Plausibility Issues - All Our Yesterdays

[Gary7]

I'm not sure if there have previously been any plausibility threads about various TOS episodes. If so, my apologies... otherwise, I'd like to start one. The idea being a "plausibility test" of various Star Trek episodes. Generally speaking, I think the writers did a pretty good job overall. TNG was usually better about it, though. In TOS, there were things that were just plain wrong, couldn't have been done, or could have been done differently to better "fit" within the universe that Roddenberry defined.

"All Our Yesterdays" was one of my favorite episodes. The idea was really entertaining to me. Unfortunately, the limited budget meant there was so much that couldn't be shown and thus corners had to be cut. Frankly speaking, with less than an hour of episode time, it would have been nearly impossible to do everything in a plausible manner.

One concept I thought was intriguing but troubled was the whole idea of being "prepared". "The atavachron adjusts our cell structures and our brain patterns to make life natural here. To return to the future would mean instant death!" Rubbish. Brain patterns? Ah, there's nothing about the atmosphere or environment that creates a dependency on brain patterns, or even cell structures. It's all about bacteria/disease/virus. That's where the conflict arises. You take someone from the future and bring them to the past, and you could end up causing an epidemic--the future person introduces bacteria or a virus that the indigenous people have no natural immunity for. I understand why the brain pattern/cell structure idea was conceived. You didn't want people from the past using the portals as revolving doors.

A way to make it more plausible, at least in my mind, would be to make the process of simply traveling through the portal causing some kind of mental stress. It's not enough to kill you, but it makes you horribly weak. You then need time to rest up... but ultimately, something happens to your brain that makes you very susceptible to going through the portal again. If you try it once more, your psyche gets stressed to the point where you go insane. The bacteria thing would be handled with shots. You'd be given innoculations that would protect you in the time period you're going and also prevent you from being a carrier of modern diseases (so you don't kill off the people of the time you're going to).

Now of course, this won't fare well for our Federation heroes. If this idea were the case, they'd become raving lunatics upon their return to their normal time periods. The solution would end up with Spock... you probably already know what I'm talking about. Remember "Spectre of the Gun"? Zarabeth tells about the madness... Spock then does a mind meld on McCoy. He essentially "prepares" them for the return. But what about Kirk? Well, when he gets ready to go back, he hears Spock (we reverse the order of return). Spock ends up going to the time period Kirk went into, does the mind meld, and just as the guards come charging after them, they escape back to the future. What do you folks think? Better solution to the "prepared" implausibility problem?

By the way, in the interest of brevity, I'll skip the other plausibility problems, that being the "talking" to the people in the other time periods, the persistent portals, and the "one" atavachron sending everyone to safety. You see if, the discs always start off at a certain time, well, reloading them will then be "behind" the time of when the people went; out of phase--they'd never hear you. The "portals" being around like they are would be serious problems... like black hole traps littered about. What if someone accidentally walked through one? There would be severe chaos at all those portal locations. We'd have to assume that they are only open when the discs are active on the atavachron viewers (obviously this wasn't the case, as Kirk came back without a disc loaded). And lastly, ahem, Mr. Atoz sends the ENTIRE planet population to the past? I think not. There must have been multiple atavachron centers. It would've been nice if Mr. Atoz qualified that better, when Kirk asks "You personally sent everyone on the planet to safety?" He should have said he did for everyone in this province.

 

[Timo]

Regarding the "preparation", I think Zarabeth got its basic nature a bit wrong. It's not that the brain patterns and whatnot are adjusted to make the body match the target time. It's that with adjusted brain patterns, the refugees/victims will no longer be mentally capable of returning home.

In case of Zarabeth, it would be part of the punishment: even if she were offered a ride home, she would refuse, as her brain had been "prepared" to think that this was impossible. In case of the later users of that technology, it would be for the benefit of the user: the adjustment would cure homesickness.

So yes, rubbish, as you say. But a completely plausible application of rubbish, for greater good (or in case of Zarabeth and the other banished, greater evil).

the "talking" to the people in the other time periods, the persistent portals, and the "one" atavachron sending everyone to safety

Well, the first two are intertwined: if the portal is of a persisting nature, then the talking part should be easy enough. And why shouldn't the portal persist? We know nothing about its nature that would preclude this. Indeed, it would be odd for the portal to portray any "timely" behavior such as coming or going, when its very essence is about not being tied to time!

As for Mr. Atoz saving everybody personally, that poses no problem if we assume there were thousands of examples of Mr. Atoz around to do it. They'd all be him, so he did save everybody personally!

Atoz seems to consider his "replicas" somewhat lesser beings, to be sure. Which would still perfectly match the dialogue: he did it all personally, with the help of a thousand who don't warrant mention.

As for the logistics of using a single portal for the supposed billions, I see no major problem with that, either. As Atoz says, they had plenty of lead time. And they probably had efficient intercontinental travel, too, if they had atavarchon technology. For all we know, only a single atavarchon can exist in the universe, making the logistics necessary but still plausible; assuming multiple locations could be taken as going against aired dialogue for no good reason.

Although as long as we speculate, we might say that only a certain percentage of the population chose the atavarchon escape. Many others might simply have chosen not to breed, resulting in the disappearance of the culture between the last Starfleet probe flyby and the episode.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gary7]

It's that with adjusted brain patterns, the refugees/victims will no longer be mentally capable of returning home.

In case of Zarabeth, it would be part of the punishment: even if she were offered a ride home, she would refuse, as her brain had been "prepared" to think that this was impossible. In case of the later users of that technology, it would be for the benefit of the user: the adjustment would cure homesickness.

That doesn't work out logically. If it were the case, Zarabeth would say that the portal only works one way, that you can't go forward to the future. But she says that if she DOES go back, she will die. That's very different. It means the capability is there, but once you arrive in the future you suddenly die due to no longer being "natural" in that time period.

That idea of dying suddenly is ridiculous. Remember, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were never prepared. They were fine... well, up until you see Kirk about to return, he begins to feel dizzy like the effect of being in that time period was starting to take its toll. Thus, someone "prepared" from the past should be able to survive for a few hours in the future. During that time the atavachron could be used to "adjust" them accordingly.

Well, the first two are intertwined: if the portal is of a persisting nature, then the talking part should be easy enough. And why shouldn't the portal persist? We know nothing about its nature that would preclude this. Indeed, it would be odd for the portal to portray any "timely" behavior such as coming or going, when its very essence is about not being tied to time!

The portal requires energy to persist. It doesn't make sense for them to exist all over the place. My point is that they "open up" when activated by the atavachron. This means the atavachron is powering it while the time period is selected in the viewer. But that portal exists for that point in time... not for ALL time. Otherwise, who knows what might accidentally fall through it from any other time. As such, there's this timing issue. One would need to "adjust forward" the time to match where the people are, otherwise, you end up reaching back in time to the point where they first went through... in which case you just tell them to turn right back around. The problem with this is that you circumvent the time that passed, and thus the travelers wouldn't have any memory of it... nothing to reflect on, so no interesting story line.

As for Mr. Atoz saving everybody personally, that poses no problem if we assume there were thousands of examples of Mr. Atoz around to do it. They'd all be him, so he did save everybody personally!

Well, you have a point. But it would really be Mr. Atoz and his replicas. When asked if he personally sent everyone back, he should have said, "Yes, I, along with my replicas, sent everyone to safety. We have atavachrons located in every major province."

It's little things like this that can accumulate into a larger plausibility problem. If only the writers paid closer attention, they could have done things slightly differently in order to minimize the impact and make it feel all the more real.

 

[Timo]

That doesn't work out logically. If it were the case, Zarabeth would say that the portal only works one way, that you can't go forward to the future. But she says that if she DOES go back, she will die. That's very different. It means the capability is there, but once you arrive in the future you suddenly die due to no longer being "natural" in that time period.

But if the aim of the mental adaptation is to prevent Zarabeth's escape, then it's eminently logical to instill in her the fear of dying after time travel back home. That way, even if (and when, as we learn) it is perfectly possible to travel back to the future, she will refuse this opportunity when it is offered. If Zor Khan had made her merely think that travel back to the future was impossible, and for example Spock then demonstrated that this was untrue, Zarabeth could escape. Now she cannot - she quite possibly will die if she gets back home, as she's been mentally programmed to do so.

That idea of dying suddenly is ridiculous. Remember, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were never prepared.

Indeed. Which is why I claim that Zarabeth was told a lie. Zigzagging in time is not harmful in any manner - until you are "prepared", which is a treatment that makes you avoid and abhor further time travel, and thus content to remain in your intended destination. An unprepared person would survive just fine, but she or he might get an urge to go back one day, and the preparation cancels out that urge.

As for why Kirk became queasy, I claim it had nothing to do with him being unprepared. He was merely feeling the first symptoms of being stuck in an unhygienic medieval gaol.

The portal requires energy to persist. It doesn't make sense for them to exist all over the place. My point is that they "open up" when activated by the atavachron.

Hmm, one point at a time... We don't know that persistence would require energy. Being outside time, the portals might be outside such earthly needs, too. Or then they would have an unlimited supply of energy, something rather easily rigged up if you can twist causality. (On a related note, one wonders what happens to this setup when the library is consumed by the nova... does the time travel system collapse, or is it independent of the timely developments at the library? And if there's a collapse, when does the collapse happen, from the POV of the people in the past? Does it perhaps work so that if you went to the past five years before the nova, your local portal would collapse five years after your arrival? Just wondering.)

Being all over the place... I don't see how that would be a big problem even if the portals persisted for all eternity. The way the library was set up, the disks would probably guide multiple people to select the same exit point, and the globe could support millions of permanent portals without people stumbling upon them. Especially back in those days when the planet had a tiny preindustrial population - or even virtually none at all, since the library did offer trips to the latest ice age and to other decidedly non-urban settings.

We could also postulate that the portals persist eternally, but only from the timepoint when they were opened - so there wouldn't be a portal there on that medieval brick wall before the wall was built.

As for opening up when activated by the atavarchon, I'd say the ability to yell across the centuries is more suggestive of a setup where the atavarchon accesses an alternate realm where all time is one, and then shoves you towards a suitable exit point. Sound carries across this realm just fine, as it has no spatial dimensions between the various exit points. Probably every exit point would echo with the yells of Spock or Kirk, were there listeners in the vicinity. But the atavarchon helps with making the physical travel "directional" in time, and thus allows one to move from Sarpeidon's final days to destination T and back but not much else.

But yeah, it would also be acceptable that the portals only persist for a relatively short time, say, a few dozen years.

But it would really be Mr. Atoz and his replicas. When asked if he personally sent everyone back, he should have said, "Yes, I, along with my replicas, sent everyone to safety. We have atavachrons located in every major province."

It's little things like this that can accumulate into a larger plausibility problem. If only the writers paid closer attention...

Here I must strongly disagree. The "amended" line above would be bad writing, clumsy as all hell and offering information that was not needed nor desired. If this sort of policy were really followed, we'd soon end up with Kirk and McCoy and a human guy named Spock who had met with an accident while machine-picking rice, flying around the Sol system in a rocket and encountering strange new lifeless asteroids, because that's plausible and Star Trek is not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

I'm not sure if there have previously been any plausibility threads about various TOS episodes. If so, my apologies... otherwise, I'd like to start one. The idea being a "plausibility test" of various Star Trek episodes. Generally speaking, I think the writers did a pretty good job overall. TNG was usually better about it, though. In TOS, there were things that were just plain wrong, couldn't have been done, or could have been done differently to better "fit" within the universe that Roddenberry defined.

"All Our Yesterdays" was one of my favorite episodes. The idea was really entertaining to me. Unfortunately, the limited budget meant there was so much that couldn't be shown and thus corners had to be cut. Frankly speaking, with less than an hour of episode time, it would have been nearly impossible to do everything in a plausible manner.

One concept I thought was intriguing but troubled was the whole idea of being "prepared". "The atavachron adjusts our cell structures and our brain patterns to make life natural here. To return to the future would mean instant death!" Rubbish. Brain patterns? Ah, there's nothing about the atmosphere or environment that creates a dependency on brain patterns, or even cell structures. It's all about bacteria/disease/virus. That's where the conflict arises. You take someone from the future and bring them to the past, and you could end up causing an epidemic--the future person introduces bacteria or a virus that the indigenous people have no natural immunity for. I understand why the brain pattern/cell structure idea was conceived. You didn't want people from the past using the portals as revolving doors.

A way to make it more plausible, at least in my mind, would be to make the process of simply traveling through the portal causing some kind of mental stress. It's not enough to kill you, but it makes you horribly weak. You then need time to rest up... but ultimately, something happens to your brain that makes you very susceptible to going through the portal again. If you try it once more, your psyche gets stressed to the point where you go insane. The bacteria thing would be handled with shots. You'd be given innoculations that would protect you in the time period you're going and also prevent you from being a carrier of modern diseases (so you don't kill off the people of the time you're going to).

Now of course, this won't fare well for our Federation heroes. If this idea were the case, they'd become raving lunatics upon their return to their normal time periods. The solution would end up with Spock... you probably already know what I'm talking about. Remember "Spectre of the Gun"? Zarabeth tells about the madness... Spock then does a mind meld on McCoy. He essentially "prepares" them for the return. But what about Kirk? Well, when he gets ready to go back, he hears Spock (we reverse the order of return). Spock ends up going to the time period Kirk went into, does the mind meld, and just as the guards come charging after them, they escape back to the future. What do you folks think? Better solution to the "prepared" implausibility problem?

By the way, in the interest of brevity, I'll skip the other plausibility problems, that being the "talking" to the people in the other time periods, the persistent portals, and the "one" atavachron sending everyone to safety. You see if, the discs always start off at a certain time, well, reloading them will then be "behind" the time of when the people went; out of phase--they'd never hear you. The "portals" being around like they are would be serious problems... like black hole traps littered about. What if someone accidentally walked through one? There would be severe chaos at all those portal locations. We'd have to assume that they are only open when the discs are active on the atavachron viewers (obviously this wasn't the case, as Kirk came back without a disc loaded). And lastly, ahem, Mr. Atoz sends the ENTIRE planet population to the past? I think not. There must have been multiple atavachron centers. It would've been nice if Mr. Atoz qualified that better, when Kirk asks "You personally sent everyone on the planet to safety?" He should have said he did for everyone in this province.

I never thought of it as an atmospheric dependency, I felt that in some "futuristic" way, they were able to adjust your brain subtley so as to be acclimated to a huge culture shock. We've seen other brain control/changing machines on TOS, it doesn't seem to be all that different of a self-internally consistent conceit. The cell adjustment might be what really kills them though.

RAMA

 

[Gary7]

Well, it could very well be that Zarabeth was told a lie, to dissuade her from attempting a return. Certainly, no one would want to risk trying it out because of the consequences.

Anyway, trying to sift into the precise details as to why things were presented a certain way is not productive, as the concepts were so esoteric to begin with. I'm just trying to look at it logically from an overview perspective.

In any case, as someone else mentioned in another thread, there were so many strains on the suspension of disbelief in Star Trek, that one must just "let go" and enjoy the ride. I thought this would be a fun exercise, but I suspect it will just bring up too much conjecture that won't be possible to resolve.

 

[Ssosmcin]

That idea of dying suddenly is ridiculous. Remember, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were never prepared.

Indeed. Which is why I claim that Zarabeth was told a lie. Zigzagging in time is not harmful in any manner - until you are "prepared", which is a treatment that makes you avoid and abhor further time travel, and thus content to remain in your intended destination. An unprepared person would survive just fine, but she or he might get an urge to go back one day, and the preparation cancels out that urge.

But what about the prosecutor? He has not sent back by Zor Kahn and he also tells Kirk that if one is not prepared then "one can only survive a few hours here in the past." So, obviously, the atavachron is the key. It could send someone through time but, as a security measure to keep people from hanging around and changing things, only gives a person a few hours to return before cutting off some life support connection to that point in time when they left. By being "prepared," the atavachron could send you out with ability to move about indefinitely, but with limited knowledge of the future or simply unable to do anything that would disrupt the timeline. This would be the only way to securely send millions of people into the past without worrying about history being totally screwed up.

As for why Kirk became queasy, I claim it had nothing to do with him being unprepared. He was merely feeling the first symptoms of being stuck in an unhygienic medieval gaol.

Nothing in the dialog alludes to this, but the "dying if unprepared" was rather heavily referenced. I'd be inclined to go with what evidence they provided in this case and assume Kirk was leaving the time period just in time. There's nothing there at all to suggest he's reacting to the germs of the environment.