything short of that, and the reboot series is Star Trek in name only.

 

[Marsden]

For instance, for The Terminator instead of believing that John Connor exists because of a predestination timeloop involving Kyle Reese, I just feel that an earlier timeline must have existed where John Connor was just a random guy that just happened to become a resistance leader. Who cares who is father was? He could have had completely different genetics, but once he became important, a time loop happened, and Reese changed history by *becoming* the father of the man who sent him. Its not like he ever got to go home to realize that its now a *different freakin guy.*

I absolutely despise predestination pardoxes. They make my brain hurt.

I love predestination paradoxes, because it's the only kind of time travel story that's very slightly realistic, because it means nothing has changed at all.
It's all been done and history is unchangeable.

It's impossible for someone to go to a different point in time and change something and pop back to see the changes. Any changes in the past would have already been and there would never have been a notion to go back to change them because they didn't happen.

No matter how far into the future, millions or billions of years, if time travel were discovered then it would have already happened to us, because the travel would then have changed or done what they have done already. That's why time travel is impossible.

All time travel stories are fantasy, no matter how sciencey they try to make them.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Nice post!

I'm just going to add just a little to what CopralCaptain and others have said.

McCoy's first damage to the timeline is bringing the means of the mendicant's death, the second damage is then saving Edith. That guy had already said a lewd thing about Edith when Kirk told him to shut up. That could also have been a "damage" to the time line. What if the person that might have been in hearing distance was someone else who had bad intentions and thought it was a good idea to rape Edith, and encouraged rather then discouraged it. I think "Rodent" rethought his position when Kirk made it clear if he said anything like that again his next meal would be a knuckle sandwich instead of soup. But if Kirk wasn't there and the other person was encouraging him, or maybe no one hears him at all, and thus not being discouraged, he decides to go through with it when an opportunity arises, then while he's attempting that she's killed running into the street to escape.

Fascinating and tragic theory.

 

[Kor]

Maybe the bum ["Rodent"] and Edith died together. Say, he was drunkenly crossing the street, she went out to help, and both of them were run down.

I'm not saying it was intended to be this way. But, it gives the milk thief a reason to be in the story, and it makes his death from McCoy's phaser more than a simple curiosity.

[Edit - As pointed out below by @Marsden, Rodent has a different reason to be in the story already, but only as one who criticizes Edith's vision of the future and who is interrupted by Kirk before he was quite possibly about to say something very improper about Edith.]

Maybe in the other timeline, Rodent and Edith fell in love, but everybody was against it, so they met a "Romeo and Juliet"-esque end. In a traffic accident.

Kor

 

[Kevman7987]

I've always been partial to a theory about alternate timelines for "real" time travel. The first time-travelers can't return due to the fact their mere appearance in the past immediately creates an alternate timeline going forward for them.

With the Kelvin timeline, it made sense to me that the red matter wormhole was actually a portal to an alternate universe or created one from that point forward and backward through time. The changed future changes any way the future affected the past; Data's head disappears from the mine, George and Gracie get killed by Norwegian Whalers, Gary Seven goes on his mission without interruption, etc. The only things from the future to not be erased from the Kelvin timeline were Narada & Jellyfish because they were protected by a "temporal wake" caused by the red hole.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Maybe in the other timeline, Rodent and Edith fell in love, but everybody was against it, so they met a "Romeo and Juliet"-esque end. In a traffic accident.

Kor

 

[Mytran]

I love predestination paradoxes, because it's the only kind of time travel story that's very slightly realistic, because it means nothing has changed at all.
It's all been done and history is unchangeable.

It's impossible for someone to go to a different point in time and change something and pop back to see the changes. Any changes in the past would have already been and there would never have been a notion to go back to change them because they didn't happen.

Indeed - the casual splitting of history into alternate timelines every time a someone travels back and does something seems fantastically whimsical when you consider the scale of a person in relation to the size of the universe (it's big, really big...).
Now, if the range of the temporal transgressions were contained within a local bubble (Time Squared, Cause & Effect, Relativity) I can imagine that a great deal of temporal jiggery-pokery is possible. Across the whole of space & time? Not so much.
Fortunately, virtually all time travel adventures in Trek can be explained away as predestination paradoxes (Kirk always caused the death of Keeler, Sisko was always Gabriel Bell, etc). Yesterday's Enterprise only really makes sense if the wartorn bits occur in a parallel universe (hey, if it works for Mirror Mirror, why not?) And the Kelvinverse's many continuity problems are solved if it, too is a parallel universe (as suggested upthread).