What Setting Would You Like For The Next Series?

[SolitaryJustice]

"Parallels" is great. It's actually one of the episodes I watched again to research my idea. You all know the one Enterprise where Riker is begging & pleading not to go back, the one that is ultimately destroyed by one photon torpedo... what if we're in THAT universe? The Borg IS everywhere and the Dominion is fighting them with every last bit of conquered technology... wouldn't you want to "fix" the timeline, too?

 

[SolitaryJustice]

Wouldn't you want to send your proverbial Worf through the temporal rift that made things the way they were supposed to be, Butterfly Effect aside? If you made that the focus of a story with main characters who knew how to survive, keep their rough ships running, but not a whole lot about the Federation, Starfleet, Earth, etc, but trying to figure out how to make the universe a better place in this huge, mind-blowing idea of going back in time and shutting Nero down? Heroes had a great first season because the theme was "Save the cheerleader, save the world." What if you had a Trek show, who's whole thing was "Stop Nero" but nobody knew who Nero was or what that meant...

 

[BillJ]

"Parallels" is great. It's actually one of the episodes I watched again to research my idea. You all know the one Enterprise where Riker is begging & pleading not to go back, the one that is ultimately destroyed by one photon torpedo... what if we're in THAT universe? The Borg IS everywhere and the Dominion is fighting them with every last bit of conquered technology... wouldn't you want to "fix" the timeline, too?

No.

Are you "fixing" them when you make them more like your own or are you destroying something unique? By trying to fix the Abrams timeline to make it more like the Prime timeline, you are destroying twenty-five years of something unique and unlike the Prime timeline. Something that will continue to diverge and become even more unique. Does anyone have the right to consign all those people who never existed in the Prime timeline or exist in a different manner to oblivion?

Do we also need to fix the Mirror Universe as well?

 

[BillJ]

Wouldn't you want to send your proverbial Worf through the temporal rift that made things the way they were supposed to be, Butterfly Effect aside? If you made that the focus of a story with main characters who knew how to survive, keep their rough ships running, but not a whole lot about the Federation, Starfleet, Earth, etc, but trying to figure out how to make the universe a better place in this huge, mind-blowing idea of going back in time and shutting Nero down? Heroes had a great first season because the theme was "Save the cheerleader, save the world." What if you had a Trek show, who's whole thing was "Stop Nero" but nobody knew who Nero was or what that meant...

Worf didn't destroy all those timelines by going back. He merely fixed the leak that allowed them to all flow together into one reality.

RIKER: This is Captain Riker of the Enterprise. That is, the Enterprise which is indigenous to this universe. We've all encountered a quantum anomaly. We think we have found a way to return all of us to our proper realities, but we need to find that ship which exhibits a certain quantum signature. Our Mister Data will transmit that signature to you now.

 

[SolitaryJustice]

You're right. He fixed the leak. Worf "made things the way they were SUPPOSED to be". He blatantly understood, in a dumbed down way, what Guinan understood in "Yesterday's Enterprise", that there is a certain way that this certain timeline is supposed to be, and it needed to be repaired to, in his case, stop him from shifting between all of them, or in Guinan's case, prevent a reality where the Federation and Klingons were in a continual war. I present to you a reality where the Federation is dead. What would you do?

 

[BillJ]

You're right. He fixed the leak. Worf "made things the way they were SUPPOSED to be". He blatantly understood, in a dumbed down way, what Guinan understood in "Yesterday's Enterprise", that there is a certain way that this certain timeline is supposed to be, and it needed to be repaired to, in his case, stop him from shifting between all of them, or in Guinan's case, prevent a reality where the Federation and Klingons were in a continual war. I present to you a reality where the Federation is dead. What would you do?

You're working under some wrong assumptions regarding how the Prime timeline and the Abramsverse relate to one another.

When Nero arrived in 2233, it created a new timeline that runs in parallel to the Prime timeline. It created a branching point or a fork in the road. To the right the Prime timeline goes on as if nothing happened, to the left the Abrams timeline was created and Nero wreaks havoc.

The writing team used the concept from Parallels to keep both the Prime timeline intact and create a new one. They essentially used the concept to create a soft-reboot of the franchise.

If they destroy Nero before he ever creates the new timeline, they destroy the new timeline but it has no bearing on the Prime timeline in any way. It is still chugging along in two different forms in the novels from Pocket Books and the game Star Trek Online, which both also have had to branch off at some point because they are incompatible with each other from a story and continuity standpoint.

 

[SolitaryJustice]

Forgive my novice knowledge of how temporal mechanics works, but if Nero didn't create a new timeline replacing the original timeline, then why, in the Prime Universe, would there be a Department of Temporal Investigations that made sure that nothing was changed? They're all parallel universes, after all, right?

No, I reject that theory. You can't create a timeline and kill people essential to that timeline and expect that timeline to go on existing unchanged. Vulcan was destroyed as a result of Nero's incursion. Where does that leave Tuvok or any of the other younger future Vulcans? Were they still born? Do they still exist? Spock was immune, for what I imagine would be much the same way the Enterprise E crew still existed after the Borg tried to assimilate the past, protected by the Temporal Wake. But all of his compatriots from the future. Gone. Or changed. Will Kirk still get sucked into the Nexus and ultimately killed? Does it matter if there's no Guinan? No Enterprise D? How can they exist when the past is changed? What would have happened if Nero went to 1945? Would you and I still be here? Think about it.

 

[David.Blue]

People assume time...

 

[BillJ]

Forgive my novice knowledge of how temporal mechanics works, but if Nero didn't create a new timeline replacing the original timeline, then why, in the Prime Universe, would there be a Department of Temporal Investigations that made sure that nothing was changed? They're all parallel universes, after all, right?

Why didn't they fix the muck-up of the timeline that Janeway made in Endgame? They're a storytelling tool. A tool used if they want to gum up the works of a time-travel story. Nothing more.

No, I reject that theory. You can't create a timeline and kill people essential to that timeline and expect that timeline to go on existing unchanged. Vulcan was destroyed as a result of Nero's incursion. Where does that leave Tuvok or any of the other younger future Vulcans? Were they still born? Do they still exist? Spock was immune, for what I imagine would be much the same way the Enterprise E crew still existed after the Borg tried to assimilate the past, protected by the Temporal Wake. But all of his compatriots from the future. Gone. Or changed. Will Kirk still get sucked into the Nexus and ultimately killed? Does it matter if there's no Guinan? No Enterprise D? How can they exist when the past is changed? What would have happened if Nero went to 1945? Would you and I still be here? Think about it.

The Prime timeline still exists. You can go out and play Star Trek Online right now and that story begins in the Prime timeline in the year 2401.

 

[R. Star]

I wouldn't quote STO is an example of prime continuity.

 

[SolitaryJustice]

Is STO even considered canon? I mean, if it is, then ST09 and STID are both non-existant movies. (Maybe we should push for that! lol)

 

[BillJ]

Is STO even considered canon? I mean, if it is, then ST09 and STID are both non-existant movies. (Maybe we should push for that! lol)

No it isn't canon. But I'm sad to see you still don't understand the underlying concepts of the alternate timeline.

 

[SeerSGB]

Is STO even considered canon? I mean, if it is, then ST09 and STID are both non-existant movies. (Maybe we should push for that! lol)

Or for the love of...the new movies aren't getting decanonized anytime in the near future. If anything, they might do what Gene did to swaths of TOS and decanonize the old in favor of the new.

And really, the whole concept of this or that being put in and out of canon is stupid to begin with. Besides, if a story has to lean on canon to be told, it's a bad story.

 

[R. Star]

Is STO even considered canon? I mean, if it is, then ST09 and STID are both non-existant movies. (Maybe we should push for that! lol)

No. It isn't even consistent with the novels, though it barrows a lot of elements from them.

 

[SolitaryJustice]

I haven't gotten on STO... I'm far too aware that I wouldn't have a social life at all. I'm gonna not hijack the post here, but I'm curious to know if it's as awesome as t looks.

 

[Opus]

No. It isn't even consistent with the novels, though it barrows a lot of elements from them.

Wheel or antigravity?

 

[R. Star]

And I'm sure you never accidentally misspelled something.

 

[Sindatur]

Again, The Abrams Time Line, didn't replace the Prime Time Line, they are running side by side, we just happen to be watching the Abrams Time Line. The Prime Time Line is still there intact, unbroken

Except for part where it doesn't exist anymore after Kirk's birthday. You see, what happened is that Nero and Spock Prime came from Prime Future, and when they came back, they changed the timeline. The Prime Timeline from Nero's incursion point onwards was/is being replaced by the Abrams Time Line. It's overwriting the Prime Timeline. They're not running side by side. This universe runs parallel to the Mirror Universe, which is differently entirely. That actually IS a separate timeline, with its own events that only slightly (when someone jumps across) effects this timeline. However, the future of, say, my great great grandson, who may have grown up to see Pike and the Talosians, will now see Kirk and the iEnterprise and a Kahn who is British.

You are totally wrong, as has been said by Bad Robot folks. The Abrams timeline, is not an overwrite, it is a completely seperate different timeline, and the Prime Time Line marches on as it always did. Check your DVD shelf, and you'll see your TNG Era Star Trek DVDs still show the same events they always did,t hey were unchanged the new timeline Nero created.

Prior to Nero's incursion, the timeline is the same, then Nero jumped in, made changes and the timeline split. Prime Time Line went it's own way, and Abrams Time Line went another way, both existing together side by side.

 

[SolitaryJustice]

I don't own any Star Trek DVDs, unfortunately. Money and I are only briefly friends before it goes to feeding the family. Are you saying that DVD covers are canon now, too? Did the timeline split after Star Trek IV? After "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"? After "Yesterday's Enterprise"? After "Assignment: Earth" or "All Good Things..." or "Past Tense" or "Year of Hell" or "Future's End" or the Temporal Cold War in Enterprise? These are all relevant futures, right, because Abrams Universe exists and didn't change anything. It just threw out everything we knew about time and history in a Trek future. So Picard and Riker are having this conversation in an episode of TNG (or a movie) about something that happened 80 years ago, and instead of Riker saying "that was the mission where James Kirk was killed", he says "that was the mission where James T. Kirk negated our existance..." umm... wait... what?

 

[Sindatur]

I don't own any Star Trek DVDs, unfortunately. Money and I are only briefly friends before it goes to feeding the family. Are you saying that DVD covers are canon now, too? Did the timeline split after Star Trek IV? After "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"? After "Yesterday's Enterprise"? After "Assignment: Earth" or "All Good Things..." or "Past Tense" or "Year of Hell" or "Future's End" or the Temporal Cold War in Enterprise? These are all relevant futures, right, because Abrams Universe exists and didn't change anything. It just threw out everything we knew about time and history in a Trek future. So Picard and Riker are having this conversation in an episode of TNG (or a movie) about something that happened 80 years ago, and instead of Riker saying "that was the mission where James Kirk was killed", he says "that was the mission where James T. Kirk negated our existance..." umm... wait... what?

Star Trek already established, way before Abrams ever touched it, that time travel comes in different brands.

1. Any change causes a new timeline to be created alongside existing timeline (Parallels)
2. Time can be rewritten, Butterfly effect (City on the Edge of Forever)
3. It’s impossible to change history/the future, any change you attempt to make will correct itself (I don’t recall a specific instance offhand)

The Bad Robot team has stated, that the Nero Incursion resulted in the first type.