I wasn't referring to myself when I cited someone changing the facts and indulging in death-of-the-author revisionism. For the record, I said "that is nonsense", not "that might be nonsense".
Is Data's head still under San Francisco?
- Thread starter USS Triumphant
- Start date
I wasn't referring to myself when I cited someone changing the facts and indulging in death-of-the-author revisionism. For the record, I said "that is nonsense", not "that might be nonsense".
Star Trek is one of the most revised fictional franchises around. Think of all the stuff that went down in TOS, only to be retconned by TNG (warp speeds and space travel are major example).
Then you have the Borg, a species initially portrayed as only being interested in the accumulation of technology. By FC they assimilate anyone and anything. Data is initially portrayed as having emotional ability, by season 3 of TNG he is emotionless. Picards age seems to be constantly up for debate, as does Spock's rank in TOS and even the exact location of Earth in comparison to anywhere else in the Trek universe.
Its a fictional franchise, authored by hundreds of different writers. Revisions are inevitable and a great many things are left open for fan interpretation.
Then you have the Borg, a species initially portrayed as only being interested in the accumulation of technology. By FC they assimilate anyone and anything. Data is initially portrayed as having emotional ability, by season 3 of TNG he is emotionless. Picards age seems to be constantly up for debate, as does Spock's rank in TOS and even the exact location of Earth in comparison to anywhere else in the Trek universe.
Its a fictional franchise, authored by hundreds of different writers. Revisions are inevitable and a great many things are left open for fan interpretation.
At the risk of sounding the echo, this is inconsistent with the fact that Nero and Spock both ARRIVED in the same universe. If Nero arrived in the Prime Universe, then Spock should have arrived there as well. But Spock didn't, and so it stands to reason that Nero probably didn't either.
The thing is, the origin of Nero and Spock Prime IS something that was left open. Writer intent may suggest they came from the universe we're already familiar with, but the FILM doesn't make that determination, in fact the only thing established by the "parallel universe" dialog on the bridge is literally this: "Whatever our lives might have been, our destinies have changed." That doesn't tell us anything about where Spock and Nero came from, it merely tells us where everybody else is going.
And while I agree that there is a strong implication that Spock and Nero come from the Prime Universe there is no evidence on screen to dictate the exact science behind the time travel mechanics. On screen, the exact mechanics ARE left open.
If your main defence is writer intent then fair enough. However, with a LONG history of lame science and retconning revisions for the sake of the story they want to tell, any future writers could change that intent. The Schrodinger's Cat analysis is as close as we can get. The head may or may not be there.
This thread for me is more about debating time travel mechanics. There are several theories and none of us can know for sure because time travel into the past isn't scientifically plausible. My personal view is that any theory that could lead to a paradox is silly (such as Data Prime's head spontaneously duplicating into two timelines). Theories that contradict the Prophets' concept of time (like the temporal police) are silly. Pre-destination paradoxes and many worlds near infinite parallels make sense (albeit I disapprove of the implications of the latter as the actions of our heroes seem rather diluted if in the next universe across Kirk's awesomeness failed and Nero killed him).
Your mileage may vary on your own opinions but none of us can say that the head is definitely there or not.
(It isn't)
I alway took Lester statement to mean people in Kirk's career field don't have significant others (girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, insane folks), not that there are no non-male starship captains.
To paraphrase "Kirk's world of starship captains doesn't admit Janice."
I alway took Lester statement to mean people in Kirk's career field don't have significant others (girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, insane folks), not that there are no non-male starship captains.
To paraphrase "Kirk's world of starship captains doesn't admit Janice."
Yeah, but 'writer intent' was that women are crazy and make awful starship captains.
I recall reading the novelisation of STIV in 1985 ish where they said explicitly that Captain Scott was the first female starship captain in Starfleet! I thought it was hilarious. Seriously, writers even in the eighties foresaw a glass ceiling on women in the 23rd century!
Mind you, at the rate we're going, they may be right. NuTrek didn't show a lot of women in positions of authority and the ones we did see (apart from our token girl Uhura) were just window dressing.
Interestingly, when I read the review of Super 8 in Metro this morning the reviewer noted that there was only one girl in the kids' gang in the movie. Why do so many Hollywood productions (apart from family stories where we get plenty of wives and moms) still employ this level of token female syndrome?
This is apparently just a property of red matter black holes: that when multiple people go through in sequence they end up in the same universe at different times. The argument above does not make sense. Supposing that Nero did not end up in the past of the Prime Universe, but in some "other" universe we might call P', then the same logic would say that Spock should have ended up in P' as well, but he didn't, so it stands to reason that Nero probably didn't. So we reach a contradiction and the argument falls apart.
newtype_alpha said:
The film itself implies that, with its reference to Ambassador Spock, its lines of dialogue lifted directly from TWOK/TSFS, et cetera. But when I used the phrase "left open" I was including writer intent as a consideration, meaning that something contradicted by writer intent was not left open per se.
Pauln6 said:
If you're going to dispute that Nero and Spock come from the Prime, then anything is possible. If Nero and Spock come from the Prime, the head is there.
Last edited:
Unless of course, it isn't.
We know from Time's Arrow that it is.
We know from Time's Arrow that it WAS. We don't know that it IS. It might be.
The 31st century junk Daniels' left in his cabin ("Cold Front") remained there after his timeline diverged from prime Trek in "Shockwave". It was used in later episodes such as "The Expanse". Therefore Data's 24th century head is still in San Fransisco in STXI's alternate 2258.
Items from timelines don't cease to exist when taken from that timeline unless you subscribe to the overwritten timeline theory, which would mean Dat's head would cease to exist. Even then, temporal shielding would prevent the items from ceasing to exist. If you were to suggest that they existed in his cabin AND in the timeline after they'd been taken then I'd disagree.
The problem with the temporal police is that they don't make a whole lot of sense if you subscribe to the branching theory since any branch is equally valid. They also don't make sense if time happens everywhen all at once except that they would be able to monitor every timezone and know automatically who went back and what they did, including their agents. It would be impossible to make unintended mistakes and for that matter they would have been able to prevent Nero going back in time in the first place.
But he did. Spock ended up in whatever universe Nero went to. If Nero's actions CREATED an alternate timeline, then the timeline had to have been created the instant the black hole came to exist, in which case Nero and Spock did not enter the past of the prime universe at all.
It's sort of like how the Enterprise-C never actually enters the future of its own universe, but of the alternate universe that comes to exist the instant it leaves the battle. Thus Prime Universe Picard and others are totally unaware that the Enterprise-C ever went to the future, despite Sela's existence as proof that--somehow--it did.
newtype_alpha said:
The film itself implies that[/quote]
The film implies nothing of the sort. The best you can say is that the two universes are similar in terms of Spock's future plans after Starfleet, but it is never established that the events of 2287 are in the same continuity or even the same history as the rest of Trek canon. And there is at least one reason to think that they're not: the Jellyfish computer gives its "manufacturing origin" in the Abramsverse stardate system, not the prime universe one.
Again, like Sela, it's probably a timeline orphan; Data's head may still be under San Francisco even if Data himself never exists in the new universe.
If the Narada had travelled back in time to, say, 1700 and successfully destroyed Earth then, would Data's head still be floating around empty space where San Francisco used to be? No.
Besides, I figure that a lot of debris -- both matter and energy -- from the supernova was sucked into the time-travelling black hole/wormhole just like the Narada and Spock's jellyfish. If all the matter and energy was spit out all across time and space (just as the Narada and Spock's jellyfish were spit out at different times and places), there could be a whole lot of timeline-changing rocks and radiation out there so that the new timeline was different back to a few moments after the Big Bang.
Besides, I figure that a lot of debris -- both matter and energy -- from the supernova was sucked into the time-travelling black hole/wormhole just like the Narada and Spock's jellyfish. If all the matter and energy was spit out all across time and space (just as the Narada and Spock's jellyfish were spit out at different times and places), there could be a whole lot of timeline-changing rocks and radiation out there so that the new timeline was different back to a few moments after the Big Bang.
That would be because the point of divergence is taking place before Data arrived in San Francisco.
Lol - I like this! But in the context of the thread it is a genius example of why we can't say for sure whether the head is there or not. Look at Year of Hell too. What were we actually seeing there? Was Anorax creating new timelines with each action? If so, only only temporally shielded people and items were unaffected by the ripples backwards and forwards in time and his problem was that he couldn't return to a point in time where he hadn't created any ripples - he obviously lacked the power to jump tracks back to the timeline before he did any of those things, which the audience did at the end. However, time travellers are usually portrayed as being temporally shielded so that the viewer can follow the story but the temporal mechanics get fuzzy. As a time traveller, you could argue that Data Prime's head would be shielded.
Ok thinking about this overall I think we have to take account of the following:
1. There have been several inconsistent portrayals of time travel mechanics throughout Star Trek history.
2. It isn't always possible to tell on screen which particular mechanics are being applied. More than one mechanic can often lead to similar results on screen.
3. Character dialogue isn't conclusive. In NuTrek, the only previously documented incidence of time travel for Starfleet would have been Daniels during the Enterprise run (otherwise the first was going to be at PSI2000 in 2266) so the characters themselves are not in a position to tell us for sure which mechanics they have encountered (can somebody remind me what mechanics Daniels was working under? It may be that Daniels will never travel back in this timeline because the temporal cold war will never happen. If I'm honest, I didn't really understand the intended mechanics in the Voyager episode where Seven was sent back repeatedly).
4. Writer intent may give us an idea for this movie. Writer intent has led to the inconsistent mechanics in the past. Future writer intent may change what we think we know for future stories such as Data's head.
5. Branching theory in the way it is being presented here contradicts the concept of the Prophets, where they can see that time happens everywhen all at once. It isn't possible for Nero to suddenly do something new since he is travelling to a past that is ocurring simultaeously with the present, merely at a different point in the timestream. Since this is a concept that was the foundation for a whole series, it's the method of time travel that we should take as our baseline. It is worth noting that the prophets may only be aware of one timeline or a limited number.
6. With that baseline in mind, in branching theory, when a 'new' timeline diverges away from the parallel this includes its past because an event cannot suddenly 'happen' to create a fresh branch - it was always going to happen in that timeline. The past before the time travel event may remain parallel to the prime but a time traveller from NuTrek travelling back to before Nero's arrival is in its own (largely parallel) past, not a shared past, because the past has never changed. It is the past that was always going to happen in that timeline. It is possible for time travellers to retain memories from their future. This is becase they have either travelled within their own timeline in a pre-destination paradox or they have come from a different alternate future that still exists.
7. If their presence has affected the past in any way that would 'change' the future, many worlds theory explains this as jumping tracks to parallel timelines. This is the only theory that can explain away all the inconsistencies of the various time travel stories. In this theory, there is no paradox - Marty McFly can still exist but he will never be born in the current timeline. Ergo, writer intent aside, overall evidence should be interpreted to be consistent with this theory.
8. Some people may have no problem with the inconsistencies and are happy to view each episode in isolation. That's not necessarily an endorsement for extrapolating from a different episode where different time travel mechanics were used.
9. Writers may still come along and contradict this. They're writing stories to entertain, not educate, as should have been very apparent from the last movie! :P
10. Thus Data's head may or may not be present.
Last edited:
Similar threads
