• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sci-Fi Resurrections

The question is whether that man was the original, or a copy, or neither AT THE TIME THE INCIDENT OCCURRED, which we only learn about AFTER Farpoint.

That's the reason I posted:

unless someone can come up with some hard evidence that there was some in-universe confusion (among his companions) or confirmation going forward.

There was never a question about Will being the original after that episode, unless there's some proven, on-screen dialogue or scene that confirms or even entertains the idea of it. Of all of the TNG staff interviews I've read, I cannot recall one that said Will was--undeniably--the copy, not the original man.
 
Where does Captain Jack fall in the resurrection spectrum due to it being timey-wimey? He gets resurrected in the same body no matter how badly messed up that body gets.
 
Where does Captain Jack fall in the resurrection spectrum due to it being timey-wimey? He gets resurrected in the same body no matter how badly messed up that body gets.

I'm not sure that even technically counts as a resurrection. The idea is that he's a "fixed point" and therefore can never die no matter how extremely damaged he is. So essentially he never actually dies in the first place, even if it appears he has due to his heart and lungs not working or not existing at a given moment.
 
What do we think about Hugh Culber from Discovery? The way it's explained, his dying body in close contact with Stamets (who is connected to the mycelial network) preserves Culber's identity and memories as energy within the network. They then use a mycelial transporter to form a new organic body for him and recombine it with this energy.

In principle, it's very similar to the katra + new-body-because-Genesis event with Spock.

It's on my mind because of another "resurrection" (though he's actually still alive but unbeknownst to the characters) in Star Trek Online, where:

A holo-simulation of Paul Stamets is created in 2410 to help with a problem involving the mycelial network, like Geordi made a simulation of Leah Brahms to help with engine issues. In the course of events, this hologram is "merged" with the network's memories of the real Stamets from his connection to it, and essentially becomes Stamets - fully sentient and feeling the loss of his shipmates - in the 25th Century. Whether he befriends a sentient humanoid bird or gets a diminutive penis-headed robot buddy remains to be seen.
 
It's on my mind because of another "resurrection" (though he's actually still alive but unbeknownst to the characters) in Star Trek Online, where:

A holo-simulation of Paul Stamets is created in 2410 to help with a problem involving the mycelial network, like Geordi made a simulation of Leah Brahms to help with engine issues. In the course of events, this hologram is "merged" with the network's memories of the real Stamets from his connection to it, and essentially becomes Stamets - fully sentient and feeling the loss of his shipmates - in the 25th Century. Whether he befriends a sentient humanoid bird or gets a diminutive penis-headed robot buddy remains to be seen.

Actually, this brings to mind another sci-fi resurrection story. In the pre-NuWho novels set after the end of the Classic Doctor Who series, the Eighth Doctor encountered a society that used "remembering" as a means to bring people back - they would use peoples' memories of the deceased to recreate them.

This was obviously not 100% perfect, but in one instance the option was used in conjunction with the Doctor's TARDIS to perfectly recreate one of his companions from HER memories (which encompass past, present and future), so he was identical to the original.
 
Actually, this brings to mind another sci-fi resurrection story. In the pre-NuWho novels set after the end of the Classic Doctor Who series, the Eighth Doctor encountered a society that used "remembering" as a means to bring people back - they would use peoples' memories of the deceased to recreate them.

I'm reminded of the metaphysics of Kamen Rider Den-O, the Japanese superhero series. In that show, the monsters were disembodied consciousnesses from a destroyed future timeline trying to change history back to restore themselves, and they did it by going further into the past and wreaking destruction to try to kill the guy who was responsible for preventing their future. Eventually it was established that as long as the monsters were defeated, any damage they did in the past would be reset and anyone they killed in the past would be restored -- but only if people had known and remembered them. There was a rather poignant story about a homeless man who was killed in the past and not restored because nobody knew his name or had a personal connection to him. The theme of the season was that memory is the essence of existence, the thing that makes something real and lasting. Another facet of this was that the monsters restored themselves and traveled into the past by tapping into people's most potent memories in a parasitical way. It was very existential, the idea that memory literally created time and reality.

Generally each Kamen Rider season is in its own independent universe (aside from the annual crossover specials/movies where they pretend to share a universe), but there have been a couple of later productions (including the Decade finale movie and I think Heisei Generations Forever) that have drawn on this same metaphysical idea, that someone who was erased from the timeline could be resurrected by the concentration of people who remembered and loved them. (Which, come to think of it, is how Amy brought the Eleventh Doctor back when he was erased.)
 
What do we think about Hugh Culber from Discovery? The way it's explained, his dying body in close contact with Stamets (who is connected to the mycelial network) preserves Culber's identity and memories as energy within the network. They then use a mycelial transporter to form a new organic body for him and recombine it with this energy.

In principle, it's very similar to the katra + new-body-because-Genesis event with Spock.
I'd say yes, since there his consciousness was preserved.
 
that someone who was erased from the timeline could be resurrected by the concentration of people who remembered and loved them

John Byrne used a variation of this during his run on Wonder Woman, to restore Wonder Girl/Donna Troy to the Post-Crisis DC Universe. One of his better ideas, to be honest.
 
This reminds me of Fringe. One of the main characters was erased from time in the Season 3 finale. This set the 4th season in an alternate timeline. Some 4 or 5 episodes in, the character bled over to the new timeline. The answer was that love brought him back into reality. To those who've seen the show, it's that and a very clever plot. This was one of my favorite TV resurrections.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top