Time for Time Travel

[doublegoodprole]

Let me just preface this by saying that I am not at all interested in flame wars, pissing contests, or hurting people's feelings. We're talking about a fictional science fiction franchise here. In the end, everyone's canon is valid and no one is wrong. It's a happy, peaceful utopia.

So I want to talk a little bit about time travel in the Star Trek universe. Now, generally, it seems that traveling through time is a process that can only affect the universe in which it takes place. If you utilize the Guardian of Forever to travel back in time to kill Hitler, you will return to a present in which the consequences of that action have changed history. You do not return to an alternate universe, nor did you travel to one. When Kirk and co. traveled back to the 1980's to grab a couple whales, they did not travel back to an alternate 80's--nor did they return to an alternate 23rd century. Other examples abound. Sisko's actions in DS9's "Past Tense" directly affected his future--you get the point. If you time travel, you're time traveling to your universe's past (or future).

Of course, then you have the time travel in Star Trek '09, which indicates that Nero's time travel to the past did not erase or alter the timeline we all know and love--in direct contradiction with most depictions of Trek time travel. And I'm not even talking about the screams of millions of deeply hurt Trek fans--in the movie, OriginalSpock travels to the past after Nero, correct? If Nero's journey to the past had changed history--which it obviously did--OriginalSpock would (in all likelihood) not be chasing Nero back through time. Unless changes to the timeline take, uh, time to propagate through...the timeline, OriginalSpock would now be OldNuSpock, if he was even alive. So even the movie seems to support the idea that the Abramsverse is an alternate timeline. But how? When the Enterprise-C traveled from its present into TNG's present, the change was instantaneous--likewise when it returned. My perception is that the great majority of time travel in Star Trek supports the idea that changes to the timeline affect the native universe and the native universe only--instantaneously. While there are parallel universes, time travel is not a way to reach them. So unless some funky stuff went down when Nero and OriginalSpock made their trips, the Prime timeline is gone.

Well, wait, it's not completely gone...only the ones in which Nero and OriginalSpock traveled back in time are gone. The ones in which they did not are obviously unaffected. There have to be universes like that, right? In any case, one gets the idea that the Star Trek multiverse is full of universes in which all sorts of species are traveling back in time and changing their universe's flow of historical events. If this is so, how can the Q possibly get bored?

So...here's a few questions:

Which version of time travel is correct--the one where travel is contained within the original universe, or the one where travel creates an alternate reality? Or both? Or am I comically missing the point?

Is there a sort of universal time police (like a superpowerful DTI) that prevents people from constantly changing the past and altering the future (or creating new universes)?

How do parallel universes come into existence, if time travel does not create them?

 

[JoeZhang]

So...here's a few questions:

Which version of time travel is correct--the one where travel is contained within the original universe, or the one where travel creates an alternate reality? Or both? Or am I comically missing the point?

Since both are onscreen, both must be correct.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Read the DTI novels by Christopher. They provide a much better explanation than anything else I've seen.

The basic thrust of the gist is this: If a time portal opens up and information can be freely exchanged in both directions - to both endpoints of the portal - then travel through that portal changes history. If, however, it's strictly one-way (meaning, information can only flow through in one direction, and nothing is passed back), then travel through the portal creates a branching timeline which does not replace the original.

The former is what happened in, for example, TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise". ST09 is an example of the latter.

 

[Chronos]

Is there a sort of universal time police (like a superpowerful DTI) that prevents people from constantly changing the past and altering the future (or creating new universes)?

Supposedly, the 29th century Federation is capable of preventing temporal violations, but they must be really bad at it if they allowed Nero travel through time at all.

 

[doublegoodprole]

Read the DTI novels by Christopher. They provide a much better explanation than anything else I've seen.

The basic thrust of the gist is this: If a time portal opens up and information can be freely exchanged in both directions - to both endpoints of the portal - then travel through that portal changes history. If, however, it's strictly one-way (meaning, information can only flow through in one direction, and nothing is passed back), then travel through the portal creates a branching timeline which does not replace the original.

The former is what happened in, for example, TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise". ST09 is an example of the latter.

Sorry if I'm being dumb, but it seems like the slingshot-around-the-sun method would be a ST09 example.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Supposedly, the 29th century Federation is capable of preventing temporal violations, but they must be really bad at it if they allowed Nero travel through time at all.

From their point of view Nero was swallowed by a black hole.They'v no idea he wound up in the 23rd Century of an alternate Universe.

But if we're opening this can of worms, were where they when the Borg traveled in time to the 21st Century?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Supposedly, the 29th century Federation is capable of preventing temporal violations, but they must be really bad at it if they allowed Nero travel through time at all.

Remember what I just said. Since the unique method of Nero/Spock Prime's time travel resulted in an entirely new timeline which exists alongside the original, there's no way for anyone in the prime timeline to know about it. They can't prevent the existence of a timeline that they don't know exists.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

So unless some funky stuff went down when Nero and OriginalSpock made their trips, the Prime timeline is gone.

I'd say the red matter counts as "funky stuff". That solves the issue for me.

 

[doublegoodprole]

All right, I accept the Christopherian Theory of Star Trek time travel. I just want to know why the slingshot method doesn't result in the creation of a new timeline.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'd say the red matter counts as "funky stuff". That solves the issue for me.

All right, I accept the Christopherian Theory of Star Trek time travel. I just want to know why the slingshot method doesn't result in the creation of a new timeline.

How do you know it doesn't?

 

[doublegoodprole]

How do you know it doesn't?

Well, I don't. But Kirk and friends don't seem too worried about it in The Voyage Home.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well, I don't. But Kirk and friends don't seem too worried about it in The Voyage Home.

Why should they?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Feynman curve that allows the slingshot maneuver to work, is a two way process. A ship using this method can return to the present after it travels to the past. Therefore, since information passes in both directions - to the past and present - it does not create a new timeline.

 

[doublegoodprole]

Wow, I think I'm starting to understand.

 

[Tosk]

If, however, it's strictly one-way (meaning, information can only flow through in one direction, and nothing is passed back), then travel through the portal creates a branching timeline which does not replace the original.

What about Past Tense, Children of Time, and Time's Arrow?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ All of those were two-way, so they do change history (and in the first two cases, actually did).

 

[Tosk]

But that's not the distinction made up-thread. The first point listed, "If a time portal opens up and information can be freely exchanged in both directions - to both endpoints of the portal - then travel through that portal changes history." doesn't cover Past Tense or Children of Time. If memory serves, they make one-way trips and then only later make a new trip back to "the present".

If the point of the theory is that the only way to create a new timeline is when someone travels to the past and then never time travels back, then what of Time's Arrow? Data never makes the return trip and still alters history.

 

[hux]

Couldn't you just write this off with some technobabble as different types or combinations of chronoton particles? If you have this combination of chronoton particles, you return to a past that you can change because it's your reality's past but if it's a slightly different combination of particles, you end up in a past that can't be changed because it's a different reality.

Both of these depend on returning to the time you left in order to know if any changes have occurred. Since Spock didn't return, there's no reason to believe the reality he left is actually still there. Just because you own DVD's that say it does... doesn't mean it does.

 

[Timo]

What real reason do we have for thinking that all time travel in Trek doesn't lead to alternate timelines/universes?

The heroes themselves may have misconceptions about it all. And since the audience tags along with the time-traveling heroes, rather than staying put with the innocent bystanders, the misconceptions will be shared. But nothing about the plot of, say, ST4 requires us to think that history would have been overwritten in any fashion. Our heroes simply depart a bleak 2280s and return to a brighter one - an act of self-improvement that (possibly) required them to do stuff in the past first but did not save the billions who perished in the original 2280s, nor harm the umptillions who did fine in all the alternate 2280s.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tosk]

And then you get even weirder ones like the fact that Miles once took the place of his dying past self, went back in time and took over his life from that point on.