Which Star Trek Productions are in the Same Alternate Universes as Others?

The knee jerk reaction will be to say that all Star Trek productions are ins the same alternate universes, except for the alternate universes seen in "Parallels", and the Mirror Universe, and the Kelvinverse, etc.

But most works of fiction contain details which can be shown by research to be false in our universe. Therefore, a work of fiction can only be accurate in an alternate universe. Therefore to suspend disbelief in a work of fiction while reading or watching it is the same thing as imagining that work of fiction happens in an alternate universe to ours.

If one imagines that our universe exists and that one alternate universe exists in which a work of fiction happens, it is an easy step to go on to imagine a multiverse with many alternate universes branching off each second, with our universe and the work of fiction's universe being two of them, and both having countless alternate futures.

According to the concept of an infinite number of alternate universes, when someone takes a new job, like becoming captain of a starship for example, they will have an infinite number of possible future events happening to them in different alternate universes.

Thus in each second they will suffer failure in some alternate universes and gain success in other alternate universes.

The idea that a protagonist of a long running episodic television series goes through all the experiences in all the episodes one after another in the same alternate universe violates statistical probability.

Suppose the hero survives danger in 100 different episodes. Suppose that in each episode the protagonist has a 90 percent (0.90) chance of surviving and a 10 percent chance of dying. Their probability of surviving 10 episodes would be only 0.3486783, and their probability of surviving 100 episodes would be only 0.0000265.

Suppose that each episode is much less dangerous, so that the protagonist has a 99 percent (0.99) probability of surviving each episode. The protagonist would have a 0.9043818 probability of surviving 10 episodes and a 0.366031 probability of surviving 100 episodes.

In order for it to be statistically probable for a protagonist to survive 100 or 200 adventures, each adventure has to be safe enough that it is not very exciting or thrilling. Unless most of those adventures happen in their own alternate universes and various alternate universe versions of the protagonist survive facing only one or two exciting and dangerous adventures.

So if I like the protagonists of an adventure series, I wish to believe that their adventures happen in different alternate universes and that they have high probability of surviving in each alternate universe by only facing one or two dangerous adventures in each alternate universe.

I don't believe that each and every single Star Trek episode or movie is in its own alternate universe, I believe that most Star Trek episodes and movies are in their own alternate universes, but there are examples of Star Trek episodes and movies that happen in the same alternate universes, or at least very similar ones, as one or more previous productions.

I think that the only time an episode should be considered to happen in the same alternate universe after another episode is when the later episode is clearly a sequel to the previous one.

If the vast majority of episodes in a series happen in their own alternate universes and were selected as the most unusual and interesting events the protagonists experience out of millions and billions of possible alternate universes that avoids the vast statistical improbability of a long series of extremely improbable events happening one after the other.

Therefore, I think an interesting question is which Star Trek episodes and movies are among the minority which are sequels to previous episodes or movies.

For example, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second pilot episode, happens before all other TOS episodes in production order and in stardate order, though it is the third TOS episode in broadcast order.

Thus it is easy to imagine that all other TOS episodes happen in various alternate universes which branch off after "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and thus are sequels to "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

But there is no proof that each and every other TOS episode is a sequel to "Where No Man Has Gone Before". It is possible that some episodes happen in alternate universes where Gary Mitchell died from a poisoned dart on Dimorus or the Enterprise was never sent to the edge of the galaxy, etc., etc.

In "A Taste of Armageddon" on planet Eminiar VII:

In "By Any Other Name":

This establishes that "By Any Other Name" is a sequel to "Where No Man Has Gone Before", or at least a sequel to similar events.

And:

Thus "By Any Other Name" is a possible sequel to both "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "A Taste of Armageddon".

In "That Which Survives":

So "That Which Survives" seems to be a sequel to "The Devil in the Dark" or very similar events.

So I am asking for examples of Star Trek movies and episodes of various series which are clearly sequels to other Star Trek movies and episodes

 

It's pretty simple, really: all Star Trek produced after "The Cage" is clearly a sequel or prequel to "The Cage."

 

Here.

 

All Star Trek is just a fantasy concocted in the mind of young Timothy Westphall of Earth.

 

Dear God.

 

But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!

 

I look forward to the dissertation on this subject.

 

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"

 

"Oh bulbous pustular pestilent protruberance
Thy vesicular verdance verily vexing
My undulating odorous amygdala
Boffered to be bestoculated

Burgeoning bastion of bleak blasphemy
Gastrically gestate my unctuous hair
Diadactically dreaming of destiny
Gallois de la Carthage"

 

I suggest a federal inquiry into this. We need top men working on the answers.

You hear me?

Top. Men.

 

Tommy, or, I suppose, Thomas.

Timothy's aren't that creative.

 

The Cage, The Menagerie (Parts 1 and 2), and the entirety of Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1 and 2 (via If Memory Serves) are in the same universe. And also the Enterprise episode Broken Bow (and all the episodes that reference it). And then the TNG episode "The Pegasus". And Star Trek: First Contact. And then, some Voyager episodes. Oh, and also DS9 referenced First Contact. And so those episodes tie in to the Dominion War arc, tying in most of that series.

So that's Alternate Timeline 1.

 

Where Silence Has Lease and Contagion are clearly alternate universes because the Yamato has a different registry in each one. Also Star Trek: First Contact is set in several different alternate realities where the Enterprise has different total amount of decks.

 

Do episodes in the first season of TNG happen in production order, airdate order, or stardate order?

The stardates for "Skin of Evil" range from 41601.3 to 41602.1.

"Angel One" has stardate 41636.9, "We'll Always Have Paris" has stardate 41697.9, "The Battle" has stardate 41723.9, "The Arsenal of Freedom" has stardate 41798.2, and "The Big Goodbye" has stardate 41997.7.

So if episodes of TNG happen in stardate order Yar is seen in five episodes happening after her death in "Skin of Evil", which can only be justified by those episodes happening in alternate universes to "Skin of Evil". Possibly Yar signed on to serve as chief of security on the Enterprise for one year before transferring to another assignment, and did transfer to another assignment as planned after her year was up in all alternate universes where she wasn't killed while on the Enterprise, explaining why Yar was not seen in episodes in later seasons.

It seems to me that the best way to argue against first season episodes happening in stardate order would be to find a sequel with a lower stardate that its prequel.

"Conspiracy", stardate 41775.5, was a sequel to "Coming of Age", stardate 41416.2. "Coming of Age" mentions events in, or similar to, "Where No One Has Gone before", stardate 41263.1, "The Battle", stardate 41723.9, and "Justice" 41255.6, as well as either "The Naked Now", stardate 41209.2 or "Angel One" stardate 41636.9.

But one can avoid having higher stardates before "Coming of Age" by having the infection mentioned be from "The Naked Now" instead of "Angel One", and by being in an alternate universe where Daimon Bok carried out his plan months earlier than in "The Battle".

And probably nothing interesting happened on DS9 after "Way of the Warrior" in alternate universes where Worf didn't arrive because in most alternate universes which branched off from "Emissary" DS9 was closed down and the staff reassigned before then. Starfleet and the Federation probably considered the risk of trouble with the Dominion so great that they mined the entrance to the wormhole or closed the wormhole, and/or the Dominion probably invaded the Alpha Quadrant and destroyed DS9, long before "Way of the warrior" in 99.99 percent of the alternate universes branching off from "Emissary".

And in the tiny fraction of alternate universes where the protagonists remained on DS9 until "Way of the Warrior", they were probably all killed in the vast majority of such alternate universes, and only survived in a small minority of alternate universes where Worf arrived and helped them.

As for the O'Briens' younger child, how many episodes that happened after he was born mentioned him or that the O'Briens had two children? It is possible that the O'Briens had only one child or no child in most of the episodes that happened afterwards, because they happened in alternate universes.

Anyway, DS9 was the most serialized Star Trek series, much more than TOS, TAS, VOY, or ENT. So naturally a larger proportion of DS9 epiodes happen in one single alternate universe than in most Star Trek series.

 

Consider the problem in this thread:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/geordi-la-forge-forgetful.298921/#post-12867846

it would not be a problem if "The Next Phase" and "Realm of Fear" happened in different alternate universes.

 

In an alternate universe I was smart enough not to open this thread.

 

Can we change the timeline so this thread makes sense?

 

Sometimes a production inconsistency is just a production inconsistency.

 

Some people have too much time on their hands or have not discovered that whiskey cures insomnia.