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Will the original timeline ever be restored?

Yeah, I think we can all agree that the old timeline still "exists" (to the degree that a fictional setting exists). It's just highly unlikely that we'll ever see it onscreen again.

Any new Star Trek shows will either pick up from the modern, post-2009 continuity, or start over again.
 
There's no reason for the timelines to "merge" any more than there's a reason to merge the Batman movies with the comics or animated series. All this stuff about alternate timelines is just a story conceit; on a more fundamental, metatextual level, what's happening is that Paramount and Abrams have sought to reinvent the declining Star Trek franchise for a new audience, to build something new and fresh on the foundations of the original.

Of course, different takes on a fictional franchise can borrow from each other; I'm sure current Batman comics draw on a lot of elements from the Nolan films, and of course comics have adopted lots of characters that originated in other media, like Jimmy Olsen (radio) and Harley Quinn (animation). And Marvel's animated Avengers show is going to be retooled into one that's more like the live-action movie. But it's not actually a merger of the different continuities, just one continuity introducing its own version of elements created for another. The realities remain separate. Because, ultimately, they're separate creative works intended for different, if overlapping, audiences and demographics. From a business and marketing standpoint, and to some degree from a creative standpoint, it's appropriate to keep them separate, because the whole point is to broaden the appeal of the franchise by branching it out into different media for different target audiences. Trying to consolidate the whole thing into a homogeneous mass would be counterproductive.
 
Each iteration in the original timeline had its day.

TPTB have extracted the core of Star Trek from all the other esoterica that the general public regards as geeky, nerdy make-believe, to give the franchise another chance.

The audience who prefers that the original timeline be restored on screen is one whose preferences, if adopted, would send the franchise back into the death spiral of imploding ratings. The other subsets of Star Trek viewers either don't care or prefer to just go forward.

You do the math.
 
The audience who prefers that the original timeline be restored on screen is one whose preferences, if adopted, would send the franchise back into the death spiral of imploding ratings. The other subsets of Star Trek viewers either don't care or prefer to just go forward.
Which is why in a real sense it doesn't matter which timeline Trek is in--that's more a concern of Trekkies than general audiences. Trek's decline had less to do with the timeline and more to do with mainstream interest in Trek having peaked in the mid-90s with TNG (TNG came along at the right time when there had been a lack of sci-fi shows on US TV for awhile). It was a far more crowded sci-fi/fantasy television landscape for DS9, VOY, and ENT and those shows only really caught the attention of the most ardent Trekkers. Various opinions of writing, characterization, and buzzworthiness (or lack therof) of the subsequent spinoffs aside, it could also be said that the various Trek shows splintered Trek's audience with some deciding to follow one series and not another.
 
I'd love to see another movie/series set in the prime universe, just to see what happened after the destruction of Romulus. It wouldn't have to feature any of the old TNG/DS9/VOY cast, or maybe just a few minor characters. But chances of than happening are most likely ZERO ... :(
 
This does bring up the point that I love how selective the 29th century temporal Starfleet is in enforcing and correcting changes to the timeline. You'd think this one would be high up on their list.
 
This does bring up the point that I love how selective the 29th century temporal Starfleet is in enforcing and correcting changes to the timeline. You'd think this one would be high up on their list.

Only if they knew it existed. For all anyone in the Prime Universe knows, Spock and Nero fell into a black hole and were never seen again. They have no way of knowing it split off a new timeline. And the existence of that timeline poses no threat to the Prime Timeline; rather, they coexist side by side, like the Prime and Mirror Universes. So there'd be no reason to try to unmake that timeline even if its existence were known.
 
For that matter, it's been established in the first DTI novel that there are circumstances under which the temporal authorities will specifically allow "problems" to occur.
 
Paramount wont hit the cosmic reset button, it works for stand alone episodes but while they are good they dont add anything to a story. If they did then that would be it and Star Trek would be dead as it would be pointless and as an act of utter rebellion I will contract and only class TAS as the only real Trek! ;)
 
There's definitely two realities in play now, not a strange notion considering that we've know there were at least two all along, the Mirror Universe being the other. So why not three, or three trillion?

My hunch is that the writers do intend for the new timeline to "self repair" it's way back to the original, just based on the dialogue they've written that points in that direction. Will that mean that they've merged, or simply that we have two realities that are now identical, but still separate?

Since Star Trek has contained a multiverse ever since the MU was introduced, I say they'll still be separate. Simply because they're similar doesn't mean they need to be the same. There's probably a reality out there that's the same as ours except for the flap of one butterfly's wings, and it's still a separate reality regardless.

As for what reality we'll see in the post-Abrams-movies future, well, on TV that means CBS is in control, and I wonder if they'll even care about this stuff and what Paramount established? if Bob Orci is in charge of the TV show, he'll be more likely to stick to the Paramount scheme of things, but if Bryan Fuller or Seth McFarlane take over, who knows?

Its possible that we won't be able to tell what reality the new TV show is in. There could be a Vulcan, but is it the new colony, or the old planet? If they don't tell us, we won't know. Not telling us is the simplest way of solving the problem.
 
My hunch is that the writers do intend for the new timeline to "self repair" it's way back to the original, just based on the dialogue they've written that points in that direction.

I don't think that dialogue means what you think it means. There's a planet formerly in the vicinity of 40 Eridani that ain't coming back.
 
Will the original timeline ever be restored?

No. There was no 'original' timeline. None of this stuff made any sense whatsoever in the first place and the ridiculous baggage of a forced 'continuity' between the various Trek incarnations is best left in the past.
 
I don't think we need to worry about new Trek fans getting confused by there being two different versions of Trek: when they see the styrofoam rocks, or the space hippies from Season 3, or the Gorn costume ... I think they'll clue in that they're watching a different version of Trek from the Abrams films!:rommie:
 
If Batman fans can handle the comics, the Nolan movies, The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, and the various animated DVD movies all at once, then there's no reason Star Trek fans should be bewildered by coexisting continuities.
 
This does bring up the point that I love how selective the 29th century temporal Starfleet is in enforcing and correcting changes to the timeline. You'd think this one would be high up on their list.

Only if they knew it existed. For all anyone in the Prime Universe knows, Spock and Nero fell into a black hole and were never seen again. They have no way of knowing it split off a new timeline. And the existence of that timeline poses no threat to the Prime Timeline; rather, they coexist side by side, like the Prime and Mirror Universes. So there'd be no reason to try to unmake that timeline even if its existence were known.

And for all we know the whole timeline did a shift/reset thing like in Yesterday's Enterprise, with Gunian being the only one who knows what's up.

Being we haven't seen anything in the Prime Universe that's set after the Romulus boom, no way to know.
 
Being we haven't seen anything in the Prime Universe that's set after the Romulus boom, no way to know.

We have, in the Countdown comic, although it's not canonical. And we have seen time travellers coming back from centuries in the future of the Prime universe, though that's not conclusive.

More importantly, we do know that it was not the creators' intent to erase the original timeline. That was their whole reason for creating a new, parallel timeline -- to allow the new version to exist without undoing the old. Of course nobody who gets hired to create a new Trek production is going to want to go down in history as the one who destroyed the Trek timeline. They'd earn the wrath of the fans that way. So there's no point even considering it as a possibility. Nobody is ever going to do that.
 
Being we haven't seen anything in the Prime Universe that's set after the Romulus boom, no way to know.

We have, in the Countdown comic, although it's not canonical.

There's also Path to 2409.

I'm getting really tired of this "the Prime timeline was destroyed" stance. All because a film came out that wasn't entirely set in the Prime timeline, horrors. It's like little kids who start panicking when a parent is temporarily out of sight. It's like the whole concept of peek-a-boo. Mommy's gone, Mommy's back, Mommy's gone, Mommy's back...

Mommy's not gone, kids. Mommy's just in the other room.

Get over it.
 
My guess is that we'll see two more Abrams movies, and then several years from now we'll see a Trek series on TV/Internet that is set many years after Voyager. It might be prime or Abrams universe, but they'll likely be smart enough to not mention Vulcan, and leave fans guessing.
 
Will the original timeline ever be restored?

No. There was no 'original' timeline. None of this stuff made any sense whatsoever in the first place and the ridiculous baggage of a forced 'continuity' between the various Trek incarnations is best left in the past.

It's just words my friend. When someone says original in the Star Trek universe, we are referring to established continuity from Star Trek TOS to Star Trek Nemesis. It's just a word used for a lack of better term or laziness.
 
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