Why would the 'old Kim' timeline be erased in 'Timeless'

[Destructor]

In 'Timeless', which is a great ep that I watched again last night, Kim says something like: "If we'd changed history, we wouldn't still be here trying to change it!"

This struck me as odd when I watched it on first broadcast (many years ago now!) but it's even odder now that the new Star Trek film has come out- why WOULDN'T they still be around if they'd changed history- wouldn't the alternate history just play out in a different timeline? The question is rendered moot when the Flyer explodes (the timeline may well have continued), but still, he seemed pretty sure of how time travel was 'supposed' to work.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Isn't it obvious? Because that "alternate timeline" crap really only came with Trek '09. For classic trek when it came to time travel, there is only one timeline and if you change something in the past then it changes the future. That's the way I like it too.

 

[Ian_Burow]

Indeed. Harry Kim was almost certainly thinking of a singular timeline and that by altering 2375, he would also be altering everything after 2375 i.e. Voyager completing the slipstream jump and reaching the Alpha Quadrant. In his mind, if he were to be successful in sending the right phase corrections to Seven of Nine in 2375, he and his timeline would have ceased to exist the instant he transmitted the corrections. The fact that he transmitted the corrections and he still existed meant that the timeline had failed to change, Voyager still crashed, and he was still there, in 2390, trying to change 2375.

Guess he never read the Myriad Universes anthology...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Don't be so smug.

There isn't actually a correct answer.

Unless I'm talking.

The message being sent was outside of time or shielded from time when the single universe changed, therefore surviving the utter demolishment of a couple decades by Harold Kim's space-mail re-entering into the past redecorating the very same universe with a new history, present and future-history as it arrived, making the future/present it came from paradoxically impossible even though it would always exist out side of time to arrive in the past from a future that no longer exists..

If they were just dumping crank calls into mirror universes, it would hardly require the immediate deployment of the USS Challenger to "save the day" if really there was no day to save.

 

[Ian_Burow]

Haha I didn't mean to sound smug. I'm new at this.

Something like... the timeline cannot change until AFTER the message from 2390 arrives in 2375. If the message never arrived in Seven's cortical implant, there is no reason the slipstream flight should have a different outcome. It is the arrival of the message which causes the destruction of the slipstream and Voyager's return to normal space, which negates the 2390 timeline. But Harry's message is still there, in Seven's head.

Does that make sense? Ish?

 

[You_Will_Fail]

LOL don't take Guy Gardener too seriously!

 

[Sandoval]

Don't be so smug.

There isn't actually a correct answer.

Unless I'm talking.

 

[Destructor]

If they were just dumping crank calls into mirror universes, it would hardly require the immediate deployment of the USS Challenger to "save the day" if really there was no day to save.

Ha ha, so true! The ST09 theory of multiple universes basically takes the urgency out of every time-travel story Trek ever did, because none of them should have any effect on the 'original' universe.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The ST09 theory of multiple universes basically takes the urgency out of every time-travel story Trek ever did...

No, the urgency comes from people wanting to "return" to what they think of us their "proper timeline". Elderly Spock Prime, knowing he'd done all he could for "his" Romulus, decided to stay in the new timeline and help the Vulcans. He, logically, experienced no urgency to "return" to his old timeline. Once the new timeline branches off, you can attempt to return, if you can, but how would you ever know it's the right one? And this concept was introduced in "Parallels" (TNG), not by JJ's writers. And it's based on current scientific thinking.

The old "Yesteryear" TAS episode is a fun one to try and work out, because the timeline changes while Kirk, Spock and Erickson are in the Guardian of Forever but, seemingly, only Spock returns to an almost-familiar timeline, this time one where his pet sehlat died too early. His Kirk and Erickson, though, are permanently left behind with Thelin the Andorian.

 

[spot_loves_data]

If we used the "one timeline" storytelling mode for ST09, should SpockPrime vanish at some point? Planet Vulcan has been sucked into a black hole. Therefore, engineers on Vulcan couldn't have created SpockPrime's "jellyfish" ship 100 years later (or however long it was). Then again, SpockPrime wasn't explicitly killed in the time travel/reshuffle of the past.

 

[Therin of Andor]

If we used the "one timeline" storytelling mode for ST09, should SpockPrime vanish at some point?

Wasn't the fading/vanishing thing in time travel stories only introduced popularly in "Back to the Future"?

For me, the definitive time travel science fiction novel is still David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself". I don't want to give away the plot by revealing how Gerrold deals with the multiple timeline thingie, but it's well worth seeking out. It's also an excellent "coming of age" novel for older "young adults". It was a novel that really spoke to me. Eerie, funny, bittersweet. A page-turner.

 

[spot_loves_data]

If we used the "one timeline" storytelling mode for ST09, should SpockPrime vanish at some point?

Wasn't the fading/vanishing thing in time travel stories only introduced popularly in "Back to the Future"?

I didn't mean to specify a visual effect. I meant "cease to exist" like you have in a lot of Trek time travel, Harry Kim and co. in Timeless being one example. But yeah, Back to the Future probably was the first to use a semi-transparent person to indicate time travel/changing the past. Well, at least that I can remember.

For me, the definitive time travel science fiction novel is still David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself".

Sounds interesting, will check it out.

 

[Timewalker]

Haha I didn't mean to sound smug. I'm new at this.

Something like... the timeline cannot change until AFTER the message from 2390 arrives in 2375. If the message never arrived in Seven's cortical implant, there is no reason the slipstream flight should have a different outcome. It is the arrival of the message which causes the destruction of the slipstream and Voyager's return to normal space, which negates the 2390 timeline. But Harry's message is still there, in Seven's head.

Does that make sense? Ish?

Also check out Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. One basic tenet of changing/fixing history in that series is that just because you know you will/have succeed(ed), that doesn't mean you don't have to go through the steps to get there.

So in Voyager's case, the future isn't altered the moment the message is relayed to Seven; she still has to tell the others about it and they have to follow the instructions. To skip any of these steps would result in failure again.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Cause and effect starting from a prime movement resulting in definitive change or fracture into an unspecified number of new universes existing in parallel and skew to all pre-existing universes.

In (DS9) Past Tense, time in the present didn't change around the temporally protected Defiant till after/as Gabriel Bell died in the past, which was hours after Ben Sisko arrived in the past, but then you have something like (Voy) Time and Again where once Janeway in the past Saves that planet, she vanishes, and Voyager a day later marches past never to consider a visit at all.

SPOCK: You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold. To the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party.
UHURA: An alternate reality?
SPOCK: Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three.

So I looked up continuum just to make sure the word meant what I thought it meant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum

Abram's used the language to describe the single universe theory about a single universe, not branch theory about the multiverse.

The universe changed. It didn't split.

(Thinking about Blackjack the card game a little..)

Parallels was about Quantum Realities. All those universes had different Quantum Signatures, so unless the quantum signatures of universe change every moment time splits into an infinite new universes, it more likely that all those (mirror?) universe(s) were created with the Big Bang.

(Now quote that Boy Who Could Fly from Good Shepherd. I dare you.)

 

[You_Will_Fail]

No, the urgency comes from people wanting to "return" to what they think of us their "proper timeline".

That's pretty lame in my opinion, I much prefer the normal approach to time travel we see in Trek

And this concept was introduced in "Parallels" (TNG), not by JJ's writers. And it's based on current scientific thinking.

No, the concept of parallel universes was introduced in that episode. That's not related at all to the different "timestreams" concept created for Trek '09. Changing events in the past would not "create" a new universe like in Trek '09, it would simply change the universe you're in.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Abram's used the language to describe the single universe theory about a single universe, not branch theory about the multiverse.

The universe changed. It didn't split.

No matter what word ended up in the script, long before the film opened, Bob Orci told us to "think 'Parallels'."

No, the concept of parallel universes was introduced in that episode. That's not related at all to the different "timestreams". Changing time would not "create" a new universe like in Trek '09, it would simply change the universe you're in.

I'm glad you're so certain, but that's not what the writers of JJ's movie believe.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Star Trek '09 told us that changing history *creates* new universes.
"Parallels" simply introduced us to the idea that there are other worlds/universes out extremely similar to ours but where things have turned out slightly differently.

There's a huge difference and Orci and Kurtzman trying to link Star Trek '09 with "Parallels" simply because they used the same phrase is kind of desperate.

 

[Guy Gardener]

"No matter what word ended up in the script"?

Have we met?

 

[Therin of Andor]

"Parallels" simply introduced us to the idea that there are other worlds/universes out extremely similar to ours but where things have turned out slightly differently.

Yep, Each one perhaps created by someone's time traveling "sliding door" moment. Such as Nero destroying the Kelvin.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We have no idea how or why those universes were created.

TOS Mirror Mirror, and the subsequent episodes of DS9 didn't seem to be about time travel, and neither did sliders.