Will the original timeline ever be restored?

[Greg Cox]

It would be like the Batman movies going back to the old Tim Burton continuity--or maybe Adam West!

Not necessarily, they could hit a reset button and continue in the prime universe about ten years after the destruction of Romulus, with a new ship (Enterprise or other) and a new crew. A fresh start, if you will ... none of the established characters would HAVE to appear, but they COULD if needed.

But what would be the point? Especially years down the road when the original timeline and continuity will be even older news as far as most of the audience is concerned. How would that attract new viewers? And especially younger viewers for whom the new timeline is the version of STAR TREK they're most familiar with.

If you want a "fresh start," why hit the reset button at all? What's to be gained by doing so?

 

[RandyS]

"Will the original Timeline ever be restored?"

No, because it was never disrupted in the first place. Remember the TNG episode "Parrallels"? The universe that was overwritten was not the one we saw in the old shows. Instead, it was one of the 285,000 alternate realities that also exist.

Which one, I can't say, but that's how I see it.

Shatner and Nimoy, Stewart and Frakes, and all the others still exist in their universe.

 

[Christopher]

^But that wasn't the question (see post #7). The question was whether future Star Trek productions after the Abrams movies would be set in the Abrams timeline, the Prime timeline, or something else, and whether fans would be confused by having more than one timeline.

And I say that if fans of Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, the Transformers, and so on can handle multiple timelines/continuities/interpretations, there's no reason it should be any more "confusing" to Star Trek fans.

 

[los2188]

"Will the original Timeline ever be restored?"

No, because it was never disrupted in the first place. Remember the TNG episode "Parrallels"? The universe that was overwritten was not the one we saw in the old shows. Instead, it was one of the 285,000 alternate realities that also exist.

Which one, I can't say, but that's how I see it.

Shatner and Nimoy, Stewart and Frakes, and all the others still exist in their universe.

Yeah it was a poor choice of words as I stated in an earlier post. The prime timeline still goes on. A better choice of words should be along the lines of will we ever go back to the prime timeline down the road. The original still continues....those are the continuing voyages of the starship Enterprise....I just came up with that line!!! Pretty good, huh?

 

[Set Harth]

"Will the original Timeline ever be restored?"

No, because it was never disrupted in the first place. Remember the TNG episode "Parrallels"? The universe that was overwritten was not the one we saw in the old shows. Instead, it was one of the 285,000 alternate realities that also exist.

Which one, I can't say, but that's how I see it.

Shatner and Nimoy, Stewart and Frakes, and all the others still exist in their universe.

Correct except for the Shatner and Nimoy part.

After 2387 that universe is missing a Nimoy.

And it's been missing a Shatner since Generations ( unless there's a Kirk echo in the Nexus ).

 

[RandyS]

"Will the original Timeline ever be restored?"

No, because it was never disrupted in the first place. Remember the TNG episode "Parrallels"? The universe that was overwritten was not the one we saw in the old shows. Instead, it was one of the 285,000 alternate realities that also exist.

Which one, I can't say, but that's how I see it.

Shatner and Nimoy, Stewart and Frakes, and all the others still exist in their universe.

Correct except for the Shatner and Nimoy part.

After 2387 that universe is missing a Nimoy.

And it's been missing a Shatner since Generations ( unless there's a Kirk echo in the Nexus ).

No, you're missing my point. The universe that Nero changed was one of those alternates that Worf visited. Or didn't, whatever. There are 285,000 realities out there, and the last movie took place in one of those. The universe we saw from 1966-2005 was not part of the storyline.

At least, that's how I choose to interpret it.

 

[RandyS]

^But that wasn't the question (see post #7). The question was whether future Star Trek productions after the Abrams movies would be set in the Abrams timeline, the Prime timeline, or something else, and whether fans would be confused by having more than one timeline.

And I say that if fans of Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, the Transformers, and so on can handle multiple timelines/continuities/interpretations, there's no reason it should be any more "confusing" to Star Trek fans.

I'm not confused at all. I understand just fine. I'm simply saying that the parrallel universes seen in past Star Trek productions offer another way of looking at it.

That's if we want to include Shatner and Pine in the same "universe" at all, which goes along with your point.

 

[Greg Cox]

No, you're missing my point. The universe that Nero changed was one of those alternates that Worf visited. Or didn't, whatever. There are 285,000 realities out there, and the last movie took place in one of those. The universe we saw from 1966-2005 was not part of the storyline.

At least, that's how I choose to interpret it.

But that's not the intent of the movie. It wasn't a story about some weird alternate Spock visiting another alternate Trekverse. The whole point of Nimoy's guest-appearance was for the original Spock, the one we've been watching for the last forty years, to symbolically pass the torch to the new Trek universe. He absolutely was from the 1966-2005 continuity.

Emotionally and dramatically, that was the whole point. Spock Prime was supposed to the "real" Spock, the one from "Amok Time" and "Wrath of Khan," etc. Otherwise, why bother to include another alternate Spock at all?

 

[Christopher]

I don't understand why some people assume that the 285,000 realities glimpsed in "Parallels" represent all the alternate timelines that exist. They only represented that subset of timelines which were connected to the quantum fissure and which contained a Galaxy-class starship Enterprise with a Worf aboard. In fact, Wesley reported detecting over ten million distinct quantum states that the fissure connected to.

And Greg's right. The whole point of including Spock Prime and the time-travel stuff in the first place was to establish that the new timeline was, in its own way, a direct continuation of the Star Trek universe we've known and loved for over four decades. If that hadn't been the intent, if it had been meant to be completely disconnected, then they wouldn't have bothered to bring Leonard Nimoy out of retirement or use time travel as a plot device yet again, and would've just told a more straightforward origin story.

Besides, it's a mistake to assume that parallel timelines are somehow a fundamentally separate phenomenon from altered histories. All timelines branch off as quantum variations in the same way; it's just that sometimes it happens spontaneously and sometimes as the result of time travel (at least in fiction; in reality, a time traveller would be constrained by quantum effects to relive one's own timeline, even if other parallel timelines did exist). But go back far enough and they all branch off from the same original universe.

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

I enjoy reading the TNG era based books. I'd love to see more live-action of this era (probably as TV and not feature film). I enjoy the Star Trek Phase II fan series as well so we are still visiting that quantum reality/alternate timeline/parallel universe. I really wish I could find a good TNG era fan series on par with the Phase II TOS series as far as quality -- none of them have been very good.

I think the powers that be, with all the money at paramount/CBS/whatever, certainly don't leave anything on the table. It's just a matter of what viewers want to see down the road in a couple years, and if they want to visit "that timeline" again, and it looks like they might make money, I'm certain it would be at least considered.

I don't completely buy that it was being tied to continuity that dried up the Prime universe's stories. I think it may have contributed, but I believe it had much more to do with the way the stories were told. Villain of the week/reset button formula, the emphasis on a few characters, no consequences for anything -- honestly a failure to to even have continuity as it dragged on.

The problem with Enterprise I think is that it didn't break any new ground as far as how to tell stories and just wasn't interesting. Being a prequel, I think it may have been more mired in a continuity trap, but I don't even think they tried really. The fourth season was great.

No, because it was never disrupted in the first place. Remember the TNG episode "Parrallels"? The universe that was overwritten was not the one we saw in the old shows. Instead, it was one of the 285,000 alternate realities that also exist.

What makes anyone think we can trust "Prime" Spock's story anyway? He could be from an alternate timeline where he's a loyal Terran Empire soldier in the 24th Century and he intentionally destroyed Romulus.

 

[Set Harth]

Spock Prime was supposed to the "real" Spock, the one from "Amok Time" and "Wrath of Khan," etc.

And ultimately Unification, hence the "Ambassador Spock" reference.

What makes anyone think we can trust "Prime" Spock's story anyway?

Authorial intent.

 

[Greg Cox]

What makes anyone think we can trust "Prime" Spock's story anyway? He could be from an alternate timeline where he's a loyal Terran Empire soldier in the 24th Century and he intentionally destroyed Romulus.

Uh-huh, and maybe "Pike" was actually a Changeling infiltrator from 39th Century and "Uhura" was actually Harry Mudd after an ingenious sex-change. Or maybe the whole movie was actually an episode of "Newhart" in which Bob was having a really elaborate dream.

I think we have to accept the movie on its own terms, and not go off the deep end here . . . .

By that reasoning, how do we know that the "Spock" on TOS was really Spock and not a Romulan imposter?

 

[Christopher]

What makes anyone think we can trust "Prime" Spock's story anyway? He could be from an alternate timeline where he's a loyal Terran Empire soldier in the 24th Century and he intentionally destroyed Romulus.

We can trust the story because Star Trek is fiction and we understand what the filmmakers' reasons were for convincing Leonard Nimoy to appear in their movie, as I discussed above. If he weren't supposed to be our Spock, the same Spock we've been following for 40-odd years, he wouldn't even have been in the film because there would've been no reason to include him.

 

[C.E. Evans]

No, you're missing my point. The universe that Nero changed was one of those alternates that Worf visited. Or didn't, whatever. There are 285,000 realities out there, and the last movie took place in one of those. The universe we saw from 1966-2005 was not part of the storyline.

At least, that's how I choose to interpret it.

But that's not the intent of the movie. It wasn't a story about some weird alternate Spock visiting another alternate Trekverse. The whole point of Nimoy's guest-appearance was for the original Spock, the one we've been watching for the last forty years, to symbolically pass the torch to the new Trek universe. He absolutely was from the 1966-2005 continuity.

Emotionally and dramatically, that was the whole point. Spock Prime was supposed to the "real" Spock, the one from "Amok Time" and "Wrath of Khan," etc. Otherwise, why bother to include another alternate Spock at all?

I think I understand where RandyS is coming from. I don't think he's denying that Spock Prime came from the 1966-2005 continuity, but he may be in the Star Trek XI was already a slightly different continuity even before Nero's arrival camp.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I always thought that we were supposed to believe that everything about the Kelvin's timeline was the exactly same as the Prime timeline, right up to the point when the Narada came through. I also always thought that any visual discrepancies, between Star Trek in 2009 and Star Trek in 1966, were simply a result of the filmmakers re-imagining what the Prime timeline looked like. I got over that within the first two seconds of my first viewing.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think it's vague enough that it could go either way and not really change anything as far as the movie is concerned. Either way, destinies are changed by Nero's arrival.

 

[Greg Cox]

I always thought that we were supposed to believe that everything about the Kelvin's timeline was the exactly same as the Prime timeline, right up to the point when the Narada came through. I also always thought that any visual discrepancies, between Star Trek in 2009 and Star Trek in 1966, were simply a result of the filmmakers re-imagining what the Prime timeline looked like. I got over that within the first two seconds of my first viewing.

Exactly. If we start assuming that every minor inconsistency or change in art direction constitutes proof of an alternate universe, and not just a bit of artistic license, we're way down the rabbit hole.

That bit in "Conscience of the King" where McCoy says the Vulcans were conquered? Alternate universe! Uhura is wearing a yellow uniform instead of her usual red? Alternate universe! Betazoids can't sense Ferengi's emotions anymore? Alternate universe!
Deanna says she never kissed Riker when he had a beard before? Alternate universe! Romulans have heavy prosthetic foreheads? Alternate universe!

That way madness lies.

 

[Set Harth]

There's no way James R. Kirk and James T. Kirk are the same guy.

Alternate universe.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

..Exactly. If we start assuming that every minor inconsistency or change in art direction constitutes proof of an alternate universe, and not just a bit of artistic license, we're way down the rabbit hole...

And that is why I think it would have been much less painful if Abrams and Co. just called their film what it was -- a reboot/reimagining. That would be much easier than the current picking of nits we keep seeing on these boards concerning what exactly should and should not look different due to the Kelvin//Narada incident in 2233.

They should have just called it a reimagining, and be done with the convoluted explanations. It would have made for a much cleaner movie that could be enjoyed for what it is.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

As Greg Cox pointed out, reimagining the details that occupied the Star Trek universe happened all along during the lifetime of TOS. The original run was anything but internally consistent.

Look at the inconsistent models of the Enterprise that were used in the VFX footage, often in the same episode. How is STXI any different, except by degree?

These sorts of differences just aren't that important, especially to the general audience, but also to many fans. Not every fan is obsessed with chasing consistent in-universe explanations for things, to the exclusion of a less convoluted appreciation of the show ultimately as theater.