Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction?

[MakeshiftPython]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

So, why should Spock Prime think he should change the destiny of his new universe? What's being set right?

I dunno, saving Vulcan and the lives lost from its destruction? Seriosuly, if this was Earth that got destroyed, I doubt everyone would just throw their hands up in the air and say "Well, we're an endangered species now. Guess we'll just have to colonize New Earth", given that time travel is a possibility.

 

[Franklin]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

So, why should Spock Prime think he should change the destiny of his new universe? What's being set right?

I dunno, saving Vulcan and the lives lost from its destruction? Seriosuly, if this was Earth that got destroyed, I doubt everyone would just throw their hands up in the air and say "Well, we're an endangered species now. Guess we'll just have to colonize New Earth".

But this is a separate issue from making things "right" or returning things to normal, or resetting things, or whatever you want to call it. In this universe, Vulcan is gone. That was Vulcan's destiny in this universe. In the original universe, existing alongside this new one but in another dimension, Romulus is gone. That was its destiny in that universe. And it that universe, Vulcan still exists.

Should the Romulans in the 25th century venture to travel back in time and make sure Spock delivers the red matter in time to save their planet?

Should Spock Prime make it his mission to visit every universe where Vulcan was destroyed and alter their histories to restore the planet?

Should Kirk and Spock have responded to the planet-eating doomsday machine by going back in time to save the billions of beings it killed on planets it destroyed?

Restoring a reality that's broken is one thing. Altering one that isn't is another thing entirely.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

All I'm going to say that if the characters ever expressed that it was pointless to try to go back in time and save their world because "there's nothing to set right", it would make them appear callous and come off as a bunch of assholes I don't call heroes. You make a good point about the planet killer aftermath, and maybe that's something they also should have fixed since they had the ability to time travel and would actually use that technique when going back to save Earth in THE VOYAGE HOME. It would be so unsatisfying to just have Kirk and co not bother doing anything because they believe it was "destined" for destruction or whatever bullshit.

I'm glad ST09 at least doesn't have the characters saying something repugnant like "it's the planet's destiny in our universe", they just leave it up in the air instead.

 

[DonIago]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

Witness the start of the Temporal Cold War.

 

[Franklin]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

All I'm going to say that if the characters ever expressed that it was pointless to try to go back in time and save their world because "there's nothing to set right", it would make them appear callous and come off as a bunch of assholes I don't call heroes. You make a good point about the planet killer aftermath, and maybe that's something they also should have fixed since they had the ability to time travel and would actually use that technique when going back to save Earth in THE VOYAGE HOME. It would be so unsatisfying to just have Kirk and co not bother doing anything because they believe it was "destined" for destruction or whatever bullshit.

I'm glad ST09 at least doesn't have the characters saying something repugnant like "it's the planet's destiny in our universe", they just leave it up in the air instead.

I guess it would be like a temporal prime directive, because, "it's the planet's destiny," was often the excuse for inaction by Picard in TNG and even Pike in STID.

And where would the line be drawn on making such changes? In TWOK, after having warp power restored, why wouldn't Kirk just fire the Enterprise up, slingshot around a star, and go back to his first meeting the Reliant and do things right that time?

Witness the start of the Temporal Cold War.

 

[Nebusj]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

Restoring a reality that's broken is one thing. Altering one that isn't is another thing entirely.

How might one have knowledge of whether one's reality is broken or not?

 

[Oso Blanco]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

In ST09, there are TWO SEPARATE universes: the one Spock and Nero came from, and the new one created by Nero.

There is the original timeline and the one where Nero messed things up ... how is that any different from all the other time travel episodes/movies we ever saw? The Borg created a new timeline in First Contact, but Picard and his crew restored the original timeline. The same can be done here, by stopping Nero from interfering with history!

Restoring a reality that's broken is one thing. Altering one that isn't is another thing entirely.

The reality we're watching in nuTrek IS broken and it NEEDS to be restored!

 

[Ryan8bit]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

In "City", what happened wasn't supposed to happen.

Neither was what happened to Vulcan.

And I'm not sure how time travel can both alter futures and create new timelines. The two methods coexisting doesn't really make that much sense. Why would any time travel event cause one or the other? It's not as if Star Trek has really had the most harmonious treatment of time travel anyways though.

Not doing that has nothing to do with Spock not caring, and everything to do with playing God. I'm sure Picard and the surviving Romulans wish they could go back in time and see to it that Spock Prime succeeds in saving Romulus. Same thing. They would be playing God in their own timeline.

No, it's not playing god any more than traveling back in time to get some whales is. The problem with willful time travel is that once it's established as a possibility, many other stories suffer from that. It's like a drama suck unless some extreme limitations are placed on it. If you have catastrophes that can be undone on a whim, then why not do so? That above all is why willful time travel stories should be avoided.

When the Narada (and Spock) went back in time, the timeline they left continued to exist.

I'm assuming this is based on comics, novels, or something the writers said?

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

In "City", what happened wasn't supposed to happen.

Trek XI wasn't supposed to happen either!

When McCoy jumped back into time, the timeline they all lived in ceased to exist as it was ...

This is just convenience / incomsistency of writing / conjecture on the part of the characters, though, and not what "really" happened. NuSpock has absolutely no clue whether or not the old timeline "still exists." If it's inaccessible, it might as well be gone.

Changing an event in history = changing the future.

 

[DonIago]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

Maybe he'll compare his quantum signature to that of the rest of the timeline he's in and find out.

 

[Franklin]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

There are different sci-fi flavors of time travel, and Orci and Kurtzman invoked something Trek hadn't seen, before. Trek tended to live by, "change event = change future." Therefore, there was the need to "correct" things. What they did was, "change event = alternate or new timeline."

Orci and Kurtzman said the alternate reality branched off the prime reality when the Narada appeared, and then it parallels the prime reality. In other words, the event that thrust Nero and Spock Prime back into time created an entirely new reality, it didn't change the prime one. Both exist. Nothing was changed, but something new was created. There was "the next day, 2233 in the prime universe" and "the next day, 2233 in the alternate universe." Both are very different days. Frankly, it was beautiful way to have one's cake and eat it, too, and it fits in with established theories of multi-verses and time travel. They really didn't just pull the idea out of their noses. Some folks may think their hack writers, but there's evidence of pretty sound thinking if one is willing to look hard enough for it.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

In other words, the event that thrust Nero and Spock Prime back into time created an entirely new reality, it didn't change the prime one. Both exist.

But why? Why is it that this time changes to the past do not alter the future and instead create something new? How do we know that events previously depicted in Star Trek didn't also create new branches instead of just altering the future? How is it that Spock, being the same guy involved in several issues of restoring the timeline, knows that this is somehow different and not worthy of restoration?

There really aren't in-universe answers to these.

 

[BigJake]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

But this is a separate issue from making things "right" or returning things to normal, or resetting things, or whatever you want to call it. In this universe, Vulcan is gone. That was Vulcan's destiny in this universe.

Nevertheless I hardly think it would be implausible that some Vulcans should come not to accept that answer and want to change it. Whether the "alternate reality" is changeable or not or "destined" or not would affect the dynamics of the plot, but it's still a perfectly plausible story idea.

(Personally I think "that was Vulcan's destiny" is kind of a cop-out and would not want to see that used as the answer to our hypothetical Vulcan time-pirates.)

 

[2takesfrakes]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

Carol Marcus will go back in time with ENTERPRISE and her Torpedo of Magic and set the Romulan star to rights, or whatever the balls Spock was fiddling with, when he pissed Nero off and started the whole Blowing Up Vulcan for Revenge business.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

There are different sci-fi flavors of time travel, and Orci and Kurtzman invoked something Trek hadn't seen, before. Trek tended to live by, "change event = change future." Therefore, there was the need to "correct" things. What they did was, "change event = alternate or new timeline."

What Orci and Kurtzman did was adopt Everett's "many worlds hypothesis," which is a way of explaining what happens to quantum superposition states when they're measured, and applied it to the story. The short of it is (in re: Schrodinger's cat): the cat isn't "both alive and dead" before you check, but rather is *always* alive in one universe, and always dead in a second parallel one. There is a probability that you will "transition" to one universe or the other when you open the box to see the cat, but never a probability that the cat is both alive and dead. This is hardly science fact, however, but merely one way of explaining something we don't understand in physics.

The stretch is carrying the idea to classical events (giant Romulan ships coming back in time), not quantum ones.

 

[BigJake]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

^ This is, incidentally, something Trek has seen before.

 

[Search4]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

It's easy to stop Nero.

Go back and tell Spock to ignite the red matter the moment he comes out of the black hole. Nero may be swallowed, or may survive, and has a ship that can wreck some havoc, but no red matter = Vulcan survives. Period.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

And where would the line be drawn on making such changes? In TWOK, after having warp power restored, why wouldn't Kirk just fire the Enterprise up, slingshot around a star, and go back to his first meeting the Reliant and do things right that time?

Or how about the planets Nomad sterilized, or the ones the Amoeba destroyed, or the people that died on Deneva, or Cestus III, how about stopping the Doomsday Machine before it kills the Constellations crew.

Honestly it seems hypocritical to say the Vulcans are worth saving while writing off the one off species as disposable.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

This whole debate only underlines why I think this film should have been a full on reboot with no connections with the previous iterations of Trek. You take Spock Prime and time travel out of the equation, then I can see Vulcan being destroyed without making me think there has to be a character thinking of time traveling to save the planet since in a reboot nobody has ever time traveled.

I feel this whole business of "alternate reality" was merely just a way of trying to appease hardcore Trekkies that their "Prime Universe" still exists and is not invalidated, especially when bringing in Spock Prime. It's all fan service there. I would have been much more appreciative of a full on reboot because all of my issues would have been done away with a simple "it's a completely different take like Ron Moore's BSG" as opposed to suggesting that there's a connection between Old Trek and nuTrek. This would have truly cleaned the slate.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Re: Will a "Hero" try and go back in time and fix Vulcan's Destruction

^ What needs to happen now, is for a BSG feature-film to enter production that has ties with the original, do incredible box office and somehow involve Dirk Benedict back as Starbuck. Well, if Star Wars can get a 70 year-old Han Solo back in the saddle... Generation 80s seem to be taking over the universe right now.