Is there a prime time line?

[ConRefit79]

Star Trek has been time traveling since the Naked Time. By some current theories and the one used in JJ Trek, if one travels back in time and alters it, a new branch of the time line is created. So wouldn't the Prime time line had ended in the Naked Time episode? And branched again each time they went to the 60's? An I guess earth was destroyed by the Whale probe in the time line they left when they went to the 80's.

I HATE TIME TRAVEL.

 

[R. Star]

Well in Star Trek, it's pretty much easier to travel back and forth in time than travel from point a to point b by warp. Man, good thing all ships are equipped with reset buttons or things could get really screwed up.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Read this:

It weaves every method of Trek time travel into one complex but coherent system. In short: One-way time travel creates a branching parallel timeline, but in the case of two-way time travel (where any matter or energy of any kind go back and forth, not just a spaceship), the resulting timelines are entangled and the original history is overwritten.

Christopher did a LOT of homework, and wrote a great story.

 

[B.J.]

Temporal mechanics give me a headache!

 

[MacLeod]

I think Chief O'Brien said it best. "I Hate Temporal Mechanics".

 

[Dukhat]

Star Trek has been time traveling since the Naked Time. By some current theories and the one used in JJ Trek, if one travels back in time and alters it, a new branch of the time line is created. So wouldn't the Prime time line had ended in the Naked Time episode? And branched again each time they went to the 60's? An I guess earth was destroyed by the Whale probe in the time line they left when they went to the 80's.

I HATE TIME TRAVEL.

I suppose it would depend on your point of view. Some people can argue that, as you said, every little instance of time-travel/meddling/whatever in the Trek universe created a new universe, and there really is no "prime" universe per se.

However, I believe the most popular line of thinking is that even though there are several of these changes that happened, if the changes really didn't do much of anything, then it's still considered the "prime" timeline (or the similar thinking that those changes were "always" meant to happen, so the prime universe was not in fact changed at all, but is continuing the way it should be despite the timeline changes).

IMHO, ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and all the films (with the exception of the Abrams movies) all take place in the original "prime" universe, simply because that was the intention of each series' or movies' creators, and there's no reason to doubt that, even though there are huge tech differences between a prequel filmed in 2000 for a show filmed in 1966.

 

[blssdwlf]

Star Trek has been time traveling since the Naked Time. By some current theories and the one used in JJ Trek, if one travels back in time and alters it, a new branch of the time line is created. So wouldn't the Prime time line had ended in the Naked Time episode? And branched again each time they went to the 60's? An I guess earth was destroyed by the Whale probe in the time line they left when they went to the 80's.

Ah the "prime timeline". Is it the one that Kirk dies (in "Generations") or was alive when Scotty left for the Norpin colony (in "Relics") ? It's more like Schroedinger's Kirk.

I think the "prime timeline" in AbramsTrek only exists in the AbramsTrek-continuity. IIRC, Abrams or one of the writers cite "Generations" as to why Shatner doesn't appear in their movie so it sounds like they picked a timeline/continuity for their "prime" where the events of at least the TNG TV series happened differently or not at all.

 

[yenny]

Is there is still a prime time line? It would depend on who had change the time line. If you went back in time and change events that had happen to you? Then when you travel back to your original starting date. You would had created a new time line and the original one would no longer exist.

But if someone else went back in time and change your past? Then the original time will continue on as is, but there will be a new time existing as well.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

In short: One-way time travel creates a branching parallel timeline, but in the case of two-way time travel (where any matter or energy of any kind go back and forth, not just a spaceship), the resulting timelines are entangled and the original history is overwritten.

But all two-way time travel starts as one-way. So does this mean that whenever someone travels BACK in time, the timelines diverge, but if they go FORWARD again, the timelines sync up?

 

[Anduril]

Yes there is a prime timeline. I gotta hand it to JJ Abrams for throwing the biggest monkey wrench of all time into the Trekkie collective.

But what is the prime timeline anyway? There haven't been any Eugenics Wars that I'm aware of so Star Trek takes place in an alternate timeline anyway.

 

[blssdwlf]

Is there is still a prime time line? It would depend on who had change the time line. If you went back in time and change events that had happen to you? Then when you travel back to your original starting date. You would had created a new time line and the original one would no longer exist.

But if someone else went back in time and change your past? Then the original time will continue on as is, but there will be a new time existing as well.

I dunno. The movie "First Contact" showed what happened to the original timeline when someone else went back in time and changed the past. (It doesn't continue on as-is.) It was only fortuitous that the E-E was protected by a time bubble. The same could be said also for "The City on the Edge of Forever" where McCoy aka "someone else" went back in time and altered history and the landing party was insulated from the changes by the Guardian.

The only times when the original timeline/continuity stays "relatively" intact is when someone else goes back in time is when the "someone else" was already predestined to do what they were going to do or it was spelled out that they were hopping dimensions / universes (continuities).

In AbramsTrek, it sounds like their starting "prime" continuity is different than what we know of regular TOS or even TNG continuity. There are some abilities that "prime" Spock appears to lack, most noticeably his desire to return back to his original universe or effect time-travel to undo Nero's damage. IMHO, of course.

 

[T'Girl]

So wouldn't the Prime time line had ended in the Naked Time episode?

It might depend on how big or significant a change you made. If after the time travel the Enterprise engaged in (in Naked Time) Kirk simply went on to the Enterprise's next destination, and made no effort to communicated with the Enterprise that hadn't yet traveled backwards in time, the impact of that particular time travel would have been zero.

No harm, no foul.

To all the other incidents of time travel in the show, the JJ-verse's old Spock said that there exists some kind of mechanism that would try to repair time lines (I'm not looking up a direct quote on my damned phone), to "correct them."

 

[SicOne]

To further complicate matters, how would someone from the "prime" timeline go back in time and convince someone in a new "alternate" timeline to make whatever adjustment was needed to restore the "prime" timeline? As far as the "alternate" timeline person is concerned, this IS the way things are supposed to be...

 

[SicOne]

Yes there is a prime timeline. I gotta hand it to JJ Abrams for throwing the biggest monkey wrench of all time into the Trekkie collective.

But what is the prime timeline anyway? There haven't been any Eugenics Wars that I'm aware of so Star Trek takes place in an alternate timeline anyway.

Didn't author Greg Cox handle the Eugenics Wars in his Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh books in a way to reflect a Eugenics Wars taking place in the 90s, but under the radar of history, so to speak?