DTI: Why is Kirk considered the worst violator?

[F. King Daniel]

If I were running DTI, there's no chance I'd allow the Bajorans to keep the Orb of Time, and I'd have zero faith in the wormhole aliens or the Bajorans to control or use it correctly. I'd have it swapped for a fake or something.

I suspect it's my kind of thinking that'd lead to the paranoid 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission. But with the lives of trillions at stake...

 

[Christopher]

If I were running DTI, there's no chance I'd allow the Bajorans to keep the Orb of Time, and I'd have zero faith in the wormhole aliens or the Bajorans to control or use it correctly. I'd have it swapped for a fake or something.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that every living adult Bajoran in the timeframe in question has firsthand memory of living under the tyrannical control of an alien occupier -- an occupier that did exactly what you're all advocating, i.e. barged in and stole their most sacred religious artifacts. If the Federation acted as you're suggesting, they'd be no better than the Cardassians were, and the Bajorans would resist just as violently as when the Cardassians did it. If the UFP even tried to take an Orb away from them, the Bajorans would sever relations with the UFP in an instant, and they'd put up a hell of a fight to keep the Orb. That's the last thing anyone in the Federation would want.

And really, how condescending and ethnocentric is it to assume that the Prophets, who created the Orb, and the Bajorans, who had it as an integral part of their culture for thousands of years before the Cardassians stole it, are somehow less qualified to understand its responsible use than a Federation that's only known of its existence for a decade? I mean, seriously, come on. The Bajorans aren't primitive tribesmen. They were an advanced civilization long before humans even figured out agriculture.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ But like I said, surely the Bajorans would understand if the DTI at least wanted to monitor the Orb? Even if, and I agree, the Federation made no attempt to actually remove the Orb from Bajor, wouldn't there be at least some justification for the DTI wanting to check on it occasionally, or even send some of their own people to provide additional security? You yourself suggested that the DTI might want to establish a permanent base on Bajor.

(Assuming the Federation has an embassy on Bajor, perhaps the DTI might locate its Bajoran branch there, prior to Bajor's actually joining the Federation.)

 

[Christopher]

^ But like I said, surely the Bajorans would understand if the DTI at least wanted to monitor the Orb?

Well, yes, I already said days ago that the DTI would surely work alongside the Bajoran government and the Vedek Assembly to monitor the Orb. So that question has been asked and answered. I'm just objecting to the suggestions that the UFP should barge in and take the Orb away without any consideration for the Bajorans' history or cultural sensitivities.

 

[Ronald Held]

Taking the Orb away sounds like a Section 31 operation.

 

[BillJ]

Taking the Orb away sounds like a Section 31 operation.

*urge to kill rising*

 

[Christopher]

Taking the Orb away sounds like a Section 31 operation.

I don't think even Section 31 would be that stupid. As corrupt as they are, they at least nominally believe they're acting in the Federation's best interest. And it's in the Federation's best interest to have Bajor as a friendly power and a UFP member, because the Wormhole makes their system a pivotal strategic location. Taking an Orb would make an enemy of Bajor, and there's no way that would serve the Federation's security.

 

[Sci]

We all understand wanting to control potential threats to the timeline, and I'm sure the Vedek Assembly and Bajoran government want to preserve the timeline, too. But this insistence some people have on direct UFP government control over the Orb of Time is bordering on imperialism.

 

[RPJOB]

What would the Federation's reaction be to a member planet that develops time travel on it's own? Would they have to agree to work under DTI supervision? What if Bajor decided to leave the Federation, would DTI then decide that it would be best to remove the Orb from them? Would it be fair to allow one member planet to have access to time travel and not another simply because of one planets history of occupation? Does the Federation believe in "separate but equal"? And in a universe whey almost any starship can utilize the slingshot maneuver (you can't keep secrets forever. Eventually word would leak out) or expose a shioment of kemacite to a stream of energetic electrons? It's not like you need a large, permanent installation in order to travel through time. Heck, the Orb of Time can be carried by a single person. Even if the DTI put restrictions on development of time travel they can hardly keep an eye on everyone.

 

[Christopher]

One of the things I tried to put across in Watching the Clock is that the DTI's ability to regulate time travel is extremely limited in practice. After all, it has no jurisdiction over other nations, no way of controlling temporal research going on in distant parts of the galaxy that haven't been contacted yet, and no way of restricting temporal intervention by people from the future (or advanced alien civilizations from the past). They do what little they can to identify and minimize known risks, but the sheer hopelessness of gaining any real control is one of the things that makes the job so stressful.

When feasible, as I showed in WTC, the DTI coordinates with other governments' temporal regulation agencies, or negotiates with their governments to try to convince them to embrace a responsible approach toward time travel (as with Ranjea & Garcia's negotiations re: the Axis of Time). But all they can do is advise, cajole, and seek cooperation. They aren't an army, just a bunch of bureaucrats and investigators. So no, they don't have the right to invade a sovereign nation and steal their time machines.

Temporal research within the UFP is subject to the laws that were put in place in 2270 (read Forgotten History for more on that). Of course, theoretical research is freely permitted, but practical experimentation is subject to regulation on safety grounds, the same way that the US government regulates nuclear energy and other potentially hazardous pursuits. (By analogy, the information about how to build a nuclear bomb can easily be obtained from the library or the Internet, since it's basic physics and engineering, but it would be illegal to build a bomb or possess nuclear material without the proper government licenses, and those wouldn't be easy to come by.) The DTI would function as the regulatory agency responsible for enforcing the laws. They'd crack down on any unlicensed temporal experimentation and supervise any licensed experimentation.

Possession of a temporal artifact such as the Orb of Time would probably be something that would require a federal license, but it wouldn't automatically be prohibited, just regulated. If possession of such an artifact could be justified, then a license could be granted. Given that the OoT was in Bajoran possession for thousands of years without any evident damage to the timeline, and given its importance as a religious artifact, I'd think the Federation would be willing to recognize the Vedek Assembly's right to possess the artifact. But actually using it for time travel would probably be subject to Federation laws and be rather more restricted (in the same way that it can be legal to own a firearm but illegal to discharge it except in specific places and circumstances).

 

[chrinFinity]

It's clear the Orb of Time does actually send people and things into the past (as opposed to just giving them visions of the past).

No, the Orb pretty clearly did send the Defiant back to Space Station K-7.

Respectfully, Christopher, that is what I said (see excerpt above, with emphasis added).

The simpler explanation is that the Bajorans would never allow Quark access to the Orb in the first place.

Fair enough, but I believe it would be safer for the prophets to have arranged the orb to be "safe" without the need to rely on Bajoran bureaucracy through the ages (not to mention the tender temporal ministrations of the Cardassians who, as per Trials and Tribble-ations, had captured the orb and posessed it for some time prior to its return.

With regard to your book(s), I am in fact aching to read them, however I am a slave to the continuity and so I have many more unread books to "catch up" on prior to getting to read DTI.

 

[Christopher]

Fair enough, but I believe it would be safer for the prophets to have arranged the orb to be "safe" without the need to rely on Bajoran bureaucracy through the ages (not to mention the tender temporal ministrations of the Cardassians who, as per Trials and Tribble-ations, had captured the orb and posessed it for some time prior to its return.

I don't think that's the way the Prophets think. Although they do have some direct interest in the Bajoran people, they're still very alien minds from a very alien realm, and can't be assumed to be micromanagers who are just hovering over the Bajorans and taking care of things for them. After all, why would they? They don't perceive reality as a linear progression of cause to effect (but as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... oh, you know). They see it all at once. They know that action X has result Y because they both exist simultaneously in the Prophets' perception. So they already know which direct actions they need to take (like taking over Sarah to ensure she'd bear a child with Joseph Sisko) and which things will turn out okay without their intervention.

Also, since they don't perceive time in a linear fashion, they might not even think of the Orb of Time as dangerous. After all, the reason we see changing history as dangerous is because it disrupts our expectation and need for time to progress in a single, linear course. The Prophets can only distantly grasp that idea in the first place. To them, alternate timelines would just be parallel possibilities, harmonics in the music of time. Remember, they were pretty casual about rewriting history with Akorem Laan, or altering Zek's personality to that of the Ferengi of an earlier age. They clearly don't feel any strong incentive to defend a single version of history. So they wouldn't see the Orb of Time as a danger that needs to be controlled. If anything, they might be surprised and disappointed that the Bajorans haven't made full use of the power the Orb gives them to explore the breadth of temporal possibilities.

 

[Destructor]

The mechanism that Star Trek calls the slingshot effect was described by physicist Frank Tipler in a seminal 1974 paper (notably, ST got there first by seven years), and the physics behind it has been the subject of many research papers in the decades since.

Hi Christopher. The link to that paper in your annotations appears to be broken. I would be very interested in reading more on this, if you have a way to find the material?

Thanks!

 

[Christopher]

^I've replaced it with a better link (hopefully) in the annotations. Here's the new link:

http://theophysics.host56.com/pdf/tipler-rotating-cylinders.pdf

 

[Destructor]

^I've replaced it with a better link (hopefully) in the annotations. Here's the new link:

http://theophysics.host56.com/pdf/tipler-rotating-cylinders.pdf

Thank you! I'd be lying if I said I could make heads nor tails of it, but it's still good!

 

[MacLeod]

In DTI, Kirk is considered the worst starfleet violator of temporal rules in the agency's history. Yet a cursory example of Trek canon suggests that that distinction probably belongs to Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D (at least until Voyager comes home).

We'll the line says Kirk had seventeen seperate violations, so even if the Ent-D had more how many belonged specifically to Picard.

It also depends on what they mean by seperate temporal violations. So travelling to 1930's Earth via the Guardian of Forever could be one, but any actions that take place within it might not count as seperate but as sub sections.

So one seperate temporal violation could have a dozen or more specific violations within one.

 

[zarkon]

You don't even need to bother with looking at it that way. 17 is canon as it was in DS9, so the extras can easily be taken as not happening during the aired TOS stuff, but instead before/after/inbetween.

 

[Christopher]

^Right, I said that back in post #6. A much smaller percentage of Kirk's Enterprise command history has been depicted onscreen than Picard's.

 

[RPJOB]

Seeing how often time travel occurs in the Trek universe(s) I would imagine that there's fairly large files on almost every member of Starfleet, to say nothing of civilans and foreign powers. Your average starfleet captain may have 8-10 time travel experiences over his career. Multiply that my the number of ships and it's obvious that the files must be fairly extensive. There's nothing to suggest that your average starfleeter is surprised when there's a time travel incident.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Fair enough, but I believe it would be safer for the prophets to have arranged the orb to be "safe" without the need to rely on Bajoran bureaucracy through the ages (not to mention the tender temporal ministrations of the Cardassians who, as per Trials and Tribble-ations, had captured the orb and posessed it for some time prior to its return.

I don't think that's the way the Prophets think. Although they do have some direct interest in the Bajoran people, they're still very alien minds from a very alien realm, and can't be assumed to be micromanagers who are just hovering over the Bajorans and taking care of things for them.

The Prophets like to say that they are "of Bajor". I have a theory about what that might mean:

Spoiler: idea

that they are actually the super-evolved descendants of the Bajoran race, somehow transformed into an incorporeal state or whatever the hell they are. So when they say they are of Bajor, they mean it literally.

The reason this is possible is because of their non-linear nature.