I just saw Yesteryear

[Temis the Vorta]

Kryton Kryngle said:
Ellison wants more money!

He's got hungry llamas to feed.

 

[Timo]

Still, with only two broadcast works about the Guardian, it's hard to choose which version to treat as authoritative.

To be sure, the Guardian wouldn't be much worth as a traveling device if it only worked the "City" way. So it's fairly logical to think in terms of mode select... "Yesteryear" is the version that makes more sense from the user's (and the audience's) point of view, but doesn't exclude the "City" mode.

Of course, we may be completely misunderstanding the purpose of the device. It's not as if it were the most ergonomic shape or size of viewscreen or stargate possible. And it's uppity and all. Perhaps its intended role isn't to cater for time tourists at all, but to mess with people's minds, to educate them through experience. Or then it's an important time flux relief valve, with the viewscreen/stargate mode trivially added just for fun much like some microwave ovens come with a TV screen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Maybe it's designed to only show the passage of time in one way, but it can take requests as to when to start.

 

[Christopher]

But it didn't start on the 20th day of Tasmeen and go forward. It locked onto that precise date and time and stayed there until Spock was ready to go. In "City" it said it was only capable of fast-forward, but now it had freeze-frame.

 

[Forbin]

Hmmm.
Somebody installed a remote?

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

***Warning: 'Yesteryear' Spoilers Below***

First Off, let me say that I think 'Yesteryear' is a fine story. However, I must nitpick...

...I'm not experienced in the ways of time travel like some people are, but I can't help but wonder WHY Spock had to be there to save himself. I sort of understand the whole "Spock was away watching the Conception of the Orion Civilization" thing. What I don't understand was what if he WASN'T observing the Orions? Would he have had any reason to go through the GOF and save himself otherwise? Probably not. If he wasn't observing the Orions, he would have probably just been on the Enterprise in some other part of the Galaxy doing exploration stuff. He wouldn't have woken up one morning saying to himself "I need to go back in time and save myself". Also, why does the GOF playing back Vulcan history cause that history to change?

I think DC Fontana should have thought of some better reason for 7-year old Spock to have not survived.

..Oh, and one more "nitpick". If I were McCoy, Scotty, Therin (the Andorian First Officer), and the others in the "Spock-less" timeframe, I would protest to Kirk and Spock more vehemently about screwing with "their" timeline -- whose to say which one is the correct timeline. Maybe Spock was supposed to die. They were a bit cavalier about the lives the others have been living without Spock.

Don't get me wrong, I loved this episode. It, along with a small handful of other TAS eps, made TAS a worthwhile project. I'm just the type of guy who likes all loose ends tied up in my TV shows and movies. When I bring these kind of things up with my wife, she always says "don't worry about it -- it's just TV (or a movie)", but that answer just isn't good enough for me.

 

[Christopher]

Forbin said:
Somebody installed a remote?

"I am the TiVo of Forever. Would you like to create a WishList?"

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Jackson_Roykirk said:
***Warning: 'Yesteryear' Spoilers Below***

First Off, let me say that I think 'Yesteryear' is a fine story. However, I must nitpick...

...I'm not experienced in the ways of time travel like some people are, but I can't help but wonder WHY Spock had to be there to save himself. I sort of understand the whole "Spock was away watching the Conception of the Orion Civilization" thing. What I don't understand was what if he WASN'T observing the Orions? Would he have had any reason to go through the GOF and save himself otherwise? Probably not. If he wasn't observing the Orions, he would have probably just been on the Enterprise in some other part of the Galaxy doing exploration stuff. He wouldn't have woken up one morning saying to himself "I need to go back in time and save myself". Also, why does the GOF playing back Vulcan history cause that history to change?

I think DC Fontana should have thought of some better reason for 7-year old Spock to have not survived.

..Oh, and one more "nitpick". If I were McCoy, Scotty, Therin (the Andorian First Officer), and the others in the "Spock-less" timeframe, I would protest to Kirk and Spock more vehemently about screwing with "their" timeline -- whose to say which one is the correct timeline. Maybe Spock was supposed to die. They were a bit cavalier about the lives the others have been living without Spock.

Don't get me wrong, I loved this episode. It, along with a small handful of other TAS eps, made TAS a worthwhile project. I'm just the type of guy who likes all loose ends tied up in my TV shows and movies. When I bring these kind of things up with my wife, she always says "don't worry about it -- it's just TV (or a movie)", but that answer just isn't good enough for me.

In the ST universe, the rule of thumb with the timeline is pretty much: Whatever the ultimate outcome of the episode/film is, that's what was supposed to happen all along. The timleline often appears to be mutable in the short term, but ultimately it's fixed.

 

[Timo]

Or, rather, all the episodes are shot from the viewpoint of the latest possible timeline. Not the latest timeline so far, but the timeline that is current after the closing credits roll for the final episode of the putative final spinoff show, sometime in the distant future of the audience. Which is sort of natural: why would the audience be shown a "half-baked" version of this universe, when it is technically possible to show the "completed" one?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

Jackson_Roykirk said:
I sort of understand the whole "Spock was away watching the Conception of the Orion Civilization" thing. What I don't understand was what if he WASN'T observing the Orions?

The problem occurred because the other historians were using the Guardian and their tricorders to observe Vulcan's recent past while Spock, Kirk and Erickson were in Orion's past.

Maybe the recordings made by Grey and Aleek-Om were crucial to judging when Spock had to jump? this tallies with "City".

But... Kirk and Erickson should have gone with Spock because, although Spock returns to a Thelin-free Enterprise, the Kirk that did not know him is still with Thelin and the McCoy who doesn't know Spock. Yes?

 

[Timo]

Is there "a Kirk that did not know him"? We never saw such a character; rather, the Kirk who was Thelin's commanding officer apparently never returned from the expedition to watch C-beams off the shoulder of Orion.

(Or did you mean "the Kirk that did not know Thelin"?)

And nobody seems to care about whether Erickson belongs to the Thelin timeline or not. Indeed, our Kirk claims he himself is the only one in the Thelin timeline to recognize Spock - so perhaps the Erickson who returned was actually Thelin's Erickson and not ours?

We can assume that the Thelin timeline simply ceased to exist once Spock restored the past. In a puff of magic, that timeline, too, would come to feature First Officer Spock, and the Kirk there would be quite happy with that. After all, that's what Thelin expects to happen to himself if Spock is successful: while there may still be a guy named Thelin born in the amended timeline, he will not grow up to be Kirk's XO. Spock will.

Thus, no two timelines, just one that is restored - save for the memories of the people standing right next to the Guardian, or traveling through it, just as happened in "City" and just as happens in most time travel stories. (All time machines that allow for the grandfather paradox would be expected to have such a "traveler-protecting field", now wouldn't they?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Frosty the Vorta said:

Kryton Kryngle said:
Ellison wants more money!

He's got hungry llamas to feed.

Feed? Wrong f-word...

 

[Christopher]

Therin of Andor said:
The problem occurred because the other historians were using the Guardian and their tricorders to observe Vulcan's recent past while Spock, Kirk and Erickson were in Orion's past.

Yep. The way I've always interpreted it is that they thought they were simply reviewing that period of Vulcan history, but by having the Guardian access it, they were actually influencing it. They didn't know it was an interactive process rather than a purely passive one.


One thing to keep in mind about time travel is that it allows cause to follow effect. A lot of time-travel stories follow a sort of Moebius-strip structure -- the "original" timeline happened in the first place because some future time travellers saw an alternate path that didn't fit their known history and retroactively saw that they had to go back and create the history they knew in the first place. In such a case, there was no "original, unaltered" timeline that preceded the alteration -- the "original" timeline was itself the result of restoring the alteration. It seems paradoxical, but it's exactly the kind of causality inversion that movement backward in time makes possible, even unavoidable.

Of course, the real paradox here is I-Chaya. If Spock was Selek all along, if he went back "in the first place" as a result of the altered timeline here, then why doesn't he remember I-Chaya dying in the "original" timeline? If Spock had somehow taken the place of the real Selek, say, nerve-pinched him or sent him off on a wild goose chase and taken his place, then the change in I-Chaya's fate would make sense. But if Selek was always Spock from the future, why are there two different iterations of his journey to his own past? And if I-Chaya didn't get poisoned by a le-matya the other time, how did young Spock prove himself and choose the Vulcan path? The episode claimed that nothing significant was changed, but that event influenced a pivotal decision in Spock's young life, so I'd call it very significant to his future.

So yeah, there are a lot of ways in which this episode doesn't quite fit together. But no more so than in most TV/movie time-travel stories. I've found it's best not to dwell on the inconsistencies.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Therin of Andor said:...But... Kirk and Erickson should have gone with Spock because, although Spock returns to a Thelin-free Enterprise, the Kirk that did not know him is still with Thelin and the McCoy who doesn't know Spock. Yes?

Okay, Okay! I know I said I like to have loose ends tied-up, but not if it makes my head hurt.

...and by the way Therin, in my post I meant to write "Thelin". I didn't mean to steal your screen name 'Therin of Andor'®

 

[Timo]

Of course, the real paradox here is I-Chaya. If Spock was Selek all along, if he went back "in the first place" as a result of the altered timeline here, then why doesn't he remember I-Chaya dying in the "original" timeline?

I wouldn't worry about that, really. These time loops need not be identical; an infinite succession of roughly similar loops would do as well. Such a series of loops might slowly converge to something that finally looks identical, loop after loop. Or then it could enter an alternating pattern, with every second loop featuring the death of I-Chaya as the formative event, and this in fact preventing the death of I-Chaya on the next loop (as "Selek" is prepared to act to prevent it) and resulting in a Spock that doesn't remember such an event, which then results in the death of I-Chaya on the loop after that (because now "Selek" isn't prepared for it), etc.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Redfern]

Sound's like you're describing a kind of Schrödinger's Sehlat.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Christopher]

Therin of Andor said:
But... Kirk and Erickson should have gone with Spock because, although Spock returns to a Thelin-free Enterprise, the Kirk that did not know him is still with Thelin and the McCoy who doesn't know Spock. Yes?

As "City" showed, those within the field of the Guardian's time effects are insulated from the timeline shifts. Although that doesn't explain why McCoy and the historians did undergo a timeline shift, since they were standing right next to the thing. But if the Guardian's getting erratic as I suggested above, maybe its field strength is erratic too -- hence the time ripples seen in "City." Maybe the field shrank to the point that McCoy and the historians weren't insulated at the time the shift occurred.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Maybe they all went to get lunch when that magic moment happened.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Timo said:
(Or did you mean "the Kirk that did not know Thelin"?)

Well, originally I was going to write "the McCoy that did not know Spock" but it's too late to edit now. No matter, only Spock returned to a corrected timeline (such as timelines worked in other ST episodes), leaving Kirk and Erickson in a different one, and Spock in a new timeline where I-Chaya died when Spock was a boy.

Jackson_Roykirk said:
...and by the way Therin, in my post I meant to write "Thelin". I didn't mean to steal your screen name 'Therin of Andor'®

That's okay. We are brothers and were often confused for each other. He died mysteriously when he was just seven.

Our zhavey could tell us apart; Thelin was always the animated one.