Altering the past to change the present
- Thread starter Crewman47
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^^Yeah, they were saying that in the 70's.
Listen very closely to Spock's lesson before the bullies show up - I don't know for sure if it's in the final film, but in the script the computer asks him "What is the central assumption of Quantum Cosmology?", and Spock replies "Everything that can happen does happen, in equal and parallel universes."
Listen very closely to Spock's lesson before the bullies show up - I don't know for sure if it's in the final film, but in the script the computer asks him "What is the central assumption of Quantum Cosmology?", and Spock replies "Everything that can happen does happen, in equal and parallel universes."
BTW the James R. Kirk deal was explained in a new novel pre "Where no Man" according to Itan magazines recent issue. Sorry Titan magazine)
I do have an idea called Timeline detachment theory. The enterprise at warp breakaway maintains memory of past events during the process. It beams a character at warp (homing in on its previous transporter beam. Once "outside" the pilot remembers nothing, and the earlier timeline actually is now torn away from the universe, so he no longer sees the ship ahead. This is like Rose and the Doctor seeing their earlier selves disappear. They alone now have the whole timeline. It is like a trafmadorion sees a human lifeline spliced away and then reattached.
I do have an idea called Timeline detachment theory. The enterprise at warp breakaway maintains memory of past events during the process. It beams a character at warp (homing in on its previous transporter beam. Once "outside" the pilot remembers nothing, and the earlier timeline actually is now torn away from the universe, so he no longer sees the ship ahead. This is like Rose and the Doctor seeing their earlier selves disappear. They alone now have the whole timeline. It is like a trafmadorion sees a human lifeline spliced away and then reattached.
^^It was done differently in a couple of novels: In the My Brother's Keeper trilogy, it's a bunch of terrible in-jokes (James "Raquetball" Kirk etc) from Kirk and Mitchell's academy days. In Q-Squared, the episode "Where No Man..." takes place in an alternate timeline to TOS and TNG.
Maybe time travel is possible for other species, but human timetravel is impossible because we go extinct as a race before we discover it. So we'd have no proof of it.
Oh yea, trek-verse stuff.....I think the entire altering of timelines creates a grandfather paradox. The only real explanation is that each time incursion creates a new alternate universe instead of altering the events of the original universe.
Oh yea, trek-verse stuff.....I think the entire altering of timelines creates a grandfather paradox. The only real explanation is that each time incursion creates a new alternate universe instead of altering the events of the original universe.
Indeed! So few people understand this, it is quite irritating. I have the most annoying recurring conversation with someone who insists that even though subtle things have changed, major events could still happen in exactly the same way. They don't understand how the tiniest difference necessarily has huge implications further down the timeline. The film Sliding Doors did this justice - I'd love a Trek version of this.
...Of course, in Trek, the existence of divine overseers is not just a comforting hypothesis for us mortals who like to think that the ability to divinely oversee would somehow translate to taking care of us after we die. It's an oft-confirmed fact. The ability to manipulate history is there, and from the Olympian behavior of some of the more prominent gods out there, it would seem to follow that the will is there as well.
If you derive satisfaction from rearranging history with your divine powers, wouldn't you get annoyed if lesser time travelers kept disturbing your circles? Wouldn't you organize a self-repairing feature into your precious timelines from the very start?
Timo Saloniemi
If you derive satisfaction from rearranging history with your divine powers, wouldn't you get annoyed if lesser time travelers kept disturbing your circles? Wouldn't you organize a self-repairing feature into your precious timelines from the very start?
Timo Saloniemi
Temporal police become completely redundant in the many universe interpretation even if they have multiversal temporal scanners, no branch is any more or less important than any other branch and it becomes impossible to change time if all you're doing is splitting off to a new alternate reality, leaving the original time intact. Bring back Sapphire & Steel I say.
The different time travel stories in Star Trek just explore a different type of time travel, some of them create parallel universes, some don't, some do both. It doesn't make a lot of sense but it helps develop good stories.
Also, each of them can be explained.
The ones that change the timeline like the one in the OP can be explained by the existence of a meta-time. Think of our universe as a 4-dimensional bubble in a bigger universe. And think that in this bigger universe there is time (the meta-time). When you change a part of our 4-dimensional bubble all events "after" it change. It might take time for the change to propagate (which was also shown in several of the stories). It would also allow for a person to be protected from those changes in a way that allows for the stories to work.
There's another explanation that works for some of the stories - virtual timelines. There are timelines which don't, didn't and won't happen but can be explored. For example, in VOY Time and Again there is an alternative timeline explored with a nice causality loop. That timeline didn't happen because if it did happen Janeway would, as shown, break the loop, so it's impossible to happen. Now, if you allow for objects and messages to move from those non-existing timelines, you could explain all stories like Yesterday's Enterprise, the one in the OP, etc.
If you're determined, you can build a single time theory that would explain all Trek time stories with the most interesting interpretations. After all, time travel is most likely a fantasy that can't happen, so it doesn't really matter how you depict it, your depiction will always be wrong.
Also, each of them can be explained.
The ones that change the timeline like the one in the OP can be explained by the existence of a meta-time. Think of our universe as a 4-dimensional bubble in a bigger universe. And think that in this bigger universe there is time (the meta-time). When you change a part of our 4-dimensional bubble all events "after" it change. It might take time for the change to propagate (which was also shown in several of the stories). It would also allow for a person to be protected from those changes in a way that allows for the stories to work.
There's another explanation that works for some of the stories - virtual timelines. There are timelines which don't, didn't and won't happen but can be explored. For example, in VOY Time and Again there is an alternative timeline explored with a nice causality loop. That timeline didn't happen because if it did happen Janeway would, as shown, break the loop, so it's impossible to happen. Now, if you allow for objects and messages to move from those non-existing timelines, you could explain all stories like Yesterday's Enterprise, the one in the OP, etc.
If you're determined, you can build a single time theory that would explain all Trek time stories with the most interesting interpretations. After all, time travel is most likely a fantasy that can't happen, so it doesn't really matter how you depict it, your depiction will always be wrong.
In principle, the multiverse theory covers all paradoxes. The characters actually do nothing but escape, which is dramatically unsatsifying, which is why it generally does not work. Or get used.
In a single timeline universe, changing the past is impossible because it leads to a paradox. Where did the person who changed the past come from? Greg Benford's Timescape squeezed around this by having the changes that occur made by the same signals that were also sent in the new timeline. Any information making a causal violation obvious could not be sent, appearing in the earlier time as a kind of static.
In Exultant, Stephen Baxter permitted paradoxes by having the person who changed the past come from a kind of limited timeline, one of an infinite variety of virtual timelines that fan out from each spacetime point (aka event.) The agent of change is sort of a virtual particle. The changes propagate at light speed, so they are essentially local folds or rips in spacetime, but not an entire alternate universe.
In practice, the timeline that counts is framed by the edges of the tv set, and marked by episode running time. There are no paradoxes because the person who changed the timeline came, for example, from the time between the second and third commercial breaks. But the new time line came from right before the end of the episode.
In a single timeline universe, changing the past is impossible because it leads to a paradox. Where did the person who changed the past come from? Greg Benford's Timescape squeezed around this by having the changes that occur made by the same signals that were also sent in the new timeline. Any information making a causal violation obvious could not be sent, appearing in the earlier time as a kind of static.
In Exultant, Stephen Baxter permitted paradoxes by having the person who changed the past come from a kind of limited timeline, one of an infinite variety of virtual timelines that fan out from each spacetime point (aka event.) The agent of change is sort of a virtual particle. The changes propagate at light speed, so they are essentially local folds or rips in spacetime, but not an entire alternate universe.
In practice, the timeline that counts is framed by the edges of the tv set, and marked by episode running time. There are no paradoxes because the person who changed the timeline came, for example, from the time between the second and third commercial breaks. But the new time line came from right before the end of the episode.
But that's the point - time travel NEVER 'creates' a new timeline. Since time travel exists, and there are timelines representing every eventuality, timelines involving time travellers exist. Nothing ever 'changes' and time is never 'overwritten'. If the perceptions of characters change it can only be because THEY have jumped into a fresh reality, which should only occur if their perceptions are affected by an external source (see Year of Hell or Parallels). If they are not aware of the changes it is because they are the alternate reality versions and they always have been i.e. it is only the audience who has jumped realities (Yesterday's Enterprise).
So Guinan's intervention had nothing to do with restoring the timeline, she just wanted to expunge the link to her other consciousness back in our 'prime' reality. No doubt in our 'Prime Reality', Guinan was saying, 'Okay, lets head to Risa, nothing to see here...' Or alternately, all Guinan's alternates are equally aware of echoes of possible timelines all the time (or at least those that entered the Nexus are), which is why they are so good at offering advice.
Give me the single reality pre-destination version of time travel any day. Alternate reality theory sucks.
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