Red matter is artificial, but created a "natural" seeming black hole. Warp or transwarp induced time travel must be something completely different...
Timelinegeddon - Grand Universe Unification Theories
- Thread starter dahj
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Don't tell anyone else this, but I'm from the future. How far into the future doesn't matter. 
But black holes can take you not just through time and space but also through universes. So it's inherently different from simply travelling backwards of forwards. When that's all you're doing, you're just rewriting. But there's another reality where it's like "What if you didn't rewrite?"
So, in some time travel you know future. In other time travel, you don't know the future because it's now another universe and the butterfly effect.
But black holes can take you not just through time and space but also through universes. So it's inherently different from simply travelling backwards of forwards. When that's all you're doing, you're just rewriting. But there's another reality where it's like "What if you didn't rewrite?"
So, in some time travel you know future. In other time travel, you don't know the future because it's now another universe and the butterfly effect.
It could be that every universe is set and unable to be changed. The 'changes' that you perceive from 'time travel' may simply be a shifting of awareness from one universe to another, among your countless 'selves'.
Back in the ‘80s, Mark Gruenwald established rules for time travel in the Marvel Universe based on that idea. The theory was that every time a time travel incident occurred, it created two timelines- one where the time travel occurred and one where it didn’t. Those rules haven’t been enforced in ages, but Roger Stern wrote a really excellent Kang story in Avengers based on the idea.
Sometimes I like to think about the implications of that idea as it would apply to Trek. It would mean that we haven’t been in the “prime” timeline since the Enterprise traveled three days into the past in The Naked Time!
Imagine if old Kirk, Picard or Janeway were told this
My understanding was always that TAS was not considered to have actually happened, in the Prime universe, at least.
And clearly Discovery isn't set in the Prime universe, whatever the producers say.
The TNG episode parallels states flat out that a parallel universe is created whenever anything happens.
DATA : "For any event, there is an infinite number of possible outcomes. Our choices determine which outcomes will follow. But there is a theory in quantum physics that all possibilities that can happen, do happen in alternate quantum realities."
So when you time travel and "change the past", what you're actually doing is moving into a different quantum reality. The original timeline is there, you're just not part of it any more.
The oddity to that is how people perceive and react to the changes. For instance in City of the Edge of Forever, when McCoy saved Edith Keeler, he should have gone into the quantum reality where she didn't die. But in that case, why did Kirk and the Enterprise crew know that the Federation was gone? Why did they even exist - shouldn't they have been wiped from reality with the rest of the Federation? Or rather, shouldn't they still be in the reality in which Keeler died and the Federation existed, whilst McCoy had gone into the one where she lived and it didn't?
I guess the Guardian isolated them from the changes. Much as being in the wake of the Borg cube isolated the E-E from the changes the Borg made to Earth history.
What's odd to me is that usually when stuff like that happens, the people involved act like they need to revert the timeline, i.e. return themselves to the Prime timeline. But then Spock found himself in the Kelvin timeline, and he was perfectly fine with it and took the view that it was a nice place to live. No effort at all to undo it or get back where he came from. Odd.
I don't really buy that. For one the black hole if it is artifically created is also artifical, in the rain in that DS9 episode where Worf and Jadzia go to Risa is. And I also don't quite understand how different methods of time travel would result in different effects on the timeline.
Oh, did those rules ever actually appear in a story and if so in which? I'd love to read it.
Just wait until you add Enterprise to that idea, the timeline gets changed like thirty times there...
I just want to see the DTI talk to them and be like "Uh, yeah, you've left a bunch of screwed up timelines behind".Imagine if old Kirk, Picard or Janeway were told this
Yes, Gruenwald was the editor of Avengers when Roger Stern was the writer. When Gruenwald starting developing these rules, Roger Stern wrote a story in which Kang the Conqueror seeks to eliminate his divergent selves that were created each time he time travelled. It's in Avengers #s 267-269. It's been collected a few times, most recently in the Avengers Epic Collection: Under Siege. That's the one I'd recommend getting, since it also includes my all-time favorite Avengers story, the Mansion Siege saga.
Avengers #267-269? Turns out that's already on my reading list because it features Monica Rambeau! I'm looking forward to reading it when I get to it in 200 years, judging by my reading speed
I have to be honest and say that there was a time when I was a complete nerd for the minutiae of continuity and in-universe consistency and it used to bug the hell out of me that things were missed or unnecessarily retconned -- or both.
I must have mellowed with age, or maybe I just have other far more pressing priorities in my life over the last thirty years or so. Now I just accept that it's a bunch of TV shows and movies that I'm very, very fond of but, f**k it, they really are just a bunch of TV shows and movies and the producers and writers will do whatever they want.
Sure, each successive new group of producers/directors/writers might pay lip-service to being "true to Gene's vision" or "protecting the ideals of Trek" or "acknowledging fans" and "defending the continuity" (or whatever the heck else they say) -- and some might even mean it -- but, ultimately, this is entertainment for the masses, made by large studies who want to make money. That's it; no more no less. I either enjoy it and I'm interested in watching it or I can switch off and ignore it. Detailed pedantic fights about the changes to artificial prosthetic foreheads on an implausible fictional race of aliens, or who said what when, or why this universe can't be part of that continuity -- these are just not something about which I feel the urgent need to become incensed anymore.
That Trek continues to maintain any integrity at all in the era of manipulated social media and claim vs. counter-claim of what is or isn't fake news, this is and should be your fight. Defend the legacy of Trek as a vehicle for teaching enlightenment and reason; defend the legacy of Trek as shows and movies that promote equality, fairness and hope for the future. Now, perhaps more than ever, Trek needs to stand for something -- and that has to be more, so much more, than just a bunch of nerds arguing about foreheads.
I must have mellowed with age, or maybe I just have other far more pressing priorities in my life over the last thirty years or so. Now I just accept that it's a bunch of TV shows and movies that I'm very, very fond of but, f**k it, they really are just a bunch of TV shows and movies and the producers and writers will do whatever they want.
Sure, each successive new group of producers/directors/writers might pay lip-service to being "true to Gene's vision" or "protecting the ideals of Trek" or "acknowledging fans" and "defending the continuity" (or whatever the heck else they say) -- and some might even mean it -- but, ultimately, this is entertainment for the masses, made by large studies who want to make money. That's it; no more no less. I either enjoy it and I'm interested in watching it or I can switch off and ignore it. Detailed pedantic fights about the changes to artificial prosthetic foreheads on an implausible fictional race of aliens, or who said what when, or why this universe can't be part of that continuity -- these are just not something about which I feel the urgent need to become incensed anymore.
That Trek continues to maintain any integrity at all in the era of manipulated social media and claim vs. counter-claim of what is or isn't fake news, this is and should be your fight. Defend the legacy of Trek as a vehicle for teaching enlightenment and reason; defend the legacy of Trek as shows and movies that promote equality, fairness and hope for the future. Now, perhaps more than ever, Trek needs to stand for something -- and that has to be more, so much more, than just a bunch of nerds arguing about foreheads.
An artificially created diamond wouldn't be different chemically than a natural diamond. They both would have the same hardness, etc. Same for artificial black holes and naturally created ones.
Okay, that's fair enough, but why would it be different for time travel then?
Well, Bob Orci back in the day repeatedly claimed that "quantum mechanics" ensured that the Prime universe would still exist. I guess he was trying to use some sort of "science" explanation that multiple timelines coexist.
Now most other time travel in Star Trek are from slingshot maneuvers of warp engines, Borg transwarp, Guardians of Forever, etc. which are all outside of "normal" science. Coincidentally these also overwrite timelines that had to be corrected.
Going by observations of the franchise and Orci's words, I just guessed that more "natural" time travel methods create a new universe per "quantum mechanics" and warp engines and other non-natural methods overwrite the timeline. This theory will have to do unless another entry in the franchise blows it out of the water.
I can see why he did it, surely fans would have ran amok if he said "The last 43 years are gone", but I generally disagree with his terminology, the prime universe was never in any danger, just the prime timeline.
How would they be outside of "normal" science. I mean, it's all pretty fucking weird, but so is a time travel wormhole or a temporal rift.
I don't think that fits with what's on-screen, even if one only includes "non-natural" time travel instances. In "Yesteryear" Thelin says "Live long and prosper in your world, Commander Spock" just before Spock goes through the Guardian of Forever to change the past and Spco kresponds with "And you in yours, Commander Thelin". That suggests that both of their respective worlds, or rather timelines, would continue to coexist.
Oh, and one thing I just thought of, we don't actually have hard evidence that the prime timeline is not overwritten. I think the only timeline we ever observed after someone travelled back to the past is the one in "Yesterday's Enterprise".
While we don't have hard evidence of the Prime timeline being overwritten, Spock would surely have shown even more of an emotion/reaction to the last 150 years of his entire timeline being wiped out than he would have over the destruction of alternate Vulcan.
Well, judging from "Yesteryear" Spock doesn't belief in erasing timelines at all, so that definitely works with his general lack of a reaction in ST09.
THELIN: This change in the timeline will put you in my place, yet I am not aggrieved.
SPOCK: Andorians are not known for their charity.
THELIN: True. A warrior race has few sympathies, but one we do possess is for family. In your time plane, you will live and so will your mother. That is valuable. Live long and prosper in your world, Commander Spock.
SPOCK: And you in yours, Commander Thelin.
Thelin outright indicates that Spock would overwrite him in Yesteryear. Spock's "And you in yours" to Thelin may not necessarily be Spock's belief in parallel timelines, but just a polite return phrase to Thelin's "Live long and prosper in your world."
The Guardian of Forever very clearly overwrites timelines. But Spock traveled to the Kelvin timeline using a different method. Spock is one of the foremost science minds in the Federation. If he felt his timeline was overwritten in the 2009 movie, he would have surely known of it and mentioned it. That he didn't is strong circumstantial evidence that the Prime timeline is not erased.
Well, that's one way to read that scene, I interpreted it as Thelin reffering to Spock taking his place in Spock's timeline. I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if someone would go back in time and take my place in history, even if it's just in an alternate timeline. It's just kind of strange.
I really see no evidence for that. FWIW there's a (obviously non-canon) novel called The Chimes at Midnight (published in Echoes and Refractions) that follows up on the Therin-timeline, although you could argue that since the series is called Myriad Universes it actually just showed an alternate universe and not the timeline from "Yesteryear".
That's a good point, but that doesn't change the fact that there is neither evidence nor reason for one way of time travel to create alternate timelines and for another to overwrite the timeline. Plus, overwriting always creates a paradox, which tends to be problematic.
Imagine the mess episodes like "Cause and Effect" and "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" would cause if each time travel split off an alternate reality.
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