Actually, when I see the this explanation, it amounts to throwing away cause-and effect, and simply assuming that if you kill your own father, and your own birth doesn't happen, then you simply go on remembering an origin that doesn't exist.
Yes. So? That's how time-travel has routinely been presented in Trek, among a wide variety of other fictional settings.
It doesn't really damage causality. The important thing to remember is that the
worldline of you, the time-traveler, is
not the same as the worldline of the universe/timeline you happen to be in. So if (say) time is progressing forward through points A, B, C and D, and you're born at C, age until D, then time-travel back to B and change things such that you're never born and history diverges off toward E... then the timeline of the universe you're now in progresses "A>B>E," but your own personal past still includes additional points in which you were born in the ordinary way.
That, as already pointed out before, breaks cause-and-effect, and is thus impossible. The Grandfather Paradox, which makes linear timetravel impossible, thus lending itself to MWI. There is no getting around Causality.
But Trek has routinely shown things being "fixed so that they are back the way they were." We've seen it. How can you dismiss it as "impossible"?
If the damage is fixable, then fine, fix it and move on.
But if the damage is NOT fixable, then, YET AGAIN, cause-and-effect comes into play.
Not explicitly ("here are the details of all the ships in the fleet back in the 2230s" would've made for a pretty dry episode), but logically. If one of the most advanced ships in Starfleet in the 2260s, one of a select dozen, has only two shuttles and a crew complement of 430 (which we know was even smaller a decade earlier under Pike's command), then it defies credibility that a ship 30 years earlier would have twice the crew and ten times the shuttles.
One possible scenario:
- Ships grow larger for longer duration missions, as technologies and needs grow.
- Ships are equiped with a large number of shuttles to allow for large scale planetary surveys.
- Over the years, Sensor technology improves to a point where visiting planetary surfaces is not needed anywhere near as much, so fewer shuttles.
- As previously manual operations are automated, less officers and crew are required on starships.
- Improvements in processes and technology lead to smaller components performing the same job, and more components can be hidden behind panels, etc.
- Thus, ships got smaller, simpler in appearance and more advanced.
- Escape Pods are added in lieu of the generally oversized shuttles.
Stardates
The Stardates, are, in fact, consistent with the idea that it started with Earthdates (source: Enterprise), to "decimalized gregorian" (source: the movie) through to a new system, based on pulsar/other undetermined calculation method (source: TNG thru Nem).
Two problems. One: there was never
anything (prior to this movie) suggesting that stardates had ever used a system of "decimalized Gregorian," so you can hardly use that as evidence of consistency with past canon. Two: the movie has Spock's "Jellyfish" ship
from the 2380s describe its origin date in those same "decimalized Gregorian" terms, even though we
know that no such system was used in the TNG era.
One, there has never been anything to establish that the "decimalized gregorian" system did NOT occur, and it provides a natural logical progression.
Two, this is correct, and was a mistake on the part of the writers. I also may have been done deliberately so that an uninitiated audience would get a good idea as to the timescales involved. It was done under dramatic license.
The information does NOT disprove the MWI model. Your alternative theory does fit, but no evidence supports it.
It's difficult to prove a negative, so no, I suppose I didn't technically "disprove" the MWI model. I don't feel an obligation to do so, however... since as you acknowledge my explanation does fit all the available evidence, from both the film and previous Trek canon, while meanwhile (if we ignore out-of-universe things like the writers' interviews) there's no actual evidence to
support the MWI model in the Trekverse.
As I suggested: if you (or O&K!) really want to do the heavy lifting to explain how the MWI makes sense for all previous Trek time-travel stories, feel free, and I'll cheerfully give those explanations serious consideration. However, since we don't
need to reinterpret all those past stories in order to make sense of this one, it would seem to be a lot of unnecessary effort.
I again refer to the scene where Uhura's reply that they were in an Alternate Reality, coupled with Writer's Intent, as well as the simple fact that Spock observed irreversible changes.
