Orci on Start Trek, timelines, canon and everything (SPOILERS)

[Jackson_Roykirk]

First, I don't remember why we're talking about the Mirror Universe in a thread about timelines, and if I'm the one who brought it up, I'm sorry.

Alternate timelines and the Mirror Universe are connected becuase the Mirror Universe (may have) been created by an alteration to a timeline sometime, somewhere. But I agree that we have strayed too far afield.

...if you see two realities where history is different for centuries but individual people are genetically identical in each reality, then you MUST assume that there is some supernatural force operating outside the known laws of physics, genetics, and causality at work. (In the case of the Mirror Universe, that supernatural force is the writers of the episodes.)...

...the pairing of the Mirror Universe and Federation Universe remain unique -- for centuries they have remained "artificially synchronized" at the genetic level, while everything else in the Universe is different. This is physically impossible, assuming the same physical possibilities in both universes...
....In fact, the only way the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe could both exist as depicted would be if one or both of them were a work of fiction.

I agree with you that the supernatural force -- or ghostly force as some have called it -- that has "artificially synchronized" the MU and the TOS universes is simply the desires by the writers in the case of this particular episode to want us, the audience, to suspend our disbelief.

However, as I said before about quantum uncertainties, the theory says that since there are infinite variations of universes, In Star Trek there will almost surely be one universe like the MU. Since the possibilities are "Infinite", EVERYTHING not only can happen -- every possibilty (however improbable) actually does happen somewhere in one of the alternate universes.

But quantum theory isn't the reason I'm OK with the existence of the MU. 'Mirror Mirror' is plausible because the writers wanted me to believe it was plausible.

 

[Augustus]

Plausible because the writers say so???? How naive of you Jackson Roykirk

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

^
^^ I knew someone would catch that...

To clarify...I mean "Plausible" in the context of TV fiction, although not necessarily plausible in the real world. Fiction, especially science fiction, does not need to be "real-world realistic", but I surmise you already agree with me on that...that clarification is for others.

Take the classic Ray Bradbury short story "All Summer in a Day". Bradbury sets up this premise:

"IF Venus had one day of summer-like weather after seven years of rain,
here's a story that could take place involving humans who live there..."

Obviously I think it's quite impossible for Venus to be summer-like, but once I get past that obviously erroneous premise and accept the writer's idea that in the context of the story it is possible that Venus will be summer-like for a day, then I can sit back and enjoy the story.

Much of Bradbury's stories (and much of the other mid-20th century classic sci-fi writers' work) have premises that are very inplausible from a real-world standpoint. But by using that magic phrase "what if", those classic stories can be enjoyed for what they are.

 

[3D Master]

First, I don't remember why we're talking about the Mirror Universe in a thread about timelines, and if I'm the one who brought it up, I'm sorry.

My point was this: In alternate timelines, as depicted in "Star Trek" and elsewhere, each reality tends to have the same basic laws of science -- atoms, electrons, gravity, biology, genetics, thermodynamics, entropy, etc. That means, even in an "infinite" number of alternate timelines, NONE will have a square-shaped Earth instead of a round one, because all realities will have gravity. (If you want to argue that there are realities without gravity, then we will have to redefine the word "reality.")

In fact, super string M-theory says there are universes out there, where indeed there is no gravity, where space can be a fluid (heh, heh), where there is no weak nuclear force, or the force acts totally different. The forces we see around us, are only aspects of one over acting force - special limit cases; and depending on starting conditions, those forces would have been totally different or not present at all.

But that's neither here nor there.

So, based on observations, it appears that the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe -- which are both EQUALLY REAL, in case there was any question -- each follow the basic laws of science on their own (if you ignore the existence of the other Universe).

That is, it makes perfect sense for Captain Kirk's parents to have a son, and for that son to become a starship captain, and to have Spock and Uhura and Sulu and McCoy on his crew, regardless of what Universe they are in. None of those events, happening once, violates the laws of physics or biology or thermodynamics or Chaos Theory.

But then you have to apply Chaos Theory over time. I believe the theory states that small changes, over time, inevitably lead to bigger changes.

That only works if you have nice starting point, and you know all variables, and then you can project that into the future. However, this is totally meaningless when it comes to past events. The past events are the past events, whatever those events are, or what physical laws govern them, matter not.

I saw a Ray Bradbury movie on TV last week, where some time travelers went back to see dinosaurs, someone accidentally stepped on a single butterfly in 65 million B.C., and that screwed up all of mammalian evolution by the time they got home, so that all of human society started to disappear. A small change in history, over time, led to a major change at the genetic level in the future.

This Butterfly Effect is a natural extrapolation of Chaos Theory, as it applies to time travel stories. For example, in "Star Trek: First Contact," the Borg went back in time to 2063 and killed Zefram Cochrane, and 300 years later we saw an assimilated Earth and there were no humans alive anywhere in the Galaxy. That means that after Cochrane's death, there would never be a Kirk or Uhura or Spock or Sulu or Picard or Data or anyone else whom we've seen in the original timeline.

In "Parallels," we saw many different timelines that all branched off at different points in history, and as time went on, each timeline became more and more different from any other.

In Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, it was stated that future history could be calculated for thousands of years in general -- i.e., which Galactic 8Empires would rise and fall, which political or social groups would gain power, etc. -- but small things like an individual person's name or genetic code could not be predicted even a few decades out, because those small-scale traits are "random" and unpredictable.

Rather off topic, but anyway: that is of course mutually contradictory. If you can't predict one individual, then you can't predict large scale social groups, because that one individual you can't prodect can completely alter the course of the large scale social groups.

<snip>

Way to long to quote, but here's the answer to the rest:

No, it's not. You see, you make the mistake of demanding that the two universe were once one, and they must therefor split apart is logically flawed. You're making a premise without backing it up. What you're doing is a probability calculation upon a tiny sub-set of variables, based upon an uprovable premise; that they are once one, and thus they must split apart. Even if you say you don't; you do it implicitly. You apply your knowledge of physics and the implicit expressed changes of certain events happening because of those physics after the fact that these events happened and then say they can't.

Just us being here, having had the string of events that lead to us, have an equally low chance of happeing; aka 1 in a billion trillion zillion; or however small it exactly is. You'd say WE can't have happened then, without some supernatural interference; but this is ridiculous. EVERY sequence of events had an equal chance of ocurring, and ONE had to have occurred, this just happens to be the one that occurred. Now you can do that a second time, with a whole new set of events, these events could be different, they could be the same, they could be partially the same, but these has an equally low chance of having happened. Yet they still would have happened, without any supernatural inteference at all.

Or in other words: take a dice throw it a billion trillion zillion times, and write down the sequence. You'll find that the chance of thise one sequence occuring is only 1 in a billion trillion zillion. Does that mean a supernatural force willed that sequence into existence? Of course not. Now do it again, throw the dice anoher billion trillion zillion times. What are the chances of you have thrown exactly those two sequence of events? 1 in a billion trillion zillion times a billion trillion zillion. Does that mean a supernatural force made you throw those two sequences? Of course not, you went to throw two sequences, so you must have had two sequences at the end, you just happened to have thrown those two sequences. And the same laws of physics govern both sequences; now you check the sequence, and you find that a few patterns, or sub-sequences repeated themselves in both sequences. Does that than mean that a supernatural force made you throw the same sequences? Of course not; you just happened to have thrown those sequences.

This is the same with the universe and the mirror universe: you got two sequences of events. Certain parts are highly similar (but not actually the same), does that mean a supernatural force forced or chose those two universes? Of course not; they just are, it just happens to have been these two universes and they contained a few similar patterns along the line. You can't decide after a sequence of events have occurred, then arbitrarily go back and chose a starting point force feed some physics and chances in there, and say it can't have happened, so there's some unseen force. They just happened to have happened, and ran for a while parallel.

They just ARE.

 

[xortex]

Plausible because the writers say so???? How naive of you Jackson Roykirk

I keep my dramatic liscense in my wallet with my driver's liscence.

 

[Qonos]

First, I don't remember why we're talking about the Mirror Universe in a thread about timelines, and if I'm the one who brought it up, I'm sorry.

My point was this: In alternate timelines, as depicted in "Star Trek" and elsewhere, each reality tends to have the same basic laws of science -- atoms, electrons, gravity, biology, genetics, thermodynamics, entropy, etc. That means, even in an "infinite" number of alternate timelines, NONE will have a square-shaped Earth instead of a round one, because all realities will have gravity. (If you want to argue that there are realities without gravity, then we will have to redefine the word "reality.")

In fact, super string M-theory says there are universes out there, where indeed there is no gravity, where space can be a fluid (heh, heh), where there is no weak nuclear force, or the force acts totally different. The forces we see around us, are only aspects of one over acting force - special limit cases; and depending on starting conditions, those forces would have been totally different or not present at all.

But that's neither here nor there.

So, based on observations, it appears that the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe -- which are both EQUALLY REAL, in case there was any question -- each follow the basic laws of science on their own (if you ignore the existence of the other Universe).

That is, it makes perfect sense for Captain Kirk's parents to have a son, and for that son to become a starship captain, and to have Spock and Uhura and Sulu and McCoy on his crew, regardless of what Universe they are in. None of those events, happening once, violates the laws of physics or biology or thermodynamics or Chaos Theory.

But then you have to apply Chaos Theory over time. I believe the theory states that small changes, over time, inevitably lead to bigger changes.

That only works if you have nice starting point, and you know all variables, and then you can project that into the future. However, this is totally meaningless when it comes to past events. The past events are the past events, whatever those events are, or what physical laws govern them, matter not.

I saw a Ray Bradbury movie on TV last week, where some time travelers went back to see dinosaurs, someone accidentally stepped on a single butterfly in 65 million B.C., and that screwed up all of mammalian evolution by the time they got home, so that all of human society started to disappear. A small change in history, over time, led to a major change at the genetic level in the future.

This Butterfly Effect is a natural extrapolation of Chaos Theory, as it applies to time travel stories. For example, in "Star Trek: First Contact," the Borg went back in time to 2063 and killed Zefram Cochrane, and 300 years later we saw an assimilated Earth and there were no humans alive anywhere in the Galaxy. That means that after Cochrane's death, there would never be a Kirk or Uhura or Spock or Sulu or Picard or Data or anyone else whom we've seen in the original timeline.

In "Parallels," we saw many different timelines that all branched off at different points in history, and as time went on, each timeline became more and more different from any other.

In Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, it was stated that future history could be calculated for thousands of years in general -- i.e., which Galactic 8Empires would rise and fall, which political or social groups would gain power, etc. -- but small things like an individual person's name or genetic code could not be predicted even a few decades out, because those small-scale traits are "random" and unpredictable.

Rather off topic, but anyway: that is of course mutually contradictory. If you can't predict one individual, then you can't predict large scale social groups, because that one individual you can't prodect can completely alter the course of the large scale social groups.

<snip>

Way to long to quote, but here's the answer to the rest:

No, it's not. You see, you make the mistake of demanding that the two universe were once one, and they must therefor split apart is logically flawed. You're making a premise without backing it up. What you're doing is a probability calculation upon a tiny sub-set of variables, based upon an uprovable premise; that they are once one, and thus they must split apart. Even if you say you don't; you do it implicitly. You apply your knowledge of physics and the implicit expressed changes of certain events happening because of those physics after the fact that these events happened and then say they can't.

Just us being here, having had the string of events that lead to us, have an equally low chance of happeing; aka 1 in a billion trillion zillion; or however small it exactly is. You'd say WE can't have happened then, without some supernatural interference; but this is ridiculous. EVERY sequence of events had an equal chance of ocurring, and ONE had to have occurred, this just happens to be the one that occurred. Now you can do that a second time, with a whole new set of events, these events could be different, they could be the same, they could be partially the same, but these has an equally low chance of having happened. Yet they still would have happened, without any supernatural inteference at all.

Or in other words: take a dice throw it a billion trillion zillion times, and write down the sequence. You'll find that the chance of thise one sequence occuring is only 1 in a billion trillion zillion. Does that mean a supernatural force willed that sequence into existence? Of course not. Now do it again, throw the dice anoher billion trillion zillion times. What are the chances of you have thrown exactly those two sequence of events? 1 in a billion trillion zillion times a billion trillion zillion. Does that mean a supernatural force made you throw those two sequences? Of course not, you went to throw two sequences, so you must have had two sequences at the end, you just happened to have thrown those two sequences. And the same laws of physics govern both sequences; now you check the sequence, and you find that a few patterns, or sub-sequences repeated themselves in both sequences. Does that than mean that a supernatural force made you throw the same sequences? Of course not; you just happened to have thrown those sequences.

This is the same with the universe and the mirror universe: you got two sequences of events. Certain parts are highly similar (but not actually the same), does that mean a supernatural force forced or chose those two universes? Of course not; they just are, it just happens to have been these two universes and they contained a few similar patterns along the line. You can't decide after a sequence of events have occurred, then arbitrarily go back and chose a starting point force feed some physics and chances in there, and say it can't have happened, so there's some unseen force. They just happened to have happened, and ran for a while parallel.

They just ARE.

Well I think we need to also realize that their are what are called Prime Universes and Lesser Universes.

The Mirror universe and the Trek Universe are both Prime universes, but they are linked because they are also not truly parallel as they are more opposites, The Mirror universe is the negative version of TOS and not a true alternate, everything positive that happens in the TOS universe actually happens the reverse.

At least that's how I see it.

 

[3D Master]

Well I think we need to also realize that their are what are called Prime Universes and Lesser Universes.

The Mirror universe and the Trek Universe are both Prime universes, but they are linked because they are also not truly parallel as they are more opposites, The Mirror universe is the negative version of TOS and not a true alternate, everything positive that happens in the TOS universe actually happens the reverse.

At least that's how I see it.

I don't think we need to realize that at all.

 

[ancient]

I think that, if one buys into the idea of multiple universes to begin with (which may turn out to be utter nonsense anyway) then 'divergent universes' aren't the only type to exist. it's perfectly possible that two universe can merge or become identical again after diverging.

In other words, two universes may take seperate paths to the same place. I don't know if that could work in the case of STXI, since the new NERO timeline and the CLASSIC timeline seem to go in pretty different directions. But given Star Trek's somewhat lax attitude towards fiddling in the timeline it's not impossible that the NERO timeline and the CLASSIC timeline both lead to the same 24/25th century future.

Much in the same way that the temporal cold war changed a lot of stuff in ENT, but didn't change anything that happen in later shows. I think that the Star Trek universe actually has a reverse butterfly affect, wherein any changes in the timeline iron themselves out over the course of a few decades.

Heck, maybe the Q-continuum or some other God-like ST alien manipulates it so that timeline changes are low impact and the divergent timelines converge again with unlikely regularity.

Convergent universes may explain why Spock has to protect his future even though the TOS timeline is intact in one reality and changed by Nero in another.

How's that for fantasy logic?

 

[Qonos]

Good point.

 

[M'Sharak]

[...]

How's that for fantasy logic?

Works for me.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

But then you have to apply Chaos Theory over time. I believe the theory states that small changes, over time, inevitably lead to bigger changes.

That only works if you have nice starting point, and you know all variables, and then you can project that into the future. However, this is totally meaningless when it comes to past events. The past events are the past events, whatever those events are, or what physical laws govern them, matter not.

I'm not claiming to know all variables in two universes. But I will assume one constant in both universes: People have DNA, which comes from their parents, who must obviously be alive. And since every one of millions of sperm and eggs have different combinations of DNA, each person can only be conceived in a single fraction of a second, so outside circumstances (e.g., the whole history of the universe) are essential to genetic history (e.g., each individual person's genetic make-up).

Here's an example: Spock is only alive because his father was a Federation ambassador who met his mother on Earth. So Spock's genetic make-up is CAUSED by the existence of the Federation -- he's not just a random cluster of DNA that happened to come together in the infinite multi-verse.

But then we have Mirror-Spock, whose genetic make-up is CAUSED by the absence of a Federation, or the presence of a Terran Empire. So, given multiple genetically identical individuals in both Universes, we observe identical effects with divergent causes. This is the OPPOSITE of Chaos Theory.

You see, you make the mistake of demanding that the two universe were once one, and they must therefor split apart is logically flawed. You're making a premise without backing it up. What you're doing is a probability calculation upon a tiny sub-set of variables, based upon an uprovable premise; that they are once one, and thus they must split apart.

No, I said myself that both the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe have ALWAYS existed side by side.

And I'm not arguing about probability (obviously, the probability of Spock and Cochrane and Worf and Kira existing in both Universes is 100 percent, since we have already seen them all exist in both Universes).

I'm arguing about CAUSALITY. We all exist because events of the past CAUSE us to exist.

The classic grandfather paradox doesn't depend just on killing your own grandfather. My grandparents were married when Hitler was alive, so if I went back and killed Hitler, I would be taking away the Universe in which my grandparents were married, and my own DNA would cease to exist just as surely as if I had killed my own grandfather. (If my grandparents had gotten married just one second, or one month, sooner or later, then the same sperm would not fertilize the same egg at the same second, and the DNA of my parent and myself would never exist in the same combination. Ditto with Spock's parents, or Kirk's parents, or Worf's parents.)

You are talking about DNA, and individual people existing, in terms of infinite random dice rolls eventually leading to the same combination. I'm saying that when the whole history of the Universe is different, the dice wouldn't exist in the first place.

I think that, if one buys into the idea of multiple universes to begin with (which may turn out to be utter nonsense anyway) then 'divergent universes' aren't the only type to exist. it's perfectly possible that two universe can merge or become identical again after diverging.

Much in the same way that the temporal cold war changed a lot of stuff in ENT, but didn't change anything that happen in later shows. I think that the Star Trek universe actually has a reverse butterfly affect, wherein any changes in the timeline iron themselves out over the course of a few decades.

Heck, maybe the Q-continuum or some other God-like ST alien manipulates it so that timeline changes are low impact and the divergent timelines converge again with unlikely regularity.

Yes, this is what I'm saying.

In normal causality and Chaos Theory, any two alternate realities would be like two asteroids or billiard balls bumping into each other in space: They would bounce off each other at one point and then move farther and farther away from each other as time goes on.

But the Mirror Universe and Federation Universe keep bumping into each other, like a rock skipping across a pond. Their histories are different, and their futures are different, but the individual people in the "present" are always genetically identical, or synchronized.

This artificial synchronizing force cannot be explained away through random chance or infinite probabilities. We have seen the futures and the pasts of the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe. Even the "reverse causality" of Picard's anti-time paradox in "All Good Things..." can't explain the genetic synchronizing between the two Universes, because we already know their futures are different, as well as their pasts.

We are trying to make scientific arguments to explain away the logical blunders made by hundreds of writers over the past 40 year in "Star Trek." 3D Master's blanket response that "anything and everything is possible in an infinite Universe" pretty much excuses any paradox created by bad writing.

I tend to look at Orci's comments about quantum physics the same way I looked at Gene Roddenberry's comments about Stardates -- he's a writer on a TV series; I'll trust his opinions about writing scripts and character development; but when he starts talking about physics, I give that as much credibility as I would listening to Tom Cruise talking about psychopharmacology, or Professor Stephen Hawking talking about playing professional basketball (which, according to 3D Master, Hawking has done somewhere in an infinite Universe).

 

[xortex]

Billiard balls can hit into each other more than once when they bounce off cushions or other balls and that's not the same spock or picard. Please don't involve me in this conversation as I am a musician.

 

[ancient]

The Terminator franchise is an example of what I was saying: Everyone keeps trying to change history, but despite some major timeline alterations, the final result always ends up the same and the future remains essentially unchanged. The Terminator time-line seems to be self-fixing, always converging to the same final event.

How realistic this is, no one knows. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works ok as a SciFi device.

But if there are really an infinite number of divergent universes, some of them pretty much have to converge again, since that's one of the infinite possibilities. So two universes with different pasts can end up with essentially the same futures. There's no rule that says each change much take the universe farther apart from it's sister universes. (unless I invent one!)

 

[3D Master]

But then you have to apply Chaos Theory over time. I believe the theory states that small changes, over time, inevitably lead to bigger changes.

That only works if you have nice starting point, and you know all variables, and then you can project that into the future. However, this is totally meaningless when it comes to past events. The past events are the past events, whatever those events are, or what physical laws govern them, matter not.

I'm not claiming to know all variables in two universes. But I will assume one constant in both universes: People have DNA, which comes from their parents, who must obviously be alive. And since every one of millions of sperm and eggs have different combinations of DNA, each person can only be conceived in a single fraction of a second, so outside circumstances (e.g., the whole history of the universe) are essential to genetic history (e.g., each individual person's genetic make-up).

Here's an example: Spock is only alive because his father was a Federation ambassador who met his mother on Earth. So Spock's genetic make-up is CAUSED by the existence of the Federation -- he's not just a random cluster of DNA that happened to come together in the infinite multi-verse.

But then we have Mirror-Spock, whose genetic make-up is CAUSED by the absence of a Federation, or the presence of a Terran Empire. So, given multiple genetically identical individuals in both Universes, we observe identical effects with divergent causes. This is the OPPOSITE of Chaos Theory.

No, Spock is alive because his father met his mother and impregnated her. They could have met in any number of places, under any number of circumstances - and neither the Empire or the Federation is a requirement for them to meet and procreate. And whatever made them meet, matters not. Different reasons, matter not. Chaos Theory matters not - we're not talking about a point and one little thing happens here causing something big there, and something else little happened in the other place. We're talking about universes which is each other's mirror opposites. Talking about butterfly wings and little things is meaningless.

You see, you make the mistake of demanding that the two universe were once one, and they must therefor split apart is logically flawed. You're making a premise without backing it up. What you're doing is a probability calculation upon a tiny sub-set of variables, based upon an uprovable premise; that they are once one, and thus they must split apart.

No, I said myself that both the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe have ALWAYS existed side by side.

And I'm not arguing about probability (obviously, the probability of Spock and Cochrane and Worf and Kira existing in both Universes is 100 percent, since we have already seen them all exist in both Universes).

I'm arguing about CAUSALITY. We all exist because events of the past CAUSE us to exist.

The classic grandfather paradox doesn't depend just on killing your own grandfather. My grandparents were married when Hitler was alive, so if I went back and killed Hitler, I would be taking away the Universe in which my grandparents were married, and my own DNA would cease to exist just as surely as if I had killed my own grandfather. (If my grandparents had gotten married just one second, or one month, sooner or later, then the same sperm would not fertilize the same egg at the same second, and the DNA of my parent and myself would never exist in the same combination. Ditto with Spock's parents, or Kirk's parents, or Worf's parents.)

You are talking about DNA, and individual people existing, in terms of infinite random dice rolls eventually leading to the same combination. I'm saying that when the whole history of the Universe is different, the dice wouldn't exist in the first place.

Which all doesn't matter. Your trying to second-guess strings of events while you only know the ultimate effects, and then saying that the chances of this string of events are too low to have occurred (which is ultimately what it means when something isn't possible or can't have happened: the chances of it happening are too low.) But whatever causes and strings of events have happened to produce the Mirror Universe have no bearing on any synchronizing ghostly force, or chaos theory, or whatever. You can't after the fact calculate what the chances were of it occurring and then arbitrarily deciding they are too low, can't have happened, so there must be some steering force. Because then there can't even be one universe. Everything that exists has a chance ridiculously low of having occurred if you add enough variables.

The Mirror Universe just happens to have produced a few similar looking people with the same name. Does not mean there's a synchronizing force.

Yes, this is what I'm saying.

In normal causality and Chaos Theory, any two alternate realities would be like two asteroids or billiard balls bumping into each other in space: They would bounce off each other at one point and then move farther and farther away from each other as time goes on.

That depends entirely on how curved space-time is.

But the Mirror Universe and Federation Universe keep bumping into each other, like a rock skipping across a pond. Their histories are different, and their futures are different, but the individual people in the "present" are always genetically identical, or synchronized.

This artificial synchronizing force cannot be explained away through random chance or infinite probabilities. We have seen the futures and the pasts of the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe. Even the "reverse causality" of Picard's anti-time paradox in "All Good Things..." can't explain the genetic synchronizing between the two Universes, because we already know their futures are different, as well as their pasts.

And there happen to be a few people that are seemingly the same in outward appearance and name. That however, does not mean they are the same, or that there is any synchronizing force. If they've always been apart, they have never bumped, and are never sent flying away from each other. They are simply two strings of events/time lines, the same as two very long dice rolls, that happen to have some similarities in people. This does not, however, mean that someone or something is manipulating the dice. The dice rolls simply are.

We are trying to make scientific arguments to explain away the logical blunders made by hundreds of writers over the past 40 year in "Star Trek." 3D Master's blanket response that "anything and everything is possible in an infinite Universe" pretty much excuses any paradox created by bad writing.

The Mirror Universe is not bad writing. On the contrary; Mirror Mirror is one of the best written episodes of the original series.

I tend to look at Orci's comments about quantum physics the same way I looked at Gene Roddenberry's comments about Stardates -- he's a writer on a TV series; I'll trust his opinions about writing scripts and character development; but when he starts talking about physics, I give that as much credibility as I would listening to Tom Cruise talking about psychopharmacology, or Professor Stephen Hawking talking about playing professional basketball (which, according to 3D Master, Hawking has done somewhere in an infinite Universe).

What makes you think he hasn't done so in this universe? Hawking wasn't always wheel chair ridden, you know. The guy has an ever worsening genetic condition, but he wasn't born unable to walk and talk. It only progressed that far in his mid-twenties IIRC.

 

[trekkerguy]

It's a bit worrying to me that people worry about the intricate minutiae of Star Trek, but don't seem to care for the scientifically sounding nonsense that Orci goes on about in this interview.

Because it's not nonsense, go look it up.

 

[xortex]

So Stephen Hawking knows about professional basketball ?

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

..But if there are really an infinite number of divergent universes, some of them pretty much have to converge again, since that's one of the infinite possibilities. So two universes with different pasts can end up with essentially the same futures. There's no rule that says each change much take the universe farther apart from it's sister universes. (unless I invent one!)

I think so.

In all of the infinite universes out there, there is one that was different than ours, but now is the same. I don't know if you could say they "converged"...it's more like they are two exactly identical universes running simultaneous.

Everything that could possibly happen does happens in the quantum multiverse. It's like monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

This thread makes me want to escape from a Klingon prison and go back in time to kill the parents of everyone who posted in it, including my own.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

But whatever causes and strings of events have happened to produce the Mirror Universe have no bearing on any synchronizing ghostly force, or chaos theory, or whatever. ...

The Mirror Universe just happens to have produced a few similar looking people with the same name. Does not mean there's a synchronizing force.

If you're saying that every time we have seen the Mirror Universe over the past 40 years, depicting history over four centuries, and we keep seeing the same people in the same roles with the same names, that it's all a cosmic coincidence, then I agree. It's a very convenient coincidence, especially for the producers and the actors.

But if you are citing infinite probabilities in an infinite universe to justify that coincidence, then it's equally likely that there's a Mirror Universe where the I.S.S. Enterprise is has a crew made up solely of adorable kittens (with goatees, of course), or one where Spock's father married an Andorian woman instead of a human, or one where Data looks just like C-3P0 and Worf is a Wookie. In an infinite universe, all of those scenarios would be equally likely.

We are trying to make scientific arguments to explain away the logical blunders made by hundreds of writers over the past 40 year in "Star Trek." 3D Master's blanket response that "anything and everything is possible in an infinite Universe" pretty much excuses any paradox created by bad writing.

The Mirror Universe is not bad writing. On the contrary; Mirror Mirror is one of the best written episodes of the original series.

I agree that it was a good episode, and I have liked most of the Mirror Universe sequels through "Deep Space Nine" and "Enterprise" -- but they keep going back to the SAME Mirror Universe over four centuries, and they keep meeting the SAME people, even though the pasts and the futures are both different. It would be one thing if they went to a universe where their counterparts were all Wookies, or adorable kittens, or Andorians, but they keep meeting themselves with different facial hair. And knives.

Yes, if two guys stand at two craps tables and roll dice for an infinite amount of time, then there could be a period of four centuries where every roll at both tables is identical, while past and future rolls are different.

But at some point, one of the craps tables could be buried by molten lava, or an asteroid could hit the table, crushing the dice into powder. That's the point I'm trying to make -- at some point, it becomes physically impossible to have identical dice rolls, even in an infinite universe.

We're talking about universes which is each other's mirror opposites. Talking about butterfly wings and little things is meaningless.

Now I agree with this statement -- the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe are mirror opposites -- reflections of each other.

Just like with a real mirror, you don't need to bend over backwards citing infinite probablities to explain why your mirror reflection just happens to be brushing his teeth every morning at the same exact moment that your are. It's not a coincidence; it's the design of the mirror that things on each side always happen together, and the people on each side always look like each other. It has nothing to do with alternate histories or convergent genetics. We don't need to question or debate why your mirror image chose to come into the bathroom at the same moment you did. We just accept that it's a reflection, and that's just the way mirrors work.

At the end of the day, all the Mirror Universe episodes of "Star Trek" came out of a writer's imagination, not a quantum physics textbook.

 

[DaveyNY]

TrekGuide.com...
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But at some point, one of the craps tables could be buried by molten lava, or an asteroid could hit the table, crushing the dice into powder. That's the point I'm trying to make -- at some point, it becomes physically impossible to have identical dice rolls, even in an infinite universe.

Don't the last five words of your last sentence, completely negate the point your trying to make??

If there are INFINITE UNIVERSE'S, then Somewhere-Out-There, IT IS Possible.

It's just Not Possible IN ALL UNIVERSE'S.