Star Trek; God Revealed?

[RobertScorpio]

Is it possible that Kirk's eye glasses, the ones McCoy gave to him, are the God of all? Or, to be more trekonian, perhaps we should call his glasses Val; and show his glasses our enduring love.

Just like the watch in the movie Somewhere in Time, it is hard for my mere mortal mind to grasp; who built them? If Kirk's glasses are stuck in a continual loop between the time he sells them in antique store in the past, and then gets them back as a gift from McCoy, then who actually built those glasses..

It had to be Q. Perhaps, in a past life, Q was an eye doctor.

Okay, my Trekonian brothers and sisters, please explain to me what is going on there? Or is it one of those unexplainable loops..

Rob
Scorpio

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Okay, my Trekonian brothers and sisters, please explain to me what is going on there? Or is it one of those unexplainable loops..

There is no time loop. Kirk was just being flip when he said "they would be again" in response to Spock's inquiry about the glasses being a gift from McCoy. There is nothing in the movie to suggest that this is actually the case. In fact, there is one big thing to argue against it in the Director's Cut of TWOK. In that version when McCoy gives Kirk the glasses he comments about how rare it is to find a pair that old with intact lenses. In TVH the antique dealer comments that they'd be worth more if the lenses were intact.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Okay, my Trekonian brothers and sisters, please explain to me what is going on there? Or is it one of those unexplainable loops..

There is no time loop. Kirk was just being flip when he said "they would be again" in response to Spock's inquiry about the glasses being a gift from McCoy. There is nothing in the movie to suggest that this is actually the case. In fact, there is one big thing to argue against it in the Director's Cut of TWOK. In that version when McCoy gives Kirk the glasses he comments about how rare it is to find a pair that old with intact lenses. In TVH the antique dealer comments that they'd be worth more if the lenses were intact.

Well, he broke them at the end of TWOK. Who's to say the old guy didn't have them fixed after he bought them. But you are right, there is really no proof they are the same glasses.

BTW, I love your avatar!

Rob
Scorpio

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm all for them being in a time loop. I really don't see how they're not.

McCoy gets glasses for Kirk's birthday.
Kirk goes back in time and sells the glasses.
A couple hundred years go by.
McCoy gets glasses for Kirk's birthday.

They would have to be in a time loop in order for McCoy to be able to get them in the first place.

As for the lenses, those could have been repaired.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Well, he broke them at the end of TWOK. Who's to say the old guy didn't have them fixed after he bought them.

This is true. And if he did have them fixed then they'd still be antique lenses by the time of TWOK anyway.

BTW, I love your avatar!

Thanks! I made it for one of the recent TOS Avatar contests

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If the glasses are a time loop, wouldn't they eventually become weak and brittle and then collapse? (Even if the glass itself is replaced, the other bits presumably wouldn't be.)

 

[Lindley]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

 

[gastrof]

I'm all for them being in a time loop. I really don't see how they're not.

McCoy gets glasses for Kirk's birthday.
Kirk goes back in time and sells the glasses.
A couple hundred years go by.
McCoy gets glasses for Kirk's birthday.

They would have to be in a time loop in order for McCoy to be able to get them in the first place...

No they wouldn't.

The two versions of the glasses co-existed for 300 years, and then the "original" set were given to Kirk who then took them back in time during ST4.

 

[RoJoHen]

But time loops are so much cooler!

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

That's the way I always interpreted it myself.

 

[Shieldsdown]

If the glasses are a time loop, wouldn't they eventually become weak and brittle and then collapse? (Even if the glass itself is replaced, the other bits presumably wouldn't be.)

Have to agree. All the best scientific journals I have read agree that constant travel through time-loops severely degrades material, especially glass-frames

 

[RobertScorpio]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

If Kirk had left them in the future, yes...but he physically brings them into the past, and gives them to old dude...and eventually they will be bought again, and given back to Kirk...Where did the glasses enter the Loop? And who actually built them?

Rob

 

[Biggshow]

Again, this is assuming that they are, in fact, the same pair of glasses. The watch in Somewhere in Time is a much more convincing time loop since it's never out of the possession of either Richard or Alyse (sp?).

 

[RoJoHen]

If the glasses are a time loop, wouldn't they eventually become weak and brittle and then collapse? (Even if the glass itself is replaced, the other bits presumably wouldn't be.)

Have to agree. All the best scientific journals I have read agree that constant travel through time-loops severely degrades material, especially glass-frames

...it's because the glasses would be really, really old.

 

[Lindley]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

If Kirk had left them in the future, yes...but he physically brings them into the past, and gives them to old dude...and eventually they will be bought again, and given back to Kirk...Where did the glasses enter the Loop? And who actually built them?

Rob

There is no loop. In the glasses' own timeline, they only came to the storekeeper after they were given to Kirk. They could have been destroyed two seconds after Kirk walked out that door and it would have made no difference. He'd still get the same pair----at an earlier point in the glasses' timeline, and in his own----200 years in the future.

 

[Shaw]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

If Kirk had left them in the future, yes...

What? That makes even less sense.

There is absolutely no evidence that the glasses Kirk left in the past replaced the original pair... none whatsoever.

And in fact the loss of the original eighteenth century lenses effects them significantly. They were so valuable when McCoy bought them because the original lenses were intact, they were less valuable when Kirk pawned them because one of the lenses was broken. So unless someone else took them all the way back to the eighteenth century to have new lenses crafted using techniques of that period, the two are as physically different from each other as you would be if you time traveled back to 1970 and stayed. There is no way that you could have taken your own place in 1970 any more than these glasses could have replaced themselves in 1986.

Even if they ended up side by side years later, I could see McCoy opting for the ones he did based solely on the fact that they have the original intact lenses while the time-travelled pair might be sporting twentieth century replacement lenses.

By comparison the watch in Somewhere in Time was always in the personal possession of just two people.

 

[RobertScorpio]

There's no reason this needs to be a time loop. It's simply that the same pair of glasses exists in two places at that point.

If Kirk had left them in the future, yes...

What? That makes even less sense.

There is absolutely no evidence that the glasses Kirk left in the past replaced the original pair... none whatsoever.

And in fact the loss of the original eighteenth century lenses effects them significantly. They were so valuable when McCoy bought them because the original lenses were intact, they were less valuable when Kirk pawned them because one of the lenses was broken. So unless someone else took them all the way back to the eighteenth century to have new lenses crafted using techniques of that period, the two are as physically different from each other as you would be if you time traveled back to 1970 and stayed. There is no way that you could have taken your own place in 1970 any more than these glasses could have replaced themselves in 1986.

Even if they ended up side by side years later, I could see McCoy opting for the ones he did based solely on the fact that they have the original intact lenses while the time-travelled pair might be sporting twentieth century replacement lenses.

By comparison the watch in Somewhere in Time was always in the personal possession of just two people.

Well, I am going by what Kirk is saying, and that is the only basis we can use. He seems to think they are the same glasses. Perhaps there is a mark on them, or whatever, but he seems to think they are the same glasses. So I am going to say, for the sake of this thread, that they are the same glasses, as the watch was in Somewhere in Time. And if they are, then those glasses are....GOD!!!

But yes, it could go either way. But I like to think they are..makes it more mystic...

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Lindley]

Of course they're the same glasses. That isn't in question. Just like Marty McFly is the same person simultaneously dating his mother and chasing down the almanac in 1955.

They're the same glasses, but that doesn't mean there's a loop. The glasses Kirk sells were given to him in their past, but not their future. The fact that their future occurs on the same part of the timeline as a portion of their past is incidental.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

So what happens to the glasses after Kirk sells them?

 

[Shaw]

And if they are, then those glasses are....GOD!!!

Well, even if (for the sake of the thread) we assume that they are the same glasses, why would you elevate an inanimate object stuck in a groundhog day like existence to the status of GOD? While the glasses may not have a beginning or ending, they are also trapped in a finite range of time and do not exist outside of that range (from 1986 to 2285).

One would hope for something... more (?) before being christened GOD.

At best I'd say this falls into the interesting category rather than the deity category.