Spock Prime, A Loose End?

[Tom]

So just thinking how we left Spock Prime in the film. Presumably he was going to help start the Vulcan colony, but having him around can have a major impact on events going forward (or backward) in the alternate universe. Some examples:

- Spock knows how to time travel (Sun sling shot etc..), Why wouldn't he try to go back in time and find a way to close the black hole as soon as it opens preventing Nero from engaging the Kelvin and changing the timeline, there by restoring his timeline and saving Vulcan?

- Spock has knowledge of all the events and danger that will face the Federation live Vger, Whale Probe, Kahn and even Borg, Dominion, etc.. later on. Will he use any of this to help the Federation? Some of these are could be affected by the changed timeline but some are not like Vger, Whale Probe, The Doomsday Machine and few more.

I dunno, seem that keeping Spock Prime alive creates alot of unknowns and there for alot of plot escapes going forward. Maybe Abrams want to have the card to play just in case, not sure.

Thoughts?

 

[Devon]

- Spock knows how to time travel (Sun sling shot etc..), Why wouldn't he try to go back in time and find a way to close the black hole as soon as it opens preventing Nero from engaging the Kelvin and changing the timeline, there by restoring his timeline and saving Vulcan?

There is nothing to restore. The old timeline is still going. Going back in time and changing events would then just create a new timeline. Plus what ship is Spock going to use?

I dunno, seem that keeping Spock Prime alive creates alot of unknowns and there for alot of plot escapes going forward. Maybe Abrams want to have the card to play just in case, not sure.

Yep!

 

[BillJ]

I've always had this terrible feeling that either Spock or Spock Prime will end up being the villian in the third film.

 

[Tom]

I've always had this terrible feeling that either Spock or Spock Prime will end up being the villian in the third film.

Not if the Trebbbs canon cops can stop him first!! LOL

 

[BillJ]

Plus what ship is Spock going to use?

Please, he was able to navigate a rickety-ass Bird of Prey back through time. All Spock Prime needs is a Winnebago with wings.

 

[shapeshifter]

He is only a loose end in (some of) our minds due to the old TT rules of the Single Timeline Theory, forget them in the NuVerse.

Quantum Theory now rules the roost and they state you cannot travel back in time within your original starting timeline. Even if he acquired a ship it would not do him any good - under the NuRules he could only travel to yet another different timeline.

He knows this, that's why he isn't interested in trying to set things right. He has accepted the NuRules and so should we.

No amount of clamoring over how things 'used to work' will change anything. To paraphrase something Spock once said: Get this through your heads, he can't go back!

 

[Nerys Myk]

So just thinking how we left Spock Prime in the film. Presumably he was going to help start the Vulcan colony, but having him around can have a major impact on events going forward (or backward) in the alternate universe. Some examples:

- Spock knows how to time travel (Sun sling shot etc..), Why wouldn't he try to go back in time and find a way to close the black hole as soon as it opens preventing Nero from engaging the Kelvin and changing the timeline, there by restoring his timeline and saving Vulcan?

Same reason he doesn't go back in time to alter all the other bad stuff that happens.

- Spock has knowledge of all the events and danger that will face the Federation live Vger, Whale Probe, Kahn and even Borg, Dominion, etc.. later on. Will he use any of this to help the Federation? Some of these are could be affected by the changed timeline but some are not like Vger, Whale Probe, The Doomsday Machine and few more.

Gives us a good reason not to retread those stories. Spock gave the UFP the heads up on them.

 

[BillJ]

He is only a loose end in (some of) our minds due to the old TT rules of the Single Timeline Theory, forget them in the NuVerse.

Quantum Theory now rules the roost and they state you cannot travel back in time within your original starting timeline. Even if he acquired a ship it would not do him any good - under the NuRules he could only travel to yet another different timeline.

He knows this, that's why he isn't interested in trying to set things right. He has accepted the NuRules and so should we.

No amount of clamoring over how things 'used to work' will change anything. To paraphrase something Spock once said: Get this through your heads, he can't go back!

Which is dramatically unsatisfying. Which is why we'll be rebooting the franchise again in five years when the third film doesn't pull in the revenue that Paramount wants.

Why play in somebody else's sandbox if you're not going to play by the rules?

 

[Tom]

He is only a loose end in (some of) our minds due to the old TT rules of the Single Timeline Theory, forget them in the NuVerse.

Quantum Theory now rules the roost and they state you cannot travel back in time within your original starting timeline. Even if he acquired a ship it would not do him any good - under the NuRules he could only travel to yet another different timeline.

He knows this, that's why he isn't interested in trying to set things right. He has accepted the NuRules and so should we.

No amount of clamoring over how things 'used to work' will change anything. To paraphrase something Spock once said: Get this through your heads, he can't go back!

Which is dramatically unsatisfying. Which is why we'll be rebooting the franchise again in five years when the third film doesn't pull in the revenue that Paramount wants.

Why play in somebody else's sandbox if you're not going to play by the rules?

Star Trek's time travel has never been consistant. To paraphrase BSG: "What has happened before will happen again"

 

[Nerys Myk]

He is only a loose end in (some of) our minds due to the old TT rules of the Single Timeline Theory, forget them in the NuVerse.

Quantum Theory now rules the roost and they state you cannot travel back in time within your original starting timeline. Even if he acquired a ship it would not do him any good - under the NuRules he could only travel to yet another different timeline.

He knows this, that's why he isn't interested in trying to set things right. He has accepted the NuRules and so should we.

No amount of clamoring over how things 'used to work' will change anything. To paraphrase something Spock once said: Get this through your heads, he can't go back!

Which is dramatically unsatisfying. Which is why we'll be rebooting the franchise again in five years when the third film doesn't pull in the revenue that Paramount wants.

Why play in somebody else's sandbox if you're not going to play by the rules?

I don't think the rules of time travel are the rules that need to be worried about in this particular sandbox. They are at best a plot device.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Quantum Theory now rules the roost and they state you cannot travel back in time within your original starting timeline.

Maybe you can. Just because in this movie they traveled between realities, that doesn't mean it's impossible to travel in a timeline within a single reality.

Your argument implies that every time Our Heroes thought they were restoring their own timeline, they were just visiting someone else's reality and when they returned to their own, of course it had been "repaired" because in fact it was never broken. But that makes fools of Our Heroes. JJ Abrams canna change the laws of physics!

Spock Prime can warn Starfleet of the threats he knows about, but that won't make everything hunky dory and may in fact cause even bigger problems. What if the Doomsday Machine was "supposed" to wipe out some aggressive empire that was as bad as the Borg, the Dominion and the Klingons all rolled into one? Spock Prime tells Starfleet just where the thing is (extrapolating from the position he knew it to be on the date they encountered it) and how to destroy it, but that just unleashes an even greater threat.

 

[Tom]

Well for the doomsday machine they can just warn the ships to keep away and stop it with a special bomb when it gets close enough to the federation that it would'nt alter anything else if it was stopped.

 

[OneBuckFilms]

If you really look into the Quantum Theory Multiple Worlds interpretation used in the film, it essentially changes what actually happened with all of those back-in-time trips taken throughout Star Trek history.

Every time someone goes back in time, they create an Alternate Reality, and both realities split.

It happens that the differences upon return (simply moving forward within the newly created reality) yields little to no differences seen.

Therefore, if we take each and every time travel instance chronologically, we are following one of countless paths of history right the way up to 2387, when Spock and Nero get caught in the singularity that costumed the Hobus star, creating the new reality.

Because of this, there is no correction of the timeline by going back in time, only this time, Spock Prime was back in time long enough to see the events played out in contrast to his own memories, cementing the Alternate Reality hypotheses.

The episode Parallels (TNG) provides a good precedent for Alternate Realities of this nature being part of the Star Trek universe.

As Scotty is very fond of saying "Ye cannae change the laws of physics."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

As Scotty is very fond of saying "Ye cannae change the laws of physics."

I already said that!

But how do you know time travel creates alternate realities? What if there are already an infinite amount of alternate realities, so that anything that can happen, does happen in at least one reality.

So if you travel in time within your own reality, you aren't creating a new reality (with an infinite number of realities, the cosmos hardly needs another one!) but changing your existing reality. (And if your reality is the only one in which you burn the toast at 9:02:34 am on July 7, 2247, and you change things so you don't do that, then some other reality I guess needs to change so that it happens there.) But you can also visit other realities in which the toast is burnt, not burnt, merely singed or totally vaporized on various times and dates.

 

[Tom]

MY head hurts now! Thanks

 

[BillJ]

They could have fixed all of this by simply offing Spock Prime at the end of the movie.

The meat of the film takes place seven years prior to The Naked Time (anti-matter imbalance) and Tomorrow is Yesterday (sling-shot effect). By the time we get to 2265 the timeline may have been altered so much that the crew of the Enterprise never experiences either event.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

MY head hurts now! Thanks

That's the purpose of threads like this!

 

[Aragorn]

Maybe they can have novelizations about Spock Prime going around killing Harry Mudd, Khan, the doomsday machine, V'ger, the Borg, the Dominion, Janeway's ancestors, etc., to make things better for this Federation.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Could be interesting. Each time he "fixed" somehing, the time-line would get further from how he remembered it until it was totally unrecognisable to him. The trouble is, it is already so different that a lot of things probably wouldn't happen anyway.

 

[thew40]

I really don't think Spock would warn anyone about anything unless it was something was directly altered by Nero's arrival. Spock-Prime could have gone onto the Enterprise and just up and told nuSpock what to do . . . but he didn't because Kirk and nuSpock had to come to terms with their friendship on their own and without Spock-Prime's help.

I think Spock-Prime believes that the Federation (and the galaxy) needs to deal with V'Ger, Doomsday Machine, Whale Probe, Borg, Dominion, etc. on it's own and without his help. Maybe he even views the advanced starship designs (thanks to Narada) as enough of a give.