Hartsarb quote:"where it SEEMS like we’re violating canon"

[TIN_MAN]

The very idea of a "Temporal Cold War" is ludicrous, because you would already know the winner before it even started.
For example, we know that no future time traveling faction traveled back in time and successfully killed Hitler in infancy.
You can interfere in history all you want, but it will inevitably result in the history we have experienced, and the future we will experience.

Well, I think the idea is that any kind of “Time War” would be precisely to change the future because the assumption is that there are many alternate or parallel timelines. JJ Trek uses this idea (of multiple timelines), so it definitely holds sway in the fictional world of Star Trek.
As for your example of Hitler; he is a real historical figure, with a real biography as apposed to a fictional character like say Colonel Green, for whom we could make up any thing we want. But on the other hand, there’s nothing stopping a writer from creating a fictional alternate timeline wherein Hitler was killed in infancy.
It all boils down to whether you subscribe to the alternate or parallel timelines hypothesis, or not.
In the real world we don’t know for sure, but in Star trek we “know” that it is so.

 

[uniderth]

It all boils down to whether you subscribe to the alternate or parallel timelines hypothesis, or not.

Which I don't. Precisely because of the example I mentioned. Granting of course that time travel could ever be possible. And while I don't really have a a problem with parallel timelines/universe. The moment you start hopping between universes you're no longer traveling through time, but through universes. So, still, your attempts at meddling in your own past are fruitless because you are no longer in your own past.

 

[Kor]

If we were living in an alternate timeline, we wouldn't even realize it.

Kor

 

[fireproof78]

Which I don't. Precisely because of the example I mentioned. Granting of course that time travel could ever be possible. And while I don't really have a a problem with parallel timelines/universe. The moment you start hopping between universes you're no longer traveling through time, but through universes. So, still, your attempts at meddling in your own past are fruitless because you are no longer in your own past.

Star Trek has already demonstrated that future Starfleet monitors changes to the timeline, which means you can move within timelines, as well as alternate universes (Mirror, Lazarus, "Parallels, etc). Also, there are several different devices (Guardian of Forever, slingshot method, etc.) that allow for time travel within the time line, according to in universe descriptions.

Basically, as Daniels described it, there were factions able to observe the changes and work to manipulate events, so there is some kind of observer technology present. Same thing with the Timeship Relativity.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If we were living in an alternate timeline, we wouldn't even realize it.

Kor

Guinan would.