City on the Edge of Forever - How did they return?

[jk82]

Erastus - Also Boston currently. Hating it every second. I'm Oregon at heart too, I think I'm moving there next spring.

What's wrong with Boston? That city has to be the luckiest city in the country with every single one of its major sports teams winning at least one championship in the last 10 years.

Lol. You have no idea how insufferable everyone got. I was actively rooting against the Bruins just so people would be disappointed. The best part about the Red Sox collapse was that I got to stop hearing about them a couple weeks early. Some of those people literally think Boston is the Hub of the Universe (google it, I'm not kidding...).

Haha. Beantown is a much more appropriate nickname. It is a small town after all.

Sox is done for the year but now you have to endure all the talks about how great Patriots and Tom Brady are. There is no escaping from it, I suppose. However I am glad that there are at least two people actively rooting against Boston teams.

 

[scotpens]

Did someone mention Boston?

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5apEctKwiD8[/yt]

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But that's the thing. McCoy started in the future - his own time. Thus he had an 'anchor' there which the Guardian could use to pull him back. Edith, OTOH, had never been through the Guardian. She was native to the past. She can't return to a future she's never been to in the first place.

The same could be said for McCoy. How can he go to a past that he's never been to in the first place? The first time McCoy went through the Guardian, he had no anchor in the past and he had no problem going there. Edith had no anchor in the future so she would have no problem going there either.

But there was no Guardian that was there, to use, on Earth in the past. In his present, McCoy made it through because he was present on the planet where the Guardian was located. He literally ran through the Guardian itself. In the past, OTOH, the Guardian is not available, since our heroes are not on its planet anymore, but rather on Earth; the only way to make use of it then, would be on a return trip to their point of origin. Presumably because the Guardian was tracking whoever travelled through it and yanked them back home when their business was complete.

 

[Anwar]

If the Guardian could track whoever it sent back, couldn't it just yank McCoy back?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Apparently it can't do so against the person's will. McCoy would have had to want to come back.

 

[Bob Karo]

Or he's just screwing with them.

 

[Gary7]

They did meddle with the past. The bum is one thing. There's also the traffic accident, whereby it was Kirk and McCoy who distracted Edith to not see the truck. Surely she would have died in a different accident or at a different time. Kirk just facilitated it being the one we saw, achieving the same ends. However, who knows the precise date? I don't think we got one in the newspaper shot, because then they would've known the precise date it should occur on. So... she may have helped a few more homeless people, one of them moving on to recover and have an influence on society in some way.

We're left to believe that whatever changes they introduced, they didn't "ripple"... and affect anything else substantially enough to alter the outcome of everything that followed, including the forming of the Federation and the births of everyone in Starfleet.

 

[Gov Kodos]

But it could be that he had literally no effect on the timeline. Maybe he was going to die the next day, anyway. Spock did imply that the rivers and eddies of time generally end up with the same result unless something MAJOR is changed.

Erastus - Also Boston currently. Hating it every second. I'm Oregon at heart too, I think I'm moving there next spring.

I've actually moved on to Amherst for grad school - reminds me a lot of Portland in some ways. Too bad you don't like Boston, I always found it a fun city. But I do agree, Oregon will always be home...

Boston is fun, but I love the Happy Valley, the sunsets in Amherst are great looking across the valley.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They did meddle with the past. The bum is one thing. There's also the traffic accident, whereby it was Kirk and McCoy who distracted Edith to not see the truck. Surely she would have died in a different accident or at a different time. Kirk just facilitated it being the one we saw, achieving the same ends. However, who knows the precise date? I don't think we got one in the newspaper shot, because then they would've known the precise date it should occur on. So... she may have helped a few more homeless people, one of them moving on to recover and have an influence on society in some way.

We're left to believe that whatever changes they introduced, they didn't "ripple"... and affect anything else substantially enough to alter the outcome of everything that followed, including the forming of the Federation and the births of everyone in Starfleet.

I still think it was a predestination paradox - a closed loop. The fact that Kirk and crew returned to the same timeline they left, would tend to reinforce this. And I'm not aware of any detailed observation of the original timeline (before anyone went through the Guardian) that would contradict it; we may have gotten a few glimpses of what Spock saw on his tricorder, but nothing more than that.

 

[Maximara]

^^ Well, that sort of paradox is inherent in any instance of time travel to the past. If I travel back and meet my younger self, then I should have memories of meeting my older self when I was younger. But would I have those memories even before I travel back in time? Like in the TAS episode “Yesteryear,” in which Spock recalled meeting a Vulcan named Selek (actually his own present-day self) as a child?

Actually, the novel Proteus Operation gives an alternative form of time travel which fit well into the TNG episode "Parallels" that explains this paradox: you can't travel into your past. So that isn't your past-self you are meeting but the you of another quantum reality.

 

[Maximara]

When Edith lived, her "peace movement" is what delayed the US getting involved in WWII, which allowed Germany to develop the A-bomb first. She had to die so there would be no peace movement. Her disappearance would amount to the same thing. No peace movement, no delay in the US getting involved in the war.

The problem with that idea was that as Frank Capra's Prelude to War showed it the US wasn't interested into going to war "Over some mudhuts in Manchuria" (1931) nor over some similar mud huts in Ethiopia (1936). It wasn't until Pearl Harbor in 1941 that the whole isolationist-peace movement died.

In fact, traditional weapons were working so well for the Nazis that it was only after the Japanese bombed the US bring them into the war that the German Army Ordnance even asked about atomic weapons and the scientists were cautious regarding a time table. As a result German Army Ordnance decided the resources needed for such a project could be better spent elsewhere...such as into the V program. Even with this the V-1 flying bomb didn't come into being until October 1943 and the V-2 had to wait until September 1944.

Furthermore, contrary to John Gill's claims in "Pattern of Force" the Nazi system was very inefficient--programs were needlessly duplicated and more importantly incomparable with each other thanks to rivalries.

Sure "City on the Edge of Forever" is still good drama but in terms of history it leaves much to be desired but considering John Gill's knowledge perhaps the Federation's knowledge of Earth's past is not a as good as they think it is.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

it was only after the Japanese bombed the US bring them into the war that the German Army Ordnance even asked about atomic weapons and the scientists were cautious regarding a time table. As a result German Army Ordnance decided the resources needed for such a project could be better spent elsewhere

Maximara, your claims, including those that I've quoted here, about the German nuclear program in World War II are at the very least misleading, if not completely false, depending on what you mean.

I first direct your attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project, an article which contains numerous bibliographical citations in its sections on the First Uranverein and Second Uranverein. It outlines official involvement of the Heereswaffenamt (Army Ordnance Office) from 1939 to 1942. The stated interest at this time of the German military in sustained nuclear chain reactions should not be construed as ignorance of the potential military applications of uncontrolled nuclear reactions on the part of those involved, either among the scientists or within the German Army. Indeed, according to this preprint of Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project by Horst Kant, in 1939 the bomb was stated out loud by those involved to be a possible long term result of the program [see page 5].

Control of the nuclear program passed to the Reichsforschungsrat (Reich Research Council) in July 1942, and while it is true that it was realized by this time that the program would not affect the outcome of the war, the project was still deemed important to the war effort, and it was funded for the remainder of the war.

The very famous effort to sabotage the German nuclear program was the Norwegian heavy water sabotage, which included the sinking of the SF Hydro. Although there is agreement that the Germans were years away from producing atomic weapons, it is a fact that they were producing heavy water during World War II for their nuclear program.

In 1939, Albert Einstein thought that, in conjunction with their investigation into nuclear fission, German efforts to control the availability of uranium ore on the world market was enough of a concern that he mentioned it explicitly to President Roosevelt in his famous letter dated August 2, 1939, in which he also informed the President of the probability that atomic bombs would soon become feasible.

It cannot be doubted that German interest in atomic weapons predated the American entry into World War II. Nor can it be doubted that Germany actively pursued its nuclear program for the duration of the entire war. On the other hand, it can certainly be argued that Germany did not pursue its nuclear program at the most aggressive level it might have, and it can also be argued that the Allies set the German nuclear program back with their efforts.

All of this is completely consistent with Spock's dialog in The City on the Edge of Forever. For The City on the Edge of Forever to be plausible, it need only be believable that, with America uninvolved in the war effort for at least the first half of the 1940's, there would have been less pressure on Germany, which could have permitted them, if they so chose, to fund their nuclear program, which they did recognize as important and which they were in fact actively engaged in, at significantly higher levels. Contrary to the impression that one would get by reading your post, I do not doubt that this is so.

SPOCK: This is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.
KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler. They won the Second World War.
SPOCK: Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.
KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.
SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.

 

[Maximara]

it was only after the Japanese bombed the US bring them into the war that the German Army Ordnance even asked about atomic weapons and the scientists were cautious regarding a time table. As a result German Army Ordnance decided the resources needed for such a project could be better spent elsewhere

Maximara, your claims, including those that I've quoted here, about the German nuclear program in World War II are at the very least misleading, if not completely false, depending on what you mean.

I first direct your attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project, an article which contains numerous bibliographical citations in its sections on the First Uranverein and Second Uranverein.

Wikipedia is hardly something I would present as a counter argument. I'm more inclined to believe Nova (a science Program)'s Nazis and the Bomb
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/nazis-and-the-bomb.html article.

"From the start of the war until the late fall of 1941, the German "lightning war" had marched from one victory to another, subjugating most of Europe. During this period, the Germans needed no wonder weapons. After the Soviet counterattack, Pearl Harbor, and the German declaration of war against the United States, the war had become one of attrition. For the first time, German Army Ordnance asked its scientists when it could expect nuclear weapons. The German scientists were cautious: while it was clear that they could build atomic bombs in principle, they would require a great deal of resources to do so and could not realize such weapons any time soon. Army Ordnance came to the reasonable conclusion that the uranium work was important enough to continue at the laboratory scale, but that a massive shift to the industrial scale, something required in any serious attempt to build an atomic bomb, would not be done."

The author of this (Mark Walker) is a teacher of modern German history and the history of science and technology at Union College in Schenectady, New York and so of far better quality then Wikipedia which even at the best of time tends to be seriously lacking in quality control.

In fact Walker's Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb goes into far more detail and some of what he is saying can be found in a Oct 20, 1947 Life magazine article called "Nazi Atomic Secrets".
"German documents indicate that their scientists did not have correct concept of an atomic bomb" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nov 1947)

"Simply said, that there was no atomic bomb race. We ran alone. The Nazis were so slow in getting started and ran so poorly that they never got within sight of the goal." (Think "The atomic bomb Race" IBM 1948)

Even the wikipedia article under "Comparison of the Manhattan Project and the Uranverein" acknowledges Uranverein says Manhattan Project depended on four criteria being met:

1. A strong initial drive, by a small group of scientists, to launch the project.

2. Unconditional government support from a certain point in time.

3. Essentially unlimited manpower and industrial resources.

4. A concentration of brilliant scientists devoted to the project.

Uranverein at best only met criteria 1 and criteria 2 and 3 only came to the table after the US entered the war and even then criteria 3 was basically DOA. The very structure and infighting caused by the Nazi system made the failure of criteria 4 effectively a given.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And yet Mark Walker's article is in agreement with the points I made. Cherry picking from his article while ignoring the parts that support my points doesn't refute anything.

Let's examine this in a bit more detail, and make sure that what he says really does agree with my points. Let's also see if I indiscriminately and exclusively relied on Wikipedia while we're at it.

My first point was that the German nuclear program began in 1939 and was funded for the duration of the war. I'll simply quote your own source to support that point:

The German "uranium project" began in earnest shortly after Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939,

(...)

By the very end of the war, the Germans had progressed from horizontal and spherical layer designs to three-dimensional lattices of uranium cubes immersed in heavy water. They had also developed a nuclear reactor design that almost, but not quite, achieved a controlled and sustained nuclear fission chain reaction.

Check.

My second point was that in 1939 the bomb was stated out loud by those involved to be a possible long term result of the program. Was this point made based on Wikipedia? No, as I said, it was from page 5 of preprint of Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project by Horst Kant. Who is Horst Kant? He's a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. What is on page 5 of that preprint? References to notes of scientists at Army Ordnance. Check.

Now why was making these first two points significant? You wrote the following, which I claimed to be misleading if not downright false.

In fact, traditional weapons were working so well for the Nazis that it was only after the Japanese bombed the US bring them into the war that the German Army Ordnance even asked about atomic weapons and the scientists were cautious regarding a time table. As a result German Army Ordnance decided the resources needed for such a project could be better spent elsewhere...such as into the V program. Even with this the V-1 flying bomb didn't come into being until October 1943 and the V-2 had to wait until September 1944.

If one didn't know better, one could easily get the impression from what you wrote here that the idea of atomic weapons didn't even occur to the German scientists until Army Ordnance asked about them after the US entered war, and then when scientists indicated that weapons were not forthcoming all work on atomic weapons ceased. Points one and two Ive raised contradict this impression one might get. Now let's see what else I had.

My third point was that Germans were producing heavy water during World War II for their nuclear program. I also referred you to the sinking of the SF Hydro in Norway. The following is from your own source:

The Norwegian resistance and Allied bombers eventually put a stop to Norwegian production of heavy water (see Norwegian Resistance Coup and See the Spy Messages. But by that time it was not possible to begin the production of either pure graphite or pure heavy water in Germany. In the end, the German scientists had only enough heavy water to conduct one or two large-scale nuclear reactor experiments at a time.

Check.

Now why was this point significant? It simply underscored the fact that the Germans continued their work for the duration of the war, and actually made some progress, contrary to the impression one might have gotten from what you wrote.

For my fourth point, I cited a passage from Albert Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt. What did this passage prove? They prove that Einstein at least suspected that the Germans had the intention of developing a nuclear program that might have a bearing on the outcome in the war, and that steps were initiated to realize that intention in 1939. Again, this contradicts the impression that would get from your post. Check.

Finally, let's read the opening paragraph of the reference that you cited.

How close were the Nazis to developing an atomic bomb? The truth is that National Socialist Germany could not possibly have built a weapon like the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. This was not because the country lacked the scientists, resources, or will, but rather because its leaders did not really try.

It sounds to me that Mark Walker is saying that the Germans had everything they needed to build a weapon comparable to the American bomb except only for one thing: leaders who decided to "really try" to make it.

Does The City on the Edge of Forever claim that the Germans could have built a bomb in our timeline? No, the claim is that with America out of the war until the Germans completed their heavy water experiments, Germany could have had such a bomb. Everything I've cited and everything you've cited supports this point. Indeed, your Mark Walker is very clearly saying that if the Germans had organized their nuclear program on the same scale as their rocket program, they likely would have succeeded in making the bomb. Were America not pressing down on Germany from the west until after 1945, it seems likely that the Germans would have had the opportunity to choose to organize their nuclear program on that scale.

But for some reason you are cherry picking from your own sources to draw a different conclusion. Furthermore, you failed to critically evaluate the sources I cited. To support the really contentious points (the second and fourth, as numbered in the post you are reading now) I actually took the trouble to cite material from reputable and credentialed experts. But you failed to notice that and in fact claimed that I had done otherwise.

In any case, your claim that The City on the Edge of Forever is based on an ill-informed view of history regarding the German nuclear program has been refuted, not that there was any doubt about this.

Sure "City on the Edge of Forever" is still good drama but in terms of history it leaves much to be desired but considering John Gill's knowledge perhaps the Federation's knowledge of Earth's past is not a as good as they think it is.

P.S. It is actually bizarre that you make noise about what sources someone's argument appears to rely on, although you don't actually analyze the passages and citations to see what points are in contention and how they are supported by the cited references, and yet also on the one hand you claim The City on the Edge of Forever is bad history while on the other you blame alleged shortcomings in its teleplay on one written later by a different author.

 

[Maximara]

Does The City on the Edge of Forever claim that the Germans could have built a bomb in our timeline? No, the claim is that with America out of the war until the Germans completed their heavy water experiments, Germany could have had such a bomb.

The dialog between Spock and Kirk doesn't really make much sense:

SPOCK: This is is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.
KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler. They won the Second World War.
SPOCK: Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.
KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.
SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.

The problem is how could Edith Keeler have prevented Pearl Harbor the real trigger for the US entry into WWII?

Ever in OTL the Germans were meh on developing an atomic bomb so how did Keeler's peace movement in the US make the German more aggressive?

Sure it is good drama but in terms of actual history it sucks.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Does The City on the Edge of Forever claim that the Germans could have built a bomb in our timeline? No, the claim is that with America out of the war until the Germans completed their heavy water experiments, Germany could have had such a bomb.

The dialog between Spock and Kirk doesn't really make much sense:

SPOCK: This is is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.
KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler. They won the Second World War.
SPOCK: Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.
KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.
SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.

The problem is how could Edith Keeler have prevented Pearl Harbor the real trigger for the US entry into WWII?

Ever in OTL the Germans were meh on developing an atomic bomb so how did Keeler's peace movement in the US make the German more aggressive?

Sure it is good drama but in terms of actual history it sucks.

President Roosevelt moved the Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor in early 1941, as a rattling of our saber to the Japanese to signal that they should watch their step in the Pacific. It's not hard to imagine that, under the influence of Edith's peace movement, the President would have chosen to keep the fleet at San Diego. That would have eliminated the opportunity for the attack on Pearl Harbor. A stronger and more overt pacifist tendency in the United States also would have reduced the motive for the attack, which was to keep America off Japan's back while they expanded their empire in the Pacific.

As to the effect of America's absence from the European theater until much later, you are looking at it all wrong. Of course that didn't make the Nazis more aggressive; they were already brutally aggressive. But, as I've said twice now, what it would have done was make available more resources for them to spend on wonder weapons. There is general agreement that the Nazis spent more on their rocket program than the Americans spent on the Manhattan Project. I believe a level of additional expenditure less than their rocket program to put towards a wonder weapon would have been within the means of the Nazis, if the Allies were not bombing at the levels that they were, taking territory on the Western Front, and pressing towards Germany, which all necessitated immediate and costly defense by the Germans. This change in strategy no doubt could have increased German's security on their Eastern Front as well.

 

[Maurice]

In short, Keeler's living would have cascading effects that would change so many things that history as we know it wouldn't have happened. For all we know, in that timeline the Nazis built their A-Bomb in 1950.

 

[MarsWeeps]

I'm wondering if Kirk didn't send a few torpedoes down and obliterate the guardian. I don't think it would have been a wise move to leave it active.

 

[scotpens]

^^ In the animated “Yesteryear,” the Guardian is periodically used by Federation historians and scientists for studying the past. The planet is presumably kept under tight Federation security, for obvious reasons.

 

[MarsWeeps]

^^ In the animated “Yesteryear,” the Guardian is periodically used by Federation historians and scientists for studying the past. The planet is presumably kept under tight Federation security, for obvious reasons.

Didn't Spock use it to go to his past in that episode? That would have made a cool live episode.