Picard, 'Yesterday's Enterprise' & polluting the timeline

[JesterFace]

Tasha asked to be transferred to Enterprise-C. Picard accepted.

I wonder, was Picard worried at all that sending someone from the future into the past might pollute the timeline? Maybe he believed that there was no way that the ship or anyone onboard could survive? Well, as we know, there were survivors. Did Picard act a bit too much on emotion on that transfer, like LaForge said in 'All Good Things...', ”sure goes against everything tauhgt in the academy about polluting the timeline” after Picard told them what happened in 3 different time periods.

Maybe Picard trusted Guinan so much he was sure they would succeed in restoring the original timeline?

 

[Iamnotspock]

Maybe he believed that there was no way that the ship or anyone onboard could survive?

I think this is the most likely explanation.

 

[Shikarnov]

I think he probably gambled they'd all be killed -- and maybe they all would have been if not for the repairs made in the alternate timeline shoring up the warp core integrity field or whatever long enough for lifeboats to launch.

 

[JesterFace]

Even if it was almost certain that the Enterprise-C wouldn't survive, it was still a risky move. One that might have been a mistake? It did affect the future.

Also, repairing Ent-C was also in the same vein...

But, what's so precious about the timeline that it couldn't be messed around with.

 

[Tom]

It did effect the future with Sela being born. Sela's plan in Unification got thousands of Romulan soldiers killed in those stolen Vulcan ships.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Young Guinan should have died in Time's Arrow, unless she met regular Picard, which is why she was so spaced out trying to figure out why time was wrong.

 

[DonIago]

Indeed, everything that's occurred in the Prime timeline since the E-C incident is essentially occurring in a timeline altered by the 24th century events of YE.

One wonders how many Romulans were aware of the fact that one of their admirals was involved with a woman from the future.

Kind of makes me wonder how things played out in the timeline where the E-C was destroyed without Yar on board.

 

[Guy Gardener]

that's not how time travel was displayed in this episode.

As soon as Enterprise appeared in the future, the indeterminince of it's return, repainted the timeline, rather than split it into branches.

As it returned to the past the certainty of it's return, repainted the past to how it always had been.

I don't think this is about infinite variable divergencies, it's binary.

 

[DonIago]

The episode doesn't give us any clear indication of whether or not the timeline we "return to" is the same one we saw at the beginning of the episode.

If I wanted to take a cheap shot, I'd argue the fact that La Forge is still wearing an alternate timeline uniform while talking to Guinan suggests they're in a different one. But that would be a very cheap shot indeed...

 

[at Quark's]

Maybe he believed that there was no way that the ship or anyone onboard could survive?

I think this is the most likely explanation.

TASHA: Captain, I request a transfer to the Enterprise-C.
Picard: Approved, on one condition. You take the boy Wesley with you.

 

[DonIago]

Then we could have met an embittered adult Wesley...

 

[Guy Gardener]

You do realize that because Picard was changing the time line on purpose, that everything he did was contamination?

 

[Ithekro]

I am pretty sure that was the point of sending Yar back. Give the older Enterprise every possible advantage in combat with the Romulans to prevent their present day war with the Klingons that they were losing. Anything beyond prevention of the Klingon War was more than Picard wanted to think about because basically anything was better than the last two decades of warfare.

 

[Guy Gardener]

No?

Picard could have given the Enterprise C modern weapons, or taken his Enterprise through the rift, to destroy the Romulans, and assure complete and total Federation supremacy in the past.

Finding the debris of the Enterprise C who failed immediately would have saved history, helping them too much might have disjoint history again.

If the Enterprise C had survived, the Klingons may have been weary of Starfleet's might and knuckled down to destroy the Federation, because they are clearly a threat to the Empire.

Time, God, whatever, gave Tasha a hall pass, and Picard chose to honour it, because it was all too big for him to fight against.

Alternatively, Picard was her wingman, locking down that scrummy piece of tail Tasha had her eye on.

 

[Ithekro]

However the Enterprise-D in the past would have been too much, even for Picard. Two Enterprises would cause too many questions. One security officer likely would not. The idea was that the Enterprise-C should do down fighting gloriously in defense of a Klingon planet, but the Klingon planet would still get trashed by the Romulans (Picard's lingering combat sense of 20 decades of fighting would probably still want the Klingons there to die for their Empire) A Federation starship, specially an Enterprise, one of those hated names that constantly was getting in the Empire's way since first contact with the humans, all the way to Khitomer and likely beyond, falling in battle for the honor of the Klingon Empire would be enough to secure a peace and alliance.

In the Enterprise-C's state, she would have been taken out by a single torpedo from the Romulans, and the honorable death not achieved. If all is as thought, the Enterprise-C would have gone in blind to what the Romulans were like in the 2240s since there should have been no contact with the Romulan Empire for 33 or so years at that point. But with the ships at least partly fixed up, and a tactical expert with 22 years later knowledge of weaknesses and tactics of the Romulan starships would allow them to give a much more impressive combat display and prove their honor to the Klingons.

 

[JesterFace]

You do realize that because Picard was changing the time line on purpose, that everything he did was contamination?

Picard did say that sending Ent-C back wouldn't be altering the past but restoring the past.

 

[Mojochi]

I like to think the decision was to weigh the potential of polluting the timeline against the pollution already done to it. He faced the possibility that even though the C was meant to be destroyed, it might have originally done more than it could currently do, after having suffered so many losses.

The line that made him consider her request

No. Captain Garrett belongs on that ship. But now that she's dead, there's a certain logic in this request.

He may have been weighing the possibility of how undermanned they now were. Surely, the ship hadn't faced it's battle without a captain & part of its crew. So while it's still a pretty bad call, it does have a half-assed logic to it

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm pretty sure Picard's though processes at the time were, "We're all gonna die anyway, so fuck it."

 

[Guy Gardener]

In season one he fixed a time paradox by shooting his future self dead.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Picard did say that sending Ent-C back wouldn't be altering the past but restoring the past.

Restoring the past by exterminating all life in the universe for the last two decades.

Alt Enterprise D could have gone back, joined the Romulans, and then destroyed Qo'noS voiding the threat of that horrible war entirely.

Trusting fate is chumpy when you're with in reach of all the tools you need to architect a superior future where you win so hard that everyone else gets on their knees to worship you forever.

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[at Quark's]

Then we could have met an embittered adult Wesley...

Or we could have gotten the half-Romulan son of Wesley, leaving with the Traveler, his Romulan mummy imploring him to 'dress warmly on those other planes of existence'.

 

[JesterFace]

Because many of the reasons mentioned in this thread, I don't like timetravel episodes, too complex...

 

[Kirk Prime]

Well, what is the definition of the prime timeline? I would argue that the prime timeline would be defined as the timeline that we the viewer in the real world follow.

We always followed the prime timeline, and in that timeline, Sela always existed. Picard just hadn't met her yet. She was alive and well even before Tasha got killed by the goop.

I would also argue that Goop Tasha wasn't her mother. Genetically yes, but her mother was the one that died in the past.

One could argue that it was a predestination paradox and the proof that they did not affect their own timeline was that once the E-C went back through the wormhole, all was exactly as it was before, right down to their dialogue.

A similar claim can be made about Kirk and crew taking the humpback whales. They didn't change history. They lived in a timeline in which Kirk and crew were indeed in the 1980s collecting a couple of whales.

As for Picard's logic and tampering with the timeline, remember that this was an alternate version of Picard that may have acted differently than Picard Prime.