Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND

[Quinton O'Connor]

This kind of nitpicking back-and-forth about fantasy time travel is typical of what people mock about trekkie and find so trivial and unappealing about Trek. It would be hard to find a subject more meaningless and boring.

Some of my local friends who I've successfully brought into the Trek fold were initially very hesitant to try to the franchise because they associated it with this sort of thing and this sort of thing only. The stigma is real. "Oh, that Jeff. He likes that nerd show." I had to ease them in, get them to see things for how they really are. What amuses me is that nowadays they often initiate these kinds of back-and-forths with me after watching an episode, and I'm just like, "ack, no, just enjoy it... n3rdz!"

Not so different from sports fans endlessly debating player statistics and rattling off scores and whatever else they do. Or people who are into cars talking about performance and specs and mechanical details and whatever. Any fan's fascinations seem like a pointless waste of time to those outside the fandom.

Haha, of course, of course. We love what we love.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Courtesy of TrekCore:

http://trekcore.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/quinto-wigs.jpg

[Converted to link. Pics posted as embedded images should be hosed on a website or image-hosting account registered to you. - M']

Where's the camera??

 

[Phantom]

Again, no you are not. You are restoring things to what they are supposed to be.

Who are you to say the way things are supposed to be? It's just like the natural evolution non-sense in the Prime Directive. If someone went back in time, maybe that is simply the way things were meant to be.

Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

"The way things are supposed to be" is the revealed/understood history of the traveller prior to the moment of temporal incursion. It is incumbent on the traveller to not do anything to change it, and to stop someone else from changing it either.

Put another way: history records that JFK was assasinated Nov 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas TX. If you were there as a time traveller, you are not supposed to interfere with that event. You are not supposed to stop it. If you did, by some means accidentally cause it not to happen, or if you find someone else causing it not to happen, then it is your duty to fix it so it does happen.

That's the point of the TPD: to preserve the integrity of history to the maximum extent possible.

 

[FarStrider]

^^^^^ That is what I wanted to know!!!

 

[Franklin]

Again, no you are not. You are restoring things to what they are supposed to be.

Who are you to say the way things are supposed to be? It's just like the natural evolution non-sense in the Prime Directive. If someone went back in time, maybe that is simply the way things were meant to be.

Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

"The way things are supposed to be" is the revealed/understood history of the traveller prior to the moment of temporal incursion. It is incumbent on the traveller to not do anything to change it, and to stop someone else from changing it either.

Put another way: history records that JFK was assasinated Nov 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas TX. If you were there as a time traveller, you are not supposed to interfere with that event. You are not supposed to stop it. If you did, by some means accidentally cause it not to happen, or if you find someone else causing it not to happen, then it is your duty to fix it so it does happen.

That's the point of the TPD: to preserve the integrity of history to the maximum extent possible.

A story like that JFK scenario was told in a "Red Dwarf" episode.

The thing is, this is all fiction. While cosmologists and astro-physicists are certain travel into the future is possible, they mostly range from either pessimistic about the possibility of travel back in time to believing it is impossible. Or if it is, we are for some reason unable to change events. Or if it is and we can change events, then we create an alternate reality and exist in it. We change nothing in the "reality" we left. In most of Trek, the third option was to assume a timeline could be changed and reset. In ST09 they actually followed a more scientifically plausible idea: changes in time create new realities.

Then again, like I said, some are certain travelling back in time will always be science fiction. As I heard one astronomer put it on a TV show years ago, if people from the far future invented a way to go back in time, where are they? Where are the changes they'd make?

 

[Phantom]

This kind of nitpicking back-and-forth about fantasy time travel is typical of what people mock about trekkie and find so trivial and unappealing about Trek. It would be hard to find a subject more meaningless and boring.

Only if you're of the opinion that science fiction should be dumbed down for mass consumption. Classic science fiction was/is very concerned with asking larger questions than the simplistic "Is it fun/entertaining...?"

The happy-go-lucky treatment of time travel you favor (the Back to the Future or Bill and Ted model) is frankly chilling, not to mention being a misread of large parts of the trilogy.

On the other end of the question is extremely "hard" sci-fi approaches such as Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", which relentlessly expounds on the very real perils of temporal displacement.

Trek has always fallen somewhere in between, being much more serious than your model, but not as unforgiving as Bradbury.

 

[M'Sharak]

Courtesy of TrekCore:

http://trekcore.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/quinto-wigs.jpg

http://trekcore.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/wigs-numbered.jpg

[Converted to links. Pics posted as embedded images should be hosed on a website or image-hosting account registered to you. - M']
<snip>

Just realized these had been hotlinked from TrekCore, so they've now been converted to links. We need to be sure that all pics posted as embedded images are hosted properly, ideally with a link provided back to the source page.

 

[BillJ]

Trek has always fallen somewhere in between, being much more serious than your model, but not as unforgiving as Bradbury.

Trek has always done whatever serves the story they are telling.

 

[Phantom]

Then again, like I said, some are certain travelling back in time will always be science fiction. As I heard one astronomer put it on a TV show years ago, if people from the far future invented a way to go back in time, where are they? Where are the changes they'd make?

Which is a nonsense question. If they're doing it right, we'll never know they're here, because they won't be interfering with history to begin with.

Then again, from our perspective as non-time travellers, we'd never know the difference, because we would be "re-written" by each temporal change.

Trek has always fallen somewhere in between, being much more serious than your model, but not as unforgiving as Bradbury.

Trek has always done whatever serves the story they are telling.

No, they've been very consistent. You don't change history. If history does get changed somehow, you fix it.

 

[Khan444]

Really, so trading "transparent aluminum" in the past (long before it would have been invented otherwise) or bringing a person from the past into the future, did they ever "fix" those, because I don't seem to recall them doing so?

 

[fireproof78]

Trek has always fallen somewhere in between, being much more serious than your model, but not as unforgiving as Bradbury.

Trek has always done whatever serves the story they are telling.

No, they've been very consistent. You don't change history. If history does get changed somehow, you fix it.

Except for situations like "Parallels" where Worf from their timeline is not guaranteed to return. Same thing with the Mirror Universe, where Kirk works to change the Empire.

I don't remember the VOY episode title but when they go back to 1995(ish) there is not a complete attempt to restore everything.

Same thing with FC where the crew actively informs Cochrane of the future, with the whole statue part from LaForge.

Also, TOS informed Captain Christopher (no relation to Pike) in the past by beaming him aboard the Enterprise.

For every hard and fast rule, there is an exception or fragrant violation.

 

[BillJ]

Trek has always done whatever serves the story they are telling.

No, they've been very consistent. You don't change history. If history does get changed somehow, you fix it.

Except for situations like "Parallels" where Worf from their timeline is not guaranteed to return. Same thing with the Mirror Universe, where Kirk works to change the Empire.

I don't remember the VOY episode title but when they go back to 1995(ish) there is not a complete attempt to restore everything.

Same thing with FC where the crew actively informs Cochrane of the future, with the whole statue part from LaForge.

Also, TOS informed Captain Christopher (no relation to Pike) in the past by beaming him aboard the Enterprise.

For every hard and fast rule, there is an exception or fragrant violation.

Then there's Sisko replacing Gabriel Bell in the past in "Past Prologue". And them bringing a Tribble to the 24th Century in "Trials and Tribble-ations". There's also Sisko meeting Jim Kirk in the same episode. The bum that phasers himself into oblivion in "City on the Edge of Forever". Mark Twain making an appearance on the Enterprise in "Time's Arrow".

Some people really don't pay attention when watching these shows.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It's science fiction, dude. The "concept" is purely embodied in science fiction that deals with it. I can't help that Star Trek uses this concept exactly the same as any other science fiction production and the use is this: the purpose of time travel is to change the past.

No, it is not. It is a potential peril of time travel

It is the INHERENT peril of time travel. The goal of the time traveler is to avoid changing things TOO MUCH. If you can return to your original starting point and not notice anything being all that different, then you've succeeded.

And then there's "Voyager Home" which was basically a space-time shopping trip. Not only did they make no serious effort to avoid changing the timeline (Kirk even jokes about this when he sells his glasses for bus fare) they seemed largely indifferent to any effects their visit might have had.

Only to repair an already fractured timeline per their mandate via the TPD.

The "temporal prime directive" doesn't exist until after the 29th century. Janeway's the only one who ever heard of it, and SHE isn't bound to follow it.

 

[BillJ]

The timeline is so contaminated that there's no way to ever know what the original timeline looked like. Which makes the Temporal Prime Directive a non-starter. A way for those in power to make sure nothing changes that power.

 

[BillJ]

The "temporal prime directive" doesn't exist until after the 29th century. Janeway's the only one who ever heard of it, and SHE isn't bound to follow it.

It actually gets a mention in "Endgame":

ADMIRAL: Oh, the almighty Temporal Prime Directive. Take my advice. It's less of a headache if you just ignore it.

But I'm not sure whose directive it actually is?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This kind of nitpicking back-and-forth about fantasy time travel is typical of what people mock about trekkie and find so trivial and unappealing about Trek. It would be hard to find a subject more meaningless and boring.

Only if you're of the opinion that science fiction should be dumbed down for mass consumption. Classic science fiction was/is very concerned with asking larger questions than the simplistic "Is it fun/entertaining...?"

Correction: LITERARY science fiction was concerned with those things.

Star Trek was INDEED dumbed down for mass consumption every step of the way. It didn't actually get smarter in the spinoffs, it just PRETENDED to.

FYI: written science fiction generally treats time travel very differently. It's a lot more common for the story to break down such that the entire time-travel adventure is a causality loop where events are set in motion by a time traveler that causes a problem that leads to a solution that leads to a bigger problem that leads to the time traveler needing to go back in time in the first place.

Trek has always fallen somewhere in between, being much more serious than your model

Not much. Just a little. It's significant enough that Kirk didn't even consider sending Major Christopher back to Earth until after Spock realized his son was a famous astronaut.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Then there's Sisko replacing Gabriel Bell in the past in "Past Prologue". And them bringing a Tribble to the 24th Century in "Trials and Tribble-ations". There's also Sisko meeting Jim Kirk in the same episode. The bum that phasers himself into oblivion in "City on the Edge of Forever". Mark Twain making an appearance on the Enterprise in "Time's Arrow".

For that matter, stopping the Devidians from hunting people on Earth would qualify since there's no evidence that the people they killed didn't ACTUALLY die that way historically.

OTOH, the presence of Data's head suggests that the entire situation was already an historical event and "interference" was logically impossible. I'm pretty sure that's how it ALWAYS works, but Starfleet for some reason hasn't acknowledged it (or doesn't believe it) yet.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

In Star Trek IV, the whole purpose of the time travel was to get some whales and bring them to the future. That's pretty obvious interference as a goal.

 

[FarStrider]

In Star Trek IV, the whole purpose of the time travel was to get some whales and bring them to the future. That's pretty obvious interference as a goal.

Not only did they interfere, but they took Gillian back to the future with them. . .thus erasing her from the past. . .

~FS

 

[Christopher]

Trek has always featured a mix of both kinds of time travel story -- the ones like "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "City on the Edge of Forever" where they had to repair a damaged timeline, and the ones like "Assignment: Earth," "All Our Yesterdays," and TVH where their presence and actions in the past were just part of how history had "always" unfolded. I've never understood the idea that it's unbelievable for both situations to happen in the same reality. Just because the same overall laws of temporal mechanics apply, that doesn't mean the laws can't manifest differently in different situations, just as the laws of gravity manifest differently on the Earth's surface than they do in deep space.