He had temporal psychosis, which in that novel was confused memories of alternate histories. As I recall, he remembered Janeway dying from the novelverse and even Vulcan being blown up a century before from the Kelvin universe.
Last edited:
Spoilers New Picard TV Series and Litverse Continuity (may contain TV show spoilers)
- Thread starter chrinFinity
- Start date
Or they could just be tying things up as a way to get ready for whatever the new status quo will be.
Claiming an invalidated spin-off continuity as an "alternate parallel timeline" doesn't always plausibly work IMO.
How can one plausibly reconcile the Tzenkethi of the Pocket novels and the Tzenkethi of STO as sharing a common origin in two branching tracks of the multiverse? Or for that matter, Iconians, Preservers and progenitor humanoids, Breen, Hur'q, Future Guy, etc.
How can one plausibly reconcile the Tzenkethi of the Pocket novels and the Tzenkethi of STO as sharing a common origin in two branching tracks of the multiverse? Or for that matter, Iconians, Preservers and progenitor humanoids, Breen, Hur'q, Future Guy, etc.
I do my best not to even think about it!
Willing suspension of disbelief.
If you think too hard, the Kelvin Universe doesn't work with the differences spinning off of the attack on the USS Kelvin in 2233. Discovery doesn't fit into the world of The Original Series. Voyager doesn't fit into the world of The Original Series, since the latter crossed 1000 light years in 12 hours, meaning they'd make Voyager's 70,000 light year journey in a month. But we pretend they do, despite the glaring issues. This would be the same.
It works for me. Because it’s all made up, so it can be as simple as that.
The Tzenkethi have no onscreen appearance at this time, so the novels have built them up in the way that worked for them. If they appear on a new show with a different appearance, then yeah, I’m willing to go with “alternate timeline” as all the justification.
It’s all permutations on the same base ideas anyway. Even when they don’t contradict anything on screen, the novels are still nothing the shows are constrained by. We could have five different novels offer five different takes on a species and all get invalidated by the show coming up with a sixth. That’s the game.
I’d sooner focus on the good stories, rather than get bogged down in minutiae and trying to make them all fit in a single continuous timeline that even screen canon can’t keep 100% internally consistent track of.
But, humouring the argument — why exactly can’t TREK ONLINE and the novelverse function as alternate timelines? Why can’t doubles of alien races have the same origin but with a divergence point? Why can’t the timelines have periods where they’re in lockstep and periods where they branch off before a period where they converge? The X-FILES comics and TV show have the same timeline for the nine seasons and two films that were onscreen (convergence), but they have dissimilar pre-1994 histories and dissimilar post-2008 events. They were separate until a period in sync from 1994 - 2008, then branched off again.
To me, the Kelvin timeline has a different look and different tech from TOS because the Kelvin attack led to a much more militaristically developed Starfleet that pursued weapons advancement whereas the prime timeline focused on sensor and communications technology.
To me, the Kelvin timeline has a different look and different tech from TOS because the Kelvin attack led to a much more militaristically developed Starfleet that pursued weapons advancement whereas the prime timeline focused on sensor and communications technology.
Technically, because species like the Iconians are depicted in completely incompatible ways.
But that wouldn't explain, for example, San Francisco is 100x more densely built up in the Kelvin universe than in Enterprise or The Motion Picture. That's why we shouldn't look too close.
I would actually have fun with that and declare the Iconians multidimensional beings of varying manifestations. If asked why they do this, they might laugh and say, “To annoy the readers!”
And maybe we could say that the destruction of the Kelvin called for greater weapons development that needed more scientists and engineers who gathered in San Francisco to keep armament research closer to HQ and this led to more businesses and residences in Frisco to support and profit from a population boom.
One other explanation I've heard is that they were able to get a hold of data on the Narada and used that to develop more advances technology.
If the Tzenkethi ever did appear on screen, I would prefer them to be depicted as the ethereal beings the novels depicted them as. Although armoured lizards would be cool to see I suppose.
I don't think we can say definitively that the Kelvin timeline was exactly the same as the Prime timeline right up to the appearance of the Narada in 2233. I believe that the Narada's arrival had a ripple effect both "uptime" (the flow of time into the future) and "downtime" (the flow of time from the past).
Let's keep in mind that the Kelvin timeline's James T. Kirk has had a very different life from what his Prime counterpart did. The Prime Kirk was a very prolific time traveler, as were future captains such as Picard and Janeway. If temporal incursions into times before 2233 that originate from times after 2233 were altered, then the timeline may have already been different before Narada's arrival. Or, to make it more complicated, that timeline did not exist until the Narada's arrival, and its past and future all occurred simultaneously to create the new universe.
Last edited:
Well, on the one hand, the events of ST4 must surely happen, or the Earth would have been nuked in the 20th century. So there has to be a common history to at least then.
OTOH, we've got stuff like stardates being Gregorian years, as opposed to whatever the hell they're meant to be in the Prime timeline, which means the divergence must have happened some time between the 20th century and whenever the Stardate system was created.
So... *shrugs*
Of all the stupid U.S.A.-isms that pervade Star Trek, I especially loathe MDY date order.Maybe the Stardates can be read different ways like today. For example today's date in the correct format is 06/08/19 whereas in the wrong format used on the other side of the Atlantic it is 08/06/19
Exactly! We numerically date things the way we speak them! Makes so much more sense. January fourteenth, April twenty-third, August sixth... It’s written how the language uses it.
Yeah, well, you're all wrong. ISO dates forever! I've got files that need to alphabetize properly!
Sincerely, Davidcgc
2019-08-06
Just out of curiosity, when was this actually used within Star Trek? I'm having difficulty coming up with an example.
You're singing my song!
I don't understand why everyone doesn't use this, everywhere.I would give your post more than one 'like' if I could!
