So you're suggesting that if it's the Primeverse compared to the MU and there's no evidence of time travel in either, then either/both constitute the "original" timeline?
Time Travel, Alternate Timelines
- Thread starter Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
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So you're suggesting that if it's the Primeverse compared to the MU and there's no evidence of time travel in either, then either/both constitute the "original" timeline?
In Star Trek their is different time travel methods and how it impacts time has been different but the Kelvinverse movies were the first to do time travel much in the way it would likely work in real life and that is to create a branched alter timeline while the first one keeps on going. At least as far as we know. When Kes goes back in time it seems very unlikely that the Voyager crew we had been watching would just have forgotten Kes form the future once came back and tried to kill them. Thus the last time we really saw the Prime Universe was those few moments after Kes goes back yet we see the crews reaction to what just happened. That means in the Prime Universe Seven and Torres are both dead. It's possible the later TNG movies and Picard happen differently. Maybe Spock never went back thus a second Kelvinverse like timeline wasn't created.
One thing you also have to consider though is in Trek because of the many different ways time travel works is you can alter the past beyond the point you go to. I means you can go back to TOS and change the future. The future that no longer has the Temporal Cold War thus Daniels doesn't go back to Enterprise which in turn alters the future and you don't have TOS. That's why in the Kelvinverse when Nero and Spock arrive the timeline had already been altered along time ago before they arrived since they arrived.
This I think this explains how Krall when still human was a MACO who fought in the Xindi wat which makes no sense compared to what we saw on Enterprise. It means this new timeline still had a Xindi war only it played out differently. Maybe more ships went into the Expanse or it was fought outside of the expanse. Who knows.
Jason
One thing you also have to consider though is in Trek because of the many different ways time travel works is you can alter the past beyond the point you go to. I means you can go back to TOS and change the future. The future that no longer has the Temporal Cold War thus Daniels doesn't go back to Enterprise which in turn alters the future and you don't have TOS. That's why in the Kelvinverse when Nero and Spock arrive the timeline had already been altered along time ago before they arrived since they arrived.
This I think this explains how Krall when still human was a MACO who fought in the Xindi wat which makes no sense compared to what we saw on Enterprise. It means this new timeline still had a Xindi war only it played out differently. Maybe more ships went into the Expanse or it was fought outside of the expanse. Who knows.
Jason
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Or if time travel has been used to return the timeline to its original state and negate any actions of a time traveler. For example, in City on the Edge, McCoy changed history by saving Edith Keeler. Kirk and Spock made sure history was on track as if no time travel happened (I suppose it could also be a predestination paradox).
This was always something that bothered me--how can anyone say how time travel works in real life when so far, it's impossible? Since time travel to the past is considered impossible, how can any idea be wrong?
I feel like there is no wrong answer--but once a franchise makes a rule, it makes more sense to stick to the rule. What Abrams did, if you accept it, is to take all the prior Trek time travel stories, and make them meaningless.
Do we really need to overthink the Kelvinverse?
Abrams want tell different history. Fans mad if history erased. That’s all we need to know.
Okay, how about this. The method used in ST2009 was unknowingly taking them to a parallel universe. But all other time travel except the Constitution class ship in Mirror Darkly was into the same universe.
Abrams want tell different history. Fans mad if history erased. That’s all we need to know.
Okay, how about this. The method used in ST2009 was unknowingly taking them to a parallel universe. But all other time travel except the Constitution class ship in Mirror Darkly was into the same universe.
CoTEoF is one of the few cases where I'm willing to unequivocally grant that the time travel must have occurred within the same timeline, because the Guardian itself asserts that "all is as it was before".
Otherwise, short of checking for quantum signatures, I think it's entirely possible or even likely that in a case such as TVH, the future Our Heroes return to is different from the one they departed from. But then, unless you want to assert that TVH is a predestination paradox, it would have to be.
I would actually say zero percent chance of that. Everything was exactly the same, right up to the dialogue with Sarek. They returned maybe 10 seconds before they left and nothing changed.
That would have been fine had Abrams chosen that explanation. He didn't.
That's why it is a bit of a mess. If you go by Roddenberry time travel rules, history has been erased.
So make it fan canon. The creators don’t have to specifically designate something canon. I’d it makes the most sense, and it’s not contradicted by official canon, a rough consensus of fans makes it ‘Canon until contradicted’.
Please explain how that's possible?
If you're arguing that TVH is not a predestination paradox, then Our Heroes start in a timeline where Taylor and the whales don't suddenly disappear, and return to a timeline in which they do. Granted the whales were likely about to die at the point they were removed from the timeline, but even having them disappear rather than being killed might have had repercussions.
In the absence of showing any changes, the only canon is what we see on screen, in which they didn't change a single thing. The butterfly effect makes things as we saw impossible, if they changed anything.
Actually, I would argue the opposite--that TVH was indeed a predestination paradox. There's really no evidence that there even was a timeline that we know of where the whales didn't always take care of the Probe. All we know for a fact is that due to the dialogue and what we saw, Kirk and crew did not change a single thing. The movie chose that route. Likewise, Picard and crew didn't change a thing in First Contact.
There's one time travel theory that postulates that it's very hard to change things. Think of throwing a pebble into a raging river. It won't do anything in the big picture.
So someone like Gillian may be that pebble. In the end, the timeline doesn't care about her enough for history to be changed by her absence. But someone like Edith Keeler would be like making a dam in that river and divert it on a new path.
Gillian, if you use Catherine Hicks' age, was 35 years old and married to her work. She seemed to only care about whales.
With no offspring, she had no impact on history, and was more of the pebble.
Someone like John Christopher though had a son that DID impact history.
In short, they were fortunate Gillian was that pebble, or they would have had to take her back.
Canon exists more on the collective imagination of the fans and their interpretation of what appears on screen.
Canonical constructivism is an inherently flawed and inflexible philosophy.
Canonical constructivism is an inherently flawed and inflexible philosophy.
I'm not a fan of it either. But canon isn't the choice of a fan--it's what the show runners decide. The definition of canon in Star Trek is what's on screen.
There are certainly some stories I wish they could add--like the first 6 Shatner books for example, and the book Kobayashi Maru, by Julia Ecklar. Also the Captain April stories with George Kirk Sr. by Diane Carey would get in there if I were in charge.
There are certainly some stories I wish they could add--like the first 6 Shatner books for example, and the book Kobayashi Maru, by Julia Ecklar. Also the Captain April stories with George Kirk Sr. by Diane Carey would get in there if I were in charge.
The bum who killed himself with McCoy's phaser in COTEOF could have subtly impacted the timeline. The two officers replaced in the line-up by Bashir and O'Brien in TAT could have been promoted sooner as their records wouldn't have contained a reprimand for the fight in TWT. I've long theorized that showing Cochrane the Enterprise could have changed some things like, for instance the NX-01 being named Enterprise instead of Dauntless. I've got a million of them.
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Just say that Edison was one of the MACOS serving on Enterprise and that he got a battlefield commission as an officer later on.
Easy peasy.
I mean, it's not like we met every single MACO, right? Edison could have been there the whole time and we just never saw him. And who knows, he may have always been an officer - it makes no sense that Major Hayes was the only one. Hayes should have had at least a Lieutenant serving as his XO. Perhaps that was Edison.
In any case...the mere fact that we are still seeing shows produced right now (DSC, PIC, LD), taking place in the prime timeline, should settle the fact that said timeline still exists...
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I don't think paradox is the right term here because there is no predestination "paradox" in the movie. The events are intended to show that everything that happened in the past were always meant to happen in the past--the whales were about to be killed; Dr. Taylor must have just been listed as a missing person, etc. The ship even arrives back in the present prior to when they left. They didn't go back to fix an event in the timeline that had already happened; they just found a solution to a crisis that was happening in the present.
Somebody mentioned Seven Days awhile back. There's something bugging me about that show:
When Frank travels into the past, what happens to the version of him that's already there?
When Frank travels into the past, what happens to the version of him that's already there?
I couldn't give less of a shit about "canon", I include books, comics, and games in my version of the Star Trek universe.
Have you read the first Department of Temporal Investigations novel? @Christopher comes up with a time travel system that includes both rewritten history and branching timelines. I thought worked pretty well with what we've seen in the shows and movies.
If you include the books, than we have seen one. The Myriad Universes novella, The Chimes at Midnight by Geoff Trowbridge, takes place in a universe with Thelin instead of Spock, and in that one they never go back in time to get the whales. It does not go well.
If we're talking about real world theories, I've always preferred the idea that whatever you do is part of history, and no matter what happens you will always end up doing that thing. For example let's say you find out that you go back in time and kill someone, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will always end up in that place, at that time, and you will always kill the person the way that history says you did.
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It's called a predestination paradox precisely because the effects of the time traveler's actions occur before the time traveler took the step of travelling into the past to make those actions occur. If Dr. Taylor was always meant to go missing because she was taken into the future, then it's a paradox because the timeline Our Heroes have been living in only exists because of time travel that hasn't happened until TVH.
If, on the other hand, Our Heroes were merely living in a very similar timeline where Taylor disappeared and the whales were killed and there were no significant repercussions to either event, then it's not a paradox, but it also means that after TVH the timeline has been altered from the original, even if just slightly.
I always thought that a Predestination Paradox was when the future actions of a character have an effect on the past actions. So, if future Gillian were to have sent a message to herself in the past saying to jump on the cloaked spaceship with the man from the future--and that is why Gillian did that then that would be a paradox. Or if Spock in the past sent a message to the future to tell himself how to find the whales.
If Gillian and the whales had always disappeared at that precise moment in the Trek history then that is not a paradox.
"If Gillian and the whales had always disappeared at that precise moment in the Trek history then that is not a paradox."
It's a paradox because they disappear due to events that haven't "happened" yet. How can Kirk & Co. make her disappear when they haven't even been born yet? And if she hadn't disappeared, would they have been born?
It's a paradox because they disappear due to events that haven't "happened" yet. How can Kirk & Co. make her disappear when they haven't even been born yet? And if she hadn't disappeared, would they have been born?
But not events that she was responsible for, as far as we know.
Time Travel
That is never stated onscreen or even hinted at. I think we can just agree to disagree on this point?
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