Is there a major contradiction in "The City on the Edge of Forever"?

[Pauln6]

According to Einstein, time is fluid, so there’s no past, present, or future. Kirk going back to the 1930’s had to happen to CAUSE Keeper’s death. Kirk not going back into time was the reason she lived. Timey wimey……

This is the only type of time travel I like!

I was deeply disturbed when Marty McFly abandons his gf in a hell hole timeline on the assumption time will just fix itself around her. If many worlds is correct, that woman is still there now and needs a sequel.

 

[Metryq]

I was deeply disturbed when Marty McFly abandons his gf in a hell hole timeline on the assumption time will just fix itself around her.

The BTTF movies screwed up both "single history" and "multiverse" models, but I continue to enjoy them partly for the nostalgia, and also because they have other redeeming qualities. The first movie could easily be re-written to avoid the nonsense paradoxes while delivering the "human value" aspects of the story (Marty learning that his parents had been kids once upon a time, too).

Imagine the third movie having both Marty and Doc'55 go back to the Olde West. On the way back to the future, Marty and Doc'85 must stop in 1955 to drop off Doc'55. But they arrive a week too early. The thunderclap arrival of the Outatime startles Doc'Prime who is hanging a clock in his bathroom, causing him to slip and hit his head on the sink...

 

[Sci]

I'm aware of that . However, as presented in the episode, via music, lighting, etc. Keeler seems such a saintly, near angelic personality that I'm inclined to believe she is one of the more chaste types.

I mean, that's a legitimate interpretation, but I personally don't see how being willing to have sex would make her any less saintly or angelic.

I always thought she was supposed to be some kind of religious missionary or something, at least as a formality. The end credits list the character as "Sister Edith Keeler." While the soup kitchen that she ran in the 21st Street Mission didn't seemed to have any religious aspects --no religious imagery/icons, and her dinner speech being about solving world hunger through science and whatnot-- "Mission" in the name seems to indicate some kind of religious sponsorship. So to me it seems that she would have been careful about that sort of thing, at least not to jeopardize her role at the Mission.

Kor

On the other hand, there were progressive Christians back then too who wouldn't have objected to a woman having a sex life.

 

[mb22]

I mean, that's a legitimate interpretation, but I personally don't see how being willing to have sex would make her any less saintly or angelic.

OK. But I imagine that she would have eventually married Kirk. As someone posted above, I doubt she would have been able to retain her position and niche in society with an out of wedlock pregnancy.

On the other hand, there were progressive Christians back then too who wouldn't have objected to a woman having a sex life.

I recall reading 1930s issues of the liberal Christian journal The Christian Century a few decades ago, and was somewhat surprised about their prudishness regarding film censorship.

 

[Grant]

There is no contradiction at all.

 

[Noname Given]

The real question: How would the timestream be affected if the Wino hadn't disintegrated himself with Dr. McCoy's Phaser?

 

[drt]

The real question: How would the timestream be affected if the Wino hadn't disintegrated himself with Dr. McCoy's Phaser?

I remember reading decades ago some fan-thing, maybe in Best of Trek, that the wino somehow saves Gene Roddenberry in WW2, so that in the Trekverse there is no actual Star Trek show.

 

[mb22]

Sign in to Internet Archive and read it here:

https://archive.org/details/bestofbestoftrek0000unse/page/86/mode/2up

 

[XCV330]

I remember reading decades ago some fan-thing, maybe in Best of Trek, that the wino somehow saves Gene Roddenberry in WW2, so that in the Trekverse there is no actual Star Trek show.

edit:
sorry I should have followed up on that:
with SNW now showing Benny Russell was real and did indeed continue to write science fiction - we have some some curious connections. Benny was alive and probably in NYC during the events of COTEOF. He was a teenager by then. We know Edith would have soon formed a pacifist movement that kept the U.S. out of WW2 (by late 1941), so this could have happened shortly after Benny was orphaned. Had he known about any of the events, such as the zapping of the wino, etc, it might have had some bearing on his own future career.. plus he had some kind of of link to the Sisko through the Prophets and they certainly have occasionally manipulated events on Earth, in Trek.

 

[SpocksTricorder]

As I see it, the premise is that McCoy, having without warning entered the time-stream then being displayed by the Guardian, acted to disrupt That Which Was. Kirk and Spock were forced to act to prevent / undo the damage to the time-stream caused by McCoy's presence and to retrieve him.

I don't think there's a contradiction.

1. Time-stream exists
2. Out-of-place element introduced to time-stream, disrupting it.
3. Heroes enter time-stream in advance of the disruption and prevent it from occurring, restoring time-stream to The Way It Should Be.
4. Time-stream continues to exist.

A number of Star Trek stories followed a similar formula.

It's a TV show. Reality does not exist. But TOS was great mind expanding for us earthlings.

 

[Mytran]

It's a TV show. Reality does not exist.

We all know this, it's just easy to talk about the fictional world of the TV show without having to spell it out every time. Or would you really rather people's statements appear more like:

1. Time-stream depicted within the fictional world of the TV show exists
2. Out-of-place element introduced to time-stream of the fictional TV show's world, disrupting it.
3. Heroes enter time-stream of the fictional TV show's world in advance of the disruption and prevent it from occurring, restoring time-stream to The Way It Should Be according to it's depiction within the fictional world of the TV show.
4. Time-stream depicted within the fictional world of the TV show continues to exist.

Just seems more clunky IMO but whatever you prefer...

 

[Vger23]

My head vs. time paradox discussions on sci-fi message boards:

 

[Metryq]

My head vs. time paradox discussions on sci-fi message boards

That's because all too many time travel tales invoke paradoxes, which by definition are impossible. That sort of sloppy writing is unsatisfactory for the reader/audience. So don't strain your brain over them.

There are two basic models for the writer: the single history, and the multiverse. If you want to "change history," then it must be multiverse. And if you think that deflates the drama, check out James P. Hogan's The Proteus Operation. (It ain't your grandfather's transparent aluminum.) I would love to see that one on the big screen, but Hollywood would find some way to foul it up.

 

[M'Sharak]

It's a TV show. Reality does not exist.

 

[blssdwlf]

There are two basic models for the writer: the single history, and the multiverse. If you want to "change history," then it must be multiverse.

Wait a sec. If you want to "change history" then shouldn't that be "single history" model instead of multiverse model? That way history is being changed. The multiverse model would be more like escape the bad one and find the one you or an alternate you successfully changed?

 

[UssGlenn]

there are at least 3
Single history, with only predestination paradoxes, Like in Harry Potter
Overwriting the timeline, like Back to the Future
Multiverse, like Avengers Endgame

 

[M'Sharak]

Wait a sec. If you want to "change history" then shouldn't that be "single history" model instead of multiverse model? That way history is being changed. The multiverse model would be more like escape the bad one and find the one you or an alternate you successfully changed?

In a single-timeline model, changing history overwrites whatever existed before; to change it back, it is necessary to overwrite the timeline again.

In a multiverse model, an intrusion or event creates a branch point in what had been a single timeline, from which two or more probabilities continue onward; one branch would be the timeline continuing unaltered / unaffected, and the other(s) would be similar timeline(s) reflecting a change caused by the event or intrusion.

Jumping to another, already-existing timeline would be inter-dimensional travel.

 

[Metryq]

No, a single timeline history cannot be changed or "overwritten." That is a paradox. C'mon, this is a sci-fi forum. Surely everyone here knows the "grandfather paradox"? One writer who tried to explain it away was Orson Scott Card in Pastwatch. The theory there was that time was made up of "quanta," or frames like a movie. With causality running only forward, the traveler could be displaced into the past and "change history." But he would not wipe out his own causality because his own "film," from the moment he traveled, had been displaced into the past, free of the forward-running domino effect. That's a shell game, taking the attributes of time and giving them to the mass that is changed by time.

This doesn't work for several reasons. First, it allows causality to run into the past (the time traveler), but prohibits that insofar as the traveler is concerned because it is inconvenient to the author. Second, it "nests" time within another dimension of time, again because it is convenient to the author. For example, in Back to the Future it took a week for Marty's interference to "catch up" with him and make him start to fade away.

But time does not "happen" anymore than the world appears one step ahead of you—unless you are Harold with a purple crayon. In order to "time travel" there must be past and future to go to. Edwin Abbott Flatland time: that means all of time exists as a 4-dimensional shape from deepest past to farthest future. Consciousness experiences duration. Time simply is. Mind-bender 2: time traveling into the past in a multiverse does not "spawn" a new universe, that "shape" was "already" there. (Hard to talk about time with tense-oriented language.)

Each Back to the Future movie was flawed all on its own. Taken together they are a total mess. But I enjoyed them for the human element. They are fantasy.

Why would time be one-directional? How about entropy? Some have suggested that entropy is not universal. Consider "evolution" of the Big Bang, if you subscribe that model. If everything were running downhill to a "heat death," where does "evolution" fit in? There might be a net loss so that a small fraction of the mass involved is "wound up" like a clock... Does that mean that an "open" Big Bang universe would result in a tiny fraction of mass in a highly evolved state? (Utopia/Nirvana?)

 

[Pauln6]

No, a single timeline history cannot be changed or "overwritten." That is a paradox. C'mon, this is a sci-fi forum. Surely everyone here knows the "grandfather paradox"? One writer who tried to explain it away was Orson Scott Card in Pastwatch. The theory there was that time was made up of "quanta," or frames like a movie. With causality running only forward, the traveler could be displaced into the past and "change history." But he would not wipe out his own causality because his own "film," from the moment he traveled, had been displaced into the past, free of the forward-running domino effect. That's a shell game, taking the attributes of time and giving them to the mass that is changed by time.

This doesn't work for several reasons. First, it allows causality to run into the past (the time traveler), but prohibits that insofar as the traveler is concerned because it is inconvenient to the author. Second, it "nests" time within another dimension of time, again because it is convenient to the author. For example, in Back to the Future it took a week for Marty's interference to "catch up" with him and make him start to fade away.

But time does not "happen" anymore than the world appears one step ahead of you—unless you are Harold with a purple crayon. In order to "time travel" there must be past and future to go to. Edwin Abbott Flatland time: that means all of time exists as a 4-dimensional shape from deepest past to farthest future. Consciousness experiences duration. Time simply is. Mind-bender 2: time traveling into the past in a multiverse does not "spawn" a new universe, that "shape" was "already" there. (Hard to talk about time with tense-oriented language.)

Each Back to the Future movie was flawed all on its own. Taken together they are a total mess. But I enjoyed them for the human element. They are fantasy.

Why would time be one-directional? How about entropy? Some have suggested that entropy is not universal. Consider "evolution" of the Big Bang, if you subscribe that model. If everything were running downhill to a "heat death," were does "evolution" fit in? There might be a net loss so that a small fraction of the mass involved is "wound up" like a clock... Does that mean that an "open" Big Bang universe would result in a tiny fraction of mass in a highly evolved state? (Utopia/Nirvana?)

Trek has very clearly used the multiversal model and the existence of a fixed 4th dimension in each timeline is unambiguously established in episodes featuring the non-linear wormhole prophets. That's clever sci fi.

The notion that time is overwritten and must be fixed is a writing technique to simplify things for more casual non-si-fi viewers but also to ramp up perceived peril. It can easily be explained away by accepting that the way what we are seeing on screen is described is not actually time being overwritten but the viewer jumping tracks into an alternate timeline. The time traveller has 'changed' the future for people in that timeline but no more so than any other native from that timeline making a different decision. It isn't possible to reconcile the single changeable timeline within the multiversal model so multiverse wins.

Best/Worst example is Voyager's Year of Hell. So, for both episodes, nobody mentions Kes's warning or the information they prepped so the entire story is set featuring alternate versions of the crew who never had that information until the very last scene where Janeway, for no apparent reason, says let's go round. At the very least, she should have said, (alternate timeline Kes since our Kes was never exposed to the energy) Kes warned us about these guys, let's go round, to make that clearer.

I wonder if anybody has sat down and worked out which timeline the characters end up in as they go? I know that modern producers have cheekily suggested that the shows look different because time travel in Enterprise or First Contact means that the prequel shows are not set in the same timeline as TOS.

I don't really get the time police though. If every possible timeline exists, that includes an infinite number containing time travellers.

Maybe Black Mirror needs to do an episode set in WWII that features a concentration camp that's just full of time travellers.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe Black Mirror needs to do an episode set in WWII that features a concentration camp that's just full of time travellers.

Outer limits beat them to it.

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Age restricted? You wussies!

Paul, it'd been 200 relative years aboard Annorax's ship.

ANNORAX: No, not until every colony, every individual, every blade of grass is restored.
OBRIST: You said yourself our task will never be complete. Please. We should be satisfied with what we have accomplished. For two hundred years, we have never come this close.
ANNORAX: Not close enough.

Conservatively, considering how long it takes to do the math, if they had had two incursions a year for two hundred years, that's 4 hundred incursions. So we are lucky that Nicole Janeway wasn't in charge of Voyager.

The reason Janeway went around Krenim space in the end was because the border guard was friendly second time around... Four hundred and second time around... Compared to the bullying asshole from the beginning of the story.

Kathryn doesn't like being mansplained to by belligerent pricks. It makes her tetchy.

LANG: They're firing on us, Captain.
TUVOK: It's a small vessel, fifteen lifeforms aboard. Low warp capacity, limited armaments. They pose no threat.
JANEWAY: Open a channel. Good day, sir. Have we offended you in some way?
KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: You will reverse course immediately. This region is in dispute. You have no business in Krenim space.
JANEWAY: I was under the impression we were entering Zahl territory.
KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: The Zahl have no legitimate claim here. They have taken what is ours. Reverse course or be destroyed.
JANEWAY: With all due respect, unless you've got something a little bigger in your torpedo tubes, I'm not turning around. But I'm certainly willing to discuss this issue with you.
KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: No discussion! No compromise!
(Transmission ends.)
TUVOK: They are in retreat.
CHAKOTAY: His bark's obviously worse than his bite.
JANEWAY: He seems rather intent. Let's go to yellow alert. Maintain our course. Maybe the Zahl can give us some answers.

The Krenim boarder guard shoots Voyager and threatens Janeway with death, inspiring her to dominate this species because of their gall and presumption.

Take two.

KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: You've entered Krenim space. State your identity.
JANEWAY: Captain Janeway of the starship Voyager. We're just passing through, trying to get home.
KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: This region is in dispute. I suggest you avoid our territory.
JANEWAY: Thanks for the warning.
KRENIM COMMANDANT [on viewscreen]: Good journey.
CHAKOTAY: Tom, plot a course around Krenim space.

Just words, a friend advisory from a local official about border safety. Janeway is not triggered. She reacts like a normal human being, and obeys the Federation laws about tresspass and respecting sovereign territory. Less like a crazy person, no?



I was Wrong.

It's the Zahl.

Janeway met the Zahl, who guaranteed Voyager safe passage through contested space without explaining that it was contested space, or that it was being contested by idiots with tech 3 hundred years behind the Federation, that no one took seriously, the Krenim, so it wasn't really being contested at all, but anyone that matters.

As far as Janeway was concerned she was not entering Krenim Space, she was entering Zahl space, but if the Krenim had taken the time to calmly explain who the lying bastard was, then Janeway could have gone around the contested area, because her permission to go there was not completely wholeheartedly legal, or it was, or it might not be.

She believed that her figurative Visa from Zahl was water tight in take one, meanwhile there was no Zahl in take two, so what the Krenim border guard said, was the law of the land, and there was no need to attack him, or bring the Imperium to it's bloodied knees.