I agree. It was never time travel, and the characters in the movie are very confused.
'Kelvin' Timeline was almost the 'Hobus' Timeline
- Thread starter Tuskin38
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They travelled back in time. Doing so was an event which branched off a new quantum reality as per "Parallels".
Time travel does not make new quantum realities. If they entered another quantum reality, then it already existed, and very well may have time running at a slightly different time or not quite in unison with the other reality. Its possible that they time traveled AND dimensional jumped at the same point, but I think the simpler explanation is a direct tunnel to a different reality that was at a slightly different point in its timeline. Although, In a Mirror Darkly does give canon evidence for reality/time travel happening in consort.
Wait, so you mean Ambassador Spock instructed the Jellyfish to subspace-hack into the past, specifically the Vulcan Learning Center database, and make sure Young ‘n’ Alternate Spock is asked that particular question so he’ll subconsciously understand where Nero came from when the time comes? Is there a scene I missed with a closeup on a Jellyfish console saying “Vulcan Learning Center — accessing…”?
Sure, maybe it already existed and the red matter just opened a gateway, or maybe it exploded into existence in all directions. We don’t really know and there is no need to speculate. The facts are what we saw in 2009 and what we’ll see next year on PIC.
Time travelling to the past is an event like any other.
ST09 showed that it does, but you're just plugging your fingers in your ears and yelling "LALALALALALA" because for some weird reason it makes you feel better believing that the filmmakers "originally planned to erase canon".
Also, are you ever going to back up that claim of the filmmakers wanted to erase canon or have I missed a post?
Remember when Picard shot his other self who then vanished when most of the time temporal duplicates just live on? Remember when the Enterprise crew beamed Captain Christopher into his younger self which somehow wasn't just deleting/killing the version they'd picked up earlier? Remember when the ENT time war was begun from an event in the resultant timeline? Remember when plucking Archer out of the 2150's destroyed the future once but not all the other times he did it?
The writers make it up as they go along. You either accept that somehow the ST'09 time travel branched off a new reality but the Red Angel stuff probably didn't, or Trek is ruined forever.
The writers make it up as they go along. You either accept that somehow the ST'09 time travel branched off a new reality but the Red Angel stuff probably didn't, or Trek is ruined forever.
If Trek had remained consistent with just one idea of how time travel works then there would be at least 47 episodes that never would have happened.
Knock off the goalpost shifting.
What I'm saying is that people skeptical of the idea of the Kelvin timeline being able to coexist with the prime universe (given that time travel has almost always been shown to overwrite the "original" timeline) have stated, like you, that there needed to be an onscreen connection between "Parallels" the Kelvin timeline to make it plausible that the quantum realities explanation would preserve both in some fashion. The movie did that by having the same science and observation that everything happened somewhere established in the new movie.
Goalpost shifting when it comes to making in-canon, in-universe connections? They’ve always been made in manner internal to the fictional reality, and the fact of the matter is you have no proof of connection between Spock’s Learning Center Q&A and whatever the Jellyfish went through. As soon as you start saying “Well, the writers obviously put that in for a reason”, you’re inserting an external, non-canon, real-world connection into the story.
However, unlike people who claim that “time travel doesn’t work that way”, all I’m saying is, we don’t know that either. We don’t know what red matter does, and maybe not even the characters in-universe understand it fully. We’re just an audience looking at whatever it is that’s being presented and pretty much taking wild guesses as to why it’s happening one way and not another. And even if we take this discussion out-of-universe, once again, whatever the writers feel like doing can be justified using explicit or implied technobabble. If they feel like protecting the Enterprise-E when the Borg jump first, they’ll do that. If they feel like protecting the Prime Timeline, they’ll do that also.
Would it have been more palatable if Ambassador Spock had said to Kirk, “I’ve time-traveled many times before, but this time it’s different. According to sensor logs…”?
For many, yes it would be. For me, I just read it as time travel is different this time and created an alternate reality. That Spock Prime didn't try to fix it means nothing needs to be fixed. Otherwise, he would just go to the Guardian of Forever is something.
Trek is science FICTION. It tries to imagine things that don't really exist as if they were a real thing. It can contradict itself sometimes or use new devices for the same reason special effects don't look like they were in the 60s.
Part of the fun for writers is precisely trying to find new devices taking inspiration from what astrophysics etc discover or newest theories.
It seems crazy for me to fault jj&Co because they use quantum mechanics (and used parallels as an in canon inspiration for the device! )
This trek is a respectful reboot because it makes itself both a sequel of the original thing and a separate reality, but it's still a reboot and as such it's an UPGRADE of the old thing to make it more contemporary.
For me, quantum mechanics is more realistic anyway but this is me. Experts told the marvel guys that movies like "back to the future" are utter nonsense so you have that too.
If you want to go old school sci-fi, the perspective of the classic time travel device only makes sense to me the way "lost", the novel 'the time travelers wife' or 'interstellar' did it in which the characters cannot experience a life where the time traveler didn't create the outcome they are living. Everything is like a puzzle. Whatever happened has happened, your present self just doesnt know yet that your future self traveled in time and created your past and present as you always experienced it. Time isn't linear, it creates paradoxes that are such just from our perspective.
Even if humans would eventually find a way to travel in time, the idea you experience a life, then go back in time to change the past and then get back to your present and see it altered is too implausible with what we know now. Unless, again, you don't get back to your reality but rather you get into the alternate one that time travel created/made you access to.
In short, I don't believe in rewriting history or resetting a reality. You can't cancel an universe, a reality, a timeline. Every possibility happens in different realities, the universe cannot be like a book a God writes and then they remove most of its first pages because they changed their mind about the plot. You can only start another book.
This is humble for humans to accept too because the old time travel device is the fantasy of having a power that it too big. The power to change the past and therefore the future.
Personally, though, I find the idea you can't change things somehow less depressing than the idea a God-like person has the power to change the story of earth and the whole universe without us knowing that. The idea our experiences don't matter because someone can just rewrite everything ..it seems to really reduce us to nothing.
However tragic the destrouction of vulcan was, I prefer the characters just handle what happened and move on. They need to face the fact the planet doesn't exist anymore and vulcans need to start over. They can't rewrite history, but they can find peace in knowing there are other realities where their original planet still exists.
Part of the fun for writers is precisely trying to find new devices taking inspiration from what astrophysics etc discover or newest theories.
It seems crazy for me to fault jj&Co because they use quantum mechanics (and used parallels as an in canon inspiration for the device! )
This trek is a respectful reboot because it makes itself both a sequel of the original thing and a separate reality, but it's still a reboot and as such it's an UPGRADE of the old thing to make it more contemporary.
For me, quantum mechanics is more realistic anyway but this is me. Experts told the marvel guys that movies like "back to the future" are utter nonsense so you have that too.
If you want to go old school sci-fi, the perspective of the classic time travel device only makes sense to me the way "lost", the novel 'the time travelers wife' or 'interstellar' did it in which the characters cannot experience a life where the time traveler didn't create the outcome they are living. Everything is like a puzzle. Whatever happened has happened, your present self just doesnt know yet that your future self traveled in time and created your past and present as you always experienced it. Time isn't linear, it creates paradoxes that are such just from our perspective.
Even if humans would eventually find a way to travel in time, the idea you experience a life, then go back in time to change the past and then get back to your present and see it altered is too implausible with what we know now. Unless, again, you don't get back to your reality but rather you get into the alternate one that time travel created/made you access to.
In short, I don't believe in rewriting history or resetting a reality. You can't cancel an universe, a reality, a timeline. Every possibility happens in different realities, the universe cannot be like a book a God writes and then they remove most of its first pages because they changed their mind about the plot. You can only start another book.
This is humble for humans to accept too because the old time travel device is the fantasy of having a power that it too big. The power to change the past and therefore the future.
Personally, though, I find the idea you can't change things somehow less depressing than the idea a God-like person has the power to change the story of earth and the whole universe without us knowing that. The idea our experiences don't matter because someone can just rewrite everything ..it seems to really reduce us to nothing.
However tragic the destrouction of vulcan was, I prefer the characters just handle what happened and move on. They need to face the fact the planet doesn't exist anymore and vulcans need to start over. They can't rewrite history, but they can find peace in knowing there are other realities where their original planet still exists.
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Yes, this completely baffles. Abrams is the one who gets shellacked for not getting Star Trek, and when he actually utilizes Trek-style science concepts he gets taken to task for it.
I would say all the scientific concepts in trek get picked over and pulled apart in the main, a lot of folks around here dislike TWOK for the genesis device for example, I personally think 'Q' was a fucking ridiculous idea that should have never seen the light of day. I think Abrams gets shit because its the most recent, I don't think any of the decisions taken in 09 or STID from a scientific point of view are any big departure from what we've seen before.
That no one, least of all SPOCK, tries to save Vulcan or the genocide of the Vulcan people is one of the many plot decisions which absolutely destroys any sense of believability for me. If it was Earth, you'd have no one willing to rest until it was done. Janeway did it just for her crew. Spock wouldn't do it for every Vulcan *ever* ?? While knowing that the timeline was altered via an outside source? In any Trek in the past, anything less then stopping the Kelvin disaster would have been seen as complete and total failure.
Still mad they never undid the Xindi attack in 2153? 7 million humans killed that weren't supposed to be...
Again, this argument means that every single disaster that has occurred, form the Dominion War, to the Xindi attack, Wolf 359, or even the Hobus supernova, is to get traveled back in time and avoided.
Still, the fact remains that identical pieces of sci-fi science are used in two episodes, much like how characters from other series are sometimes mentioned in later shows. Even without the "Parallels" reference, the quantum line establishes all we need to know; if all things happen in different timelines, there must be timelines where Nero and Spock's trip through the black holes didn't work as we saw here.
Agreed that the writers do make up exceptions when it suites the story. However, there's never any indication in the movie itself that there's supposed to be any exceptions like this in this story. All we have is what's onscreen, including the fact that quantum realities are still working as usual.
Maybe. I would've enjoyed the movie a lot more had it been made clear that it was a splinter timeline, not an overwritten one. However, "Parallels" always preserved the prime universe in one way or another (whether it be as a backup copy or otherwise). Besides, we have the line in the school scene in the movie, so the base was always covered.
I agree with you on principle, but I have to admit, from a logistical standpoint, I don't see how Spock would be able to actually do it. (Also not sure why the time cops from VOY and ENT didn't do anything, but that's a different plot hole and one that rears its head anytime there's a story where the timeline is changed and not "fixed" at the end).
Yeah, we are pretty much running into a significant logic problem if there is the demand for Spock to go back and undo the destruction of Vulcan due to the number of lives lost. It pretty much sets up a problem of, "Why not go back and save all the lives?" or "We only go back and save lives when it is so many." Either one presents issues because it makes the characters having to play almost a god role of deciding who lives and who dies.
It's kind of like what happened with Superman with "Man of Steel." Superman has the power (we've seen it) to go back and time but only uses the power when impacts him personally. So, despite the significant levels of destruction in "Man of Steel" none of it impacted Superman personally so no time travel. Same with VOY in "Endgame" where Janeway decides to impact many hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives just because she had a personal loss. Apparently going back and preventing Voyager from going back in the first place and saving her first officer, or even going back and stopping the Borg didn't occur to her. Only certain lives matter.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make.
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