Or he could beam inside Nero's ship and kick his ass!
Prime Universe time travel and the new timeline
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Or he could beam inside Nero's ship and kick his ass!
Why does it have to?
I also personally view it as Nero/Spock going back in time to an already existing alt-universe. It makes it a lot easier to reconcile things that appear to be different to the Prime-U before Nero's arrival, or that are difficult to imagine being influenced by same. You can make excuses for most (all) the differences, but I prefer one excuse that covers them all in one fell swoop.
If you believe in a splittable timeline then of course Old Spock would continue to exist! He's simply travelled back through a time tunnel much the same way that you or I would cross the street and forge a new path through the grassy verge.
The trouble with both timelines (indeed, more than those two as there are numerous examples of alternate timelines throughout Star Trek) sharing a common history is that there would be relics from other timelines scattered throughout, as a result of other time travel adventures. Indeed Star Trek's past would be a virtual dumping ground for artifacts that had no causal business being in that reality!
OP, what an EXcellent thread! And, Welcome to danielcw
As I was thinking about the Prime/New timeline and the meaning and ramifications, what Mytran said above made sense to me. Along with agreeing about the artifacts, there would also be numbers of Kirks and Spocks and various crews ripe for meeting each other at pivitol moments in History. I am thinking of the odds of someone not finding a 'fact, or a 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 Kirk or Spock, or what have you, not running into each other...
...wait!!! I think we just wrote NuIV!
Better start filming OldKirk and OldSpock warpspeed!
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This discussion actually led to me registering to this forum. The strange "Things did happen, things did not happen - alternate reality, but original timeline is still there" ambivalance from Orci also puzzled me beyond description. In the real world, I came to the conclusion that the producers wanted to eat the cake and keep it at the same time. In Star Trek terms I came to a rather fascinating conclusion. So far everyone was taking about the remification, the new Timeline has into the Past or its near future. But if you go to the point of the new timeline, where Nero starts to go back in time, the "new" Timeline is going to wipe itself out! Here's why (Spoiler alert, just in case...): Romulus is taken out by a Supersomethingnova. That makes Nero mad, so he travels back in time, to destroy the Vulcans homeworld, because they refused to help. This changed the timline to the new JJ-Verse. But here are not enough Vulcans anymore to make any significant impact. Therefore, in the new timeline, the Vulcans are not involved in safing (or not safing) Romulus. So, in the new Timeline, Nero cannot get mad at the Vulcans and will not travel back in time to destroy their homeworld. Timeline restored, and everything and anything that happended in Prime will happen as it was. Including Datas head in the desert and Voyagers jump before the Big Bang and onto the Christmastree. At least that is my wishful thinking... (Here I stop, because I think it's time I stop using the word "time" for so many times... Oh my...) 
That is my view as well.
But if you go with the alt universe theory then all bets are off. You can come with anything you want regardless of how absurd it is, in regard to known history. In fact Spock could be a villain just pretending to be on the side of the good guys for example.
I've got to agree with Kirkfan on this one. Once you've started using parallel universes as an "easy" explanation once, it might as well be applicable to all instances of time travel, or indeed spin off series of Trek themselves.
Not to say that there isn't strong evidence to indicate the presence of some parallel universes in play during Trek's run (the differences between TOS's and TNG's universes and history are numerous, for instance) but it really should be a last resort explanation, not the first.
However, even in the "single timeline" approach we have seen instances in Star Trek where the time travelers themselves are immune to the changes they have wrought: City On The Edge Of Forever, Star Trek First Contact, DS9's Past Tense and so on. Therefore, Nero(1) would be perfectly fine to carry on existing, even if Nero(2) never stole the Red Matter and went back in time.
Not to say that there isn't strong evidence to indicate the presence of some parallel universes in play during Trek's run (the differences between TOS's and TNG's universes and history are numerous, for instance) but it really should be a last resort explanation, not the first.
I see your logic here, but it's one that only really works in a "single timeline" approach, whereby time travelers' actions alter history rather than create branching timelines (or new ones). This is also what happened in "Back To The Future" where Marty invalidated his own existence by stopping his parents getting together.
However, even in the "single timeline" approach we have seen instances in Star Trek where the time travelers themselves are immune to the changes they have wrought: City On The Edge Of Forever, Star Trek First Contact, DS9's Past Tense and so on. Therefore, Nero(1) would be perfectly fine to carry on existing, even if Nero(2) never stole the Red Matter and went back in time.
They sometimes make terrible mistakes with their time-travel stories. For example in Children Of Time (DS9) If Sisko's descendants have not only disappeared but have in fact never existed then everything they did should never have existed as well and that definitely includes the memories they left inside Sisko's and the others' brains. No one should remember about them. Of course, that would have made a different story.
I guess my argument would be that the whole "branching theory" doesn't tie into how time travel has been shown in the rest of the Star Trek franchise... if every change made in the past automatically just creates a new timeline, it would remove all of the jeopardy from those episodes/movies, plus we have seen people observe how a timeline has changed (Guinan for example in "Yesterday's Enterprise"). They always used the overwrote model. But, maybe red matter has the ability to create a parallel universe that did branch? But, again, you already have tons of cases of people from the 24th century that traveled back before 2233 etc. That's a complicated scenario related to the "branching", so if something was split, it would have to be from the beginning.
Well, there is always the case that the Prime Universe was overwritten, but again, if that was the case, Spoke might have tried to do something about it, although as people have pointed out Nero would be a pretty tough opponent.
Could Nero's ship really have caused all the changes in the Abramsverse? Maybe, but we already have signs that it was different from the Prime Universe even before 2233, but people are right that that is more style and perception over hard examples.
I think the parallel universe option works much better than the branched timeline, is far more consistent with what ST has already developed, plus makes the Abramsverse able to be easily crossover in future stories with the Prime Universe.
And, well, I have to admit that I've never liked the re-boot, so I am biased. The plot holes alone...
I think Christopher has done an excellent job explaining why time travel sometimes creates branches, and sometimes does not, in his Department of Temporal Investigations novels. It's surprisingly easy to read.
As for Nero's ship: It didn't "cause" the technology of this timeline to become more advanced. Not as such, anyway. Starfleet just pounced on the detailed scans that the Kelvin took of the Narada, and used them to upgrade its tech. Not so hard to understand, IMHO.
As for Nero's ship: It didn't "cause" the technology of this timeline to become more advanced. Not as such, anyway. Starfleet just pounced on the detailed scans that the Kelvin took of the Narada, and used them to upgrade its tech. Not so hard to understand, IMHO.
Time travel in Star Trek
Expectations:
Reality:
The Doctor explained it best
Expectations:
Reality:
The Doctor explained it best
Now you're getting it.
Much simpler explanation: quantum states of red matter, yadda yadda yadda; works much better than trying to say the writers were full of it or something.
If a few drops of red matter is enough to turn a planet into a black hole, then how come the guy had like thirty gallons of it? did he plan to collapse all the planets of the hundred closest galaxies or something?
You'd have to ask the Vulcans who made it. Perhaps they like to buy in bulk.
REd Matter has nothing to do with the creation of parallel universes. All it did was create a black hole. It was Nero traveling through the black hole and into the past that caused the branching timeline
It really seems like it, doesn't it?
The thing that seems to trouble some people in fandom is that the Kelvin already seems to exhibit parts of the new asthetic before the timeline change even happens.
I think what caused the continuity snarl is that future Trek shows 'canonised' the TOS asthetic as being the real deal. Up until a certain point we might have made allowances for how things looked in TOS, or applied a retcon to say that the motion picture era bridges were more representative of what things had 'really' been like all along. But the 24th century shows eventually canonised the more stylised TOS look as being a historical fact. Which is where people started getting angsty when they perceived that ENT wasn't paying tribute to that enough.
NuTrek faces some problems inherent in that, even before Nero's incursion, what we are presented on the Kelvin bares more resemblence to what comes after than it does to anything from pre-timeline change Trek. My understanding was that at least one draft of the 2009 script actually had the TOS-style Enterprise under the command of Robert April getting blown out of the stars instead of the Kelvin, which was the explanation for why everything post-Nero was so different. It's a shame they weren't able to run with that, really, as I think it would've pleased a lot of fandom.
The Kelvin as a presTOS ship works for me. It's all switches and dials. It has a retro feel. Even when compared to today's tech.
The only way to justify the way Trek ships look and work is by saying they're futuristic technology-meets-art. Thus there is no real design evolution, just the whim of the designer/artist. Thus, it all fits - from TOS' blinking coloured squares, to the classic movies' buttons and 80's graphics, to TNG's touchscreen DOS to JJ's Apple store.
Perhaps it's only stable enough to transit in large quantities.
Perhaps it's only stable enough to transit in large quantities.
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