Destiny-timeline vs. Countdown/STO-timeline

[Xavier_Storma]

I know it has probably been discussed to death, and I am sorry to warm up an old soup, but was there an official statement which specific moment those two completely different timelines originated from?

STO ignores major key events of the novels (Borg invasion of 2381 and the resulting formation of the Typhon Pact) and characters chose different ways.
As an example let's take a look at Captain Picard: in the novels the rejects yet another promotion to be a 'James Kirk' like captain "out there"He follows Kirk's advice not to leave the center seat, to move things. It is doubtful that the Federation will be completely rebuild within 3.5 years after the events of DESTINY, so that he would retire (like it is suggested in STO).
Second example, the politics: The Federation and the Klingon Empire are closer to eachother than ever. It is very unlikely the Klingons would change sites (it would be against their code of honor)... plus, the Typhon Pact has never been mentioned in the STO timeline.

I checked the STO timeline and found that the "Path to 2409" in the year 2380 describes the events of the novels, down to the encouters and rumors of a Borg presence in the AQ. The first differences start with 2381, when DESTINY happens.

Did anyone consider that Q&A might be the origin of the two independent timelines? We saw Enterprises from different quantum realities in this novel. What if one of them was until that point identical to the established timeline and then went on to become the STO timeline? Did anyone consider this before?

Again, sorry for bringing up this (probably) old discussion.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Christopher posted a link to a list of deviations last time this came up (it might have been me, I can't remember). IIRC they go back further than the finale of DS9, which is what I saw as the divergence point. The link was a page on either Memory Beta or Wikipedia, I don't recall.

I loved how the STO novel The Needs of the Many dealt with the alternate timelines. It mentioned the versions of Ogawa's child, Janeway's death followed by the Borg invasion, and finally the destruction of Vulcan in 2258 - all "remembered" by temporal psyhcosis-suffering Lucksley of the DTI.

Also, I think the Typhon Pact was actually mentioned as existing in the STO timeline, albeit as a minor trading partnership.

There's loads of potential for crossover stories. I'd love to see someone travel back from STO and create the Destiny timeline, or maybe have someone randomly wake up in the wrong universe one day and have to adjust to a new world (can you tell I've been watching too much Fringe?)

 

[Christopher]

I know it has probably been discussed to death, and I am sorry to warm up an old soup, but was there an official statement which specific moment those two completely different timelines originated from?

No, because they aren't officially different timelines in a single coherent universe. They are separate companies' independent fictional extrapolations from canonical Star Trek. ST:O chose to borrow some elements of their backstory from Trek Lit while disregarding others, and some fans (and at least one author) have chosen to reconcile the discrepancies by treating them as divergent timelines. But there's nothing official about that interpretation.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Surely it being published in a novel that's been vetted by TPTB counts for something?

 

[Sci]

^Surely it being published in a novel that's been vetted by TPTB counts for something?

It counts for there being two different, contradictory depictions of non-canonical events in the Star Trek Universe.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for us fans to treat them as though they constituted separate continuities, as, for our purposes, they might as well be different universes. But from a non-fan POV, they're no more separate "universes" than, say, the Batman comics and Christopher Nolan films are. They're just different versions of the story.

 

[FordSVT]

Yeah, people have become very comfortable over the last ten years with post-Nemesis Trek books fitting together nicely and having a continuity, but STO has nothing to do with that continuity. And neither of them are "canon" in the ST universe like the movies and TV shows are.

 

[EJA]

I loved how the STO novel The Needs of the Many dealt with the alternate timelines. It mentioned the versions of Ogawa's child, Janeway's death followed by the Borg invasion, and finally the destruction of Vulcan in 2258 - all "remembered" by temporal psycosis-suffering Lucksley of the DTI.

OMG, they refer to Vulcan's destruction in the Abramsverse?!!! I didn't know that.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I loved how the STO novel The Needs of the Many dealt with the alternate timelines. It mentioned the versions of Ogawa's child, Janeway's death followed by the Borg invasion, and finally the destruction of Vulcan in 2258 - all "remembered" by temporal psycosis-suffering Lucksley of the DTI.

OMG, they refer to Vulcan's destruction in the Abramsverse?!!! I didn't know that.

Yep. Dulmer (pretty sure it was him not Lucsly) clearly remembers it in The Needs of the Many, although no-one else does, largely because Vulcan's still there.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I loved how the STO novel The Needs of the Many dealt with the alternate timelines. It mentioned the versions of Ogawa's child, Janeway's death followed by the Borg invasion, and finally the destruction of Vulcan in 2258 - all "remembered" by temporal psycosis-suffering Lucksley of the DTI.

OMG, they refer to Vulcan's destruction in the Abramsverse?!!! I didn't know that.

Yep. Dulmer (pretty sure it was him not Lucsly) clearly remembers it in The Needs of the Many, although no-one else does, largely because Vulcan's still there.

Maybe it was Dulmer in your timeline.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

OMG, they refer to Vulcan's destruction in the Abramsverse?!!! I didn't know that.

Yep. Dulmer (pretty sure it was him not Lucsly) clearly remembers it in The Needs of the Many, although no-one else does, largely because Vulcan's still there.

Maybe it was Dulmer in your timeline.

Oh well, they're pretty much interchangable at this point anyway. We'll have to wait for Watching the Clock to separate them out.

 

[EJA]

Hang on, I'm a little bit confused here. How would Dulmer know about events in the Abramsverse in the first place?

 

[Christopher]

^Surely it being published in a novel that's been vetted by TPTB counts for something?

All that means is that the author of the novel chose to put forth that interpretation and nobody objected. "TPTB" in this case means CBS licensing, whose only concern is that canonical Trek is not contradicted. They didn't have a problem with the suggestion, but that doesn't make it an Official Policy or something.

I'm not saying they can't be treated as alternate timelines if that's one's preference. I'm just saying that that's an interpretation after the fact.

Oh well, they're pretty much interchangable at this point anyway. We'll have to wait for Watching the Clock to separate them out.

There are some pretty clear distinctions between Lucsly and Dulmur in "Trials and Tribble-ations" if you pay close attention. Heck, just watching their three minutes and forty-odd seconds on screen gave me virtually all I needed to get a handle on their characterizations for the book.

Hang on, I'm a little bit confused here. How would Dulmer know about events in the Abramsverse in the first place?

The chapter in The Needs of the Many dealing with Lucsly and "Dulmer" (as it's usually spelled in tie-ins, though it's Dulmur in the script and novelization of "Tribble-ations," on Startrek.com and Memory Alpha, and in DTI:WTC) postulates that "Dulmer"'s experiences over the years have given him knowledge of events in many alternate timelines that nobody else knows about.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Hang on, I'm a little bit confused here. How would Dulmer know about events in the Abramsverse in the first place?

He's institutionalized and suffering from temporal psychosis, which seems to mean he "remembers" things from alternate timelines - things that, presumably, alternate versions of himself knows. He's been sent a bit dotty by these (often conflicting) memories of events that are very real to him, but is just meaningless crazy talk to everyone else.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Oh well, they're pretty much interchangable at this point anyway. We'll have to wait for Watching the Clock to separate them out.

There are some pretty clear distinctions between Lucsly and Dulmur in "Trials and Tribble-ations" if you pay close attention. Heck, just watching their three minutes and forty-odd seconds on screen gave me virtually all I needed to get a handle on their characterizations for the book.

Unfortunately it's been a long time since I watched the episode (and I don't have to write novels on the duo, so I probably wasn't paying too much attention anyway). I guess it shows I'm so used to thinking of them as a unit that I didn't really focus on any individuality; I imagine most fans are somewhat the same...

 

[Therin of Andor]

I imagine most fans are somewhat the same...

Heck, Andorians have trouble seeing the difference between Mulder and Scully.

 

[Count Zero]

They're all pink-skins.

 

[RonG]

Regarding the OP, I started a thread in March on reconciling STO with Trek Lit, and the main point was, that STO is some sort of simulated study done by Starfleet.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=117719

I think the two timelines can be reconciled into the same continuity, if one wishes to engage in a theoretical exercise

 

[Xavier_Storma]

Regarding the OP, I started a thread in March on reconciling STO with Trek Lit, and the main point was, that STO is some sort of simulated study done by Starfleet.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=117719

I think the two timelines can be reconciled into the same continuity, if one wishes to engage in a theoretical exercise

That sounds actually very good and would make perfect sense.

 

[Christopher]

The thing about ST:O is that it has so many game-necessary elements that don't really make sense outside of a game, like the gigantic sets (so the virtual "camera" isn't constrained), the way everybody has their own starship, the fact that different people conduct the same missions as one another, etc. I'm not sure how you can even define a canonical reality to a computer game where the same events are played out in many different ways. At most, maybe you could say that the game is based on some consistent alternate timeline but takes liberties with it for the sake of gameplay.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well, if you ignore the actual game, Countdown, The Needs of the Many and the "path to..." articles make up an alternate post-Nemesis continuity that fits with tv/film Trek just fine.

The closest videogame Trek came to fitting into the tv/film version was the old point-and-click games from the early 90's. Everything else includes way too much violence to really be a justifyable part of the tv/film/novel Trek universe - like Elite Force 2's massacre through Space Station K-7 (armed with a bazooka-style micro quantum torpedo launcher) in order to capture and interrogate a Ferengi.