Bingo!
How can future shows retcon the errors of Star Trek Picard?
- Thread starter Garak234
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Bingo!
We'll deal with those issues when we come to them.
That's the exact problem! You wouldn't be dealing with the ripple effects of one single person's attempts to alter the timeline, but who knows how many millions of people all trying to change their own "insignificant" subjective pasts at once. How would you control that and maintain the integrity of the timeline? How would anyone be able to do it?
Especially if you don't exist anymore.
How do you think the 31st century dealt with it?
Because it wasn't until that century that Time Travel was so common amongst the civilian populace that Temporal Discriminators were everywhere, even in HighSchool desks according to Temporal Agent Daniels.
By that time, the UFP has had 500 years of Time Travel experience, countless new technologies that are in common, well developed use.
They had a proper Temporal Division that was wide spread, well trained, monitoring the entire timeline across Time & Space.
I'm sure there were regulations, escorts for chaperoning personal Time Travel missions, along with monitored missions for Time Travel.
People were allowed to use Temporal technologies, but it wasn't without certain restrictions, and definitely without involvement from the official Temporal Divisions to make sure things didn't go wrong.
In the 24th century, people had to charter space flights to go from Star System to Star System.
By the 26th century, General Space travel is available to the common civilian and AstroMobiles are as common as AutoMobiles are today.
The Transwarp Corridor Freeway Networks allow any average civilian with a AstroMobile to go FTL by taking a ride in the Government maintained Transwarp Corridors that are designed for civilian sized vessels of a certain size.
There are Public Use Warp Ferry Rings for rental for individual InterStellar Spelunking at FTL in your AstroMobile.
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The problem is that you make assumptions about how time travel is used in the future based on a few lines of dialogue that are way too generic to extrapolate that way, and are also in direct violation of what we have learned from Voyager on the 29th century. At the end of Future's End, Braxton categorically refuses to return Voyager to 24th century Earth and specifically cites the Temporal Prime Directive as his reason for doing so.
Now, even if we concede that we don't know the actual wording of the Temporal Prime Directive, the mere name suggests it's a non-interference clause akin to the generic PD, with the past being treated as the "other culture" whose development should be left undisturbed. It's evidently not just the past of other civilizations, because Braxton specifically applies it to a Starfleet vessel, and will later serve as a basis for the arrest of his own future self that blamed Voyager for his being stranded in the 20th century and sought revenge on Janeway personally.
Nothing in what has been established about the pre-Burn future Federation suggests that time travel was regularly used to alter the past in a legal way, even if time travel itself was commonplace. We're talking about archeologists covertly witnessing the construction of the Pyramids, not high school students convincing Shakespeare to write raunchy jokes about their English teacher as a senior prank. The entire Temporal Cold War storyline in Enterprise was presented as the Federation trying to preserve the timeline against incursions made by outside actors. Allowing random people to alter that timeline, even in a limited and controlled manner, would destroy that entire purpose.
You might raise the various time travel incidents involving Kirk, Picard and the like, but the majority of those were done in order to restore a timeline that had been previously altered (e.g. The City on the Edge of Forever, First Contact, Past Tense, Relativity), or in one case, brought back to the past together with the perpetrator and thwarted his attempt before he could've succeeded (Trials and Tribble-ations). The rest is few enough that they can be treated as exceptions rather than the rule, especially since they led to the existence of the timeline where the Federation can even be a position to safeguard the integrity of the timeline like that in the first place. Those incursions likely cannot be averted without catastrophic consequences. The whale probe would've destroyed Earth if not for Kirk bringing back George and Gracie, after all.
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That's true, Braxton & Crew from the 29th century know exactly the impacts of what Janeway did, that's why her Time Travel was allowed to occur and is protected from getting reverted back.
Janeways Time Travel advantageously benefits the UFP and severely hurts the Borg. So it's allowed to stay.
Our own Christopher Bennet talks about Janeways Time Travel incursion at the end of the series specifically and why it's allowed to stay, while other time travel incursions are fixed. That's part of the major plot point.
Braxton was also the cause of the problem in the first place when he royally screwed things up the first time.
That eventually leads to the second incident with Braxton where he tried to destroy Voyager a second time later on and the Temporal Division needs to recruit Seven of Nine & Janeway.
Braxton was the problem, not Voyager's time traveling shenanigans.
The Archaeologists covertly witnessing the construction of the Pyramids was part of regular controlled Time Travel from the 26th century.
HS Students wouldn't be allowed to even remotely contact Shakespeare, so you're over exaggerating things.
The limit of HS levels of time travel is incredibly local and relevant to their era in the 31st century, to their personal timelines.
Era's before the HS students existence aren't allowed to be touched and would be highly monitored. HS students wouldn't be allowed to mess with other people's local timelines willy nilly.
Yes, the Temporal Cold War was about stopping "Outsiders" from messing with our timeline because they had clear intentions of screwing up our timelines. Those are clear acts of aggression from hostile powers.
Time travel by the 31st century isn't allowing random people doing random things.
It's highly regulated, very monitored, very much under control.
There are limitations when it comes to Time Travel, especially for the average civilian, they don't get to play with anywhere near the full set of tools that real regulated Time Travelers in the Temporal Divisions get to play with.
And future Time Travel would still have the Temporal Division in place across all of the UFP as well.
It's not like there aren't rules & regulations in place when Time Traveling.
500+ years of Time Traveling makes controlled Time Traveling relatively safe along with constant monitoring, improvements, temporal communications with the Past & Future.
The society I want to see, will be MUCH better for it thanks to Time Travel, especially validating critical time line events long into the future and making sure things go correctly.
Emphasis mine. You aren't describing the society portrayed in Star Trek.
Actually, my basis comes from what happens in Star Trek and the lines describing how time travel has progressed over time.
It's not like regular civilians gets to time travel early on. It wasn't until the 31st century, 500 years after common regulated time travel by the professionals in the UFP Government / StarFleet, that Time Travel came into some form for civilians.
By that time, ALOT more about the science of Time Travel is well known.
Temporal defenses are in place across and around the UFP.
Everything is highly regulated, controlled, planned.
Even then, civilians are very limited & monitored compared to the full set of temporal tools availabe to trained & certified professionals.
Look at how General Aviation has progressed over time.
In the early days, it was the pioneers, then as time progressed, everything became very structured, organized, licensed & regulated.
People have to take training, get certified, before you can even fly.
Average civilians with no training or certification gets to enjoy aviation in a far more limited capacity via modern day drones.
The same with Time travel, just over a far longer scale of time.
And which part of the "lot more well known" states that Federation civilians in the future routinely and legally alter their own subjective pasts?
During the 31st century.
You wouldn't need Quantum Discriminators in every HS desk if low level Temporal communications wasn't a common thing.
Temporal Communication devices are common to the average HS student.
Imagine being able to talk to yourself in the past or future, how advantageous that would be.
Obviously, by the 31st century, Temporal Communicators are so common that every HS desk had one.
It's obvious that in the beginning / pioneering era's of Time Travel, Temporal Communicators were restricted for a long time.
Now it's in the hands of your average HS student.
I'm sure it's still highly monitored & regulated as to how far in time it can be used.
But the fact that your average civilian can communicate through time is a HUGE advantage and bonus to yourself and your life.
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But none of this means that people can certainly talk to anyone they wish in any time frame they want. Daniels and the Memory Alpha article never actually state who exactly these devices are being used to communicate with. For all we know, they are used to keep in contact with the observers who went back to the past from their own time with various specific applications, such as being able to bring them back instantly if they get in trouble, or they can send live footage from the past to be used a high school history class etc. but nowhere is it stated that people in the future routinely communicate with their own past selves.
Have you warched Star Trek? "Future's End", "Relativity" and "Shockwave" were all problems caused by the time police, which our heroes had to fix.
While I do find the idea of Daniels' 30th century fascinating, it would be utter chaos. Saying it caused a century-long war (which led to such things as an alternate WWII with alien Nazis in the White House, again a thing our heroes had to fix) and all the tech was wiped out and banned afterwards definitely works for me as a means to sweep it under the rug.
It kind of makes sense that time travel was successfully banned and stopped, despite how implausible it seems that they were able to pull it off, because all the possible futures where it wasn't banned were far more likely to be erased by time travel.
That's why I extrapolated future details based on what's already established.
And I limited temporal communications to ones own personal self and not to others.
That's part of the whole regulation and control.
I've seen most of Star Trek. And Yes I've watched all of those episodes and more.
Just because the "Time Police" screw up every now and then. The important part is that they realized that they screwed up and they go back to fix it.
How many times do you expect general Police to get things right? They aren't going to be 100% perfect, that's impossible, despite modern civilian expectations of perfection. But the important part is that they strive to improve, get better, fix the problems.
That's the key part.
It caused a century long war because outsiders (The Nakhul) decided to mess with Earth's history during WW2 because Earth is a Key player in the forming of the UFP.
And Yes, I know the story-line from STO on why (The Nakhul) wanted to interfere with the UFP's personal timeline.
What may look like Chaos to you, you need to think of perspectives from previous generations.
Look at those who saw the transition from Horses as the primary modes of transportation to the car age.
Look at the change when Aircraft became a common fixture in our skies.
Look at the rise of computers.
Everybody of older generations saw things as "Chaos & Confusing" because it was tech that they weren't familiar with or don't understand.
The same will be true of those who aren't used to daily Time Travel tech and those who grew up with it.
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"Every now and then?" They screwed up every time we see them and have always needed people from several hundred years in their past to step in and fix their mistakes for them. Worse yet, those screw-ups almost always result in the eradication of their own society.
To put it in perspective, imagine we had time travel today and the time travel authority caused an incident which resulted in the destruction of the modern world and the time travel authority had to turn to people from 16th or 12th century to fix the problem for them. Who would actually feel comfortable in such a world?
How often do Police Screw Up IRL?
How often do Airline Pilots screw up IRL?
Now how often do the Police & Airline pilots in their totality get things right on their day to day basis?
Yes, the story covers the screw ups, that's because those are the stories the writers chose to write about.
News Articles choose to only cover the screw ups because it makes headlines and drives viewership/readership for their articles.
Now compare the screwups to the totality of how often Police successfully do their jobs or Airline Pilots complete their flights.
Flying is still considered the safest form of travel.
The VAST MAJORITY of police don't have incidents.
But you wouldn't know that if you only took the news articles at face value.
Look at how many cars are on the road and for how many hours a year compared to the accidents and fatalaties.
It's a statistical minority compare to the totality.
The same with Transporter Usage. Transporters are the safest form of travel for long distance, especially planet onto space ship in orbit.
Yet we have plenty of transporter accident stories.
Doesn't mean Transporters aren't vastly safer than shuttles or riding on chemical rockets.
It just means the Transporter Accident stories are the outlier stories that get covered and written about because they are interesting stories to watch or read about.
You only need to look at ST:Picard and see StarFleet HQ and the Transporter Arches that transport countless people every day across the world.
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Apples and oranges. When the Timecops screw up, their entire society gets eradicated and people who as backward to them as Vikings are to us have to step in and do their job for them. That does not inspire confidence at all. At least when a modern day police officer or pilot screw up the world doesn't end and several hundred years worth of history is not erased, nor are Vikings stepping in to fix their mistakes for them.
Yet here we are, society is fixed, & Star Trek keeps going on.
It's not like the Temporal Divisions didn't learn from those earlier mistakes and made changes to policies & procedures moving foreward.
With that attitude, I'm surprised you ever leave your house.
Driving is too dangerous, Flying is too dangerous, hell walking on the street might be too dangerous.
You might want to get your own bunker, hide yourself inside, and have order out and delivery cater to your every need so you never have to leave home.
God forbid, doing something that might even be remotely dangerous.
I still fail to understand how restricting communications to talking to your past self carries no risks to the overall timeline. Because it isn't about "oh, you're just a random civilian, your life being changed doesn't affect the timeline on a larger scale" but rather that tiny little happenstance events can and will add up until the mere fact of telling your teenage self something they weren't supposed to know yet could end up with the Enterprise having a different captain or a presidential candidate who would've otherwise won the election deciding to withdraw simply because your teenage self would make a different decision that would affect another person that would affect a third and so on. Annorax's crew in Year of Hell had to be specially trained to calculate the effects of any kind of interference with the timeline, because altering something that appears insignificant (e.g. deleting a random comet) could end up causing several parsecs worth of space not to be seeded with sentient life. There's a reason why the "time traveler moves a chair" meme is that popular.
On the other hand, if your life is so insignificant that altering it wouldn't alter the course of history, doesn't this mean that you could accidentally delete yourself from history and nobody would care? After all, you're insignificant, history wasn't changed, why should the government of the Federation waste the time and effort to restore you into existence? High school students would randomly disappear during temporal communications classes because something they told their past selves during the exercise actually ended up getting them killed, and the teacher would just shrug and say c'est la vie?
No thank you, I'd rather that we didn't talk to our past or future selves, period. All I see is the danger, not just to your own existence (you could end up screwing up your own life in ways you couldn't even imagine), but potentially a great deal of history.
Quite frankly, commonplace technology allowing people to talk to their past selves sounds like a story hook for a Black Mirror episode or a classic dystopian pulp sci-fi novel, because the ways it could go wrong are practically limitless. More likely than not, stories featuring this plot device in any form would turn into a parable on how all our past actions have led to us being the persons we are now and if we tried to change them because we think we are wiser now, the result would probably not be what we expect. Now where have I heard that before?
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