Star Trek

[JediTricks]

I don't understand where you are getting this "same thing viewed from different perspectives" idea from. They aren't the same thing at all, and as such perspective doesn't apply. The base concept behind each of these episodes is very different, and that's the whole point here. "Yesterday's Enterprise" involved time travel that resulted in an alternate timeline. "Parallels" involved shifting to parallel universes, separate from Worf's own reality. That's not the same thing at all. And just because Worf experienced several alternate realities makes no difference here.

I don't remember anything in Parallels saying that, and official materials state the episode was written with a quantum mechanics concept known as "sum over histories": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integ ... rpretation

Yeah, a wiki article is still not that reliable. And the production notes I've seen said that the theory this episode was based on was the "Many-Worlds Interpretation". Essentially a quantum mechanic theory stating that everything that could possibly have happened but didn't happen in our universe, did happen in another universe. And that is pretty much exactly how the episode itself explained it:

Deanna: What do you mean, quantum realities?
Data: For any event there is an infinite number of possible outcomes. Our choices determines which outcomes will follow. But there is a theory in quantum physics that all possibilities that can happen, do happen, in alternate quantum realities.
Worf: And somehow I have been - shifting, from one reality to another?
Data: That is correct.
Deanna: How did this happen?
Data: When Worf's shuttlecraft came into contact with the quantum fissure, I believe its warp engines caused a small break in the barriers between quantum realities. Worf was thrown into a state of quantum flux. He immediately shifted into other realities.

Here's a non-wiki article then, but it doesn't really cover as much ground: http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlig ... _integrals

Anyway, your quote from the episode doesn't disprove my point, it proves it. That dialogue says that "all possibilities that can happen, do happen in alternate quantum realities". The episode is arguing that for each change to a timeline, you get a new quantum reality, a new parallel universe is created by choosing left over right, and simultaneously another universe is created where right is taken over left. Do you remember the chalkboard scene from Back to the Future 2? Any time travel-altered timeline is going to be the same thing, Yesterday's Enterprise starts with universe A, the ship is ripped out of time which creates universe B, and then the ship is sent backwards in time with repairs and Tasha Yar, creating a THIRD universe. My point about point of view is that Parallels is looking at ALL of those universes as existing separately, as jumping around between them, while Yesterday's Enterprise is looking solely at a single universe at a time, but they all still exist, we're simply observing them from "our heroes'" perspective as seeking to exist in a "correct" timeline which is merely another parallel universe as close to the universe A they left at the beginning of the episode.

Again, I don't see where you're getting this idea of different perspectives from, because there is a huge difference between an alternate timeline and a parallel universe. It's not the same thing at all. And how you're describing an alternate timeline isn't accurate here. Changing the timeline of Universe A wouldn't result in a Universe B. Rather, it would still be the same Universe A, only then it would be timeline B, overwriting original timeline A. That's how time travel has always been shown to work in Star Trek, such as in episodes like "Yesterday's Enterprise". That's why the only way to fix something that created an alternate timeline is to restore original events in the timeline, or at least get it close enough. It doesn't create a parallel universe that allows both to exist simultaneously. Yet, despite this, that is how the writers of NuTrek did it so that it's both a new timeline and a parallel universe, with out the understanding that isn't how time travel is shown to work in Star Trek.

No time travel story truly can "restore" original events, by traveling back into time you create a new timeline, and every instance of traveling back to undo that creates its own offshoot timeline. Those timelines are alternate universes. Most time travel episodes simply assume that the universe that brings us closest to the status quo is the only universe, but it's not, each one is its own quantum reality and the crew just strive to pick the one that suits their needs the best.

They are understanding time travel and parallel universe ideas fine. Imagine what happens in Star Trek 4 when Kirk and company go back in time, does Earth simply go on hold while the HMS Bounty tracks down some whales? No, it continues on, destroyed by the alien probe, and other events of the galaxy are eventually affected more and more, so that timeline is Universe A. Then there's the timeline where Kirk and the Bounty land in San Francisco in the 20th century, that is automatically Universe B because that timeline has an alien vessel landing on Earth a century early and transporting whales from the sea and take Jillian to the 23rd century. So now Kirk and company go forward in time to return to the time when the probe is assaulting Earth, but they've damaged that trash can, they've caused people to talk about the ghost wind in the park, the US is on higher alert because of an incursion onto one of their nuclear carriers by a perceived Soviet spy (while carrying Klingon technology that gets left behind), doctors are locked in a room, that old lady gets a new kidney and lives longer, they've removed 2 whales and a whale biologist from the 20th century, that stuff all takes place only in Universe B, so they're going forward from Universe B's timeline, not Universe A's. We think of it as the "corrected" timeline because it has the happy ending, but Universe A had Jillian live out her sad lonely life miserable to see that her whales got harpooned and eaten, there was an uptick of 0.01% of makeup thanks to the extra whale ambergris, the old lady died immediately instead of inspiring her grandson to do great things, etc., that's the universe that Kirk and the Bounty left Vulcan from, but not the one they returned to. Those universes are parallel quantum realities.

Impossible time paradox's is what generally happens with such time travel stories and not always explained. To borrow a phrase from another series that involves a lot of time travel, it's "wibbily wobbly timey wimey...stuff" that makes time travelers like that somehow the exception to alterations in the timeline. But a time paradox like this has never been explained to be a parallel universe, because that would make it the result of a parallel universe changing another universe rather than simply time travel.

A paradox can only be explained by a parallel quantum reality universe, that's the point, a paradox cannot exist, that's what makes it a paradox, so anything that SEEMS paradoxical can only exist because of traversing multiple quantum realities, as I tried to explain in the paragraph above.

[Shockwave]

Target: 2006. Galvatron returns to his own time because he killed Starscream in the past but continued to exist as Galvatron, thus proving to him that anything he does in the past is only going to create an alternate reality, not alter his own.

[Sparky Prime]

Anyway, your quote from the episode doesn't disprove my point, it proves it. That dialogue says that "all possibilities that can happen, do happen in alternate quantum realities". The episode is arguing that for each change to a timeline, you get a new quantum reality, a new parallel universe is created by choosing left over right, and simultaneously another universe is created where right is taken over left.

You're misunderstanding the difference here... By the Many-Worlds Interpretation, and what Data says in "Parallels", those universes already exist in their own separate quantum realities based on any possible choices made to any given event. That episode isn't arguing changes to a timeline at all, because there is no time travel involved. Take the Futurama episode where the Professor makes a box with a universe inside of it for example. They found out it was essentially the same as their universe, although the difference between their universes is that coin flips yielded the opposite result. That's essentially what "Parallels" is saying, every decision we could make exists as a new quantum reality, not that each change to a timeline causes a new quantum reality.

Do you remember the chalkboard scene from Back to the Future 2? Any time travel-altered timeline is going to be the same thing, Yesterday's Enterprise starts with universe A, the ship is ripped out of time which creates universe B, and then the ship is sent backwards in time with repairs and Tasha Yar, creating a THIRD universe.

The chalkboard scene was about alternate timelines, not alternate universes. Doc never once says they've created a parallel universe, only an alternate timeline. In fact, as he's drawing it on the chalkboard he says: "Imagine that this line represents time... Here's the present, 1985, the future, and the past. Prior to this point in time...(pointing to 1985) somewhere in the past, the timeline skewed into this tangent, creating an alternate 1985." The timeline skewed into an alternate timeline, it didn't create an alternate universe.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" is a bit more complicated. The alternate timeline of the Enterprise C traveling forward in time resulted in a Tasha Yar that wasn't killed, Timeline B. The timeline was restored to timeline A by the Enterprise C returning where it was supposed to be. However, the alternate Tasha was then made a part of the original timeline having went with the Enterprise C, essentially making a duplicate of her in the timeline.

My point about point of view is that Parallels is looking at ALL of those universes as existing separately, as jumping around between them, while Yesterday's Enterprise is looking solely at a single universe at a time, but they all still exist, we're simply observing them from "our heroes'" perspective as seeking to exist in a "correct" timeline which is merely another parallel universe as close to the universe A they left at the beginning of the episode.

That's not how those episodes worked though. In "Yesterday's Enterprise" their own universe was altered to become a new timeline. In "Parallels" Worf left his own universe and began shifting between other parallel universes.

No time travel story truly can "restore" original events, by traveling back into time you create a new timeline, and every instance of traveling back to undo that creates its own offshoot timeline. Those timelines are alternate universes. Most time travel episodes simply assume that the universe that brings us closest to the status quo is the only universe, but it's not, each one is its own quantum reality and the crew just strive to pick the one that suits their needs the best.

You're wrong. A new timeline is not the same thing as an alternate universe, although an alternate universe could essentially be an alternate timeline.

They are understanding time travel and parallel universe ideas fine.

No they are not. I'm just going to skip over the rest of this because again, that's not how time travel has ever been shown to work in Star Trek before and you seem to be confusing the two concepts as well.

A paradox can only be explained by a parallel quantum reality universe, that's the point, a paradox cannot exist, that's what makes it a paradox, so anything that SEEMS paradoxical can only exist because of traversing multiple quantum realities, as I tried to explain in the paragraph above.

No, a paradox can't be explained by parallel quantum realities because that is an entirely different concept. A paradox exists because of contradictions in a single altered timeline, not between parallel universes. You're not understanding the differences between the two concepts here.

Target: 2006. Galvatron returns to his own time because he killed Starscream in the past but continued to exist as Galvatron, thus proving to him that anything he does in the past is only going to create an alternate reality, not alter his own.

Entirely different fictional universe, with its own entirely different set of rules. That's not how it works in Star Trek.

[Shockwave]

At the very least it is now since that's essentially how NuTrek works.

[Sparky Prime]

At the very least it is now since that's essentially how NuTrek works.

Which is a problem because it shows these writers aren't paying attention to how things are supposed to work in Star Trek, hence the original point I was making with this.

[Shockwave]

Sure it is. We just didn't see what happened in those other universes after the episodes were over. The other universe created in "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the Federation is at war with the Klingons still continued to exist, we just didn't see it. We instead went on watching the events of the universe that was created when Enterprise C went back.

[Sparky Prime]

Sure it is. We just didn't see what happened in those other universes after the episodes were over. The other universe created in "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the Federation is at war with the Klingons still continued to exist, we just didn't see it. We instead went on watching the events of the universe that was created when Enterprise C went back.

No that's completely wrong. There was NO other universe created. The timeline of a single universe changed when the Enterprise C traveled forward in time. And the timeline changed back to the way it was (save for the introduction of the Tasha Yar from the altered timeline) when the Enterprise C returned to its proper place in the time. Think about it. There would be zero consequences to time travel if it created a new universe every time something altered the timeline. That's not how time travel has ever worked before in Star Trek. It all has to do with the timeline of a single universe. There is no other universe involved at all.

Now going by the theory in "Parallels", there should be a separate quantum reality for if the Enterprise C decided not to go back to where it belonged in history, in which case a universe like that still exists, but that is an entirely separate concept here than what time travel is.

[Shockwave]

But that assumes that there are no other realities or continuities and that there is only "one" reality "active" (for lack of a better term) at any given time. Which we already see as wrong even way back in Mirror, Mirror. That clearly establishes that there are other realities and that they are always "active" but that those just aren't the ones we're watching. In fact, this is further established in Enterprise in the episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" which was described by the writers as "It's as if you were changing channels and decided to check in on what's happening in that universe". In other words, the alternate timeline in "Yesterday's Enterprise" (YE) didn't cease to exist just because we quit "watching" it. Or, I guess a better analogy (and this is how I've always thought of it) you could think of "our" reality as a microscope with multiple lenses. And the different timelines are the different lenses and whichever one we're looking through at any given moment is "our" universe. So what happened in YE is that we briefly switched lenses. But that didn't eliminate the lens from the microscope, it still remains to be looked through.

Ok, maybe that wasn't that great of an analogy but it is how I've always thought of it. I guess we just have different interpretations of how time travel works in Trek. So, to me, you would be correct, there are no consequences to time travel, that's why Galvatron went back.

Hey, I have another question for you guys: Do you consider the animated Trek series to be canon?

[Sparky Prime]

But that assumes that there are no other realities or continuities and that there is only "one" reality "active" (for lack of a better term) at any given time.

....how? I don't think you followed what I was saying there. The only thing that it assumes is that there is no parallel universe created purely as a result of changes to a timeline cause by time travel. Changes to a timeline rewrites the timeline of one universe, it doesn't create a parallel universe where one universe remains the same and the other is the altered timeline. That's not to say that parallel universes don't exist or aren't "active" when we aren't watching them.

Ok, maybe that wasn't that great of an analogy but it is how I've always thought of it. I guess we just have different interpretations of how time travel works in Trek. So, to me, you would be correct, there are no consequences to time travel, that's why Galvatron went back.

How about we look at some examples where we actually do see two different points of time during a Star Trek time travel storyline then...
TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever" - McCoy travels to the past using the Guardian of Forever, and inadvertently causes a change to the timeline where the Nazi's win WWII and the Federation never came into existence. The landing party in the 'present' is protected from the changes to the timeline, supposedly because of the Guardian itself, but the Enterprise no longer exists. So naturally they have no other option but to follow McCoy into the past and correct the timeline. No parallel universe is created here.
DS9 "Past Tense" - Sisko, Bashir and Dax are accidentally beamed into Earth's past and inadvertently get a man named Gabriel Bell killed. In the present timeline, we actually see what effect this has on the timeline as the Defiant is protected from the changes because of chroniton particles on the hull. The Defiant is witness to the timeline overwritten to a history where Starfleet and the Federation never comes into existence in the first place. There is no parallel universe created, otherwise, the Defiant shouldn't have seen anything happen at all.
"Star Trek: First Contact" - Albeit brief, the Enterprise E is caught in a temporal vortex shielding them from changes the Borg make to the past. Before entering the vortex, they get a glimpse of an assimilated Earth. Again, no parallel universe exists here, as the Enterprise is present to see how the timeline of their own universe is overwritten by a new history.

That's how time travel has always worked in Star Trek. Changes to the timeline results in their history being rewritten, not a parallel universe. Otherwise, there would be no consequences and no reason for them to need to restore the timeline. Other fictional universes have their own ways of handling time travel.

Hey, I have another question for you guys: Do you consider the animated Trek series to be canon?

Personally, I wouldn't count it as canon, although I have seen some people say "Yesteryear" was a particularly good episode from that series that explores Spock's background.

[Shockwave]

I think what we've just proven here is that it has actually been inconsistent. There's really only two ways this works: Either there's only one "timeline/reality/continuity" and it changes depending on whatever some time traveler does that essentially causes reality to be "overwritten" (again for lack of a better word) or there's multiple "timelines/realities/continuities/whatever" and each time some random time traveler does something, a new "timeline/reality/whatever" is created that exists separately from the original. Clearly Trek has been inconsistent in it's portrayal of this since as you pointed out, there are several episodes where time travelers go back and make changes to the one existing "reality/whatever", but they have also portrayed time travel as also creating separate "whatevers" as seen in "Parallels", "Mirror, Mirror", Several Voyager Episodes (the one where Ensign Kim goes back to unfreeze Voyager, the message he got from himself at the end implied that the "future" Kim stayed in his own "whatever"), and even the finale "Endgame" where future Janeway, essentially from an alternate "whatever" came back and saved Voyager. So really, it seems as though time travel, like everything else in Trek, has been changed to fit whatever the story required and it really isn't as consistent as you've said.

As for the cartoon, I generally do consider it canon mostly for the reasons that the only person (cast, crew, writers, editors, producers, etc.) who wasn't from the original series was Walter Koenig. Literally the only difference between the animated series and the original is that it's animated. So based on that, I regard it as canon. And you're right, "Yesteryear" was a good episode (and, just in case you didn't know, also an episode that supports your point).