Kelvin Timeline all but confirmed

[Mr. Laser Beam]

City on the Edge, Past Tense, and First Contact all suggest strongly otherwise.

I must respectfully disagree:

- City: How can we be absolutely sure that McCoy wasn't "always" supposed to travel back in time?
- Past Tense: Sure, at the end of the episode, Gabriel Bell looks like Sisko in the computer records. But nobody bothered to look this up before they went back to 2024, did they? Who's to say that a search wouldn't have turned up Sisko's face then, too?
- First Contact: The Enterprise returned to the same future it left. And we have no proof that Cochrane's original crewmates on the Phoenix were ever anyone other than Riker and Geordi.

 

[Prax]

It's quite often not repaired at all - Voyager in particular is a complete mess of timelines which happened in the unaltered 'prime' universe then got reset, changed, or overwritten. In fact, it's the whole plot of at least two episodes - Timeless and Endgame.

In those two instances, you have people that deliberately set out to change history, rather than "change back" history. When Kim and Chakotay succeed in saving Voyager by sending a message through time, that 15 year history ceases to exist.

Except the plot of that movie relies on that not being the case - history must be alterable for the Borg to be able to change the future. They change it, including some things that were never undone (we see several deaths in Montana for example), the the E-E crew change it again by going back and making the first warp flight happen.

From the Perpective of anyone living after that point in history, that's what happened. The Cochrane in Metamorphosis could have told Kirk about Riker, Troy, Geordi, and Barclay if he wanted to.

 

[cultcross]

I must respectfully disagree:

- City: How can we be absolutely sure that McCoy wasn't "always" supposed to travel back in time?
- Past Tense: Sure, at the end of the episode, Gabriel Bell looks like Sisko in the computer records. But nobody bothered to look this up before they went back to 2024, did they? Who's to say that a search wouldn't have turned up Sisko's face then, too?
- First Contact: The Enterprise returned to the same future it left. And we have absolutely no proof that Cochrane's original crew on the Phoenix were anyone other than Riker and Geordi.

In all three my point was that we see the future at it existed at the start of the episode/movie altered, in that time period, by a character or characters going into the past - i.e. the future is changed, in real time, by events taking place in the past. In City, the Enterprise disappears. In Past Tense, the Defiant finds no Federation on Earth. In FC, the crew observe an assimilated Earth. In all three, our heroes then alter the timeline again in order to force events which would hopefully lead to their future being brought about.
Times Arrow, on the other hand, explicitly uses the concept of a predestination paradox, flipping cause and effect to kick start the adventure in the first place.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I can see why people might think the timeline could be changed in those instances. It's just that there is no proof that history was changed. We have no concrete evidence that any of those examples of time travel weren't part of what was always supposed to happen. You can't prove this was not the case, anyway.

And yes, I'm aware that you can't prove a negative, but that just means that this problem has no easy solution. Like the DSC timeline issue: Everyone has their own opinion on this, and they will never be convinced otherwise.

 

[cultcross]

In those two instances, you have people that deliberately set out to change history, rather than "change back" history. When Kim and Chakotay succeed in saving Voyager by sending a message through time, that 15 year history ceases to exist

The only thing that's different to other time travel episodes is that we are seeing the story from the perspective of the past. Because we the audience aren't invested in a future we haven't seen yet, these stories tend to gloss over the sacred timeline protection that Ben Sisko was willing to die for. What's happened in them though is that the 'prime' timeline has been altered by a traveler from the future (exactly what happened in ST09) and it stays altered. An alternate timeline has been created and we continue to follow it - Nemesis is clearly set in the one created by Endgame, for example, because of Admiral Janeway's cameo.

We have no concrete evidence that any of those examples of time travel weren't part of what was always supposed to happen. You can't prove this was not the case, anyway

In each case you explicitly see, on screen, the timeline changing and hear the characters point it out. In a fictional universe, I'm not sure what more proof you could wish for.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think I already brought it up in this thread, but remember "Year of Hell" - every single time Annorax fired his Big Gun it rewrote the timeline so that his target never existed, with repercussions affecting the entire galaxy (check out the effects of Chakotay wanting to erase one asteroid), and then the whole thing is undone.

Now try and explain how that works/coexists with "Before and After", where Old Kes lived through the "Year of Hell" except that episode and that timeline can't be the same one that existed after the reset at the end of "Year of Hell".

And remember, because of "Fury", Janeway always knew Kes would go senile and attack them years later, so had a message recorded and stowed away ready for the "present" of "Fury", even though that contradicts "Before and After"

And all that's before we even start on the madness that is "Shattered" (involving adult versions of Icheb and Naomi in a future where Voyager was still trying to get home) and "Relativity" where Janeway gains more knowledge of the future.

Oh yeah, and there's yet another timeline reset in "Endgame"

 

[Prax]

Yeah, if we didn't go 15 years back, we'd see Harry Kim about to die in a runabout, to say, Harry Kim sitting in his San Francisco apartment drinking arizona ice tea. He would have no memory of what we saw happen, because his life didn't happen like that. He got home like 12 years earlier, found out his fiance went and married some jerk, and whatever else happened to him.

 

[jaime]

In all three my point was that we see the future at it existed at the start of the episode/movie altered, in that time period, by a character or characters going into the past - i.e. the future is changed, in real time, by events taking place in the past. In City, the Enterprise disappears. In Past Tense, the Defiant finds no Federation on Earth. In FC, the crew observe an assimilated Earth. In all three, our heroes then alter the timeline again in order to force events which would hopefully lead to their future being brought about.
Times Arrow, on the other hand, explicitly uses the concept of a predestination paradox, flipping cause and effect to kick start the adventure in the first place.

Bubbles.
The events In all of those are the very events that trigger the actions of the crew to 'fix' the timestream. Which means they in essence bring their own timeline into being from that moment. Which makes it a predestination paradox no different to times arrow, and in fact it must naturally occur...if the Borg only defeat humanity in the past due to their previous failings, then their 'fix' cannot stand...because it would never have had cause to happen. Wolf 359 doesn't happen, Picard as locutus doesn't happen, the Borg attack at earth didn't happen, so they didn't go back in time...which means the universe loops off at that point. By going back and repairing the damage, the enterprise crew is essence removes a paradox, and the Borg earth they saw is nothing but a bubble...datas head...an event that caused an event that returned the timeline to its natural path, and allows the universe to continue past that point. Conservation of energy and healed causality...the loop happens, but isn't closed. Interference from potential futures, as in Timeless and Endgame are a different question, where actors voluntarily erase their own timelines from a certain point, which will likely cause problems further down the line without another fix...a Janeway has to always come back, a Chakotay and Kim always have to come back...with only dimensional travel being a get out clause, thankfully covered in both cases by the time travel used. They become in essence the same as the duplicate Picard in early TNG...and can also be covered by the interference of Q. Trek, historically, always works from a linear model of time, only ever looping and no real divergent web being shown.

 

[JD]

I condsider the Prime timeline one consistent timeline because, as far as the characters we follow are concerned it is. I don't consider things like Timeless or Endgame alterations to the Prime timeline because the characters we've been following up to that point do not experience the futures that the other versions of the characters came from.
As for things like Past Tense, a minor thing like the Bell picture is enough to kick it out of the Prime timeline. We're also still following the same versions of the characters at the end as we were at the beginning.

 

[BillJ]

We're also still following the same versions of the characters at the end as we were at the beginning.

Didn't Voyager change Kim's due to time travel/alternate reality shenanigans?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ No.

 

[Jesse1066]

Yes.

 

[Phoenix219]

In those two instances, you have people that deliberately set out to change history, rather than "change back" history. When Kim and Chakotay succeed in saving Voyager by sending a message through time, that 15 year history ceases to exist.

From the Perpective of anyone living after that point in history, that's what happened. The Cochrane in Metamorphosis could have told Kirk about Riker, Troy, Geordi, and Barclay if he wanted to.

Maybe in the post First Contact timeline, he DOES .... but when we first watched Metamorphosis, it was before those changes to the timeline were made.

With very few exceptions, you can't prove that any supposed changes to the timeline were not actually part of history all along (i.e. predestination paradoxes).

I don't believe predestination paradoxes are ever real. There is always some trigger from an original timeline that begins the loop, even if we never see it, and even if it was X number of iterations of the loop ago.

In my opinion, there is one timeline that can be rewritten innumerable amounts of time. This is different from an alternate universe. Unfortunately, this means, for me, by following my own long standing personally held time travel rules, that Nu Trek IS Prime Trek, in an altered timeline. OR, Nu Trek is an alternate universe completely, like mirror mirror; there was never any time travel, and that to Prime Trek, Spock just disappeared during the destruction of Romulus.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Yes.

That's not a change to Harry's timeline. In that episode, he's duplicated; one of the copies lives, and one dies. It's not a change to his previous history, it's a branch off to a new one.

There is neither time travel nor an alternate reality. Just a copy.

 

[Jesse1066]

That's not a change to Harry's timeline. In that episode, he's duplicated; one of the copies lives, and one dies. It's not a change to his previous history, it's a branch off to a new one.

There is neither time travel nor an alternate reality. Just a copy.

True, time travel wasn't involved, but it does mean that in the case of Harry Kim we aren't following the same version of the character at the end as the beginning as JD said. A better example would be what happened to O'Brien in Visionary. I agree with JD's point, however.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Or, like in Acquisition and Regeneration, Archer would forget to ask the name of their species.

Must have seen a different version

ULIS: Ingala habi.
(Grish injects Archer and he wakes up, handcuffed to a stanchion.)
ARCHER: Who are you?
ULIS: Ingala duk habi?
(Krem cautiously holds out a translator while Muk has a rifle.)
ARCHER: I don't understand.
ULIS: Duk habi nakustra?
ARCHER: What?
ULIS: Bok, megoron duk what I'm saying?
MUK: Sit down!
ARCHER: Who the hell are you?
ULIS: Who we are is unimportant. Do you command this ship?

As for Rengeneration, exactly when would Archer ask them? And let's face it, the Borg aren't exactly known for their conversation skills. It was Guinan who tells Picard their name and IIRC, the only line spoken by the Borg in Q Who? is:

BORG: (many voices speaking as one) We have analysed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

True, time travel wasn't involved, but it does mean that in the case of Harry Kim we aren't following the same version of the character at the end as the beginning as JD said.

Actually, yes we are. Harry was duplicated, so therefore both resulting versions of the character had an absolutely identical history before that.

 

[Campe]

Don't forget the two O'Briens.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ With that, there was time travel involved. Not so with Harry and "Deadlock".

 

[Campe]

Aren't we generally discussing time travel and how it affects characters and the timeline(s)?

Edit: I see @Jesse1066 brought O'Brien up a few posts ago as well. Sorry to steal his thunder.