Yet, Kirk et al. did return and the second time they made Spock disappear.
Some people are just gluttons for punishment.
Hey, I never noticed that before....
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Yet, Kirk et al. did return and the second time they made Spock disappear.
Some people are just gluttons for punishment.
To me, it's not definitive, but there's at least some evidence that a predestination paradox is an essential component of the timeline they were tasked to restore. Upthread I said:
There's more to ponder. Would Edith have turned back and walked across the street to get hit, were it not for the reunion between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy? The time we saw the event, Edith's attention was focused on the reunion, instead of the traffic. But what if the three of them had not been in the past there? Would something else have involved her in an accident there? Or would her fatal accident have occurred elsewhere, maybe at a slightly different time?But the critical focal point is Edith, in particular when, where, and how she died. Would she have been on that street at that particular place and time were she not going with Kirk to the movies?
The difficulty in postulating that Edith's death in traffic was meant to occur anyway without Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in the past is twofold. First, we are given an explicit reason for the accident, Edith being distracted by their reunion and going to join them instead of paying attention to the traffic. But second, which is only a minor issue, we are given no alternate circumstance that was to operate without the three of them in the past. We are given enough clues to surmise how she was saved, which would be that she did not part from McCoy to go to the movies with her "young man," but rather that she stayed with him for at least a little while, when he asked if there were something he could do around the mission.
However, in consideration of the line "All is as it was before," I would have to say that the operative word is "is." Is the Guardian referring to the present? Does the Guardian mean that while differences exist in the past, they no longer matter? If that's what the Guardian is saying, yes, then that indeed implies that "originally" the timeline did not have Kirk, Spock, or McCoy going into the past. That would definitely mesh well with the interpretation of Rodent as someone who didn't matter. It's worth mentioning that, if this interpretation is the only valid one, then, from the perspective of Kirk's, Spock's, and McCoy's time, there is no difference between all three going back and none of them going back.
There is, of course, another interpretation, which is reasonable in my opinion and which is that the Guardian is saying that the entire original timeline has been selected again. So, I don't think it's definitive either way.
I'll buy that, but only if there is a screen grab supporting it. That would definitely qualify as something I never noticed before!McCoy's type one phaser was just hidden under his shirt.
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@CorporalCaptain: accidents need a fraction of a second synchronicity, one second too soon and the driver might have swerved to avoid her, one second too late and she would have seen the car peripherally. So it's unlikely that the same accident could happen with different people present.
Who knows what the GOF is really up to - after all, it seemed to do a pretty lousy job of fulfilling its own job description (guarding time) at all: In its first appearance, it let a crazy man leap through the portal and (seemingly) alter all of known history! After this apparent debacle is resolved, the malfunctioning mechanical monstrosity straight up invites Kirk and pals to take another stab at mangling the timeline!
To be fair to the GOF thought, that is only how it seems at a first glance - or as the GOF would say:
Indeed. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that rather than haphazardly creating and narrowly resolving crisis after temporal crisis, what the GOF actually "guards" are these predestination paradoxes that are essential to the makeup of this particular timeline.
For example, we know (or are told by the GOF broadcast) that if Edith Keeler lived then Star Trek's history would have been radically altered. We also know that she was killed, crossing the street to see the joyful reunion of McCoy with his friends and distracted by the thought and sight of her beau. Specifically, it is only due to Kirk's presence in the 1930s in the first place that his own history is able to unfold in the way it does; a predestination paradox, seen here, in the TAS episode Yesteryear and TNG's Time's Arrow.
Time trundles along from the 1930s until the 23rd century, when Crazy McCoy leaps into the past. The is the moment the GOF has been waiting for; the "appointed time" when Kirk, Spock & McCoy must play their part for history to unfold as it should. However, since only McCoy has gone through then history itself is in a sort of limbo - hence why they lose contact with the Enterprise. Of course, it might also be that the GOF is forcing them to perceive reality in a certain way, or bumping them into a neighbouring timestream, or doing whatever it takes to encourage Kirk and Spock to follow the good Doctor into the 1930s. The GOF knows that it MUST happen.
The cryptic invite at the end of TCOTEOF might be to view certain "safe" areas of known history (like Orion at the dawn of its civilisation) , or else to fulfil certain other predestination paradoxes. After all, Spock is standing right there and still has a part to play in his own history. But the GOF is patient and can wait until the next "appointed time"...
As a final thought, the GOF itself may owe its existence to a predestination paradox. After all, one of the first things it says to Kirk is:
Sounds like a time loop to me...
Plus the second attempt at using the GOF resulted in Spock's disappearance...
Who knows where he sent Emperor Georgiou?
Who knows where he sent Emperor Georgiou?
To be fair we never saw the GOF interact with the species/Civilization that created it. From our perspective all the interactions it had were with other species most of which weren't even in existence when it was first created or used.
Perhaps the civilization that created the GoF is from an alternate timeline... by using the GoF they made their whole species never having existed...The GoF somehow survived the incident which is why in OUR timeline he has no beginning and no end...
I wonder if the Guardian of Forever is a library, like the one on Beta Niobe, and at one time had its own Mr. Atoz who has since died? That is the question, at least to me.
And yes, I know Harlan Ellison had the Vortex watched over by the Guardians. That was changed in the aired episode.
And yes, I know Harlan Ellison had the Vortex watched over by the Guardians. That was changed in the aired episode.
Ellison's original script is much better and less ambiguous in this regard. They don't know what will happen to Edith. Spock hypothesizes that, amongst other things, her philosophy could delay the entry into the war and Hitler atom bombs, but it's not certain. They just know Beckwith/McCoy will give life to that which must die, and at one point Kirk realizes Spock is ready to use the phaser to make sure it happens.
That's definitely grimmer than what we got.
Did the Mayberry backlot have a grassy knoll...?
A grassy knoll? You mean like in JFK's assassination?
You don't know that. It would certainly be a great coincidence if that happened.
Anyway, that would not be the same thing for all the gazillions of microscopic lifeforms on and in the vagrent. If the vagrent was disintegrated so would be the microbes in him. If he just died, someof the microbes in him would survive and have descendants that would eventually live in other humans.
And what are the lifeforms which have the most effiect in determining how long humans live? Microbes. Bacteria and viruses.
The two methods of death for the vagrent would have different effects of the genetic diversity of the many different microscopic species he carried, and thus would effect the future evolution of deadly diseases from those mostly harmless forms of microbes. A different evolutin of different deadly diseases will mean that different humans will live or die. A few different indivudal humasns living or dying will men that a few thousand yers later, and for the rest of the existance of humans, there will be a totally different world population.
I quote from my post number 257 at :
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/worst-character-assassination-episodes.307981/page-13#post-13799407
I note that there are only three classes of humans sorted by reproductive results.
1) Those who have no children.
2) Those who have children but their descendants die out within a few generations.
3) Those whose descendants continue until the end of their species. And after enough generations, each such ancestor will have so many descendants that every member of their species will be descended from them.
Suppose that a time traveller visits a group of hunter-gatherers living several times farther in the past than the period for someone's descendants to become the entire human population. Suppose that he somehow wipes out the entire group. Unless they would have all died without descendants anyway, some of them should have become the ancestors of everyone living in his era, including himself. So the time travellor will never have been born.
Suppose that a time traveller visits a group of hunter-gatherers living several times farther in the past than the period for someone's descendants to become the entire human population. Suppose that the entire little tribe is at the shore when the ocean suddenly recedes and they walk out on the seabed to gather stranded fish, but he warns them to run for high ground.and they do, and so survive the tsunamies which would have otherwise killed them all.
So some of them will become the ancestors of all people living in the time traveler's era. And to do that they will have to marry and have children with people who would have otherwise married and had children with different people. So after thousnds of years their descendnts will completely replace the total population of humans. And thus the time traveller will never have been born.
Think about mcrosopic life forms and how short their generations are and how many generations they have in one human generation. And which lifeforms have the greatest impact on how long humans live? Microscopic bacteria and viruses.
So suppose that a time traveller travels thousands of years in the past and breathes once before returning to his own time. He will bring specimens of long extinct bacteria and viruses back to his own time. And he will take specimens of the bacteria and viruses of his own time into the past and relese them when he breathes.
That will change the evolution of bacteria and virus species in the past. And that will change the evolution of new deadly diseases from previously harmless germs. Thus a number of diferent peole will live or die than would have. And so by the time the time travller came from, there will be a completely different set of living humans. And thus the time traveller will never have been born.
In my forty plus years of watching Star Trek, I never noticed until watching 'The Trouble With Tribbles' tonight on MeTV, that ensign Chekov's uniform is missing braids on its sleeves.
Was it like that throughout the two seasons he appeared, or did his uniform acquire braids in the third season?
Was it like that throughout the two seasons he appeared, or did his uniform acquire braids in the third season?
I don't recall ever seeing Chekov with braid on his uniform sleeves. According to Franz Joseph's Starfleet Technical Manual, ensigns wear no sleeve braid.
He never had a braid, if I'm not mistaken.
I’d love a try at home design. Not only would there be milk doors, but I would design all plumbing in such a way that leaks don’t ruin the contents of the house. All fixtures are a bit above ground level, with metal sloping beneath sinks to force water away from the kitchen floor, but towards a lower utility corridor where plumbers can let themselves in…with pipes at head level for them. They and utility repairmen could not however gain access to the rest of the house, so they can’t STEAL AND KNOCK OVER THINGS.
Now, the real question is: Would Chekov receive a promotion if TOS ran seven seasons?
Which is obviously wrong for commodores. But yes, ensigns (Chekov, Rizzo, Wyatt, nameless personnel officer, probably others) wear no sleeve insignia. Chapel never had sleeve braid, either.
The FJTM is also missing lieutenant (junior grade), which is canonical in "The Naked Time."
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Joe_Tormolen
