1. We don't know yet how this will play out in the movie. It is possible that what seems confusing and/or contradictory now will be clarified/explained.
2. Specifically, we don't know exactly what Nero or Spock's motivations are or what goals they hope to achieve by going back. Someone on the TrekBBS pointed out that it's possible Spock feels a moral duty to stop Nero from harming people whether it's in his universe or someone else's, for instance. Maybe it's not the future that's at stake so much as simply lives. Again, we won't really know until the movie (or script) is out.
3. Regarding previous treatments of time travel, perhaps our (and by extension, the characters') interpretations of what we saw were not entirely correct. Perhaps the characters we watched never did "correct" their own timelines but simply moved into "preferred" alternate ones. (And we, as the audience, moved with them. A little like the end of Back To The Future, but with the outcome less obvious to them and to us.) Perhaps there really is no such thing as "time travel," per se, but only travel between parallel universes. Perhaps, as some scientists have indeed suggested, space and time are not separate but the same.
4. Really, the whole idea that you can "fix" changes made to the timeline by making MORE CHANGES never held much existential water. It makes more sense and is more in line with what scientists currently theorize that every moment represents a point at which an infinite number of alternate realities diverge/intersect. Again, we don't move through time, but across these planes. Whether this will be "realistically" portrayed in the film is dubious, but it is a better science fiction concept.
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Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Hypothetically, of course, the main characters should see someone go back in time, and, to them, that person simply ceases to exist. Any changed that person makes will create an alternate timeline, but the main characters won't be in that timeline, so they won't see the changes. The altered timeline will have different versions of the main characters (maybe), who have no idea anything was ever deliberately changed.
However, most of the time in Trek, when we see someone go back in time, the main characters somehow get pulled into the new timeline and can see the changes while still remembering their old timeline.
This is why they always go back and try to "fix" things. It's not that there is a single timeline, and they have to put it back the way it was. They may see it that way, but what they are really doing is trying to get themselves back into their original timeline, or one which is close enough that they won't know the difference.
Strictly speaking, trying to stop the bad guy won't fix anything, anyway. As soon as they try, the universe will branch off into atimeline where they stop him, and one where they don't. The audience just ends up getting to follow the timeline where things go the way the main characters think they've restored their own.
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: However, most of the time in Trek, when we see someone go back in time, the main characters somehow get pulled into the new timeline and can see the changes while still remembering their old timeline.
This happens because they are artificially or (super) naturally isolated from the changes in some way, though, right? Guardian of Forever, Borg temporal wake, Orb of Time, insert various plot device here, etc. Otherwise, like in "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG), they don't notice the changes.
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
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posted
Like I said, "most of the time". Presumably, for now, we're going to have to figure that Spock follows Nero back in time because of one of the sort of things you mentioned.
[ December 15, 2008, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: TSN ]
Registered: Mar 1999
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Anna Pickard apparently gets paid by the Guardian to review music videos and film trailers. This is only marginally less annoying than the fact they also pay Sam Wollaston to review TV programs*. Most of the time it's plain she doesn't know what she's on about, so I'm puzzled by her assertion that a Sovvie is visible in the trailer - is this some bit of fan speculation I've missed out on?
*Seriously, the guy is a moron. And his excursions into the SF genre are especially bad. He decided to review the first episode of BSG season 4 on Sky, despite never having watched the show before, and his whole review was largely a routine about how you never see toilets in science fiction in general (and Trek in particular) - this, despite there being a whole, pivotal, scene in a toilet in the very episode he was supposed to be reviewing!
posted
It says that the Sovvie appears in at 1:31 of the video embedded within the page. The only thing within that second, besides the clean room white walls of the Enterprise, is Spock's time travel ship. Although, I guess to someone who isn't a die hard fan, and hasn't seen any bit of the last 3 movies could mistake that for a Sovereign, based on the angle it's seen at.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
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Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
Well, we've all seen clips of starships in Trek trailers that do not appear in the movie itself.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
But this is the first I've heard of anyone seeing the Sovvie. Just wishful thinking I'd imagine. When the trailer came out I scoured it frame by frame for little insights, as I'm sure many others did. And we all know a Sovereign when we see one. There just aren't any in that trailer.
posted
The only other possibility is that someone saw the Enterprise-head-on-view-while-at-warp bit from about 1:32 but there's no question which Enterprise it is, so I doubt it.
posted
The First Contact trailer (or was it the teaser trailer?) didn't feature any footage from the movie, just recycled shots from the rest of the franchise. So you had the Enterprise-D being hit by a torpedo from Generations, the future Enterprise fleeing the exploding Pasteur and Voyager firing at a Borg Cube, among other things.
And the Generations trailer randomly showed the Bozeman coming out of the causality loop laser show in between Klingons being blown up from TSfS and actual shots from the movie.
posted
An image of the Playmates James T. Kirk 6" action figure. The phaser looks pretty similar to the TOS type II, but has the iPod aesthetics of the rest of the ship...
I like the holster for the phaser. I'd assume that everything is pretty much as it will be in the movie, and I definitely like the phaser in a holster more than I like it on a little belt hook.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
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