Not JUST Two Timelines - Started with The Naked Time

[UnknownSample]

It also means no time travel ever accomplishes anything, for your original universe. All you've done is to abandon your home universe, for one that's new and improved from your own perspective, leaving the first versions of all your friends to stew in their own (in many cases) screwed up reality.
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I wish people would stop expecting splinter realities. People have gotten the impression that this is proven reality, when it's always been speculation. It's a pretty extreme idea... human choices, of all things, creating new universes. Extreme ideas are great, but rein it in a bit.

 

[Sgt_G]

From my short story posted here:https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/short-story-set-in-st-tos-era-timelines.221197/

The most commonly accepted theory held that an infinite number of timelines ran nearly parallel, yet always diverging away from one another, and with every random act of chance or choice, an infinite number of new timelines were created with each passing moment, always on a different path from the one they split off of.

 

[USS Triumphant]

The 'Back in time to another identical universe' theory is a little bit depressing if you think about it. It means every time somebody goes back in time, they vanish from their universe and are never seen again.

Well, that's the glass-half-empty way to look at it. The glass-half-full way would be that maybe every time we've had someone disappear without adequate explanation, there's a chance that instead of it just being because of something horrible, they actually accidentally side-stepped into a parallel universe.

I wish people would stop expecting splinter realities. People have gotten the impression that this is proven reality, when it's always been speculation. It's a pretty extreme idea... human choices, of all things, creating new universes. Extreme ideas are great, but rein it in a bit.

Well, there's two more ways to look at it, that amount to the same thing but have some radically different implications:
1. Probability states (parallel universes) already exist for every possible outcome, and our decisions don't create them, they simply decide which branch of probability we follow.
2. There's really only one set outcome for absolutely everything, and free will is an illusion. Only one path is necessary, and you think you choose it, but in reality your choice and even your perception of choosing are all predetermined by the vectors of particles and energy in your body that were set on their present course back at the very beginning of it all.

I'm not a fan of option #2 - which doesn't preclude it being possible. Option #1 seems like the best one to me, because it allows free will, but also doesn't involve (as you complained) our individual choices constantly creating whole universes.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Of course, if you think about the fact that option 1 still has another version of you that made a different choice in every branch of probability, it still might seem to negate free will. Sigh.

 

[lee249]

I think what i found most intriguing in TNG: The Naked Now, was when Dr Crusher was analysing old records from TOS looking for an antidote to counteract the spreading infection amongst the crew.

Initially, I thought Data would be immune given the fact he's an android... And thus, his assistance would be perative in saving the ship and it's crew.

Dr Crusher trying to seduce Picard and Tasha getting raunchy with Data made the episode pretty fun and entertaining.

I always wondered... How far did Tasha and Data actually go before all was done and dusted? She seemed pretty alarmed afterwards like 'let's forget any of this ever happened'

 

[UnknownSample]

Actually, I'd rather not have the splinter reality thing at all, whatever actually causes them. We're stuck with Parallels... Ever think about how we seem to be able to accept countless different versions of parallel universes, some of which imply situations of two and only two universes? I know I never felt they contradicted when I was a kid, but why didn't I? Okay, there are matter and anti-matter universes. A situation of two, polarity, with two known kinds of matter. Fine, that's how things work. Then no, the dual situation is our reality plus one with opposite personalities. So... does that make three? Our reality has two different kinds of opposites? Later Tholian Web, where we have parallel realities coming out the wazoo. Then in Parallels, they're infinite... but all splinters. Or are they? The previous universes, the first two anyway, don't seem possible to fit into that. Choices were irrelevant. They had a one to one relationship with ours.
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So... an infinite number of universes... plus two? That makes no sense. Why is this okay with us?

 

[Phoenix219]

I just see things as two different things - timelines, and universes. Universes are physical space. There are infinite of them. They are unique and exist on their own frequency / in their own dimension in a 5d multi-verse. They can be anti matter, or mirrored for whatever reason, or they can be complete unique and different in every way. They can have similar events, or even identical events, or completely different *everything.* They are not connected and they go on for infinite.

Now...


Each universe has its own timeline. These timelines can be altered. They don't really splinter. They are re-recorded on the same physical universe membrane/"tape". You can change the events of your own universe, and you can travel to other physical spaces, but your own choices are NOT going to create a physically new 3D universe to exist next to the previous one. You can alter your own world by erasing what came before, but it is till on your original "canvas." I'm not going to bring up Star Trek '09+ in relation to my theories. These theories predate that series... lol.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I always wondered... How far did Tasha and Data actually go before all was done and dusted? She seemed pretty alarmed afterwards like 'let's forget any of this ever happened'

They went all the way, as revealed in 'The Measure of a Man'.

 

[Paul Weaver]

They went all the way, as revealed in 'The Measure of a Man'.

And First Contact

 

[suarezguy]

What if every instance of time travel that we've seen in Trek, going all the way back to the TOS episode "The Naked Time", has actually resulted in a different timeline, and generally in our heroes being IN that different timeline? No predestination paradoxes, just things seeming to work out as they were supposed to in the end, because the characters check and everything seems fine and they didn't know enough about very specific details in the past of the timeline they were in before to notice the change.

The Enterprise that they returned to at the end of COTEOF wasn't the same, they just didn't see the very minor butterflies. The Earth they received a distress signal from got wrecked and never got help in Star Trek IV, but Kirk and crew saved the future of a different branch that had them in the past taking whales and eating Italian when their original timeline didn't.

I think that interpretation kills a lot of the drama and point to a lot of stories, the characters generally think and the audience is also supposed to think that there is one timeline that can be changed or fixed. There is no saving something if it's really just going someplace else.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In a web comic called Faans this mechanic is made explicit, and in one storyline the villain goes back in time to pivotal historic events explicitly to create weakened timelines to conquer so she can build a big enough army to conquer the original universe.