Spoilers Coda Trilogy Discussion Thread

[Avro Arrow]

Hi everyone,

I noticed that a lot of the discussion lately in the Oblivion's Gate review thread was starting to cover more of the trilogy as a whole. It's only natural to want to discuss a trilogy after the final book comes out, so I've set up this thread for discussing the overall trilogy, and then the Oblivion's Gate thread can instead focus on reviews of that specific book.

If you are looking for the individual book threads, you can find them here:
Coda: Book 1: Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward Review Thread
Coda: Book 2: The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow Review Thread
Coda: Book 3: Oblivion's Gate by David Mack Review Thread

Please be aware that this is a spoiler thread for the entire trilogy, so there may be open spoilers for any of the three books herein.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Additional helpful link to the pre-release thread:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/no-...-spoilers-for-entire-lit-verse.306200/page-51

 

[Markonian]

I’m glad we had a send-off, specifically after the way the SWEU was unceremoniously chucked out.

Would’ve preferred a Happily Ever After but any solid ending will do.

Memory Beta is due some major rewrites to excise post-2373 literary content from Prime universe articles.

 

[VESATI]

I’m glad we had a send-off, specifically after the way the SWEU was unceremoniously chucked out.

Would’ve preferred a Happily Ever After but any solid ending will do.

Memory Beta is due some major rewrites to excise post-2373 literary content from Prime universe articles.

The mercy of science fiction is that if you can't have a "happily ever after", you still have the "unhappily never was" option.

 

[14thDoctor]

I'm of the opinion that the trilogy and the temporal psychosis that effected Riker and Word explains the events leading up to the first season of Picard. Novelverse Picard ends up haunting Primeverse Picard, driving him into a decade of despair and hopelessness until the shock of Data seemingly having another daughter causes the two personalities to sort themselves out for the sake of her.

I can think of no other reason for Primeverse Picard to act so out of character.

 

[Christopher]

I can think of no other reason for Primeverse Picard to act so out of character.

A lot of us act "out of character" when our circumstances change, especially after a major setback or tragedy. We tend to forget that when it comes to fictional characters, and mistake complex characterization for mischaracterization.

 

[Ben]

I posted this in the book 3 thread. Anyone brave enough to try and help me understand this?

I didn't have a good understanding of what caused the First Splinter or how their plan undid any of it. Like okay, so the Borg planet shot some weapon at the Enterprise-E as it emerged from the past? But wouldn't they be emerging to a non-Borg timeline? And what was that weapon? I'm not saying this wasn't explained, but it just wasn't explained in a way that made sense to me. I went along for the ride hoping it would get restated by other characters in ways that I'd understand, but that never really happened. And since I didn't get how it started, I really could not tell you how Kira's role in the Mirror Wormhole mattered or what the Orb of Time did.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I posted this in the book 3 thread. Anyone brave enough to try and help me understand this?

Have you watched TNG - "Yesterday's Enterprise"? It may be confusing for the audience because of how the episode presents things for drama, but what happened is the Enterprise-C travelled from 2344 to 2366, found an undesirable 2366, and then travelled back through. Though the Enterprise-C crew succeeded in their objective, this still left behind a remnant of the temporal vortex in the new 2366 which the new Enterprise-D could detect.

As Oblivion's Gate interprets First Contact, the Borg of the revised 2373 detected the foreign Enterprise-E inexplicably appear in Earth orbit next to a temporal vortex that was generated from the main timeline. Though the Enterprise-E travelled through to 2063, the Borg planetside were able to hold open the vortex to maintain access to it. Then when the Enterprise-E returned to their own 2373, the alternate Borg tried to blast them with chronitons to wipe them from spacetime and negate their actions in 2063. This partially succeeded and partially backfired. The Borg of 2373 got to keep their revised timeline side-by-side with the Enterprise-E returning to their own timeline. As it turns out, the Enterprise-E's timeline was intrinsically unstable.

 

[ryan123450]

I posted this in the book 3 thread. Anyone brave enough to try and help me understand this?

The logic of why two identical timelines (the Prime and First Splinter) would diverge so drastically, but seemingly only after 6 years or so, still eludes me also. But as for the why of how the fix is able to fix anything, the answer is only…because technobabble. Which isn’t really a criticism, that’s just how Trek always works.

 

[Christopher]

The logic of why two identical timelines would diverge so drastically, but seemingly only after 6 years or so, still eludes me also.

Well, we can assume the divergences started earlier than that, i.e. that the events of New Frontier, the DS9 and VGR relaunches, SCE, Gorkon, The Genesis Wave, A Time To..., Slings and Arrows, etc. didn't happen as shown. Possibly also things like Immortal Coil and Millennium, although those both involve catalyzing events that happened well before 2373.

It doesn't strike me as unreasonable that if a timeline diverges into two, it might take years for random variations to cause their events to begin to diverge significantly. Most of the causal factors underlying any given event would still be the same, so if the initial difference were subtle, it might take a long time for any ripple effects to propagate out more widely, and some things could be changed while others remained the same for a while. For instance, any change in events in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would've had no impact on Voyager until they got home, or at least until they achieved regular contact with Starfleet.

 

[Mike Doyle]

As it turns out, the Enterprise-E's timeline was intrinsically unstable.

My understanding was that one of the Enterprise-Es timelines was unstable.

3 timelines emerged at that point. The Prime Timeline where the Enterprise-E arrived back in 2373 free of any Borg generated Chronitons, the Borg Timeline and the first splinter where an Enterprise-E covered in Chronitons arrives in 2373.

is it those Chronitons from a different timeline that cause the instability. They appear to be created out of nothing if you don’t know about the Borg Timeline.

 

[Mike Doyle]

Or is the Borg weapon hitting the enterprise a Schrodingers Cat situation.

The Borg miss the enterprise with their weapon = The Prime timeline = We open the box and the cat is alive = The waveform has collapsed on that possibility so it’s a stable timeline.

The Borg hit the enterprise with their weapon = The Borg timeline = We open the box and the cat is dead = The waveform has collapsed on that possibility so it’s a stable timeline.

We don’t know if The Borg hit or miss the enterprise with their weapon = The First Splinter timeline = We haven’t opened the box so the cat is a superimposition of alive and dead = The waveform has not collapsed on a possibility so it’s an unstable timeline.

 

[Christopher]

We don’t know if The Borg hit or miss the enterprise with their weapon = The First Splinter timeline = We haven’t opened the box so the cat is a superimposition of alive and dead = The waveform has not collapsed on a possibility so it’s an unstable timeline.

Except in the decoherence model, any "timeline" is simply the result of the other particles in the universe correlating with only one state or the other of a superposed particle. The reason they function as separate timelines is because each one is only correlated with one of the possible states and is unaffected by the other states. Wavefunction collapse doesn't happen in the Many-Worlds model; the illusion of collapse is merely the result of the particles constituting the observer and their measuring device collectively correlating with one state, while in other timelines those particles correlate with the other states of the superposition. So there couldn't be a timeline where the states were observed as superposed; it's a contradiction in terms.

 

[Ben]

The analogy to Yesterday's Enterprise is super helpful! Thanks!

Then when the Enterprise-E returned to their own 2373, the alternate Borg tried to blast them with chronitons to wipe them from spacetime and negate their actions in 2063.

How could the Borg see the E-E when it returned from their First Contact mission? The E-E should've returned to a non-Borg timeline. I could imagine the Borg Earth seeing E-E before they went into the vortex, but not them returning. That doesn't make sense as being analogous to the residual vortex at the end of Yesterday's Enterprise. But if that's what it is, then I'll just have to accept it.

 

[Ben]

The logic of why two identical timelines (the Prime and First Splinter) would diverge so drastically, but seemingly only after 6 years or so, still eludes me also. But as for the why of how the fix is able to fix anything, the answer is only…because technobabble. Which isn’t really a criticism, that’s just how Trek always works.

I'm also curious about events that happened way before this split in the Novelverse, like Soong transferring his mind into an android body right before his human body dies. I don't actually think this would ever be followed up on on-screen (though the idea that Spiner is playing an android Noonien Soong instead of some unknown son is much more appealing to me), but it's fun to think about remnants of the Novelverse that are actually still floating around.

 

[Christopher]

(though the idea that Spiner is playing an android Noonien Soong instead of some unknown son is much more appealing to me)

Hey, maybe android Noonien took on the alias Altan Inigo Soong. It makes more sense than an exact-lookalike son.

 

[Ben]

Hey, maybe android Noonien took on the alias Altan Inigo Soong. It makes more sense than an exact-lookalike son.

That's my headcanon for now.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Well, we can assume the divergences started earlier than that, i.e. that the events of New Frontier, the DS9 and VGR relaunches, SCE, Gorkon, The Genesis Wave, A Time To..., Slings and Arrows, etc. didn't happen as shown. Possibly also things like Immortal Coil and Millennium, although those both involve catalyzing events that happened well before 2373.

It doesn't strike me as unreasonable that if a timeline diverges into two, it might take years for random variations to cause their events to begin to diverge significantly. Most of the causal factors underlying any given event would still be the same, so if the initial difference were subtle, it might take a long time for any ripple effects to propagate out more widely, and some things could be changed while others remained the same for a while. For instance, any change in events in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would've had no impact on Voyager until they got home, or at least until they achieved regular contact with Starfleet.

DS9 also seems to have concluded the same way in the two universes. The Prime timeline and the Litverse seem to have ended in the same ways, with the same Dominion War that we know and with Ezri replacing Jadzia and with Sisko joining the Prophets after learning of Kasidy's pregnancy.

 

[Enterprise1701]

The analogy to Yesterday's Enterprise is super helpful! Thanks!

How could the Borg see the E-E when it returned from their First Contact mission? The E-E should've returned to a non-Borg timeline. I could imagine the Borg Earth seeing E-E before they went into the vortex, but not them returning. That doesn't make sense as being analogous to the residual vortex at the end of Yesterday's Enterprise. But if that's what it is, then I'll just have to accept it.

According to Oblivion's Gate interpretation, it doesn't work like that. By employing the same temporal vortex in reverse to return in 2373, the Enterprise-E made themselves visible to the alternate Borg of 2373. Wesley says that for whatever reason, the Borg timeline just happens to be inherently more stable.

You said it yourself. If the Enterprise-C successfully altered 2344, then how did the Enterprise-D of the new 2366 detect anything at all? The old 2366 persisted long enough to be briefly linked to the new 2366.

Look at it this way, when Admiral Kathryn Janeway travelled from 2404 to 2377 in "Endgame", the Klingons pursuing her did not cease to exist as soon as she entered 2377 and spoke to her past self. Their timeline persisted such that Voyager of 2377 had a moment to contemplate the instructions they received before following through to close the temporal aperture. In fact, the Borg queen was confident that if Sphere 364 could destroy Voyager before returning to Earth, then that would still negate Admiral Janeway initially embarking on her stratagem from 2404.

 

[Christopher]

DS9 also seems to have concluded the same way in the two universes. The Prime timeline and the Litverse seem to have ended in the same ways, with the same Dominion War that we know and with Ezri replacing Jadzia and with Sisko joining the Prophets after learning of Kasidy's pregnancy.

Which goes without saying, since of course all the books were written to be consistent with the shows at the time.

And really, it's not uncommon in fiction to show time-travel changes being selective, with most things staying the same aside from certain variations -- e.g. everything in the "Yesteryear" timeline somehow worked out the same aside from events surrounding Spock and Thelin, so much so that the two versions of the ship were even on the same mission at the same time. (Which is weird, given all the episodes where Spock's unique Vulcan gifts were critical to saving the day.) And in the Arrowverse, all the various timeline alterations over the years have left the bulk of the shows' characters and continuity intact with only selective changes, even after Crisis on Infinite Earths merged several different realities together.