Which time travel method makes the most sense from a scientific perspe

[The Wormhole]

Re: Which time travel method makes the most sense from a scientific pe

But if you ask me the only real way to travel through time is the use of the Temporal Transporter like they used on the Time Ship in the 29th Century, Seemed to be the easiest way to travel through time.

Unfortuantely, it was unhealthy and caused damage to the body.

 

[Tyjos Azari]

Re: Which time travel method makes the most sense from a scientific pe

yeah if you transported several times I think...Temporal Psychosis I think is what they called it? That Captain Braxton [the future braxton was suffering from when he was talking to his future self if I recall....}

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: Which time travel method makes the most sense from a scientific pe

This is one of the several reasons why I hate "City on the Edge of Forever," it introduced the a paradigm of time travel that makes no sense, and gave us nonsense about "protecting timelines."

I'd argue, that this time travel logic, however, provides the most promising opportuity to create drama and tension. What are the obstacles, when there's no original timeline to be protected? From a storytelling point of view it's not very exciting when everything will either eventually turn out as it always turned out or it doesn't matter how everything turns out, because it is an alternate timeline anyway.

That is an arguable point. The restoration of timelines has potential for making good stories (Back to the Future, for example). But "Yesterday's Enterprise," as a Trek example, would work even without resetting the timeline. The alternate versions of our heroes' sacrifice is exactly the same in either case.

I disagree, at least when it comes to "bad" timelines. I wouldn't want to live in an alternate Earth where Hitler won the World War 2 if I lived in the Trek universe. Sure, there would be alternate universes that would be almost identical to the one I used to live in, but I couldn't go to them without some kind of anomaly/transporter accident/whatever. Saying that protecting timelines makes no sense is like saying we shouldn't cure diseases because everyone is going to die eventually anyway.

I wouldn't want to live on Planet Hitler either, but that's not my point. Protecting timelines isn't like fighting diseases, it's like burning the witches you think caused them.

Leaving aside the conservation violations from being able to, apparently, change the world line of every particle in the light cone of ground zero of the time travel (and destroying the prior configuration), let's assume it's the correct paradigm for time travel. It's rife with other problems. Most obvious is the constant need to figure out how to keep the heroes from being affected by the "time wave" or whatever through applied bullshit. So the Borg temporal flux protects the Enterprise and the Enterprise continues to exist. So Marty McFly doesn't just vanish (thus undoing the harm he has caused), he fades out of existence even as he remembers everything about the future.

And even then, fixing timelines doesn't make sense, because you can't fix a timeline. At all. Just one person showing up in the past and interacting on any human level would radically change things far enough down the line. For example, remember that it is extraordinarily unlikely that any given human is conceived; it requires a very constrained set of circumstances for a specific person to be born. Say the September 11th were actually perpetrated by time travelers; you go back in time and succeed in stopping them by shooting down the planes (not a pretty win, but maybe it's the only option). You've not just saved the two thousand or so in the Twin Towers--you've changed the genetic code of the millions born in the last decade, because their parents' sexual word lines were skewed by moments or centimeters.

Far enough down the line, and the 300 years between most Trek temporal escapades and their present, is more than enough time for much of the world to be affected by an event which, in the large scale, occurred exactly as "history said," but which, on the small scale--the scale that determines the identity of people and ultimately the society they build--it is just as messed up as when you arrived.

Interestingly, in the best Trek time travel story, they didn't give a crap. Give the savages transparent aluminium!

Obviously, it doesn't open the door to not caring about time-traveling despots going around setting up future-tech empires and making slaves of the past, like your Kangs and Ramas Tut (shhh), or your Borg. You don't need to "SAVE THE FUTURE!!" to have a reason to go back and stop the Borg from assimilating people! That's already a good goal!

Edit: Now if only I could go back in time and save my pizza that I burnt while I was writing this claptrap.