Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Another great TOS episode

[Marsden]

I've never liked the beaming into place of the people they'd picked up, by which I mean that I've always hated that aspect of it.

Well aren't you killing the version of the person you are beaming themselves into?

Every person that's ever been transported has been killed. Their body is disintegrated. The only difference between that and the disintegration chambers on Eminar 7 is the transporter then makes a copy based on the pattern and forms a replacement. It thinks it's the person it's replacing because it has their memories but it doesn't realize that person is gone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Every person that's ever been transported has been killed.

No. In-universe, the characters do not believe this, so part of the premise of Star Trek is that it is untrue that normal operation of the transporter involves killing the tranportee. The engineers, scientists, and philosophers in the Star Trek universe have examined the theory of the transporter and come to the consensus that it does not kill the people who use it during normal operation. McCoy and Barclay are the outliers.

 

[Marsden]

And if they believe in something that makes it true!

Absolutely!



Sorry, I'm just messing with you, but I find it strange to complain/state that "it's killing this person but not anyone else"

I think it's just replacing the one version with the other, but it's the same person, actually the one being killed might be the one that's on the ground/in the plane rather than the one beaming back.

 

[Poltargyst]

This is why I always would have preferred that the transporter transports people whole rather than disassembling then reassembling them.

 

[Mytran]

Actually, I think it does - things like Kirk & Saavik continuing a conversation during transport in TWOK and Barclay actually grabbing that creature whilst "suspended" in mid transport are just two of numerous examples that suggest life carrying on regardless. Sure, the body is "phased" somehow into some other state for the relocation process, but there's nothing to suggest the "kill and copy disintegration" method is what's going on. As CorporalCaptain stated upthread, that would run contrary to the philosophy of Star Trek!

Also, it would be really easy to just pump out a few copies of Data or Picard whenever you needed them. It demonstrably isn't.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Actually, I think it does - things like Kirk & Saavik continuing a conversation during transport in TWOK and Barclay actually grabbing that creature whilst "suspended" in mid transport are just two of numerous examples that suggest life carrying on regardless. Sure, the body is "phased" somehow into some other state for the relocation process, but there's nothing to suggest the "kill and copy disintegration" method is what's going on. As CorporalCaptain stated upthread, that would run contrary to the philosophy of Star Trek!

Also, it would be really easy to just pump out a few copies of Data or Picard whenever you needed them. It demonstrably isn't.

Mytran nailed it.

For a third example, Kirk and the landing party watching the Losira avatar kill Ensign Wyatt at the transporter controls, while they are partially dematerialized, in "That Which Survives." Kirk even visibly moves while sparkly.

 

[Ithekro]

This is one of the half dozen episode we had recorded off TV that I could watch whenever growing up in the early 1980s.

"The Trouble with Tribbles"
"The Menagerie" (both parts)
"A Piece of the Action"
"Tomorrow is Yesterday"
and in lesser quality "Space Seed", so I'd know who Khan was in Star Trek II.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Don't forget "City on the edge of forever" that's a classic too.

Would not killing Edith Keeler really change things that much?

 

[Timewalker]

Don't forget "City on the edge of forever" that's a classic too.

Would not killing Edith Keeler really change things that much?

Only if you consider the Nazis winning World War II "not much."

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Don't forget "City on the edge of forever" that's a classic too.

Would not killing Edith Keeler really change things that much?

Only if you consider the Nazis winning World War II "not much."

But how does anyone know that for sure? Time isn't necessarily fixed, and events can always be fluid

 

[Mytran]

However, within the context of the episode the ramifications of allowing Edith to live are made quite clear:

SPOCK: This is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.
KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler. They won the Second World War.
SPOCK: Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.
KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.
SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.
KIRK: No.
SPOCK: And all this because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident as she was meant to. We must stop him, Jim.

And this information comes via a Time Travelling Space-Donut Of The Future, so it's a fairly reliable source

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

However, within the context of the episode the ramifications of allowing Edith to live are made quite clear:

SPOCK: This is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.
KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler. They won the Second World War.
SPOCK: Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.
KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.
SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.
KIRK: No.
SPOCK: And all this because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident as she was meant to. We must stop him, Jim.

And this information comes via a Time Travelling Space-Donut Of The Future, so it's a fairly reliable source

Awwww don't knock The Guardian Of Forever he's awesome.

 

[Mytran]

Honestly, I'm not (okay, just a little on the donut-ty bit). The GOF gets a bad press from many as being a pretty lousy guardian of Time, but I see its role more in the line of a device set up to protect the numerous pre-destination paradoxes that seem to pepper the galaxy in general and the Federation in particular! The events in TCOTEOF (despite the original author's intentions) are clearly one example of that; Yesteryear is another (obviously).

After all, how did Edith die? By crossing the road following a date with Kirk to see him reunite with McCoy, of course. Without the presence of the time travellers, Edith Keeler wouldn't have been on that street at that particular time and would never have died at all, and the Federation (we are told) would never have formed. The GOF needs to ensure that our heroic trio enter the time portal though one means or another, otherwise recorded history will never unfold as it should.

 

[Ithekro]

Earlier in the story Kirk stops her from getting hit by a car. Spock says that might have been her time, to which Kirk replies that is can't because McCoy isn't there. So we see that Edith never learned to look both ways when crossing the street. So basically any time she might get hit by a car. Without either Kirk, nor McCoy being present, she would have been killed at somepoint due to her carelessness. After McCoy saved her, she either got wise to the ways of crossing the street, or McCoy was always their to keep her from being dumb about that aspect of 1930s life.

 

[Timewalker]

Earlier in the story Kirk stops her from getting hit by a car. Spock says that might have been her time, to which Kirk replies that is can't because McCoy isn't there. So we see that Edith never learned to look both ways when crossing the street. So basically any time she might get hit by a car. Without either Kirk, nor McCoy being present, she would have been killed at somepoint due to her carelessness. After McCoy saved her, she either got wise to the ways of crossing the street, or McCoy was always their to keep her from being dumb about that aspect of 1930s life.

That's not what happened. Kirk kept her from falling down the stairs.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Earlier in the story Kirk stops her from getting hit by a car. Spock says that might have been her time, to which Kirk replies that is can't because McCoy isn't there. So we see that Edith never learned to look both ways when crossing the street. So basically any time she might get hit by a car. Without either Kirk, nor McCoy being present, she would have been killed at somepoint due to her carelessness. After McCoy saved her, she either got wise to the ways of crossing the street, or McCoy was always their to keep her from being dumb about that aspect of 1930s life.

That's not what happened. Kirk kept her from falling down the stairs.

But might her death by any other means other than being hit by a car have changed the desired outcome at all that much?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But might her death by any other means other than being hit by a car have changed the desired outcome at all that much?

We'll never know. The Guardian presented only two alternatives.

In the timeline in which things turn out differently, evidently McCoy saved Edith. In the "Prime" timeline, Kirk prevents McCoy from saving Edith. Those are the only two alternatives at play, as per what Spock scanned on his tricorder.

By the way, my interpretation has always been that in the timeline in which McCoy saves Edith, Edith had gotten McCoy to take her to the Clark Gable movie. Instead of mentioning to McCoy that her "young man" is taking her to see the film, it was something like her simply asking if perhaps he would enjoy getting out and going with her. So, it was McCoy and Edith together at the site of a near accident, and it seems that there is no timeline without at least McCoy going back in time. Someone compared the situation to the resolution of "Assignment: Earth," and I agree, but I can't seem to find their comment right now.

 

[Shawnster]

We had a nice discussion on the Edith Keeler alternate history here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=269500

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

We had a nice discussion on the Edith Keeler alternate history here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=269500

OMG this board, you guys... I'll be up all night reading