If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the same.

[Pauln6]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

Plus, ST Online is an alternate timeline in and of itself.

No, it isn't. Path to 2409 is Prime timeline after the destruction of Romulus.

Where you have several, inconsistent methods of time travel you should pick the one that is consistent with the most material.

There is no reason different methods of time travel cannot coexist if based on different circumstances. Since we have never seen red matter black hole time travel before, there is zero inconsistency on the subject of how red matter black hole time travel works.

Ah ok. But I was automaticaly discounting the single timeline being re-written method of time travel because that is the one method that scientists universally reject. Whatever the characters' own perceptions and theories seen on screen, if we accept that the laws of physics apply unless we are expressly told differently, then I prefer to follow the theory that is consistent with what phycisists say is possible.

Your mileage may vary since a lot of trek tech is impossible given our current knowledge of physics but re-writing the history of your own timeline is universally panned by everybody except sci fi writers and there is an alternative explanation that scientists are willing to gie a tiny bit of credibility.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

Plus, ST Online is an alternate timeline in and of itself.

No, it isn't. Path to 2409 is Prime timeline after the destruction of Romulus.

The novels claim to be the "prime" timeline too, continuing from Nemesis. "The Needs of the Many" hints that they're alternate timelines.

Where you have several, inconsistent methods of time travel you should pick the one that is consistent with the most material.

There is no reason different methods of time travel cannot coexist if based on different circumstances. Since we have never seen red matter black hole time travel before, there is zero inconsistency on the subject of how red matter black hole time travel works.

The DTI novel "Watching the Clock" makes an epic attempt to reconcile everything. Part of that is that one-way time travel (i.e. through a black hole) creates an alternate reality, wheras in two-way anomalies ("Yesterday's Enterprise" etc), the resulting timelines remain entangled and eventually merge again, with only the altered version of history being remembered. So: alternate timelines, but not for every possible outcome of every event.

It's all explained in far more detail in the book, and well worth reading.

 

[Pauln6]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

The DTI novel "Watching the Clock" makes an epic attempt to reconcile everything. Part of that is that one-way time travel (i.e. through a black hole) creates an alternate reality, wheras in two-way anomalies ("Yesterday's Enterprise" etc), the resulting timelines remain entangled and eventually merge again, with only the altered version of history being remembered. So: alternate timelines, but not for every possible outcome of every event.

It's all explained in far more detail in the book, and well worth reading.

That does sound like fun, although technically the slingshot manoeuvre is one way. Still, the odds of manually calculating and performing the manoeuvre to arrive back at the exact moment they left stands alongside successfully transwarp beaming using decrepit 23rd century equipment as far as probability goes.

Once you accept that the Q have been subtley adjusting probability fields for entertainment value since Archer's time, the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

You're on the Guardans world and your timeline is overwritten.

It's clearly one universe according to the laws created by the perfectly sane and agreeable author of City on the Edge of Forever.

So TOS McCoy is fucked up on Cordrozine, lands on the Guardians planet and meets Abrams McCoy fucked up on Cordrozine and they slap the shit out of each other and then escape through the Guardian into Alexis Carrington's despicable embrace...

(Showing my age.)

Which means that Abrams Kirk and TOS Kirk will both be on the Guardians planet chasing Mcoy in confrontation with one another arguing about who's universe has more of a right to exist even as McCoy is insuring that the Nazis win WWII and both their Federations vanish.

A universe exists from end to beginning. Just because you change it in the middle it doesn't mean that everything didn't happen existentially. So TOS Kirk was in several situations during his life which Abrams Kirk may mirror where he was protected from alterations to the timeline in so that many TOS Kirk (19 according to Temporal Investigations, but those are just the adventures which he told them about.) could reenter time, call it "wrong" and be pissed off by the Abrams universe with a hankering to do something the hell about it.

Kirk in San Francisco in the late 1980s is protected from the alternations Nero made, so when he returns back to the future with George and Gracie, Starfleet is going to shit a brick wondering what the hell is going on that some Mirror Jim Kirk thinks that his job to save this Universe with "Whales".

That's if the Abrams Jim Kirk doesn't go back to find Whales too, that is if Old Spock didn't sort the Whale issue out 30 years before that shit came to a head, and only TOS Kirk comes back with Whales that aren't really needed.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

How I like to think of time travel in Star Trek:

How time travel actually works in Star Trek:

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: If you're outside time when the universe changes... You stay the s

That ball of yarn is soaked in Halran Ellison's piss isn't it?