Did Scotty change the future at all?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Remember what I just said. Those things that happened in the film were part of history all along. It's a predestination paradox - there was never a timeline where they did NOT happen.

Don't believe me? Very well then. Prove it wrong.

 

[cardinal biggles]

^^In Greg Cox's Khan novels, Gary Seven is tasked with cleaning up after the crew's messes; he retrieves Chekov's Klingon hand phaser, and Dr. Nichols works in a secret facility that is developing, among other things, the DY-100 ship that Khan and his followers will be found on ~270 years later.

 

[urbandefault]

Ok, in rewatching the movie today I have a question that never occurred to me in the last 30 years.

When they crash land the BOP in the bay, why does it immediately start taking on water? It's airtight for space travel, why wouldn't it float?

In universe, of course.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Assuming that Klingons have something similar to the Structural Integrity Field used on Starfleet ships, it's possible that after the probe drained their power, the hull was more easily damaged by their trip through the atmosphere and crash landing in the bay.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Did the whales swim out or transport out?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Didn't they crash in Golden Gate Bridge on the way down?

Serious historical landmarks would have shields.

Even if the probe was sucking up all the energy on the planet, which is why the Bird of prey would not have shields or a structural integrity field.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Didn't they crash in Golden Gate Bridge on the way down?

No. The ship didn't hit anything other than the water.

 

[cardinal biggles]

They swam out. Kirk had to dive under the water flooding the cargo bay in order to get to the manual release for the cargo bay doors.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The ship was already flooding, cool, i was wondering if how the whales got out was how the water was getting in.

I thought the bridge got hit by something when the window to Starfleet Command's C and C got smashed?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

There's just so, so, so, so, so many braches. Scotty didn't just cause a butterfly to flap its wings, he blew it up. And not to forget: Chekov threw his hand phaser away! Idiot. So what if it doesn't work? Taht doesn't mean you leave it in the past!

And one of their communicators too.

Sure the devices didn't work but you don't think the navy would have not taken them apart and tried to see what makes them tick. Hey maybe that's where cellphones came from (in the Trek universe) of course.

Then there's other great examples like Cronoworx in Voyager where that guy lands in Earth's past and all the tech we have in Star Trek is a result of his meddling, at least that's the impression that episode gave me.

 

[elamigodemiamiga]

an elderly Dr. Nicholas by the year 2030, invents some radically new sealing tech, from a formula he was working on since the late 1980s.... he licences it out to various firms, and dies a billionaire and gives his fortune to engineering schools (what Scotty's history books say...)

reality - Scotty gave him the formula, and he "invented it" decades later...

 

[Green Shirt]

Did the whales swim out or transport out?

They swam out since their flappers couldn't handle the transporter controls.

Sorry about this post, I just had 3 beers and couldn't help myself.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Fins.

 

[Green Shirt]

Fins.

That's the sober word, thanks.

 

[Guy Gardener]

My girlfriend thought that you were talking about dancing girls from the roaring 20s.

 

[somebuddyX]

I always thought Scotty changed the timeline but it was kind of like Back to the Future shenanigans, in how Marty makes huge changes to his parents meeting and yet major things are mostly the same when he gets home, but the details are different. Course correcting timeline or something.

 

[Guy Gardener]

That close to the Eugenics war and the much earlier sentiment for when the beginning/duration of WWIII... Only by stopping WWIII would there be any wholesale changes to timeline, if the bombs all went off in the exact same locations, where almost all the same people died.

It's a course correction the re-alines the events in the timeline to something familiar, even if the actual time line post war is different from before albeit imperceptibly.

Unless transparent aluminium makes the missiles faster, that more strike zones are struck, and shelters/regular buildings and more resilient that more people survive, or a very important survives that didn't before.

 

[Spot261]

That assumes the war wouldn't have taken a completely different course as a result. Bear in mind wars are often won and lost on the most trivial things sometimes. All it would have taken is for one side to gain a minor advantage, or even for the new manufacturing base to lead to the war being fought slightly differently, or a the different economic conditions leading to a sufficiently different environment for the war to be fought in.

Hell, one person being somewhere other than under a falling bomb might change things if they went on to be the next Turing or Oppenheimer.

 

[Green Shirt]

My girlfriend thought that you were talking about dancing girls from the roaring 20s.

Wasn't that drunk.

 

[Nebusj]

I just assumed that they would want to use to use the new material.

The new material might be nice but it takes more than a couple hours to go from a formula to a production line to a usable product. Like Dr Nichols says, it'll take years to work out the new matrix.

Anyway, watch the movie. They install plexiglass sheets about six inches thick, not the transparent aluminum one inch thick.