How come NOG didn't wreck the timeline in LGM?

[doctorfoto]

Forgive me if this has been asked before, but I was watching Little Green Men and it occurred to me that Nog was holding that Earth Guidebook with him the moment they went back in time to 1947 and right before they crash-landed and blacked out.

The Federation PADD was clearly in English and contained "a completely interactive program detailing Earth's customs, culture, history and geography."

First off, Nog knows how to READ English but not speak it? (Thanks Jake!)

More importantly, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GUIDEBOOK!?!?

The humans indicated that they accessed the bridge of the ship, so they must have found the guidebook just sitting there.

Did somebody pocket it? Do PADDS have a "slide to unlock" password protection feature?

If just leaving a communicator behind is bad - what happens when you have something like THIS just sitting around?!

 

[od0_ital]

We can all read Latin, thanks to science class. But its a dead language, so we can't really speak it, now can we? In a universe where communication is instant thanks to technology, why would you need to speak anything but your own?

And if ya were presented with a flyin' saucer, would ya have any interest at all in the one small thing on it that ya can't even figure out how to turn on?

And even if ya did try to pocket it, don't forget, Odo was there, too, and its entirely possible he could make sure nothin' happened to it.

 

[doctorfoto]

Maybe Odo WAS the PADD!

 

[od0_ital]

^

Not possible - Odo was never shown to be a complex piece of machinery like a padd.

He could have been the reflective surface of the padd, though...

 

[JirinPanthosa]

How do we know the padd wasn't written in Ferengi, and we all have universal translator contact lenses?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Do PADDS have a "slide to unlock" password protection feature?

They just might.

Odo was there, too, and its entirely possible he could make sure nothin' happened to it.

I also find that very likely.

I mean, obviously something prevented the 1947 humans from reading the guidebook (Quark and co. returned to the same timeline they left, so there was no contamination), and Odo retrieving it is as good an explanation as any.

 

[doctorfoto]

I mean, obviously something prevented the 1947 humans from reading the guidebook (Quark and co. returned to the same timeline they left, so there was no contamination), and Odo retrieving it is as good an explanation as any.

I agree.

I mean Odo DID turn himself into a German Shepherd, and those things chew up everything.

 

[T'Girl]

More importantly, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GUIDEBOOK!?!?

It's lying out in the middle of the desert, right next to the instruction booklet from The Greatest American Hero, and Bender's head.

 

[doctorfoto]

It's lying out in the middle of the desert, right next to the instruction booklet from The Greatest American Hero, and Bender's head.

That makes sense.

Also a possibility: The farmer out in Roswell that discovered Quark's Treasure was named Tannen. (Screw Grays Sports Almanac!)

(This is also how those Tannens came up with the term "butthead")

 

[F. King Daniel]

I hear a guy named Gene Roddenberry eventually got hold of it.

 

[Pavonis]

Why would anyone assume the guidebook isn't exactly in the last place it was seen - aboard Quark's Treasure?

The Earthlings finds this spaceship and its alien crew - which would be of more interest to the primitives? The ship, which is incomprehensible to them, or the living crew? I'd say the crew would be of more interest than the ship. Yes, the primitive Earthlings managed to look inside it, but why would they remove anything from it? The first priority was to establish communications with the crew; the ship could wait for later investigation. It's not like the primitives expected to lose the ship and the crew within a day of finding them. I'm sure they expected to have decades to unravel both the ship and the crew.

So, given an expectation of years with which to work on the ship, why would anyone remove anything from it? It wasn't going anywhere, and who would know what might cause it to blow up? Better to not touch it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

A military institution finds an advanced spacecraft?

First thing they do strip it dry.

But then again, Dominion captures enemy agents, they do not just leave the shuttle floating around fully operational. Star Trek is good at plot contrivances that make escape physically possible.

Maybe LGM would have worked better if it were a little more like Stargate's 1969 and they had to find some other way to get back.

 

[Pavonis]

I can believe that stripping the machine would be a goal, but in the first few hours after acquiring it? Wouldn't it take some time for specialists to get to the location? Do you think they'd have grunts from the motor pool do that kind of work? Not to mention you'd want to completely document the state of the ship before taking it apart.

 

[Mage]

As for the language issue.... Modern day tablets can be set for different languages. So why not a 24th century PADD??

 

[AntonyF]

Passcode. DNA passcode.

Next.

 

[JarodRussell]

Yeah, like that would be impossible to crack.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Maybe not impossible, but extremely difficult.

Even if the thief rips off somebody's hand or something like that, the device could be configured to only respond to DNA from a live person (like detecting for body heat or a pulse).

 

[theblitz]

To quote DULMUR: "How do you know that? For all we know, we could be living in an alternate timeline right now."

 

[Third Nacelle]

^

Not possible - Odo was never shown to be a complex piece of machinery like a padd.

He could have been the reflective surface of the padd, though...

It seems to me Odo quite regularly morphed into the shape of his own combadge.

 

[Melakon]

It's more of a mystery to me that Denning's men didn't find some sort of hand weapon on Quark's ship.