Simon Pegg suggests that the Kelvin timeline is (essentially) a reboot

[WarpFactorZ]

From what I've heard, however (mind you, I'm purposefully avoiding spoilers, so this isn't necessary reliable info):

Spoiler: from ST Beyond

Apparently, there are references to ST:Enterprise via the Franklin that quite explicitly establish it as part of the Kelvin-verse history, pre-Nero. Since these were penned in the script by Pegg, I'm a bit surprised he's taking this stance.

 

[mattman8907]

Simon Pegg also said he used Memory alpha as a source so i wonder what he looked up to help him write the "Beyond" Script.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Suggesting that Nero made an alternate timeline from the moment he appeared has always been extremely flawed. Just one example: "The Cage" is set in 2254 and Pike is a man in his 30s, yet in ST09 Pike is suddenly in his 50s when it's only chronologically set a year after "The Cage"?

It's why I think a full on reboot would have been cleaner. New universe, new rules, go with it. Trying to have it connect to the Prime universe in some way along with Nimoy Spock was just useless fan pandering.

 

[JWPlatt]

Simon Pegg suggests that the Kelvin timeline is (essentially) a reboot.

Wait, this is a discussion? Of course it's a damn reboot. I was there. I saw it reboot. Don't tell me it didn't reboot! Did something suddenly happen in our timeline where it was once obvious and universally stipulated only to become a retroactive argument?

Of course it's a reboot. They did their best to throw a sop to the folks that they knew would freak out about that, which I always thought was fairly useless - trying to get fans to not complain on the Internet is like trying to dig a hole through the Earth to the other side of the world.

Wrong. Digging the hole is infinitely more plausible.

Suggesting that Nero made an alternate timeline from the moment he appeared has always been extremely flawed. Just one example: "The Cage" is set in 2254 and Pike is a man in his 30s, yet in ST09 Pike is suddenly in his 50s when it's only chronologically set a year after "The Cage"?

I'm going to quote myself for reasons that explain why the above doesn't matter. I would give the same pass to the new producers as I have to the old:

...I am willing to forgive and ignore the predictions which did not come true. I praise them for the courage to commit to making predictions for the purpose of cautionary tales, knowing some will work and some won't in retrospect.

http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/do-y...more-prominently.277388/page-43#post-11651525

Eh, I wouldn't hold them to the minutiae of 50 years. I'd forgive all changes to Star Trek's future history about WWIII and the Clone Wars, er, I mean the Eugenics Wars, for example, to align it with our history so "Prime" can still mean "in our universe." Retcon the heck out of those babies.

http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/pitfalls-the-new-series-should-avoid.279599/page-9#post-11535445

 

[siskokid888]

Roddenberry gifted us with a hell of a big sandbox. Anyone can play in it, and you can play with who ever you want. Just play well!

 

[Dick Whitman]

He did not gift Star Trek to anyone. It's owned by CBS. They decide who is allowed to play in their sandbox.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Of course it's a reboot.

 

[Commander Richard]

I've always said that they managed to have their cake and eat it too. We have a rebooted Trek and it takes place in the Trek universe we already know. What they did was brilliant.

 

[VideoSteve]

I always wondered about the past in a new timeline.

We know that Kirk and crew travel back to San Fran in 1986.

The Voyager crew goes back to Cali in 1996.

After the events of Voyager, Spock goes back in time and creates what we know as the Kelvin timeline.

I was always under the assumption that everything before the incursion by Spock and the Narada, the Kelvin timeline and Prime timeline were identical. Meaning that the Kelvin timeline Enterprise crew could travel back to 1986 and meet up with the Prime timeline Enterprise crew. Then jump forward 10 years and meet up with the Voyager crew.

According to Pegg, the past also changes in the Kelvin timeline. This totally blows my mind.

How does it change? How can it change? This solves one answer but I'm left with 20 more.

 

[JWPlatt]

You could just call it BS and avoid the struggle.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Is Data's head in San Francisco....or isn't it?

That's the "Schrödinger's head" dilemma in a nutshell.

 

[CorporalClegg]

It's not.

It's in Oakland. Obviously.

 

[SpaceLama]

Suggesting that Nero made an alternate timeline from the moment he appeared has always been extremely flawed. Just one example: "The Cage" is set in 2254 and Pike is a man in his 30s, yet in ST09 Pike is suddenly in his 50s when it's only chronologically set a year after "The Cage"?

It's why I think a full on reboot would have been cleaner. New universe, new rules, go with it. Trying to have it connect to the Prime universe in some way along with Nimoy Spock was just useless fan pandering.

Yup I would have preferred it as just a full reboot too.

Wait, this is a discussion? Of course it's a damn reboot. I was there. I saw it reboot. Don't tell me it didn't reboot! Did something suddenly happen in our timeline where it was once obvious and universally stipulated only to become a retroactive argument?

The point is nobody in an official position has endorsed the idea ever before - as far as I recall, Orci and Kurtzman were adamant it was just run-of-the mill time travel.

 

[SpaceLama]

I was just saying in another thread that this makes Star Trek start to resemble other famous franchises with multiple settings running side by side as complete re-imaginings, such as Japan's venerable Gundam:

It seems the idea of multiple Star Trek re-imaginings running side by side has become a lot more recognised with Pegg's comments. One of Japan's longest running sci-fi franchises, Gundam, operates the same way. Maybe Bryan Fuller's series will constitute a third universe/setting within the umbrella of Star Trek. Maybe we will one day get a race and gender blind recast of TOS or TNG.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

Of course it's a reboot. They did their best to throw a sop to the folks that they knew would freak out about that, which I always thought was fairly useless - trying to get fans to not complain on the Internet is like trying to dig a hole through the Earth to the other side of the world.

They just needed a gimmick to get the old fans to stick around.

I don't think they cared whether the fans would stop complaining.

We've been complaining for decades, and it hasn't stopped us from consistently handing over our money...

 

[siskokid888]

He did not gift Star Trek to anyone. It's owned by CBS. They decide who is allowed to play in their sandbox.

That's not what I meant. I was referring to those making commercial films and shows, not the amateur stuff.

 

[Galileo7]

J.J. rebooted Star Trek with all events after Nero's arrival altered what happened in TOS/TAS/TOS movies/TNG/DS9/VOY/NG films to the new Kelvin timeline. Bond rebooted with Daniel Craig without a time travel plot. Time travel is a great reboot tool...that's how the alternate 1985s existed in the Back To The Future and Bk2fut2.

 

[Franklin]

They shouldn't have started the "reboot" the way it did then. It basically means every time Kirk, Picard and the rest time travelled they did the same thing, started some "mutated" alternate universe and hence came back to that mutated crap. Sorry, technobabble from a hack who realizes he messed up.

The thing is, that may be closer to how many theoretical physicists see time travel than the "setting things straight in one timeline" version seen in most of "Star Trek" and other popular science fiction. Frankly, the entire thing may be fiction and therefore open to any interpretation that is useful at the moment, because there are also quite a few physicists and such that believe while one can go into the future, it's actually impossible to go back in time -- or at least impossible to go back in time to before the machine one used to do it existed. At least that's how most of science sees it now. It's not well understood.

If one combined the idea of creating an alternate universe with the more common "set things straight within a timeline" approach in Trek, then Pegg could mean time travel within the new universe could affect only the future of that universe. Otherwise, the thing is, Pegg is saying our heroes got it wrong in ST09. They always were two universes. The easiest thing to say, since it's all fiction, would be the time travel experienced by Spock and Nero was different or rare or affected by the red matter in some way that can't be duplicated or fixed.

If they share the same trunk as the Prime Universe pre-Kelvin, then Data's head is still in the Bay Area, but in the Kelvin universe, Data may never exist or not have the same experience, and when his head is found (if ever), it becomes just an oddity to be explained. Someone may even theorize it is an artifact from the future of the timeline that was left there from events that happened before they branched off (before Spock and Nero fell into the black hole).

 

[elric428]

Didn't Quinto Spock say in Star Trek 2009 that the Romulan ship travelling back in time created a brand new timeline from that point onwards? How can it always have existed then? Back peddling at its finest.

Found it. Yep.

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Simple explanation. Spock's theory was in error. From his point of view it seemed the timeline changed from that point onward. But the reality that we have seen proves that this is a brand new alternate universe.

 

[JWPlatt]

The thing is, that may be closer to how many theoretical physicists see time travel...

Not really. I'd like to see sources on the "most" part of that.

The Many-worlds Interpretation popular with quantum physicists these days is time-asymmetric and does not support backward change through the timeline due to the boundary condition of the Big Bang. Every possibility is a new branch forward - not backward - in the timeline to create a new universe. Time-symmetric quantum theories while accepted at the quantum scale are not so accepted beyond that. We remember the past but not the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation