1. Rain Robinson (yummie) apparently knows more about ET life than she's letting on. Somehow, she has a small model of a Talosian (from the original Trek pilot) on her desk. O.K., actually it's just the little playmates figure.

2. While there is no mention of the Eugenics Wars (which should be raging at this point in history) there is evidence that, in that timeline, humanity has reached a level of tech that allows for sleeper ships. Rain has a model of the DY-100 type ship somewhere in her office.

3. Janeway tells Chakotay that she has no idea what her ancestors were doing in the late 20th century. Yet,in the ep. "11:59" she seems to remember (or at least thinks she remembers) alot about her ancestor from 2001.

Any thoughts or comments about this stuff?

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

[This message has been edited by Aban Rune (edited March 13, 2000).]
 

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Fool of a Took, throw yourself in next time!!
Gandalf

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

#2 can be easily explained that the Eugenics Wars were a EurAsian thing (which is, to be honest, one of the possible impressions I got from TWOK and "Space Seed" before I saw "Future's End").
 

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"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"
 

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Dane

"Mathematicians have long held that a million monkeys banging on a million keyboards would eventually reproduce the collected wisdom of the human race. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Silensky
 

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Fool of a Took, throw yourself in next time!!
Gandalf

[This message has been edited by Kosh (edited March 14, 2000).]
 

*removes tongue from cheek and puts it in his pocket*

I will again point to the DY-100 ship model in Rain's office. I suggest that this is not an in-joke, but rather a representation of society's technological advancement at that point in history in Rain's timeline. Instead of having a model of a space shuttle, she has a model of a sleeper ship.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

[This message has been edited by Aban Rune (edited March 14, 2000).]
 

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"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"
 

Alternate timeline 1: Someone finds the crashed timeship. Said person, let's call him Berlinghoff Rasmussen, causes no changes to his immediate timeframe by finding the ship. Rasmussen takes his timeship forward in time, causing a temporal explosion in the 29th century and somehow bringing Voyager's debris along for the ride. Braxton comes back in time to destroy Voyager, thinking it'll fix things, and so begins the episode. The temporal explosion wiped out the mission that sent the original timeship back in time in the first place, but Aeon goes back and takes a similar role, causing the changes to the timeline we saw in Future's End. Keep in mind that we never actually saw this timeline. It's simply nesecary to setup the second alternate.

Alternate timeline 2: Henry Starling finds the Aeon, causing a technological revolution at approximately the same time it occured in the Original timeline. Thus the future of this timeline is not significantly different from the Original. Janeway of the alternate timeline naturally doesn't realize that the electronics revolution would have still happened without Starling, since she never experienced a timeline without him. Voyager prevents Starling from causing another temporal explosion, and Braxton returns them to their proper location in space/time.

In the timeline we now watch, the solid-state revolution still occured on schedule, but because the 24th century of both Original and Alternate 2 are not significantly different, it's impossible to tell which we're currently watching.

Of course, if time travel made any sense at all, the entire episode would never have happened. But I've had one too many episodes that never happened for my taste. A third part that took place before the first one that explored alternate 1 would have been nice.

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You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend far too much time reading this sort of trash.

 

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"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"
 

Minor random variations would then decide whether Starling sits in the cockpit of the ship, presses the wrong button and accidentally launches himself to the future, blowing up the 29th century Earth, or whether Starling sits in the cockpit of the ship, presses the right button and unravels the secrets of the ship and creates an electronics empire.

And to avoid confusion, the "original" timeline in Omega's description would be one we never saw - the adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, as well as those of Cochrane and Gabriel Bell and other past characters, happened in "alternate timeline 2", which is the proper timeline of all Trek adventures after 1996.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

I goes like this: throughout history are a number of important historical events; say you kill Hitler before the war, then the future will undoubtedly change. But if you just bump into him to make him miss a war meeeting, then history will probably "correct" itself. He'll probably call another meeting or simply call his generals on the phone, and the future won't be altered.

The Star Trek universe seems to have a lot of these situations, although it has never been explicitly described as such. "Trials and Tribbles-ation" is one of these. The past HAS changed but the future hasn't.

As to how that applies to "Future's End", well huh, I don't really know...

I take the whole episode like this: Starling's past IS the real ST past. There was a causality paradoxe (I think that's what it's called when an event triggers itself in some way) and Janeway just happened to get out ot it when it was convenient. I feel no obligation to apply real temporal mechanics seeing as how the writers obviously don't.

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-If you took that broomstick out of your tail-pipe once in a while, you might have some FUN for a change!
*Rattrap - Beast Wars*

-Let the Fates land where they may!
*Megatron - Beast Machines*
 

Basically, there's no way to tell what universe we've been watching all this time, because no one's ever looked up the historical records on screen. The only time travel that would indicate the existance of Cronowerx would be Trek IV, and they never said it DIDN'T exist, so I see no reason to go with either one. The entirity of all the series probably took place without significant differences in both universes, so it doesn't particularly matter. But I'd say that all the changes affected in the past by alternate one would probably be excized by the temporal police, so we're probably watching Original now.

Original IS where we exist right now, minus some time-travelers that never showed up. At least, as far as we know...

Oh, and the ship crash CAN'T be identical in both alternates. The loop has to be started by an outside source, otherwise it would NEVER happen. Someone had to cause a temporal explosion involving Voyager to start the loop, and to do that someone had to use a timeship in an improper manner. So I'm guessing that someone somehow got a hold of a timeship like Rasmussen and Starling did, and for some odd reason went to Voyager before going to the 29th century. The chances of it being Starling getting a hold of Braxton's ship are rediculously slim, but I suppose it's possible. It doesn't particularly matter, though.

Perhaps our Rasmussen pulled the same stunt the original Rasmussen did and stole a time traveler's timeship. The timetraveler might have programmed it to go visit Voyager so _they_ could stop our Berlinghoff from screwing things up with minimal damage to the timeline. After all, she is isolated from everyone else. Better than sending the guy to the heart of the Federation, where he could damage Q knows what. But the plan backfired and our Rasmussen figured out how to get to the 29th century AFTER encountering Voyager. Voyager entered the rift while trying to stop him, and was destroyed in the subsequent temporal explosion. Thus the loop begins. Sound good?

Or maybe our Rasmussen for some reason was trying to help Voyager get home. Maybe Barclay built a ship capable of warping space to get you wherever you wanted to go, thinking he could create a rift in space that would get Voyager back to Earth. But somehow he ended up taking them to the 29th century Earth instead, and blowing up the system. Ya think?

Nah.

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You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend far too much time reading this sort of trash.

 

I believe that idea about minor changes being factored out was mentioned in "Statistical Probabilities" on DS9.

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You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend far too much time reading this sort of trash.

 

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The Miranda Class model is not a kitbash, it is a bashkit.

(-=\V/=-)
 

Janeway even mentioned this dilemma in "Time and Again".

I believe the ultimate conclusion of a temporal paradox (to an outside observer) that involved the time traveler preventing his birth (or construction of his starship or whatever) would be that the person would only exist during the period of time from when he or she arrived in the past and the time that they initiated the event that exised them or their ship or whatever from their proper place in the time line.

-Before you ask what this has to do with anything, just consider this a theory on temporal paradoxes submitted for your approval-

Take for instance Back to the Future. Say after Marty saved his dad in the past, he had been unable to repair that damage (actually, he would have had no opportunity to prevent the damage as he would have disappeared as soon has he interfered). Marty never would have been born in the 60's and never would have existed to be able to back to the 50's. Therefore you might conclude that history would right itself and everything would be back on track. But than the events would take place again as we saw them in the movie. And we're back to square 1. So the solution (again to an outside observer) is that Marty McFly would only ever have existed for the few hours between the time he arrived in 1955 and the time he altered history. Fortunately though, the young lad was able to fix the problem. This opportunity was no doubt due to some residual subspace field that protected him for the changes in the timeline...

Anyway, have at the hole punching!!

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Strikes me as a double standard, despite significant time difference between the settings.

But that's probably just me.
 

Aban:

Which is why such paradoxi are logically impossible. From an external perspective, there MUST be a cause for the loop existing. A loop does not nesecarily constitute a paradox. Say I find a time machine buried in my back yard. I go back in time, build a time machine THEN, and bury it in what will be my back yard for me to find in the future. But how did the machine get there to begin with? It's a loop, but not nesecarily a paradox. Say someone ELSE not involved with time travel buried a time machine there AFTER the point in the past were I burried mine. I'd find his, go back in time, build mine and bury it there. The other person would not bury HIS machine, since mine was already there. But there'd still be a time machine there, and I'd still go back in time and bury a time machine there. It becomes a loop, but not a paradox, since it did have a beginning from a 5-D POV. The loop can not exist without something starting it.

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You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend far too much time reading this sort of trash.

 

Besides, since it's an alternate timeline, it is alright for them not to mention the Eugenics Wars. The thing is, the encyclopedia could have said this, but they didn't bother to think about it. Instead, they put down the first thing they thought of: California just happened to be unscathed. This was unnecessary. All they had to say was that, since the timeline was changed, the Eugenics Wars didn't happen.

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"To make the merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves."
-They Might Be Giants, "They Might Be Giants"
 

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Accepting "Future's End" as part of the actual Trek timeline doesn't create any obvious continuity failures. And it nicely sets up the accelerated drive to space that eventually makes it possible for Cochrane to launch a rocket all by himself, at apparent shoestring budget.

Timo Saloniemi