Do you want ongoing novels on the Kelvin Universe

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Yes, I believe he did. And he was quite aghast to find that some fans were claiming that the Kelvinverse was always different, even before Nero showed up.

(Which, I admit, makes much more logical sense than Pegg's attempt at explanation. If Pegg had simply gone with that version - i.e. "Kelvin" was a pre-existing alternate universe - I'd have no problem with anything he said. )

 

[Christopher]

@Christopher , didn't you used to vociferously argue that the pre-2333 past of the Kelvin timeline was the same as the past of the Prime timeline?

Not as a personal belief, merely as a clarification of what was stated to be the case by the people involved with the films -- that they intended it to be the same. Reporting a thing is not the same as endorsing it. Honestly, I never felt that model adequately explained some of the discrepancies we saw, but that was the officially favored model, to all indications, so I uneasily wrote them off as differences in artistic interpretation.

But now there have been some changes in the production team of the movies, so the old intentions aren't necessarily binding anymore. We've been presented with a revised model that evidently comes from the Okudas and has been endorsed by Simon Pegg, and it's reasonable to expect that future filmmakers may embrace that model, because it gives them greater leeway. So it stands to reason that this is the model that will be "true" going forward. It's actually a better model than the old one, in terms of justifying the movies' changes and in terms of giving future filmmakers creative freedom. It's a pretty good compromise between the official model that the timelines branched in 2233 and the fan/comics model that they were separate all along; it still uses Nero's arrival in 2233 as the triggering event of the timeline divergence, but introduces the innovative notion that its changes could propagate in both directions, so that things pre-2233 can be different if the movies need them to be, but mostly the same otherwise. So it's not a rejection of the original theory, merely a refinement of it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Are you saying that if Chris Pine Kirk looked into historical records, he'd see Sisko's face as Gabriel Bell?

Actually, yes, I am saying exactly that. For the same reason that nuKirk and his crew could theoretically find Data's head underneath San Francisco.

Because the Kelvin and prime timelines are both possible futures. Thus anything, or anyone, from those timelines can travel back to a point prior to the divergence (2233), and even meet each other. It's exactly like a road that diverges into two "forks": move backwards along those forks, and people from either one can meet in the original.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

And frankly any aesthetic differences between prime and alternate Enterprises, etc, can be explained in-universe by the butterfly effect. Starfleet ramped up technological advances so they wouldn't be caught unawares. Our own lives are infinitely different than they could have been thanks to things we don't even know about or think of.

 

[WebLurker]

Actually, yes, I am saying exactly that. For the same reason that nuKirk and his crew could theoretically find Data's head underneath San Francisco.

Because the Kelvin and prime timelines are both possible futures. Thus anything, or anyone, from those timelines can travel back to a point prior to the divergence (2233), and even meet each other. It's exactly like a road that diverges into two "forks": move backwards along those forks, and people from either one can meet in the original.

I'd disagree, if the Kelvin timeline rippled the future that the original causes of those events never happened, then the timeline would follow the original course.

Not as a personal belief, merely as a clarification of what was stated to be the case by the people involved with the films -- that they intended it to be the same. Reporting a thing is not the same as endorsing it. Honestly, I never felt that model adequately explained some of the discrepancies we saw, but that was the officially favored model, to all indications, so I uneasily wrote them off as differences in artistic interpretation.

But now there have been some changes in the production team of the movies, so the old intentions aren't necessarily binding anymore. We've been presented with a revised model that evidently comes from the Okudas and has been endorsed by Simon Pegg, and it's reasonable to expect that future filmmakers may embrace that model, because it gives them greater leeway. So it stands to reason that this is the model that will be "true" going forward. It's actually a better model than the old one, in terms of justifying the movies' changes and in terms of giving future filmmakers creative freedom. It's a pretty good compromise between the official model that the timelines branched in 2233 and the fan/comics model that they were separate all along; it still uses Nero's arrival in 2233 as the triggering event of the timeline divergence, but introduces the innovative notion that its changes could propagate in both directions, so that things pre-2233 can be different if the movies need them to be, but mostly the same otherwise. So it's not a rejection of the original theory, merely a refinement of it.

I do have two questions about this model:

I'm sure I've heard a suggestion of how before (and I'm sorry for not remembering), but how would events prior to 2233 be affected if the actual incursion happened then and there's no indication that anti-time or Krenim technology was involved (the two main methods of changing events before they happen in the Star Trek universe)?

Secondly, wouldn't that open a can of worms suggesting that time travel incidents in the prime universe also may have revised the timeline from beginning to end? I don't think that any of the original stories lend themselves to that suggestion very well.

 

[Jinn]

Secondly, wouldn't that open a can of worms suggesting that time travel incidents in the prime universe also may have revised the timeline from beginning to end? I don't think that any of the original stories lend themselves to that suggestion very well.

Yeah that's how it works. Gabriel Bell, would be the first example that comes to mind. Technically it would be possible that all the TOS episodes happened in an ""original"" (one pair of quotation marks just wasn't enough) timeline where Bell looks like Bell on all the historical records. However it seems likely that all these TOS episodes would also have happened in the Prime Timeline, where Bell is depicted as Sisko.

 

[Christopher]

I'm sure I've heard a suggestion of how before (and I'm sorry for not remembering), but how would events prior to 2233 be affected if the actual incursion happened then and there's no indication that anti-time or Krenim technology was involved (the two main methods of changing events before they happen in the Star Trek universe)?

There have been several possibilities proposed. There's Idran's notion that the effect would ripple back by undoing future acts of time travel that in turn affected the past -- much like what happened in "Yesteryear." There's my notion that the red matter wormhole (which we know opened in both 2233 to deposit Nero and 2258 to deposit Spock) could've opened at other points in the past and that the energy, matter, or gravitational effects it emitted could've caused some past phenomena to happen a bit differently. And there's the Okuda/Pegg notion that it's some kind of retrocausality effect we haven't seen before -- which seems vague, but there is a theoretical-physics basis for the hypothesis that quantum causality could progress both forward and backward in time, specifically John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Cramer's idea is that there are always quantum waves propagating both forward and backward in time, and in most cases they cancel out, but not always, so that there are instances where an event in the future can influence an event in the past -- which could explain the quantum paradox of how a photon in a slit experiment seems to "know" in advance what slits it will or won't pass through. Cramer's model hasn't been experimentally verified yet, as far as I know, but it's certainly solid enough theory to use as a basis for fiction.

Really, it's contradictory to allow for the idea of time travel in the first place, yet resist the idea that causality can go backward. The very existence of reverse time travel would prove that we have to throw out our conventional assumptions of cause coming after effect.

Secondly, wouldn't that open a can of worms suggesting that time travel incidents in the prime universe also may have revised the timeline from beginning to end? I don't think that any of the original stories lend themselves to that suggestion very well.

Like I said -- it's a fundamental mistake to assume it has to happen the same way in every instance. The outcome depends on the specific conditions of the interaction. The gravitational forces that hold you against the Earth's surface right now are the exact same forces that would stretch you into a strand of spaghetti if you fell toward a black hole. Same physics, wildly different conditions, wildly different outcomes. So it's completely possible that "normal" time travel events would only have forward-propagating effects, but some specific types of time travel event, occurring under unusual conditions, could also have backward-propagating effects.

Good grief, time travel itself is already an enormous exception to the normal operation of physical law. It's a solution that arises out of the equations of general relativity, but the variables that have to be plugged into those equations to get that result are staggeringly improbable at best. The normal operation of relativistic physics just does not produce closed timelike curves (i.e. backward time travel), but they might rarely occur in extremely unusual circumstances. So since time travel is itself an exception to the norm, why should it be hard to believe that there are also exceptions to the way time travel normally happens?

 

[tenmei]

@Christopher , didn't you used to vociferously argue that the pre-2333 past of the Kelvin timeline was the same as the past of the Prime timeline?

I remember being argued down c. 2009, not by Christopher I may add, for postulating that the actual divergence point for the Kelvin Timeline was first contact with the Vulcans in 2063. He's certainly not been alone in his views, or appearing to change them.

My reasoning, at the time, being that if the original incursion and the loss of the Kelvin propagated forwards through time, then this ultimately reached the timeframe of The Next Generation and a Kelvin-ised Enterprise E. When this ship travels back to 2063 after the Kelvin Timeline equivalent to 'First Contact', it creates a further divergence in the timeline with the appearance and size of the Enterprise E as witnessed by Cochrane and Sloane influencing the design of future ships such as the Kelvin and nuEnterprise.

And yes, I want an ongoing novel series in the Kelvin Universe - to be honest, I'd quite like an ongoing Kelvin series with Robau, Kirk and Winona leading up to the Narada Incident.

 

[Enterprise1701]

If that's the reasoning being used, then it doesn't go far enough. If the argument is that a change in 2233 will alter a time travel incident originating in 2373, then every other time travel incident after 2233 should be different too. Like the 31st century Federation agency of Daniels stopping the Na'kuhl from wiping out the prehistoric Suliban.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In response to the original question, -- no. I have zero interest in the new Trek verse, which is bankrupt of everything but boobs and explosions.

 

[DimesDan]

which is bankrupt of everything but boobs and explosions.

Have you taken the time to watch the three films?

 

[Smellincoffee]

Have you taken the time to watch the three films?

I've watched the first two several times. There is nothing of the Star Trek spirit in them -- just talented actors doing a space-action movie with Trek references. Yes, it was nice that Kirk told off Peter Weller, but Bashir did that a lot better in one DS9 episode. Perhaps the third one has more redeeming value, but so far the first two have yet to make me THINK the way TOS, TNG, and DS9 did and still do. They were philosophically rich and culturally literate.

I do plan on seeing the third movie, if not this week then when it hits Redbox.

 

[DimesDan]

I've watched the first two several times. There is nothing of the Star Trek spirit in them -- just talented actors doing a space-action movie with Trek references. Yes, it was nice that Kirk told off Peter Weller, but Bashir did that a lot better in one DS9 episode. Perhaps the third one has more redeeming value, but so far the first two have yet to make me THINK the way TOS, TNG, and DS9 did and still do. They were philosophically rich and culturally literate.

I do plan on seeing the third movie, if not this week then when it hits Redbox.

I assume you're okay with drone warfare then or killing a person before they are put on trial.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I assume you're okay with drone warfare then or killing a person before they are put on trial.

??? Weller was the one who wanted to fire the drones.

 

[DimesDan]

Weller was the one who wanted to fire the drones.

And yet that action is very similar to the present war on terror using drones to kill individuals before being sentenced, similar to how Trek "of old" used numerous real world events to make a story, like how the Klingons were compared to the USSR back in the sixties or how the Cardassians were compared to Israel with the treatment of the Palestinians/Bajorians.

I find it rather amusing though that you originally focused on boobs, when yes, Uhura and Marces are seen in their underwear for less than twenty seconds combined across two films, when it had that highly political theme running through it, do the ends justify not taking Khan in and placing him on trial - also, Enterprise didn't fire one shot in Into Darkness.

 

[Christopher]

If that's the reasoning being used, then it doesn't go far enough. If the argument is that a change in 2233 will alter a time travel incident originating in 2373, then every other time travel incident after 2233 should be different too. Like the 31st century Federation agency of Daniels stopping the Na'kuhl from wiping out the prehistoric Suliban.

Could be. Not necessarily should be. After all, the standard conceit of alternate timelines in fiction is that a lot of things still happen the same way -- the same individuals are born, the same ships and space stations and such are built, and the same groups of people tend to end up working together in the same places, even if the circumstances are so different that it seems none of that should be the case. It's always pretty much implicit that changing the course of history only changes some things, while other things still turn out much the same way.

So some time travel events might not take place in an alternate timeline, but others could take place in a very similar way. Heck, there's even evidence of this in canon. The Enterprise crew in the Thelin timeline in "Yesteryear" was performing the exact same time-travel research mission through the Guardian of Forever at the exact same moment that the crew in the Spock timeline was. Even though one major element was changed, other factors continued to play out in the same way and led to the same time-travel event occurring at the same time in a different timeline, just with different players.

As for temporal agents like Daniels, though, I tend to assume that they can transcend timeline shifts to a degree. In "Shockwave," Daniels was unaffected when the future was changed around him, although it never made sense that he had protection from the shift while the rest of his agency didn't. And then there's Bill Leisner's idea from "Gods, Fate, and Fractals" that I co-opted for the DTI series, that the DTI has a form of temporal shielding on their archives that preserves a record of the original history in the event of a timeline change. So if time is changed in a way that undoes an important time-travel event a la "Yesteryear," then temporal agents would be able to determine that said time-travel mission was needed and make sure it was still carried out.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Occam's Razor applies because that's exactly how we see it play out: The timeline proceeds until Nero's arrival, then it splits. That's the simplest explanation. Characters in the film even point it out. So I see no reason to assume anything other than this - the events that the film shows us.

The film really doesn't show us any such thing. The brief segment of the film that we see before Nero arrives is set in a timeframe that we've never seen before, so we really have nothing to compare against. If the changes propagate in both directions, then logically the segment we see before arrival would already have been affected by those changes, so nothing in the film would necessarily have been different under either model.

And the characters in the film offer their own speculation on what has happened. There's no possible way that any of the in-universe characters could have any objective knowledge on what has actually occurred.

(Which, I admit, makes much more logical sense than Pegg's attempt at explanation. If Pegg had simply gone with that version - i.e. "Kelvin" was a pre-existing alternate universe - I'd have no problem with anything he said. )

But really... either of those options would effectively end up with the same result, so... what's the issue?

 

[WebLurker]

There have been several possibilities proposed. There's Idran's notion that the effect would ripple back by undoing future acts of time travel that in turn affected the past -- much like what happened in "Yesteryear."

I personally can get behind this one. In fact, I kind of assume that the differences in Khan's cyro tech in Into Darkness compared to "Space Seed" (TOS) is because of the likely possibility that Henry Starling never got the 29th century time ship and created his advances, meaning that the '90s computer revolution from real life that Cronowerx explained in "Future's End, Parts I and II" (VOY), never happened, which arguably would affect all '90s tech, including cryonics.

The catch is that I think there might be a few instances where without a specific predestination paradox or time travel incident, the 23rd and 24th century Federations would be vastly different from what we know and the Kelvin timeline shows, but since a lot of time travel shows are about fixing a changed future, then in most cases, if the event never happened, then the timeline would just follow the same correct history as the "repaired" timeline did.

There's my notion that the red matter wormhole (which we know opened in both 2233 to deposit Nero and 2258 to deposit Spock) could've opened at other points in the past and that the energy, matter, or gravitational effects it emitted could've caused some past phenomena to happen a bit differently.

I can see the logic to it, although I'm honestly not sure how many changes in the movies could be explained by extra radiation and the like. Also, I think the '09 movie is pretty clear that the red matter wormhole only opened twice (in 2233 and 2258), so I'm not sure I buy the idea of it opening at random (although if there is evidence or ways it could happen, I'd be curious for further explanation/discussion).

And there's the Okuda/Pegg notion that it's some kind of retrocausality effect we haven't seen before -- which seems vague, but there is a theoretical-physics basis for the hypothesis that quantum causality could progress both forward and backward in time, specifically John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Cramer's idea is that there are always quantum waves propagating both forward and backward in time, and in most cases they cancel out, but not always, so that there are instances where an event in the future can influence an event in the past -- which could explain the quantum paradox of how a photon in a slit experiment seems to "know" in advance what slits it will or won't pass through. Cramer's model hasn't been experimentally verified yet, as far as I know, but it's certainly solid enough theory to use as a basis for fiction.

I don't really like this idea, and I'm not sure how well it works with what we know about Star Trek's quantum mechanics, but it's really hard to argue with, esp. given that the gist of it seems to be: "This happened somehow." Maybe when the Encyclopedia comes out, it'll make more sense.

Really, it's contradictory to allow for the idea of time travel in the first place, yet resist the idea that causality can go backward. The very existence of reverse time travel would prove that we have to throw out our conventional assumptions of cause coming after effect.

I think that depends. Does only what the time traveler and his equipment do in the past affect history, or is there extra radiation and stuff, like you've suggested, that can do crazy stuff? At the end of the day, I think this can only be answered by the laws of time travel that the story uses.

Now, you've said repeatedly that Star Trek temporal mechanics vary so much by story that (going on canon alone) there's no unifying theory. (I think that there's just enough consistency to make a couple rules of thumb, and the rest can be -- mostly -- chalked up to special circumstances, but that's another topic.) So, are there any other Star Trek time travel stories that have worked with causalities like this before that we can compare to this model? (For the sake of discussion, let's allow examples from non-canon stuff, too.)

Like I said -- it's a fundamental mistake to assume it has to happen the same way in every instance. The outcome depends on the specific conditions of the interaction. The gravitational forces that hold you against the Earth's surface right now are the exact same forces that would stretch you into a strand of spaghetti if you fell toward a black hole. Same physics, wildly different conditions, wildly different outcomes. So it's completely possible that "normal" time travel events would only have forward-propagating effects, but some specific types of time travel event, occurring under unusual conditions, could also have backward-propagating effects.

Good grief, time travel itself is already an enormous exception to the normal operation of physical law. It's a solution that arises out of the equations of general relativity, but the variables that have to be plugged into those equations to get that result are staggeringly improbable at best. The normal operation of relativistic physics just does not produce closed timelike curves (i.e. backward time travel), but they might rarely occur in extremely unusual circumstances.

Poor choice of words. What I was trying to get at was, are we assuming that that the "total timeline" re-write has only happened with '09 movie incursion, or are there other time travel stories in the franchise that we could or should assume could've also used the same rules? (I'm not counting "Year of Hell, Parts I and II" [VOY], since that was already explained as a unique form of time travel.)

So since time travel is itself an exception to the norm, why should it be hard to believe that there are also exceptions to the way time travel normally happens?

That's a fair point and I agree with it. Let's just say that, based on the movies themselves, I don't think there's enough evidence to support the suggestion that this case is an exception to the "normal" Star Trek time travel rules.

 

[Christopher]

I can see the logic to it, although I'm honestly not sure how many changes in the movies could be explained by extra radiation and the like.

We saw in Generations that changes in gravitation due to supernovae could affect the courses of starships (even though gravity should only propagate at the speed of light, not instantly). The gravitation from a wormhole could have a similar effect. Starships could be delayed or hastened, and people could have different interactions as a result. An asteroid that hit a planet could miss it, or vice versa.

Also, I think the '09 movie is pretty clear that the red matter wormhole only opened twice (in 2233 and 2258), so I'm not sure I buy the idea of it opening at random (although if there is evidence or ways it could happen, I'd be curious for further explanation/discussion).

Just because it didn't mention any other examples, that doesn't mean it ruled out other examples. It just means they didn't come up, or the characters didn't know about them. Characters aren't omniscient.

Besides, there's precedent for a single wormhole connecting to many times: the Bajoran wormhole. You can theoretically go into it and come out at any time in the past or future, like Akorem Laan did. If the red matter wormhole that originated in 2387 had destinations in both 2233 and 2258, why would it be limited to only those two dates? If it could have more than one output point, it seems entirely arbitrary to assume it couldn't have more than two.

I don't really like this idea, and I'm not sure how well it works with what we know about Star Trek's quantum mechanics

You keep saying this like this that are predicated on the assumption that ST physics has ever been logically and factually consistent. This is simply not true. ST is a universe that's been created by many different writers and producers with many different sets of assumptions, and only some of them have ever bothered to pay attention to science at all, and even those have been willing to take poetic license as needed for whatever story they were telling. There has never, in fifty years, been a Star Trek writer who said, "Oh, I can't tell this story because existing Trek science makes it impossible." They just make up new science or ignore the old.

I think that depends.

Of course it depends! That's the whole damn point, that things don't have to happen in just one single way!

Now, you've said repeatedly that Star Trek temporal mechanics vary so much by story that (going on canon alone) there's no unifying theory. (I think that there's just enough consistency to make a couple rules of thumb, and the rest can be -- mostly -- chalked up to special circumstances, but that's another topic.)

Yes, I know that there's just enough consistency to create the illusion of a unified theory, because I wrote a whole book that did just that. I've mentioned that several times by now.

Poor choice of words. What I was trying to get at was, are we assuming that that the "total timeline" re-write has only happened with '09 movie incursion

Nobody said "total." The idea is that the history is mostly the same (obviously, because it's still Star Trek and still has the Federation, Starfleet, the Enterprise, and the same characters), but that certain things in the past can be different if necessary.

, or are there other time travel stories in the franchise that we could or should assume could've also used the same rules?

Why is that important? Many Trek stories have invented new phenomena that never came up before. Many Trek stories in the future are bound to do the same. Why should this particular one be any different?

That's a fair point and I agree with it. Let's just say that, based on the movies themselves, I don't think there's enough evidence to support the suggestion that this case is an exception to the "normal" Star Trek time travel rules.

Evidence, schmevidence. It's fiction. They make stuff up. Deal with it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The truth about how time travel works: