Time travel discussion (SPOILERS)

[Captain Captain]

I thought this warranted future discussion. Captain Robert April first brought this up, but never responded to my second reply so I wanted to get a larger perspective from others. That and I'm a dolt who likes time travel discussions.

Here's the original conversation:

And my complaint about Spock still remains: He knows how to achieve a time warp, and he knows precisely what happened when, why it happened, and how to circumvent those events. So why doesn't he get a ship, do a few time jumps, and fix everything that got screwed up? He could not only restore the timeline, but finally cement a lasting peace between the Romulan Empire and the Federation.

So why doesn't he do this?

Because Spock has to have a sudden attack of the stupids in order for JJ to get his own Star Trek universe to run amok in.

Saw this on another board as a possible explanation for why Spock doesn't just time travel to fix things:

Well, he can't go back into the future at that point to fix things as he's already in the alternate timeline. And if he goes back in time to when Nero first shows up, how exactly is he going to stop him? Nothing in that time era is capable of destroying Nero's ship, and he has no access to the red matter in his own ship as Nero has it in his possession.

Makes sense to me - if the Narada can lay waste to anything from that time period, why would Spock try to go back in time to stop it when he has nothing that would help?

Feldercarb.

Did Spock have access to any of this "red matter" any of the three times he's been involved in a slingshot maneuver ("Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Assignment: Earth" and ST IV)?

Go back before Nero attacks the Kelvin and changes the timeline, then go forward to make sure that supernova is dealt with before it destroys Romulus. Presto, all problems solved, a grateful Romulus signs a peace treaty with the Federation, and Nero gets to make little bald Romulan babies with his hot Romulan wife.

But would traveling back before that point in time (Kelvin incident) guarantee that moving forward would move you into the right timeline to begin with? You might end up in a timeline that's very similar to where you were but isn't completely the same as the time travel back could still cause some alteration to the timeline unbeknown to the traveler.

And I brought up the red matter not because of time travel, but because it was what ended up destroying Nero's ship and was the only thing he could possibly use in that timeline to stop Nero if he could somehow get his ship back, otherwise he had no realistic options to do so. I thought the point I was trying to make there would be obvious to someone who has seen the movie.

What do other people think? Did Spock come to the conclusion that, even had he gotten off of Delta Vega and managed to get access to an appropriate ship, that time travel was not an option as he still would have no way of stopping Nero anyway? Does the claim that jumping back to pre-Kelvin incident than back into the future to get back into the original timeline when he was already in an alternate timeline sound feasible? How would one guarantee that you would get into said original timeline in the first place and not a different one, as the very act of time travel can create new timelines completely, even if they seem mostly the same (see TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise, where Ent-C goes forward then back in time to "fix" the timeline, but actually creates a brand new one that's almost the same due to Yar being sent back)?

 

[DarthTom]

In order for Trek fans to enjoy this film, you're going to have to ignore a lot of the past 'canon.' It's really just the simple. BTW, Spock has been 'ignoring the stupids,' ever since ST IV because since then he could have gotten the crew out of a lot of trouble with the Time Travel magic hocus pocus. So this film is hardly the first one that you could make that complaint about.

 

[Captain Captain]

In order for Trek fans to enjoy this film, you're going to have to ignore a lot of the past 'canon.' It's really just the simple. BTW, Spock has been 'ignoring the stupids,' ever since ST IV because since then he could have gotten the crew out of a lot of trouble with the Time Travel magic hocus pocus. So this film is hardly the first one that you could make that complaint about.

I have no issue with that, but some of us still like to discuss this sort of thing anyway.

 

[Lt Cmdr Tyler]

Ok i can understand that when your own star is gonna go supernova (Romulus) then there's not much you can do about it.

So R.I.P Romulans.

But Vulcan itself, the founding member of the UFP and our First Contact with aliens. It's a bit much i think.

They definately need to find a way to fix the nero part and make all good even if it is slightly misaligned.