I have an alternate universe episode planned for my own series. I like the 'what if' nature of alternate realities. What really brings them into my heart is when they play with the events we already know, like making a historical reference to Admiral Kirk or Ambassador Spock. Only, those have been done so regularly as to almost be expected.
The Wrath of Khan, may be a great example. When Chekov read the name of the planet and realized what that meant, the whole audience of avid Trek fans were transported back to the original episode. Even though the movie wasn't about time travel, it kind of was. Khan, in stasis for a hundred years, the Enterprise returns to meet a past that catches up with it; these are the same elements of alternate reality stories.
I would say the one thing that could have improved episode
Mirror Mirror, for example, would have been deeper references to an event or events in the main story line, either one that viewers already were familiar with, or one that would soon pop up in the next few episodes. Maybe some plan to assassinate a young officer who witnessed the alternate captain's ruthlessness and was trying to extort the captain for advancement in rank and other favors, could have resulted in the parallel officer in the original universe, having an accident and dying on an away mission. Same event, different cause. Parallel movement of the universes are maintained.
With my own series, I wish to explore an alternate reality where Khan hadn't been forced to flee Earth, and instead, the Singh Dynasty has lasted for a two hundred years. Khan, himself is long gone, but the brutal and empirical dynasty rules, until my crew find themselves in the middle of a war between Earth, ruled by Khan's great great great great... grandson, and Vulcan, Romulus, and Andor, as allies against Earth and Klingon. The UFP springs up as the United Beta Allies (of something like that), against Earth on one front and Klingon on another.
Great material to explore. What about Kirk's Enterprise? What about Spock? What would their roles be in such a universe? Certainly not old friends from their academy years. Two great captain's that meet across battle lines?
I have another time travel episode planned where one of the crew becomes the ancient ancestor of another of the crew. Who is to say that changed a thing, or that had been the case all along. Destiny is either immutable and time travel or parallel realities can be crossed such that their actions were pre-destined, or we play with the mess of unforeseeable mucking-things-up by being where and when we were never meant to go.
in both cases, answers are the results.
what if we didn't know time travel technology until one of our descendents comes back and gives it to us, or we invent time travel and go back into the past to change it such that we didn't invent time travel? Maybe, once the future invention of time travel has been thwarted, our time travelers become stuck in the past with no technology to return to their timerline. Thus, they are forced to develop time travel even sooner than it had been invented before.
Endless possibilities.
-Will
