Time Travel, Alternate Timelines

[The Borgified Corpse]

As far as Star Trek time travel goes, it's even weirder when you factor in all of the Quantum Realities from "Parallels." And I thought that the implication from "In a Mirror Darkly" was supposed to be that the Mirror Universe is actually the original timeline and that it was only thanks to the good influence of the Enterprise-E crew during the time travel events of First Contact that inspired Zefram Cochrane to not kill the Vulcans when they landed.

Actually, "In a Mirror Darkly" also establishes that it's really easy to time travel back into an alternate universe by mistake. The Tholians from "The Tholian Web" were trying to send the Defiant back into their own past but ended up sending it into the Mirror Universe instead.

i watched three seasons of 7 days last week.

They describe the process as erasing people's memories for 7 days.

I'd call it murder.

But I was thinking that if all they are doing is creating a new timeline, and the original timeline survived, then every time they backstepped the sphere, everybody left behind post crisis Just shrugs, and gets on with their aspocalypse.

Also in the forked timeline where Frank Parker always arrives back, and saves the day, that means that the team has never backstepped their sphere.

So the grey in the basement "remembers" all the alt timelines that have happened, so all the crisis ridden futures still exist in some quantifiable fashion at least up until the point that the sphere launched.

I love 7 Days but that show was NOT designed to hold up to intense scrutiny. Every time there's a major continuity flub, it's always contradicting something from THE VERY PREVIOUS EPISODE! Also, I can name 3 Season 2 episodes that shamelessly recycle clearly identifiable scenes from previous episodes.

At the end of the first movie, Marty had a truck, but the Marty who had a Truck was still Doc Brown's Lab Assistant

Which just goes to show that you're probably going to end up roughly the same no matter what your parents were like, so stop blaming all of your psychological hangups on them, man!

I feel like I once read a fan fiction on this topic and never found it again. But the basic idea was that the Marty that had the truck went back to 1955 and his adventure caused the original timeline--so essentially, the Martys switched places.

There's a really cool Doctor Who audio adventure called "Flip-Flop." It's a 2-disc set and you can listen to the 2 discs in either order. Each one follows the Doctor & Mel in a different timeline where they land on a planet, get involved with some time travel shenanigans, then end up creating the alternate timeline on the other disc.

I like the point that by the end of the BTTF trilogy Marty actually knows very little about "his" life. His parents are no longer the parents he grew up with, his siblings are different, etc.

That was actually part of why Eric Stoltz was fired from the movie. He kept trying to look into the darker, more tragic angles of this aspect of the story, which was totally not the story that Gale & Zemeckis were trying to tell.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

If the mirror universe is the original timeline, how could there be an Enterprise-E to go back in time in First Contact? If time travel creates a parallel reality and leaves the original alone, why did the Enterprise-E follow them back?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Which just goes to show that you're probably going to end up roughly the same no matter what your parents were like, so stop blaming all of your psychological hangups on them, man!

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Doc from 1982, already had had his 50s adventures with older Marty, so he had to hustle to get that kid on board, even if he didn't know that it was the wrong Marty.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

If the mirror universe is the original timeline, how could there be an Enterprise-E to go back in time in First Contact? If time travel creates a parallel reality and leaves the original alone, why did the Enterprise-E follow them back?

Because it's both a Predestination Paradox AND a Multiverse story at the same time! Did I break your brain yet?

 

[DonIago]

How does one even define an "original" timeline?

I like to think all of the timelines have always existed, like railroad tracks in parallel, and one is simply jumping tracks. Otherwise it also begs the question of what constitutes a "significant" enough change for a new timeline to be created.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The appearance of a time traveler should be enough to split the timeline into a line with a time traveler and a line without a time traveler.

I still think it's bullshit that Jennifer from the truck timeline, went back to the truck timeline, when the billionaire Biff timeline faded out, since the Marty with a truck time line was not "restored" it was recreated, so there would already be a Marty with and without a truck in that timeline and a Jennifer already there, when our heroes returned to 1985.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

"Start at the beginning."
"If there is such a thing."

 

[theenglish]

As far as Star Trek time travel goes, it's even weirder when you factor in all of the Quantum Realities from "Parallels."

Other than Parallels, the implication in Star Trek involves primarily traveling back to your own universe--with the Mirror Universe seeming to be an alternate universe that can be reached from ours. As far as I recall, in canon, it has never been implied that Mirror Universe was created through some changed or altered event in the past--the Mirror Universe always existed in parallel to our own universe.

The Kelvinverse seems to be a Quantum Realm similar to those we see in Parallels. Or maybe it wasn't just changing the time stream; maybe it was because of the Red Matter's properties--or something. So it seems to be a different thing altogether. The general rule in Trek is that, unless told otherwise, the single universe timeline is what exists.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Other than Parallels, the implication in Star Trek involves primarily traveling back to your own universe--with the Mirror Universe seeming to be an alternate universe that can be reached from ours. As far as I recall, in canon, it has never been implied that Mirror Universe was created through some changed or altered event in the past--the Mirror Universe always existed in parallel to our own universe.

IIRC, some of the later Shatner novels suggested that the Mirror Universe broke off from ours thanks to the time travel events in First Contact. The Shatner novels were ghost written by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who were also executive story editors during the final season of Enterprise. So I always interpreted the opening of "In a Mirror Darkly" to be implying that they were accepting that explanation into the TV canon as well.

 

[theenglish]

IIRC, some of the later Shatner novels suggested that the Mirror Universe broke off from ours thanks to the time travel events in First Contact. The Shatner novels were ghost written by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who were also executive story editors during the final season of Enterprise. So I always interpreted the opening of "In a Mirror Darkly" to be implying that they were accepting that explanation into the TV canon as well.

Which is perfectly fine for "headcanon" which we all have--but is there any on screen explanation for that? Maybe on Discovery?

 

[Guy Gardener]

In the TNG novel Dark Mirror, Picard was reading the mirror mirror merchant of Venice, where Shylock got his pound of flesh, and it was disgusting.

The credits to in a mirror darkly show historical differences before 2063.

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[The Borgified Corpse]

Wasn't "Dark Mirror" written before the DS9 mirror universe episodes?

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Because it's both a Predestination Paradox AND a Multiverse story at the same time! Did I break your brain yet?

No. If we begin in the mirror universe, the Enterprise-E as we know it won't exist. If we begin in the prime universe, amd going back in time creates a parallel universe... Picard and crew celebrate when the sphere goes back in time. Threat averted!

 

[Kirk Prime]

As far as Star Trek time travel goes, it's even weirder when you factor in all of the Quantum Realities from "Parallels." And I thought that the implication from "In a Mirror Darkly" was supposed to be that the Mirror Universe is actually the original timeline and that it was only thanks to the good influence of the Enterprise-E crew during the time travel events of First Contact that inspired Zefram Cochrane to not kill the Vulcans when they landed.

Parallels and time travel are different animals. They can co-exist quite easily under the one timeline theory. Yes, there are infinite universes and infinite possibilities. But that doesn't change that in Star Trek, if you travel back in time, you don't cross a universal barrier--and you absolutely can change history.

The key is that the writer has to let you know what's going on--and do so quite clearly. Abrams failed in that regard when he had the opportunity which is why I feel he created what I call a revocable mess.

How does one even define an "original" timeline?

History as it played out if not for any time travel.

The Kelvinverse seems to be a Quantum Realm similar to those we see in Parallels. Or maybe it wasn't just changing the time stream; maybe it was because of the Red Matter's properties--or something. So it seems to be a different thing altogether. The general rule in Trek is that, unless told otherwise, the single universe timeline is what exists.

That's the problem--I believe post movie, that's what they want, but they didn't make it clear when they had the chance. Again, revocable mess. Just do another story and explain it better.

 

[JD]

The key is that the writer has to let you know what's going on--and do so quite clearly. Abrams failed in that regard when he had the opportunity which is why I feel he created what I call a revocable mess.

Didn't Spock Prime say point blank that when him and Nero came back in time it created an alternate timeline? I don't know you could possibly get much clearer than that.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

My take on Abrams Trek: Nero and Spock change the past. Alternate timeline, the future erased. To save face with the audience, it's an alternate timeline in an alternate universe so Prime Trek can continue.

 

[theenglish]

My take on Abrams Trek: Nero and Spock change the past. Alternate timeline, the future erased.

If Trek rules applied this is what should have happened, and the way I interpreted the events of 2009 Star Trek, and I think that is the way I interpreted it up until Star Trek Picard was announced.

 

[JD]

Did we really not see any examples of time travel creating new timelines before the first Kelvin movie? I could have sworn we did.
Even if we didn't we'd already had the existence of alternate timelines established in Parallels, so even if we didn't, it's not breaking any rules.

 

[theenglish]

Did we really not see any examples of time travel creating new timelines before the first Kelvin movie? I could have sworn we did.
Even if we didn't we'd already had the existence of alternate timelines established in Parallels, so even if we didn't, it's not breaking any rules.

I could be totally wrong--but I think Parallels was the only time. We don't have characters jumping to other timelines prior to the Kelvinverse.

 

[RandyS]

My take on Abrams Trek: Nero and Spock change the past. Alternate timeline, the future erased. To save face with the audience, it's an alternate timeline in an alternate universe so Prime Trek can continue.

This has always been my take on it. Particularly since Robert Orci said so himself at the time. He even mentioned the "Parrallels" episode as his inspiration.