How can the original timeline still exist?

so true so very true

 

even if he realizes it, why would he let billions of vulcoans die when he could somehow save them. I'm sure if he spoke with nu-spock and nu-kirk to take nu-enterprise back in time they would have done it.

 

And yet we know for a fact that the Prime Timeline continued to exist, because Spock entered the black hole after Nero did yet he -- and the Prime Timeline -- continued to exist during the period between Nero's entry and Spock's.

Like it or not, time travel in this film worked differently than it has in previous Trek installments. That's just all there is to it.

 

KottenFutz - It just makes things easier, doesn't it? To go from Enterprise, to TOS, to TNG... it just doesn't fit anymore (unfortunately), but if you place Enterprise after ST:FC, sort of like a whole new universe, it fits in much better.

Of course, a lot of fans won't agree with that, but that's what makes a fictional television show/book series so appealing - any one person can treat it any way they want

And that's also true of all Trek installments. Every series (and a lot of episodes in each series) treated time travel/parallel universes differently, and had their own rules to fit the plot of the show.
And if the rules apply to every episode, then surely The Department of Temporal Investigations (or whoever it was) will just come and sort out the timeline every single time, putting right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that their next leap will be the leap home...

 

If you ask me, drawing on what previous Trek has established, there's only two ways this can be interpreted:

1) When Nero and Spock went through the black hole and emerged in the past, they altered history so that the timeline they came from was totally erased, save for themselves. The reason they both still exist in this timeline is because they were somehow shielded from the changes in the timeline when they went through the black hole, similar to what happened with the Ent-E crew in FC, and Sisko and Bashir in "Past Tense" (and I suspect may also have been the case with the alternate Tasha Yar from "Yesterday's Enterprise" as well as Admiral Janeway in "Endgame."). I personally don't like this option, as I feel it destroys too much of the mythos.

2) The second option is that when Nero and Spock went through the black hole, they emerged not only in the past, but in the past of an alternate quantum reality that had already long since diverged from their own, a la "Parallels" and "In A Mirror, Darkly." This is my preferred option, but if anyone can come up with a really good explanation for why the timeline never doubled in previous time travel excursions, I'll gladly consider it.

 

You missed the third (and correct) option:

3) The timeline splits when Nero arrives.

The fact that it contradicts what came before is because the writers a. ignored it, or b. fucked it up.

 

I think it's a pretty big assumption on your part that it didn't. Just because we didn't return to any alternate timelines that the crew found themselves in, and got out of, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Here's an alternate explanation:

The new trek movie is a change, made to better suit modern audiences. It's along the same lines as the drastic change in Klingon makeup made for the first ST movie.

They had more money and more time, so they made a change. Does it conform to TOS? No, not really, and all the tortured nerd-explanations to rationalize the two looks, including the one used by Enterprise, are silly.

 

You know nothing. If Nero entered in first and got sucked through time before Spock enters, then how would Nero even know what happened to Spock? And estimating his arrival time would be completely impossible.

The idea the movie was trying to set up was that they were both passing through this tear in space/time, and their physical distance within the tear accounted for when they got out of it.

It's like if two ships are traveling in one warp bubble and the bubble is shut off, the ship at the front of the bubble will have traveled many light-years further than the one in the rear of the bubble.

 

Pretty sure the writers have said its "a". They decided to use newer science theories rather than be stuck in the science of the 60s or 80s.

 

Wow. Take a chill pill, dude. We're discussing how fictional time travel systems work, not how to end poverty or war.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Nero entered the black hole first but knew that Spock's ship was trapped in the gravity well and would inevitably enter it as well. But the film makes it very clear that Nero went through first. Logically, therefore, the Prime Timeline continued to exist after Nero's temporal incursion.

Again, like it or not, time travel works differently in ST09 than it did in previous Trek installments. So the Prime Timeline still exists, and now so does the New Timeline. Everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too.

 

What the writers say also counts toward how they intended it to be, even if it isn't explained as in depth on screen. It's a setup like In A Mirror Darkly and this NuTrek timeline always existed and it was pre-determined that they would travel back in time from the Prime Universe to that one.

 

^^Sci, I only meant you don't "know for a fact" the claims you make, because the film clearly doesn't support that. Obviously you're still aware your name, address, vocational abilities, grammar, etc.

No, doesn't work that way. Deleted scenes don't count either, fyi. That they only bring up the idea outside of the film is hardly unintentional IMO.

 

And why, exactly, does creative intent not matter?

 

What you call 'creative intent' I call fanboy pandering. A bone thrown out for those who would have been irate if they had just come out and said "yeah, all that old stuff has been 'erased'. "

What we're actually talking about is canon. The rules of Trek-time-travel are canon. For that canon to be re-written, changing the the context of hours of classic 'Trek material, you're damn well going to have to put it on the screen.

 

Canon is just the collected works. The newest addition to that collection says that time travel can work in that fashion.

 

The movie concludes that with history tampered with they now exist in an alternate reality-- this is what always happens. Where does it say that this reality, contrary to all the other times they've altered history, exists along side the original in some separate dimension?

It doesn't, if it did we wouldn't be on page 8 of this thread.

 

Sure we would. Trek fans can argue for pages on any subject long past the point were the facts support one conclusion or the other.

 

No, those are the other fans. Not us.

 

Right, those other fans.

 

Mainly because if we counted all the different conflicting visions of the Trek-verse that all the different writers and creators have brought to the table over the years, our heads would explode and our ability to discuss canon at all would be annihilated. So the only thing that we can consider authoritative in canon discussions is stuff that happened on-screen in a (live-action) official Trek production on TV or movie screens.

However, neat trick people often forget: just because there's no evidence to support a particular interpretation of canon doesn't mean that interpretation is wrong. As long as it doesn't contradict canon, it can be legitimately held and argued. And there's nothing about the "Many Worlds" interpretation of Trek XI's theory of time travel that contradicts anything in canon. That's even if you concede that Trek had coherent rules of time travel up until now, which I maintain that it did not.

Prologic is correct to say that canon, if interpreted on its own, would lead us to believe that the so-called "alternate reality" had in fact overwritten the previous Trek universe. However, you neglect to realize that nothing in the movie concretely proves that theory, and nothing in canon contradicts Orci's many-worlds theory. Therefore, multiple interpretations are possible, and -- just as Aquinas's commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics are considered valuable and weighty in considering differing interpretations of Aristotle's work, despite Aquinas being "non-canon" -- the intent of the screenwriters is valuable and weighty in this discussion, despite being non-canon.

Same goes for deleted scenes, tech manuals, the animated series, and so on. Every guide to canon interpretation, including Memory-Alpha's, recognizes this. They're not canon, but they're useful and weighty pointers. That's why I believe in the Alternate Timeline theory over the Rewritten Timeline theory.

However, at the same time, the creative intent is by no means the final word on the subject. For this reason, I believe a compelling argument can be made that "Eleven is Prime" -- that Star Trek XI in no way diverges from the original Prime universe history, and in fact has always been the unseen backstory behind the TOS we all know and love. No alternate or rewritten timelines necessary.

And that's why I love it here.

It's like Catholicism, only with nothing whatsoever at stake.