With the established existence of parallel universes to cover certain instances, most examples of time travel in Star Trek work just fine as predestination paradoxes.
Production Order Group Viewing 2018
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I gotta say that the assertion that "time travel just works wrong" in a piece of science fiction is a fairly absurd thing to say, mainly because the statement literally implies that there's a right way for it to work. In order to take that idea seriously, one has to have a working example of time travel—which there isn't. Hence, the absurdity.
The predestination paradoxes I can think of are Time's Arrow, All Our Yesterdays, and the Prophets ' story in DS9 (possibly the Naked Time and Assignment Earth).
Tomorrow is Yesterday, Yesterday's Enterprise, and Parallels, plus Voyager and Enterprise deal with many worlds theory. Voyager goes really weird as Kes warns them about the Kremin and leaves the ship before she even meets them so she must have created a different timeline .
I just find the creation of new timelines a cheat storyline because the original timeline still exists in many worlds theory. All the viewer is doing is jumping tracks to the new timeline with the characters.
What's wrong with that?
I'd also throw in Yesteryear, Captain's Holiday, Eye Of The Needle, ST4:TVH, ST8:FC, Little Green Men and Past Tense into that mix as well (along with others on this list). In all these cases the characters show concern that they could alter their timelines, even if that really isn't so.
The events of Yesterday's Enterprise clearly take place in a parallel universe, since there's no external influence which would the timeline to change in the first place (despite what the episode purports). Several other Star Trek episodes that appear to show time travel (such as Trials and TribbleAtions) actually take place in an alternate universe, made evident by numerous differences on set when compared to the original episode footage (yes, I am that obsessive on detail!)
As for situations like Time Squared, Cause and Effect, Visionary or Relativity, we are dealing with only very local repeating time loops and in each case there was either a natural (TS, C&E) or artificial (V, R) force creating a temporal bubble around the ship/station until our heroes were able to find a way out of it, rejoining the natural flow of time.
Tomorrow Is Yesterday requires its own thread, given how mixed up it is!
Kes' journey (quite apart from being told from an extremely subjective POV) has all the hallmarks of someone bouncing around between parallel universes in a similar way to Worf in Parallels, not least because in one instance she is shown physically vanishing from that reality! If it were just her consciousness moving this would not happen.
I'm not sure that the events of Yesterday's Enterprise take place in an alternate universe as such until the end of the episode! The ripple effect at the beginning indicates that this 'will be' the timeline of the TNG era from this point on because of the Enterprise C appearing from the anomaly! Luckily the sacrifice of the C crew re-establishes the correct reality and Picard and his team know no different! That is until Sela turns up later on!
JB
JB
I suppose the issue with many worlds is that the motives of the characters become purely selfish. They aren't taking action to change anything except for themselves. Edith dies in the original timeline no matter what they do now. She lives in McCoy's timeline. She dies only because of Kirk's action so he essentially creates (or participates) in a new timeline where she dies, while next door is a timeline where they live happily ever after.
Despite all the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, I still love CotEoF.
Despite all the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, I still love CotEoF.
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City on the Edge of Forever. A very good hour of television, very dramatic, very universe shattering and so on. Good performances from the actors, most of the dialogue is good.
Everyone seems to take this at face value, that there really is a time portal that Dr. McCoy went through and "changed history" which Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock "put back" to the way it was.
What if this doughnut that speaks in riddles is just a big liar to see what these new people will do and there's no time travel at all.
What proof do they have?
As if that thing isn't powerful enough to block communications? There is no one that "knows" that it happened besides McCoy (who was drugged at the time), Kirk, and Spock. The others on the surface said they were only gone a moment, the ship doesn't even answer when they are back.
This could all have been a mind probing hallucination or even some kind of hologram that simulated they were there. They don't even have the period clothes they were wearing when they supposedly came back.
Is Dr. McCoy's phaser missing? He doesn't mention it. What about Kirk and Spock's phasers, they didn't take them off and leave them with Scott or Uhura, did they have theirs? Kirk had his communicator, did he carry that everywhere with him in "the past"? Why couldn't Kirk and Spock just use their communicators to detect McCoy's communicator when he showed up, (unless he didn't take one)?
Also, I don't see how the Edith illusion could survive outside of the chamber. It was obviously programmed to be irresistible to Kirk, the commander of the ship that showed up, for a character test to see what's more important, his personal happiness or the greater good? He couldn't save "Edith" and the universe to, that seems very explicit from the spectacle she was in.
Still a top ten episode, and I do accept it is a time portal, but... we have to take it's word for it.
Everyone seems to take this at face value, that there really is a time portal that Dr. McCoy went through and "changed history" which Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock "put back" to the way it was.
What if this doughnut that speaks in riddles is just a big liar to see what these new people will do and there's no time travel at all.
What proof do they have?
As if that thing isn't powerful enough to block communications? There is no one that "knows" that it happened besides McCoy (who was drugged at the time), Kirk, and Spock. The others on the surface said they were only gone a moment, the ship doesn't even answer when they are back.
This could all have been a mind probing hallucination or even some kind of hologram that simulated they were there. They don't even have the period clothes they were wearing when they supposedly came back.
Is Dr. McCoy's phaser missing? He doesn't mention it. What about Kirk and Spock's phasers, they didn't take them off and leave them with Scott or Uhura, did they have theirs? Kirk had his communicator, did he carry that everywhere with him in "the past"? Why couldn't Kirk and Spock just use their communicators to detect McCoy's communicator when he showed up, (unless he didn't take one)?
Also, I don't see how the Edith illusion could survive outside of the chamber. It was obviously programmed to be irresistible to Kirk, the commander of the ship that showed up, for a character test to see what's more important, his personal happiness or the greater good? He couldn't save "Edith" and the universe to, that seems very explicit from the spectacle she was in.
Still a top ten episode, and I do accept it is a time portal, but... we have to take it's word for it.
Oh jeeze. Yuck. I always found it refreshing that Twelve Monkeys (the movie) showed you could tell a great time travel story where the time travel is part of history and doesn't change anything.
For my own tastes, that's the sort of idea that sounds kinda appealing in theory, but doesn't always work in practice. Or, it can work, and should work, but it really depends upon what one means by "rules of the fictional universe as presented on screen."
In Star Trek's case there are two factors. One, especially in TOS and all the more so in early TOS, the first time it happens it is literally establishing the rules of the fictional universe. In S1 TOS, we have "The Naked Time," "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "City," and arguably also "The Alternative Factor," though that last example is well-known to be a mess and it largely only name-checks time travel by referring to Lazarus' saucer as a "time ship" or "time chamber" and Lazarus himself as a "time traveler." Anyway, the point is that the fist time it happens, the rules are being written, so there is nothing to compare it to.
Two, the other factor, is that just because it's happened one way in earlier episodes it, in my view, shouldn't necessarily exclude it being done different ways in different episodes. "All Our Yesterdays" isn't a great episode, but the Atavachron is an original idea and therefore interesting. Its rules about travelers having to be prepared is unique to the episode. Does it matter that that's not the way time travel works in any other episode? Not to me. What brings the episode down from greatness for me is primarily the tedium of Kirk's adventure in the past. Spock's and McCoy's adventure is where the real story is.
Take also "Yesteryear." Do we know from "City" that scanning the past can cause changes in the timeline? No, we don't; in fact we see nothing to indicate that at all since Spock's scanning of the past with his tricorder is central to the plot of "City" and nothing detrimental happens as a result of it. Does that reflect badly on "Yesteryear"? Not to me. It's a rather clever extension of what we see on screen, but it's really an entirely original contribution.
"The Alternative Factor" is, among other things, an object lesson in why an episode becomes bad when there are no rules being followed. Without getting even more long-winded, suffice it say that, in my view, the other examples of time travel in TOS/TAS work, despite the differences in the way they work, even though they make up the rules as they go along.
I probably should at least touch on the fact that the beaming at the end of "Tomorrow Is yesterday" is also contrary to all other known methods of time travel in Star Trek. Does that matter? Well, if I'm being honest, maybe somewhat actually, but on the other hand, it was original, and it seemed like they were trying to depict something that made some kind of sense on some level to somebody. And also, if I'm being honest, I'd rather have something to think about than nothing, which is what you have if it's all the same.
TL;DR = I'm not exactly disagreeing with @Mytran, but there are really a lot of moving parts to the idea that rules in fiction should be obeyed.
The issue with YE is that at no point is there interference with the timeline that could cause a change in history (there was in earlier drafts, but it got lost in the rewrites). In other stories, someone usually travels back from a future time to affect the change, but in this instance the displaced Ent-C was the result of ordinary events between the Ent-C and the Romulans. There was no external interference, accidental or otherwise. The disappearance and reappearance of the Ent-C was an established part of history from the moment the Ent-D was first launched, so why would the normal course of events initiate a "timeline change"?
That's one of the reasons I love time travel in Trek - there's so much to unpack!
Is time travel a thing that scientists think exists and works one way rather than another?
I thought time-travel was just a made up thing and couldn't possibly eist and the best we could get in a Star Trek universe was consistency.
If time-travel works the way it does in COTEOF and you can actually go back in time and change things its a really good dramatic way of setting up a story.
The Kelvin multiple universe theory means that time travel just goes about creating multiple universes for each significant time travel violation.In fact Nero did not destroy Vulcan but just created an extra entire copy universe minus the Vulcan part. So Nero is a creator rather than a destroyer.
Much the same as warp drive, the science of time travel does exist. They believe it's only possible to go forward in time but if it was possible to go back, they theorise it would only be possible to do it as part of many worlds theory so you are leaving your own timeline and entering a different timeline where you have always been there in the past.
Because Trek has aliens who exist outside time, it has also confirmed that time exists everywhere, all at once, so in Trek, it seems possible to visit your own past, but only if you've always been there.
It's not possible to travel back to a time you've never visited because that has already happened (is happening) and you have the illusion of free will because you future has already happened (is happening) but it is possible to jump tracks to a different timeline where something different happens / has happened / will happen.
The temporal police are paid for no reason and the Guardian was only concerned with restoring the landing party to their correct timeline.
But you're right, the reality of that sucks so writers dress it up in more dramatic terms that the heroes are saving lives instead of just affecting their own present and future.
The Kelvin universe was different to the TOS reality from day one with the more advanced spaceships for a start so it wasn't just a copy of the original universe changed by Nero's intervention! 
JB
JB
##Discovery## cough, cough.The Kelvin universe was different to the TOS reality from day one with the more advanced spaceships for a start so it wasn't just a copy of the original universe changed by Nero's intervention!
JB
The City episode had a reasonable good romance story. Most romance stories in Star Trek are tortuous to watch. One of the biggest flaws is the time spent between the characters. In a later TOS episode, Bones becomes the love of a high priestess and marries her in a ceremony. Then, at the end, she dumps him, or he dumps him, - career choices, people. This all happen in a day or two. Gimme me a break.
The big issue I have with the episode is two-fold: it ignores the reality that there were movements, some pacifist, before World War II, which I will acknowledge did slow the US's response to NAZI Germany, and the Japanese Empire. Roosevelt was a pragmatist - he knew the war was coming with Germany. He needed the support of the people before he could move the county onto a war footing. On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, there was a rally for keeping the US out of the global conflict. The coverage of the rally was blanketed by news from Hawaii and Washington, and the isolationaist and pacifist movements faded away. And the country was on the war path.
Having played video games, when I was younger, I can say that Star Trek treated World War II as the video gamer developers treated that war - the war in Western Europe was the only thing which mattered. America and Germany might not have gone to war if Japan had not decided to attack Pearl Harbor. As a member of the Pact, as an ally of Japan, Germany was pushed into a position where it had to go to war with the United States. Hitler's own generals made a valiant effort of unsuccessfully persuading Hitler not to get into war with America.
As an aside: Beside the wonky history, I am still trying to figure out how the Germans in the two part episode about space Nazis in Star Trek: Enterprise managed to invade the United States. They did not have a large enough fleet to invade America and they certainly did not have a functional aircraft carrier for carrying their planes. Hell, Hitler did not understand the navy, he was an infantry man through and through, and actually considered scrapping it in 1943.
And, I am still attempting to understand the figures given by Spock for the number of dead in the three world wars in Bread and Circuses. How did he come to those numbers?
The big issue I have with the episode is two-fold: it ignores the reality that there were movements, some pacifist, before World War II, which I will acknowledge did slow the US's response to NAZI Germany, and the Japanese Empire. Roosevelt was a pragmatist - he knew the war was coming with Germany. He needed the support of the people before he could move the county onto a war footing. On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, there was a rally for keeping the US out of the global conflict. The coverage of the rally was blanketed by news from Hawaii and Washington, and the isolationaist and pacifist movements faded away. And the country was on the war path.
Having played video games, when I was younger, I can say that Star Trek treated World War II as the video gamer developers treated that war - the war in Western Europe was the only thing which mattered. America and Germany might not have gone to war if Japan had not decided to attack Pearl Harbor. As a member of the Pact, as an ally of Japan, Germany was pushed into a position where it had to go to war with the United States. Hitler's own generals made a valiant effort of unsuccessfully persuading Hitler not to get into war with America.
As an aside: Beside the wonky history, I am still trying to figure out how the Germans in the two part episode about space Nazis in Star Trek: Enterprise managed to invade the United States. They did not have a large enough fleet to invade America and they certainly did not have a functional aircraft carrier for carrying their planes. Hell, Hitler did not understand the navy, he was an infantry man through and through, and actually considered scrapping it in 1943.
And, I am still attempting to understand the figures given by Spock for the number of dead in the three world wars in Bread and Circuses. How did he come to those numbers?
I love both of those songs.
You're thinking of "What's on Your Mind"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_on_Your_Mind_(Pure_Energy)
There was essentially no way to avoid it at that point. The Roosevelt administration had already taken sides against Germany in 1941. Damaged British ships were being repaired in US dockyards, US pilots were ferrying planes to the UK and Commonwealth pilots were being trained in the US, the Destroyers for Bases and Lend Lease deals were done, US forces had relieved British forces in Iceland, and by late fall US Atlantic Fleet ships were actively hunting U-boats. The administration could follow its policy unchallenged at least until the 1942 mid-terms.
With such a status quo in December 1941, to avoid war with the US Germany would at least have had to abandon the unrestricted submarine campaign in the Atlantic, and, just as in 1916, they couldn't afford to do that.
I didn't watch that show but yeah, that certainly seems far-fetched. As in, not possible.
I wonder if they asked Kellam de Forest Research for this information, and if so what came of it.
Spock's dialogue might be a simple case of counterfeit detail, a writer's shortcut that was pretty easy to get away with before the Internet happened. Fiction writers figured that any fact they found difficult to look up would slide by the vast majority of readers/viewers without being questioned.
Even if a viewer did find something in his home encyclopedia or an almanac, what was he going to do, write a letter and send it by snail mail? Big deal. People back then had only a tiny fraction of our information at hand, far less interactivity with writers, and no social media.
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