That's kind of my feelings as well. It's putting so much work in to connecting it all together that it seems to create more anxiety over what doesn't fit with prior lore that I cannot see any enjoyment in it.
When did canon become such a hot-button issue?
- Thread starter Amasov
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That's not the problem. The problem is that, as you acknowledge further on in your post, the whole shocking twist ending is predicated on Taylor not realizing that he's on Earth. Greg's point is that the use of English should be a dead giveaway that he's on Earth. In addition to it having the exact same gravity and atmosphere as Earth, the same vegetation, horses, presumably roughly the same star configurations in the night sky, etc.
I didn't even know there was a TV series until I saw the telemovies they put together. I was rather confused at first---I thought there were just 5 movies. Eventually I found out they were pieced together from the TV series. Back then there was no Wikipedia so I had to figure things out based on empirical evidence
I do wonder why they limited it to 5, when with 2 more "movies" they could've incorporated the entire 14-episode series. Maybe they wanted to match the number of theatrical films for some reason.
Way to go, ruining the movie with logic
Yeah, I got trapped in the 'in universe' story. Yeah, logically it doesn't make sense. It's obvious the writers just wanted the audience to 'forgive' the illogic of that part of the story. "Let's just assume everyone speaks English" and move on sort of thing. And most of the audience I dare say bought it. Most people I talk to about the film seem equally shocked at the ending.
One of those cases where if you think about it too deeply the house of cards tends to fall down--but despite that was very well done.
I wonder if that's because they wanted it to fill out a Monday to Friday week. I recall reading somewhere that the telefilms were originally showed on ABC as an afternoon special with McDowall reprising his Galen role in some sort of intro. Were they originally shown Monday to Friday? If that's the case it would explain why it was just 5 telemovies. I remember getting the box set when I finally got to see all 14 episodes uncut (certain parts were cut from the telemovies--particularly the opening credit scenes).
Honestly, tons of SF movies and shows have just assumed that aliens everywhere spoke English (or Japanese, or Russian, or whatever the audience's language is). Even Star Trek didn't handwave universal translators into existence until season 2. For that matter, it's not just SF. Look at Mission: Impossible and all the other spy shows where foreigners all spoke English with foreign accents even in their own countries.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. Strip syndication and all. Yes, they did tend to show them M-F in the afternoon TV-movie slot.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. Strip syndication and all. Yes, they did tend to show them M-F in the afternoon TV-movie slot.
I confess: the first time I saw "2001" in 1968, I honestly expected that at some point some humanoid aliens were going show up and explain the story to us--in perfect English, of course. Just because that was what classic SF films and TV shows had conditioned me to expect.
"Oh, I see you've encountered our Monoliths. I am Doctor Zenith, chief scientist of the Star Alliance, and this is my beautiful daughter, Europa . . . ."
"Oh, I see you've encountered our Monoliths. I am Doctor Zenith, chief scientist of the Star Alliance, and this is my beautiful daughter, Europa . . . ."
These excerpts are from the final shooting script by Pierre Boulle and Michael Wilson, final revision 7/27/67.
As the above excerpts indicate, while the SFX crew couldn't properly replicate the intended effect in 1968, the intent was that they couldn't see the moon, the stars, etc. As such, as strange as Taylor was supposed to find it that they were speaking English, he still had no clue from his environment that he was in fact back on Earth. He was merely on a planet that had visually identical flora and fauna, and no real explanation for it. He did find it confusing whenever he stopped to think about it, but that wasn't often.
I confess: the first time I saw "2001" in 1968, I honestly expected that at some point some humanoid aliens were going show up and explain the story to us--in perfect English, of course. Just because that was what classic SF films and TV shows had conditioned me to expect.
"Oh, I see you've encountered our Monoliths. I am Doctor Zenith, chief scientist of the Star Alliance, and this is my beautiful daughter, Europa . . . ."
What Kubrick and Clarke wanted was to do the opposite of that, to come up with as scientifically plausible a portrayal of aliens as they possibly could. The reason they finally gave up on showing the aliens at all was that they realized it was impossible for human beings to imagine what "realistic" aliens would be like, since we have no actual information about aliens to base that on, and thus anything we came up with would probably just be a variation on stuff we already know from Earth. So the most realistic portrayal was not to portray them at all.
Oh, he would've had plenty of clues from his environment: identical gravity to Earth, identical horizon distance, a 24-hour day, a compatible atmosphere and climate, not to mention all those identical flora and fauna. Given all that evidence, "We're on future Earth" is automatically and obviously a more probable explanation than "We're on an alien planet that's coincidentally identical to Earth by every observable metric except for the English-speaking apes."
Yeah, probably from a real world perspective it's just easier. Like in Planet of the Apes, there was a story they wanted to tell and using up valuable movie time to cross a language barrier just wasn't in the mix. Like a lot of things when it comes to films, or TV shows, the viewers have to make certain allowances. Language is usually one of them. It's probably one reason I forgot the whole they speak English so Taylor should have known he was on Earth thing (which now that I think of it someone brought up to me once before and I still forgot about it).
I confess: the first time I saw "2001" in 1968, I honestly expected that at some point some humanoid aliens were going show up and explain the story to us--in perfect English, of course. Just because that was what classic SF films and TV shows had conditioned me to expect.
"Oh, I see you've encountered our Monoliths. I am Doctor Zenith, chief scientist of the Star Alliance, and this is my beautiful daughter, Europa . . . ."
Ha-ha, yeah. True.
That's one thing that's interesting about Alien, as they did come up with a pretty unique alien for that film. Any similarity to a humanoid form (mainly that it has 2 arms and 2 legs and a head--though the face hugger was truly alien in appearance) is that it was gestated in a human form and is roughly the same size as Cain. In Alien3, the alien gestated within a dog and adopted canine characteristics for instance.
I remember David Gerrold gave "The Devil in the Dark" high marks with coming up with something truly alien there. So while Star Trek usually had humanoid aliens (and even tried to offer some explanations why it is--I give them credit for acknowledging the prevalence of humanoids--they didn't ignore it) they occasionally went outside the box. The Shelliak was another unusual alien.
For the record, the dialogue in question is as follows:
We also gets Starling's boast in Part II:
Pretty dang conclusive right there (unless we want to assume that in the "original" and "restored" timeline, the real-life computer developments that Starling was credited for in the episode never happened. Granted, as far as I know, it was never officially established that it was a predestination paradox (the way the non-canon LUG RPG continuity established that Starling's work had to happen in order for the Botany Bay to be built). However, even within the context of the episode itself, I don't think the fix of "it was all erased" works, esp. since Voyager is still floating around 1997 Earth when it's all put to rest. Had Starling work and Chronowerx been erased entirely, Voyager would be back in the Delta Quadrant in their home time, with no memories of their trip back. The fact that nothing changed for them strongly argues that the events that lead them up to that point still had to have happened (beyond the destruction of the far future).
Later episodes would confirm that Janway was right, with a 1999-era Chronwerx browser in "11:59" (VOY) and Braxton himself suffering from the effects of the episode in "Relativity" (VOY), so I'm not sure what else there is to say, unless I'm missing something.
As I already said, the only thing that dialogue proves is that Janeway believes it. It doesn't prove that her belief is objectively true.
Besides, quoting the dialogue doesn't matter, because as I also already said, the writers surely intended her to be correct, but they wrote the story badly and it makes no sense as presented because it contradicts its own premise. So just quoting the thing that doesn't make sense doesn't make any more sense of it.
That's not how time travel has ever been shown to work in Star Trek, or indeed in most time-travel fiction. The people who do the time-traveling remember the changes in the timeline; it's everyone else who doesn't. For instance, Kirk and Spock remembered going back through the Guardian of Forever to undo McCoy's damage to history even after they prevented that damage.
Then it's just a plot hole that makes no damn sense. Please forgive John Ordover and me for trying to fix the problem.
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You might be interested in this:
Timeline Of The Planet Of The Apes: The Definitive Chronology by Rich Handley
https://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Pla...s=gateway&sprefix=rich+handley,aps,604&sr=8-1
Let's just say that I think her model makes more sense then the alternative one provided here, esp. in the grand scheme of things.
"Before and After" (VOY) used that model, so it can happen. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS) also showed people being displaced in time and forgetting everything that occurred before history was fixed. Besides, the model you're describing is used when characters get unstuck in time, not when sections of the timeline get erased. If your model was right, the episode would be like "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) or "Twilight" (ENT).
I agree. It's one of my favorite stories from the series, but I agree the logic is screwy.
Fair enough if you think that's a good fix, but I think it creates more problems then it solves -- e.g. it makes no sense in regards to the ending (IMHO) and doesn't fit the followup episodes. Because of that, I find that assuming that everything that happened in the episode -- except for Starling blowing up the future -- still happened in the "final" timeline and may have been a part of the original one, per the circumstantial evidence of Janeway theorizing on the origins of the '90s computers. If you disagree with me, that't fine; there's no final answer in the TV show itself how it all works, but at least I hope you understand why I think the way I do.
I'm trying to remember...wasn't there an episode of Star Trek where the crew even comments on that. That is them asking why they weren't affected by change in history? I know I've seen that somewhere but I can't recall. I know in First Contact Data speculated the Borg's time vortex may have shielded them in that case. But I seem to recall it being brought up one other time.
On the contrary -- Kes did remember her own travels through time in "Before and After," and told Janeway about them at the end.
That's different. They were beamed into their original bodies, which never made any real sense anyway. But it's a different situation from the general rule I'm talking about, which is that in most time travel fiction, the time travelers themselves remember the changes. Of course you can cherrypick the occasional exception, because it's all just make-believe and there are no universals, but the overall rule in plenty of time-travel fiction is that they remember. It's a common enough trope that I'm amazed you need it pointed out to you.
You're not listening. The time travelers themselves remember even when everyone else's memories are altered. That is the usual way it works in these stories.
Again, the general rule is that the people who are traveling through time are unaffected by the changes they make to the timeline, because they're "outside" of time. In the case of "City on the Edge of Forever" and First Contact, and also DS9: "Past Tense," that principle extends to include the people who are within the field of effect of the time-travel device, even if they haven't gone into the past themselves. But those are exceptions to the normal practice, dramatically necessary so that there's still somebody in the altered present who remembers the original version.
My bad, it was "Time and Again" (VOY). (In fact, that episode is exactly how "Future's End" should've ended had the events been erased from existence in whatever the "final" timeline was.)
Glad I'm not the only one who found that part confusing.
I know the trope very well. In fact, I think it's more then safe to say that Star Trek time travel usually works that way, unless there's other factors in play. However, what you're not listening to, is that I don't think that applies in this case; pretty darn consistently, when the crew change history while they're still "in time," e.g. altering their own present or breaking a predestination paradox, they do forget the stuff that never happened. "Time and Again," as mentioned before, also "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG), "Year of Hell" (VOY), "Timeless" (VOY) (technically everyone died, but the characters completely erased their own timeline by the end), "Twilight" (ENT), etc.
The ones where they don't forget tend to be the ones where they got thrown forward or backward in time and they're trying to get back or fix things. There's no paradox usually (unless the story indicates that the whole time travel adventure was part of the proper flow of events) and the future beyond the present can be revised in just about any way.
"Future's End" is the latter, the crew are not "unstuck" in time, but sent back by a paradox they broke. As we've seen with such episodes before and after, that means that the timeline should've been erased, but it wasn't, since the ship was still there, meaning nothing was reset. It's a plot whole that this happened in the first place, but I feel that that is stronger evidence that nothing was erased then the claim that it should've been erased. Sorry I'm doing such a bad job explaining it, but there it is.
Yeah, I know. I was just trying to remember another instance when the crew made the observation themselves---"Hey, if history is changed then why are we unaffected" But I think you answered my question because now that I think of it I seem to remember in "Past Tense" the crew making that observation. They don't always say it out loud, I was just thinking of a time when they did.
That's the episode where Kes told Captain Janeway about the Krenim, right? I always wondered about that in "Year of Hell". While the events were consistent with "Before and After"--including the frequency of the Krenim torpedo I believe it was--it seemed Janeway didn't recall being told about them by Kes earlier. I was waiting for Janeway to say something to the effect of "I remember Kes saying....." But none of that happened and it almost seemed like Voyager had never heard of the Krenim. I found that a bit odd.
Forget it. "Future's End" was just a dumb episode. VGR had a habit of throwing common sense out the window in its time-travel stories and driving me crazy with their sheer incoherence. I had my fill of trying to make sense of them when I wrote Watching the Clock -- I'm not getting paid to do it now, so never mind.
From my annotations for Places of Exile:
It seems easiest to think of the entire episode as being in an alternate reality from the rest of the series, or simply to regard it as an apocryphal story, because it is inconsistent with “Before and After” (in that Janeway has no memory of the Krenim despite being told of them by Kes), and because, aside from the inauguration of Astrometrics (which could’ve happened much the same in a different timeline), it has no further impact on the series.
Thus, I offer the following hypothesis: Despite the order in which events were depicted onscreen, I submit that the entirety of Voyager (and thus the 23rd/24th-century Trek universe as a whole) takes place in the timeline seen at the end of “Year of Hell,” in which Annorax’s timeship had been wiped from existence. After all, there is no explicit mention in “Before and After” of Annorax, a timeship, or any kind of historical alterations; the only thing mentioned is that the Krenim exist and use chroniton-based torpedoes to penetrate shields.
So: “First,” in the Annorax timeline, a version of Voyager encounters Annorax’s timeship and destroys it, resetting the timeline back to the 2170s and creating the timeline seen in [DSC,] TOS, TNG, DS9, and early VGR, in which Annorax never invents his timeship. Two centuries later, in May 2374 in the B&A timeline (six months after B&A), another version of Voyager encounters the Krenim Imperium, which does not engage in rewriting history, but is aggressive in defending its territory. A Krenim ship attacks Voyager without provocation, Janeway and Torres are killed, and the B&A version of the Year of Hell occurs. Four years later, a dying Kes jumps back to 2373 and creates the timeline seen in the series from that point on, telling Janeway of her future experiences with the Krenim. Later, in March 2374 (64 days before Janeway’s May 20 birthday), the final bridge scene of “Year of Hell” occurs: Voyager is hailed by a different Krenim ship, one whose commander is more talkative and warns them to bypass their territory. (By arriving two months earlier, they may have encountered the Krenim before their military status had escalated to the point of firing without warning.) Janeway readily follows their advice, because she remembers Kes’s warnings about the Krenim from the end of B&A. (Why else would she so unquestioningly agree to bypass their territory, rather than negotiating for passage as she normally would?)
Thus, I offer the following hypothesis: Despite the order in which events were depicted onscreen, I submit that the entirety of Voyager (and thus the 23rd/24th-century Trek universe as a whole) takes place in the timeline seen at the end of “Year of Hell,” in which Annorax’s timeship had been wiped from existence. After all, there is no explicit mention in “Before and After” of Annorax, a timeship, or any kind of historical alterations; the only thing mentioned is that the Krenim exist and use chroniton-based torpedoes to penetrate shields.
So: “First,” in the Annorax timeline, a version of Voyager encounters Annorax’s timeship and destroys it, resetting the timeline back to the 2170s and creating the timeline seen in [DSC,] TOS, TNG, DS9, and early VGR, in which Annorax never invents his timeship. Two centuries later, in May 2374 in the B&A timeline (six months after B&A), another version of Voyager encounters the Krenim Imperium, which does not engage in rewriting history, but is aggressive in defending its territory. A Krenim ship attacks Voyager without provocation, Janeway and Torres are killed, and the B&A version of the Year of Hell occurs. Four years later, a dying Kes jumps back to 2373 and creates the timeline seen in the series from that point on, telling Janeway of her future experiences with the Krenim. Later, in March 2374 (64 days before Janeway’s May 20 birthday), the final bridge scene of “Year of Hell” occurs: Voyager is hailed by a different Krenim ship, one whose commander is more talkative and warns them to bypass their territory. (By arriving two months earlier, they may have encountered the Krenim before their military status had escalated to the point of firing without warning.) Janeway readily follows their advice, because she remembers Kes’s warnings about the Krenim from the end of B&A. (Why else would she so unquestioningly agree to bypass their territory, rather than negotiating for passage as she normally would?)
Well in fairness to Voyager Captain Janeway always said she hated time travel, and time paradoxes, or whatever she called it. In a way it seemed the writers were telling us not to try to make sense of the time travel stories
.Thanks for the explanation BTW. It was something that always bugged me about "Year of Hell". It was consistent with what we heard in "Before and After" for the most part, yet it always bothered me that no one seemed to recall Kes' explanations about the Krenim. When I first saw "Year of Hell" I was waiting for some scene to acknowledge "Before and After" and it never came.
I loved the ending of "Year of Hell" with Annorax being pulled away from his time ship design. It's been a while since I watched it but I believe that's the scene where we infer that it was Annorax himself who caused the loss of his family by designing his ship in the first place--and that the Krenim were better off in the 'original timeline' I guess I'll call it (we really don't know which is the prime timeline so I'll just go with how it ended). Especially considering much of his motivation is to get his family back. Hopefully "To Lose the Earth" will see a release soon and we can find out more about what's going on with the Krenim. I was glad to see Beyer bring them up again as it was something I was curious about. I mean, the series largely resolved it but there was a bit of a hanging thread there.
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Whatever you say.
Yeah, that was a little wonky. The Memory alpha wiki has a few comments on the situation:
IMHO, given that Annorax was already altering the timeline "before" "Year of Hell" took place all during the previous seasons, it's very possible that one of his edits may have affected the status of Kes's report.
At least in the book he has to learn the simian language.
Which will propel me into my rant about how I wish somebody at some point did an adaptation faithful to the book. Don't get me wrong, I adore the film series. I just also love what the book does and still think the story told its way, especially about how the apes take over
as a result of humans simply becoming too lazy to care
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