No, it didn't.
Question about the timeline post-movie *possible spoilers*
- Thread starter aussie_voy_fan
- Start date
No, it didn't.
Considering how in every single mirror universe and parallel dimension that's ever been encountered or shown on Star Trek, everyone's managed to marry the same people who have the same children who grow up to marry the same people and have the same children whose names are exactly the same and who go on to have the exact same jobs working the the exact same people, all future Trek characters will still be born.
Just a little different.
Just a little different.
Why didn't it? The entire freekin' series was about time travel!!! How many alternate realities did we see? Answer: TONS !!
The fact that the timeline was changed (the day Kirk was born) yet the gang all ended up on the Enterprise anyway indicates to me that the cosmos wants to follow the Star Trek script and will do so as much as cosmically possible. Any and all changes will happen merely because the story is better that way. 
The Dominion War, for instance, can still happen. There may not be as many Vulcans fighting in it; or maybe there will be. They have time to rebuild their numbers and who knows, maybe they'll go the test-tube-baby route as a shortcut.
I wouldn't mind seeing the Dominion War re-run in the new timeline. Maybe some elements will be different but that just raises the potential for improvements (no more paghwraith BS) and new dramatic possibilities (can the Vulcans and Rommies ever be "good allies" now?)
The Dominion War, for instance, can still happen. There may not be as many Vulcans fighting in it; or maybe there will be. They have time to rebuild their numbers and who knows, maybe they'll go the test-tube-baby route as a shortcut.
I wouldn't mind seeing the Dominion War re-run in the new timeline. Maybe some elements will be different but that just raises the potential for improvements (no more paghwraith BS) and new dramatic possibilities (can the Vulcans and Rommies ever be "good allies" now?)
You are injecting your own views of time travel into your perceptions of "Star Trek" stories.EXACTLY, which would mean the entire landing party along with McCoy NEVER MADE IT HOME FROM THE GUARDIAN'S PLANET, and we've been watching a DIFFERENT Star Trek universe than the one depicted in episodes prior to "City".If the original reality still exists then BY THAT LOGIC the reality where the coward Edith Keeler lived and Hitler won the war still exists.
Whether there is one or multiple timelines makes no difference to the characters, since the past looks identical to their own. And, likewise, whether "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "ST: First Contact" took place in one or three timelines makes no difference to viewers, since the third timeline in each case was "close enough" to the first timeline.
It only becomes a problem if you try to overthink it, and apply some kind of logical theory to every instance of time travel depicted in dozens of episodes written by dozens of writers with dozens of their own opinions about time travel theory.
If you believe there is only one timeline in "Star Trek," then just think of this new movie along those lines. Anything Ambassador Spock does in this movie is no different from what Admiral Janeway did in "Endgame." They both went back in time, met their younger selves, introduced new technology into the new timeline to help solve a problem, and then remained in the new timeline for the rest of their lives.
If you watch "Endgame" and "Star Trek XI" back-to-back, I challenge you to point out any technical differences in their handling of time travel.
Since time travel is entirely fictional, even when Einstein or Hawking are talking about it, you are entitled to your opinion. But what you are not entitled to is telling the rest of us that your opinion of time travel is a fact, and everyone else is wrong.
The divergent-timelines theory is just as well represented in "Star Trek" (for those of us who subscribe to that theory). Even the characters in "Star Trek" itself are unsure of how time travel works, and are just making it up as they go along, as indicated in dialogue in episodes like "Star Trek IV" and "E2."
ALL time travel stories -- from "Back to the Future" to "Terminator" to, yes, even "Star Trek" -- fail the "logic test" if you think about them for too long.
The best way to test any time travel theory is to throw the Grandfather Paradox at it. This new movie has successfully killed its own grandfather, and lived to tell about it, so in my opinion, it is a reasonable time travel story.
Citing "Tomorrow is Yesterday" as an example of how time travel is "supposed to" work, in my opinion, weakens your argument. I don't think the writers of that episode could explain the logic of the story in any scientific manner; likewise with "The Naked Time" -- if they were thrown a day back in time, why didn't they meet themselves from the day before?
When Picard went back in time in "Generations," he and Kirk physically left the Nexus to go back into Picard's past, so why didn't Picard meet his younger self? But when Admiral Janeway went into the past in "Endgame," she DID meet her younger self.
If you try to make the case that there is a consistent and logical handling of time travel throughout ALL "Star Trek" episodes, regardless of who is writing them, then you will fail.
Perhaps you can rationalize it all in your own mind, since all time travel theories are equally fictional, but there are certain time travel theories that are more logical than others. And the single-timeline theory is not one of them.
You seem to be defending your single-timeline theory as if you are the owner of "The Official Star Trek Time Travel Rule Book," written by Gene Roddenberry in his own blood. Well, until I see some photocopies of that book, I'm sticking with my divergent-timelines theory, and I have just as much right to do so as you do.
And I can continue to enjoy 40 years of "Star Trek" epidodes by applying that theory to them, including this latest movie. (I personally believe it is the most logical theory, and avoids logical paradoxes and outright inconsistencies that plague most other handling of time travel.)
Excellent points and I've emphasized the ones that most need to be considered by the "there's ONLY been a single-time line in Trek, evah" brigade (not that I think it will induce them to re-think their position).You are injecting your own views of time travel into your perceptions of "Star Trek" stories.EXACTLY, which would mean the entire landing party along with McCoy NEVER MADE IT HOME FROM THE GUARDIAN'S PLANET, and we've been watching a DIFFERENT Star Trek universe than the one depicted in episodes prior to "City".If the original reality still exists then BY THAT LOGIC the reality where the coward Edith Keeler lived and Hitler won the war still exists.
Whether there is one or multiple timelines makes no difference to the characters, since the past looks identical to their own. And, likewise, whether "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "ST: First Contact" took place in one or three timelines makes no difference to viewers, since the third timeline in each case was "close enough" to the first timeline.
It only becomes a problem if you try to overthink it, and apply some kind of logical theory to every instance of time travel depicted in dozens of episodes written by dozens of writers with dozens of their own opinions about time travel theory.
If you believe there is only one timeline in "Star Trek," then just think of this new movie along those lines. Anything Ambassador Spock does in this movie is no different from what Admiral Janeway did in "Endgame." They both went back in time, met their younger selves, introduced new technology into the new timeline to help solve a problem, and then remained in the new timeline for the rest of their lives.
If you watch "Endgame" and "Star Trek XI" back-to-back, I challenge you to point out any technical differences in their handling of time travel.
Since time travel is entirely fictional, even when Einstein or Hawking are talking about it, you are entitled to your opinion. But what you are not entitled to is telling the rest of us that your opinion of time travel is a fact, and everyone else is wrong.
The divergent-timelines theory is just as well represented in "Star Trek" (for those of us who subscribe to that theory). Even the characters in "Star Trek" itself are unsure of how time travel works, and are just making it up as they go along, as indicated in dialogue in episodes like "Star Trek IV" and "E2."
ALL time travel stories -- from "Back to the Future" to "Terminator" to, yes, even "Star Trek" -- fail the "logic test" if you think about them for too long.
The best way to test any time travel theory is to throw the Grandfather Paradox at it. This new movie has successfully killed its own grandfather, and lived to tell about it, so in my opinion, it is a reasonable time travel story.
Citing "Tomorrow is Yesterday" as an example of how time travel is "supposed to" work, in my opinion, weakens your argument. I don't think the writers of that episode could explain the logic of the story in any scientific manner; likewise with "The Naked Time" -- if they were thrown a day back in time, why didn't they meet themselves from the day before?
When Picard went back in time in "Generations," he and Kirk physically left the Nexus to go back into Picard's past, so why didn't Picard meet his younger self? But when Admiral Janeway went into the past in "Endgame," she DID meet her younger self.
If you try to make the case that there is a consistent and logical handling of time travel throughout ALL "Star Trek" episodes, regardless of who is writing them, then you will fail.
Perhaps you can rationalize it all in your own mind, since all time travel theories are equally fictional, but there are certain time travel theories that are more logical than others. And the single-timeline theory is not one of them.
You seem to be defending your single-timeline theory as if you are the owner of "The Official Star Trek Time Travel Rule Book," written by Gene Roddenberry in his own blood. Well, until I see some photocopies of that book, I'm sticking with my divergent-timelines theory, and I have just as much right to do so as you do.
And I can continue to enjoy 40 years of "Star Trek" epidodes by applying that theory to them, including this latest movie. (I personally believe it is the most logical theory, and avoids logical paradoxes and outright inconsistencies that plague most other handling of time travel.)
You know, I think the only time travel movie I ever remember watching that didn't trip all over itself was 12 Monkeys.
The claim that I'm presenting myself as the rule-setter is poppycock.
Don't try to deny that what I've described IS the way that time travel has been depicted.
The Guardian even said that if they prevented McCoy from saving Edith's life, 'all would be as it once was'.
He didn't say they'd be transported into an offshoot reality where there'd be an Enterprise above waiting for them. He/It said 'all will be as it once was'.
Now, if the altering of a timeline does NOT change the past, but simply creates a new parallel timeline from the point of the change on, then that means that Scotty, Uhura, and the others were left on the Guardian's planet in the secondary timeline, until they did as Kirk had instructed (going back in time themselves).
The original Kirk and Spock would have been the only ones to make it to the end of the episode, and they'd have ended up in a THIRD timeline. the landing party they found waiting for them when they returned would actually be new creations of the third offshoot timeline.
Also, where would the landing party have come from in the first place? Since we were seeing a timeline WITHOUT the Enterprise, and with an Edith who LIVED, then by rights there should have been no landing party just as there was no Enterprise.
The timelne would have been changed in the distant past. The resulting offshoot timeline would have gone on from that point, the moment of McCoy's arrival.
In fact, there should have been no vanishing of the Enterprise, since if the original timeline remained both it and the landing/rescue party should have remained in the original timeline, untouched, unchanged.
McCoy should have been the only one to end up in a new offshoot timeline.
Since the Enterprised vanished and the landing party only remained (apparently) due to proximity to the Guardian and a measure of 'temporal grace', then they were NOT in an offshoot reality, but rather were in their own original timeline/reality, but with its past altered.
Again, if changing the past (as McCoy did by saving Edith) would have caused HIM to end up in an offshoot timeline, Kirk and company should have experienced no loss of the Enterprise, since "the original timeline would have remained unchanged".
The Enterprise DID vanish, however.
I'm not making the rules guys.
I'm only reasoning on what we saw IN THE EPISODE.
Your argument falls apart based on what we saw onscreen.
You want to play "onscreen is canon"? Okay. I'll play, and you just lost by virture of non-support from onscreen occurences.
No offshoot timeline came to be.
The Enterprise VANISHED.
The existing timeline simply got altered once, and then altered again, putting things pretty much back on track. (Except for the guy who destroyed himself with McCoy's phaser.)
Don't try to deny that what I've described IS the way that time travel has been depicted.
The Guardian even said that if they prevented McCoy from saving Edith's life, 'all would be as it once was'.
He didn't say they'd be transported into an offshoot reality where there'd be an Enterprise above waiting for them. He/It said 'all will be as it once was'.
Now, if the altering of a timeline does NOT change the past, but simply creates a new parallel timeline from the point of the change on, then that means that Scotty, Uhura, and the others were left on the Guardian's planet in the secondary timeline, until they did as Kirk had instructed (going back in time themselves).
The original Kirk and Spock would have been the only ones to make it to the end of the episode, and they'd have ended up in a THIRD timeline. the landing party they found waiting for them when they returned would actually be new creations of the third offshoot timeline.
Also, where would the landing party have come from in the first place? Since we were seeing a timeline WITHOUT the Enterprise, and with an Edith who LIVED, then by rights there should have been no landing party just as there was no Enterprise.
The timelne would have been changed in the distant past. The resulting offshoot timeline would have gone on from that point, the moment of McCoy's arrival.
In fact, there should have been no vanishing of the Enterprise, since if the original timeline remained both it and the landing/rescue party should have remained in the original timeline, untouched, unchanged.
McCoy should have been the only one to end up in a new offshoot timeline.
Since the Enterprised vanished and the landing party only remained (apparently) due to proximity to the Guardian and a measure of 'temporal grace', then they were NOT in an offshoot reality, but rather were in their own original timeline/reality, but with its past altered.
Again, if changing the past (as McCoy did by saving Edith) would have caused HIM to end up in an offshoot timeline, Kirk and company should have experienced no loss of the Enterprise, since "the original timeline would have remained unchanged".
The Enterprise DID vanish, however.
I'm not making the rules guys.
I'm only reasoning on what we saw IN THE EPISODE.
Your argument falls apart based on what we saw onscreen.
You want to play "onscreen is canon"? Okay. I'll play, and you just lost by virture of non-support from onscreen occurences.
No offshoot timeline came to be.
The Enterprise VANISHED.
The existing timeline simply got altered once, and then altered again, putting things pretty much back on track. (Except for the guy who destroyed himself with McCoy's phaser.)
You are missing the point of his post. It is not that EVERY SINGLE time that time travel occurred in Trek we got "new timelines"--it's that there are multiple, contradictory (when compared to one another), mechanisms for time travel in Trek, for which there are ample (already given many times) examples. The argument that there has always been "one single timeline" in Trek is the one that falls apart--not the one that says SOMETIMES timelines were altered/"fixed".
As an aside, unless the Guardian reversed the death of the hobo who killed himself with the phaser, then "all is [NOT] as it once was". However, that is not really germane to the larger question of "is time travel handled consistently in Trek?"--the answer to which is a resounding NO.
That was the classic causality loop, as in TNG's "Time's Arrow," the first "Terminator" movie, and last year's Spanish film "Timecrimes."
To me, those are the least interesting time travel stories, because nothing ever changes, and the story always depends on all the characters being ignorant and incompetent so that they stumble into fulfilling their destiny, whether they want to or not.
But you're right. They are the most consistent and free of paradoxes.
You don't make up the laws of time travel, you just enforce them? "The way that time travel has been depicted"? As in "The Alternative Factor" was the way anti-matter was depicted?
It's obvious that the dozens of writers who wrote the dozens of time travel stories never communicated with each other in any way, and had no time travel rule book to follow, so "the way it was depicted" doesn't really prove anything.
I mean, in just three "Terminator" films, they presented three mutually exclusive theories of time travel. You really think "Star Trek" has been more consistent than that?
Well, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy all entered through the Guardian, then returned to the same Guardian at the end, so the landing party standing next to the Guardian was obviously the same landing party, since they were shielded by the Guardian's "time waves."
This is exactly the same phenomenon in "Star Trek: First Contact" After the Borg went back alone, they created the alternate timeline where Earth was assimilated and there was no Federation (just like in "City"), but the Enterprise-E crew was shielded within the "time waves," allowing them to exist in the new alternate timeline, while remembering the original. In both stories, the captain went back in time to "undo" the changes.
Once he "fixed" the past so that it was "close enough" to the original, then he could return to the point he left and its history would be similar to the one he left. The third timeline in "City" would be so similar that the same landing party would follow McCoy down to the planet, so that when Kirk and the rest from the Guardian planet beam back up to the Enterprise, there won't be another Scotty already on the ship.
You are looking at it in the "Time's Arrow" causality loop sense, such that in the original history, with no time travel, Edith Keeler died in the street while Kirk, Spock, and McCoy stood nearby and did nothing.
But I believe that, without time travel, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would never have been there originally, and Keeler died alone, never having met them. It was only after McCoy went back and changed things (creating Timeline 2) that Kirk and Spock went back and met her, creating Timeline 3.
I will concede that there is a consistent "law" in Trek that time seems to "heal" itself, such that whether Keeler died alone, or with three Starfleet officers standing over her, the future Enterprise mission would still bring the same people to the same Guardian planet at the same time.
Likewise, in "First Contact," whether Cochrane piloted his first warp flight with Lily without incident, or did so with Riker and Geordi after a Borg attack, it would still lead to a similar future where the Enterprise-E would follow the Borg back through a time rift in the 24th century.
But that's not a causality loop; it's a convergence of divergent timelines.
In all alternate realities, there seems to be some kind of "fate" or something that keeps small details the same, even when major events in history change, so that in all the alternate timelines in "Parallels," and in all the Mirror Universe episodes over 200 years, there are always the same characters with the same positions on the same ships, even when they have different histories.
So if Kirk or Picard return to a timeline where everyone else remembers that he just went back in time, he would assume it's his same timeline, but it is in fact an (almost) identical timeline.
Like in "First Contact," the people within the time effect surrounding the Guardian were causally "shielded" from the rest of the Universe, and were pulled into the new future caused by the changes in the past. That's why Kirk and Spock and Scotty and the rest of the landing party did not vanish along with the Enterprise and the rest of the Federation, and why Picard and the Enterprise-E did not vanish along with the rest of the Federation.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That's the future that the landing party on the Guardian planet found itself in. Just like Picard and crew found themselves in the offshoot timeline that the Borg created by killing Cochrane and assimilating Earth. They were all pulled into the future of the new timeline.
It's similar to how Ambassador Spock, in "Star Trek XI," was pulled 25 years into the same future that Nero had altered. Imagine if the time differential of the "red matter" black hole were different, and instead of 25 years it was 130 years. Then Spock would be pulled into a timeline 130 years after Nero had arrived, Vulcan and the Federation would be gone, but it would be the same date as it was in his original timeline. In effect, it would be exactly like the Enterprise-E suddenly finding itself in a new timeline with Earth assimilated, but on the same date in "First Contact." They are each pulled latterally into the new timeline, but still in the "present," years after the point of divergence.
From that point they can choose to go back into the past of that new timeline, and create a third timeline similar to the one they remember, but that would just be another offshoot of that second timeline.
Right. The Enterprise didn't vanish. The landing party was pulled, along with the Guardian, into the alternate future that McCoy created. They were the ones who vanished, along with the TV cameras recording that episode.
The crew on the Enterprise would have lost contact with the landing party. In the original timeline, the landing party may never have returned, like Lt. Yar never returned to her original timeline at the end of "Yesterday's Enterprise." But we don't care about the timeline they came from, because the cameras were following the time travelers, not the folks who watched them vanish and never return. We don't care what Picard and the Klingons were doing after "Yesterday's Enterprise," because the cameras flopped over into the new timeline along with Lt. Yar.
(Maybe one of those infinite timelines depicted in "Parallels" is the one where McCoy and the landing party beamed down to the Guardian planet and were never heard from again, and after a few weeks of searching, the Enterprise gave up and went home without them. That would be Timeline 1. The landing party beamed up to a similar Enterprise in Timeline 3, which had a similar landing party vanish, probably ending up in Timeline 5, but we don't care about them, either, since no TV cameras were following them.)
In fact, if you think about it, not only did McCoy1 create a new timeline from which he never returned after saving Keeler (Timeline 2), but then Kirk1 and Spock1, by going back, created a Timeline 3, where Keeler did die (which was not shown), and would allow McCoy3 to exist again in that future, where he would again go back in time (to Timeline 4) while Kirk1 and Spock1 from Timeline 1 were still in the past, which was depicted in the episode. At the moment McCoy3 from Timeline 3 arrived in the past, that created a new Timeline 4 with a different Kirk 1B and Spock 1B in the past. So at the end, Kirk1B and Spock1B from Timeline 1, after meeting McCoy3 from Timeline 3, all returned to the future of Timeline 4, where the shielded landing party from Timeline 1 was still with the Guardian, and beamed up to the Enterprise of Timeline 4. (The original McCoy1 from Timeline 1 was never seen again, since he never returned to the Guardian after saving Keeler. He presumably lived out his life in the future of Timeline 2, where the Nazis won the war.)
That seems straightforward to me. Why are you trying to make it all complicated?
Well, if the past is different from the one you remember, how is that any different from being in an alternate timeline? Since the TV cameras follow the characters into the new (or altered) timeline, it really doesn't matter if the original timeline still exists, since we never see it again. But like "Yesterday's Enterprise," we know the original timeline did exist, because at least one character still remembers it. Likewise with "Star Trek XI." As long as Ambassador Spock and Nero remember the timeline they came from, it still exists, even if no one ever films another episode there.
No, the Enterprise remained in Timeline 1. It's the landing party, along with the TV cameras recording the episode, that vanished into Timeline 2, and were never heard from again. You are being biased by the cameras' point of view. But try to imagine what was going on everywhere else in the Universe where the TV cameras weren't recording.
Yes, from the time travelers' point of view (which is our point of view, as the TV audience following them), they were always in one timeline, since their memories are continuous, but that is subjective.
Objectively, from an external point of view (say, if the entire episode had been filmed from the bridge of the Enterprise) the landing party is the group that changed timelines. The original timeline never changed. The Enterprise never went anywhere.
No, you're just making the mistake of assuming that there ARE rules.
So am I.
Like I said, what we see onscreen is subjective. It only shows the point of view of the characters who are moving from one timeline to another.
Your argument falls apart when you try to imagine time travel objectively from the point of view of EVERYONE ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE. The rules of time travel don't change just because there are TV cameras present.
It's like you watching a TV show shot from a roller coaster, and you are trying to invent "rules" for why the entire planet keeps turning upside down and sideways while the characters and cameras in the roller coaster remain at a constant orientation to each other. In order for these "rules" to make any logical sense, they also have to apply to people who AREN'T on the roller coaster.
In other words, what does time travel look like to people who AREN'T time traveling? We don't know. The cameras in "Star Trek" never show that (except for the few seconds where the Enterprise-D was destroyed in the original timeline of "Star Trek Generations").
Again, "onscreen" is the point of view of the TV cameras, which follow the point of view of the time travelers. That is subjective. You can't base a time travel theory on that. You need to define time travel from an objective point of view. It's like the speed of a space ship. You can't measure it if you are inside the ship; you have to measure it from a stationary point in space.
That is exactly what happened, FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCOTTY AND THE LANDING PARTY. But from the point of view of EVERYBODY IN THE UNIVERSE NOT ON THE GUARDIAN PLANET, nothing changed. The timeline was constant from the point of divergence caused by McCoy, or Kirk and Spock, or all three, in four different timelines.
In fact, Scotty and the others standing outside the Guardian were the only characters from the original Timeline 1. Everyone else "vanished" as the Guardian shifted from one alternate future to another. Kirk and Spock were from a fourth Timeline 1B, and McCoy was from a third timeline, by the time they were all reunited with the landing party from Timeline 1 at the end, and they all beamed up to the Enterprise from Timeline 4. To the folks on the Enterprise, they never left Timeline 4. And these guys from Timelines 1, 3, and 1B all had similar memories to the landing party from Timeline 4 that vanished forever, so it all worked out, as far as the TV cameras following the original landing party were concerned.
From Scotty's point of view, he never moved, and the rest of the Universe was "altered," as you say. But to the rest of the Universe, it's Scotty who kept moving to alternate timelines. The Guardian (and anyone near it) always stays in the new future of the last person who went through it.
The Guardian is the only thing constant in all timelines. That's why Spock's tricorder had recordings of both Keeler's death, as well as her continued activities when she didn't die. If there were only one timeline, one chain of events would have overwritten the other on Spock's tricorder. But he was recording two different timelines, which both exist, so the recordings on his tricorder don't fade away like Marty's photo in "Back to the Future." And the landing party didn't fade away when McCoy changed the past; they just shifted into the new future with the Guardian.
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