IDW Star Trek Ongoing...

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by serenitytrek1, Nov 21, 2012.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Dogma is a matter of belief or ideology. I'm merely describing what the physics says, which is not a matter of either of those things.


    Actually there's a lot about it that's very consistent. I was surprised at how well it held together when I researched Watching the Clock -- and how much of it could be more or less reconciled with actual theory.


    As someone who's actually researched the physics, I can tell you that's not true. Physics is about building models based on observation and extrapolating predictions from known theory. Our theories of time and causality are grounded in two of the most solidly confirmed theories in all of physics: relativity and quantum mechanics. The conclusions are based in mathematics, derived from the equations of those theories. And while there are certainly predictions that haven't been tested yet, I don't see a lot of argument or lack of consensus among the physicists theorizing about time travel or alternate quantum histories.


    That doesn't follow. No, it can't branch until you go back, but that doesn't mean it must branch if you go back. If you drive past a crossroad, then reverse and go back to before the intersection, you can choose to turn onto a different road the second time, but you can also choose to go forward again along the same road you took before. That option remains along with the others.


    No, you can move forwrd into whatever timeline results from your actions. If your actions contradict your own history, then you move into a different timeline. If your actions promote your own history, then you continue in the original one.
     
  2. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2009
    Location:
    Bristol, United Kingdom
    adjective: dogmatic
    Inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.
    ;P

    This is the bit I don't understand. You're breathing air that wasn't previously breathed by you. You're introducing new strains of bacteria that did not previously exist in that time or location. You're interacting with people, animals, and objects that either nobody interacted with or somebody else interacted with. I don't see how you can change nothing at all and if you change something, that has to make a new branch. It just seems to me that saying a branch only comes into existence if there is a major change is entirely arbitrary. What constitutes a major change and who in the world of physics has decided through maths, observation, and quantification, what that is?

    BTW I admit I have not ready an actual papers on the subject just a new scientist article which examined the existing theories. The science may have veered towards one theory now but at the time there was certainly no consensus and each theory remains an untestable theory.

    Nonetheless, out of interest, how does the many worlds theory of time travel deal with temporal bottlenecks? If travellers from alternate futures can travel back to the same point in a shared past, aren't they adding additional matter to the shared past and if so is this the tipping point of the Big Bang?
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2014
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Now you're being insulting. The fact is, your own assertions here are based on some major misunderstandings, confusions, and mistaken assumptions. I'm just trying to point out where your understanding of science is mistaken and your logic is self-contradictory. If you refuse to admit that you're capable of error and that any criticism is merely a difference of opinion, then you're the one being a dogmatist.


    That's a myth, that you weren't there "previously." There is no "previously," except from the subjective viewpoint of the time traveler. If you went back into the past, then you were there all along. If you created a second time track, then that second track was there all along. As Dr. T'Viss said in Watching the Clock, you can't understand time travel until you step outside your own subjective perception of time -- look at the whole thing as a timeless continuum where every event has already happened. If an event looks new to a given observer, that's only because that observer wasn't previously aware of its existence.

    After all, it's a fundamental contradiction to talk about two versions of a single moment in time coming "before" and "after" one another. By definition, they are simultaneous. It only looks to the time traveler that one comes after the other, but that's an illusion caused by the time travel. If you rewind a video of a ball game and watch it again, that doesn't mean there's a second game being played. It just means you've altered your own perspective to experience the same moment in time at a subjectively later moment.


    Okay -- strictly speaking, in real physics, if you went back in time, you couldn't change anything. As a quantum observer, you're already entangled/correlated with the events of your own timeline, so if you go back into the past, you correlate that past with your own future, and thereby guarantee that the future you perceive will be the one you started from.

    http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0506027.pdf

    So a self-consistent time loop is actually the default. For a more classical perspective:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

    The fictional premise of altering history by time travel is actually pretty much a fantasy, although it might be justifiable through nonlinear quantum mechanics, which I won't get into here. Stories can fudge things to allow for it to happen, but realistically speaking, the self-consistent type of loop that you're dismissing as impossible is actually the more plausible outcome of time travel by an enormous margin.


    They aren't "adding" anything -- they were there all along. If you mean that any time travelers are contributing mass-energy to the universe that wasn't there before the moment of their arrival in the past or future (from an objective observer's perspective), I've come across time-travel theories that account for that -- say, the time warp releases an amount of negative energy to balance the amount of mass-energy the traveler adds.

    Strictly speaking, Many Worlds isn't about time travel specifically. It's about the nature and definition of alternate histories of a universe. I'm using it as a shorthand for the type of alternate realities I'm talking about, those that are alternate histories of a single physical universe, in order to distinguish it from the separate and unrelated type of alternate universes involved in the infinite-multiverse model, which are simply distinct physical realms that exist unreachably far away in space or in other dimensions.

    And I have no idea what you mean by "tipping point of the Big Bang."
     
  4. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2009
    Location:
    Bristol, United Kingdom
    Lol. No I'm not a dogmatist about most things but why would you assume that being dogmatic is an insult? It's just a personality trait. I just thought it would be ironic if you became dogmatic about the definition of dogmatic. ;P

    That said, I think I understand and agree with everything in your last post. The trick I suppose is picking the least worst fictional explanation for something scientifically impossible.

    I was was just being facetious about the Big Bang i.e. if enough time travellers congregate in one bottleneck time zone they add so much mass that the universe implodes and starts over. Since they would all be arriving simultaneously there would be no chance to rectify their error and BOOM. I'm not expecting to see it in any scientific papers or books now that Douglas Addams is dead...
     
  5. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2004
    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    So does this basically mean if you go back in time and do something, then you've always gone back and done that, so you aren't actually changing anything? I find all of this stuff confusing.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    ^Essentially, yes.
     
  7. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2009
    Location:
    Bristol, United Kingdom
    Yeah the past has already happened. You can't suddenly pop into it. If you're there, you've always been there. But with the concept of time being a dimension of which beings such as Q or the Prophets can sit outside, then future has already happened too so if you travel to the future the same rule applies. Time happens everywhen all at once.

    Things get screwy if you use beings that can jiggle time around and create a paradox because technically, they can't.
     
  8. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2004
    Location:
    New Therin Park, Andor (via Australia)
    Of course, that could also be an indication that the character may appear or be referenced in the next film. ;)
     
  9. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    ^For the next film Orci had better prove himself a true Star Trek fan by putting in established Star Trek species like Andorians and Tellarites and not all these first-time generic aliens.
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Umm... TOS used Andorians and Tellarites only three times, only once as speaking roles. TNG, DS9, and VGR never used them at all except in occasional passing allusions. Only ENT really embraced and developed them.

    If anything, Star Trek has always had a habit of inventing new aliens rather than reusing old ones. Edoans, Vendorians, etc. from TAS, most of the background species from TMP and TVH, countless one-shot races in all the shows... If anything you have it backward, and ignoring previously established aliens in favor of new ones is part of the decades-long tradition of Star Trek. It's a frustrating part, but it's simply incorrect to claim that it's not part of "real" Trek.

    Not to mention that it's ridiculous to use a filmmaker's fandom as a gauge of the quality of their work. Nicholas Meyer wasn't a Trek fan, and people seem to like what he did with it. Indeed, many of the problems with STID were due to excessive fanboyism, like the gratuitous TWOK homages. I'd rather see them tell an original story than just give us another collection of reworkings of familiar characters and situations.
     
  11. Villordsutch

    Villordsutch Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2009
    Location:
    UK
  12. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2009
    Location:
    Bristol, United Kingdom
    I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I'm a big fan of them re-imaging and expanding on 'established' alien races over yet another random alien. Andorians were allegedly avoided in TNG because they took a deliberate decision to avoid TOS aliens and because they felt that the antennae would look lame. However, I personally have always loved Andorians and their inclusion in ENT was one of the best things about the show.

    The flip side is that so-called fanboys will be divided on what they do with those established races. Some people rage at the changes to the Klingon appearance and I personally was unimpressed at the suggestion that Caitians shave to look sexier to humans.

    On balance I come down on the side of them re-using 'classic' aliens more often in both the movies and the comics. I'm a fan of the assorted Rec Deck scene in TMP.
     
  13. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    Yeah, I don't understand how Damon Lindelof can say that the two cat girls in Star Trek Into Darkness were Caitians. I think it almost makes the whole white Khan situation pale by comparison.
     
  14. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    ^I think what happened was that they were intended by at least some of the production team to be Caitians but the decision was made to give them a simpler makeup.
     
  15. Markonian

    Markonian Fleet Admiral Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2012
    Location:
    Derbyshire, UK
    :rofl:

    It wasn't mentioned on screen whether they were Caitians. Let's take a wait-and-see approach whether it will be addressed again or whether the twins were one-shots. Calling them Caitians was to please a fan. It happend before, with the question whether Porthos was still alive. I wouldn't take all of that too seriously. It can still be confirmed or retconned.
     
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2008
    Location:
    A type 13 planet in it's final stage
    They're Brazilian Catians. M'ress wore the look for a little while herself in Passage to Moauv:
    [​IMG]
     
  17. Malaika

    Malaika Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jul 1, 2012
  18. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    I'd issue some kind of threat about if they screw up The Q Gambit, but in the absence of more visual Star Trek (besides Star Trek Online, which I have different complaints about), I have no motivation to stop paying attention to the ongoing comic series.
     
  19. Sto-Vo-Kory

    Sto-Vo-Kory Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Sep 25, 2008
    Location:
    Battle Creek
    Add me to the list of disappointed readers. The story had zero surprises while offering no new or interesting ideas. The only compliment I can give the writing is that the characterization was competent (but riddled with cliche).

    However, I do disagree with Villordsutch's opinion of the art. I've always liked Corroney's style (especially his covers) and his work here -- while not outstanding -- is no worse than the "house style" IDW seems to favor on this title.

    In fact, the only fun aspect of this storyline has been Corroney's "casting" of Larry Hagman as the astronaut character and the I Dream of Jeannie references in the flashbacks.
     
  20. borgboy

    borgboy Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 3, 2005
    Unless I'm missing something, is there anything going on with comics based on TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT? It would be nice to get some variety in the output.