No it wouldn't.
Marty nearly vanished because he was directly involved with his parents. Data was faffing around with Mark Twain.
Is Data's head still under San Francisco?
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Marty nearly vanished because he was directly involved with his parents. Data was faffing around with Mark Twain.
Then why did Spock emerge into the new timeline instead of the prime one? 25 years after the timelines had diverged?
Remember, Nero went through first, and therefore arrived first. If he had changed the universe FROM WHICH HE LEFT, Spock and the Jellyfish would have both ceased to exist before they had time to enter the wormhole. If his arrival had created an alternate timeline, the black hole in the prime timeline would have still lead to the the PAST of the prime timeline, and Spock would have arrived in a 2257 where George Kirk was still alive and nobody had ever heard of Nero.
They can't BOTH have come from the prime timeline. Either Nero did, and "Spock Prime" was pulled into the black hole in an incident that parallels to but was substantially different from what happened to Nero, or NEITHER of them did, and STXI is some sort of predestination paradox.
Come come now, this is the classic paradox! Events that would have led to Marrty's existence in the future that he came from were altered so that he could no longer exist (it doesn't really matter if they were altered by him or by someone else, although in the latter case it wouldn't be a paradox).
Events that would have led to Data Prime going back in time have also been altered. Therefore Data Prime would vanish. If Data goes (or went, depending on your perspective) back in time it would now be NuData. Back to the Future was unambiguously dealing with one timeline that was being overwritten - this is the time travel version ascribed to Yesterday's Enterprise if you interpret what you see on the screen literally.
Btw Newtype_Alpha didn't Spock get pulled in first and Nero pursued him? I haven't seen the movie for a while so I can't be sure. However, Spock's arrival would indeed be another branching event if you ascribe to branching theory so we actually have three branches not two. Data Prime's head is only in the first one in my view.
No they haven't. They still happen in the Prime timeline. As the timeline only splits when Nero arrives, prior events are shared including Data and co. messing around in the past.
They have changed if you apply the Back to the Future method of Time Travel that overwrites a single timeline. Remember how they just left his girlfriend behind because time would just readjust around her?
I was simply pointing out that Marty McFly was a bad example as that definitely isn't the form of time travel we see in NuTrek. If it was, Spock's passage into the past could have instananeously altered the present by saving Romulus at an earlier date thus removing the need for Nero to seek revenge (assuming I'm remembering Spock going through first correctly).
The two possibilities are branching from a single timeline (which I dislike because you have to create 'budding' universes from nothing and I don't see how that makes sense) or pre-existing near-infinite universes (which we know exist from Parallels) billions of which can run parallel to each other until an event like Nero causes one (or more) to diverge. As I said, this version can explain every time travel story in Trek history except perhaps how or why Temporal Police work to 'restore' a timeline.
The science of the Star Trek universe is simply different than our own. The writers of the story said the timeline split in 2233. By the logic of the story one universe became two, sharing the same past prior to the split. So Jim Kirk Prime was present in 1930, 1968, 1969 and 1984. Ben Sisko was present in 2023 and Janeway in 1996. The writer intent allows for no other interpretation. Real science or not.
Good enough for me.
Yes, but Marty from the first movie was still around in 1955 even after Marty had travelled from an alternate 1985 in the second. If the timeline was overwritten, Marty could have never gone to 1955 in the first place.
So really it doesn't actually matter if the timeline was overwritten or if the timeline split, Data's head would still be there.
The PU's Datas head is still there but the timeline has been so construed that I can garundamntee that anything post 2009, has been changed in such a drastic manner that people things and events will never happen. So his head is and will probably remain.
Oh yeah that's true! But it was still a different form of time travel unless of course they were jumping tracks without realising. Many worlds covers a multitude of inconsistencies. I prefer pre-destination paradoxes ovreall but proper many worlds theory lets you ride over the stupidity far more easily.
I've just spoken to a more scientifically inclined friend now too and, while she agrees with me more generally, she postulates another version of branching theory where the timelines don't branch, they pop apart so your common history can be identical but not the same timeline - at least that would stop time travel bottlenecks which would be dumb. She also thinks Schrodinger has it right and ranted something about Hollywood monkeys...
Nope. Nero went through first, Spock went through a few seconds later. There was, therefore, a short period of time where Spock was still in his original timeline AFTER Nero had traveled into the past.
You've gotta wonder why the black hole would have stayed linked to the altered universe and not to the past of the prime universe... UNLESS, of course, Spock Prime isn't really from the Prime Universe and there's a lot going on that he's not telling us.
If Data's head is still under San Francisco, it's definitely NuData's head. That is, unless "San Francisco" is Tasha Yar's nickname in the Abramsverse.
The Great Bird of the Universe wanted Spock Prime to be where he needed to be. But does he want Data Prime to be where he doesn't need to be?
That's the whole point. It's a fictional movie in which fictional red matter time travel works the way they say it does, not the way a science lecturer not involved with the film might say it should.
Pauln6 said:
The existence of Data Prime's head follows from previously known facts about the TNG timeline combined with writer intent regarding STXI. The writers don't have to release a statement saying it's there.
Pauln6 said:
That know-nothing attitude is not as close as you can get. It ignores the fact that the presence of Data's head can easily be deduced from its presence in the Prime timeline at that point.
newtype_alpha said:
Wrong. It's Data Prime's head, just as the Kelvin seen in 2233 before Nero arrives is the Prime Kelvin, along with everything else that was part of the Prime universe in 2233. The Abramsverse has the same past as the Prime before Nero arrives, and that includes Data Prime's head being there.
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Then why is the Kelvin crew wearing the arrowhead insignia of the Enterprise? In the Prime universe the adoption of this insignia throughout Starfleet was seen in recognition of the achievements of the Enterprise.
I'd like to point out that, IMO, we never see the Primeverse (the mind-meld possibly excepted). The whole movie is a timeline that parallels the one we've seen before very closely, except that a Nero from another timeline (presumably a Primeverse (yes, we've seen several of those in the course of Trek)) pops in, and later Spock does the same, and the timeline changes in accordance with the resulting consequences. It was -never- the Prime timeline.
And as I've said before, since we're not seeing a Prime timeline, we can't know whether or not Data's head is in the past, because we don't know whether the TNG folks from another timeline jumped into this one and deposited it.
To say that we're "wrong" because we're not paying attention to the writers' intentions is to ignore the fact that the question didn't specify that we adhere to the writers' intentions. Frankly it's also more than a little rude, IMO, to say "You're absolutely wrong and I'm absolutely right," when we're talking about something that's theoretical to begin with. The "wrong" folks would, IMO, come off a lot better if they instead said, "I don't agree".
And as I've said before, since we're not seeing a Prime timeline, we can't know whether or not Data's head is in the past, because we don't know whether the TNG folks from another timeline jumped into this one and deposited it.
To say that we're "wrong" because we're not paying attention to the writers' intentions is to ignore the fact that the question didn't specify that we adhere to the writers' intentions. Frankly it's also more than a little rude, IMO, to say "You're absolutely wrong and I'm absolutely right," when we're talking about something that's theoretical to begin with. The "wrong" folks would, IMO, come off a lot better if they instead said, "I don't agree".
That's fanon. Some Federation ships had different insignia, but ships and facilities other than the Enterprise had the arrowhead in TOS, too. Like on Starbase 11, where Kirk greets ex-classmates wearing the familiar arrow.
Franz Joseph's old (1975) Tech Manual explained the different insignia as ships operating under different branches of Starfleet.
See also: "Friendship One", an Earth probe from the 2060's with the familiar symbol.
Fair enough, It might have been retconned in that case. I was under the impression that the arrowhead insignia was an Enterprise only thing, like all the other ones for different ships seen in TOS.
It was intended to be the past of the Prime timeline until Nero arrived.
DonIago said:
That is nonsense. You already said we see the Prime timeline in the mind-meld. The presence of Data Prime's head does not depend on anything we "don't know" or "can't know". We know that it had been there in the past of the Prime timeline as of 2387 when Nero went back. That is a done deal, left unchanged as of the end of Time's Arrow. Nero travels into the past of his own timeline, to a point when it was there. There's no ambiguity or mystery there whatsoever. The only way for it not to be there is if the writers intended a retcon that episodes such as Time's Arrow didn't actually happen ( or equivalently intended Spock and Nero to not actually be from the Prime we saw in TOS, TNG, the films, etc ).
DonIago said:
Whatever. Do we need a new thread titled "Is Data's head still under San Francisco IF YOU MUST ADHERE TO THE WRITERS' INTENTIONS"? Obviously anyone can be right on any issue if they change the facts to suit their position.
It could be both. Perhaps each ship had its own insignia, but since the Enterprise was the flagship of the fleet, it's "own insignia" was essentially the insignia for all of Starfleet? (Yes, I know there are scenes on Starbases and such that contradict this - but there is also a scene that says women can't be starship captains. Best to let some things go.
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Absolutely and I'm pretty sure that was due to executive meddling. I can imagine the original pitch being that Janice Lester lost out to Kirk for command of the Enterprise and the whole story would have been about her having going insane and using his body to live out her dream of commanding the ship.
But those were the 1960's, where people of non-white ethnicity, let alone women were not given parts in tv shows where they could be in a position of control. It goes without saying that post 1960's, Roddenberry and the writers of the following Trek productions retconned this away. I think the general consensus interpret the line in that episode as just part of Lester's insanity and her belief that being a woman has prevented her gaining command of a starship.
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