Re: Why did spock end up in alternate universe?
Re: Why did spock end up in alt. universe?
The real reason that Spock ended up in an alternate universe is because they still wanted to allow for the possiblity of the orginal universe to still exist, for two reasons:
1. An attempt to placate all the haters of the new franchise who felt that the new destroyed the old. They hoped that the old timeline still existing would help some of the detractors let go of their hate and allow themselves to enjoy the new Trek, ultimately to have some of the old franchise customers also be new franchise customers as well. There are people like me who like both Treks, and spend money on both.
And even if they had just stated that the original timeline had simply been erased to be rewritten over, I can't believe the number of irrational old franchise fans that feels that the new Trek has any bearing on
their Trek. Real life isn't like
Back to the Future where your old Trek DVD collection just fades away when the 2009 movie came out. You all still have your old Trek. Each fan can pick and choose his own personal canon. For example, in my personal original Trek canon, TMP, TFF and Nemesis simply do not exist. If you don't like the new Trek, just pretend it never happened and continue to enjoy your old Trek. Don't waste time hating on the new Trek timeline if you don't like it. Ignore it. The old Trek franchise was virtually dead anyway. It was either going to stay dead, or be rebooted. If you prefer, just enjoy the old Trek as you had before the new film.
2. The second reason for establishing the new timeline as an alternate reality is to still sell the old franchise. The new movie can't really hurt sales of the old franchise (new stories only existing in non-primary media such as novels and the online game). The old timeline still sells a bit after all. And with no new official canon (film or TV) for the old timeline to maintain, they are free to go Tellerite-wild and do whatever they want. The new franchise is still going to allow the old franchise to at least sell to the old customers.
As far as
in-universe explainations, I caution people when citing previous stories about time travel and alternate realities. Time travel has been handled e
xtremely inconsistantly throughout Trek's history. Even within the TOS itself.
If you want to be technical, how come the landing party still existed near the Guardian when McCoy went back and changed history in TGotEoF? If the Enterpise in orbit was erased from existance, then how could they still be on the planet? Because, how else can Kirk and Spock go back to rescue McCoy and fix things. It's a contrivance of the story. And don't even get me started on the one where they beam the American pilot back into himself.
Sometimes, it seems that the travelers just merely serve to become a part of their own history, like the predetermination "destiny" theory. Often things get changed but there is an opportunity to correct things. But there is the grandfather paradox of changing something that would not have resulted in time travellers not going back to change it, but if they hadn't gone back to change it then how could it be changed... and which came first the chicken or the egg?
I love time travels stories (well, some of them), but I don't hold them to be too consistent. So I say, perhaps the temporal rules of the universe change depending on the method and other circumstances of the time travel. Perhaps these circumstances can't always be predicted or understood. So there is an inherent risk in time travelling, even for a good purpose like saving a planet. Perhaps the elder Spock-prime from 2387 is more aware of these dangers than he was in his 23rd century days, maybe even a little more aware than the 24th century Trek characters we know the adventures of. Maybe he now realizes how lucky these prime-Starfleet officers had been by not totally screwing up the univese/multiverse.
I've read that after using time-travel to have an in-universe explaination for the reboot, they plan to retire time travel as a story element in the franchise, at least in the films. As much as I love time travel stories, I agree with this plan. It's been done already many times. You can't start citing precendents by saying that when every disaster happens, time travel should happen to prevent it. That would be boring and reduce the drama. Be orginal. Solve problems without time travel.
Perhaps this new "red matter black hole" method of time travel permanently change cosmological aspects of the new alternate universe that prevent slingshot around the sun, Guardians and time orbs from working there. Perhaps there could be an in-universe reason why they can't just time travel any more. Maybe Spock-prime is stranded in the new universe.
Or, maybe this new realization of the divergent timeline cast doubt for Spock whether any good every came out of time travel, because maybe he now accepts the possiblity that for every previous time travel, it may have only just created a new divergent reality, which leaves the "previous" timeline uneffected after all. So he might now believe that every time he travelled back in time he may have just hopped into an divergent timeline and wants to end the cycle. Maybe Spock feels guilty about allowing Romulus to be destroyed in his previous timeline, but now that he is in an alternate reality, he knows he is really unable to prevent that Romulus from being destoyed (only the new reality's Romulus). And if he went back to before the Nerada incursion created the divergent timeline, he still couldn't save Vulcan in his current timeline because he might only be entering
yet another timeline. And maybe he also wants to stay around in the new universe to help set things more like his timeline since it is so drastically different by 2258 now.
There are a lot of possiblities for
no more time travel.
Personally, I also like the idea of time travel creating divergent realities. It solves the causality paradoxes as our modern understanding of quantum physics suggests. Nero created the new reality just by appearing in it, but the old reality is still there somewhere else in the multiverse. The Nerada and the Jellyfish just disappeared from that prime realitiy in 2387, never to return, but the timeline still exists which is what allows for the events leading up to leaving that timeline. The old franchise "prime" canon is still intact.
And it allows for a time travel explaination for the Mirror Universe. That reality may have been created when someone from the Prime universe (or yet another universe) went back in time and to at least the 1600s and initiated the events leading to Terran Empire being created. That reality diverged and the TOS and DS9 adventures into the MU are considered travelling "sideways in time". Of course, another possiblity is that the Prime Universe was created by time travel from the Mirror Universe!
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