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If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the same.

Guy Gardener

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Outside of time or temporally shielded, either by accident like the defiant in Past Tense, or on Purpose like Janeway in Year of Hell, you're out of range to time grabbing you by your identity and jiggling you till you make sense with your surroundings.

The point being is that there are going to be hundreds, maybe thousands (Billions?) of time travellers making it back to the future from some hop sock colostomy of pain in the past only to discover they're now living in the Abrams Movie Star trek Universe and thinking that it's their job to set right which once went wrong.

This obviously includes Tomorrow is Yesterday, Assignment Earth, the fourth Movie, Times Arrow, the eighth Movie, Past Tense, Futures End but not Carpenter Street since Archer returned home a hundred years before the Destruction of Vulcan. Duh.

Trials and Tribblelations is an odd one, since wouldn't Sisko and Company be arriving in the Abrams Universe, and never have encountered the original TOS timeline?

(Although the Prophets probably know wtf they are doing.)

So, this is problematic much?
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I'm not sure that the alternate universe is described by the writers as working that way.

Basically, it branches off into its own universe at the point of change. The "original" future still exists on another branch, and the time travelers presumably return up that branch to the future they knew.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

Competing theories.

The One Universe theory. Changing time rewrites the universe physically. No physical remnants or echoes. No parallel time lines. Blank slate. of course if you're beyond the reach of the universe when it changes you're golden.

Branch theory a. You go downstream towards the past with ease, but because of whatever bollocks up you've made/committed you lean toward whatever future present is more statistically probable to occur.

Branch theory b. You go downstream towards the past with ease, but because of the infinite realities that could originate from the moment one begins to travel forward in time an individual fractures infinitely and an infinite number of temporal dopplegangers arrive in all the infinite possible universes.

Branch Theory c, vis a vis The anchor theory. No matter what you do, creating how many alternate and paradioxical timelines you will return to exactly the same timeline you left unmolested by by any of your fumbling.

"Sigh"

The very act of Spock going back in time first precludes that anyone, even Nero, should have been able to follow him, if the universe was erased in Spocks wake

OH.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

According to the film, Nero entered the black hole first.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I'm watching the movie right now.

(Halfway through.)


oh!

A flashback in the middle!

Nero went through first.

A technicality.

I was merely saying that it was impossible for them to go through at exactly the same time.

One after the other.

But that's just because Nero's ship had a greater mass, and they're were both trying not to be consumed while playing cat and mouse.

If Nero went through First, then the original time had to still exist for Spock to still be around enough to follow him into the black whole.

Unless emanating fields from the black hole created a natural temporal shield similar to how kirk was immune to changes to the timeline when in proximity to the Guardian of Forever.
 
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Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

The universe is so infinitely big, would a time traveller 5 or 6 galaxies over, whose entire galaxy has been affected exactly zero by, not only Nero's temporal incursion, but every single temporal incursion in all of Trek combined, emerge into an alternate timeline, also? What is a difference that makes no difference?

The details and technobabble have faded, but I think the (excellent) DTI novel "Watching the Clock" said something about alternate realities only existing so far as their effects, overlapping each other locally in the greater universe. And something about the wave form of the universe, which made me think of an oscilloscope.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

Ever had sex with twins?

At the same time?

A time traveller three galaxies over might not notice he's returned to the wrong universe because of Nero, unless that time traveller returning to the present considers the present to be ten thousand years in the future, and their interaction with an expanded (or absent?) Federation is different.

I have wondered if the Galactic Barrier which is fencing in the Milky from the rest of the Universe is actually an artificial construct put there by an elder race to confine the rampage of temporal experiments by the savage child races cutting their teeth with new and interesting technology.
 
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Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I'm watching the movie right now.

(Halfway through.)


oh!

A flashback in the middle!

Nero went through first.

A technicality.

I was merely saying that it was impossible for them to go through at exactly the same time.

One after the other.

But that's just because Nero's ship had a greater mass, and they're were both trying not to be consumed while playing cat and mouse.

If Nero went through First, then the original time had to still exist for Spock to still be around enough to follow him into the black whole.

Unless emanating fields from the black hole created a natural temporal shield similar to how kirk was immune to changes to the timeline when in proximity to the Guardian of Forever.

Nero and Spock went through the same black hole. If the stern of the Narada can arrive in the same timeline as the bow, then so can Spock.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I've always had the opinion that the effects of time travelling would only affect time travellers themselves, that no one else would ever notice any difference because of the branch theory listed above. So essentially, unless your not in any danger if being trapped in a temporal bubble, ala the temporal wake of the Borg Sphere in First Contact or the Guardian of Forever, then if you witness or know of someone travelling back to do no good then there's no real point to travel back to try and stop them, is there?
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

How bout this...

Would the Guardian recognize nuKirk when (or if) the Enterprise discovers it? Or Spock and McCoy?

Hmmm
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

How bout this...

Would the Guardian recognize nuKirk when (or if) the Enterprise discovers it? Or Spock and McCoy?
Only if Unca Harlan says it's OK.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

NuUNca Harlan or ToUnca Harlan?

Harlan_is_everywhere.jpg


Much like the Guardian, in fact.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I'm watching the movie right now.

(Halfway through.)


oh!

A flashback in the middle!

Nero went through first.

A technicality.

I was merely saying that it was impossible for them to go through at exactly the same time.

One after the other.

But that's just because Nero's ship had a greater mass, and they're were both trying not to be consumed while playing cat and mouse.

If Nero went through First, then the original time had to still exist for Spock to still be around enough to follow him into the black whole.

Unless emanating fields from the black hole created a natural temporal shield similar to how kirk was immune to changes to the timeline when in proximity to the Guardian of Forever.

Nero and Spock went through the same black hole. If the stern of the Narada can arrive in the same timeline as the bow, then so can Spock.

So those Klingon Battle Cruisers could have followed Costello and Yar on the Enterprise C through that timey Wimey event back to Narendra III?
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

If Nero went through First, then the original time had to still exist for Spock to still be around enough to follow him into the black whole.

Unless emanating fields from the black hole created a natural temporal shield similar to how kirk was immune to changes to the timeline when in proximity to the Guardian of Forever.

Nero and Spock went through the same black hole. If the stern of the Narada can arrive in the same timeline as the bow, then so can Spock.

So those Klingon Battle Cruisers could have followed Costello and Yar on the Enterprise C through that timey Wimey event back to Narendra III?

Short answer is that it's up to the writers to set the rules. Personally I can't ascribe to the notion of divergent universes branching or 'popping' into existence at the moment of the time travel event unless somebody can explain where all the energy comes from to create an entire universe at that moment in time.

Nor do I find the notion of time travellers rewriting their own timeline to be satisfactory because of the way non-linear time is presented with the Prophets. Somebody who travels back to their past is part of their past - they don't suddenly become part of the past when they make the decision in the present to travel back.

It seems to me that the divergent universes must already exist, having been created in the same big bang that created the prime universe and all you are dealing with is the time traveller jumping tracks. So Yesterday's Enterprise is silly only because alternate Tasha will not cease to exist when Enterprise C travels back. She is taking action to salvage an alternate universe, not her own and Guinan's awareness is an awareness of echoes from the alternate universe precipitated by the presence of the 'time travellers'.

Thus Nero and Spock Prime pass into a universe whose history they were always a part of. They have not 'changed' anything per se although they are still responsible for events with which they are directly or indirectly involved due to the butterfly effect. The same is true of every other person in the universe though.

The Guardian may be a fixed point in every reality and it lets those in close proximity jump tracks to the appropriate universe when somebody travels back. This gets very messy though since each time traveller is becoming part of their own alternate reality. Technically the universe where McCoy saves Keeler is not the same universe when Spock and Kirk prevent that from happening. It may not even be McCoy Prime who comes back with them at the end, albeit it is a McCoy who has the same shared experiences.

Give me a nice clean pre-destination paradox any day.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

I've been wondering about time travel in the nuTrek myself. So if the universe branches then somewhere the original universe continues on unaltered. OK thats fine. BUT doesn't that make any travel back in time pointless from a temporal meddling perspective. After altering an event in the past;

Either A) You return to the future of the new universe that has branched off, The universe you wanted to alter is exactly the same, and you're in the wrong one!

or B) You return to the original universe, which is exactly as you left it, nothing has changed at all you actions were completely pointless.


So how could you have, for example a Temporal cold war? sending someone back on a mission to change the past is pointless from your perspective, your time will be unaltered and you may very well lose an agent.

Surely then given Enterprise is part of the Abramverse canon, this cannot be a branching timeline.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

B) You return to the original universe, which is exactly as you left it, nothing has changed at all you actions were completely pointless.

If the intent were to change the original timeline by using time travel that creates a branching timeline and leaves the original timeline unaffected, then yes, that could be called pointless. Spock Prime still stopped the Hobus supernova, just too late to save Romulus, and did not intend to travel in time.
 
Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

If the intent were to change the original timeline by using time travel that creates a branching timeline and leaves the original timeline unaffected, then yes, that could be called pointless. Spock Prime still stopped the Hobus supernova, just too late to save Romulus, and did not intend to travel in time.

Makes Nero's actions rather pointless though. That said, I was mainly thinking of the Temporal cold war, which since is was before 2233 still occured unaltered ( there is certainly a reference to Archer's Beagle). Seems to indicate the branching timeline is not the way it happens.
 
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