Yesterday's Enterprise blooper??

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The timeline at the end of the episode is the same one as the timeline at the beginning of it.

Not exactly. In the beginning, Starfleet didn't know what had happened to the E-C. In the end, Starfleet did, as later evidenced by "Redemption". Yar's antics in the past apparently made a small but significant difference after all.

The only reason Starfleet found out in "Redemption" is because of Sela. There's no evidence that Sela did not exist before YE.

Great episode
I also noted that a lot of crew in that alternate universe also wore the uniform from seasons one and two.

At first, the 'new' uniform (the one with the collar) was only used for senior officers. Junior officers continued to wear the one without the collar. Eventually this was phased out completely.

 

[Dukhat]

Hopefully they can digitally edited that out or something for the Blu-Ray.

If they're going to edit anything, they should edit those ridiculously out-of-scale Birds of Prey, not Geordi's uniform collar.

The only reason Starfleet found out in "Redemption" is because of Sela. There's no evidence that Sela did not exist before YE.

Not quite. In "Redemption," when Guinan asked Picard what he knew about the Ent-C, he replied that it had been destroyed while defending Narendra III from the Romulans. Contrast this to YE, where all he knew about the Ent-C was that it was mysteriously lost with no explanation. Also, contrast this to "The Neutral Zone," where it was stated that the Federation had zero contact with the Romulans for 70 years. But this wouldn't be the case if Starfleet knew about the Ent-C's destruction at Narendra, thanks to the changed timeline in YE. Sela was just an after-effect of the timeline change.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Contrast this to YE, where all he knew about the Ent-C was that it was mysteriously lost with no explanation.

The only time we ever see that is in the "war future". In the beginning of the episode, nobody has any idea what that ship is - meaning, nobody even thinks to consider it's the Enterprise-C - until it emerges from the rift, at which point the timeline shifts. And of course in the war future, the Ent-C was indeed mysteriously lost, because it was snatched out of the battle by the rift.

If, before this episode took place, somebody had asked Picard about the Ent-C, he would have said it was destroyed at Narendra Three, because that's what was supposed to happen, and which (in the normal timeline) actually DID happen.

 

[Dukhat]

The only time we ever see that is in the "war future". In the beginning of the episode, nobody has any idea what that ship is - meaning, nobody even thinks to consider it's the Enterprise-C - until it emerges from the rift, at which point the timeline shifts. And of course in the war future, the Ent-C was indeed mysteriously lost, because it was snatched out of the battle by the rift.

If, before this episode took place, somebody had asked Picard about the Ent-C, he would have said it was destroyed at Narendra Three, because that's what was supposed to happen, and which (in the normal timeline) actually DID happen.

Yes, upon reflection, you're correct. However, that still doesn't explain the line from "TNZ" about the Federation having no contact with the Romulans for 70 years. If Starfleet knew the Romulans destroyed the Ent-C, then wouldn't that constitute "contact?" Furthermore, wouldn't Starfleet have considered that an act of war?

(In reality, it's obvious that there was a premise change between TNG and YE, and not something that came about because of a change in the timeline )

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

However, that still doesn't explain the line from "TNZ" about the Federation having no contact with the Romulans for 70 years. If Starfleet knew the Romulans destroyed the Ent-C, then wouldn't that constitute "contact?"

Not really. I interpret the "no contact" to mean that the Federation had no diplomatic relations with the Romulans in that time. Besides, if taken literally, and thus assuming the Federation had absolutely no idea what the Romulans were doing all that time, then the Romulans attacking Narendra Three AT ALL would be an inconsistency, because surely Starfleet would know about something like that...

In the end, we can only stick with the fact that "TNZ" was written over two years before "YE" was, and so you can't expect total consistency.

 

[Timo]

We know that "no direct contact" allows for such things as Federation and Romulan fleets posturing at each other, as happened in "Angel One" just months before "The Neutral Zone"...

Perhaps it would allow for an actual publicly known space battle as well, then.

Or does the dialogue in "TNZ" mean that the Romulans have been avoiding direct contact until recently, and the events of "Angel One" are part of the change that prompted the briefing in the teaser in the first place?

Riker's comment about "This first encounter, coming so suddenly after all this time" seems to preclude such an interpretation. But if "Angel One" did not amount to a first encounter, despite involving multiple starships, why should Riker think this one-ship mission at hand would be any different?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Worf's beard is right! I too believe the episodes should be preserved the way they were made, mistakes and all, rather than being constantly tinkered with like the Star Wars movies.

Also, it is kind of amusing.

Seriously though, I don't mind either way in this case, because this mistake isn't glaring enough to puncture and kill my suspension of disbelief. If the blooper is too obvious by half, then I'd rather have it edited out.

 

[Start Wreck]

I hadn't noticed it before, so thanks for pointing it out!

I'm in the camp that doesn't mind if they 'fix' it or not. It's certainly within their remit to fix production errors, which they so far have where possible. I'm not sure this one would be feasible on their timescale, though. It's kind of a fiddly awkward thing to fix.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

Then maybe the time line still isn't right after all Tasha bore Sela?
Maybe this was a hint of things to come??

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Best not to go there...time travel and parallel dimensions do not go well together, unless one likes to be confused.

 

[los2188]

Then maybe the time line still isn't right after all Tasha bore Sela?
Maybe this was a hint of things to come??

Thank you!! That's why I asked the question. My thought was more along the lines of, assuming this wasn't a blooper, this may be a wink and nod of things to come. As stated earlier, it's hard to imagine with the number of people working with all these episodes and in so many different areas, that something like that would be missed, but then again, anything is possible and obviously these things can and do happen. I'm still confused as to how many timelines there are in Yesterday's Enterprise. Is the war timeline still continuing?

 

[22 Stars]

Hawking and others postulate that ALL possible 'timelines' or eventualities exit simultaneously. Anything that has, or could happen, does happen. Our timeline is simply a single lightning bolt through a 'cube of jello' or set of ALL possibilities.

So to answer your question following this hypothesis, the war timeline exists, and will always exist. Whether we as an audience ever 'go' there or intersect with it again, is up to the writers.

 

[22 Stars]

Oh, and it was a costuming mistake.

 

[Timo]

The mechanism by which our heroes end up in different timelines is at the very heart of time travel. And sometimes it seems that they have to go through a key "switching point" in the past, in an universe with timelines that constantly branch from past to present (but very seldom merge again from past to present), if they want to go from one present (say, whaleless Earth doomed to die) to another (Earth with whales). But wouldn't it be far more practical to go from one present to another without going through that past switchpoint? That seems to be what our TNG heroes achieved twice in "Yesterday's Enterprise"!

Different means of traveling to the past are probably going to impose different terms on how to switch from timeline to timeline. Do you just have to kill your grandfather to immediately get to the timeline where you paradoxically don't exist? Not in "Back to the Future" style time travel - there's a delay there. Some Trek adventures also seem to feature such a delay, especially if time travel is in the hands of a higher power such as the Guardian of Forever.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm still confused as to how many timelines there are in Yesterday's Enterprise.

Two.

Is the war timeline still continuing?

No.

 

[Tosk]

I'm still confused as to how many timelines there are in Yesterday's Enterprise.

Two.

Surely it'd be three?

1. Original.
2. War.
3. Original but with Tasha from War timeline now living in the past.

 

[Tiberius]

I'm still confused as to how many timelines there are in Yesterday's Enterprise.

Two.

Surely it'd be three?

1. Original.
2. War.
3. Original but with Tasha from War timeline now living in the past.

Possible, but I think not.

In the original timeline (I'll just refer to them by the numbers you gave to them in your post), so in 1, the peace with the Klingons required the loss of the Enterprise C at Narendra 3.

However, if the E-C ended up in Timeline 3, then the E-C was never lost at the Timeline 1 version of Narendra 3 (it simply disappeared instead). But we know that this sequence of events never occurred because if it had occurred that way, Timeline 1 would involve a war with the Klingons like Timeline 2.

So it would seem that either the E-C we saw came from yet another timeline (Timeline 4, perhaps?) so as to allow the E-C in timeline 1 to be destroyed. But if that was the case, then the arrival of the timeline 4 E-C wouldn't have altered history, because the timeline 1 E-C never disappeared to cause the change in timeline to timeline 2. This is because the E-C from TL1 MUST disappear from Narendra 3 to trigger the shift over to TL2.

The only way I can see is that TL 1 and TL 3 are the same one.

 

[Vanyel]

I think bot the original time line and the war time line both ended with Tasha going with the Enterprise C. That formed a new 3rd time line nearly identical to the original.

 

[Tiberius]

I think bot the original time line and the war time line both ended with Tasha going with the Enterprise C. That formed a new 3rd time line nearly identical to the original.

But Tasha didn't exist in the original timeline to go to the E-C.

 

[Vanyel]

I think bot the original time line and the war time line both ended with Tasha going with the Enterprise C. That formed a new 3rd time line nearly identical to the original.

But Tasha didn't exist in the original timeline to go to the E-C.

Right, she did not exist in the original time line. Now since she goes back in time from the War time line, she ended the original and war time line.

In the 3rd timeline she does exist, in 2 places simultaneously. Kind of like Marty McFly in BTTF2. He's at 2 different places at the dance, he created a new time line again nearly identical to the one he created in BTTF1.

The 3rd time line has War time line Tasha giving birth and dieing by execution some 20 odd years before 3rd time line Tasha dies at the hands of Armus. And because she died on Romulus, she does not effect the events that we saw. All the events in the 3rd new time line are nearly identical to those in the original, except for Tasha existing in the past of that time line.