City on the Edge of Forever-A question

[Henoch]

McCoy jumps into the time machine, and instantly, time is changed back in Earth's past which affects all time and space instantly (except for people in the zone of time protection by the Guardian for some reason; "because the plot says so"). Kirk and Spock jump into the time machine, and instantly, time is changed again back in Earth's past which affects all time and space instantly, again. The Guardian then returns the time travelers in reverse order of entering the machine <first in, last out; why? "because the plot says so">.

(McCoy leaps through the doughnut and the pictures stop. He's gone.)
KIRK: Where is he?
GUARDIAN: He has passed into what was.
UHURA: Captain, I've lost contact with the ship. I was talking to them. Suddenly, it went dead. No static, just nothing.
KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise. Scotty.
SCOTT: Nothing wrong with the communicator, sir.
GUARDIAN: Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone.
KIRK: McCoy has somehow changed history.
...
(Kirk and Spock leap back out of the Guardian.)
SCOTT: What happened, sir? You only left a moment ago.
(McCoy returns.) <McCoy was first in and last out.>
SPOCK: We were successful.
GUARDIAN: Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.
UHURA: Captain, the Enterprise is up there. They're asking if we want to beam up.​

Time travel per "because the plot says so."

 

[blssdwlf]

They are unchanged after McCoy goes through, on the planet. Why can't it be that the rest of the universe is changed, because Kirk and Spock still have a choice, they still have free will, to decide for themselves whether to go back? The mechanism of the past being altered is a two-step process. When McCoy went back, he opened the process. It's up to Kirk and Spock to complete it one way or the other. The Guardian is showing them what is at stake. If it was simply a question of the universe being changed just because McCoy went back, then Kirk and Spock would have been erased too, but that's not what happened.

There isn't anything to suggest that the alteration of the past is a two-step process. When McCoy stepped into the past he altered time immediately from the landing party's and our perspective. From the dialogue, the Guardian affirmed that Kirk, Spock and McCoy will be returned after McCoy is prevented from changing history. If McCoy is changing history then there was a history that existed before, the "original unaltered timeline". As to why Kirk, Spock and the rest of the landing party were not erased they were clearly stated as stranded from their timeline.

KIRK: Where is he?
GUARDIAN: He has passed into... what was.
UHURA: Captain, I've lost contact with the ship. I was talking to them. Suddenly it went dead. No static, just nothing.
...
GUARDIAN: Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone.
KIRK: McCoy has somehow changed history.
SCOTT: You mean we're stranded down here?
SPOCK: With no past, no future.
...
Captain's Log, no stardate. For us, time does not exist....
...
KIRK: Make sure we arrive before McCoy got there. It's vital we stop him before he does whatever it was that changed all history. Guardian, if we are successful...
GUARDIAN: Then you will be returned. It will be as though none of you had gone.​

Of course, YMMV.

EDIT: @Henoch ninja'd me.

 

[Daddy Todd]

EDITH: Would you care to try for 30?

SPOCK: It would seem unlikely, Jim. A few moments ago, I read a 1930 newspaper article.

Thanks! I guess I need to rewatch and pay better attention this time.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There isn't anything to suggest that the alteration of the past is a two-step process.

Not even, the fact that... wait for it... two time travels were involved.

 

[Pauln6]

There isn't anything to suggest that the alteration of the past is a two-step process. When McCoy stepped into the past he altered time immediately from the landing party's and our perspective. From the dialogue, the Guardian affirmed that Kirk, Spock and McCoy will be returned after McCoy is prevented from changing history. If McCoy is changing history then there was a history that existed before, the "original unaltered timeline". As to why Kirk, Spock and the rest of the landing party were not erased they were clearly stated as stranded from their timeline.

KIRK: Where is he?
GUARDIAN: He has passed into... what was.
UHURA: Captain, I've lost contact with the ship. I was talking to them. Suddenly it went dead. No static, just nothing.
...
GUARDIAN: Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone.
KIRK: McCoy has somehow changed history.
SCOTT: You mean we're stranded down here?
SPOCK: With no past, no future.
...
Captain's Log, no stardate. For us, time does not exist....
...
KIRK: Make sure we arrive before McCoy got there. It's vital we stop him before he does whatever it was that changed all history. Guardian, if we are successful...
GUARDIAN: Then you will be returned. It will be as though none of you had gone.​

Of course, YMMV.

EDIT: @Henoch ninja'd me.

It's great story-telling, that's why it's a trope that writers use. The version of time travel used in Strange New Worlds also muddies the water quite a bit. Spock even confirms that the present they return to is different to the one they left but only insofar as lost interactions with the dead tramp are concerned.

Similarly, in the present, in Year of Hell, Anorax's meddling only appears to affect his corner of the galaxy but it's impossible to calculate the loss of future interactions with lost generations. In story, the entire universe was being re-written every time he meddled but most people would never even know. Would decisions remain the same or would quantum fluctuations lead to different decisions being made all throughout the universe?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Still it's strange that kidnapping Edith and taking her to the future is never brought up as a possibility.

A twist contemplated by fandom that Dr Gillian Taylor then surprises us with in ST IV. On premiere night, that really threw us for a loop.

It's great story-telling, that's why it's a trope that writers use. The version of time travel used in Strange New Worlds also muddies the water quite a bit. Spock even confirms that the present they return to is different to the one they left but only insofar as lost interactions with the dead tramp are concerned.

Similarly, in "Yesteryear" (TAS), Kirk and Bates should have gone through the Guardian with Spock, and stayed out of sight while Spock portrayed Cousin Selek, because Kirk seemingly gets left behind in the same timeline as Thelin.

So there is a timeline where I-Chaya the sehlat lives to a much older age, another where I-Chaya is fatally wounded by a le-matya when Spock is a child, one where Spock dies in his kahn-wan rehearsal and Amanda dies soon after in a shuttle accident, and one where Kirk and Bates will continue serve with Thelin the Andorian.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

A twist contemplated by fandom that Dr Gillian Taylor then surprises us with in ST IV. On premiere night, that really threw us for a loop.

ST IV is a good movie, but it had no respect for the problem of changing the past. It was unserious in that regard.

 

[Therin of Andor]

ST IV is a good movie, but it had no respect for the problem of changing the past. It was unserious in that regard.

It did save the humpback whales though. They prosper!

 

[blssdwlf]

There isn't anything to suggest that the alteration of the past is a two-step process.

Not even, the fact that... wait for it... two time travels were involved.

The fact that McCoy only had to time travel once to change the past would support that it is a one step process.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The fact that McCoy only had to time travel once to change the past would support that it is a one step process.

It's a two step-process to alter the timeline to set history aright. That's obviously what I meant, and that's literally in the episode.

 

[BK613]

McCoy beamed down alone. If he had managed to wake the Guardian and step through at the same moment but before the landing party beamed down, then the changes to the past would have happened and nobody would have been there to put things right.
So a one-step process to change the past.
(Kirk and Spock have the choice of correcting the changes that have happened or letting them stand. The need to make that decision is a result of the changes and not a part of how they came about.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If he had managed to wake the Guardian and step through at the same moment

He didn't. It's literally not any event depicted in the episode that we have under our consideration.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

SCOTT: You mean we're stranded down here?
SPOCK: With no past, no future.
...
Captain's Log, no stardate. For us, time does not exist....
​

Your bold faces suddenly gave me an idea. As whatever doesn't exist stops ''dead,'' could Kirk and the others now be condemned to an immortality they never expected with no apparent place to go? I don't see Ellison intending that, yet to a ten-year-old kid the THOUGHT of neverending afterlife can be as terrifying as utter nonexistence. Small wonder Uhura's frightened, despite her preference for agelessness and immortality. So for most, boredom terrifies. No phones, no lights, no motor cars.* Like Robinson Caruso despite the tricorder luxuries.

(*and no internet! Yes!!!!)​

 

[blssdwlf]

It's a two step-process to alter the timeline to set history aright. That's obviously what I meant, and that's literally in the episode.

It would have been obvious if you actually wrote that.

You wrote "the mechanism of the past being altered is a two-step process". You wrote "McCoy went back, he opened the process" and "It's up to Kirk and Spock to complete it". However in the episode it is clear that McCoy altered the history immediately when he went through on his own and did not require Kirk and Spock to complete the alteration.

"To set history aright" was not in your prior reply (below).

The mechanism of the past being altered is a two-step process. When McCoy went back, he opened the process. It's up to Kirk and Spock to complete it one way or the other.

Your bold faces suddenly gave me an idea. As whatever doesn't exist stops ''dead,'' could Kirk and the others now be condemned to an immortality they never expected with no apparent place to go? I don't see Ellison intending that, yet to a ten-year-old kid the THOUGHT of neverending afterlife can be as terrifying as utter nonexistence. Small wonder Uhura's frightened, despite her preference for agelessness and immortality. So for most, boredom terrifies. No phones, no lights, no motor cars.* Like Robinson Caruso despite the tricorder luxuries.

(*and no internet! Yes!!!!)​

There are quite a few dark ideas that come from this episode like being stranded in time, are other Guardians in other timelines servicing other time-travelers (Many Worlds), what does the Guardian consider as the correct shape of time, etc.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

McCoy beamed down alone. If he had managed to wake the Guardian and step through at the same moment but before the landing party beamed down, then the changes to the past would have happened and nobody would have been there to put things right.

That's what the Guardian wants you to think. He's a drama king. But notice he isn't called The Oblivious Bystander of Forever. He's the Guardian of Forever. He likes to see scenarios play out, he likes the counterfactuals, but in the end he makes sure precious History is corrected.

I heard an anecdote from Ben-Hur (1959) in which Charlton Heston was nervous about the big chariot race. The director told him something like, "Chuck, just keep those horses on the track. I think you'll win."

So in COTEOF, I think the chances wouldn't have ended until Kirk and Spock got it right.

 

[BK613]

That's what the Guardian wants you to think.

Nah, that's what the episode told us.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

''Guardian......could you send me back to California in 1965? Within walking distance of Fox studios?''
WHY DO YOU WISH TO VISIT THAT TIME?
''Seems like my best chance to watch year one of LOST IN SPACE in color.''

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

That's what the Guardian wants you to think. He's a drama king. But notice he isn't called The Oblivious Bystander of Forever. He's the Guardian of Forever. He likes to see scenarios play out, he likes the counterfactuals, but in the end he makes sure precious History is corrected.

I heard an anecdote from Ben-Hur (1959) in which Charlton Heston was nervous about the big chariot race. The director told him something like, "Chuck, just keep those horses on the track. I think you'll win."

So in COTEOF, I think the chances wouldn't have ended until Kirk and Spock got it right.

Which implies the city on the EDGE OF TOMORROW is yesterday's GROUNDHOG DAY, I guess.

 

[Shawnster]

How did Spock record the original timeline if McCoy changed it? If I remember correctly, McCoy jumped and changed history, then the guardian replayed history and Kirk and Spock jumped.

My next question, which I've wondered for decades, was why was Spock upset when Kirk caught Edith when she stumbled on the stairs? Spock claims she could have died at that moment, yet he already played the "original" obit scan where she died in a traffic accident.

 

[blssdwlf]

How did Spock record the original timeline if McCoy changed it? If I remember correctly, McCoy jumped and changed history, then the guardian replayed history and Kirk and Spock jumped.

Spock starts recording at this point:

SPOCK: I am a fool. My tricorder is capable of recording even at this speed. [You can hear the tricorder start recording.] I've missed taping centuries of living history which no man has ever-
SCOTT: Doctor McCoy!
KIRK: Bones, no!
[~7 seconds later, McCoy leaps through the time portal.]
...
SPOCK: I was recording images at the time McCoy left. A rather barbaric period in your American history. I believe I can approximate just when to jump. Perhaps within a month of the correct time. A week, if we're fortunate.​

My next question, which I've wondered for decades, was why was Spock upset when Kirk caught Edith when she stumbled on the stairs? Spock claims she could have died at that moment, yet he already played the "original" obit scan where she died in a traffic accident.

Spock sounded like he was concerned that Kirk didn't have the objectiveness to let her die if it came down to it and that her death was more important than the exact time of her death in this case. IMHO.

SPOCK: I must point out that when she stumbled, she might have died right there, had you not caught her.
KIRK: It's not yet time. McCoy isn't here.
SPOCK: We're not that sure of our facts. Who's to say when the exact time will come? Save her, do as your heart tells you to do and millions will die who did not die before.​