That wasn't quite where I was going with that. My phrasing was clumsy. My point was that if the base timeline includes time travel - Yar always went back - then the rift was always there in both times. It may not have been open all the time, but it always existed at its proper times And if the base timeline didn't have such travel, then it doesn't matter whether the hole was created at the future end or the past end; it appears in both eras at once, and you've got your new timeline right there.
In your example, it doesn't matter if it was the 1701-C or the 1701-D that created the rift that brought the 1701-C forward. From either end of the rift you have an opportunity to change the timeline. As it happens, it was the 1701-C that went through. If the 1701-D had gone through, we get a very different episode.
The only difference is that if you're going forward, it isn't obvious to you that you've changed the timeline, since you haven't changed the timeline for yourself. But everyone later than you can be changed.
Nope. The rift is not there, the first time around if it was created in the future. At the moment of the rift forming, there is still no rift, there's no path to the past; it only exists, and not before, once it's actually formed.
You can imagine this as time travel without a rift (slingshot around a star). Was the ship that went around a star to appear in the past always in the past? Of course not. It only arrives in the past once it's traveled to it. Before that, it was never there. (Of course, you can really speak of this if you have an outside meta-view. If you're someone inside the timeline you wouldn't know, (hence a changed time line).)
The rift is essentially the same thing; something that time travels without the use of a portal/rift/wormhole. It's essentially that ship slingshotting around a star; but instead of an object reaching the past, it creates a bridge between the past and future.
So you have two possibilities:
1. The rift originates in the future, the following sequence of events happens: Enterprise-C gets destroyed, we have peace. Rift opens. Enterprise-C goes to the future and is not destroyed. Time changes, there is now war. Enterprise-C goes back to the past carrying Tasha Yar. She survives the destruction, gets captured, and we are now in a third time line that is the same on the Federation and Klingon side of the equation.
2. The rift originates in the past, the following sequence of events happens: Enterprise-C enters the rift and arrives in a war-torn future. Enterprise-C takes Yar on board. Enterprise-C returns, gets destroyed defending a Klingon outpost. We are now in a timeline that has peace between the Klingons and the Federation.
Likewise, in this new film, we see on the screen that Ambassador Spock and his original timeline STILL CONTINUE TO EXIST AFTER NERO WENT BACK through the black hole.
Which is the PROBLEM, this is completely DIFFERENT from all the time travel we've seen before. The only way this happens is if Spock and Nero did not go back in time at all, but that went over to another reality from the get go and went back in time of that reality.
Huh? This is exactly what we saw in "First Contact." Nero/the Borg go back in time, and blow the timeline up, but somehow Enterprise-E/Spock aren't altered by this and are able to continue on into the past. The only difference is that Ent-E gets back in time to restore the original timeline, or at least a very close version of it, but by the time Spock gets back, his timeline is hopelessly trashed.
No, that did not happen. The E-E did NOT go into another reality, it stayed in ITS reality. The timeline of that reality however was CHANGED. You could see this, because the Earth actually turned into a Borg world in their very future before they even moved through any displacement event. The timeline they were in before they entered the wake, is GONE, finito, finished, done, over, no longer present.
Star Trek XI wants us to believe, that the timeline did NOT get changed at all. The timeline they came from still exists, fully, just in another reality; that upon time traveling a new reality was simply split off. This is entirely different from FC and all other time travel stories in Star Trek up until the new movie.
Also - -to satisfy proof that Star Trek has already demonstrated inconsistent effects of time travel:
"Time Squared" and "Cause and Effect"
In both cases, Enterprise was caught in a time loop. The only difference between both of these episodes is that in Time Squared, Picard managed to break the loop on the first cycle, but had things went as they did the first time, it was established that there would be a time loop for Picard.
In Time Squared, Picard phasers Future Picard. Once the loop is broken, Future Picard's corpse *vanishes*.
In Cause and Effect, on the second to last loop, Data sends a message into the next loop to warn himself that Riker's idea to decompress the shuttle bay will break them out of the loop.
When the loop breaks, Data still remembers the message that was sent from the other iteration of the loop.
Hell, both of these episodes combined present us with THREE inconsistent outcomes of time travel:
1. Time Squared: Corpse from previous loop vanishes, Cause and Effect: Data's memory of a message from the previous loop does not vanish.
2. Everyone remembers the previous loops in Cause and Effect.
3. In Time Squared, Future Picard's brain is all whacked out because, it is clearly stated in the episode, as a result of him being "out of his own time." No where else, in the entirety of Star Trek, is this effect observed, but it is clearly stated, in this episode, that this is what happens.
So don't try saying time travel mechanics have been consistent in Star Trek, because that's a load of targ excrement.
Nope, they are not inconsistent, because they are two entirely different things. But close enough in nature that it actually explains number 3. First off, notice that different does not equal inconsistent. I can jump and land smoothly, I can jump and stumble - two different things, but not inconsistent. Similarly I can walk somewhere, or I can take a train. Two different things, but not inconsistent.
I. Time Squared: In Time Squared, Picard, and Picard alone, is actually traveling through time. His shuttle leaves the enterprise, gets thrown back in time by the anomaly, gets on the enterprise, and the whole thing happens again. The Enterprise itself however, is not in a timeloop. To Riker and co. and "our" Picard, the whole thing happens only once.
2. Cause and Effect; in Cause and Effect something entirely different is happening. In Cause and Effect, as cause of something we don't know, the space-time continuum has cordoned off a section stuck in a loop. Enterprise and Bozeman blow up, time in that cordoned off section resets, rince and repeat. Until they don't blow up, and the time loop and cordoned off section collapses. When they are free, that outside the loop, time has continued onward and its several months (IIRC) later.
However, although number 2 is a different event (but not inconsistent as I explained above), it is similar enough to number 1 to show the mind thing does happen in all such cases. As the crew of the Enterprise keep redoing the same things in C&E over and over again, small little imprints remain. It seems the human brain (and logically so) has parts of it subspace or another higher dimension. If such a dimension like subspace exists that is directly connected to the 3 dimensions we're most familiar with, then our minds must equally be tied to it through the same laws of physics that govern all subspace events. This allows us to pierce the veil of time (and as Star Trek has shown us directly or indirectly a lot of other magnificent abilities we either already have or might evolve to have.)
Apply this to Future Picard of Number 1; and you'd get the same thing. The thing is though; he wouldn't have had to have done the time loop once, but many, many, many times. His mind would similarly start to notice something wrong about constantly repeating the same time; with people around him who refuse to listen and seeing the Enterprise destroyed over and over, the combination of psychological pressure and his mind's instinctive knowledge of time being all wrong; would have finally broke him down, reducing him to his coma state.
So no, not inconsistent. Different, but not inconsistent.
Any protection to a timeline that a black hole gives would be limited to its influence on space-time. In other words; only where the black hole has warped space-time to the point where it can't simply change as there's no way to escape its grasp would there be any protection from time travel. Further away from the black hole things would simply change. Much like the vortex and its temporal wake in FC. Inside the wake you'd be protected, beyond it, time changes.
The difference is, that the future that Janeway came from, is GONE. GONE, finished, finito, it no longer exists. Janeway goes back into her own time, and CHANGES her own timeline. Trek XI tells us, that upon going back in time, it did not change the timeline, a new reality simply split apart from the original timeline, which continues onward uninterrupted. These are completely different.
You just made two contradictory statements in two subsequent posts. You are saying that the timeline was changed in "Star Trek XI," and that Spock was protected from the changes by the black hole's gravity, but then in your very next post you are getting upset that two different timelines exist.
:sighs:
Nope, not all. Do keep up with the posts, friend. The first posts of mine, was SPECULATION in ANSWER TO A QUESTION whether or not a Black Hole could have protected THE ENTIRE TIMELINE, the ENTIRE UNIVERSE from the time travel. The answer to that question was: no. It COULD have, it MAY have protected a few people/ships in its direct sphere of influence, but beyond that it would not have.
Going into the Nexus is NOT going back in time. They went into the Nexus, and NOT back in time. The timeline happily continues onward, because there was no time travel to be had. Picard is simply in the Nexus, and the Nexus is still moving onward. There isn't any time travel, until Picard and Kirk get out of the Nexus at an earlier point in time. And from that moment onward, time is changed, the original is erased.
No, it was specifically stated in "Star Trek Generations" that the Nexus was timeless. Time didn't pass within it. In the few seconds that Guinan was trapped in the Nexus before Scotty beamed her out to the Enterprise-B, she was able to find Picard and have a long, detailed discussion about time travel. Clearly, we can't infer anything about the passage of time outside the Nexus by anything the characters experienced inside the Nexus.
So it doesn't matter whether Picard was in the Nexus for four seconds or four thousand years. No time passed for him after he entered the Nexus. There was no delay between when he entered and when he left. So the scenes showing the destruction of the Enterprise-D AFTER he entered the Nexus really did happen. The camera angle changed to Picard's point-of-view to move the story along, not because that timeline ceased to exist exactly 90 seconds after he entered the Nexus.
Wrong. Guinan was just an echo. Time obviously passses in the Nexus. If it was actually timeless, Guinan and Picard could not talk at all. They would simply be frozen in the moment of them entering.
The Nexus is only "timeless" in a sense that it is connected to all times, and you can go to all times, NOT that no time passes at all.
And in "Time Squared" Picard arrived in the past to meet himself just like the others. Whether or not you continue on in the new timeline, because you went there - has nothing to do with whether the timeline changes, or whether you go into a new reality while the old one continues to exist.
What? ... What?
How is Picard fading out of existence after changing history consistent with Lt. Yar living many years and having a daughter after changing history?
That, to me, is the single biggest hole in your "consistency" argument. Clearly these episodes were written by different people -- one who thought that changing your own past will erase yourself (like "Back to the Future"), while the other thought that after changing your own past, you simply continue to exist in the new timeline, and don't fade away.
"Yesterday's Enterprise" is more consistent with "Star Trek XI" than it is with "Time Squared."
"Time Squared" is more consistent with "Back to the Future" than it is with any other "Star Trek" episode.
When the Future Picard faded away, he was also INSIDE a temporal anomaly instead of simply out and about in the universe.
