Spoilers Spoilers for SFA e5 - fan theory I need an assist on

[Destructor]

Okay, so obviously the debate in fandom running around right now is 'Did Sisko literally come back to raise his child or did he not?'

As a novelverse fan, I'm wondering if... he did AND he didn't. In 'The Soul Key', it is revealed that the Prophets don't just see all of time, they also see all of possibility (no wonder Kira and Bashir accessed the mirror universe from the wormhole), including the Benny Russell reality, and every other reality. So... I have not read the Coda trilogy, but as I understand it that reality ceased to exist, but Sisko, being a Prophet, would have still experienced it (as was depicted in the splinter timeline of the novelverse). So my question is... even if he did not literally return to raise Rebecca in the Prime timeline... he also did, in the splinter timeline.

To those who have read Coda, is this correct? Or has the relaunch timeline been erased entirely, even from ever happening?

 

[Avro Arrow]

To those who have read Coda, is this correct? Or has the relaunch timeline been erased entirely, even from ever happening?

Spoilers for CODA, obvs.

The relaunch/First Splinter timeline was erased in such a way that it never occurred. That being said, it's been a while since I read it... there is a scene set in the wormhole near the end of the trilogy, and I don't remember what it said, if anything, about whether the Prophets would retain a memory of the collapsed timeline. Maybe someone with a better recollection will be able to chime in.

That said, there are presumably other timelines in the multiverse that would fit the conditions you're looking for, even if it turns out the First Splinter doesn't.

 

[Christopher]

I established explicitly in DTI: Watching the Clock that it's impossible to "erase a timeline so that it never occurred," because that's a logical contradiction and a mathematical impossibility. To put it simply, any change or erasure requires the passage of time -- the version before the change/erasure and the version after it. But a single moment in time cannot come after itself; that's a contradiction. It may look to a time traveler as if one version of history has "replaced" the other, but that's an illusion created by the time travel. If you rewind a video and watch it again, it hasn't happened a second time, you've just looped your own pespective back to the one time it did occur. The time traveler's subjective perception that one version of a moment in time happens "after" the other does not outweigh the objective fact that they're simultaneous. (Most time travel fiction ignores this, assuming the characters' subjective experience is the objective reality.)

So if there are two versions of the same span of time -- a version where X event happened and a version where it didn't happen -- then by definition, they must coexist simultaneously, instead of one replacing or overwriting the other. At any given moment, every alternate version of that moment that ever has been or will be created by time travel or spontaneous reality branching already coexists, even those that will be created by time travelers in its future coming back to create alternate branches in its past. An alternate version only looks "new" to a given time traveler because they looped back and moved from one branch into another.

I reconciled this physically and logically valid model with the fantasy conceit of timeline "erasure" by positing that if a time traveler from Timeline A goes back in time from Date Y to Date X and creates Timeline B, then Timelines A and B will coexist simultaneously from Date X onward, but once Date Y is reached, the two timelines will quantum-collapse into one with Timeline A's quantum data being erased (with some exceptions like Kelvin). So from Date Y forward, only Timeline B will be remembered, creating the illusion that Timeline A never happened. But from an objective point of view, during the span of time between Dates X and Y, both timelines definitely did coexist.

Coda ignored this for the sake of the story it had to tell, but the characters in Watching the Clock would argue that the Coda characters' belief that timelines were being retroactively erased was simply wrong, a character error resulting from incomplete understanding of temporal physics. So if a reader wants to believe that the so-called "First Splinter" continuity was not "erased so that it never happened," there's a basis for choosing to believe that.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

Correct, a strict reading of Coda (as was the intention) is that the First Splinter is undone and never happened.

It's been a while since I've read Coda but I remember thinking there "felt" (most likely me reading into it and not intentional) that was a potential "out" to restoring the First Splinter in the future based on a some of the events in the story. But obviously that's fan fiction and my logic may not even hold up.

So like Christopher said, I think there's something to believing it wasn't erased and someone more clever than me could come up with a reason.

 

[Markonian]

.. even if he did not literally return to raise Rebecca in the Prime timeline... he also did, in the splinter timeline.

So Sisko abandoned his pregnant wife to go after another woman and raise her kid.

 

[David Mack]

The relaunch/First Splinter timeline was erased in such a way that it never occurred. That being said, it's been a while since I read it... there is a scene set in the wormhole near the end of the trilogy, and I don't remember what it said, if anything, about whether the Prophets would retain a memory of the collapsed timeline. Maybe someone with a better recollection will be able to chime in.

It was stated explicitly in CODA, Book III: Oblivion’s Gate that the Prophets would retain full memory of the "lost" timeline. Chapter 38, end of scene 1, p338 in the trade paperback edition:

“When this ends, I will never have existed. No one will remember me. Or what I did.”

The Sisko Prophet leaned into view beside her, a visitor in her oasis.

He set his hand atop hers on the Orb of Time.

“We remember. Forever.”

Coda ignored this for the sake of the story it had to tell,

We did no such thing. Your characterization makes us sound either malicious or negligent, neither of which is true, and both of which I resent.

but the characters in Watching the Clock would argue that the Coda characters' belief that timelines were being retroactively erased was simply wrong, a character error resulting from incomplete understanding of temporal physics. So if a reader wants to believe that the so-called "First Splinter" continuity was not "erased so that it never happened," there's a basis for choosing to believe that.

Of course there is — because we explicitly wrote it into the story.

The First Splinter Timeline is remembered by the Prophets, the Q, Benny Russell, and possibly by any number of Travelers who escaped the timeline. And the whole point of Chapter 40 is that every temporal variation of Picard carries the seed of the First Splinter timeline.

Correct, a strict reading of Coda (as was the intention) is that the First Splinter is undone and never happened.

For continuity purposes, yes.

It's been a while since I've read Coda but I remember thinking there "felt" (most likely me reading into it and not intentional) that was a potential "out" to restoring the First Splinter in the future based on a some of the events in the story. But obviously that's fan fiction and my logic may not even hold up.

So like Christopher said, I think there's something to believing it wasn't erased and someone more clever than me could come up with a reason.

The "final" resolution of any work of narrative fiction can have an out if someone wants it to; I have no doubt some works of fan fiction have found or eventually will find some means to sidestep the narrative choices that Dayton, James, and I made for the end of Coda. But none of that matters. Part of what gives some stories their weight, their raison d'être, is their ending. As James Goldman wrote in The Lion in Winter (another tale about endings), “As if it matters how a man falls down; When the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal." In other words, when facing an inevitable and dire end, doing so with dignity is what matters. THAT's what Coda is about.

 

[Tosk]

I wanna live in the alternate timeline where the litverse continued despite the new shows coming along.

 

[Christopher]

Of course there is — because we explicitly wrote it into the story.

The First Splinter Timeline is remembered by the Prophets, the Q, Benny Russell, and possibly by any number of Travelers who escaped the timeline. And the whole point of Chapter 40 is that every temporal variation of Picard carries the seed of the First Splinter timeline.

Except you're saying it was still remembered after it was erased. I'm saying the opposite of that -- even if nobody remembered it after the moment its quantum data was erased, it would still have existed before that moment, rather than having been made to "have never happened in the first place," which is a physical impossibility and logical absurdity. A Q, Traveler, or other being with unfettered access to the multiverse could still go back and visit that timeline on a date prior to its erasure. Its existence would always be part of the branching tree of the multiverse, even if its branch doesn't continue forward indefinitely.

So I guess it boils down to how you define "never happened." In a cosmically objective sense, anything that ever happened in any timeline did indeed happen, and will always be part of the total Schroedinger wave equation of reality. But a pruned timeline, one that did happen but is overwritten and forgotten after a certain point, may as well have "never happened" from that point forward, as far as any characters in the surviving timeline are aware.

 

[JD]

I wanna live in the alternate timeline where the litverse continued despite the new shows coming along.

Yeah, I was really hoping they'd find a way to keep it going along side the continuity set up by Paramount+ shows. But I understand why they chose not to.
I'm at least glad they gave it a big send off trilogy, which is more than Star Wars got. I believe they just dumped everything instantly, with already contracted and announced books even being canceled.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It was stated explicitly in CODA, Book III: Oblivion’s Gate that the Prophets would retain full memory of the "lost" timeline. Chapter 38, end of scene 1, p338 in the trade paperback edition:

“When this ends, I will never have existed. No one will remember me. Or what I did.”

The Sisko Prophet leaned into view beside her, a visitor in her oasis.

He set his hand atop hers on the Orb of Time.

“We remember. Forever.”

Ah, thank you!

There you go, @Destructor , can’t get more definitive than that!

Yeah, I was really hoping they'd find a way to keep it going along side the continuity set up by Paramount+ shows. But I understand why they chose not to.

You’d think with how primed today’s audiences are to accept the existence of multiverses within their media, that they could have continued on with two (well, three if you include Kelvin as well) separate continuities if they had wanted to. Presumably there was no appetite on the part of the licence holder to do so. And with the benefit of hindsight, when we see how the number of novels per year has dropped off a cliff, it’s not like they could have really supported both anyway, no matter how much some of us might have liked to see the novelverse continue.

 

[Destructor]

The First Splinter Timeline is remembered by the Prophets, the Q, Benny Russell, and possibly by any number of Travelers who escaped the timeline. And the whole point of Chapter 40 is that every temporal variation of Picard carries the seed of the First Splinter timeline.

God bless you sir, this is precisely what I was looking for. So: even if Sisko did not return in the prime timeline (and I'm not by any means arguing that e5 SFA says this definitively- although it certainly doesn't NOT say it), from his perspective, he did return, in (at least) one reality. Which is a very Prophety thing to do, have it both ways.

 

[Destructor]

Follow-up question: At what point does the splinter deviate from the prime timeline- at the end of the DS9 finale? And what causes it to splinter at that point?

This is all making me want to read Coda I must say!

 

[JD]

I'm not positive since this is only based on what I read on Memory Beta, but I believe it split off when the Enterprise-E went back to the 24th Century at the end of First Contact.

 

[Mage]

I'm not positive since this is only based on what I read on Memory Beta, but I believe it split off when the Enterprise-E went back to the 24th Century at the end of First Contact.

Yessir.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yeah, that way there they could also include New Frontier in the First Splinter.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Yeah, that way there they could also include New Frontier in the First Splinter.

But as I recall, it was also either implied or explicitly stated that certain things happened in both the Prime and First Splinter timelines, often in the same way.

And in practical terms, even if it was impossible to erase the First Splinter timeline from existence, the goal, as I recall (and I only read the Coda Trilogy once, so it's not nearly as familiar as, say, Spock's World or The Wounded Sky), was to put it, and the "chronovore-nummies" that grew out of it, permanently out of reach of the Devidians.

(I'm resisting the urge to rattle off a series of excruciatingly tasteless puns about "branch Devidians.")

 

[The Wormhole]

But as I recall, it was also either implied or explicitly stated that certain things happened in both the Prime and First Splinter timelines, often in the same way.

Well, yeah. To account for the fact that everything after First Contact through to Nemesis are the same in the Prime and Splinter timelines.

 

[David Mack]

I'm not positive since this is only based on what I read on Memory Beta, but I believe it split off when the Enterprise-E went back to the 24th Century at the end of First Contact.

Close — it was Borg interference with Enterprise-E's return trip that triggered the temporal fracture.

I'm not positive since this is only based on what I read on Memory Beta, but I believe it split off when the Enterprise-E went back to the 24th Century at the end of First Contact.

Well, yeah. To account for the fact that everything after First Contact through to Nemesis are the same in the Prime and Splinter timelines.

The in-story explanation is that the Prime and First Splinter timelines began as one; when they fractured, they were still virtually identical. But over time, as more events and decisions in the First Splinter diverged from those made in the Prime Timeline, the more different the two timelines became.

 

[Christopher]

The in-story explanation is that the Prime and First Splinter timelines began as one; when they fractured, they were still virtually identical. But over time, as more events and decisions in the First Splinter diverged from those made in the Prime Timeline, the more different the two timelines became.

Which is natural enough, and consistent with what TNG: "Parallels" showed, with some timelines being just slightly different and others -- presumably ones that diverged earlier -- being more radically different. Although in fiction, even wildly different timelines have implausible parallels in terms of the same individuals being born and ending up serving together on the same starships or stations that somehow have the same designs.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Follow-up question: At what point does the splinter deviate from the prime timeline- at the end of the DS9 finale? And what causes it to splinter at that point?

This is all making me want to read Coda I must say!

One could view it like the interpretation Simon Pegg offers for the Kelvin movies not being obligated to match prime timeline works completely. While the 2009 Star Trek movie focused on a spacetime incursion from 2387 to 2233, the Kelvin timeline by its own nature can no longer include the latter-day portions of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", "Assignment: Earth", Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, "Past Tense", Star Trek: First Contact, "Future's End", etc. Therefore, reality adjusts such that the Kelvin timeline is also different before 2233 in various ways.