Tomorrow is Yesterday

[Timo]

Yes, the aircraft was breaking up, and eventually did break up. That's what I was describing as well. And naturally, we couldn't tell this visually because Desilu couldn't afford to show it visually, so it doesn't affect the issue.

(Whether the beam even was related to the bright light is debatable - tractor beams in TOS are invisible, and OTOH Christopher was approaching from below cloud cover and trying to look up, so the sudden emergence of bright light and his need to cope with that should not be a surprise there!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Let's try this, The Enemy Within was the 5th episode produced, Tomorrow is Yesterday was the 21st episode produced. In The Enemy Within two separated Kirks were beamed into a single common body.

Is it possible that that procedure is basically what we saw with Christopher and the sergeant?

I really like this idea. Headcanoned.

 

[Mytran]

Kirk didn't order the tractor beam released until Spock reported that the plane had completely broken up. I find it hard to believe that Spock would have failed to notice a second version of Captain Christopher suspended in the tractor beam...

 

[UnknownSample]

I'm afraid I've lost track of the specific issue being debated.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's all wibbly wobbly timey wimey

This is probably the best explanation.

 

[Shawnster]

Yes, the aircraft was breaking up, and eventually did break up.

At the end of the episode Christopher is not acting like a pilot whose plane is breaking up. He makes a report about not seeing anything and chalking the experience up to being a UFO. He's calm and there are no indications the plane is breaking up.

I've always taken the scene to be Christopher was "beamed back into himself" prior to the tractor beam turning on.

The Enterprise was initially in too low an orbit and suffering from massive systems failure. It can reasonably be assumed sensors were not functioning properly. Either they were offline or affected by atmospheric distortion. In addition, the crew was distracted by the emergency. It's quite possible this combination would have prevented the second Enterprise from being detected.

The real question is, where did the first Enterprise go once all the the people were restored to their proper places? It just disappeared.

 

[MANT!]

One of my guilty pleasure episodes..
#1 I always thought the F-104 was a cool aircraft (though a F-106 would have been the more correct 1969 ADC aircraft )
#2 Had a squadron commander who looked like and sounded like Col. Fellini while I was in the USAF (he was a bit.."ate up"
#3 two fish out of water stories for the price of one!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

#3 two fish out of water stories for the price of one!

Ha! True.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I really like this idea. Headcanoned.

So does that mean he's now twice the man he used to be?

 

[J.T.B.]

#1 I always thought the F-104 was a cool aircraft (though a F-106 would have been the more correct 1969 ADC aircraft )

Yeah. But I really liked that zoom-climb shot they used for the 104. And I give them points for the orange flight suit and the ADC patch.

 

[Mytran]

...
The real question is, where did the first Enterprise go once all the the people were restored to their proper places? It just disappeared.

That version of the Enterprise is the one that segued into the other timeline, the one that went on to kidnap 2 Airforce personnel and later travel back in time to its original timeline in an attempt to return them...

 

[spockboy]

How can I resist?

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[UnknownSample]

That version of the Enterprise is the one that segued into the other timeline, the one that went on to kidnap 2 Airforce personnel and later travel back in time to its original timeline in an attempt to return them...

If we're going with more than one "timeline" existing simultaneously business. The only real problem I tend to have with that sort of thing is, I guess, that it's so taken for granted these days. I admit, it does deal with ship #1 having disappeared. What also deals with it, though, is the idea that the one and only timeline has been rewritten, so that neither ship #1 nor #2 was ever within viewing distance. I think that was the intent.

I also think that the intent was for Christopher and guy #2 to have been beamed back in just as their original selves were being beamed out, or else there really would have been double-mass people who were "beamed into themselves". I realize that Christopher was beamed back in before the original moment of beam-out. That's a bit of TV style fudging, and let's face it, every time travel story ever made has done some of that, to make an inherently unworkable idea work.
=========
Example... the currently accepted convention of having people and things from now-superseded dead end timelines disappear before our eyes. People now put that forward as an outcome of time travel that "makes sense". It doesn't. It's blatant TV fudging. Things can't disappear which have now been prevented from having happened in the first place.
===========
I'm wandering, sorry. Maybe I just wanted a place to get that said.

 

[Poltargyst]

If we're going with more than one "timeline" existing simultaneously business. The only real problem I tend to have with that sort of thing is, I guess, that it's so taken for granted these days. I admit, it does deal with ship #1 having disappeared. What also deals with it, though, is the idea that the one and only timeline has been rewritten, so that neither ship #1 nor #2 was ever within viewing distance. I think that was the intent.

I also think that the intent was for Christopher and guy #2 to have been beamed back in just as their original selves were being beamed out, or else there really would have been double-mass people who were "beamed into themselves". I realize that Christopher was beamed back in before the original moment of beam-out. That's a bit of TV style fudging, and let's face it, every time travel story ever made has done some of that, to make an inherently unworkable idea work.
=========
Example... the currently accepted convention of having people and things from now-superseded dead end timelines disappear before our eyes. People now put that forward as an outcome of time travel that "makes sense". It doesn't. It's blatant TV fudging. Things can't disappear which have now been prevented from having happened in the first place.
===========
I'm wandering, sorry. Maybe I just wanted a place to get that said.

I disagree with that too. The Back to the Future thing of "People are disappearing from my photograph because they ceased to exist. Baloney.

 

[Mytran]

As regards your example, I agree entirely that it makes no sense. After all, those sort of examples feature events that happened years prior to the "present" and as such shouldn't have ever existed in the first place!

FWIW, my current leanings on how time travel exists in the Trek universe are a single timeline with multiple predestination paradoxes, supplemented by various parallel universes and instances of artificial temporal bubbles. Divergent timelines just refute logic, IMO

 

[Poltargyst]

As regards your example, I agree entirely that it makes no sense. After all, those sort of examples feature events that happened years prior to the "present" and as such shouldn't have ever existed in the first place!

FWIW, my current leanings on how time travel exists in the Trek universe are a single timeline with multiple predestination paradoxes, supplemented by various parallel universes and instances of artificial temporal bubbles. Divergent timelines just refute logic, IMO

You're okay with all that other stuff, but divergent timelines make no sense?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

By the way, the reintegration of multiple versions of a person from different timelines into a single version is still a thing in the 29th century, according to VOY "Relativity." So, yay!

It was mentioned at the resolution of the episode as something that would be done both for Braxton and Seven of Nine.

 

[Mytran]

You're okay with all that other stuff, but divergent timelines make no sense?

Fair question. I suppose the biggest difference is that divergent timelines are the consequence of an individual's actions, whereas parallel universes are the result of nature itself. I simply don't believe that it's reasonable for an individual to have that much power over the entire universe. We are, in the final equation, only a very small part of it.

Then, there's the question of practicality of the divergent timeline model. Suppose that Shatner's Kirk and Pine's Kirk both go back in time to 2232, a year before Nero's attack. Would they see each other? What if they decided to stay and proceed through the years at the normal pace. What happens at the time of the Kelvin incident - could both versions witness it? If so, shouldn't both come from the same future? If not, aren't we essentially describing separate parallel universes?

Either way, I don't see a home for coexisting divergent timelines.

 

[Phoenix219]

If Kevlin Trek went back in time to 1986, would they see the TOS crew running around San Francisco, and if so, where does the Bird of Prey go when it leaves with the whales?

And what would happen if one of the new Trek iterations snuck onto the Bird of Prey?

 

[Poltargyst]

Fair question. I suppose the biggest difference is that divergent timelines are the consequence of an individual's actions, whereas parallel universes are the result of nature itself. I simply don't believe that it's reasonable for an individual to have that much power over the entire universe. We are, in the final equation, only a very small part of it.

Then, there's the question of practicality of the divergent timeline model. Suppose that Shatner's Kirk and Pine's Kirk both go back in time to 2232, a year before Nero's attack. Would they see each other? What if they decided to stay and proceed through the years at the normal pace. What happens at the time of the Kelvin incident - could both versions witness it? If so, shouldn't both come from the same future? If not, aren't we essentially describing separate parallel universes?

Either way, I don't see a home for coexisting divergent timelines.

From Nu Trek 09 we know that both timelines have a common past. So I'd say that both NuKirk and ShatKirk end up in the same timeline prior to Nero's attack and can see each other. If they hang around, they can both see the attack. If ShatKirk continues to hang around, he ends up in NuKirk's timeline and needs to travel not only time but to another dimension to get back home.