The folly of time travel in fiction
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Or simply have them mindwipe their originals only to have to kill them when they return to the future. Also, it could be explained that since the characters are the ones doing the time travel that they simply forget when time is set aright.
There are all kinds of ways to do it as long as you explain it in story. All time travel stories are filled with incongruity and logic-gaps by the very nature of the concept.
There are all kinds of ways to do it as long as you explain it in story. All time travel stories are filled with incongruity and logic-gaps by the very nature of the concept.
You could use the Quantum Leap approach, your characters jump back in time into other peoples bodies. That way, anything they do will have been done by a person of that era, their actions become part of the established timeline and nothing changes for the timeline in the future, save for the events that needed to change to maintain the continuity of the timeline.
Clearly did not in what sense? That it wasn't documented in history? I could go back in time next week and talk to Julius Caesar and odds are it'll never be documented in history. Even if it were, odds are it wouldn't survive. Unless some Monk stumbled upon some other chronicler who wrote it down and then decided to copy it and some later Monk copied him, it won't have survived to the printing press. Then it would be cheap to copy, but there'd still have to be a reason to do so. All it takes is one fire or flood and all record of my conversation will be lost.
The single universe theory is cleaner than any other. It avoids paradoxes.
Then again, I also reject the butterfly effect. If you go back in time and kill a butterfly, there will be more food available and a different butterfly that would have starved to death is able to live. It's a course correction argument, but, essentially, it's a requirement that the change in history is a big one for there to be a ripple effect.
But even big things can be explained away. If Thomas Edison is killed or The Beatles never meet, it could be argued that somebody else invents all of Edison's inventions, or another group inspires the British invasion and even big things like this do not have a significant long term effect on history.
Branching theory, as seen in STXI, completely avoids paradoxes. However, it tends to lack a certain degree of popularity when it comes to writing fiction, because the poor time travelers never get back to their original timeline/universe, and the poor denizens of the original timeline/universe never get to see the time travelers again. ( I'm looking at you, Picard. )
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Go back in time and do it first!
Yup. The core plot line of FC, at its most basic, is one of the most common time travel plot lines ever.
STXI creates its own problems. Where is Kirk's brother? Why is the Enterprise insignia being used for Starfleet? Perhaps not in story problems but as a part in an ongoing series, not having a full understanding of the source material, led to paradoxes with previously established continuity.
They understood it fine. Those things just aren't that important.
Anyhow:
Kirk's brother was in there, but they decided to edit the scene because they really didnt have time to spend on him.
The "Enterprise insigna" was used for non Enterprise personnel in TOS. Most notably in "Court Martial"
This.
STXI's inconsistencies with the original series can either be explained away because A) they weren't important enough for the writers to care about (who gives a shit about the Enterprise insignia?) or B) the timeline was altered when Nero came through the blackhole.
Kirk's brother? At what point in the story would he have been relevant? Just because we don't see things doesn't mean they aren't there.
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STXI can be explained away easily. That universe wasn't created or diverged by the intervention we saw onscreen. It already existed. If there was a divergence, it occurred much earlier. Or maybe it's a true parallel universe, one that never diverged at all, but evolved along similar lines as the main universe. Similar, but not identical.
As to the current query: You could make the resulting changes so minor as to be inconsequential and turn it into a punchline. I read a Wolverine comic once where he and Lady Deathstrike went back in time to duel in the 1930s. Donald Pierce was left behind in the present and was somehow shielded from changes in the timeline and able to identify what they were. He had some concern about gross timeline changes. At the end he shrugs it all off, saying, "I guess no one's going to miss that fifth Ninja Turtle."
As to the current query: You could make the resulting changes so minor as to be inconsequential and turn it into a punchline. I read a Wolverine comic once where he and Lady Deathstrike went back in time to duel in the 1930s. Donald Pierce was left behind in the present and was somehow shielded from changes in the timeline and able to identify what they were. He had some concern about gross timeline changes. At the end he shrugs it all off, saying, "I guess no one's going to miss that fifth Ninja Turtle."
Odds are he'd keep going "Que?" until he got frustrated and walked off.
True, on small timescales. On large timescales, you'd wind up altering a large fraction of the human population's genetic makeup, since sperm are not identical and any given fertilization depends on very specific conditions which are easily altered by the most minute impositions. I find it unlikely that this would not wind up significantly altering history within a few generations; even if I concede that the underlying social fabric is more durable, you'd wind up with a planet comprised largely of entirely different human beings.
I agree. Hell, just imagine if Hitler's parents had sex at a slightly different time of day. For all we know, Adolf would have been born a girl with a severe speech impediment and a lazy eye. She would likely develop self-esteem issues, and she certainly wouldn't have been able to rally the Nazis the way the real Hitler did. Just imagine how different the world would be today.
Now do the same with even more people all over the world. Everything would be completely different from how we see it today.
That's a very good point that I hadn't even considered. Not only would you see "great men" born with different constitutions, but often different genitalia--and up until about 1980 having the wrong genitals means no access to power whatsoever.
Hitler is the obvious example to use to demonstrate this kind of stuff, but let's say he remains intact. You travel back in time in Florida and delay somebody getting home to bang his wife. A much less important person is born a different gender than they otherwise would have. Now, just think of all the people's lives that will be affected from one simple change like that. It might take longer to affect things on a global scale, but eventually the world will still be completely different than it would have been.
I guess the point is that, when writing fictional stories like this, you just need to make a decision about time travel works in your universe and stick with it. As long as your world is consistent with itself, it shouldn't matter what option you go with.
I guess the point is that, when writing fictional stories like this, you just need to make a decision about time travel works in your universe and stick with it. As long as your world is consistent with itself, it shouldn't matter what option you go with.
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