Was it good?
What happens if you beam a person to the exact same space a person already is in?
- Thread starter Shat Happens
- Start date
He is a dark thought. They didn’t beam Christopher and the guard anywhere. Their pre-existing versions prevailed in their respective given time and space and their future selves went…nowhere.
It gets more complicated trying to explain where the pre-existing Enterprise went to. Because in that scenario the future Enterprise prevails over the pre-existing one in its given time and space.
A similar conundrum exists at the end of “The Naked Time.” We’re supposed to assume that when the Enterprise went back in time 71 hours it supplanted the past Enterprise then headed for the planet to pick up the science team and observe the breakup of the planet.
It gets more complicated trying to explain where the pre-existing Enterprise went to. Because in that scenario the future Enterprise prevails over the pre-existing one in its given time and space.
A similar conundrum exists at the end of “The Naked Time.” We’re supposed to assume that when the Enterprise went back in time 71 hours it supplanted the past Enterprise then headed for the planet to pick up the science team and observe the breakup of the planet.
Last edited:
Not too sure of this, they did show some sort of "beaming" effect into each man, so, something happened. Just don't know what?
It's confusing. If the Enterprise goes back before it was built and before the birth of any of crew, then returns at the moment or after its disappearance, then no problem and no two ships at the same time (probably what happens in Tomorrow Is Yesterday).
This is a real problem, if the Enterprise returns before they disappeared, then there are two Enterprises at the same time. If the time travel Enterprise hides and does not alter the flow of time (probably what happens in The Naked Time), then everything is okay once the original Enterprise disappears. If the Enterprise interferes with the original flow of time, i.e. stops the original Enterprise from time traveling in the first place, then what? Do we have two Enterprises and crews forever, or does the time travel Enterprise vanish from time at the moment it changes the flow of time of the original Enterprise? I vote for the second option; it's easier to continue the TV series than following two sets of Enterprises - or maybe, that's what we are doing and we just don't know which Enterprise we are seeing this episode.
60's Time Travel as per Television (TTT)
Tomorrow is Yesterday:
The Enterprise slingshots around the sun, goes back to the time when they first appeared in the late 1960's and doesn't enter the atmosphere. Beams Christopher back and the guard back and they never see the ship or meet the crew. The Enterprise was never there.
(NOTE: this episode makes The Time Tunnel logical by comparison)
If this were made today, they would have created a multiverse. But I hate that shit, so they don't.
The Naked Time:
The Enterprise's engines "implode" and they break the time barrier. They travel back three days and for three days there are two Enterprises. But since they are so far away from PSI2000, nobody notices and they just go back to their schedule. In fact, they may be so far overshot, they used those three days driving. So they got to catch up on some sleep and clean all of the "Sinner Repent" graffiti off the walls.
This episode's time travel makes more sense. Tomorrow is Yesterday's solution would only work if they prevented the earlier Enterprise from entering the atmosphere. Simply travelling back and depositing these guys wouldn't do it. In fact, preventing planetfall would have simply erased "present" Enterprise, Christopher and guard and reset the timeline.
Oy vey. This is why I never try to fix a broken script.
Tomorrow is Yesterday:
The Enterprise slingshots around the sun, goes back to the time when they first appeared in the late 1960's and doesn't enter the atmosphere. Beams Christopher back and the guard back and they never see the ship or meet the crew. The Enterprise was never there.
(NOTE: this episode makes The Time Tunnel logical by comparison)
If this were made today, they would have created a multiverse. But I hate that shit, so they don't.
The Naked Time:
The Enterprise's engines "implode" and they break the time barrier. They travel back three days and for three days there are two Enterprises. But since they are so far away from PSI2000, nobody notices and they just go back to their schedule. In fact, they may be so far overshot, they used those three days driving. So they got to catch up on some sleep and clean all of the "Sinner Repent" graffiti off the walls.
This episode's time travel makes more sense. Tomorrow is Yesterday's solution would only work if they prevented the earlier Enterprise from entering the atmosphere. Simply travelling back and depositing these guys wouldn't do it. In fact, preventing planetfall would have simply erased "present" Enterprise, Christopher and guard and reset the timeline.
Oy vey. This is why I never try to fix a broken script.
We are shown in the course of the series that in this reality, there are multiple, simultaneous realities. To me, that’s the easiest way to explain such paradoxes- a “many worlds interpretation” or some similar multiverse scenario - “MWI views time as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realized”. If time travel is physically possible in the Star Trek reality, and the multiverse is, too, then every eventuality that includes time travel happens and manifests a new reality.
Telefrag
"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is utter nonsense from start to finish, but it had some funny moments. If you accept the paradox solutions to this episode, then it is total fantasy. Time doesn't "happen again."
As for the question in the original post, you must first establish how the transporter works. Good luck with that. The TOS episodes are inconsistent about it, and there are already long debate threads on the subject. Up-thread ZapBrannigan made the simplest reply that the transporter safeties would not permit it.
But let's assume an "instantaneous" displacement—no "we're awake through the whole process" wormhole stuff like "That Which Survives" or Kirk and Saavik having a conversation during beaming in TWOK. I doubt the VFX artists for Back to the Future gave it much thought, but their dramatic transitions suggests a "blast wave" that moves anything out of the way, including atmosphere. (Note the return from 1885 in the third movie: BAM! BAM! BAM! then the Outatime reappears.) Suppose the Trek transporter does something like that? The gentle sparkle and lack of sonic thunderclaps suggests a similar, though gentler "get out of the way" blast wave. Whether that pushes a body out of the way (like a person) or explodes it into fragments depends on that "how does the transporter work" question. If the offending something is too much to be pushed aside, like the security screen around Tantalus penal colony, then the transporter aborts—lending credence to Zap's "safeties" suggestion.
"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is utter nonsense from start to finish, but it had some funny moments. If you accept the paradox solutions to this episode, then it is total fantasy. Time doesn't "happen again."
As for the question in the original post, you must first establish how the transporter works. Good luck with that. The TOS episodes are inconsistent about it, and there are already long debate threads on the subject. Up-thread ZapBrannigan made the simplest reply that the transporter safeties would not permit it.
But let's assume an "instantaneous" displacement—no "we're awake through the whole process" wormhole stuff like "That Which Survives" or Kirk and Saavik having a conversation during beaming in TWOK. I doubt the VFX artists for Back to the Future gave it much thought, but their dramatic transitions suggests a "blast wave" that moves anything out of the way, including atmosphere. (Note the return from 1885 in the third movie: BAM! BAM! BAM! then the Outatime reappears.) Suppose the Trek transporter does something like that? The gentle sparkle and lack of sonic thunderclaps suggests a similar, though gentler "get out of the way" blast wave. Whether that pushes a body out of the way (like a person) or explodes it into fragments depends on that "how does the transporter work" question. If the offending something is too much to be pushed aside, like the security screen around Tantalus penal colony, then the transporter aborts—lending credence to Zap's "safeties" suggestion.
How is the video in any way applicable to what I said? Hossenfelder said nothing about time travel (except that remark about U-turns). All of this was about simultaneity, which many misunderstand as "time slowing down." Clocks might slow down, but not time. "Oh, that twins paradox thing," which many also misunderstand. In Einsteinian Relativity it is just as valid to say the universe zips past the spaceship at high speed as the ship moving at high speed through the universe. Thus, which twin ages slower? That is the true paradox, and also the flaw with every experiment that has attempted to measure the speed of light. But again, that is not "time travel." (Physicists "solved" this problem with circular reasoning, by tying the speed of light to the unit used to measure it.)
And since she brought up Maxwell, maybe you can explain the flaws in Maxwell's electrodynamics:
1. Weber electrodynamics is mathematically consistent. Maxwell's electrodynamics is not.
...
5. Weber's electrodynamics does not have hidden restrictions. Maxwell's electrodynamics has two implicit restrictions: 1) the charge density function must be a constant in time; and 2) the velocity of the test body (the detector) must be zero in the coordinate system chosen.
...
Einstein knew that there was something wrong with Maxwell electrodynamics. ... "It is known that Maxwell's electrodynamics — as usually understood at the present time — when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. ... In this way, we have resolved the discrepancy mentioned by Einstein.
(Follow link to see full argument.)
As for the title of Hossenfelder's video, "Does The Past Still Exist?" perhaps you can tell me how time travel is possible without other time coordinates to go to? As the Time Traveler argued in HG Wells' famous novel, "Can an instantaneous cube exist?"
All of which has nothing to do with the OP of TOS transporters putting two bodies in the same space.
This stuff is why I got to a point where I just prefer they don't do time travel stories any more. There's always something that doesn't make sense or doesn't work the way I think it should or just pisses me off in general.
Oh shit. I remember spending time thinkin about the air molecules inside her lungs exiting her mouth during speech, and at what time the transporter substituted those molecules for the molecules already in the chamber
You wrote “Time doesn’t happen again.” If it exists simultaneously with the present and future, it is constantly “happening again”. It was a jolly little aside pointing out that yeah, maybe the past is not so past, ie it is constantly “happening again”. You ask “perhaps you can tell me how time travel is possible without other time coordinates to go to?” and all I can say is, I am a historian, not a physicist. So I can’t and really don’t know how my preferred model of reality (Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis) deals with time travel. I suppose with dispatch since, you know, simulation. You wrote that anything addressing your claim that the past doesn’t happen again “has nothing to do with the OP of TOS transporters putting two bodies in the same space”. Henoch wrote that “Since time travel is involved during the beaming process, the beam-ees are combined with their past selves”. That is where the discussion merged time travel and the OP observation on beaming. It might not have had anything directly to do with the OP, but it did respond to where the discussion went afterwards.
That scene in TWOK, as well as TNG "Realm of Fear," suggests that people are flung whole through a subspace tunnel during transport. It solves the "kill you and create a new you" problem, but it directly contradicts all the episodes where McCoy describes the process.
McCOY: It's been nearly an hour. Can people live that long as disassembled atoms in a transporter beam?
SPOCK: I have never heard of a study being done, but it would be a fascinating project.
Maybe Kirk and Saavik were disassembled but picked up their conversation once they were sufficiently reassembled but still in the beam.
I've always preferred the idea that you are transported whole like through a Stargate rather than disassembled anyway.
"Damn it Spock, I'm a Doctor, not a transporter technician!"
McCoy: "Agreed. *mumbles* Would you like to be the test payload?"
Spock: "What?"
McCoy: "Mmm. Nothing."
Holy shit, I haven't heard telefrag in decades. Core memory unlocked.
I don't know what happens if you beam them to the same space they're already in, but the space next to that? It would make them mad. They'd be beside themselves.
No time travel story survives scrutiny. Better for one’s blood pressure to simply take the rules of time travel as given by the story (easy enough as time travel isn’t real) and sit back to enjoy the ride (or not).
I think that’s because time travel to the past is impossible.
Time travel to the future, via time dilation, is relatively easy.
Having said that, many of my favorite Star Trek episodes involve time travel.
Similar threads
