I like any time travel story, using any of those models, but my main problem with "Star Trek," given the hundreds of writers who have worked on the series, is that there are no series-wide "rules" for time travel. One week there's a predestination paradox, then another week there's "Back to the Future"-style grandfather paradoxes within a "single" timeline, and then there's the branching alternate timelines, or some combination of all of them. That's why we have these debates -- trying to retroactively impose rules on a series that never had consistent rules.
Ah, trying to make logic out of chaos - this mantra applies in Trek equally well to their technology, their chronologies, their character motivations etc. And it's what keeps me coming back to Trek talk, of all sorts. Gimme more!
Well, if there were only one timeline, then they wouldn't remember their own history after erasing it. They would just fade away like Marty McFly. But most time travelers in Trek often remember their own timeline, and their timeline's history affects their new timeline (like Nero and Spock meeting young Kirk, or Ambassador Spock meeting Yar's half-Romulan daughter, or Admiral Janeway meeting her younger crew -- these remnants from the "original" timeline continue to exist and persist for a time, so even if they can't get back home, their memories of their original timeline still exists).
I think there's enough episodes to suggest that artefacts from previously overwritten timelines (assuming the single timeline model) can survive erasure if they are the ones doing the time travelling (Admiral Janeway) or if they are in some sort of protective temporal bubble (Ent-E int ST:FC)
As far as I know, the only time objects or people fade away (BTTF style) is in
Time Squared, but as that whole incident took place within a temporal bubble (IMO) caused by the unknown intelligence in the vortex, the usual rules don't apply.
In YE there's no time meddler from the future; there's no weird time experiment being conducted in the present; Enterprise-D just happens on a timey-whimey phenomenon which it turns out originated in the past.
But alternate timelines cannot "originate" from the past. Remember in "Back to the Future," when Doc Brown's dog, Einstein, takes the first trip in the DeLorean, one minute into the future. The car and dog disappear for one minute, then reappear. That's not an alternate timeline, that's just time passing normally while the time machine was taking a shortcut.
Ah, this is not quite what I meant. My point was that as presented in the episode, the timelines run from regular TNG to "Federation at War" TNG and back to regular TNG again. The episode presents it as a "change" in one timeline that is then "restored" by the end of the episode. This sort of thing has been presented elsewhere in Trek (think ST:FC) but always due to the interference of a time traveller in the present or later.
However, in YE there is no instigator for the change that makes sense.
After all, when the Bozeman appeared in
Cause & Effect the timeline did not suddenly change, because the disappearance of the ship is already an established historical event in Federation history; just as the disappearance/reappearance/destruction of the Enterprise-C is an established historical event .
Nevertheless and contrary to all logic, the episode presents the main catalyst for timeline changes as the Ent-C leaving 2344 before it got destroyed. That is what I meant when I said "it originated in the past". And it still makes no sense
when the Enterprise-C disappeared into a rift 20 years into the future as a result of its battle with the Romulans, everything that happened after that was the normal, original course of history after the Enterprise-C vanished -- including the Klingon war. When Yar decided to take the Enterprise-C backwards in time and intentionally change the natural course of history that she already knew, it was only then that the alternate timeline was created.
So, in your interpretation it is the regular TNG universe that is the "altered" timeline and the "Federation@War" universe that was the original one? This is logic I can get behind a lot more. An unfortunate niggle is Guinan's insistence that the Fed@War timeline is "wrong" somehow. To the audience, this makes sense. But if the timeline is correct (until that interfering Tasha Yar steps in) then why would Guinan only now start start complaining?
Although thinking about it further, how did War-Picard and War-Guinan meet in the first place? It seems unlikely that War-Picard is going to be taking any jaunts back in time to the 19th century any time soon. They've clearly got a close friendship, but it won't have the same 19th century roots that their regular counterparts have.
...In other words, Guinan was only alive in "Yesterday's Enterprise" to talk to Lt. Yar, because her life had already been saved by Picard in 1900 in "Time's Arrow" -- a Picard who came from the timeline where Yar was dead -- and Guinan met that same Picard again in the Nexus in 2300, six decades before serving aboard the warship Enterprise-D during the Klingon war in "Yesterday's Enterprise." Maybe during all those centuries of having long, meaningful conversations with Picard (which we only saw brief glimpses of), Picard had mentioned to Guinan that Yar had died in his timeline, so Guinan already knew the future events that she was supposed to be seeing, and knew the only way to complete the predestination paradox in which she first met Picard was to ensure that an alternate timeline was created where Yar was dead.
Except that in a single timeline model (where Fed@War is converted by Yar in 2344 into regular TNG) Guinan would not have been able to remember the 19th century encounter with Picard, because it wouldn't have happened - War-Picard is in no position to take time off for archaeological pursuits (in fact, he's probably dead by 2368). Likewise, there'd be no Picard to meet up with the "echo" of Guinan in the Nexus - or are you suggesting that it wasn't an echo at all, but Guinan herself? This is the trouble when you get such a poorly written mcguffin as the Nexus! However, your speculation is an good use of it's vaguely defined power
BTW, I'm not clear how Picard & Guinan could have had centuries of conversations - do you mean in the Nexus? Picard seemed in way too much of a hurry (for no good reason) for casual chatting!
Is "I need some help to go back punch Soran" really the best he can come up with after centuries of discussion? I hope not
And finally, can you have a true predestination paradox in a single timeline model?
FWIW, in my own model (where Fed@War is an alternate universe) War-Guinan is only getting the heebie-jeebies because she is sensing the regular TNG universe through the time portal (which intersects both universes).
Keeping the Fed@War in a whole separate universe is much tidier, IMO.
Awesome scene
OK, before I garner any more "TLDR" comments, I think it's worth looking at the aforementioned Simon Pegg comment again:
Sweet shit! The timeline was different even before Nero's arrival. Simon Pegg said so.
To avoid confusion,
here's what he actually said in his 11th July post:
Sure, we experience time as a contiguous series of cascading events but perception and reality aren’t always the same thing. Spock’s incursion from the Prime Universe created a multidimensional reality shift. The rift in space/time created an entirely new reality in all directions, top to bottom, from the Big Bang to the end of everything. As such this reality was, is and always will be subtly different from the Prime Universe. I don’t believe for one second that Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t have loved the idea of an alternate reality (Mirror, Mirror anyone?).
In other words, because every event after Nero's incursion will now unfold differently, including the multitude of time travel jaunts into the past that will now not happen in the same way (if at all) - therefore, the past is also affected, in a significant enough fashion for a new timeline to fracture off from our own and form its own self sustaining universe.
For those who object to preexisting alternate universes very similar to our own, Pegg's speculation might be a more palatable explanation for their existence.
Or not.
IDIC!
