In the past few months/years, we've heard a whole lot of rumors about the premise of Series V, ranging from a Starfleet Academy series to a Time Patrol premise to BOTF. One of the sillier concepts that I remember was the one that actually combined the time travel idea and the BOTF concept. I dismissed it at the time as more baseless rumormongering.
Never in my worst nightmares did I think that this rumor would actually turn out to be true.
quote: "We will learn that the Suliban - who were formerly a relatively unimportant species - have now gotten important very quickly. They are being given technical information and assistance - particularly in regard to genetic engineering - from the distant future, where there is a temporal cold war going on. One of the fronts of that war is the 22nd Century. But whom the Suliban are taking instructions from and for what purpose are things that will remain very veiled and quite spooky." --Rick Berman Source: Trek Today. (URL)
This deal is getting worse all the time...
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
hmmmm. The concept sound interesting. However. Whth a concept like this, the big part will be how TPTB will pull it off.
Posted by Dr. Obvious (Member # 271) on :
Would You rather this be like Voyager? Where they ignore the general premise and fly around every week and learn the same moral they learned maybe a week before and just fly around randomly ?
I like the fact that this show has a Premise and I hope this Series uses an Arc based story telling process similar to Ds9 and B5 , I cant say I've liked any Star Trek since the end of Ds9 , those last season episodes were great.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Is it just me, or is a "temporal cold war" the first real fresh take on time travel we've had in years? I mean, I may get tomatoed for it, but I like the sound of it. And this pretty much confirm's there'll be something of a continuing story going on in the background. Aren't wanking "bermun and bragga must boyl in hell" fanboys meant to be attracted to arcs like moths to a flashlight?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Right on, Tom. I've never heard of anything like a temporal cold war. This DOES allow them to change history and continuity to some degree, just so long as everything turns out the same. And we know it CAN turn out the same, because we have "our" side in the cold war to make sure of it.
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: Is it just me, or is a "temporal cold war" the first real fresh take on time travel we've had in years? I mean, I may get tomatoed for it, but I like the sound of it. And this pretty much confirm's there'll be something of a continuing story going on in the background. Aren't wanking "bermun and bragga must boyl in hell" fanboys meant to be attracted to arcs like moths to a flashlight?
You're damn right it's fresh. I wish I thought of it first so I can use it for my own stories. I don't think the idea of a temporal cold war has ever been used. Ya know. This idea does leave the door wide open for Captian Braxton and company to show up!
Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :
quote: And this pretty much confirm's there'll be something of a continuing story going on in the background. Aren't wanking "bermun and bragga must boyl in hell" fanboys meant to be attracted to arcs like moths to a flashlight?
This is a good thing. Hasn't anybody else noticed that icnreasingly large story arcs are becoming the general trend on television; West Wing, Sports Night, ER, to name only a few (yes I know two of them are Aaron Sorkin but he's the big man in Hollywood these days). Not to mention the entire reality TV fad which are shows governed by a single arc taken to the extreme.
I think that was one of the major sources of Voyager's dissapointment. It aired at the very inception of this trend and had the greatest story arc dramatic premise of them all. Every episode there was the lost-and-trying-to-get-home plotline for seven years. Think about the possible stories about finally running out of torpedoes or learning how to replicate shuttles or decently written stories about running out of energy/food/etc.
But instead we got a show where shuttles came out of nowhere, Borg babies disappeared into nowhere, entire sections of the ship are blown to pieces only to be (for lack of a better term) 'reset' the next week, and characters change for no reason (C/7 in Endgame).
Posted by Treknophyle (Member # 509) on :
I think that was my silly concept you referred to. (smile when you say that, stranger...).
Actually, I was hoping that Cptn. Braxton's contemporaries (if such a thing can exist) would become recurring characters. The cold war concept does seem to be fairly original - from a Trek point of view. Of course, it's simply a rehash of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories...
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Well, everybody stamped my idea out like a weed in my "How they might just get away with it all..." thread, but it seems like you might be more partial to it here.
What if, because of all these temporal occurrences, Ent takes place in an altered timeline from the one we're used to, and so any inconsistencies or differences from what we've come to accept can be attributed to that. I think it's a wonderful idea because they can do their whole reshaping, widening-the-fan-base thing without enraging and betraying hard core fans. (like me )
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Um... If there's actual fighting going on w/ these Suliban fellows, doesn't that make it a normal war, not a cold one?
Posted by Mr. Christopher (Member # 71) on :
The fighting might not be all out war, but just skirmishes here and there and some espionage. You know, Bond kinda stuff. Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
By Cold War, I'm thinking Berman is referring to the idea of a conflict between two future forces (one of which could be the Future Federation) in which the actual fighting is done via proxy in various past times.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I tend towards anti-time travel, but it sounds neat. Set it far enough in the future, past the heat death of the universe, and all wars will be cold wars.
However, as far as arcs go...Sports Night crashed and burned and ER is a soap opera. General Hospital has arcs too, stretching over the decades. That isn't an unqualified Good Thing.
Posted by Dr. Obvious (Member # 271) on :
At least it shows that the show has Direction , i like it and i will wait and see , I'm waiting for Arc based. I hope , i pray Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Out of curiosity, has anyone come across any scifi literature that did have this idea of a temporal wars-by-proxy? They say that there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to scifi, but I certainly can't think of anything remotely close to this in filmed scifi.
Posted by Hunter (Member # 611) on :
In flimed scfi I don't think that there has been anyhting like the temporal cold war. As Treknophyle mentioned there are written scfi instances such as Andersons Time patrol series. Also I think I heard of one called mulitiverse or timeline wars that which I think had in part the bad guys starting the French Revolution. I read a short story called A quiet Dry war which featured a time war involving volunteers or proxies but that was up time (forward from the POV of the Character)
It sounds like it could be an interesting idea and could explain some contunity mistakes. I read some where that the bad guys couldn't change the timline to much or else they would disappear.
Hyperion has two rather powerful entities which may or may not be God sending warriors traveling backwards through time to destroy/save humanity.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Although it doesn't exactly fit the "cold" part of cold war, the closest big budget Hollywood movie I can think of that used a temporal cold-war by proxy idea would be "Terminator" and its sequel.
Posted by Reginald Barclay (Member # 594) on :
Well, maybe this can be a rationalization of all the retconning. This is a new Enterprise that didn't exist in the timeline we're familiar with, created by actions of future agents in response to this unknown race. Which explains why Kirk, Picard, etc. never referred to it. And it used some designs and technologies surreptitiously introduced by those agents, which is why it looks just like a ship from two centuries later in the original timeline.
Nevertheless, I get the sinking feeling that we're going to see ever more of the Braga reset button than ever before. And of course he's still thinking too damn linear for time travel. He's not as smart as he thinks. If someone is sending agents to subvert the 22nd century, why can't their opponents send agents to do the same in the 21st century? And they could leapfrog each other further into the past that way instead of just picking a few years in the 22nd century to focus on. The whole point of time travel is that you have all of time to mess around with. So forget the temporal cold war, how about a temporal arms race, so to speak?
[ July 13, 2001: Message edited by: Reginald Barclay ]
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
To quote Geordi:
"Take it easy, Reg."
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Well, you can't take a temporal cold war too far, for the same reason you can't take a terrestrial cold war too far. You might blow stuff up. Like, everything. Though in a temporal cold war, the term "everything" becomes far more inclusive.
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