Theory: The timeline of TNG after "Yesterday's Enterprise" isn't the same as before that episode

[valkyrie013]

Only way to reconcile Star Trek timetravel in that most of the time, it affects the main timeline.. is that Spock traveled to an alternate reality and in time. It was one that ran close to paralel to what happened but after Nero it went totoall tits up..

 

[XCV330]

Sometimes you just have to chalk it up to a poor decisions by writers or showrunners that have been superseded by later work. This was one of them. Everything we knew about Klingon before and after the early TNG seasons shows they would never have been in the Federation. It doesn't require a tangental universe to explain it. We don't have to accept that there is a universe where women were never captain in Starfleet before Kirk's time, either. It was a dumb line, and subsequently it has been ignored.

 

[Qonundrum]

On the plus side, all this reminds me oddly of the parallel universe show "Sliders", where in (reality) most parallel universes would be virtually identical sans one obscure or esoteric variable whose net effect would be extremely minuscule despite level of purported importance due to the sheer number of prevailing factors surrounding that one; for the sake of varied storytelling they had to make parallel worlds bat-wack krazy... The episode where the only difference between dimensions were a different baseball card player and the golden Gate Bridge being blue but everything else being the same would be the norm, not the exception of big intrigue that would set numerous scenarios in motion... but that would be boring.

TNG or TOS or any show arguably could fling "Remember when? That caused a parallel reality to be created and that's why ____ isn't mentioned anymore". In a way, it's almost cleverer than having to try to connect x number of disparate moments into a retroactively cohesive whole, which will never be rock solid complete because there's always that one scene in that one episode that doesn't add up and can't be wedged in. I blame the blasted dodecahedron-shaped peg being smashed into that two-dimensional slit hole by that hammer, instead of finding the tesseract-shaped hole for it to fit in...

Just like in real life.

Then again, if they're going to do continuity then there should at least be a token attempt to give some consistent attention to it, of the sort that doesn't come across as an insult - or often - to the viewers who pay far more attention to every conceivable nitpick and I can't hold a candle to a number of 'em... just enough so even the second most-nitpickiest of them all can be satisfied. (For all its season 1 gaffes, TNG largely avoided TOS and trying to tie all sorts of things together... let novels, fans, and anything else non-canon have a field day for those who want it or make a parallel dimension. That way they can all exist and those who don't like whatever timeline(s) remain easy-peasy happysquirreltastic. Of course, that's no less ridiculous too... )

 

[BillJ]

We don't have to accept that there is a universe where women were never captain in Starfleet before Kirk's time, either. It was a dumb line, and subsequently it has been ignored.

We have a compelling explanation for the gaffe: Lester is crazy and an unreliable narrator. Couple that with the in-universe evidence that Lester is wrong. There's no way a woman (Number One from "The Cage") would be a First Officer if women weren't allowed to be ship captains.

In the real world, I wonder if the writers of the episode were ever actually asked what that line was supposed to mean? The story was by Roddenberry and the screenplay by Arthur H. Singer. Roddenberry wrote both "The Cage" and "The Menagerie".

 

[Phoenix219]

I always took it as a personal attack on Jim, that his own personal world of being a starship captain had no room for women and commitments in it, and that he chose his career over her. What is the exact wording again?

 

[Marsden]

Do we know whether Janice Lester was a starfleet officer? Here's her background story:

The Enterprise has received a distress call from a group of scientists on Camus Two, who are exploring the ruins of a dead civilization. Their situation is desperate. Two of the survivors are the expedition surgeon, Doctor Coleman, and the leader of the expedition, Doctor Janice Lester.​

So, instead of the officer track in Starfleet, she's got a doctorate in possibly archaeology, and she's the expedition leader. Also:

JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive.
KIRK: I never stopped you from going on with your space work.​

This paints the picture that they were both in Starfleet, him for Starship service and her for "her space work" which doesn't sound like Starship service, rather both pieces of the puzzle suggest Lester was in the sciences for archaeology on planet expeditions rather than a ship-born assignment.

JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it.
JANICE: I loved you. We could've roamed among the stars.​

I'm convinced that "your world of starship..." only applies to Kirk not wanting to get tied down in a serious relation or marriage since his goal was to be a Starship Captain and he knew a relationship could threaten that goal, and he agrees with it. She never wanted to be a Starship Captain, she just didn't want Kirk to be a Captain so they could be together. Fifteen years later and she's bitter(crazy?) and takes revenge of Kirk for her unhappiness.

If both of them wanted to be Captains, then how in the hell would they roam among the stars together on separate ships? Any ship-born posting would keep them apart. No, Lester expected Kirk to quit his career path and join hers as scientists exploring ancient civilizations, etc. Remember, Kirk's brother Sam was some sort of a scientist, so, it probably runs in his family...maybe young Jim Kirk saw the affects of marriage on his older brother's career choices...stuck on an obscure planet doing boring work. Not me!

 

[valkyrie013]

Department of Temporal Affairs books do a good job of explaining multiple timelines..
One might break off and do its own thing, or if it's minor it gets folded back into the "main" timeline eventually.
There's no " Spock arriving affects time up and down stream" it's already an alternate like the mirror universe. Just that his arrival and nero's turns a minor alt universe to a full blown cluster.. And that means it won't be absorbed in to the main timeline.

 

[Prax]

Then again, if they're going to do continuity then there should at least be a token attempt to give some consistent attention to it, of the sort that doesn't come across as an insult - or often - to the viewers who pay far more attention to every conceivable nitpick and I can't hold a candle to a number of 'em... just enough so even the second most-nitpickiest of them all can be satisfied.

There's all sorts of continuity on all the shows, between all the shows, and within all the shows. The vast majority of "continuity errors" were found by people looking for them, meaning: they don't actually exist, as they almost always have a much easier, more practical explanation (sometimes explicitly given) that requires less work than what is needed to presuppose a continuity error.

Trekkies standard definition of a continuity error is the basic equivalent of cinemasins fluff, but will be complained about for literal decades and given equal weight with things like: presidential assassinations, world wars, change of government, and economic collapses.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

If that were the case,why would Guinan say "This is wrong. It's not supposed to be this way."?

We don't know how this abbility to determine the timeline actually works like. Maybe the difference between the original TNG timeline and the altered timeline after "Yesterday's Enterprise" was too subtle for Guinan to recognize or she simply didn't care about these changes...

 

[MAGolding]

Perhaps Wesley is meaning "joined" in the sense of "allied with"?

Yeah, it's a kludge, but he's allowed to speak imprecisely.

He's a kid. He's practically required to.

Like that bit with the Edo, where he says "I'm with Starfleet". Uh, no, he's not. Not yet, anyway.

Saying "I'm in Starfleet" would clearly be imprecise, since he wasn't a member of Starfleet yet.

Saying "I'm with Starfleet" might mean that he was in Starfleet, or it could mean that he came to the Edo planet in a Starfleet vessel and beamed down to the planet with members of Starfleet.

Actually many kids speak in hyperbole and exaggeration, but there is also a tendency in children to speak precisely in some situations. Children are in the process of using logic to understand the world and so in some situations they tend to speak with care to be accurate, hoping that others will do the same when informing them of things they need to know.

Fictional characters, even teens and children, who live in a fictional setting should be precise and accurate whenever they say something about their fictional setting that readers or viewers are likely to take as information about the fictional setting. The readers and viewers are depending on the characters to teach them about the fictional setting.

Therefor, the writers should have intended what Wesley said about "the Klingons joining the Federation" should be true, and at least some of the Klingons should have joined the UFP sometimes after the incident where Picard was stabbed in the heart.

So my theory that there were several different Klingon states at the time, and one of those states joined the Federation, while others including the Klingon Imperial Empire did not,seems to me to be the most logical interpretation of the Klingon situation.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Saying "I'm in Starfleet" would clearly be imprecise, since he wasn't a member of Starfleet yet.

Saying "I'm with Starfleet" might mean that he was in Starfleet, or it could mean that he came to the Edo planet in a Starfleet vessel and beamed down to the planet with members of Starfleet.

Actually many kids speak in hyperbole and exaggeration, but there is also a tendency in children to speak precisely in some situations. Children are in the process of using logic to understand the world and so in some situations they tend to speak with care to be accurate, hoping that others will do the same when informing them of things they need to know.

Fictional characters, even teens and children, who live in a fictional setting should be precise and accurate whenever they say something about their fictional setting that readers or viewers are likely to take as information about the fictional setting. The readers and viewers are depending on the characters to teach them about the fictional setting.

Therefor, the writers should have intended what Wesley said about "the Klingons joining the Federation" should be true, and at least some of the Klingons should have joined the UFP sometimes after the incident where Picard was stabbed in the heart.

So my theory that there were several different Klingon states at the time, and one of those states joined the Federation, while others including the Klingon Imperial Empire did not,seems to me to be the most logical interpretation of the Klingon situation.

That's a really good theory too. I see absolutely no reason why Picard wouldn't correct Wesley if he had been wrong or too unprecise. Especially as Picard was responsible for his training as a starfleet officer, as long as he was part of the crew.