Krenim time ship vs. the Empire

[SirNitram]

What in all of Voyager isn't rediculous?

In this case, it is not merely physically impossible(Which can be solved by technobabble copouts) but logically impossible. Ergo, we discard it.

[Eframepilot]

The reason that many Trek fans believe that time travel in Star Trek actually changes the past instead of "merely" creating a new parallel universe (i.e. rewriting over the old timeline instead of saving a new, altered version elsewhere) is that the rewriting over the old timeline is how time travel is actually presented. The creation of separately existing alternate timelines is a hypothesis created solely by fans to rationalize the paradox and is not the most straightforward interpretation of the episodes.

For instance, in "Year of Hell", the most straightforward interpretation of the timeline change shown is that the shockwave erases the old timeline and replaces it with an edited version, leaving things protected by "temporal shielding" untouched. This agrees with the descriptions of Annorax on how his weapon is supposed to function. The alternate interpretation of the shockwave being some... thing that propagates outward, creating an entirely new universe in its wake without writing over the old one and sucking in any objects encased in temporal shielding, is manifestly not a straightforward interpretation and would normally be excluded by parsimony if the preceding interpretation did not lead to a logical paradox.

Fans are also familiar with time travel from other sci-fi franchises that allow for time to actually be changed and for logical paradoxes to occur. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly almost prevents his parents from falling in love thus nearly erasing himself from existence. If the same rigor was applied to Back to the Future as is applied here to Star Trek, we would have to conclude that Marty was never in any danger of disappearance (since he would then never have been born and thus been able to cause his own disappearance) and that all of the effects he witnessed (photos and newspapers changing) were merely the result of his personal transition between parallel universes. Unfortunately, this logical conclusion utterly destroys all of the drama, and certainly no one actually watching the movies interprets them in this way. So most fans, unaccustomed to caring that logical paradoxes should never be allowed to happen, accept them in Star Trek and thus don't see the merit in arguments based upon complete avoidance of paradox in the first place.

[Darth Wong]

For instance, in "Year of Hell", the most straightforward interpretation of the timeline change shown is that the shockwave erases the old timeline and replaces it with an edited version, leaving things protected by "temporal shielding" untouched. This agrees with the descriptions of Annorax on how his weapon is supposed to function. The alternate interpretation of the shockwave being some... thing that propagates outward, creating an entirely new universe in its wake without writing over the old one and sucking in any objects encased in temporal shielding, is manifestly not a straightforward interpretation and would normally be excluded by parsimony if the preceding interpretation did not lead to a logical paradox.

Parsimony excludes terms which are unnecessary or unobservable, but parallel universes ARE observed in Trek, and they ARE necessary in this case to avoid the logical paradox. It is hardly a small problem that the unified-timeline explanation leads to a logical paradox; that is simply a euphemistic way of saying that it makes no fucking sense.

[Covenant]

You can't claim it's not analysis to avoid criticism of your ideas Covenant, sorry.

Heh, critique all you like. I'm just prefacing that because of the blaster discussion where I pulled a made up idea from my ass and people expected me to defend it. When I say I'm not putting forward an analysis I'm still allowing you critique it. In fact, I'm doing it to generate discussion, so please do! I'm just saying, don't attack me for any holes you see, since I have no desire to defend it. I was just putting out what I've observed from ST.

As for hacking at ST's unified-timeline thing with Occam's Razor, I will offer some analysis that says that sounds quite reasonable. Star Trek's alternate universes are not only one of their most common reoccuring storyline elements, but because they so easily interact with each other, they best explain the temporal effects we see. Plus, Temporal Shielding makes more trek-sense when it's put within that context as well. A shield that blocks out logic is patently ridiculous, but a shield that operates as a defense against parallel shifts is more likely within ST, seeing as transporters are the method of choice for travelling between alternate universes in Star Trek.

Furthermore, chronoton particles are the particles used in temporal weapons and defended against by temporal shields. They are stated as able to move outside of conventional spacetime, and they are also used in one telling instance where Ensign Ro the annoying girl and Geordi experience (wait for it) a transporter accident. They are thought to be dead, but are actually 'out of phase' and invisible, able to walk through walls, but when they interact with matter they create bursts of chronoton particles.

When phaser fire is exchanged later in the episode, more chronotons are blown off in extreme amounts, leading the crew to realize what is up. In this sense, chronotons are not displaying a metric of time, but of a nearby, alternate space. It would appear they are exchanged between the branes of these paralell, nearly overlapping universes--making much of the 'unified time' theory unneccessary, since it's much cleaner to remain internally consistant and stick to the paralell timeline model.

So, in this matter, Temporal (chronoton) weapons are weapons that bounce between alternate universes. 'Out of phase' effects are similar to the way Temporal weapons work. And actual time travel is done similarly to transporter accidents, but using the massive spacetime distortion of the warp drive to create an alternate universe rather than simply travelling to one. During the time-travel events Chronotons are also emitted, demonstrating that the ships involved are actually burrowing through spacetime to alternate universes, and perhaps creating their own as stated.

So, in this sense, temporal shielding is designed to block out the information exchange between paralell universes by removing chronoton interactions, allowing a brick of material that would normally be entangled back to it's proper universe to get left behind. Temporal weaponry utilizes the chronoton's spacetime warping capacity to bypass barriers in the target universe by flying through a paralell, overlapping one. And the temporal shockwaves are the results of individuals being dragged back to their appropriate universe/timelines. Any visual phenomena could be explained by chronoton effects distorting spacetime as the paralell universes seperate, as these chronoton 'bursts' are observed in other situations, and can cause the time shifts--likely in the same manner a strong wake can carry a smaller boat along with it. Chronoton effects may be aggrivated by warp fields, since warp fields are also spacetime distortions that seem capable of causing time-shifts.

Hm. I like that explination. It's really late so I bet it's got all sorts of nasty flaws, but I think linking warp fields, chronotons, teleporters, and alternate universe/phasic effects is the best way to reach an acceptable, internally consistant definition of Trek time-travel that would be useful to us.

[Shadow]

I really haven't posted here in a long time, but I saw this thread and wanted to say something, so anyway...

Parsimony excludes terms which are unnecessary or unobservable, but parallel universes ARE observed in Trek, and they ARE necessary in this case to avoid the logical paradox. It is hardly a small problem that the unified-timeline explanation leads to a logical paradox; that is simply a euphemistic way of saying that it makes no fucking sense.

I think what he means is that parallel universes are never mentioned by the characters during these time travel incidents. They're always concerned about the timeline being altered, never about being sucked into a parallel universe. Obviously characters can be fallible, but I think the reason people argue against these things is that it's hard for them to accept that the characters are always wrong when the show doesn't present them as being wrong.

I suppose that suspension of disbelief requires you to accept these things that completely contrary to the writer's intent. Of course, you can't always determine the writer's intent, but I think in this case the writer's intent should be apparent to anyone, given that no hints are ever given that time travel actually creates parallel universes instead of doing what the characters say, as far I can recall. The problem is that suspension of disbelief requires you to come up with a way to fix the unintended logical inconsistencies of the writers.

So, basically, this is just the reason I think many Star Trek fans argue on this point. I hope this post doesn't constitute reviving a dead thread since no one's posted in it a while, but I figured this would be okay since this particular board on this site is so dead that it's still near the top of the list.

[Batman]

Given that the writers have characters that are operating a starship hopelessly beyond our current-day technology ignorant about the difference between watts and joules, same said starship which masses some 5 million tons or so shake from the equivalent of a truck impacting it at 60mph or so, contaminated anitmatter, a crack in the event horizon, and starships coming to a dead stop when the engines cut out, you'll excuse me if I stick with SoD.