This universe and the Prime universe share the same past prior to 2233. It's maddening that people can't grasp this simple fact.
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This universe and the Prime universe share the same past prior to 2233. It's maddening that people can't grasp this simple fact.
This universe and the Prime universe share the same past prior to 2233. It's maddening that people can't grasp this simple fact.
How... linear your thinking is. Many Worlds Theory is dumb and this is why. Given the existence of time travel and the fact that this version of the crew has its own past you have absolutely no way of knowing if this timeline has or will have an identical past or not. It's only at the instant that someone travels back that a new timeline is created by rippling forward. The fact that the audience jumps tracks with the characters doesn't mean that the original past before they travelled back doesn't still exist. You can't mix and match timelines.
bryce said:
Nero's time travel is not intended to work in the way dictated by traditional "single-timeline" time travel. The past of the Abramsverse is identical to the past of the Prime universe before 2233, just from the way the Abramsverse was created.
Pauln6 said:
If by "dumb" you mean "free of paradox", then... yes. MWI is certainly no more "dumb" than single-timeline and BTTF.
Pauln6 said:
Yes, you do. It has an identical past when it is created. If there is assumed to be later single-timeline time travel in the Abrams timeline which alters this past, that is still a future alteration from the POV of the creation of the new timeline. As you say yourself:
Pauln6 said:
Hmm yes, maybe I haven't been very consistent in the way I presented my analysis because I loathe the many worlds approach. How can you say that the many worlds theory is free of paradox if it allows alternate people who will never exist to have travelled back into YOUR past. If that was the case we'd have alternate time travellers piling up. What happens when NuTrek's Kirk travels back when he reaches that crossroads in his timeline? Will TOS Kirk be waiting for him? How is that not a paradox? Or do you think that at that point he has to travel back to an alternate past that Kirk never went to so that many worlds is mutually exclusive to pre-destination?
Now Time's Arrow I love - the past has already happened so if you travel back you will always have travelled back. You can't change history or jump tracks because whatever your present, it has always been the product of your past. The movie Twelve Monkeys was a perfect example of how to do a pre-destination time travel storyline. Many worlds is too hard for the writers to grasp and they should always have left it alone.
Edit: Possibly with one caveat - a story element like the Guardian of Forever - something beyond the norms of science.
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As far as I can tell, the theory is something like this:
1. Time is linear. The past is in the past. This means that if, at some future point you travel back in time you are not 'changing the past' at the moment you decide to travel back because the past has already happened. If you go back then you would always have gone back. It is possible to be your own grandfather. It isn't possible to go back in time to kill your grandfather before you are conceived so that you can never be born. This is the concept of Times Arrow, Twelve Monkeys, and Babylon 5's War Without End (the heritage of Valen always existed).
2. In many worlds theory the concept of 'creating' an alternate timeline is a misconception. Every possible timeline already exists. When you throw time travel into the mix, this includes timelines where every potential time traveller travels to every conceivable point time. It also includes the concept of time travel bottlenecks where multiple time travellers end up at the same point in time in near infinite combinations. All the viewer is doing is jumping tracks to the 'alternate' timeline at the moment the time travel occurs. The time traveller is the one jumping tracks not the people in the timeline so the concept of time 'rippling' backwards and forwards is a misunderstanding. NuKirk WILL (probably) be the one who travels back in time in the future and his actions in his past may well be different to the TOS past. Therefore the NuUniverse WILL (probably) have a different past to the TOS universe.
3. None of this precludes the possibility that in this particular universe, a version of TOS Kirk jumps tracks and travels back into Nu Kirk's past instead. Red Dwarf does this a lot and it's precisely what they've done with Spock. It's possible but I just think it's very unlikely they'll do it again. Spock has simply jumped tracks.
4. It's impossible to 'restore' the timeline. The original timeline still exists and never changes. The characters we follow split off into their own timeline and are usually split off again to a similar but different timeline at the resolution of the story e.g. Yesterday's Enterprise; the whole series of Enterprise on multiple occasions. If they 'restore' the timeline (excluding predestination theory above), all the time travellers would be doing would be jumping back to their original timeline where their time travel never happened e.g. a timeline where Sela did not exist.
5. Since every conceivable timeline exists in every combination, the concept of Temporal Police to make sure no time travellers interfere is redundant.
The concept is portrayed as simple because otherwise it would confuse the masses and you seem to have bought into that notion. It is, however, ludicrously complex. Many worlds theory sucks.
Pauln6 said:
That's correct, but it's not a misunderstanding propagated by the writers or by MWI theory itself. MWI does not claim any such thing is happening. So this is not a case of the writers failing to grasp anything.
Pauln6 said:
But here you're talking about the effects of single-timeline, not MWI. Until any such future single-timeline time travel on the part of NuKirk occurs, the NuVerse has the same past as the Prime before 2233. If NuKirk were to travel back using MWI time travel, he would not change the past of the NuVerse timeline but would create a new timeline.
Pauln6 said:
The idea of a branching timeline is simple. You haven't made it look "complex" merely by showing that traditional time travel stories do not adhere to it.
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I want a television series. Not much of a comic-book reader.
I think this is where we differ. You say 'until' any such future single-timeline time travel on the part of NuKirk occurs implying that the event may or may not happen. I think that the correct approach is to say 'unless' any such future single-timeline time travel on the part of NuKirk occurs implying that the event will (or will not) happen. It isn't a probability as far as the timeline itself is concerned per Time's Arrow.
As far as the viewer is concerned the event may or may not happen depending on whether the writers choose to write the story. As far as the timeline is concerned whether the event does or does not happen depends upon which timeline the people are in. Timelines aren't 'created' by these time travel events per se. Every action the characters take 'create' the timeline. We just watch them play out based on what the particular characters do in this particular timeline. Only characters 'outside the timeline', typically the time travellers, notice any changes because, for everybody else, there have been no changes; this is just their timeline playing out.
Yesterday's Enterrpise stomped all over the many worlds theory in this regard. Both timelines were equally valid.
Pauln6 said:
I'm not entirely sure what that means, but there are no guarantees with NuKirk. He could be killed before taking part in any time travel whatsoever. He probably won't be, as an OOU consideration, but from the POV of Abramsverse 2258 anything can happen. That aspect of the Abramsverse has been repeatedly emphasized. Things are not constrained to happen in the same way.
Pauln6 said:
It is not in dispute that many incidents in previous Trek canon do not fit with MWI. Time's Arrow is among them.
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According to "Yesterday's Enterprise", the TNG timeline was created in the same way the STXI one was - a ship going back in time, altering history.
Although timelines aren't linear, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" timeline predates the TNG one in the same way the TOS timeline predates the STXI one. "Originally" the Enterprise-C vanished into a rift, and reappeared 22 years later.
Although timelines aren't linear, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" timeline predates the TNG one in the same way the TOS timeline predates the STXI one. "Originally" the Enterprise-C vanished into a rift, and reappeared 22 years later.
But again, if you are 'creating' an entire timeline from nothing, where does all the matter and energy need to create that timeline (an entire universe) come from? This version only works if you can overwrite the original timeline, which is not what is advocated with the NuTrek franchise.
If time occurs everywhere all at once then past events that are dependent upon future events cannot happen if those future events don't happen. Yesterday's Enterprise was dealing with characters from different timelines jumping back and forth between pre-existing tracks. If we are to believe that we end up in the same timeline in which we started then Sela was always there, even though we hadn't seen her before but her mother was an alternate Yar from a different, pre-existing timeline.
I'm using "created" to describe the linear chain of events in one timeline that leads to the divergeace point in the past between the two timelines. It's really no more "created" than any other possible outcome to any event anywhere ever.
The characters aren't jumping between preexisting time tracks, they're leaping back and taking a new turn at the point they jumped back to. Hence branching timelines with a shared past.
And yes, Sela was always there in the TNG timeline, even though we didn't see her until after "Yesterday's Enterprise". At Narendra III the timeline branches two ways (actually infinite billions, but two for simplicity's sake) - a) the Enterprise-C vanishes into a time rift and reappears 22 years later leading to "Yesterday's Enterprise" and b) the Enterprise-C seemingly doesn't vanish (although it actually has but was sent back with Captain Garratt dead and Tasha on board from time track A) and heroically defends the Klingon oupost leading to TNG.
The characters aren't jumping between preexisting time tracks, they're leaping back and taking a new turn at the point they jumped back to. Hence branching timelines with a shared past.
And yes, Sela was always there in the TNG timeline, even though we didn't see her until after "Yesterday's Enterprise". At Narendra III the timeline branches two ways (actually infinite billions, but two for simplicity's sake) - a) the Enterprise-C vanishes into a time rift and reappears 22 years later leading to "Yesterday's Enterprise" and b) the Enterprise-C seemingly doesn't vanish (although it actually has but was sent back with Captain Garratt dead and Tasha on board from time track A) and heroically defends the Klingon oupost leading to TNG.
Of course in the branching multiverse theory you are using the Ent-C would create a new universe when it appears in the past so it wouldn't do anything to put the universe it leaves "right". I can only conclude that "Yesterday's Enterprise" must have been written as a conventional single timeline story where someone goes back in time to change the present to something better, not a branching universe or parallel universe story. What makes you think otherwise?
Nothing, I'm merely saying that the chain of events work under STXI's multiverse theory in the same way STXI can be seen as "overwriting" TOS in a single universe Trek. Ditto "Endgame" where Admiral Janeway goes back and brings Voyager home early, setting history on a new path. If one of these old timelines still exist (as the STXI writers and a few novels indicate), they all do.
With regards to Trek time travel, multiverse pretty much says "you can't undo what's been done, but you can create new possibilites"
With regards to Trek time travel, multiverse pretty much says "you can't undo what's been done, but you can create new possibilites"
Pauln6 said:
Now, now. According to Bob Orci, MWI is "the latest greatest, most highly tested scientific theory in human history" and "most current and awesome scientific theory", and Quantum Mechanics is "the most advanced and complete", as well as "our most current and advanced thinking on the matter". Clearly, he knows what he's talking about.
So, in other words, branching theory only works if it's really just single-timeline theory by another name, meaning that true branching theory simply cannot work. This is starting to sound like self-fulfilling prophecy.
That's why "time occurs everywhere all at once" sounds nice from a poetic standpoint but is not particularly meaningful or workable when applied to an actual plot. At the point when the Abrams timeline is originally created, it is not yet subject to the effects of hypothetical time travel from its ( as yet unknown ) future. To try to somehow make it so would constitute an untenable logical proposition, and would ultimately prevent the timeline from being in a fixed state in 2233 or any other point.
If passage of time is just an annoying mortal contraint, then the STXI future and every other possible future has already happened complete with all the time travel events that will ever occur.
"Where does the energy come from" is meaningless from a non-linear/wormhole alien perspective. It's always been there.
"Where does the energy come from" is meaningless from a non-linear/wormhole alien perspective. It's always been there.
