Why was Guinan on the Enterprise in Yesterday's Enterprise?

[Solarbaby]

We learn in Time's Arrow that Guinan first met Picard on earth in the 18th century. He had travelled back in time 500 years. He knows her but she doesnt know him

At some point in Picard's life before season 2 Picard meets Guinan for the first time. She knows him but he doesnt know her.

-------------------

In Times Arrow Troi sensed trapped humans in the time displacement in the cavern on Devidia II. Without Troi's senses the away team would not have ended up detecting the aliens in the time shift and Picard wouldnt have travelled back in time.

So in yesterdays enterprise the history has changed and the Klingons are winning the war. Troi is not on the enterprise but Guinan is. How is this possible? I don't see how Picard would have travelled back into the past to meet Guinan in this reality. Especially considering the Enterprise D was blown to bits by the Klingons 2 seasons before Time's Arrow.

But more than that... I cannot see why in Yesterday's Enterprise's timeline that Starfleet would be excavating the headquarters underground cavern to find Data's 500 year old head to set events into motion to go to Devidia II. There's a war going on after all!. Plus if Troi isn't on the enterprise and they did somehow go to Devidia II she wouldn't have been there to sense the trapped humans and set up the interphasic technbabble thingy to eventually send Picard back in time to meet Guinan.

So how can Guinan be on the enterprise in Yesterdays Enterprise?

 

[nx1701g]

Good question. Perhaps, this is just my theory, since the aliens seemed to exist in some sort of subspace realm they also existed outside of normal time. Since the Enterprise-D crew stopped them in one form they also stopped them in all others.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe Guinan just met Picard some other way in this timeline?

 

[Red Ranger]

Maybe Guinan just met Picard some other way in this timeline?

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most elegant one! Not a big fan of Time's Arrow, I have to say -- although I enjoyed Mark Twain's appearance -- as the first meeting between Guinan and Picard was a big letdown from how they built it up as a relationship "beyond friendship" as Guinan explained it in Best of Both Worlds, Pt. II. -- RR

 

[FinalFrontier]

I'd figure that the point when Picard and Guinan met (Guinan's second time, Picard's first) had nothing to do with Guinan knowing Picard already, so in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline, that same event happened, but it was both Picard and Guinan's first time meeting each other.

 

[Forbin]

IMHO, she should have been left out for several reasons, but mostly because her "hurry up the plot with a mystically-sensed explanation" is totally needless, and our heroes would have been even more heroic without it:

She didn't need to explain to Picard that the timeline was FUBAR and he needed to send the C back to fix it. Picard is smart enough to figure out for himself that sending the C back might have been a way to alter history for the better, without previous knowledge that an alternate history may have happened.

Yar is a brave enough woman to volunteer for the probable suicide mission all by herself, without Guinan's mystical "you should be dead" crapola. It would have been a much better character moment for her to say "Yessir, I know I won't be coming back, but I am the right person for this job, period."

Even though the episode is a very strong story, I feel Guinan's presence was its weakest point. She was nothing but a plot explainer, and one wasn't really needed.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

A more important question about Guinan's presence in that episode is this: why is she there at all? In the "prime" timeline, Ten-Forward serves drinks, and she's the bartender, one of many civilians who live onboard. But on Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise is a warship and the replicators only dispense MREs. So why is a civilian like Guinan even there? You'd think that Ten-Forward would be a regular mess hall, and folks would serve themselves. Come to think of it, if Starfleet is really taking heavy losses, shouldn't Riker and Data have their own commands, and shouldn't Yar be the XO?

Basically, the whole thing doesn't bear extremely close scrutiny, and the fact of the episode's troubled production history makes it all the more amazing that the result was one of TNG's finest hours.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe Guinan intentionally asked to be assigned to the ship in this timeline. She could have suspected that something wasn't right even before this episode happened. So maybe her spidey sense told her that she should be on the ship.

 

[nx1701g]

A more important question about Guinan's presence in that episode is this: why is she there at all? In the "prime" timeline, Ten-Forward serves drinks, and she's the bartender, one of many civilians who live onboard. But on Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise is a warship and the replicators only dispense MREs. So why is a civilian like Guinan even there? You'd think that Ten-Forward would be a regular mess hall, and folks would serve themselves. Come to think of it, if Starfleet is really taking heavy losses, shouldn't Riker and Data have their own commands, and shouldn't Yar be the XO?

Basically, the whole thing doesn't bear extremely close scrutiny, and the fact of the episode's troubled production history makes it all the more amazing that the result was one of TNG's finest hours.

Perhaps she was the Enterprise's Cook in this timeline.

 

[Solarbaby]

A more important question about Guinan's presence in that episode is this: why is she there at all? In the "prime" timeline, Ten-Forward serves drinks, and she's the bartender, one of many civilians who live onboard. But on Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise is a warship and the replicators only dispense MREs. So why is a civilian like Guinan even there? You'd think that Ten-Forward would be a regular mess hall, and folks would serve themselves. Come to think of it, if Starfleet is really taking heavy losses, shouldn't Riker and Data have their own commands, and shouldn't Yar be the XO?

Basically, the whole thing doesn't bear extremely close scrutiny, and the fact of the episode's troubled production history makes it all the more amazing that the result was one of TNG's finest hours.

Perhaps she was the Enterprise's Cook in this timeline.

Well she certainly was the morale officer

 

[Wes-Cutting]

I remember in The Buried Age that Picard met Guinan for the first time, but that is including books. Other than that I agree with Mr. Laser Beam in the idea that she must have felt she needed to be on that ship.

 

[Michael]

Maybe Guinan intentionally asked to be assigned to the ship in this timeline. She could have suspected that something wasn't right even before this episode happened. So maybe her spidey sense told her that she should be on the ship.

That's actually the best idea offered in this thread.

 

[ALF]

Why was Guinan on the Enterprise in Yesterday's Enterprise?

Because a large portion of the plot centered around her. Also, she needed to explain how they were writing Denise Crosby back into the show as Sela using her El-Aurian and/or Nexus powers.

NEXT!

 

[D Man]

Maybe Guinan intentionally asked to be assigned to the ship in this timeline. She could have suspected that something wasn't right even before this episode happened. So maybe her spidey sense told her that she should be on the ship.

That makes the most sense, though I always loved the "tv episode" aspect of the shifted timeline, where it Changes Immediately. Logically that doesn't make sense of course (that phrase can be applied to too much Trek for me to handle ) but it's a fun way to approach this one-off episode in terms of Guinan's magic abilities.

 

[Anwar]

Why wouldn't it all change immediately? That makes as much sense as how it slowly changes or sometimes there's a "wave" of time that changes whatever it hits. We don't know what shape/form time is in.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Why was Guinan on the Enterprise in Yesterday's Enterprise?

Because a large portion of the plot centered around her. Also, she needed to explain how they were writing Denise Crosby back into the show as Sela using her El-Aurian and/or Nexus powers.

NEXT!

We can simplify that even more:

Because the script said so.

 

[flemm]

IMHO, she should have been left out for several reasons, but mostly because her "hurry up the plot with a mystically-sensed explanation" is totally needless, and our heroes would have been even more heroic without it:

...

Even though the episode is a very strong story, I feel Guinan's presence was its weakest point. She was nothing but a plot explainer, and one wasn't really needed.

I basically agree. The fact that everyone is guided by Guinan's "feeling" about the timeline is the only aspect of the episode I don't like. It's superfluous, and it tends to weaken the dramatic weight of Picard and Tasha's choices. They're weighty enough that the whole thing works anyway, but there was no need to write the episode around Guinan's nebulous extrasensory perception.

 

[Joshua Howard]

I think that Data once said that "everything that can happen does happen;" and in another instance, Picard declared that "The future is not set in stone." After 43-or-so odd years of Star Trek, so many continuity tweaks have been made that the best way to explain them all is just simply that time tends to be more fluid than we naturally imagine.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Cuz she's cool, innit?

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Hm... maybe, given that she'd been exposed to the Nexus and the whole 'being outside of time' thing, it forced the changes to the time line to wrap around her - she's there before the Enterprise-C comes through and so she still has to be there after it comes through, as opposed to Deanna who hasn't had that experience and thus was not on board the Enterprise in the altered timeline.

Of course, that obviously wasn't the writers intention at the time - they just needed her there and so she WAS.