Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x12 - "Through the Valley of Shadows"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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The attitude in Trek has always been that the future isn't written from the characters POV. The time crystals are definitely a diversion from the POV.
A Matter of Time said:
One more thought about "why Pike keeps silent about his vision". Remembering "Lights and Shadows": Pike have seen he was shooting Tyler. In the first time it seemed like he defended from Tyler.
In the second time he understood that aimed at the probe's manipulator but missed. Then he gave an order to Tyler "Hold still!" and fired at the evil tentacle succesfully.
Now imagine that Pike told to anxious Tyler about his first vision. (Man, I just have seen that I will kill you...) Or that he killed Tyler immediately to prevent his probable assault. Would it be wise or stupid?
We know that it will end by a wheelchair. Сontrariwise Pike knows that a vision is not an accomplished fact, because he used one to correct the future. And he knows, that a vision can be misinterpreted.
In the second time he understood that aimed at the probe's manipulator but missed. Then he gave an order to Tyler "Hold still!" and fired at the evil tentacle succesfully.
Now imagine that Pike told to anxious Tyler about his first vision. (Man, I just have seen that I will kill you...) Or that he killed Tyler immediately to prevent his probable assault. Would it be wise or stupid?
We know that it will end by a wheelchair. Сontrariwise Pike knows that a vision is not an accomplished fact, because he used one to correct the future. And he knows, that a vision can be misinterpreted.
I like this line of thinking. It seems entirely in-character.
Can't agree with you here. "Time's Arrow" was certainly a complicated time loop, and First Contact was a recursive one, but neither one was a predestination paradox strictly speaking. I'll stand by the position that Trek doesn't do predestination.
Meh, that was utter bullshit. They used a misunderstanding of quantum theory to straddle the fence between two different kinds of time-travel logic, basically in order to give themselves (and future writers) an excuse to make things either as similar to or as different from previous Trek as they might like, at whim, with no deeper guiding principle. A straightforward reboot would have done the same and been much cleaner, but then they wouldn't have gotten to use Nimoy.
Well, yes. Of course! That's what makes all this interesting and worth discussing.
Surely... but there's a big difference there. Lots of people go into situations involving long odds, but they do it with the conviction that they can beat those odds. Certainly that's what Kirk always thought, and did. Knowing in advance that the odds will beat you is a whole other can of worms.
And, so? A promise made under duress is hardly binding. Pike was after a McGuffin on which the fate of all known civilizations depended; he could and should have said anything necessary to get it. Once he's away from Boreth and the monks, though, they have no sway over him... and as future lives also appear to be at stake in his vision, it only makes sense to share that information.
Good point. Although it's possible Starfleet in this idealistic future takes promises to alien people very seriously, even those made under duress.
I have no doubt though that if a ranking officer ordered Pike to submit a full unredacted Boreth report and Pike refused to do so over a promise, Pike would be severely censured. This is important information about a culture the Federation recently was at war with and was almost destroyed by.
WOW! It would certainly dishonor him as a Fed who lied to Timekeeper and stole Klingon's holy relic. Are you familiar with a term "casus belli"?
If a ranking officer forces a subordinate to do something, he takes full responsibility for the consequences.
In the same way that Christopher Pike is a diversion from previous Star Trek Captains.
Save for the times when the future became locked in, like "Time's Arrow" where Data's head ended up under San Francisco, despite their awareness.
The presence of the time crystals and the monks' role in their safekeeping might add some context to Worf's experiences there in "Rightful Heir." What do you all think of that? Sorry if it's already been brought up... I don't feel like reading through 61 pages of posts.
Kor
Kor
The ONLY constant thing WRT any Time Travel in Star Trek, it's that the 'rules' of any Time Travel event are INCONSISTENT and change based on the needs of the plot...much like how distance covered by a given warp factor often changes from episode to episode...
As I take it, the future in-general isn't fixed from this point on, just that one event. It may take different forms or happen in various ways, but once pike took the crystal, every potentiality passes through that event. The rest are already might-have-beens
And all but the last loop in Cause and Effect, in which the crew discover the issue with trying to change a "known" future event:
PICARD: If you're right, perhaps we could escape the loop by avoiding the collision.
LAFORGE: That's our guess.
WORF: Maybe we should reverse course.
RIKER: For all we know, reversing course may be what leads us into the crash.
PICARD: No. We can't afford to start second guessing ourselves. We'll stay on this course until we have reason to change it. But let's do everything we can to avoid the collision.
Despite having audio recordings of the previous loop, they were unable to avoid their fate playing out again. Knowing the end of the story doesn't always help.
Yep. I don't think that time travel in Trek has ever worked in particularly consistent manner, which is understandable in a franchise spanning several decades made by countless different people. However, it is bit jarring how the temporal logic doesn't stay consistent in one season of one serialised show. The main plot relies on the idea that the future where Control kills everything can be avoided, yet in the case of Pike his future is fixed...
I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out with regards to Pike and Control. To my mind, it reminds me a bit of Doctor Who where some points are fixed or more likely to happen while others can be changed. Pike's fate just impacts him, while Control impacts the entirety of the galaxy. So, it might be a matter of scope of the impact.
Again, I'm in wait and see mode in terms of how things wrap up
And that never did make much sense and would make even less sense here.
I'd have to go back and watch that again, but did anything change from Pike's "vision" of shooting Tyler to the actual scene where he shot the tentacle?
It seems to me the only thing that changed was the context in which he was shooting -- the first one in the "vision" making it appear to Pike that he would have some reason to shoot Tyler (self defense or whatever), but in the second "real" event, it was shown why Pike was shooting Tyler, which was to shoot the tentacle thingy.
I don't think anything changed except Pike had some context as to why he would shoot at Tyler. His original vision of the event may not have included the "hold still" part, but that might only be due to Pike's vision only being a very short snippet of the event.
That's kind of the way the Eleventh Doctor got out of dying, back in Series 6.
Made sense to me...
But, I don't expect them to take the DW route. I imagine there will be more to this story.
How?
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