Anthony: So even though some things, most notably Kirk himself, are on a different path (for example he doesn’t go to the Farragut after the Academy), he still ends up on the Enterprise with Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Spock, etc. Are you saying there is some kind of ‘entropy’ perhaps? So even though some things are different, they gravitate towards some kind of center point?
Bob: Yes. If you look at quantum mechanics and you learn about the fact that our most successful theory of science is quantum mechanics, and the fact that it deals with probabilities of events happening. And that the most probable events tend to happen more often and that one of the subsets of that theory is the many universe theory. Data said this [in "
Parallels"], he summed up quantum mechanics as the theory that "all possibilities that can happendo happen" in a parallel universe. According to theory,there are going to be a much larger number of universes in which events are very closely related, because those are the most probable configurations of things. Inherent in quantum mechanics there is sort of reverse entropy, which is what you were trying to say, in which the universe does tend to want to order itself in a certain way. This is not something we are making up; this is something we researched, in terms of the physical theory. So yes, there is an element of the universe trying to hold itself together.
Anthony: OK so let’s call the timeline Nero left, as ‘the prime timeline’, so that means that the USS Kelvin, as designed and seen in the trailer, that is also in the prime timeline?
Bob: Yes
Anthony: So what happens with the destruction of the Kelvin is the creation of an alternative timeline, but what happens to the prime timeline after Nero leaves it? Does it continue or does it wink out of existence once he goes back and creates this new timeline.
Bob: It continues. According to the most successful, most testedscientific theory ever, quantum mechanics, it continues.
Anthony: So everyone in the prime timeline, like Picard and Riker, are still off doing there thing, it is just that Nero is gone.
Bob: Yes, and you will notice that whenever the movie comes out, that whatever DVDs you have purchased, will continue to exist.
Anthony: OK we just dove pretty deep into Trek physics minutiae. Is any of that discussed in the film? In "
Back To The Future II," there is that scene with the Doc and Marty, where the Doc explains time travel to Marty on a chalkboard. Does Spock ever do that with Kirk?
Bob: It would seem very logical. Quantum mechanics avoids the
grandfather paradox that
Back to the Future relies on, which is: you can go back in
Back to the Future and screw with your own birth and potentially invalidate your own birth. In quantum mechanics that is not the case. In quantum mechanics, if you go back and kill your own father, then you just live on as the guy who came in from another universe who lives in a universe where you killed some guy, but you don’t erase your existence doing that.
Anthony: And you believe that the
Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Star Trek interpretation, based on "Parallels."
Bob: Yes. I would argue that at the very least, if we are going to do our
Star Trek, it has to conform to the latest scientific theories and the most advanced and complete, and right now that is quantum mechanics.
Anthony: Star Trek has not always been consistent in this regard. For example both "
Yesterday’s Enterprise" and "
City on the Edge of Forever" seem to follow the
Back to the Future rules of time travel, where new timelines overwrite previous timelines.
Bob: We have to deal with it, with the fact that Star Trek episodes that don’t conform to our theory of it, also do notconform to the latest greatest, most highly tested scientific theory in human history. So Iwould default that it is the science that counts. And say in the case of "
Star Trek IV," it could go either way. They cross over to a parallel universe and grab some whales and bring them back and save their own universe.
