Yes, it is, isn't it?
I just wonder if Cochrane in the TOS/TNG/DS9 continuity was meant to fortuitously encounter the Vulcans on his first flight out.
The totally official, all head-canon Unified Timeline Theory of the Trek Multiverse
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Yes, it is, isn't it?
I just wonder if Cochrane in the TOS/TNG/DS9 continuity was meant to fortuitously encounter the Vulcans on his first flight out.
The problem with a "realistic" multiverse theory of time travel is of course that it's a complete wet noodle dramatically.
Consider First Contact: Starting with timeline A a Borg ship goes back in time and creates a timeline B where the Borg have assimilated the Earth. Okay, big whoop for everyone remaining in timeline A, they are just missing a Borg ship and the remaining Borg have gained nothing and the remaining good guys have lost nothing. The Enterprise for some reason decide they have to prevent timeline B, so they follow, but instead create a timeline C where they stopped the Borg but does fuck all for timelines A or B. In fact they just robbed timeline A of the Enterprise and the people in it just lost their friends.
Consider First Contact: Starting with timeline A a Borg ship goes back in time and creates a timeline B where the Borg have assimilated the Earth. Okay, big whoop for everyone remaining in timeline A, they are just missing a Borg ship and the remaining Borg have gained nothing and the remaining good guys have lost nothing. The Enterprise for some reason decide they have to prevent timeline B, so they follow, but instead create a timeline C where they stopped the Borg but does fuck all for timelines A or B. In fact they just robbed timeline A of the Enterprise and the people in it just lost their friends.
Not unless the Enterprise returned to Timeline A leaving Timeline C to evolve without the Enterprise popping up in their future Timeline C.
One could conceivably construct this timeline using the Temporal War Incursion in ENT as the branching point between the TOS/TNG/DS9 timeline and the ENT/STD/PIC timeline. I just chose the more discrete, earlier onscreen narrative which dramatizes a clear change in the timeline going forward, which is First Contact.
These are also rather unwieldy timeline names. I could have designated the first two as the TOS and the FC timelines, but that just indicates where the splits first occur rather than the stories they encompass. "Kelvin" is a different case since there is so far only one series of stories that proceed from the split.
These are also rather unwieldy timeline names. I could have designated the first two as the TOS and the FC timelines, but that just indicates where the splits first occur rather than the stories they encompass. "Kelvin" is a different case since there is so far only one series of stories that proceed from the split.
It really isn’t, it comes down to the quality of writing (I imagine the DSC’s writers will make the multiverse just as dull and unimaginative as their “Prime” stuff). It allows writers creative freedom without tossing everything out with a reboot.
The TOS/TNG/DS9 and ENT/STD/PIC timelines resemble one another more closely, obviously, because less trauma to history occurs from the Borg than from the Narada. The Enterprise-E crew stop the Borg before they get off more than a couple of poor shots at Cochrane. Nero destroys the Kelvin, a bunch of Klingon ships and the planet Vulcan before he's finished.
Yes, it is, isn't it?
I just wonder if Cochrane in the TOS/TNG/DS9 continuity was meant to fortuitously encounter the Vulcans on his first flight out.
Yes he was, because that’s what Picard and his crew remembered from their own TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY timeline.
There was no "clear change" at all in VOY or DS9 after First Contact and Seven revealed that the presence of the Borg during the events of the movie was known to the Borg, but not the the majority of Federation citizens.
I haven't said there would be. The 22nd and 23rd centuries as they would be portrayed in new productions launched after First Contact would appear to diverge considerably from what was either established or suggested in TOS and TNG.
Why would later eras so closely resemble the timeline from which they split off? Good question. One would expect differences to multiply over time, after all, rather than to converge. There is no answer for that, only the observation that for fifty years we've been shown the example of a "MIrror Universe" which, despite having its own history that's been shown onscreen to diverge dramatically at least as early as 2163 continues to closely resemble the timelines where most Star Trek stories have been set. There's some implicit, certainly unexamined premise in Trek that the timelines we see tend to align themselves century after century even down to details of who is born into those universes and the career paths that many of them pursue.
I mean, Cochrane flat-out murders the first Vulcan on Earth, the Terran Empire conquers Vulcan - but two centuries out, there's Spock serving as first officer to Kirk aboard the Enterprise. And who preceded Kirk in the captain's chair? Christopher Pike.
FWIW, according to the Enterprise creators the idea for the show sprang out of their experience creating the story of Zefram Cochrane in First Contact. They knew going in that they'd inevitably wind up contradicting established Trek continuity, so they invented the "Temporal Cold War" as an explicit, in-series explanation and dramatic element to cover that.
As for Voyager in particular, I've given no thought at all to where it fits in here - it's a little pocket continuity of its own, for most intents and purposes. I suppose that because it uses DS9 and TNG as its launching points its episodes are part of the TOS/TNG/DS9 timeline - although the Seven who appears in Picard is, obviously, the ENT/STD/PIC timeline version of the character.
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I generally concur with most of your thoughts:
NOTE: <Movies>
TimeLine: Prime
- ST: = (TOS, TAS, <TMP, TWoK, TSfS, TVH, TFF, TUC>, TNG, DS9, VOY, <GEN, FC, INS, NEM>, LD)
TimeLine: First Contact
- ST: = (ENT, DIS, SNW, PIC, PRO, S31)
TimeLine: Kelvin
- ST: = (<ST09, STID, STB>)
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The other thing to be mentioned with regard to this theory is: nowhere does it follow that there was not a Michael Burnham, a Saru, an Archer or Raffi Musiker in the TOS/TNG/DS9 timeline - simply that we haven't been watching that version of these people and so know nothing specific about them.
We have seen a TOS/TNG/DS9 version and a Kelvin version of Kirk and it's reasonably likely that in the next few years we'll see the ENT/STD/PIC incarnation of that character. We've seen all three variations of Spock in all three timelines.
We have seen a TOS/TNG/DS9 version and a Kelvin version of Kirk and it's reasonably likely that in the next few years we'll see the ENT/STD/PIC incarnation of that character. We've seen all three variations of Spock in all three timelines.
So if the 'Parallel Universe / Dimension' "that has only Shrimp" and "the one without Shrimp" exist; does that tie the 'Whedonverse / Buffyverse' to Star Trek?
I'm not at all surprised. Once this particular variation occurred to me, it seemed so obvious that I was pretty sure other people must have already proposed it.
There are at least two episodes in which the past has been explicitly rewritten, and that new version stands going forward.
In TAS "Yesteryear," the young Spock makes a different choice regarding I-Chaya than what the original Spock made. And, after he returns to the present through the Guardian of Forever, the original Spock replaces the grown up version of whom he'd mentored in the past.
In DS9 "Accession," Akorem Laan completes The Call of the Prophets when he returns through the Bajoran wormhole back to the 22nd century.
In TAS "Yesteryear," the young Spock makes a different choice regarding I-Chaya than what the original Spock made. And, after he returns to the present through the Guardian of Forever, the original Spock replaces the grown up version of whom he'd mentored in the past.
In DS9 "Accession," Akorem Laan completes The Call of the Prophets when he returns through the Bajoran wormhole back to the 22nd century.
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Great Minds think alike.
There’s also the possibility that the timeline changed between the real Gabriel Bell being involved in the Bell Riots, and Sisko taking his place.
Voyager directly references the Borg's involvement with First Contact, so they are part of the same timeline.
Okay, so if we take that as significant it becomes the ENT/STD/VOY/PIC timeline, at least at that point in the series. Since the two non-Kelvin timelines seem to track each other pretty closely, it's reasonable to assume that U.S.S. Voyager may exist in both.
I'm not interested in nailing down and providing a single explanation for every single observation in onscreen Trek history - no theory ever really does that, at least not for very long. A good theory presents a new paradigm in which the extent of what's either unexplained or appears self-contradictory is substantially reduced and simplified from the current paradigm.
Similarly, while I'd personally venture a different version of how FC affects the timeline going forward than Anti-Trekker does in his video, that's beside the point. I'm just identifying the two major timeline branches that affect Trek continuity and that, in being recognized, eliminate a lot of confusion. Everyone's going to have different notions of how the specific parts fall together.
It's interesting, though, that we saw a number of different timelines represented at one time or another on Voyager, including one in which Seven was not part of the crew - the original version of "Year of Hell," where Kes remained with the ship. Yet for some reason, when Voyager reaches that point in time, Kes is gone and in her place is...a Borg. Hmm...
I'm not interested in nailing down and providing a single explanation for every single observation in onscreen Trek history - no theory ever really does that, at least not for very long. A good theory presents a new paradigm in which the extent of what's either unexplained or appears self-contradictory is substantially reduced and simplified from the current paradigm.
Similarly, while I'd personally venture a different version of how FC affects the timeline going forward than Anti-Trekker does in his video, that's beside the point. I'm just identifying the two major timeline branches that affect Trek continuity and that, in being recognized, eliminate a lot of confusion. Everyone's going to have different notions of how the specific parts fall together.
It's interesting, though, that we saw a number of different timelines represented at one time or another on Voyager, including one in which Seven was not part of the crew - the original version of "Year of Hell," where Kes remained with the ship. Yet for some reason, when Voyager reaches that point in time, Kes is gone and in her place is...a Borg. Hmm...
Unless every episode of VOY produced after the Enterprise returns to 2373 now takes place in the altered timeline. Just like how every episode of Star Trek produced after Generations is actually just a figment of Picard’s Nexus fantasy that he never actually left from (another pet head canon theory...)
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