Getting sick of Alternate Timeline/Time Travel stories

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by GulBahana, Mar 8, 2019.

  1. GulBahana

    GulBahana Commander Red Shirt

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    Was there a point where you had enough of those time travel, or alternate timeline, stories? For me, late into Voyager I was disappointed with two Janeways in the last episode. When Enterprise came around with the Temporal Cold War, I was so fed up that I lost interest.
     
  2. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Not really. Time-travel has a pretty good track record where Trek is concerned: "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "City on the Edge of Forever," "Assignment: Earth," "All Our Yesterdays," the whale movie, "Yesterday's Enterprise," "Tapestry," the Borg movie, "Little Green Men," "Future's End," "Relativity," etc.

    Honestly, many of my favorite Trek episodes and movies involve time travel.
     
  3. plynch

    plynch Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'm tired. I like moral dilemmas and social commentary.
     
  4. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I must admit, when they said the Red Angel was from the future on Discovery I thought, "this again?" but in general I enjoy time travels and AU's.

    Often it's silly fluff like aliens in the white house and nonsense paradoxes, but sometimes they can be used for meaningful stories which can only be told in a science fiction setting - like Kirk getting to meet the dad whose shadow he grew up in, in the aborted Star Trek 4.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 9, 2019
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  5. Lord Garth

    Lord Garth Admiral Admiral

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    I like time travel stories.

    I'm not particularly interested in Trek doing social commentary heavy episodes right now because I don't want every episode to be about Trump. And, realistically, that's what it would be about if they were to do it these days.
     
  6. Kor

    Kor Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I also like being bonked on the head with some clunky, heavy-handed social message.

    Kor
     
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  7. Doom Shepherd

    Doom Shepherd Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I’ve liked Trek’s heavy handed social messaging for its entire existence, no reason to stop now.

    And I’m a big fan of alternate universe fiction, so time travel and parallel timelines bother me not a whit.
     
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  8. GulBahana

    GulBahana Commander Red Shirt

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    I just think if you overuse time travel it makes the universe/timeline too convoluted...but I guess it's too late for that.
     
  9. Turd Ferguson

    Turd Ferguson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'm a fan of alternate timeline/time travel stories. I can't think of a single Trek time travel story I haven't enjoyed (or any time travel movie or book, for that matter). If anything, I think Trek doesn't do these kinds of stories enough ;) Give me time travel or paradox stories over holodeck malfunction episodes any day of the week
     
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  10. X24actor

    X24actor Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Will never get bored of time travel. Huge Doctor Who fan. Star Trek has a better track record with continuity
     
  11. Sareesataka

    Sareesataka Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Love time travel and alternate universe stories. And I also love temporal mechanics. I like trying to figure out how events in the timeline would be affected because of time travel. Yeah, weird, I know but it's in my wheelhouse. As a kid, if I had any superpower, it would be to time travel so I always geeked out over time travel episodes of any show, Star Trek, Stargate, etc. I suppose time travel and AU could be seen as a crutch for lazy writing, but I always wished they did more of these stories.
     
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  12. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    I'll cop to having gone to the time-travel well at least twice in my Trek novels.

    No, wait, three times . . . . :)
     
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  13. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    I love them both, alternate universes even more than time travel. Sometimes I think I'm sick of it but when the next one comes I realize I'm not.
     
  14. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    Time to have Keanue on the new Section 31 show as an assassin for the branch and reveal Ted and John Wick are one and the same. And Rufus is Control.
     
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  15. Kilana2

    Kilana2 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I once attended a lecture about Star Trek/Back to the Future by Dr. Hubert Zitt at Magdeburg University. He also appears regularly at FedCon and other conventions. As it is financially difficult for me to go to conventions, I enjoyed this lecture immensely. It featured my favorite time travel episodes. The lecture was well-attended and people had fun. I met a user from a Trek forum there in person.

    (I can't be seen, I'm in a back row)


    [​IMG]
     
  16. maneth

    maneth Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I like time travel stories in general. Definitely prefer them over most holodeck malfunction stories, or in the case of TOS, evil computer ruling the world stories.
     
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  17. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    They work really well in small doses. In Voyager and Enterprise they overused them so much they became tiresome.
     
  18. Long Syntax

    Long Syntax Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I think the Time Travel entries in Star Trek (mentioned above) have contributed to the broad appeal of ST in general. There are those that really dig the time travel scenarios and are drawn to the potential of these stories. However I feel the time travel mechanism used as a vehicle to tell the story really has been used up. In a universe so vast and diverse there certainly must be other compelling stores to tell rather than leveraging previously over-used (to some extent) story telling mechanisms.
     
  19. Spider

    Spider Dirty Old Man Premium Member

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    Time travel is like any other plot device, used well it will always work.
     
  20. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Exactly. It's a staple of STAR TREK and of science fiction in particular, just like space missions, androids, telepaths, First Contact, and so on. It as much part of STAR TREK as alien encounters and interplanetary politics.
     
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