Getting sick of Alternate Timeline/Time Travel stories

[GulBahana]

Was there a point where you had enough of those time travel, or alternate timeline, stories? For me, late into Voyager I was disappointed with two Janeways in the last episode. When Enterprise came around with the Temporal Cold War, I was so fed up that I lost interest.

 

[Greg Cox]

Not really. Time-travel has a pretty good track record where Trek is concerned: "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "City on the Edge of Forever," "Assignment: Earth," "All Our Yesterdays," the whale movie, "Yesterday's Enterprise," "Tapestry," the Borg movie, "Little Green Men," "Future's End," "Relativity," etc.

Honestly, many of my favorite Trek episodes and movies involve time travel.

 

[plynch]

I'm tired. I like moral dilemmas and social commentary.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Spoiler: Discovery

I must admit, when they said the Red Angel was from the future on Discovery I thought, "this again?" but in general I enjoy time travels and AU's.

Often it's silly fluff like aliens in the white house and nonsense paradoxes, but sometimes they can be used for meaningful stories which can only be told in a science fiction setting - like Kirk getting to meet the dad whose shadow he grew up in, in the aborted Star Trek 4.

 

[Lord Garth]

I like time travel stories.

I'm not particularly interested in Trek doing social commentary heavy episodes right now because I don't want every episode to be about Trump. And, realistically, that's what it would be about if they were to do it these days.

 

[Kor]

I also like being bonked on the head with some clunky, heavy-handed social message.

Kor

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I’ve liked Trek’s heavy handed social messaging for its entire existence, no reason to stop now.

And I’m a big fan of alternate universe fiction, so time travel and parallel timelines bother me not a whit.

 

[GulBahana]

I just think if you overuse time travel it makes the universe/timeline too convoluted...but I guess it's too late for that.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I'm a fan of alternate timeline/time travel stories. I can't think of a single Trek time travel story I haven't enjoyed (or any time travel movie or book, for that matter). If anything, I think Trek doesn't do these kinds of stories enough Give me time travel or paradox stories over holodeck malfunction episodes any day of the week

 

[X24actor]

Will never get bored of time travel. Huge Doctor Who fan. Star Trek has a better track record with continuity

 

[Sareesataka]

Love time travel and alternate universe stories. And I also love temporal mechanics. I like trying to figure out how events in the timeline would be affected because of time travel. Yeah, weird, I know but it's in my wheelhouse. As a kid, if I had any superpower, it would be to time travel so I always geeked out over time travel episodes of any show, Star Trek, Stargate, etc. I suppose time travel and AU could be seen as a crutch for lazy writing, but I always wished they did more of these stories.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'll cop to having gone to the time-travel well at least twice in my Trek novels.

No, wait, three times . . . .

 

[Takeru]

I love them both, alternate universes even more than time travel. Sometimes I think I'm sick of it but when the next one comes I realize I'm not.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Time to have Keanue on the new Section 31 show as an assassin for the branch and reveal Ted and John Wick are one and the same. And Rufus is Control.

 

[Kilana2]

Not really. Time-travel has a pretty good track record where Trek is concerned: "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "City on the Edge of Forever," "Assignment: Earth," "All Our Yesterdays," the whale movie, "Yesterday's Enterprise," "Tapestry," the Borg movie, "Little Green Men," "Future's End," "Relativity," etc.

Honestly, many of my favorite Trek episodes and movies involve time travel.

I once attended a lecture about Star Trek/Back to the Future by Dr. Hubert Zitt at Magdeburg University. He also appears regularly at FedCon and other conventions. As it is financially difficult for me to go to conventions, I enjoyed this lecture immensely. It featured my favorite time travel episodes. The lecture was well-attended and people had fun. I met a user from a Trek forum there in person.

(I can't be seen, I'm in a back row)

 

[maneth]

I like time travel stories in general. Definitely prefer them over most holodeck malfunction stories, or in the case of TOS, evil computer ruling the world stories.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

They work really well in small doses. In Voyager and Enterprise they overused them so much they became tiresome.

 

[Long Syntax]

I think the Time Travel entries in Star Trek (mentioned above) have contributed to the broad appeal of ST in general. There are those that really dig the time travel scenarios and are drawn to the potential of these stories. However I feel the time travel mechanism used as a vehicle to tell the story really has been used up. In a universe so vast and diverse there certainly must be other compelling stores to tell rather than leveraging previously over-used (to some extent) story telling mechanisms.

 

[Spider]

Time travel is like any other plot device, used well it will always work.

 

[Greg Cox]

Time travel is like any other plot device, used well it will always work.

Exactly. It's a staple of STAR TREK and of science fiction in particular, just like space missions, androids, telepaths, First Contact, and so on. It as much part of STAR TREK as alien encounters and interplanetary politics.