That I can't answer. That's something the script didn't make clear. But what does seem clearer is that as long as you don't make the trip through time once prepared, you're fine.
As the episode is, it seems you can travel through time for a short period without preparation. But once prepared, you can't make the trip at all without dying as soon as you reach the other side.
I never appreciated that before, that Kirk was clinging by his fingers to avoid a trip there's no coming back from. Cool.
And he calls Spock a stubborn man!
Do you mean the trip back to the library?
Yes.
Over the years I sometimes wondered if the death aspect was just a lie told by the authorities, to prevent unauthorized use of the Atavachron portals by exiles trying to return and/or fugitives trying to escape. It never made sense to me that time-travel on Sarpeidon would work differently than in the rest of the galaxy. Nobody else ever had to be "prepared" in advance, even those like Tasha Yar who remained in a past timeline, and the stuff about compatible cell structures and brain patterns feels like hand-wavy nonsense in the Trek universe.
There's also a whole speculative rabbit trail about how the authorities gained the massive amount of intel about the past that would be necessary to use this device without wrecking their own timeline. How they learned which areas of the ice age environment were survivable, how the Atavachron testers safely came and went, and so on.
But in thinking all this through again now, I had another idea that could accommodate the story details. Bear with me while I finalize my thoughts via keyboard.
The Atavachron system seems to comprise four main components: a disc-based Selector, a Preparer apparatus (unseen, IIRC), a Portal, and a Computer to tie it all together. (If the Curse of Fatal Death part is all just a big lie, then the Preparer doesn't do anything except reinforce the idea that you'd better not try to come back.)
Now let's suppose that two of these components actually modify travelers' bodies, in some chemical, anatomical, or genetic manner. I'll use medical terminology as an analogy.
- The Preparer apparatus simply injects a tag or marker, the sole purpose of which is to inform the Portal of the traveler's status (approved/prepared vs. unapproved/not prepared).
- The Portal scans each traveler and optionally injects a countdown timer; a poison.
- If the traveler lacks the prep marker, poison is
- injected if the traveler is departing, or
- removed/antidoted if the traveler is returning.
- If the traveler bears the prep marker, poison is injected only if the traveler is returning.
- If the traveler lacks the prep marker, poison is
- Kirk & co. had no passports, so they got the poison upon departure and would have died later that day, had they not returned and been auto-antidoted by the Portal.
- Zarabeth & the magistrate got their passports, thus received no poison, and will get auto-poisoned only if they return.
Under this headcanon, if McCoy had had time to figure it all out, and remove Zarabeth's marker, then Spock could have had another tragic and uncomfortable "the only reason we can't be together is that I got my marbles back" moment, this time with with Zarabeth. Maybe then in some novel she could've gone all Thelma & Louise with Leila Kalomi.
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Great post! Either the whole death thing was a lie, or else it was an "innovation", meaning a software update that Sarpeidon pushed out to its time machines to control the customers.
We've seen innumerable examples of this in the late digital age, like when Apple updated old iPhones to work slower and have less battery life, or when your refrigerator won't make ice anymore unless you pay a monthly subscription, or your printer suddenly won't accept off-brand toner cartridges— and even the scanner won't work without an on-brand cartridge that's full and not "expired."
Making your product worse is called enshittification. And Sarpeidon's motive would be a Noble Lie instead of money. Good one, Just a Bill. How did we never realize this before?
When my fridge does that, it gonna die.
Fight the enshittification, buy used appliances. Commercial appliances, if you can afford them, last longer than the ones they want you to buy.
So, let's say you just fill up an ice tray with water and stick it somewhere in the freezer. What's the machine going to do about it? How is it even going to know what you're doing? Is it just not gonna freeze anything anymore because you didn't pay a subscription?
I'm talking about upscale refrigerators that dispense ice cubes out the front, so you don't have to open the door and mess with ice trays. Some of the new models require an Internet connection and a paid monthly subscription for that feature to work.
Some new dishwashers restrict which wash or rinse cycles will function if you aren't connected and paying every month. Same idea.
Yep. The globalists don't want us to own anything.That is some bullshit!!
So if you have ice trays you can just blow them off.
It's just that you had to pay for the whole machine, and you're only allowed to use part of it.
Same with luxury cars. Example: if you want all the horsepower from the engine you paid for, you can pay monthly to rent it. If you want the built-in driver assist or hands-free cruise control systems that are there and you already paid for to work, that'll be an extra $25 a month. If you have cold winters and want the heated steering wheel to work, you pay monthly for it. And on and on.
The new business model is, "Why just sell something when you can sell it and charge rent for it?" So now everything they sell has to be connected with a leash to the Internet, or the features won't work.
It's for control. In case we do something, or have an opinion, they don't like. They can pull the plug on us. Just like they did to the Canadian truckers when they tried to protest. They blocked their bank accounts and the accounts of donors.
Bronze age, iron age, industrial age, information age ... now we are entering the subscription age. The big question is whether enough of us will be able to resist our insatiable desires for comfort, convenience, and luxury to see this enslavement for what it is and fight it.
Well, I'd say the private corporations are out for revenue enhancement (and retirement savers do benefit from a rising stock market, to be fair), but the new levers of power that are installed by private companies have the potential for abuse by governments. So the "control" aspect is incidental but potentially devastating.
The ultimate danger is if the government creates a China-style "social credit score" system. They'll monitor everyone's online activity and assign a score based on political fealty. Then they can deny you your "privileges" in every aspect of life if you annoy your rulers.
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Ironically, this one was meant to prevent sudden shutdowns, not enforce obsolescence. It was supposed to help:
