The Burn and Time Travel Ban are incompatible

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by Fateor, Dec 6, 2020.

  1. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Well, time travel usually introduces more problems.
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Traveling forward in time is functionally no different from being in suspended animation. It's just a way to move in the normal direction through time but skip over part of it. It doesn't pose any of the problems associated with "time travel" as we think of it.

    Someone above mentioned how it would "change" the timeline, but the only way that can happen is if someone or something reaches back from the future and takes someone/something that wasn't removed from the original timeline -- and that is backward time travel. If it's strictly forward, then it was part of the original timeline anyway, in keeping with the normal progression of cause and effect.
     
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  3. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    That's an argument it's not enforceable. But I get the impression that prior to the Burn, local governments were brought around enough to the Federation way of thinking to self-enforce knowing how dangerous time travel was, also all the time travel capable ships were probably decommissioned and all the information either destroyed or highly classified.
     
  4. Awesome Possum

    Awesome Possum Moddin' Admiral

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    Only to your own past. Making any change to your past threatens the present and your future. Going forward changes nothing since it's what we all do by living anyway. Discovery just skipped ahead.
     
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  5. Uhura's Song

    Uhura's Song Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I think one happened before the other. Once the Burn hit, it would be harder to travel around to get the materials/knowledge necessary to make time travel happen. Especially after that knowledge has been suppressed/destroyed for a long time.
     
  6. Awesome Possum

    Awesome Possum Moddin' Admiral

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    Yeah, they ban time travel as a result of the Temporal Wars. Then sometime later the Burn happens, but since no one can move around or communicate easily, plus the knowledge is illegal to access, no one can go back and undo it. Some people were probably thinking it would be nice to have a time machine, but there isn't much you can do about it at that point.

    They aren't connected in any way and could be separated by decades.
     
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  7. Fateor

    Fateor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    You are forgetting to take into account timeline change immunity.

    Actually she didn't know that final signal happened, remember, it was the one that happened after she left.

    That's highly debatable since part of being a temporal enforcer would be being immune to timeline changes.

    Also it's highly debatable that that was Discovery's only option given their access to the Spore drive.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, I'm saying there is no timeline change if the time travel is purely forward, because then it was part of events "all along." The timeline only changes if there's travel from the future back into the past, causing events to happen differently than they did the "first" time (subjectively speaking).



    The whole reason she sent the suit back was to make sure that it sent the signal to let Spock know she was okay. So yes, of course it happened after she left -- that's why she sent the suit back through the wormhole and ordered it to do that.


    Good grief, way to miss the point. Obviously someone whose job is to protect the entire timeline is not going to care only about their own personal survival. Come on! You wouldn't look at a firefighter and say "Well, I'm sure she doesn't care about all the people trapped in that burning building because she's safely outside of it."
     
  9. Fateor

    Fateor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Actually there is a timeline change when people travel forward through non-entropy means.

    It's just only noticeable to things that are immune to timeline changes because when the time traveler arrives in that time they are arriving in a timeline where their time travel always happened.

    Yes, but that signal arrived personal timeline wise after she left, so it wasn't a predestination paradox.

    That's not what I meant.

    I was talking about the Temporal Enforcers from before Burnham's mother changed the timeline and caused Control to destroy all life in the Galaxy.
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, there isn't. Presume a fixed timeline model like H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. The Time Traveler going forward in time does not "change" anything, because there is only one version of history, the one in which he builds the time machine and goes forward. There is no alternate version where he doesn't.

    With purely forward time travel, there is only normal causality, a cause followed by an effect. Someone traveling forward in time ten years is functionally no different from someone being in cryogenic stasis for ten years -- they're gone for a while and then they're back. There is no mechanism for altering previous events when you only go forward.



    That wasn't the issue. You claimed she wasn't aware of the signal. She obviously was, because she was the one who arranged to send it. Changing the goalposts does not erase the fact that you were in error.


    Uhhhhhhhh.... There were none, because there was no life in the Galaxy. By definition, they only exist in timelines where Discovery did go forward in time to prevent all life from being destroyed.
     
  11. Fateor

    Fateor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    That's presuming a fixed timeline cosmological model, but Star Trek doesn't have that.

    No, I claimed in context of my reply to your statement, that she wasn't aware of the signal's success.

    Three important things you are forgetting.

    The first, the first timeline change was Michael's Mother going into the future, you need to calculate the effects of that on the timeline before anything else.

    The second, that was Michael's Mother using Hyperbole, we know this since she found a planet with living stuff on it in the galaxy.

    The third, multiple groups in the galaxy would have been multi-galactic.
     
  12. dswynne1

    dswynne1 Captain Captain

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    I see the ban on Time Travel the way I see the ban on developing Cloaking Technology and Augmentation research: it's self-imposed. It's not going to stop anyone not part of the Federation from creating a means to travel through time. The caveat I see is that only the likes of Section 31 would have anything to do with time travel, as a precaution. BTW? Time travel is still possible, via sling-shot effect.

    And the Burn is a separate thing. You know, apples and oranges.
     
  13. Noname Given

    Noname Given Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    There is as far as we can the viewer are concerned; because even after a timeline is changed; We the audience only see the changed timeline, until one of two things happen:

    - The "original timeline" is restored.

    - The new timeline continues and is now the "prime timeline" going forward.
     
  14. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Whether ban or impossibility, it's going to get a kicking tomorrow, isn't it...? They need to get Empress Gorgeous back to the 23rd Century for her spinoff show, it's going to have to be time travel in some form... [In fact since she's back on the 23rd Century ISS Discovery, it's already happened, Accord be damned]
     
  15. Fateor

    Fateor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Well it happened, and we learned for sure there is nothing actively stopping people from going back in time.
     
  16. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Any more than the synth ban stopped synths. But who has access to the tech?
     
  17. Fateor

    Fateor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Anyone who decided to build it since it's been a hundred years since the Burn.
     
  18. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Right but how available are the resources is the question for me. I don't think everyone is going to have access to the resources and those who operate under Ban won't employ it.
     
  19. Awesome Possum

    Awesome Possum Moddin' Admiral

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    Given the way it's described, the effects of the Temporal Wars could be so bad that most people don't even consider using time travel out of fear of what could happen.
     
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  20. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That would be consistent with the Federation in the past, for sure. Also, even if people had the capability it could be such small powers that their influence is largely negligible.