Nobody. Why do you ask?
Should Sisko have refused to let Kira use the Orb Time?
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
Let me see if I can escalate this further by using more comic book logic. Sisko is a deity with special abilities to manipulate time. Being less experienced, he had difficulties keeping the changes in the timeline in check in Past Tense. However, he was much better by Trials. In any case, no changes would have been permanent: Ma Wormhole Alien was always looking over his shoulder.
I'm bored with this part of the discussion. I don't even care how it turns out, is how bored I am. I vote it stops here and gets moved to, oh I don't know, anywhere outside of any TrekBBS thread that exists now or in the future. And since only my vote counts, I get my way! Wheee!
Or maybe we're supposed to believe that there are two kinds of time travels, the one without an orb where anything can happen, including the extinction of the federation and the one with an orb, where no matter what you do, things are prevented from going bad afterward. As if you were time traveling with a net so to speak... Personally, I don't buy that, but to each his own.
It could be argued that there was Braga time travel and there was Behr time travel. The former was much more concerned with the mechanics of time travel and the plot twists it induced. The latter was a device to propel the plot into new locales. Even Past Tense did not explore how the undoing of a single event led to the unravelling of human history--we never see the alternative Earth. Even though the future of Earth (and by implication, the Federation)is at stake, the episode tried mostly to recreate what would be a pivotal event as a way of presenting a prehistory of the Star Trek universe.
Well, O'brien says that he's gone to a time about thirty years in the future of the Bell riots and said something like :" I remember that things were supposed to be bad at that time but never this bad. So that implies that this single event did make a huge difference to how the population of Earth evolved afterward. Personally, I don't buy that. From where I am standing it really didn't seem like such important event. There were like half a dozen hostage takers and maybe a dozen hostages top. That's hardly noteworthy in a world of violence, let alone pivotal. But just because I don't buy a plot device doesn't mean that I am not entertained by it. You don't need to believe in talking deer to be moved by "Bambi".
Yes, there is a scene in the b-plot in which we get a glimpse of what alternative Earth might be like. Overall, that is very impressionistic, unlike Yesterday's Enterprise, Shockwave I & II or Year of Hell I & II. Why were the events of the Bell riots particularly pivotal? We got some talk, but that's all. In City on the Edge of Forever, we see the relationship between Edith Keelher and the conquest Nazism. And more importantly, Past Tense I & II make it impossible to undo changes in the timeline. There is no attempt to go back to the point at which Bell dies and prevent it from happening. Instead, our intrepid heroes must act through the events that they feel are critical for human history. They don't explore the discontinuity,
which is what would normally happen in most time travel episodes.
- City on the Edge: prevent McCoy from saving Keelher
- Tomorrow is Yesterday: return pilot to point when he makes visual contact with Enterprise
- Generations: prevent Soran from launching missile
- First Contact: prevent Borg invasion of Earth
- Yesterday's Enterprise: return old ship to a critical battle
- The Visitor: prevent accident from occuring
- ...
In most cases, the goal is to prevent the interference. In many of those cases, the solution is more time travel. DS9 had fewer time travel episodes than TNG and the other series. One or two might fit in that mold. But for the most part, DS9 did not treat time travel with the same rigidity. And time travel was not the solution in Past Tense or Trials. Time travel put them on the scene--that's it.
One could object that in the case of Past Tense the future should have remained intact given that Sisko's decision to take bell's place was not optional but a direct consequence of bell's death, Sisko's knowledge of his importance and Sisko's determination to correct the damage done to the timeline. Given all that the future should have remained unchanged whether Sisko managed to go back or not.
There's also:
-The Voyage Home-It was used to try and prevent Earth from being destroyed by an alien probe.
-Star Trek 2009-It happened by accident, and Nero's dicking around in the past DID have repercussions (creating an alternate timeline where certain things happened differently)/
Are you kidding??? DS9, especially in it's 4th through the 7th seasons, completely BROKE the rules; there was nothing in those seasons which were salvageable. It should be considered an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE of Star Trek as far as anyone's concerned.
And she'd have wondered if Dukat was lying...
I felt sorry for her. And imagine a random scan of the station in Season 7 revealing Dukat while he was in Bajoran skin resulting in his dying by her hand...
I felt sorry for her. And imagine a random scan of the station in Season 7 revealing Dukat while he was in Bajoran skin resulting in his dying by her hand...
It's funny that with her tricorder Jadzia was able to tell that a woman and O'Brien were remotely related in Children Of Time and yet it takes a sample of cells to determine that Dukat was a Cardassian surgically altered to look Bajoran... One would think that the residence of the Kai would be equipped with scanning devices and that an alarm would go off when a cardassian spy enters the premises.
There are many parts of DS9, especially in the last four seasons, that were very much in the spirit of the original series and the original cast movies. Indeed, Undiscovered Country broke many rules of Trek: the physics of the Trek universe, the portrayal of human evolution and mentality, and the development of the characters. Doing so helped the movie's writers--Leonard Ninomy included--to address timely issues. The Realpolitik of For the Uniform and Pale Moonlight have clear ancillaries to episodes like Private Little War. Moreover, the physics of the Trek universe was backdated from TNG in order to make TOS look more consistent. Yes, DS9 was different than TNG and Voyager, but it built on many of the concerns and interests of the original series.
Slight correction. Kira said "the prophets will be guiding me. Nothing will happen without their blessing".
That's not a "no I promise not to interfere with history for my own personal gains". It's more of a "I'm not saying I will interfere with the timeline but I'm not saying I won't either".
Sisko should've told her "that's not good enough"! In his serious command voice.
SFdebris takedown of this episode is fantastic.
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