Watching Star Trek Xl RIGHT now! The only Trek?

[Denny_Crane]

And again I am faced with this age old question. Why is this movie not considered the primary timeline? There is nothing in this movie that suggests that this is an alternate universe. They all say that their lives have been changed forever. Spock knows that Nero is from the future. He figures it out. When Uhura says an "alternate reality" she is referencing what Nero will now know, NOT that the CREW was is in an alternate reality.

I thought TNG series was great, but it is what it is. I just want to see Picard again!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Firstly because the writer say so.

Secondly because the characters say so.

Thirdly because the events in the movie are different.

 

[UFO]

And again I am faced with this age old question. Why is this movie not considered the primary timeline?

Oh yes, the age-old question that will confound philosophers when the pyramids are dust!

If only they could have at least sat down around a small conference table and explained things properly, history would have been so different. You know, the one with that triangular computer screen. What ever happened to that?

Small conference tables good, BIG conference tables evil!

 

[-Brett-]

And again I am faced with this age old question. Why is this movie not considered the primary timeline? There is nothing in this movie that suggests that this is an alternate universe.

Errrrr, Vulcan?

 

[Denny_Crane]

Firstly because the writer say so.

Secondly because the characters say so.

Thirdly because the events in the movie are different.

With canon, writers intent does not matter if the fiction contradicts the intent.

But this is where I am confused. Everyone always says it is what the characters said, but they never actually say that. The ONLY time "alternate reality" is mentioned is when Uhura says it, and that is in relation to Nero, that he is faced with an alternate reality to what he has known, which is why he won't know the "future." Every other comment relates to a changed timeline.

As far as the events, well, that seems to be due to some bad research? But that happens (more than it should though, that is for sure)

 

[MvRojo]

Firstly because the writer say so.

Secondly because the characters say so.

Thirdly because the events in the movie are different.

With canon, writers intent does not matter if the fiction contradicts the intent.

But this is where I am confused. Everyone always says it is what the characters said, but they never actually say that. The ONLY time "alternate reality" is mentioned is when Uhura says it, and that is in relation to Nero, that he is faced with an alternate reality to what he has known, which is why he won't know the "future." Every other comment relates to a changed timeline.

As far as the events, well, that seems to be due to some bad research? But that happens (more than it should though, that is for sure)

Spock: "Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the U.S.S. Kelvin, culminating in the events of today -- thereby creating a new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party...Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted... our destinies have changed."

I guess if you want to read that as being still in the original timeline, then a lot of things after that will be wiped out and be different, including pretty much everything dealing with Vulcan.

If you're happier reading it that way, go ahead. No one is stopping you. I don't see how the "fiction contradicts the intent," but I'm going to continuing treating this as an alternate reality. We've seen Trek treat time travel in both ways anyway.

 

[Cadet49]

Firstly because the writer say so.

Secondly because the characters say so.

Thirdly because the events in the movie are different.

With canon, writers intent does not matter if the fiction contradicts the intent.

But this is where I am confused. Everyone always says it is what the characters said, but they never actually say that. The ONLY time "alternate reality" is mentioned is when Uhura says it, and that is in relation to Nero, that he is faced with an alternate reality to what he has known, which is why he won't know the "future." Every other comment relates to a changed timeline.

As far as the events, well, that seems to be due to some bad research? But that happens (more than it should though, that is for sure)

Spock: "Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the U.S.S. Kelvin, culminating in the events of today -- thereby creating a new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party...Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted... our destinies have changed."

I guess if you want to read that as being still in the original timeline, then a lot of things after that will be wiped out and be different, including pretty much everything dealing with Vulcan.

If you're happier reading it that way, go ahead. No one is stopping you. I don't see how the "fiction contradicts the intent," but I'm going to continuing treating this as an alternate reality. We've seen Trek treat time travel in both ways anyway.

I hate to say it, but I agree that the line made it sound like the original timeline has been changed. Even Kirk says to Spock after the mind meld, "By coming back in time, you changed all our lives." Ir sounds more like the authors only came up with this parallel universe idea after audience members got mad at the idea that Nero's actions would "delete" much of Trek history - the script sounds like they were intending for the reality to be disrupted, in my opinion.

... then again, if history had been changed, Spock Prime wouldn't remember Kirk's alternate history ("Where you come from, did I know my father?" "Yes."), since that history would have never happened in his reality, and Nero would not remember that "James T. Kirk was considered a great man.", so that indicates this is a parallel universe.

 

[EnsignRicky]

All I know is for what they are, I enjoy Marvel's What If?, DC's Elseworlds, Star Wars Infinities and Star Trek XI.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I interpret Uhura's "an alternate reality" line to mean it's "alternate" simply because it's not what was "supposed to happen" (i.e. TOS).

If TOS is still "out there" in the multiverse somewhere than so is Old Janeway's universe from "Endgame", the Borgified Earth from "First Contact", the alternate WWII from "Storm Front", the Enterprise-J from "Azati Prime", the universe where Thelin is the Enterprise science officer ("Yesteryear"), the timeline where the Xindi destroyed Earth, the timeline where Edith Keeler lived, the one where the Whale Probe was never stopped, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" universe where the Federation is falling to the Klingon Empire...and so forth. It breaks every prior time travel story, but the possibilities are endless.

Damn, they need to do a Star Trek version of Sliders!

 

[Smellincoffee]

I interpret Uhura's "an alternate reality" line to mean it's "alternate" simply because it's not what was "supposed to happen" (i.e. TOS).

If TOS is still "out there" in the multiverse somewhere than so is Old Janeway's universe from "Endgame", the Borgified Earth from "First Contact", the alternate WWII from "Storm Front", the Enterprise-J from "Azati Prime", the universe where Thelin is the Enterprise science officer ("Yesteryear"), the timeline where the Xindi destroyed Earth, the timeline where Edith Keeler lived, the one where the Whale Probe was never stopped, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" universe where the Federation is falling to the Klingon Empire...and so forth. It breaks every prior time travel story, but the possibilities are endless.

Damn, they need to do a Star Trek version of Sliders!

Maybe the way people go back in time and do things is linked to timelines being "restored" and alternate timelines being "created"?

In the Millennium books, the Starfleet crew needed to go back in time, but they COULDN'T just create an alternate timeline: they needed to restore the "real" one, because the big event they were trying to avoid would destroy all universes, not just theirs. They had to try their mission in specific ways to make that happen.

 

[Denny_Crane]

I hate to say it, but I agree that the line made it sound like the original timeline has been changed. Even Kirk says to Spock after the mind meld, "By coming back in time, you changed all our lives." Ir sounds more like the authors only came up with this parallel universe idea after audience members got mad at the idea that Nero's actions would "delete" much of Trek history - the script sounds like they were intending for the reality to be disrupted, in my opinion.

... then again, if history had been changed, Spock Prime wouldn't remember Kirk's alternate history ("Where you come from, did I know my father?" "Yes."), since that history would have never happened in his reality, and Nero would not remember that "James T. Kirk was considered a great man.", so that indicates this is a parallel universe.

Well, since they are the time travelers, Spock and Nero's crew will remember things before time changed. That seems to be how it is universally treated in Sci Fi, from the very fantastical (Back to the Future) to the more serious attempts (Timecop).

The reason intent does not matter is because a writer can intend to do many things, but often a screenplay is altered by the director, during editing and so on, so it is solely what ends up on the big screen that matters and is thus considered canon.

 

[MvRojo]

I interpret Uhura's "an alternate reality" line to mean it's "alternate" simply because it's not what was "supposed to happen" (i.e. TOS).

If TOS is still "out there" in the multiverse somewhere than so is Old Janeway's universe from "Endgame", the Borgified Earth from "First Contact", the alternate WWII from "Storm Front", the Enterprise-J from "Azati Prime", the universe where Thelin is the Enterprise science officer ("Yesteryear"), the timeline where the Xindi destroyed Earth, the timeline where Edith Keeler lived, the one where the Whale Probe was never stopped, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" universe where the Federation is falling to the Klingon Empire...and so forth. It breaks every prior time travel story, but the possibilities are endless.

Damn, they need to do a Star Trek version of Sliders!

They probably do all exist, and were just the few of the millions of alternate realities that ruptured into the Prime timeline in "Parallels."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

When Uhura says an "alternate reality" she is referencing what Nero will now know, NOT that the CREW was is in an alternate reality.

Her lines were vague enough that we can decide for ourselves what she meant. What I got out of it: the writers want to change the rules of the game that they can do stories without worrying what happened in any of the previous TV shows or movies, but not change things so much that it's not Star Trek anymore. Since that's really the only way we can move forward with Star Trek in the future and have it be financially successful enough to be an ongoing project, I'm fine with the alternate reality thing.

... then again, if history had been changed, Spock Prime wouldn't remember Kirk's alternate history ("Where you come from, did I know my father?" "Yes."), since that history would have never happened in his reality, and Nero would not remember that "James T. Kirk was considered a great man.", so that indicates this is a parallel universe.

Yep. But Star Trek's time travel has never made a huge amount of sense.

I interpret Uhura's "an alternate reality" line to mean it's "alternate" simply because it's not what was "supposed to happen" (i.e. TOS).

I find it bizarre that she would regard her own reality as alternate to anything. Why wouldn't she say Spock's reality was the alternate? That's why I got the strong sense that the writers were talking to the audience through Uhura at that point.

If TOS is still "out there" in the multiverse somewhere than so is Old Janeway's universe from "Endgame", the Borgified Earth from "First Contact", the alternate WWII from "Storm Front", the Enterprise-J from "Azati Prime", the universe where Thelin is the Enterprise science officer ("Yesteryear"), the timeline where the Xindi destroyed Earth, the timeline where Edith Keeler lived, the one where the Whale Probe was never stopped, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" universe where the Federation is falling to the Klingon Empire...and so forth. It breaks every prior time travel story, but the possibilities are endless.

Those might have been "real" time travel, w/n the same universe, rather than travel between universes. Everyone accepts that the Mirror Universe is still out there and that traveling to and from it doesn't obliterate it. Trek XI is the same idea.

 

[Denny_Crane]

Yep. But Star Trek's time travel has never made a huge amount of sense.

In Star Trek, like other Sci Fi, the "time travelers" memories are not changed. They remember the events. As soon as Janeway went back in time, her "future" was changed. However, all the way up to the very end, as the "future" history was changing, she remembers the "future" as it was when she left. You have to look at ALL the stories before and you will see that the time travelers always remember the past as "they" knew it, before they time traveled...

Those might have been "real" time travel, w/n the same universe, rather than travel between universes. Everyone accepts that the Mirror Universe is still out there and that traveling to and from it doesn't obliterate it. Trek XI is the same idea.

Only thing is there is nothing in the movie to indicate that the type of time travel that occurred in Star Trek XI is any different that than the type that happened in TOS, Trek IV, First Contact, Voyager and so on.

With the exception of Uhura's comment, which again I think was directed at Nero and was in response to what Spock had said, every other comment indicated that they had accepted that THEIR lives had been changed. You have to look at the movie as a whole, and as a whole, they portrayed this as a changed within the Prime timeline.

Did the writers want to upset the fan base? Of course not. So they throw in their comments after the movie is made, but that does not negate what actually happened in the movie.

The only "out" here is if you apply the concept of a multiverse to Star Trek, then you have billions of different universes, each one created based on each possible action or lack of action. That said, it seems that the way the Trek mythology is approached in general does not allow for a Multiverse thus we are back to my original point. That everything after Kirk's birth has been erased and replaced with JJ Trek.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yep. But Star Trek's time travel has never made a huge amount of sense.

In Star Trek, like other Sci Fi, the "time travelers" memories are not changed. They remember the events. As soon as Janeway went back in time, her "future" was changed. However, all the way up to the very end, as the "future" history was changing, she remembers the "future" as it was when she left. You have to look at ALL the stories before and you will see that the time travelers always remember the past as "they" knew it, before they time traveled...

That's only one factor in time travel - there are plenty of other elements that have been a mishmash of silliness, starting with how you time travel in the first place. If the "slingshot method" worked once, why don't people do it all the time? How can Temporal Investigations ever hope to police that? Anyone with a spaceship can time travel! How can you ever reset a timeline at all? Isn't that like trying to unscramble an egg? Why doesn't the Grandfather Paradox ever trip them up? And don't get me started on that Future Guy stuff.

Those might have been "real" time travel, w/n the same universe, rather than travel between universes. Everyone accepts that the Mirror Universe is still out there and that traveling to and from it doesn't obliterate it. Trek XI is the same idea.

Only thing is there is nothing in the movie to indicate that the type of time travel that occurred in Star Trek XI is any different that than the type that happened in TOS, Trek IV, First Contact, Voyager and so on.

With the exception of Uhura's comment, which again I think was directed at Nero and was in response to what Spock had said, every other comment indicated that they had accepted that THEIR lives had been changed. You have to look at the movie as a whole, and as a whole, they portrayed this as a changed within the Prime timeline.

Oh okay, their timeline was one way and then after the movie, it was another way. Who cares about that? We didn't know how their timeline was "supposed" to go in the first place and had no emotional investment in how it was supposed to go, so if it goes some other way, that's fine with me. Just as long as it doesn't bore me, it's "right."

None of that addresses the important issue, which is that Trek XI is in a different reality than the other Trek series and movies, regardless of whether the timeline has changed from what it was supposed to be. That this is a new reality is proven by the fact that Spock didn't reset the timeline and un-blow-up Vulcan (which never happens! they always restore their own timeline.)

...in addition to being proven by the obvious fact that this is the writers' intent and the reason they chose to have a zany reality-jumping plotline in the first place. They wanted to reset the playing field so they could have creative freedom while not upsetting the oh-so-easily upset fandom by futzing with the Prime Timeline. There's no way they could have communicated this more definitively than they did, unless the writers had stopped the action, walked in front of the camera, and TOLD the audience what they were doing. Which would have been awesome but a bit of a break in tone.

I think Kurtzman and Orci should do exactly that at this point - re-edit the bridge scene, freeze the action, and superimpose themselves explaining once and for all what Uhura meant. Release it on YouTube and that's that.

Did the writers want to upset the fan base? Of course not. So they throw in their comments after the movie is made, but that does not negate what actually happened in the movie.

Okay let's say in theory that they didn't think things through, as opposed to trying to explain later what they intended all along. As of the next movie, they will continue with the assumption that their characters are in an alternate reality, de-canonizing the previous idea that the characters were ever anyplace else, so this issue will become moot one way or the other.

That said, it seems that the way the Trek mythology is approached in general does not allow for a Multiverse thus we are back to my original point.

Nope. The existence of the Mirror Universe allows for the multiverse theory. If there are two realities, why not two billion? Multiverse theory does not necessarily hold that "actions" create multiple realities - infinite realities might already exist because that's the way the cosmos is, and has nothing to do with anyone's actions. There have been infinite multiple realities since the Big Bang, and we have now seen three of them: Prime U, Mirror U, Abrams U.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The reason Spock didn't fix the timeline was because they wanted to make new Star Trek movies without worrying about continuity. That's the real life reason.

"Reality jumping" was never mentioned or implied in STXI - going back in time was. The alternate universe Uhura mentions is the result of this time travel, not some interdimensional leap.

Even then, Star Trek does not "always" fix disruptions in the time-line. In "Shockwave" a colony world was destroyed. In "The Expanse" seven million humans were murdered. Both times Archer had to deal with a panicky Daniels fretting that history has gone badly wrong. Thus it's Daniels' future that is the "real" timeline (or at least closest to it), not TOS or STXI.

Heck, in "Trials and Tribble-ations" they changed the line-up of officers Kirk was chewing out after the fight at K-7. That went unfixed, too

 

[Amaris]

^ Although quite hilarious.

O'Brien: "Me. Of all the people in the line-up he asks me who threw the first punch."
Doctor Bashir: "You lied to him."
O'Brien: "I lied to Captain Kirk! I wish Keiko could've been here to see it."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The reason Spock didn't fix the timeline was because they wanted to make new Star Trek movies without worrying about continuity. That's the real life reason.

Well yeah, everything else is an excuse leading up to that necessity. They jumped realities (that's my term for it - I never said that they said that per se) because otherwise, the writers would be creatively hamstrung or the fans would explode. Even if the writers didn't think about this in advance, they know about it now, and will continue to follow that narrow, narrow path between a creative straightjacket and fandom in full nuclear meltdown. Visualize a tightrope walker over a moat of hungry sharks and you get the idea.

No timeline distruption of the magnitude of Vulcan's destruction has ever gone unrepaired. Maybe little stuff that nobody ever hears about again/doesn't count, or stuff from ENT, where nothing ever made sense anyway, but the point is, if it does count, it gets repaired.

Heck, in "Trials and Tribble-ations" they changed the line-up of officers Kirk was chewing out after the fight at K-7. That went unfixed, too

I maintain that that always happened!

 

[Nerys Myk]

I bet Kirk wondered "what ever happend to that Irish crewman with the curly hair?".

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And again I am faced with this age old question. Why is this movie not considered the primary timeline?

To try to limit the number and intensity of hissy fits that are thrown about it.

It works just as well logically as a changed primary timeline.