Time Travel, Alternate Timelines

[Kirk Prime]

To be clear, I wasn't arguing that the terms -should be- interchangeable, I was observing that people often use them interchangeably and typically everyone involved in the conversation understands what's meant.

I still think you're arguing for the existence of rules that were never actually established. Precedents perhaps, but not rules.

I don't know about precedent v. rules. One thing that all the time travel had in common--the timeline was in danger.

Honestly, I don't see that. For starters, the only canon evidence we have is what is on screen, by your own admission. Books and comics don't count. So, we have to accept that Spock's behavior is in fact in character for the situation. Since Spock has seen time travel before, as well as alternate universes, then he would be familiar with the mechanics of it. No, it's not one the nose but Spock's behavior is sufficient explanation for me. Similarly with Kelvin Spock's own response to Uhura's "an alternate timeline."

An alternate timeline actually brings up my point--that conversation on the bridge does not make the case that the prime timeline exists. Any alternate timeline/reality would happen whether the prime universe exists or not. That might be the biggest problem--that conversation didn't explain a thing. If I go to another universe, I'm in an alternate realty/timeline, especially if I'm in the past, and I find things are different. If I travel in time and erase the timeline, I am also in an alternate reality/timeline. Nothing indicates whether my original timeline exists. As for Spock, unfortunately, they don't go into his behavior in the movie at all. Maybe he feels he is too old to fix the problem alone.

How many different types of time travel have we seen in Star Trek? In TOS I think I can recall at least 3 possibly 4. We also have the Defiant traveling both back in time as well as jumping universes. Then there's the whole timeship thing which is able to reintegrate people from multiple timelines back in to one person. You have multiple quantum realities occurring in Parallels with nigh infinite branches from singular events. At some point in time any "rules" are going to become guidelines without much of an eye bat.

No argument that there aren't plenty of different time travel methods. But quantum realities and time travel are different animals. I have no doubt that even if the prime universe is erased, another universe exactly like it exists where Spock and Nero didn't time travel. But the way it went down in ST09, they did not do the prime universe any favors. All the more reason to do a sequel.

And I would love to see something. I heard the unused Orci script was going to do that instead of Beyond. But I'll never know since no one has seen it.

 

[Myko]

What does it even mean for a timeline to "exist"? Does it mean that it has no end? Even if it ends doesn't the "line" from start to end still exist in a timeless sense?

 

[fireproof78]

An alternate timeline actually brings up my point--that conversation on the bridge does not make the case that the prime timeline exists. Any alternate timeline/reality would happen whether the prime universe exists or not. That might be the biggest problem--that conversation didn't explain a thing. If I go to another universe, I'm in an alternate realty/timeline, especially if I'm in the past, and I find things are different. If I travel in time and erase the timeline, I am also in an alternate reality/timeline. Nothing indicates whether my original timeline exists. As for Spock, unfortunately, they don't go into his behavior in the movie at all. Maybe he feels he is too old to fix the problem alone.

I don't think that would stop Spock at all. I think Spock's behavior is sufficient evidence that the Prime exists, otherwise he would be fighting to change it.

That's how I see it, and I read it in watching the film and see no reason to doubt it. Mileage clearly varies.

I heard the unused Orci script was going to do that instead of Beyond. But I'll never know since no one has seen it.

His apparently didn't involve time travel. Interestingly enough, this is being discussed over on trekmovie.com as discussions around the next Star Trek movie are being explored.

 

[Kirk Prime]

I don't think that would stop Spock at all. I think Spock's behavior is sufficient evidence that the Prime exists, otherwise he would be fighting to change it.

That's how I see it, and I read it in watching the film and see no reason to doubt it. Mileage clearly varies.

Inaction is not evidence, especially since the entire movie was about stopping Nero from destroying planets.

His apparently didn't involve time travel. Interestingly enough, this is being discussed over on trekmovie.com as discussions around the next Star Trek movie are being explored.

I wouldn't call this a spoiler, but I believe Orci's story might have addressed it head on. Maybe we even would have seen some prime universe counterparts.

 

[fireproof78]

Inaction is not evidence, especially since the entire movie was about stopping Nero from destroying planets.

I don't see how it is not evidence.

 

[JD]

Doc would have had to somehow use his knowledge of the future to make money. As much as he would hate the idea, he could justify it by saying it was to bring his family to the future, not for actual personal gain, and he would spend every penny he made to fund the train, which would not leave an estate behind.

I just looked on the Back to the Future Wiki, which appears to include all the official BTTF material, and I don't see anything about how Doc made his money. There is a reference to hiring workers, but that's the only money related thing I see on there.

 

[Kirk Prime]

I don't see how it is not evidence.

You're using a lack of action to prove something that everything else in Star Trek history goes against.

I just looked on the Back to the Future Wiki, which appears to include all the official BTTF material, and I don't see anything about how Doc made his money. There is a reference to hiring workers, but that's the only money related thing I see on there.

It probably wasn't covered in anything BTTF may not be as strict as Star Trek, but even so, I'm only speculating. If you are Doc, how else could you possibly fund recreating work that took you 30 years to do with tech 70 years more advanced? While Doc could certainly duplicate his work in a shorter time based on knowing what to do, to get the materials would be very hard in the 19th century.

He probably didn't go straight to 1985. He must have stopped at some point in 2015 to do a hover conversation to the train. That might have actually been in the dialogue and I'm not remembering it.

Unless he studied and had a thorough understanding of how to make hover conversions (which COULD have happened but we don't know for sure), it makes sense.

But without Mr. Fusion, which again,would be tough to make in 1885, Doc would have needed Plutonium.

I think Doc could have quietly figured out how to make plutonium. He would have had that knowledge. Perhaps he would have known where to find uranium to make what he needed. I do think with enough time, he could have done what was needed to get that part.

But it wouldn't have been cheap. With a blacksmith shop, how could he get the money to do what needed to be done without using future knowledge? Maybe he knew where a gold mine was, or maybe there was some sort of way to gamble on sure things. Stocks wouldn't upset history too much, and they existed in 1885.

Too bad there aren't official novels.

 

[fireproof78]

You're using a lack of action to prove something that everything else in Star Trek history goes against.

Because in every other instance Spock would have done something.

 

[Kirk Prime]

I wish I could find the dang edit feature on my posts. I've been told about it, but I honestly don't see the damn thing. Anyway, here's an interesting tidbit on Doc getting home, and it's actually clever.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...c-manage-to-build-the-time-train-in-the-1880s

He didn't build the train first. He built a car running on steam and used hover tech to generate the 1.21 jigawatts. He was able to use that car to get to the 1980s to get parts needed to build another machine back to 1885 to get the train working. Of course, this explanation is giving me more questions, like if he got back to the 1980s, why bother with the train? Just build another car, and pick your family up.

 

[JD]

This is all from the comics, so they probably address at least some of that there.
According to the Wiki he did go to future to get the hover technology, but as tends to happen that lead to a whole adventure involving multiple time periods.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I don't see where either of those things would effect the time traveler, since by that point them and the other version of them would be totally different individuals, and it's different timeline, so it wouldn't matter if they reached the same point left from.

They may be different individuals at that point in terms of memories & personality but not in terms of matter. Once it becomes definitive that no possible version of Kelvin Spock could possibly become anything like the Prime Spock that went back in time in the first place, the universe has to erase Prime Spock as a function of the conservation of matter. Even if Kelvin Spock is a very different person from Prime Spock, perhaps Prime Spock would endure so long as there was at least a theoretical possibility that Kelvin Spock would eventually make the same journey back in time that Prime Spock did.

I suppose I'm applying something closer to Back to the Future rules onto Star Trek. But I have a natural bias to do that.

Certain rules, once made, must be hard and fast. You can't establish that if you travel in time, history can be changed, and later say it can't.

Why not? Personally, I'm only interested in whether a particular time travel story is consistent with itself. When it's a big, sprawling franchise that lasts multiple decades like Star Trek, I think that we forgive the occasional inconsistencies. Doctor Who is constantly playing around with multiple versions of time travel. Stargate, while normally consistent in using the alternate universe style of time travel, wasn't always like that. "1969" was a predestination paradox.

I just looked on the Back to the Future Wiki, which appears to include all the official BTTF material, and I don't see anything about how Doc made his money. There is a reference to hiring workers, but that's the only money related thing I see on there.

Heck, where did he get that big suitcase of money from different time periods in Part II? I used to assume that, between the 1st & 2nd movies, he traveled to multiple eras and acquired a massive money collection. But, based on some deleted scenes and deleted lines from earlier drafts of the screenplays, I think it's more likely that he counterfeited that money. This is a guy who was willing to get into bed with Libyan terrorists and then immediately double cross them. Doc is a shady dude.

It probably wasn't covered in anything BTTF may not be as strict as Star Trek, but even so, I'm only speculating. If you are Doc, how else could you possibly fund recreating work that took you 30 years to do with tech 70 years more advanced? While Doc could certainly duplicate his work in a shorter time based on knowing what to do, to get the materials would be very hard in the 19th century.

Except that he did have the hoverboard. Remember that the reason why Doc couldn't originally repair the DeLorean in 1885 was because the lightning bolt fried the time circuits and suitable replacement parts wouldn't be invented until 1947. That's why he had to hide the DeLorean in the mine until his past self in 1955 could repair it. Even then, he had to replace a tiny microchip with a large apparatus made of vacuum tubes strapped to the hood. Just imagine the potential computing power and other goodies contained in that hoverboard using 2015 technology. (And this isn't our lame 2015. This is the alternate version where they have hoverboards, flying cars, holographic movies, rehydrateable pizza pucks, dust-repellent paper, and Miami's baseball team is in the American League for some reason.)

He probably didn't go straight to 1985. He must have stopped at some point in 2015 to do a hover conversation to the train. That might have actually been in the dialogue and I'm not remembering it.

It's implied in the very last dialogue in the film. Marty asks, "Where are you going? Back to the future?" Doc says, "Nope. Already been there." Then the train starts to fly. So that at least implies that he went to the future to give it a hover conversion before he met back with Marty. (Come to think of it, how did Doc know to come back at that exact moment? How did he know that Marty would be there? This seems like it was at least a couple hours after Marty had first arrived back in 1985. He was able to walk back to his house, get the truck, pick up Jennifer, avoid getting into the accident with the Rolls Royce, and drive Jennifer to the site of the wrecked DeLorean. And yet Doc is able to time his appearance for maximum drama. Almost as if he read the script! )

But without Mr. Fusion, which again,would be tough to make in 1885, Doc would have needed Plutonium.

I think Doc could have quietly figured out how to make plutonium. He would have had that knowledge. Perhaps he would have known where to find uranium to make what he needed. I do think with enough time, he could have done what was needed to get that part.

According to Doc, "It runs on steam." How? I dunno. I assume that, after years of additional study, he figured out a way to do time travel more efficiently, with a fraction of the originally required energy.

Too bad there aren't official novels.

IIRC, the IDW comics are at least semi-officially approved by Bob Gale.

 

[Kirk Prime]

Why not? Personally, I'm only interested in whether a particular time travel story is consistent with itself. When it's a big, sprawling franchise that lasts multiple decades like Star Trek, I think that we forgive the occasional inconsistencies. Doctor Who is constantly playing around with multiple versions of time travel. Stargate, while normally consistent in using the alternate universe style of time travel, wasn't always like that. "1969" was a predestination paradox.

Because that's not how science works, and in the science of Star Trek, time travel is one timeline. It would be like saying transporters are suddenly impossible, with no explanation--or that light speed is the fastest you can go.

If the Abrams method exists, and that's the way it is, it fundamentally changes every other time travel story in Star Trek, and renders them all meaningless. Who cares if Edith lives? Who cares if Darvin kills Kirk? Who cares if the Borg assimilate the 21st century? None of it matters because your universe continues unimpeded.

Except that he did have the hoverboard. Remember that the reason why Doc couldn't originally repair the DeLorean in 1885 was because the lightning bolt fried the time circuits and suitable replacement parts wouldn't be invented until 1947. That's why he had to hide the DeLorean in the mine until his past self in 1955 could repair it. Even then, he had to replace a tiny microchip with a large apparatus made of vacuum tubes strapped to the hood. Just imagine the potential computing power and other goodies contained in that hoverboard using 2015 technology. (And this isn't our lame 2015. This is the alternate version where they have hoverboards, flying cars, holographic movies, rehydrateable pizza pucks, dust-repellent paper, and Miami's baseball team is in the American League for some reason.)

True, but reverse engineering that would still be quite difficult in 1885. And that's IF Doc could teach himself how to do it. If you gave Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison an iPhone, what could they do with it, especially in a world with no electrical outlets?

One thing Doc would have to have--is money and lots of it. Being brilliant doesn't mean much if you don't have the tools.

According to Doc, "It runs on steam." How? I dunno. I assume that, after years of additional study, he figured out a way to do time travel more efficiently, with a fraction of the originally required energy.

Not impossible, but it would be hard to recreate in 1885. Science is science and even with Mr. Fusion, Doc needed 1.21 jigawatts to move through time. Another interesting thing about time travel that no one thinks about--the entire Earth is constantly moving.

It's not just going around the sun, but isn't the SUN moving and orbiting the center of the galaxy. Everything is moving constantly, and nothing is where it was, so if you time travel, how come you don't end up in space?

 

[fireproof78]

If the Abrams method exists, and that's the way it is, it fundamentally changes every other time travel story in Star Trek, and renders them all meaningless. Who cares if Edith lives? Who cares if Darvin kills Kirk? Who cares if the Borg assimilate the 21st century? None of it matters because your universe continues unimpeded.

We care because the characters care. That's the point of telling a story about people and not about technology is because we are invested in the characters and their reactions.

Also, more on topic, is the idea that there are multiple time travel methods available to the crew. The Guardian of Forever may indeed be stuck in linear time when it comes that specific method. The Orb of Time also might be similar, given the Prophets own struggles with understanding linear time. And the Borg? Um, the less Borg the better, I think that goes without saying. Also, that movie was ostensibly about Picard's obsessive nature of bringing the hurt to the Borg.

Honestly, I don't see how the Abrams' method changes every other time travel story in Star Trek. I think that it is additive to the various mechanics introduced in Star Trek, not retroactively rendering past stories meaningless. And, if that's the argument then Parallels did that long before.

 

[Snaploud]

Another interesting thing about time travel that no one thinks about--the entire Earth is constantly moving.

It's not just going around the sun, but isn't the SUN moving and orbiting the center of the galaxy. Everything is moving constantly, and nothing is where it was, so if you time travel, how come you don't end up in space?

The television show 7 Days actually takes this one into account. That's the reason Frank has to use that joystick to keep the sphere steady as it travels in space; the sphere is good at targeting a point in time but not a point in space. In the early testing, the sphere ended up in space at least once (resulting in a dead chrononaut).

 

[JD]

They may be different individuals at that point in terms of memories & personality but not in terms of matter. Once it becomes definitive that no possible version of Kelvin Spock could possibly become anything like the Prime Spock that went back in time in the first place, the universe has to erase Prime Spock as a function of the conservation of matter. Even if Kelvin Spock is a very different person from Prime Spock, perhaps Prime Spock would endure so long as there was at least a theoretical possibility that Kelvin Spock would eventually make the same journey back in time that Prime Spock did.

I think this really is one part of time travel that you can't really say what will happen unless we reach a point where someone actually time travels. Unless of course all of those pictures that you see where people back in the 1700 and 1800s have wrist watches or cell phones are real.....

IIRC, the IDW comics are at least semi-officially approved by Bob Gale.

Not just that, he has a story credit on each of the comics, and I got them impression he was fairly hands on with them.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Well, we can't say for sure what would ACTUALLY happen if time travel were real. But, beyond that, even within the confines of the fictional universe, none of these time travelers lived long enough to test my theory anyway. I imagine that the filmmakers wouldn't want to wade that far into the technical weeds for fear of confusing the casual viewers. (Hell, I'm confused and it's my theory! )

It's up there with my lingering question of what happened to the 1985A versions of Marty & Doc in Back to the Future, Part II. In that timeline, Marty is at a boarding school in Switzerland and Doc has been committed to an insane asylum. Did they disappear as they were superseded by their time traveling counterparts? Would the time traveling versions of Marty & Doc have eventually disappeared if they stayed in that timeline long enough? Keep in mind that the time traveling versions of Marty & Doc are actually a few days older than their non-time traveling counterparts, so would that have something to do with it? Or were they just protected by the timeline because there was still ample opportunity for them to correct the timeline, which they eventually did.

Of course, one of the things I always felt was weird about those movies was the photographs. So, if you take a photograph of someone and then erase that person from existence, they're erased from the photograph but the background remains. So... someone still took a photo of that spot even though no one was there? It always seemed to me that, what SHOULD have happened was that the photo would turn into something totally different because a completely different image would have been developed on that piece of photo-paper. But that's another thing that would have just been confusing to casual audiences who don't want to go down the kinds of causality rabbit holes that I do.

 

[Ovation]

No time travel story ever withstands logical scrutiny. This thread is exhibit A.

 

[Kirk Prime]

The television show 7 Days actually takes this one into account. That's the reason Frank has to use that joystick to keep the sphere steady as it travels in space; the sphere is good at targeting a point in time but not a point in space. In the early testing, the sphere ended up in space at least once (resulting in a dead chrononaut).

It's been so long since I've seen 7 Days. I liked that show. Wish it streamed on Netflix.

I think this really is one part of time travel that you can't really say what will happen unless we reach a point where someone actually time travels. Unless of course all of those pictures that you see where people back in the 1700 and 1800s have wrist watches or cell phones are real.....

And for that reason, no one can say that science validates whatever theory is used in a movie, be it the alternate universe or the one timeline or some hybrid. That's just a poor argument because time travel to the past is impossible.

It's up there with my lingering question of what happened to the 1985A versions of Marty & Doc in Back to the Future, Part II. In that timeline, Marty is at a boarding school in Switzerland and Doc has been committed to an insane asylum. Did they disappear as they were superseded by their time traveling counterparts? Would the time traveling versions of Marty & Doc have eventually disappeared if they stayed in that timeline long enough? Keep in mind that the time traveling versions of Marty & Doc are actually a few days older than their non-time traveling counterparts, so would that have something to do with it? Or were they just protected by the timeline because there was still ample opportunity for them to correct the timeline, which they eventually did.

My thinking is that there WERE indeed 2 versions of Doc and Marty in Hell Valley. I also think that based on the deleted scene where Biff disappeared, yes, had they stayed in Hell Valley long enough, Doc and Marty would have disappeared. It would have been an effect similar to Marty's delayed disappearance in the first movie. I don't think they were protected, but I think the universe takes time to correct things.

Of course, one of the things I always felt was weird about those movies was the photographs. So, if you take a photograph of someone and then erase that person from existence, they're erased from the photograph but the background remains. So... someone still took a photo of that spot even though no one was there? It always seemed to me that, what SHOULD have happened was that the photo would turn into something totally different because a completely different image would have been developed on that piece of photo-paper. But that's another thing that would have just been confusing to casual audiences who don't want to go down the kinds of causality rabbit holes that I do.

That is a logical and fair point. I think we just have to assume that for some reason, the universe had someone take that photo in that spot no matter what.

No time travel story ever withstands logical scrutiny. This thread is exhibit A.

I think time travel scrutiny is possible as long as the writer puts himself through conversations like this thread. If I'm writing a timey wimey story, that's exactly what I would do--I would go through it with the skepticism of a nitpicker, which anyone who has seen all these stories probably has done before. Then I would do an open challenge to anyone to spot a mistake that I may have missed. I would then think of a way to correct that mistake.

 

[Silvercrest]

Of course, one of the things I always felt was weird about those movies was the photographs. So, if you take a photograph of someone and then erase that person from existence, they're erased from the photograph but the background remains. So... someone still took a photo of that spot even though no one was there? It always seemed to me that, what SHOULD have happened was that the photo would turn into something totally different because a completely different image would have been developed on that piece of photo-paper.

Excellent point! You could argue that since the erasures weren't instant but took time (I cringe at that phrase), the nature of the photo itself would be the last change. First Dave disappears, then Linda disappears, then Marty disappears, then the background changes — or more likely, the photo itself disappears. (In the new timeline, the photographer was doing something else that day, if he ever existed.)

 

[JD]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. We never actually saw Marty completely disappear, so we don't know what would have happened. I was thinking that rather than disappearing, it might have changed to show whatever family Lorraine might have ended up having.

Well, we can't say for sure what would ACTUALLY happen if time travel were real. But, beyond that, even within the confines of the fictional universe, none of these time travelers lived long enough to test my theory anyway. I imagine that the filmmakers wouldn't want to wade that far into the technical weeds for fear of confusing the casual viewers. (Hell, I'm confused and it's my theory! )

This conversation has got me wondering what exactly would happen if we had two things, with the exact same matter down to the subatomic level, tried to exist in the same universe. Would it destroy the universe, would they merge, would nothing happen?