posted
Just thinking about it - was it an accident that Nero got pulled through into the past? Or was that a gutless way to destroy Vulcan?
ALSO - the destruction on Romulus is now an established fact in (the preferable) original timeline. This actually fits nicely with the events in All Good Things... where the Klingon Empire have absorbed the Romulan Empire... although I do think they say Romulus was still around. Maybe it was 'new Romulus' - I'm gathering big-arsed galactic events like this giant supernova happen across all timelines... unless it was artificially precipitated... maybe by the Borg!! LOL Just gonna throw that in there.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
As for the state of the galaxy in the Trek-Prime 24th century, I think that's being covered by that MMO they're developing. I gather that even before Romulus was destroyed that the Empire had already fractured. No idea if Paramount even care about continuity enough to make anything "offical", but at this point it seems unlikely that there will ever be another live action film or series in the Prime universe. I think for the foreseeable future that'll be the exclusive domain of books comics and games. Oh and in 'All Good Things' the Klingons hadn't just absorbed old Romulan territory, they'd conquered it.
posted
The instant the Enterprise-E arrived in 2063, they created a new timeline in which they were instrumental in Cochrane's first flight.
Alternate timelines have been part of Star Trek for ages, it just hasn't been massive changes such as the one in the latest movie.
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Krenim: A couple of months ago, I think, the writers of the movie gave an interview in which they said they were going with the multiverse theory of time travel. When you travel back in time, you don't actually change your own timeline. You just create a second timeline, and the first one goes on without you.
That oddly seemed to agree with me, since I really didn't want to see the original series, Next Generation, etc., not exist anymore. And as Harry stated, that's the theory that Star Trek Online seems to be taking, since it takes place in the Primeline.
Bob Orci (who posts at TrekMovie.com) has explicitly stated this -- this new timeline will be fleshed out, but in no way 'changes' what we've known about trek's primary timeline, and it will continue in books, games, etc. He even takes some novels into canon.
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote: from trekmovie.com EXCLUSIVE: Bob Orci Explains How The New Star Trek Movie Fits With Trek Canon (and Real Science)
December 11, 2008 by Anthony Pascale , Filed under: Interview, Orci/Kurtzman, Science/Technology, Star Trek (2009 film) , trackback One topic that seems to come up quite a bit with Trek fans regarding the new Star Trek movie, it is the subject of the Star Trek continuity (or canon). It has been the contention of the film makers that despite how some things may appear to be rewriting Trek’s history, the movie fits within Trek’s canon. In a very detailed conversation with TrekMovie’s Anthony Pascale, Star Trek co-writer Roberto Orci finally explains how it all fits together. [SPOILERS BELOW]
Bob and Anthony talk Time Travel, canon, paradoxes, physics and more
Background: As a follow-up to our earlier ‘post November’ interview with Star Trek co-writer Bob Orci is the following conversation between Bob and TrekMovie.com editor Anthony Pascale. It is presented as a ‘conversation’ because it is more of a chat between two Trekkies diving deep down a nerdy rabbit hole, than a traditional interview. Understanding the issues discussed is not required to watch the movie or enjoy it, but is presented to answer the follow-up questions about how the film ‘fits’ with Trek and with science.
The subject of the discussion was how to reconcile a number of issues. Since day one with regards to this project, it has been stated that the new movie is not a ‘reboot’ like the recent Batman, Bond and Battlestar Galactica, but will fit within Trek canon. However, just by looking at the new trailer and certainly based on JJ Abrams four scene preview tour (see TrekMovie report), some things appear not to fit within canon. Or do they? Many have noted that the report in Entertainment Weekly revealing how the film’s villain Nero travels through time to attack the ship carrying James T. Kirk’s parents might somehow come into play. But if so, then there are implications related to Trek history, as well as real and ‘Trek’ science. And that is where this discussion begins.
[NOTE: The discussion goes pretty deep into science and Trek lore, so for those who just want the quick version, skip to the summary at the bottom]
Anthony: OK, now let’s get really into it. From the trailer, and certainly from the four scene preview, there is no doubt that things are different. Pike and Kirk are hanging out in a bar. The ship looks different. Kirk is on the Enterprise and not headed to the Farragut. People are seeing Romulans…things are different. Now it has been revealed in the Entertainment Weekly article that Nero goes back in time and attacks the Kelvin, and JJ also talked about this during his previews. So the big question is: Is the destruction of the Kelvin, the canon reason why everything is different?
Bob: It is the reason why some things are different, but not everything is different. Not everything is inconsistent with what might have actually happened, in canon. Some of the things that seem that they are totally different, I will argue, once the film comes out, fall well within what could have been the non-time travel version of this move.
Anthony: So, for example, Kirk is different, because his back story has totally changed, in that his parents…and all that. But you are saying that maybe Scotty or Spock’s back story would not be affected by that change?
Bob: Right.
Anthony: Does the time travel explain why the Enterprise looks different and why it is being built in Riverside Iowa?
Bob: Yes, and yes.
Anthony: OK, well then some fans will say ‘fair enough, alternate timeline, we are used to that, but that is not my Kirk, that is some other Kirk.’ So is this still our movie, or are we seeing some other version of Star Trek?
Bob: Well that depends on whether or not you believe in nature or nurture and how much you believe in, for lack of a better word, their souls. I would argue that for the characters, their true nature does not change. Our motto for this movie was ’same ship, different day.’
Anthony: So then is time travel, and the alternative timeline, just a way to do a BSG-style reboot, while still remaining canon?
Bob: In some one else’s hands, maybe, but, again, much of what you will see could conform to classic canon, and thus we were not relying it as an excuse to change everything.
Anthony: So even though some things, most notably Kirk himself, are on a different path (for example he doesn’t go to the Farragut after the Academy), he still ends up on the Enterprise with Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Spock, etc. Are you saying there is some kind of ‘entropy’ perhaps? So even though some things are different, they gravitate towards some kind of center point?
Bob: Yes. If you look at quantum mechanics and you learn about the fact that our most successful theory of science is quantum mechanics, and the fact that it deals with probabilities of events happening. And that the most probable events tend to happen more often and that one of the subsets of that theory is the many universe theory. Data said this [in "Parallels"], he summed up quantum mechanics as the theory that "all possibilities that can happen do happen" in a parallel universe. According to theory, there are going to be a much larger number of universes in which events are very closely related, because those are the most probable configurations of things. Inherent in quantum mechanics there is sort of reverse entropy, which is what you were trying to say, in which the universe does tend to want to order itself in a certain way. This is not something we are making up; this is something we researched, in terms of the physical theory. So yes, there is an element of the universe trying to hold itself together.
Anthony: OK so let’s call the timeline Nero left, as ‘the prime timeline’, so that means that the USS Kelvin, as designed and seen in the trailer, that is also in the prime timeline?
Bob: Yes
Anthony: So what happens with the destruction of the Kelvin is the creation of an alternative timeline, but what happens to the prime timeline after Nero leaves it? Does it continue or does it wink out of existence once he goes back and creates this new timeline.
Bob: It continues. According to the most successful, most tested scientific theory ever, quantum mechanics, it continues.
Anthony: So everyone in the prime timeline, like Picard and Riker, are still off doing there thing, it is just that Nero is gone.
Bob: Yes, and you will notice that whenever the movie comes out, that whatever DVDs you have purchased, will continue to exist.
Anthony: OK we just dove pretty deep into Trek physics minutiae. Is any of that discussed in the film? In "Back To The Future II," there is that scene with the Doc and Marty, where the Doc explains time travel to Marty on a chalkboard. Does Spock ever do that with Kirk?
Bob: It would seem very logical. Quantum mechanics avoids the grandfather paradox that Back to the Future relies on, which is: you can go back in Back to the Future and screw with your own birth and potentially invalidate your own birth. In quantum mechanics that is not the case. In quantum mechanics, if you go back and kill your own father, then you just live on as the guy who came in from another universe who lives in a universe where you killed some guy, but you don’t erase your existence doing that.
Anthony: And you believe that the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Star Trek interpretation, based on "Parallels."
Bob: Yes. I would argue that at the very least, if we are going to do our Star Trek, it has to conform to the latest scientific theories and the most advanced and complete, and right now that is quantum mechanics.
Anthony: Star Trek has not always been consistent in this regard. For example both "Yesterday’s Enterprise" and "City on the Edge of Forever" seem to follow the Back to the Future rules of time travel, where new timelines overwrite previous timelines.
Bob: We have to deal with it, with the fact that Star Trek episodes that don’t conform to our theory of it, also do not conform to the latest greatest, most highly tested scientific theory in human history. So I would default that it is the science that counts. And say in the case of "Star Trek IV," it could go either way. They cross over to a parallel universe and grab some whales and bring them back and save their own universe.
Anthony: Although the "Parallels" view of time travel resolves the paradoxes and is based on quantum physics, doesn’t it also affect the level of the drama? Are there still life and death stakes if anything you do in the past has no real effect on the timeline you started in?
Bob: There are, of course, life and death stakes, they simply don’t involve the cartoonyness of having a picture of yourself fading away because you bumped into your mother [as it was in "Back to the Future"]. We are not relying on the time travel element to tell a good story. That’s why this is not "Terminator" or any other movie you’ve seen before. And yet, oddly, as a practical matter, most people who see this movie will not have read this interview. Most of the audience will assume the classical time travel rules still apply.
Anthony: Well in the history of Star Trek there are dozens of recorded time travel events, and so does every single one of those create a new timeline. For example when Ben Sisko goes back in time ["Past Tense"] and becomes Gabriel Bell, does every Trek episode after that exist in an alternative timeline where Ben Sisko is Gabriel Bell?
Bob: I would argue that, yes, any time there is time travel that they created a parallel universe, if they want to conform to our most current and advanced thinking on the matter, which is quantum mechanics.
Anthony: So starting with "The Naked Time," which is the first episode of Star Trek with time travel, where they just went briefly back in time and that even though they didn’t change anything, merely by going back in time they created a new timeline?
Bob: Yes
Anthony: And even though they are all very similar, that we are up to something like the 57th* timeline when we get to Nemesis due to all the previous time traveling.
Bob: If we take Data’s description of the most current and awesome scientific theory to heart, then there is no prime timeline. If everything that can happen, does happen, who is to say what the right timeline is.
Anthony: But elder Spock and Nero come from the last known Star Trek timeline, which is the post-Nemesis, Next Generation era, right?
Bob: Right, that is where they are starting, yes.
Anthony: And that timeline lives on after they leave?
Bob: Yes.
Anthony: Traditionally in time travel plots from "Yesterdays Enterprise", "Star Trek: First Contact" and "City on the Edge of Forever" to the Back to the Future and Terminator series, the goal of the protagonists is to protect or restore the original timeline. Is that also the case in this movie? Is Spock’s mission to restore his original timeline?
Bob: No comment, I can’t give everything away [laughs]
To summarize…in FAQ form
All of the above can be a bit much to take in, and to paraphrase Captain Janeway ‘time travel gives you a headache.’ In reality you really won’t need to understand any of this to watch the movie. The above explains (in possibly too much detail) how the film resolves both the paradox of how the movie can appear different, but fit within canon, as well as how the film resolves the traditional paradoxes associated with time travel. So here it is in a simpler FAQ.
Q: Why do some things appear different in the new Star Trek movie? A: There is an alternative timeline created by Nero traveling back in time.
Q: Is everything different in the alternative timeline? A: No, some things remain the same.
Q: Does this alternative timeline wipe out the original timeline (from TOS -Nemesis)? A: No, quantum theory says they both co-exist.
Q: Does the original timeline continue? A: Yes, again as explained by quantum theory.
Q: Does this quantum theory approach conform to ‘Trek science?’ A: Depends on the episode, but it is explicitly cited by Data in the episode “Parallels.”
* 57 was just a number pulled out of the air. In actuality (according to Memory Alpha) there are 53 Star Trek episodes (including movies) involving time travel, many with multiple time travel events within them.
(Incidentally, I realize that I am pasting entire articles into these threads, and I apologize if this is annoying anyone. I would just link, but as someone who is finally able to go back through these threads after months and months of avoiding spoilers, I've found the number of dead links to be alarming such that it's hard to know what people are talking about without the full text...)
posted
I refer to the Prime Trek timeline of TOS, TNG, et cetera, the Black Hole timeline in which the Narada emerges in 2233 and a Spock emerges in 2258, and finally leave open the possibility of a Supernova timeline distinct from the Prime one as the origin for the Black Hole timeline incursions from 2387.
Dates are given as BH 2258 (Vulcan goes boom in the Black Hole timeline), PT 2258 (four years after "The Cage" in the Prime Trek timeline), or SN 2258 (which could be something else entirely).
The reason I have a Supernova timeline is because I simply do not think the old Spock is our Spock:
1. Romulans from the Prime timeline have had ridges since at least the 2100s. (And tattoos have never been observed as a Romulan normal trait, even among the civilians.) Nero and the gang do not have ridges. Ergo they are not our Romulans.
2. Even in the Supernova timeline, they give stardates just like they do in BH 2233, a modified timeline. ***
3. Supernova Spock is a pussy. He surrenders at the drop of a hat, doesn't even care to try to fix the timeline like every other Trek character, and believes in some Care Bear idea that if BH Kirk and BH Spock are friends they can kick the ass of a ship 129 years more advanced.
4. Supernova Spock's apparently now part of the Vulcan Science Academy (where was Starfleet when help was needed?!?!) with the rank of Ambassador (like Black Hole-Spock's father in this film, presumably) instead of hanging out with the reunification crowd. Sure, there's no telling what happened after Nemesis, but none of that makes much sense in the Prime timeline.
5. Supernova Spock says Scotty discovered transwarp beaming. Our Scotty never did that.
6. Supernova Spock had no apparent interest in McCoy's friendship, though his ought to have mattered as much as Kirk's.
7. We never saw any of Supernova Spock's past with Kirk via the mind meld, thus we have no way to know what the events were.
I could say that Spock recognizing people who look nothing like the TOS cast was proof, but I'm letting that slide.
***
I think the stardates being given in the same unusual way in SN 2387 is a real clue that it's SN 2387 and not PT 2387.
I haven't got this concept cleaned up yet, but basically there are two possibilities.
1. Hopping Universes
Again, I am going with the Trek distinction of one timeline per universe. This whole event could be a different universe entirely.
2. Chicken and the Egg
Nero went in to the black hole first, as someone else here noticed.
As soon as Nero fell in, the timeline ought to have changed. Thus the 2387 that existed after Nero's departure should've been one in which Nero arrived in 2233, fought the Kelvin, and then waited in vain for Spock, because there might not've been any black hole to fall into at that time. This is the Nero-Only Black Hole timeline.
Any Spock that arrived in BH 2258 thus ought to have appeared from the Nero-Only Black Hole timeline. Vulcan would have survived in this timeline because the red matter never arrived, and perhaps enough other details remained the same (e.g. Nero disappears somehow or other) to allow for Spock to be an Ambassador and with the Vulcan Science Academy in NOBH 2387, trying to save Romulus but pissing off another Nero the Space Trucker, and both wind up caught in the black hole.
You see the problem, though. Anytime Nero goes in first, we wind up with a NOBH-style timeline. So we somehow need Spock to be wrong about Nero going in first, because otherwise we never get Spock in the black hole. Otherwise it's like trying to go somewhere by traveling half the distance with each step.
We can presume that at some point Nero's ship goes in the black hole but is destroyed prior to time travel, or perhaps it arrives in NOBH on top of Nero's first ship (or vice versa) like a spawn frag or "Tomorrow is Yesterday" beam-on-top-of-yourself event and so bingo, no changes occur. We thus have a Nero and Spock from a NOBH, a timeline pre-modified for our convenience.
The alternative is that, instead, the movie's original 2387 timeline apparently persists for some number of seconds at minimum, at which point Spock falls in to the black hole and arrives in BH 2258.
But now we go back to the other of two possibilities, since a timeline that persists after a timeline change without outside influence (say, the pocket of the Borg time vortex in First Contact, or the Guardian in "City...") is no timeline at all, in the Trek rationale . . . that is a parallel universe. Certainly arrival from a mirror universe would explain some things in a more satisfying way, such as the oddity of the Kelvin. It would also allow for the persistence of the Prime universe.
Either idea would allow for the stardate variation from the Supernova timeline.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Carol Marcus and Genesis have been mentioned as plot points of future interest in this timeline. It occurs to me that with the destruction of Vulcan, some people are gonna be looking for a new planet...
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: 1. Romulans from the Prime timeline have had ridges since at least the 2100s. (And tattoos have never been observed as a Romulan normal trait, even among the civilians.) Nero and the gang do not have ridges. Ergo they are not our Romulans.
Not in TOS they didn't, and Spock was never characterized as looking out of place on Romulus, so either there are both kinds or we're just supposed to ingnore the issue as an artistic device and not an in-universe fact.
quote:Even in the Supernova timeline, they give stardates just like they do in BH 2233, a modified timeline.
So at some point between 2379 and the 2380s they went back to an older system of stardates. We've already seen them change dating conventions twice before.
quote:Supernova Spock says Scotty discovered transwarp beaming. Our Scotty never did that.
Why do you say that? We have no idea what Scotty did or didn't do after we last saw him in "Relics" (TNG).
quote:As soon as Nero fell in, the timeline ought to have changed.
No, it would have changed when he came out, which according to Spock was "minutes" later. Besides, they aren't using the "one timeline" theory any more, but rather the "many timelines" theory. For all we know, all our previous observations about how time travel works have been wrong.
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Supernova Spock says Scotty discovered transwarp beaming. Our Scotty never did that.
Why do you say that? We have no idea what Scotty did or didn't do after we last saw him in "Relics" (TNG).
Wasn't there a TNG era episode where one of our brilliant engineers figures out how to beam between two ships traveling at warp so long as they are in relative proximity and moving at the same precise velocity? Memory Alpha Transporter Link So then I take it that transwarp beaming is transporting from (or to?) a comparatively stationary platform to (or from?) something moving at warp?
Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: 1. Romulans from the Prime timeline have had ridges since at least the 2100s. (And tattoos have never been observed as a Romulan normal trait, even among the civilians.) Nero and the gang do not have ridges. Ergo they are not our Romulans.
We mainly saw Military or high-ranking Romulans. These were mining ship Romulans. If you took a smattering of humans right now mostly from the military or government and beamed them on a ship - I doubt you'd find many with tattoos.
quote:
quote:As soon as Nero fell in, the timeline ought to have changed.
No, it would have changed when he came out, which according to Spock was "minutes" later. Besides, they aren't using the "one timeline" theory any more, but rather the "many timelines" theory. For all we know, all our previous observations about how time travel works have been wrong.
This is scary - how many people are now gonna think that the Prime Timeline/Universe is gone forever!?!
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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