Will the original timeline ever be restored?
- Thread starter los2188
- Start date
I couldn't agree with you more. The prime timeline is still active and it's still there. I've never had any doubt about that. My only thought was maybe somewhere down the line the JJ-verse would somehow meet or stumble back to the prime timeline at some point, but not necessarily becoming one with that timeline.
Aw...touche my friend...Enterprise to Nemesis....very observant Admiral.
What would be kind of neat is if the Abramsverse played out until 2387, but somehow nuSpock succeeded where primeSpock failed, and saved the planet -- thereby preventing the entire chain of events that triggered the alternate timeline. What would they call that in the Temporal Investigations novels? Realignment?
It doesn't work that way. The events that triggered the alternate timeline are not in the Abramsverse, they're in the parallel Prime universe. Preventing Romulus's destruction in the Abrams timeline would not prevent it in the Prime timeline, any more than, say, killing Odo in the Mirror Universe caused him to die in the Prime timeline.
There's no real distinction between those. You can't "alter" a timeline without creating a parallel. By definition, two different versions of a single moment in time exist simultaneously. A single moment can't come before or after itself. It may look that way to the time traveller, but only because the traveller has looped back over the same moment, like rewinding a video. To the rest of the universe, the two different versions of the moment are happening side by side at the same time. So any altered timeline is a parallel timeline. There's no way it could be anything else. (What I posited in my DTI novels is that the nonsensical fictional conceit of a timeline being "overwritten" by its altered state is actually the result of two parallel versions of history merging back into one at the point of the original time travel. But they still existed side by side for the entire duration between the moment of the change and the moment the traveller went back.)
The writers of the 2009 movie were informed by real theoretical physics, which says that time doesn't get "rewritten," that alternate versions of events run in parallel. In their view, all timelines coexist rather than replacing each other, and any previous Trek stories that suggested otherwise were either misinterpreted or simply erroneous. Roberto Orci has only said this in about a hundred interviews over the past four years. Their whole purpose in creating this parallel was to give themselves a version of the Trek universe where the future was unwritten and they could do whatever they wanted, yet still leave the original continuity intact and unchanged. So both from a dramatic standpoint and a scientific standpoint, hell yes, the idea is that they exist side by side. We've known that for years now.
The writers of the 2009 movie were informed by real theoretical physics, which says that time doesn't get "rewritten," that alternate versions of events run in parallel. In their view, all timelines coexist rather than replacing each other, and any previous Trek stories that suggested otherwise were either misinterpreted or simply erroneous. Roberto Orci has only said this in about a hundred interviews over the past four years. Their whole purpose in creating this parallel was to give themselves a version of the Trek universe where the future was unwritten and they could do whatever they wanted, yet still leave the original continuity intact and unchanged. So both from a dramatic standpoint and a scientific standpoint, hell yes, the idea is that they exist side by side. We've known that for years now.
Christopher quite literally wrote the book on Star Trek time travel.
Before "Star Trek (2009)" came out, Orci & Kurtzman told fans to "think 'Parallels'", the TNG episode.
Nero went into the black hole before Spock. According to single timeline "theory", Spock's entire reality should have altered the moment Nero went back in time, most likely preventing him from even being there to follow Nero into the black hole.
For all we know, after the events of Star Trek XI, agents Lucsly and Dulmur, Crewman Daniels, and Captain Braxton got together at the bar for a drink to celebrate that their work was finally done and the true timeline had been restored
In fact, judging by the threads here over the last three years, it would seem to me that it's the die hard Star Trek fans that have been with the franchise forever that can't handle two continuities, what with people thinking that a fictional storyline no longer exists and all (boggle).
You can't generalize about fans. I'm a die-hard Star Trek fan who's been with the franchise since 1974, and I have no problem with there being two continuities. It's not all die-hard fans who have a problem with it, just that minority who are uncomfortable with novelty -- and who have fundamentally missed that the spirit of Star Trek is about embracing and celebrating the new, not hating and rejecting it.
If the Borg know everything that Christopher knows... it's time to throw that book away.
He hasn't been assimilated. Yet. Unless the "L" in Christopher L Bennett stands for Locutus.
I really must take myself to task in my title of this thread. I erroneously and ignorantly titled the thread "will the original timeline be restored", which was a bad choice of words with the "restored" part. The gist of what I was trying to ask is will this Trek at any point down the road either merge or go in to the prime timeline, or will it play itself out again at some point....I guess in a "time's arrow" sort of way. I apologize for my poor choice of words. I am not one of the one's who subscribes to the "original timeline is destroyed" argument. I do know that both timelines are running parallel and I for one have no problem with this. I see this JJ-verse as a much wilder and a little more dangerous, especially not having Vulcans there to "advise" as per Star Trek Enterprise. I'm all for it. One thing I will say...I think the Batman parallels and such are a little different. I think it's safe to say that Star Trek is more of a possible real future to come instead of Batman, although I love Batman and Robin. Yes, I said it...Robin. He's always been my favourite since I was a kid. 
Really, I think the best way to "merge" timelines in a new installment of Trek would be to set it so far in the future that it really doesn't matter which timeline you're following. It could be the Prime Universe, it could be the Abramsverse, but events are so distant that you can't even tell. Set it in the 26th Century and avoid references to Vulcan and you're pretty much good to go! You can re-invent the entire Alpha Quadrant without anybody noticing, much like TNG did being set 100 years after TOS.
I don't see that happening. The point of this new Star Trek movie series is to reboot the franchise for a new generation of fans, to reinvent and revitalize a series whose prior incarnation had declined in popularity. The first movie included elements of the old continuity for the sake of passing the torch, in the same way that Generations had elements of the TOS films, "Emissary" guest-starred Picard, and so on. But the torch has been passed now and it's time to move forward with the new continuity as its own entity. Now that it's been reinvented, there's no sense in un-reinventing it and reverting to the old.
Yea, if there's a profitable market and a desire to do something in the Prime Universe, all they need to do, is simply do it, no need to try and make Abrams Trek mold into it. If the desire/market is for Abrams Trek, there is no reason to bend it back to Prime Universe, specifically, just do what you want, as long as it doesn't conflict with Abrams Trek that has already been produced. And if the desire/market is for another new continuity, just ignore both Prime and Abrams Universes
Really, the people concerned with Star Trek as a profit-making franchise, and most of the audience members concerned with it as a piece of entertainment, don't care much about continuity one way or the other. Nobody insisted that the Batman or Avengers movies had to be slavishly accurate to the comics' continuity, or that the animated Transformers series from Kurtzman & Orci be in the same continuity as the Transformers movies they co-wrote. They just want to see more adventures of the characters they like set in some version of the universe they like. What matters is that people keep making new Star Trek and audiences keep liking it. The important thing is to tell engaging stories about interesting characters and get talented people to play the roles and write and produce the stories. What continuity they're in, how they fit in with each other, that's incidental.
Similar threads
