Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsverse?

[BillJ]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

I hate the many worlds theory with a passion it's a nightmare of contradictions. Give me a closed loop any day.

Unfortunately, the writers have given us the 'many worlds' theory for this particular film. Unless there is something prior in continuity that says time travel through 'red matter generated black holes' works differently.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

There are no contradictions or changed memories with many worlds theory. The Quark and Rom in Roswell are the exact same ones from DS9, with the exact same memories, because the Roswell Incident is exactly the same one from the POV of TOS, STXI, "All Good Things", "Endgame", "Shockwave" and every alternate future that branches at a point after the Roswell Incident occurred.

With a shared past and multiple futures, there are no paradoxes or contradictions at all. That's why some real-life scientists favour it.

 

[Pauln6]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

There are no contradictions or changed memories with many worlds theory. The Quark and Rom in Roswell are the exact same ones from DS9, with the exact same memories, because the Roswell Incident is exactly the same one from the POV of TOS, STXI, "All Good Things", "Endgame", "Shockwave" and every alternate future that branches at a point after the Roswell Incident occurred.

With a shared past and multiple futures, there are no paradoxes or contradictions at all. That's why some real-life scientists favour it.

Yes sorry, I meant the the episodes are still correct because they are in the old timeline but in this new timeline if they were to be seen again, they wouldn't occur in exactly the same way.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

I would say that it's a pretty good chance that T'pring survived, just for the story possibilities. Looking at the numbers though - 10,000/6,000,000,000 doesn't look good for pretty much any of the Vulcans we know from later time.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

^In the timeline where Kirk just happened to be in the right place on the right planet at the right time to meet both Scotty and Old Spock?

They're all fine, having survived Vulcan's destruction in a series of increasingly unlikely flukes.

 

[BillJ]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

In the next film we'll see an evil clone of T'Pring who needs to mate with Spock! And is using him to get to Old Spock for revenge over the destruction of Vulcan!

 

[UFO]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

You will notice that there is ONE line on the left side of the screen that branches as it moves to the right. One line, one past to that point.

Yes I noticed that, hence my explanation of why it wasn't conclusive. That graphic depicts how the universes branch out, but doesn't necessarily indicate that they share the same past (instead of their own copies), which seems unworkable in a time travel sense as previously explained. In the "real world" if time travel is impossible then the point is moot anyway I guess.

By the way, the concept of "Parallels" suggests to me that each created universe has its own history going back to their own big bang though that isn't conclusive either of course.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

If, instead of branching the universes seperated there would be paradoxes. Each seperated timeline would reset to zero: None of the temporal incursions into the past would have occurred because the future wouldn't be the one that begat them. For starters, Edith Keeler would not have died crossing the street to greet McCoy and thus the Nazis would have won WWII if Nero's jump to 2233 did anything other than create a branching timeline with a shared past.

ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY are all built on one big corrupted past, and we've seen people from "earlier" incarnations of history (like Daniels and even Old Janeway) travel into the past we know and affect changes without causing big resets further back in history from the point the interlopers arrived.

 

[UFO]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

If, instead of branching the universes seperated there would be paradoxes.

I see your point but its not quite that simple. The thing is the universes do separate (a separate copy is created actually). We call it branching but that doesn’t mean there has to be any physical (merging train track like) connection as you go back in time. How would that work? I guess my assumption is that the past of the universe is just "photocopied" as the present is (excluding the branching event itself of course). Thus any apparent paradoxes would not be causal despite appearances!

Going forward again might not be the problem I thought it was. All that would happen is you would go forward to the future of the universe you created when you arrived in the past. When you got there you would create (yet another) universe. Of course that future wouldn't be based on the one you came from so there is no need for the universe to be able to tell which universe you came from and therefore no need to keep track of it.

ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY are all built on one big corrupted past, ... .

Which corrupt past? Whenever you go back in time you create a new universe. If not, you would be creating a paradox (like the ones you mentioned). Further, there must be one original past where no-one ever came back from the future.

All of these difficulties are based on the assumption that time travel is possible of course.

The above assumes no non-branching time travel of course, but since they would cause paradoxes I guess you agree with that?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

If the past were "photocopied" in a completely seperate timeline, that would mean that in the JJverse, copies of Prime Quark and co from the "photocopied" 1940's (in "Little Green Men") would warp forward to a the JJverse future instead of DS9 at the end of the episode. In an infinitely branching timeline with a shared past, Quark and co simply follow their own "time track" back up to DS9 and there are no problems or paradoxes.

 

[UFO]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

If the past were "photocopied" in a completely seperate timeline, that would mean that in the JJverse, copies of Prime Quark and co from the "photocopied" 1940's (in "Little Green Men") would warp forward to a the JJverse future instead of DS9 at the end of the episode.

Yes, I couldn’t see a way out of that either so I decided to ignore it! Well, maybe they do (creating a new universe when they get there!). Whatever happens they will never get back to their own universe, see below.

In an infinitely branching timeline with a shared past, Quark and co simply follow their own "time track" back up to DS9 and there are no problems or paradoxes.

Hmmmm, what’s a "time track"? It sounds simple enough but wouldn’t it have to involve universe jumping? And how do they know to do that? Or does the nature of reality take care of such details?

Anyway perhaps there would be no paradoxes, but they already created a new universe when they arrived and that would be somewhat different from the one they came from so they are not even on the right time track any more. Then, when they go "back to the future", they would create another one, so they can’t ever go "home". In their own universe they would disappear never to be seen again. I am assuming that even jumping universes creates a new copy so that wouldn’t work either!

Another slight problem is that given the number of branches that occur every second, if all those Quarks and co had to go back to just one 1940s past, it would be standing room only!

Edit: No I think I'm wrong about the above. Each would create their own new universe!

Perhaps we can just agree that time travel is impossible afterall. At least the Vulcan Science Academy would be pleased!

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

A "time track" would be another word for timeline (from the novel Q-Squared). In a multiverse of infinite choices and decision points, it's one route up the tree.

I'm not talking about how real-life time travel would work (IMO it's like transporters and humanoid aliens that speak American english, pure fantasy) - I'm talking about how I think it works in Star Trek's world. My all-encompassing theory that neatly fits most of the Star Trek episodes, movies, books and comics.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

I didn't even see the thing about First Contact in the thread. Something about "Star Trek" that has bothered me and wasn't clarified in the film, probably due to time constraints, was the nature of the Federation in this new reality. Pike called the Federation a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada. Now maybe this was a semantic error on the part of the writers but obviously the Federation is different in this reality than in the prime universe. I am stating this because I think that First Contact maybe happened differently than in our reality.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

The way I see it, there are so many little inconsistancies in Trek, you've got to look at the big picture rather than the little details. Spock's chitchat about the Romulan War era in "Balance of Terror" is incompatible with Star Trek Enterprise. Voyager ("The Q and the Grey") establishes info about the Q that directly contradicts some of TNG (specifically the episode "True Q"). World War III happened in the 90's, didn't happen at all (both in TOS) and then happened in the 2060's. Vulcans sometimes only mate during Pon Parr, but sometimes they do it whenever.

It wasn't the intent of STXI to fundamentally change what the Federation and Starfleet is about. The "peacekeeping armada" line was supposedly added in post-production when JJ realized his film never actually said what Starfleet or the Federation is or does - he needed newbies to get the jist of it in two seconds when the film was already done. It wasn't done very well, I admit.

I tend to go "Eh, close enough" when mistakes or retcons crop up.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

^ Oh I understand that...it just bugs me on a nitpicking level that's all. Even in the promotional material that came out before the film, it wasn't really established what the Federation and Starfleet was. This was something that I was looking forward to the novels I hoped would explore prior to their cancellation. One of the things that I would like to see in a sequel but probably won't is more Earth-bound stuff.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

With the "peacekeeping armada" kine as well as the ships being much larger I think that the Federation and Starfleet take a more pro-active role than they did in the prime universe. Peace through superior firepower and all that.

 

[BillJ]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

With the "peacekeeping armada" kine as well as the ships being much larger I think that the Federation and Starfleet take a more pro-active role than they did in the prime universe. Peace through superior firepower and all that.

Which means that the Kelvin got some serious data on the Narada that caused the Feds to crap their collective pants.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

Which explain why Kirk, with his more Gung Ho attitude got promoted ahead of everyone else. Starfleet wants people who don't follow orders, as long as they're right.
It also explains the "Fire everything" at the end.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

Pike didn't say anything about following orders...he said Starfleet needed more officers who were willing to bend the rules in order to get things done. This mindset indicates to me that Starfleet had become a stagnant organization by this time. No challenges or anything like that. I'd be curious to see what the actual Romulan reaction would have been to his attack. Or if Starfleet Command or the Federation Council bothered to make inquiries. I know I'd sure as hell would just to make sure there were no rogues roaming around or whatever.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Re: Do FIRST CONTACT & "Little Green Men" still happen in the Abramsve

How many orders did Kirk actually follow? Not very damn many. When Pike found out he was on the ship, even though he wasn't supposed to be there he made him First Officer. When he saw him in a drunken bar brawl he got him into the Academy without even applying. It seems that Pike was encouraging a rule breaker. But if you don't know how to follow orders how can you be trusted to know when to break them?

Starfleet being more militaristic even explains Kirk's coup de grace at the end. Finish the job and don't leave a mess behind.