A friend wrote an audio spoof of the ep which we recorded on cassette back in the 80s, His line, after Kirk expresses amazement at the guardian, was "A compliment! Since before your sun..."
Nonsensical courses of action…
- Thread starter Warped9
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So there were 3 TOS episodes that went to the edge of the galaxy - WNMHGB, the Kelvin one, The Truth in Beauty one. So in the Kelvin one there didn't seem to be much of a barrier - I mean Kirk and Spock weren't looking around for silver-eyed Gray Mitchells - maybe they skirted around its edge. I mean is that on the direct path to Andromeda?. In Truth they seem to have a bit of a wobble but again no silver-eyed ESPers.
Basically I think a barrier at the edge of the galaxy is a whole lot of balderdash. What the end of the galaxy anyway? Isn't our galaxy crashing into another galaxy anyway? So my own explanation is that some super race put up a barrier for a certain length to protect the galaxy from direct invasion. Of course attackers could go around it if they knew it was there. Maybe the Domesday machine was diverted. Maybe 100 other Domesday machines were damaged and self-destructed.
In Truth though I don't understand why they couldn't just chuck a 360 or look through telescopes to make it back into our galaxy.
Basically I think a barrier at the edge of the galaxy is a whole lot of balderdash. What the end of the galaxy anyway? Isn't our galaxy crashing into another galaxy anyway? So my own explanation is that some super race put up a barrier for a certain length to protect the galaxy from direct invasion. Of course attackers could go around it if they knew it was there. Maybe the Domesday machine was diverted. Maybe 100 other Domesday machines were damaged and self-destructed.
In Truth though I don't understand why they couldn't just chuck a 360 or look through telescopes to make it back into our galaxy.
This.
The multiverse (as often silly that idea is in fiction) in relation to a certain period of history does not apply to TCOTEOF, as the Guardian (for the sake of the audience as well as the characters) is unambiguous about time being one, fixed series of events, unless its altered, as in the case of McCoy's actions. In other words, there can only be a single dimension / universe in existence--one which can be disturbed and the same which can be repaired. There's no other consideration of numerous, alternate timelines for the Kirk and Spock (nor did they need one), which raised the stakes of their mission.
Yikes. Allen's own weekly exploration of time (The Time Tunnel, obviously) was a convoluted mess of theories which were treated as hard fact one week (or, over the course of a single act of an episode) and it would change in the next. If taken as just a fanciful misadventure, Allen's take on time might be enjoyable (e.g., Land of the Giants' penultimate episode, "Wild Journey"), but it was difficult to take the matter-of-fact "explanations" of how time travel and its impact worked, or any other make-it-up-as-you-go-along "rules" imposed by the alien of the week.
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There is a dwarf elliptical galaxy that orbits the Milky Way's center of mass and occasionally passes through the stellar disk, yes.
Except the Kelvans are the only extragalactic visitors who seemed to have any problem with the barrier. It didn't deter the creators of the Mudd androids, or Sylvia and Korob, or the space amoeba, or the cosmic cloud from "One of Our Planets is Missing." The majority of extragalactic civilizations and entities depicted in Trek have had no problem with the barrier. And the second episode written by the barrier's creator Samuel L. Peeples, "Beyond the Farthest Star," had the Enterprise again traveling beyond the farthest reaches of the galaxy without any issues with the barrier. So evidently even Peeples himself didn't consider it a complete shrink-wrap around the entire galaxy, or a permanent feature. All the more reason why I find it nonsensical to assume that it surrounds the entire galaxy. All canon says is that it's at the edge. It never says it goes all the way around, and there's plenty of evidence that it doesn't.
I got this one. After WNMHGB, Spock would obviously publish a science paper about the barrier. But he would also correlate all the data and figure out an upgrade for Starfleet shields. His new shield specs are adopted and installed fleet-wide, and now the crew is protected from whatever blast the barrier hit Mitchell and Dehner with.
Sadly, the improved security protocols never made it to the Enterprise...
Eh, I just figured the Kelvans upgraded the shields as part of their prep work to get the ship "ready for intergalactic travel."
Think what you like. Spock has no ego to bruise.
Well, your theory requires you assume Spock went and published a science paper after an episode which led to starfleet making advancements and adjustments to all Starship shields, which isn't even hinted at anywhere. Mine can be interpreted within the episode itself (I generally try to do that rather than make up a fansplanation out of the ether). The "adjustments" the Kelvans were making were vague enough to make the assumption. After that, hey, they can go to and fro through the barrier without any trouble other than some camera tilting.
The Guardian is described as being a gateway to other times and dimensions, but yeah the episode only seems to show the one timeline as far as I can tell. Though my science knowledge is obviously primitive.
And possibly the Guardian lied to them. Possibly the Guardian sent McCoy to an alternate universe where Starfleet and the Federation never formed when McCoy went through, and instantly switched to that other universe withouth them knowing. Thus it tricked Kirk & Spock into killing Earth Keeler, and making the Federation and Starfleet come into existance in Keeler's universe. Then it returned Kirk, Spock, and McCoy to the universe.they came from (or maybe a universe very similar to it) and told them they had restorned thier timeline, when actually they had changed another universe to make it like theirs.
It is possible that the Guardian of Forever was/will be created by a super advanced society of Star Trek fans for the prupose of changing more and more alternate universes into ones where Star Trek happens.
And I came with this theory because I think that going back in time and changing your own timeline is theoreticlly impossible an dleads into paradox country..
If a r writer writes a stor with one and only one universe and someone goes back in time and changes history, I will always believe that the writer was wrong about how time travel works in their story and they actually changed history in an alternate universe to the one they came from.
A writer has godlike power within their story to make the universe work the way they want to, but I don't recognize any ability of writers to create fictional universe where time travelers can possibly change their own history. NO writer has the power to create an imaginary universe which is that illogical and paradoxical. All writers who believe they hare created such ficitnal universes are mistaken.
The freedom of a writer to create an imaginary universe is vast, but not infinite. It has limits.
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That seems to be what "Yesteryear" assumed. The opening log entry says the Guardian is the nexus of all timelines, and when Spock goes back to rescue himself as a child, he wishes his counterpart Thelin long life and prosperity in his world, which would be illogical if he believed Thelin and his world were about to be erased from existence.
So in that formulation, the time traveler only sees history change around them because they've shifted into a new timeline resulting from their actions, and the goal of going back to undo it is merely to shift themselves back on the right track and get home, not to restore the entire universe, since it never went anywhere. You're right that "erasing" an existing timeline is a physical and logical impossibility; if there are two versions of a single span of time, by definition they are simultaneous rather than consecutive. But it's more dramatic as a story if the characters believe the whole of reality is at stake.
The barrier at the edge of our galaxy looks like this, according to DC comics -
In the 60's, we hadn't invented the 3rd dimension yet - people had NO concept of up & down, or going over/under something. Hell - we barely had left/right figured out (watch any old movie where someone is running away from something - like a train - they just keep running in a straight line IN FRONT OF IT). lol
And our galaxy isn't crashing into another just yet - Andromeda will be eating us in 4 billion years. We did have a sister galaxy (Mp32) that was the 3rd largest in our local cluster, but Andromeda ate it about 2 billion years ago. in fact, now its down to just us and Andromeda in out local group - we two ate all the others. There can be only one.
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Might be the other way around. Recent observations have caused a rethink of the Milky Way's size, and it might be much more massive than Andromeda, on the order of 1.5 trillion vs. 800 million solar masses. (link)
For some reason I take that as fantastic news. Andromeda can live long and suck it!
There can be only one, and we are all team Milky Way. LMAO
I didn't realize one of our small satellite galaxies (the ones we theoretically already chomped on) intersects our disc... good info there. I'll have to look into that. Could be great material for a scify story/scenario. The universe is a fascinating place, isn't it?
I didn't realize one of our small satellite galaxies (the ones we theoretically already chomped on) intersects our disc... good info there. I'll have to look into that. Could be great material for a scify story/scenario. The universe is a fascinating place, isn't it?
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