You take that back! Pluto never did anything to you. It's what we say it is and we say it's a planet.
Is there any chance Trek XI is the real timeline?
- Thread starter Magickthise
- Start date
You take that back! Pluto never did anything to you. It's what we say it is and we say it's a planet.
Plus "Star Trek" has shown us that at least in the Trekverse that time travel doesn't always operate exactly the same. You can change the timeline or create a divergent timeline it seems. Not only that but you can get stuck in time loops or time can be slowed down to a point where you are basically frozen in time and there are places such as the Guardian of Forever where your imune to changes in time. Time travel can work it seems in whatever way the writer wants it to work that week.
Jason
Unless you consider that the Borg, then Picard, each created a new alternate timeline, and Picard returned to the future of this third "Enterprise" timeline at the end of that movie, which was "close enough" to the one he remembered.
"Star Trek XI" simply starts 200 years later in that new "First Contact"/"Enterprise" timeline.
You are making the mistake of assuming there is only one "mainstream" universe. TNG's "Parallels" established that there are numerous parallel timelines, each of them equally real. What you subjectively call "mainstream" is merely the alternate timeline where the TV cameras happen to be recording on a given week.
"Star Trek: First Contact" depicted the same treatment of time travel as "The City on the Edge of Forever" -- when McCoy/the Borg go back in time and change the past, the captain (Kirk/Picard) is pulled into the future of that new timeline where the Federation no longer exists. He then decides to go back in time and "fix" the past, then return to the present to find the Federation exists again.
While those two episodes are consistent with one another, other episodes, such as "Voyager's" "Endgame" and TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" show characters from the future going back in time, changing history, then staying in that new timeline, which is never "fixed" by anyone. That is exactly what happens in "Star Trek XI." The time traveler leaves the "mainstream" timeline forever and continues to live in a new, alternate timeline.
You are assuming that when Lt. Yar and the Enterprise-C went through the time rift at the end of "Yesterday's Enterprise," that the entire universe disappeared. But it was just the camera shot changing from one timeline to the other, since Yar was the viewpoint character for that story. As far as we know, the original timeline kept going without Yar. Picard and the Enterprise-D could still be fighting the Klingon war without her.
That is the case in a couple episodes, but is not a universal rule in "Trek." Many episodes have depicted parallel universes, alternate realities, and divergent timelines. In many episodes, such as "E2," the characters themselves are wondering whether time travel creates a new timeline or erases their own future. In fact, in each time travel story, the characters are never sure what is going to happen, since time travel seems to follow different rules each time they encounter it.
In the "Enterprise" episode "In a Mirror, Darkly," it showed an interphasic rift creating a link between the TOS timeline to 100 years in the past in the "Mirror Universe," which would also have links with TOS and DS9 timelines in the "present," so there is precedent for an instance of time travel to also cross over into alternate realities.
Well, astronomers seem to change the definition of "planet" arbitrarily, to make themselves seem relevant. But I will stick with the dictionary definition of a planet. Astronomers do not have the authority to change the meanings of words. When astronomers debate the definition of "planet," it is as pointless as Trekkies debating theories of time travel.
All time travel theories are equally fictional, just like quantum physics and wormholes and lots of other stuff that looks cool on a blackboard, but does not actually exist in real life. And "Star Trek" episodes certainly aren't written by scientists. That's why there are so many contradictions. There's no official rule book that governs the laws of Trek physics.
Actually, in terms of causality, the proper sequence should be:
TNG > DS9 > ST: First Contact > Enterprise > Voyager > ST: Nemesis > "Star Trek" (2009)
Forgive me; the vocabulary necessary to talk about the two timelines in the same paragraph is something like reading Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. I should have said "we know it was used exclusively by the Enterprise thirty years after the Kelvin's 2233 return to Earth (a journey during which a lightning storm did not appear in space).
Blech. Grammar.
I didn't bother reading the thread, I'm just going to answer the title question:
There is no "real" timeline or "fake" timeline. In the many-worlds hypothesis there are an infinite number of universes so that all possibilities are fulfilled. None of these universes is "better" or "primary". The multiverse does not make value judgments like that.
Not only that, but the new universe isn't a "branch" of the old. It existed separately until Nero and Spock entered it, and then continued to exist separately.
There is no "real" timeline or "fake" timeline. In the many-worlds hypothesis there are an infinite number of universes so that all possibilities are fulfilled. None of these universes is "better" or "primary". The multiverse does not make value judgments like that.
Not only that, but the new universe isn't a "branch" of the old. It existed separately until Nero and Spock entered it, and then continued to exist separately.
There's a simple reason why this timeline isn't the prime, nor is the TOS timeline.
In TAS, it is determined that Spock used the Guardian of Forever in a paradoxical exercise to save himself from being killed by a Sehlat. Without TOS's 'future Spock's' interference, Spock wouldn't have made it out of childhood and the Enterprise would have had an Andorian First Officer.
We've never even seen the prime timeline except for a few minutes in one TAS episode.
Suck it, nerds!
<------- (Just kidding)
In TAS, it is determined that Spock used the Guardian of Forever in a paradoxical exercise to save himself from being killed by a Sehlat. Without TOS's 'future Spock's' interference, Spock wouldn't have made it out of childhood and the Enterprise would have had an Andorian First Officer.
We've never even seen the prime timeline except for a few minutes in one TAS episode.
Suck it, nerds!
<------- (Just kidding)Similar threads
