JJ-Trek/ IDW Continuity and Discontinuities

[Jinn]

So, websites like Memeory Alpha would have to stop acknowledging these details in Prime articles.

Since they didn't accept "Kelvin-timeline" and I can hardly believe that MA would accept Peggs statement.

 

[Jsplinis]

Actually, Memory Alpha does use information from Star Trek '09 in its Prime Universe articles. If you look up James Kirk, it is states that his mother's name is Winona Kirk and his grandfathers were James and Tiberius. This information was supposedly canonized for the Prime Universe by Str Trek '09 and that movie is even listed as the resource in the article.

But if Pegg's theory were to be accepted then we wouldn't have a canon confirmation of Kirk's mother's name and grandfathers' names in the Prime Universe.

Also, the article for the USS Kelvin states it exists in both the Prime And Kelvin Universes.

 

[Christopher]

We've been told that in Star Trek '09 that certain elements can be taken as canon for both the Prime Timeline and Kelvin Timeline. If Pegg's theory is accepted then doesn't that mean this is no longer the case? In other words, Kirk's mother's name, the design of the Kelvin, the Starfleet uniforms in 2233, etc. would not be automatic canon for the Prime universe. So, websites like Memeory Alpha would have to stop acknowledging these details in Prime articles.

"Have to?" I think that's an overstatement. It does create ambiguity. These details didn't necessarily have to be the same in Prime, but I think it's reasonable to suspect that most of them were. After all, the two timelines still have a great deal in common -- a Federation, Starfleet, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Section 31, the Enterprise, Pike, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. Overall, I'd say the similarities outnumber the differences.

Really, this new information is not a seismic shift. It's just a refinement of what we already knew. It's always been the case that this is a timeline that's broadly similar to the Prime one but has certain things changed. The only thing that's different now is the added wrinkle that some of those things can be pre-2233.

Since they didn't accept "Kelvin-timeline" and I can hardly believe that MA would accept Peggs statement.

It's just a statement now, but it's a statement about the film. Which suggests that the film may contain details that are incompatible with a unified pre-2233 timeline. In which case, the contents of the film itself will be the evidence for MA, and Pegg's comments are just describing what we'll see in the film.

And it's bizarre that MA is so slow to accept the "Kelvin Timeline" usage, given that everyone else has readily embraced it, including the filmmakers. I mean, sure, it's not used in-story, but neither are most of the series, episode, or movie titles, and Memory Alpha uses those.

 

[Jinn]

accept the "Kelvin Timeline" usage, given that everyone else has readily embraced it, including the filmmakers. I mean, sure, it's not used in-story, but neither are most of the series, episode, or movie titles, and Memory Alpha uses those.

I suppose one could argue that the title appears on-screen.

 

[Avro Arrow]

i'm hoping they'll be no continuity issues in this series like there was in the original comic series.

I'm sorry, have you met Star Trek?

 

[The Wormhole]

And it's bizarre that MA is so slow to accept the "Kelvin Timeline" usage, given that everyone else has readily embraced it, including the filmmakers. I mean, sure, it's not used in-story, but neither are most of the series, episode, or movie titles, and Memory Alpha uses those.

More to the point, the term "Mirror Universe" has never been used in-story, but MA does accept it.

 

[WebLurker]

"There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute." Every long-running canon has adjustments and course corrections here and there, because writers are human beings and are thus incapable of absolute perfection. Keep in mind that fiction is illusion. The goal is not actually perfect consistency, it's just a reasonably convincing illusion of consistency. There will always, always be some tweaks along the way, but if you work them in subtly enough, they can be overlooked or forgiven.

The reboot wasn't very subtle IMHO, but mileage will vary.

Well, that's bizarrely confrontational. Why drag "trust" into it? What a ridiculous standard. Why should you trust us? We're career liars! We make up untrue stories for a living! And we admit freely that what we're telling you is not true. You don't have to "trust" us one bit. You just have to be entertained by the tall tales we spin.

And yes, of course, an extended lie is more entertaining if it maintains a reasonable degree of internal consistency. But that's not about "trust." You're not staking your life or your job or your future on our performance. We're just entertainers.

Sorry, poor choice of words. To put it another way, if every piece of information in a series is considered expendable for the sake of change down the road, what's the point of making it a series with internal continuity in the first place?

I'm probably doing a bad job of explaining myself, but can I ask you a question? At what point, do the retcons pile up so much that the series makes no coherent sense? At what point is the line drawn, were the creator should back down, leave what's established be, and work within that framework?

You keep demanding impossible, inhuman standards of perfection.

Of course; we are Borg. Okay, all kidding aside, let's go on. I will agree that I'm stating the ideal, and that the reality won't match that.

How in the hell is anyone supposed to have foreknowledge of what will happen nine years in the future? Kurtzman & Orci & Lindelof had no way of knowing they wouldn't be the ones making the third movie.

True. But Pegg was around back then, too (albeit as an actor). The only point is, the flip-flopping on exactly how the frak this series relates to the rest of the franchise and how that black hole actually worked only runs the risk of the series contradicting itself down the road. Setting some guidelines of this is how the new timeline relates to the old one and here's the cheat sheet for deciding what's fair game to change seems like basic story-telling 101. Even TV shows set up a series bible (granted the bible usually changes over time, but still, they're planning ahead).

And again, people have the right to correct their mistakes. Trying to pretend this was only a half-reboot didn't do much good. It created more complaints from fans rather than less, and it put too many limits on their creativity. And it never adequately explained things like Pike being older or Earth's cities being so different. This "new" explanation actually makes a lot more sense of the first two movies. So there is no inconsistency here. Just a better explanation of what we've already seen.

Pike was older? Wow, I thought the "Menagerie" two-parter indicated that he was older than Kirk by a lot of years. Okay.

The thing is, I don't feel like anything's been corrected. The explanation in the original movie is still there, which presents it as a "normal" time travel accident. I feel this explanation is worse than the old one, since at least this one feels even more convoluted.

If they really wanted the clean reboot, instead of the half one, why not try and retcon the '09 movie as an actual clean reboot. Say that the new movies have no ties to the old franchise, that Spock Prime was just a new version of the character that happened to be played by the same actor, etc.? Pegg's version feels like they're still clinging to the old model, but trying to duct-tape more stuff to make it work differently.

You can rationalize these and the other things after the fact all you want, but the point is that the filmmakers felt free to change things without explaining the changes themselves. That's why we needed to invent a thousand fan-scuses for everything -- because they were changed. Because the continuity was not absolutely letter-perfect from the word go.

I got nothing, except none of the old changes were so wholesale or undermined the illusion of reality quite like this one has.

It was said that the war had ended a year ago.

All right.

Oh, bull. The only reason it seems to us like it fits together nearly that well is because we've had decades to rationalize away all the contradictions and convince ourselves they aren't really contradictions (as you demonstrated through your litany above). It's the same quirk of human psychology that creates the illusion of nostalgia -- the more we rehearse past memories, the more we gloss over the problems and build a smoother narrative, so that it seems the more recent frustrations and problems are a novelty.

Fair enough.

Different "they," though. Abrams, Lindelof, Kurtzman, and Orci had a plan that they followed, imperfectly, for two movies. Now the last three are gone and Abrams has moved back to a supervisory capacity, and Lin, Pegg, and Jung are running the show now. It's not quite as big a change as Harve Bennett taking the reins from Roddenberry, but it's close. (Maybe more like Ira Behr taking over DS9 from Michael Piller, or Brannon Braga taking over VGR from Jeri Taylor.) Again, you have to consider the personhood of the creators. Any two different people are going to have different approaches to the same problem. Even someone trying to faithfully continue a predecessor's work is going to come at it from a slightly different angle, because that's how human beings work.

I'll concede the point.

That's about things that are real. This is fiction. We're not talking about some provable objective reality. We're talking about what Pegg has declared to be his approach to telling stories.

As I said before, I'm examining this "in-universe, "which I think is okay, since Pegg's explanation was an in-universe one, too. If we're discussing the storytelling process, isn't that a different coversation?

I have no clue what your point is. Okay, he's not a solo act. He's the spokesperson for the team that made this movie. But since he was on that team in a central role, where is the sense in assuming that he isn't accurately relating the creative approach of that team? He doesn't have to be "the authority" to be a spokesperson for the group. He just has to be part of the core group, which he is now.

And you know who else didn't create Star Trek? Gene L. Coon. Fred Freiberger. D. C. Fontana. Harve Bennett. Nicholas Meyer. Maurice Hurley. Rick Berman. Michael Piller. Jeri Taylor. Ira Steven Behr. Brannon Braga. Manny Coto. Bryan Fuller. None of them created the thing, but they were all in charge of creating the current iteration of it at one point or another. And that meant they were responsible for deciding where it would go next. So saying that Gene Roddenberry is the only person who should ever have been allowed to even describe what the creators of the show were doing is... Well, just, huh?

I don't think Gene Roddenberry is the only person "who should ever have been allowed to even describe what the creators of the show were doing...": A.) More than half of the Star Trek saga was produced without him and B.) he worked with so many different people who influenced and added their own stuff, that even TOS was arguably not Roddenberry's original vision.

The only point I was making is that, in something as collaborative as film, unless you have a special circumstance like George Lucas for Star Wars, I think death of author is the best way to approach examination of the product; there's too many people involved for it to truly be the vision of one man. So, on those grounds, I don't see why I need to blindly accept Pegg's statement about how the new timeline works, esp. when it doesn't fit the world the story is set in (IMHO).

As for the rest... I'm too tired, and it's all just rehashing points we've already covered.

Sorry that the fun went out of this. For what it's worth, I enjoy talking about this kind of stuff (esp. with people involved in a professional capacity) and regret that I come across as a cranky guy who picks fights.

 

[Christopher]

Sorry, poor choice of words. To put it another way, if every piece of information in a series is considered expendable for the sake of change down the road, what's the point of making it a series with internal continuity in the first place?

Because reality is not an all-or-nothing flip of a coin. There are general rules that we try to follow on the whole, but that we occasionally have to make an exception to. If, say, the law occasionally forgives homicide if it's ruled to be in self-defense, that doesn't mean that the laws against murder cease to have any meaning. It means that there are exceptions that can be made if the circumstances warrant it.

I'm probably doing a bad job of explaining myself, but can I ask you a question? At what point, do the retcons pile up so much that the series makes no coherent sense?

That's a matter of individual opinion. There are people who have been saying ST made no coherent sense since 1969. Go track down some of the old Best of Trek anthologies and read their "Star Trek Mysteries Solved" articles. Fan debates about plot holes and handwavey fixes for them have been a staple of Trekdom all along.

At what point is the line drawn, were the creator should back down, leave what's established be, and work within that framework?

You're still demanding absolutes that are unattainable in this complicated, messy reality. The way life works is, you try to live by the rules as best you can, but you maintain the flexibility to make exceptions when they're necessary.

True. But Pegg was around back then, too (albeit as an actor). The only point is, the flip-flopping on exactly how the frak this series relates to the rest of the franchise and how that black hole actually worked only runs the risk of the series contradicting itself down the road. Setting some guidelines of this is how the new timeline relates to the old one and here's the cheat sheet for deciding what's fair game to change seems like basic story-telling 101. Even TV shows set up a series bible (granted the bible usually changes over time, but still, they're planning ahead).

I still say this is just a refinement of what we already knew. It's the same basic model, but with the added twist that it can change things retroactively -- which, I've come to realize, actually makes sense in a time-travel context and should never have been ruled out as a possibility. It doesn't contradict one thing from the actual movies; on the contrary, it makes more sense of the inconsistencies than Orci's theory did.

Pike was older? Wow, I thought the "Menagerie" two-parter indicated that he was older than Kirk by a lot of years. Okay.

Only because "The Cage" was set 13 years earlier than TOS. But remember, these movies are set earlier than TOS too. "The Cage" happened in 2254; the bar scene in the '09 movie where Pike recruited Kirk was in 2255. The main body of ST'09 was in 2258, and STID was 2259-60. Beyond is 2263.

The thing is, I don't feel like anything's been corrected. The explanation in the original movie is still there, which presents it as a "normal" time travel accident. I feel this explanation is worse than the old one, since at least this one feels even more convoluted.

That's what I would've assumed before, but now I've realized it's self-contradictory to look at an incident of backward time travel -- retrocausality by definition -- and assume that it can only have forward causal impact. If retrocausality were completely forbidden, then there'd be no backward time travel in the first place. You can't have it both ways. If it's possible to go back in time and change the past, then that is in itself an example of causality propagating backward.

If they really wanted the clean reboot, instead of the half one, why not try and retcon the '09 movie as an actual clean reboot.

I thought you were objecting to the idea of completely changing the working theory. You were the one saying there should be consistency. This is an attempt to remain consistent with the previously established idea while also reconciling it with the inconsistencies it didn't previously explain.

Say that the new movies have no ties to the old franchise, that Spock Prime was just a new version of the character that happened to be played by the same actor, etc.?

That's a terrible idea, because it negates the entire point of bringing Leonard Nimoy in to begin with.

As I said before, I'm examining this "in-universe, "which I think is okay, since Pegg's explanation was an in-universe one, too. If we're discussing the storytelling process, isn't that a different coversation?

Huh? Pegg gave the explanation in an interview as a way of explaining how Sulu can be gay now. How in the world does an interview constitute "in-universe?"

So, on those grounds, I don't see why I need to blindly accept Pegg's statement about how the new timeline works, esp. when it doesn't fit the world the story is set in (IMHO).

Because he's the one telling the stories now, of course. This is an insight into the decisions he's making as he does so. He was the head writer of the final script for this movie, and given the positive buzz, he'll probably get first crack at writing the next one. So it's reasonable to assume that his stated approach to how the timeline works will be reflected in the scripts he actually writes.

 

[Idran]

Huh? Pegg gave the explanation in an interview as a way of explaining how Sulu can be gay now. How in the world does an interview constitute "in-universe?"

Weblurker doesn't mean "in-universe" as in "presented in the media", but "in-universe" as in "explained from the POV of the fictional universe rather than an external perspective acknowledging the fictionality of the setting".

 

[Christopher]

Weblurker doesn't mean "in-universe" as in "presented in the media", but "in-universe" as in "explained from the POV of the fictional universe rather than an external perspective acknowledging the fictionality of the setting".

Yeah, but until and unless that specific explanation is stated by a character onscreen, it isn't binding. Offscreen statements have limited canon value. The original TNG series bible asserted that Data was created by unknown aliens, but that changed when Noonien Soong was invented. The first edition of the Star Trek Chronology had Cochrane's first warp flight occur in 2061, but that changed when FC put it in 2063 and used a completely different ship design.

I seriously doubt any character in any future movie will explain this theory. It was never the intention of these filmmakers to fixate on the time-travel aspect throughout the series. The goal was to set up the new timeline as a means to free the filmmakers to tell new stories. STID kind of dropped the ball on this due to Damon Lindelof's misguided desire to redo TWOK, but Lindelof is gone now and it looks like the filmmakers are finally committing to telling new, original stories. I don't think they have any interest in addressing the alternative timelines any more in the stories themselves. The only reason Pegg brought it up in interviews was because some fans made a wrongheaded objection that Sulu couldn't be gay because it Violated Cannnon, and his explanation was just his way of saying that the filmmakers aren't going to elevate such petty technicalities over the needs of the story.

 

[Leto_II]

^ Actually, wasn't Lindelof opposed to using the Khan-character (wanting instead to simply keep him "John Harrison," disgruntled Starfleet-operative), but it was Orci and/or Kurtzman (with J.J.'s blessing) who ended up winning out in the end? I think I read not too long ago that Damon wasn't too happy with that particular decision.

 

[The Wormhole]

^ Actually, wasn't Lindelof opposed to using the Khan-character (wanting instead to simply keep him "John Harrison," disgruntled Starfleet-operative), but it was Orci and/or Kurtzman (with J.J.'s blessing) who ended up winning out in the end? I think I read not too long ago that Damon wasn't too happy with that particular decision.

Other way around. Lindelof has always been pro-Khan, to the point he wanted a post-credits scene in Trek XI featuring the Botany Bay and was insistent that the sequel had to be about Khan. Orci and Kurtzman wrote out a draft of STID in which the villain was John Harrison, renegade Starfleet officer turned terrorist. Lindelof, still on his Khan obsession suggested after reading that draft that they change John Harrison to Khan operating under an alias and they finally relented, mostly just to shut him up, but also because some higher ups at Paramount were salivating over the idea of bringing "Captain Kirk's Joker" into the new series.

 

[Christopher]

Here's Orci explaining it in an interview:

http://www.startrek.com/article/exclusive-orci-opens-up-about-star-trek-into-darkness-part-1

ORCI: OK, I’ll do a deep dive with you. In a way, (fellow co-writer and co-producer) Damon (Lindelof) and I were the biggest debaters about this. He argued for Khan from the beginning and I argued against it. The compromise that we came to was, let us devise a story that is not reliant on any history of Star Trek. So, what’s the story? Well, we have a story where our crew is who they are and they’re coming together as a family. Then, suddenly, this villain arrives and his motivations are based on what happens in the movie. They’re not based on history. They’re not based on Star Trek. They’re not based on anything that came before. They’re based on his used by a corrupted system of power that held the things he held dear against him and tried to manipulate him. That story stands alone with or without Star Trek history. That’s how we approached it, and God bless Damon for going down that road.

So, once we had that, that’s when Damon came back and reared his ugly head and said, “OK, now that we have that, is there any reason why we cannot bring Star Trek history into this?” And he was right. So we ended up sort of reverse engineering it. We started with, “What’s a good movie? What’s a good villain? What’s a good motivation? We cannot rely on what’s happened before. Now that we have that, can we tailor this villain into something that relates to Star Trek history?” And that’s what we did. So, step one was “Don’t rely on Star Trek.” Then, step two was “Rely on Star Trek.”

Anyway, Orci's gone now too, so it'd be the same either way.

 

[WebLurker]

Because reality is not an all-or-nothing flip of a coin. There are general rules that we try to follow on the whole, but that we occasionally have to make an exception to. If, say, the law occasionally forgives homicide if it's ruled to be in self-defense, that doesn't mean that the laws against murder cease to have any meaning. It means that there are exceptions that can be made if the circumstances warrant it.

Okay.

That's a matter of individual opinion. There are people who have been saying ST made no coherent sense since 1969. Go track down some of the old Best of Trek anthologies and read their "Star Trek Mysteries Solved" articles. Fan debates about plot holes and handwavey fixes for them have been a staple of Trekdom all along.

Not sure if I've heard of Best of Trek before. I have heard a lot of fan theories, though, from plausible to obviously tongue-in-cheek. So, yeah, I'll agree.

You're still demanding absolutes that are unattainable in this complicated, messy reality. The way life works is, you try to live by the rules as best you can, but you maintain the flexibility to make exceptions when they're necessary.

I guess I'm still trying to convince myself that it was necessary in this case. (The fact that Wrath of Khan, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact are among the most universally popular Trek movies, that were generally accessible and reveled in the franchise's continuity is something I still wonder about; could the new team have done the same thing? Make a movie that fit into the original iteration of the franchise and was still an entry point for new viewers?)

I still say this is just a refinement of what we already knew. It's the same basic model, but with the added twist that it can change things retroactively -- which, I've come to realize, actually makes sense in a time-travel context and should never have been ruled out as a possibility. It doesn't contradict one thing from the actual movies; on the contrary, it makes more sense of the inconsistencies than Orci's theory did.

Fair enough.

Only because "The Cage" was set 13 years earlier than TOS. But remember, these movies are set earlier than TOS too. "The Cage" happened in 2254; the bar scene in the '09 movie where Pike recruited Kirk was in 2255. The main body of ST'09 was in 2258, and STID was 2259-60. Beyond is 2263.

Okay. I did really like Kelvin timeline Pike, a lot more than the prime universe Pike, in fact. So, I may be biased and cutting this one more slack then I am other stuff.

That's what I would've assumed before, but now I've realized it's self-contradictory to look at an incident of backward time travel -- retrocausality by definition -- and assume that it can only have forward causal impact. If retrocausality were completely forbidden, then there'd be no backward time travel in the first place. You can't have it both ways. If it's possible to go back in time and change the past, then that is in itself an example of causality propagating backward.

That's the part I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. How could the past be affected? Isn't the reason that time travel changes history because people or things go to a timeframe that they don't belong, creating new influences that set things on a different course? I'll agree that it's possible for for the past to be affected (that is a basic idea of time travel), but, using Pegg's model, how specifically do you think that the pre-2233 timeline could be affected all the way back to the Big Bang? I've got nothing, and that question is honestly one of my biggest hangups with the idea.

I thought you were objecting to the idea of completely changing the working theory. You were the one saying there should be consistency. This is an attempt to remain consistent with the previously established idea while also reconciling it with the inconsistencies it didn't previously explain.

I guess that I don't feel that any of the new movies's time travel models are consistent with the franchise on two points. A.) To the best of my knowledge, in the prime universe, time travel has never created a parallel universe, to the point that I think we can safely call that a fictional scientific law that needs special circumstances to be altered.. I could buy that the Kelvin timeline could have emerged with the prime universe surviving due to the way quantum realities work, as described in "Parallels" (that's my personal theory, anyways).

B.) As mentioned before, I'm not sure how a time travel accident can affect things before the point of arrival (in this case, Nero's incursion), since the only times we've seen stuff like that ("All Good Things..." [TNG], "Year of Hell, Parts I and II" [VOY], for example) had specific reasons that they could. Everything about the first movie screams: "This is a 'normal' time travel incident," with no clues that there should be any exceptions to allow for special things, like we're being told happened.

Am I making any sense, here?

That's a terrible idea, because it negates the entire point of bringing Leonard Nimoy in to begin with.

I'm not sure if it would bother me that much, but I understand what you're saying.

Huh? Pegg gave the explanation in an interview as a way of explaining how Sulu can be gay now. How in the world does an interview constitute "in-universe?"

Like Idran said:

Weblurker doesn't mean "in-universe" as in "presented in the media", but "in-universe" as in "explained from the POV of the fictional universe rather than an external perspective acknowledging the fictionality of the setting".

That's exactly what I meant.

Because he's the one telling the stories now, of course. This is an insight into the decisions he's making as he does so. He was the head writer of the final script for this movie, and given the positive buzz, he'll probably get first crack at writing the next one. So it's reasonable to assume that his stated approach to how the timeline works will be reflected in the scripts he actually writes.

Since statements from people who make these things aren't strictly canon, I guess I don't see the need to stick to them, esp. if I think they're contradicting actual canon. I will concede, though, that in analyzing the movie, taking into account how Pegg approaches the franchise will be useful.

I'll find it ironic if, given how much controversy this new idea has cause for some of us, if the movie proper actually doesn't even mention it period.

 

[David cgc]

I'll find it ironic if, given how much controversy this new idea has cause for some of us, if the movie proper actually doesn't even mention it period.

I think Beyond actually fits in easiest of the three with the established history of the Prime timeline and the conceit that everything up to the Kelvin attack was the same. It certainly makes the best use of the Trek universe as backstory, providing additional shading and context without using it as a crutch so it can gloss over necessary characterization (looking at you, Khan-revelation-scene-in-Into-Darkness).

 

[Idran]

Not sure if I've heard of Best of Trek before.

It's a series of books that compile articles from Trek magazine going back to the early 70s. Great read if you want a look at the early fandom.

That's the part I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. How could the past be affected? Isn't the reason that time travel changes history because people or things go to a timeframe that they don't belong, creating new influences that set things on a different course? I'll agree that it's possible for for the past to be affected (that is a basic idea of time travel), but, using Pegg's model, how specifically do you think that the pre-2233 timeline could be affected all the way back to the Big Bang? I've got nothing, and that question is honestly one of my biggest hangups with the idea.

I'm not really sure "all the way back to the Big Bang" was ever mentioned (unless that was a part of this conversation and I just missed it), just that it could happen at all. So here's a question for you that I also referenced in the other thread. If Kelvin-timeline-Spock had some kind of time window and looked back at 1968, would he see Prime-Kirk and Prime-Spock? If he looked back at 1890s San Francisco, would he see Prime-Data and Prime-Guinan interacting with Twain? If he looked back at late-20th-century LA, would he see Prime-Janeway and Prime-Chakotay walking the boardwalk?

And if your answer is "yes, since they traveled to before the branch point", then why don't we see millions of time travelers in the past from other timeline branches? Why is it only ever time travelers from the timeline we're looking at?

 

[Christopher]

I guess I'm still trying to convince myself that it was necessary in this case. (The fact that Wrath of Khan, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact are among the most universally popular Trek movies, that were generally accessible and reveled in the franchise's continuity is something I still wonder about; could the new team have done the same thing? Make a movie that fit into the original iteration of the franchise and was still an entry point for new viewers?)

I don't understand it when people use words like "necessary" when talking about fiction and entertainment. Creativity and storytelling is not some onerous burden where people only do what they're forced to do. It's an opportunity to play with ideas, to explore, to experiment, to have fun. You can have as much fun exploring something entirely new as you can revisiting something familiar, or doing any mix of the two. It makes no sense to say that if some stories successfully did things a certain way, that somehow requires every other story to do the exact same thing. That's like saying that all ice cream has to be chocolate, or that all dessert has to be ice cream, or that all meals have to be dessert.

We had decades of movies and shows that did what you describe. So why not try something else for a change?

That's the part I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. How could the past be affected? Isn't the reason that time travel changes history because people or things go to a timeframe that they don't belong, creating new influences that set things on a different course? I'll agree that it's possible for for the past to be affected (that is a basic idea of time travel), but, using Pegg's model, how specifically do you think that the pre-2233 timeline could be affected all the way back to the Big Bang? I've got nothing, and that question is honestly one of my biggest hangups with the idea.

We've already discussed two possible explanations right here on this board. One is my idea that, if the same wormhole opened up in both 2233 and 2258, there's no reason to believe it couldn't have opened in earlier times as well. And since the wormhole's ingress was right next to a supernova, then its egress in the Kelvin timeline could've been spewing out vast amounts of energy and matter into the distant past of that timeline, having who knows what effect on its stellar and planetary evolution. Life on Earth has been affected in various ways by astronomical events -- nearby supernovae have caused extinctions and opened niches for new life to evolve, and cosmic dust clouds could've affected the brightness of the Sun and caused mini-ice ages and the like. On a smaller scale, maybe the sight of the wormhole opening in the heavens and shining down bright light could've caused a religious upheaval on a given world and caused its cultural development to happen differently. Maybe even the gravitational shifts of the wormhole's appearance could cause starships to travel on slightly different courses (cf. the Stellar Cartography scene in Generations) and cause people to get to various places earlier or later and thereby not meet people they met before, or get killed by an accident they avoided before, or whatever. There are a lot of ways both large and small that an errant wormhole bouncing around in the past could hypothetically have altered history.

Then there's Idran's idea (I think) about the past happening differently because future time travel events that affect the past don't happen in the same way. We've seen this kind of retroactive causality canonically in TAS: "Yesteryear" (where Spock was erased from the past by his failure to do something in the present) and ENT: "Storm Front" (where the Na'kuhl had traveled back to a version of WWII that had already been altered by a time travel they hadn't yet undertaken). So it's already an established possibility in Trek canon. This is probably a more solid explanation than my hypothesis.

Even Pegg's notion isn't entirely unfounded. Some quantum physicists put forth the idea that retrocausality -- events in the present being influenced by quantum waves propagating back in time from the future -- may be an integral part of physics in real life. Our common-sense perception that causality can only go forward may simply be wrong, like so many of our common-sense intuitions have been proven wrong when it comes to quantum physics, relativity, and time. It may be that causality naturally goes in both directions anyway.

In general, when it comes to quantum physics, if you can't wrap your head around an idea, that's a good sign that it's worth taking seriously. If an idea just reaffirms your preconceptions rather than blowing them out of the water, then it's probably wrong. Because the human brain and instincts are evolved to deal with macroscopic, classical phenomena, and that means we have no intuition whatsoever for understanding quantum phenomena.

I guess that I don't feel that any of the new movies's time travel models are consistent with the franchise on two points. A.) To the best of my knowledge, in the prime universe, time travel has never created a parallel universe, to the point that I think we can safely call that a fictional scientific law that needs special circumstances to be altered.

In "Yesteryear," when Spock went back to reset the timeline to his own, he responded to Thelin's "Live long and prosper in your reality" with a reciprocal wish that Thelin thrive in his own. So Spock believed that the "Yesteryear" timeline would continue to exist even after he returned to his own.

Star Trek has handled time travel in so many contradictory ways that you can find some precedent for virtually anything.

And even if you do need special circumstances, you've got them. "Red Matter." Bam. There's your special circumstance. It's an arbitrary substance with arbitrary properties.

Everything about the first movie screams: "This is a 'normal' time travel incident," with no clues that there should be any exceptions to allow for special things, like we're being told happened.

Yes, that's what the movie claimed, but creatively, that wasn't the best choice. It meant that either they would be limited in future stories by an inability to change pre-2233 events, or that they'd be lambasted by the fans when they did make changes. And the latter is very, very much what's been happening nonstop for the past 7 years. The original proposal was not a satisfying explanation for inconsistencies like the huge Kelvin or Pike's age or the cities or the rest. So the creators have exercised their prerogative to fix a past mistake and have come up with a better explanation for what we've already seen.

As I see it, the previous filmmakers always felt free to change the past as well as the future, but they pretended it was the same past as a sop to continuity-purist fans. But the sop didn't work -- the continuity-purist fans just got madder at the inconsistencies. (And the comics just ignored the pretense and treated it as a parallel reality anyway.) Now the filmmakers are just being more honest about what the films have been doing all along.

 

[Idran]

Then there's Idran's idea (I think) about the past happening differently because future time travel events that affect the past don't happen in the same way.

Yep, that's pretty much what I meant by that post.

 

[mattman8907]

Speaking of Discontinuties and continuity issues. Does any believe that the Star Trek/Green Lantern Crossover: The Spectrum War actually happened in the Kelvin Timeline or were they just having fun?

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of Discontinuties and continuity issues. Does any believe that the Star Trek/Green Lantern Crossover: The Spectrum War actually happened in the Kelvin Timeline or were they just having fun?

I see all such inter-franchise crossovers as "imaginary stories." The problem with crossing over science fiction universes is that they tend to have such distinct laws of physics, such different planets and species, and so forth that they don't work as alternate timelines.