The Great Romulan Evacuation

[CommanderRaytas]

Star Trek: That Confusing Moment When Nobody Knows if Stuff Will Happen or Not in a Possible Future or Alternate Reality

Sounds promising.

I'm afraid I'm none the wiser as to the nature of your concern.

Sorry, mate, I thought you were joking!

I mean that there is no reason for anyone to address possible futures in different realities. What would be the point? It would only confuse people. With a new reality, everything is possible. Making announcements about what's going to happen in the future of a different dimension is...well, useless.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It would appear that there was another, different Chekov at the academy. This one's parents probably are different people. Orci has said that the universe was trying to heal itself. It apparently didn't want the younger Chekov, the one who had the same parents as in the prime universe, so it picked a different one. This one may even have a brother named Pioter.

Zefram Cochrane was supposedly in this thirties when he invented warp drive. First Contact changed that and put him in his 50's. Films and TV change character ages all the time. McCoy was originally supposed to be much older than Kirk, yet somewhere along the way he became Kirk's contemporary.

Unlike how Star Trek portrays it 99.99% of the time (the only counter-examples I can think of being that superfast planet in VOY: "The Blink of an Eye" and the sublight journey of the crippled Columbia NX-02 in the Destiny novels), time isn't constant throughout the galaxy. That's why Stardates were supposedly invented in the first place. So Chekov gaining a few years somewhere that Chekov-Prime didn't isn't really a big deal I don't think.

 

[Timo]

Well, dramatically, it sort of is. In the movie, Chekov is a genius of sorts at 17; in TOS, he was an inexperienced young man at 22. We don't get the impression that he would have a whiz kid past in TOS, that he would have entered Starfleet at a particularly young age; if anything, he appears to have started his career only very recently.

On the other hand, Uhura is a completely different character here, too, an aurally skilled linguist rather than an electrician. And incidentally she, too, is young enough to be a different character by the rules of the timeline branching... But it's not her (unestablished) age that makes her different in this case.

In comparison, McCoy and Spock are their old selves, and Scotty has yet to demonstrate a distinguishing characteristic, and they were all born before Nero messed up things.

Films and TV change character ages all the time.

Yet remarkably, this is the first time somebody's birthdate has been changed in Star Trek.

In all previous cases, it has only been the character's appearance changing to subtly or grossly indicate that an earlier noncanonical guess at his age had been wrong. And even in the most obvious cases, the ones where they do the usual trick with quickly maturing children, it's with partially alien kids, Alexander and Naomi, who sort of have an excuse. Molly O'Brien grows up more or less normally, even if there sometimes is confusion as to whether her age is counted in Earth or Bajoran years.

It's only Chekov who goes from being explicitly 22 in "Who Mourns for Adonais" to being explicitly 17 in STXI, even though the latter explicitly takes place in 2258 and the former can take place in 2266 at the very earliest.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mars]

Theres no polluting the timeline problem. Spock is in a different reality, not the one he's seen the future of. He doesnt know the future. There's no way for him to pollute the timeline. And not to attempt to warn the Romulans would be morally untenable.

Spock can use his knowledge of various things that are likely to occur or exist, such as the Bajoran wormhole or the likely location of the Doomsday Machine in this time perios, to help the Feds stave off disasters.

There's no guarantee that either of those things still exist, of course. Spock can't really know just how much this timeline differs from his own, or whether his and Nero's incursions were the only diverenge. maybe there have been billions of divergences. it's a big universe and the changes would not necesarily be obvious but rather very diffuse.

And thats not even addressing the hilarity of a supernova that sneaks up on everyone rather than being a predictable part of a star's lifecycle, or even more hilairous, a supernova capable of endangering an entire galaxy.

If a supernova can do that, there would be no life in this galaxy, because many supernovas would have already exploded before there was anyone to stop them like Spock. If Spock was saving the entire galaxy by stopping this supernova, then I'm afraid there is something wrong with this logic.

That would be true if the physics of the Trek universe worked like ours does. However, it doesn't (Scalosian water, Warp Drive, One Little Ship, etc, etc.)

There were stars before there were people, you know that.
The Milky Way Galaxy has many stars that can go supernova, and on average one star in the Milky Way Galaxy goes supernova every 100 years, if every time it did so the Galaxy got destroyed, there would be no galaxy. Saying a supernova can destroy a galaxy is hyperbole.

Spock-Prime, as close to a trusted source as we have in that universe said "129 years from now, a star will explode and threaten to destroy the galaxy." He didn'r say part of the galaxy or half the galaxy or this section of the galaxy. Since his primary role in the movie was to bring Nu-Kirk (and us) up to speed we pretty much have to take what he said at face value. He did also tell a lie to Kirk

"Under no circumstances...can he be made aware of my existence, you must promise me this.

You're telling me I can't tell you...that I'm following you're own orders, why not? What happens?

Jim, this is one rule you cannot break."

Of course, we later got this

"How'd you persuade him to keep your secret?

He inferred that, universe ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise.

You lied?

- Oh. I... I implied."

So Spock is capable of lying in this situation but un order to stop Nero we must assume that he told Nu-Kirk the truth.

In a nutshell, the star exploded, pPock didn't stop it in time (whatever that entailed) and it's likely that a large chunk of at least the area around Hobus was indeed destroyed. For all we know most of the Romulan colonies were taken out as well. Trek does tend to equate a home planet with the entire empire/Federation/etc.

A black hole will not stop a supernova explosion that's already in progress, the only chance of stopping a supernova explosion is to swallow it with a black hole before it explodes, otherwise, the black hole can swallow some of the matter and energy expanding outward but not make like the supernova never occurred. If the writers wanted to create a scenario where Romulus gets destroyed and Nero blames spock for not saving Romulus, they should have done some more research on astronomy, the one above is just ridiculous. I think if one is going to write a space opera, a little research on astronomy is a good idea. Have all sorts of science fiction gizmos, but at least the stars should behave normally according to astronomical textbooks.

 

[Timo]

If we disregard the "threatened galaxy" aspect here as politically motivated hyperbole, the rest could well hold together. Since red matter can create black holes in the middle of empty space if need be, Spock could have intended to use one as a shield between Romulus and its exploding star, rather than as a weapon against the star itself. That is, anything coming the way of Romulus would have been sucked out of the universe before it reached the planet. There'd probably be several days to evacuate, then.

In that case, we'd have to go the "red matter will blow up Spock unless he ejects it" route to explain the lack of time. Any locations outside the Romulan system would have plenty of time, though, and Spock could always deploy more red matter to absorb the wavefront at select spots when needed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rhaven]

I just had an epiphany! All this talk about Chekov's age/parents caused it. Nero's first appearance, where he destroys the ship that Kirk was to be born on is the key to the changes in the time line. It makes Kirk lose his father and has a whole ship load of deaths that change the time line hundreds of ways.

 

[Dukhat]

It would appear that there was another, different Chekov at the academy.

My personal theory is that since both Chekovs would have been born after Nero's incursion, something changed so that nuChekov was biologically not the same person as prime Chekov, as he was born later in this new timeline.

This one's parents probably are different people.

That's not necessarily true at all if they just decided to have their child later for whatever new circumstance arose to justify that.

Orci has said that the universe was trying to heal itself.

No, that was a line that was actually going to be filmed, but they decided to cut it out because, well, it doesn't make any sense. As has been stated, there's no reason for this new timeline to "heal" itself, as there's nothing to heal. The prime timeline kept existing even though this new timeline was created.

 

[Timo]

My personal theory is that since both Chekovs would have been born after Nero's incursion, something changed so that nuChekov was biologically not the same person as prime Chekov, as he was born later in this new timeline.

...For all we know, the parents simply swapped the names of their two sons, Pavel and Pyotr. And this time the older, smarter brother (from 2241) did not die in the hands of Klingons. But perhaps the younger one (from 2246) did...

As has been stated, there's no reason for this new timeline to "heal" itself, as there's nothing to heal.

Yet every time our heroes travel to the past, their interference fails to change the future in any noticeable way save for the single thing they came to change. Repelling a 2063 Borg invasion, with quite a bit of destruction and casualties, does not cause Picard or any of his crew to be unborn. That does call for quite a bit of "healing" - unless one goes by the idea that every instance of time travel is predestined and built in, and Picard would not have born had he not gone to the past. Which can be interpreted to be pretty much the same thing, really.

What is different about this adventure? Only the failure of Spock to return to his present, in the 24th century. But in the standard format of Trek time travel adventures, the past universe Spock has interfered with will have to heal somehow to allow for the present to remain unchanged. This should not be dependent on whether Spock actually achieved positive or negative interference, or whether he returned or not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

I just had an epiphany! All this talk about Chekov's age/parents caused it. Nero's first appearance, where he destroys the ship that Kirk was to be born on is the key to the changes in the time line. It makes Kirk lose his father and has a whole ship load of deaths that change the time line hundreds of ways.

That's only what the writers of the movie have been saying for the past four years!
And what the novels and comics say. And the Star Trek Online videogame.
There's even an official diagram:

 

[Rhaven]

Got it. So, I'm a little slow in this area.

 

[RPJOB]

My personal theory is that since both Chekovs would have been born after Nero's incursion, something changed so that nuChekov was biologically not the same person as prime Chekov, as he was born later in this new timeline.

...For all we know, the parents simply swapped the names of their two sons, Pavel and Pyotr. And this time the older, smarter brother (from 2241) did not die in the hands of Klingons. But perhaps the younger one (from 2246) did...

As has been stated, there's no reason for this new timeline to "heal" itself, as there's nothing to heal.

Yet every time our heroes travel to the past, their interference fails to change the future in any noticeable way save for the single thing they came to change. Repelling a 2063 Borg invasion, with quite a bit of destruction and casualties, does not cause Picard or any of his crew to be unborn. That does call for quite a bit of "healing" - unless one goes by the idea that every instance of time travel is predestined and built in, and Picard would not have born had he not gone to the past. Which can be interpreted to be pretty much the same thing, really.

What is different about this adventure? Only the failure of Spock to return to his present, in the 24th century. But in the standard format of Trek time travel adventures, the past universe Spock has interfered with will have to heal somehow to allow for the present to remain unchanged. This should not be dependent on whether Spock actually achieved positive or negative interference, or whether he returned or not.

Timo Saloniemi

Chekov Prime didn't have a older brother. Sulu specifically said he was an only child. I've had two siblings pass away. I don't say that I only have one sister, I have two sisters and a brother, two of whom have died. If my sister passed away I still wouldn't be an only child, I just be the last surviving sibling.

 

[RPJOB]

There were stars before there were people, you know that.
The Milky Way Galaxy has many stars that can go supernova, and on average one star in the Milky Way Galaxy goes supernova every 100 years, if every time it did so the Galaxy got destroyed, there would be no galaxy. Saying a supernova can destroy a galaxy is hyperbole.

A black hole will not stop a supernova explosion that's already in progress, the only chance of stopping a supernova explosion is to swallow it with a black hole before it explodes, otherwise, the black hole can swallow some of the matter and energy expanding outward but not make like the supernova never occurred. If the writers wanted to create a scenario where Romulus gets destroyed and Nero blames spock for not saving Romulus, they should have done some more research on astronomy, the one above is just ridiculous. I think if one is going to write a space opera, a little research on astronomy is a good idea. Have all sorts of science fiction gizmos, but at least the stars should behave normally according to astronomical textbooks.

That would be nice but that ship has sailed many years ago. ST-09 just continues the tradition of getting basic science wrong as often as it gets it right.

The timeline of Spock's journey to save Romulus is given as follows:


"Using red matter I would create a black hole which would absorb the exploding star.

I was on route when the unthinkable happened.

The supernova destroyed Romulus.

I had little time. I had to extract the red matter and shoot it into the supernova."

Note that he says that he still has to use red matter to create the black hole after Romulus has already been destroyed. He even says that he still has time left although litte of it. Perhaps he stopped a chain reaction that would destroy the galaxy, a sort of cosmic trick shot that would trigger numerous other supernovas. He stopped the chain but didn't save Romulus.

Scientifically accurate? Not in the least. Does it work in the context of the movie? It must since a trusted source (Spock) says that's what happened. Trek reality is not ours. It has it own rules.

 

[Timo]

Chekov Prime didn't have a older brother. Sulu specifically said he was an only child.

So it is word against word - and I should think Chekov himself ought to know!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mars]

There were stars before there were people, you know that.
The Milky Way Galaxy has many stars that can go supernova, and on average one star in the Milky Way Galaxy goes supernova every 100 years, if every time it did so the Galaxy got destroyed, there would be no galaxy. Saying a supernova can destroy a galaxy is hyperbole.

A black hole will not stop a supernova explosion that's already in progress, the only chance of stopping a supernova explosion is to swallow it with a black hole before it explodes, otherwise, the black hole can swallow some of the matter and energy expanding outward but not make like the supernova never occurred. If the writers wanted to create a scenario where Romulus gets destroyed and Nero blames spock for not saving Romulus, they should have done some more research on astronomy, the one above is just ridiculous. I think if one is going to write a space opera, a little research on astronomy is a good idea. Have all sorts of science fiction gizmos, but at least the stars should behave normally according to astronomical textbooks.

That would be nice but that ship has sailed many years ago. ST-09 just continues the tradition of getting basic science wrong as often as it gets it right.

The timeline of Spock's journey to save Romulus is given as follows:


"Using red matter I would create a black hole which would absorb the exploding star.

I was on route when the unthinkable happened.

The supernova destroyed Romulus.

I had little time. I had to extract the red matter and shoot it into the supernova."

Note that he says that he still has to use red matter to create the black hole after Romulus has already been destroyed. He even says that he still has time left although litte of it. Perhaps he stopped a chain reaction that would destroy the galaxy, a sort of cosmic trick shot that would trigger numerous other supernovas. He stopped the chain but didn't save Romulus.

Scientifically accurate? Not in the least. Does it work in the context of the movie? It must since a trusted source (Spock) says that's what happened. Trek reality is not ours. It has it own rules.

There will be other movies and television series, the question is whether we can keep the science consistent, if every hundred years we can have a supernova that threatens to destroy the galaxy, what does this mean?

I liked the series Voyager, the reason is that it gave us a sense of the immensity of the Galaxy and how long it would take a starship to cross it, now it appears that writers are attempting to shrink the galaxy once again, they didn't with Star Trek V when the Enterprise made its quick jaunt to the center of the Galaxy with Sybok, but then this is not consistent with Star Trek Voyager, so they had to make the movie "Apocryphal".

Galaxies are not small places, so I wonder if the screen writer who wrote that line had no awareness of how big galaxies actually are, the same is true of the original Battlestar Galactica, they used the term "Galaxy" as a substitute for the word "Star System". So maybe the writer meant to say the supernova threatened to destroy the "Romulan Galaxy" thinking that a galaxy was the same thing as a star system.

 

[Timo]

if every hundred years we can have a supernova that threatens to destroy the galaxy, what does this mean?

I don't see the problem, as the movie certainly did not claim that all supernova explosions threaten the galaxy. Only this single one did - and the unlikeliness of such a thing may be the reason Spock found it so difficult to convert anybody to his cause.

the same is true of the original Battlestar Galactica, they used the term "Galaxy" as a substitute for the word "Star System"

But they were entitled to, as the heroes weren't human; their "English" featured a lot of alien expressions anyway. Same with Cylons: "vector" instead of "sector" to describe a point or region in space. In neither case was there any indication that these words would also be in use in their more usual sense (galaxy = structure like Milky Way, vector = mathematical expression of direction times magnitude).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RPJOB]

Why is it a problem for a supernova to have the ability to destroy the galaxy when we have black holes that enable you to travel to the past, where an ounce of anti-matter can rip away half a planets atmosphere, where beings can consist of energy or gas or crystal or any of a number of other scientific imposibilites? From the very start Star Trek has had scientific absurdities. Both pilots involved mental powers including telepathy and telekinesis. Time travel and dimensional travel have occurred in all it's series. The character of Spock himself is without scientific merit. Trek isn't about the science. It's about the people. The science is just the wrapping paper.

 

[Timo]

Admittedly, if Trek defined a supernova as a galaxy-destroying phenomenon, then there would be internal inconsistency in that the galaxy would remain undestroyed despite the confirmed existence of several past supernovae in it. It would not matter whether this were based on good or bad science, then.

But as said, the movie only claims that a single specific occurrence of supernova had this worrisome ability - leaving us to speculate whether it was a natural phenomenon at all, or something engineered by an intellect. If it were natural, one would think that it would have already happened several times during the past ten billion years, in some of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. If it were deliberate, then the timespan would be shorter at the very least...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RPJOB]

It obviously hadn't happened before since our heroes were still around to try to prevent this one. If there had been one, they wouldn't have existed. They exist, so a similar supernova hasn't happened.

It was certainly an unusual supernova. It happened without much warning. It had the ability to travel faster than light. And creating a black hole would somehow stop it's destruction even though a black hole would most likely have been created when the star exploded.

 

[Mars]

Admittedly, if Trek defined a supernova as a galaxy-destroying phenomenon, then there would be internal inconsistency in that the galaxy would remain undestroyed despite the confirmed existence of several past supernovae in it. It would not matter whether this were based on good or bad science, then.

But as said, the movie only claims that a single specific occurrence of supernova had this worrisome ability - leaving us to speculate whether it was a natural phenomenon at all, or something engineered by an intellect. If it were natural, one would think that it would have already happened several times during the past ten billion years, in some of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. If it were deliberate, then the timespan would be shorter at the very least...

Timo Saloniemi

Well then its one of two things, either its not a supernova or its not a galaxy destroying event, and Spock prime is getting old, he is not infallible, he even admits this in the movie, could be he was exaggerating when he describe the supernova as having potential to destroy the galaxy. Supernovas can do damage to surrounding systems, usually what it does is destroy the ozone layers of planets thus allowing harmful UV rays to get through and damage plant and animal life, to actually destroy a planet, a supernoval would have to be quite close. One can have a massive star far enough away from Romulus so that it isn't its primary, the Romulans don't depend on it for light, it is a bright star in their sky, perhaps just less than a light year away, then it explodes and releases more energy that our Sun has in its entire lifetime, that would be enough to eradicate all life on the surface of Romulus, and usually that is enough, you don't have to actually blow up the planet, which would take much more energy. Melting the crust to molten material would be sufficient, and be enough to get Nero to scream for revenge if it happened to his home planet. But as the movie did show Romulus getting blown up, we could let that pass and simply settle for Spock being wrong about it blowing up the entire galaxy, but it could mess up quite a few star systems surrounding it. They say anything within 50 light years of an exploding supernova would be in trouble, and that could be as much as 800 star systems, not the whole galaxy, but it is still quite a bit.

 

[Mars]

Why is it a problem for a supernova to have the ability to destroy the galaxy when we have black holes that enable you to travel to the past, where an ounce of anti-matter can rip away half a planets atmosphere, where beings can consist of energy or gas or crystal or any of a number of other scientific imposibilites? From the very start Star Trek has had scientific absurdities. Both pilots involved mental powers including telepathy and telekinesis. Time travel and dimensional travel have occurred in all it's series. The character of Spock himself is without scientific merit. Trek isn't about the science. It's about the people. The science is just the wrapping paper.

I like to keep the artificial stuff seperate from the natural stuff, such as stars for instance. I realize for something like a space opera, we need FTL travel, but lets have realistic supernovas please, there is no reason for them to be over exaggerated. The Universe is a big place, blowing up a small corner of it should be sufficient for story purposes. The Federation occupys 11% of the Galaxy, the other 89% is unexplored, we can't have too many stories about them saving the entire galaxy. Star Trek is not usually of galactic scope, that is Star Wars. There are around 300 billion stars in the galaxy, and the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter and 3000 light years thick in our portion of it, lets not lose site of these facts when we write Buck Rogers stories about some hero saving the entire Universe, it loses some of its majesty when you do that too often.