A still loose thread.. or, the sad future of Solum.

[mithril]

So while in the finale, the protostar is sent back in time to tars lamora, ensuring it is there to make season 1 happen. But there is a catch.. the original sequence of events also involves Solum having a civil war and anti-federation sentiment, so that when chakotay and the protostar arrive through the anomaly in 52 years, it gets turned into a weapon, then when it is lost a group of vau nakat take warships through time to search for it. Thus creating tars lamora, Gwyn, and the older fanatical version of ascencia.

Just sending the protostar through a wormhole doesn't address that issue. And Solum seems to come through season 2's events ending on a hopeful note.. which goes against the bad future needed to ensure the proper flow of events. But those events, or something fairly close to them, are needed to ensure the timeline works. Especially to ensure that the jaded 'Diviner' and fanatical ascencia exist.

Which leads me to only one conclusion. The civil war on Solum hasn't happened yet at the end of season 2. The whole affair with future-ascencia, the militarization of Solum, etc? That was just the first contact that fragmented the society. the war is still to come. Probably after the federation withdraws into itself after the utopia planetia disaster, Solum gets forgotten, efforts to aid it scaled back heavily.. and you get factionalism over traditionalism vs embracing thee new, over future-ascencia's followers and friends of the federation, etc. the violence of which being what makes Ilthuran and young-ascencia so jaded and bitter that they'd volunteer to pursue an attempt to undo everything that happened. (And thus close the loops on the timeline)

 

[Markonian]

Wasn't it explained in S2E1 that the future timeline Chakotay had been stranded in had become an alternate timeline?
It's like trains. The train has changed tracks but the original track still exists.

 

[mithril]

Not really? They established that the ship was part of a grand temporal loop, with the original wormhole chakotay stumbled into and all the others being the same event connected to a single timeline, creating a stable temporal loop.
the montage bit about the timeline fixing itself still shows the bits influenced by the wartorn anti-federation future. Like the escape of the ship, the living weapon, the diviner going back in time and building the slave mine on tars lamora, etc. Which given the conflict between ascencia's militant faction and the pro-federation "uprising" ended on a positive note with out the planetary scale destruction seen in that wartorn future, is what leaves the thread hanging. They fixed the paradox caused by the Infinity trying to rescue chakotay changing a major event.. but in doing so created a new paradox by seemingly avoiding the bleak future Solum chakotay stumbled over and started the whole sequence with.

Which is why I suspect that it wasn't.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

It's been a while since I watched it so my recollection isn't 100%, but I got the impression that it was an Endgame kind of situation. Admiral Janeway's future didn't happen, but she still came back and got the Voyager crew home early. The Diviner's future didn't happen, but he still came back and put the heroes where they needed to be to steal the Protostar.

The Voyager-A crew weren't concerned about keeping the future the same, they just needed to make sure that the Protostar was there in their own past.