Time travel is a legitimate tactic.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

And no-one considers using the Bajoran Orb of time, despite it being able to send entire ship back in time to Kirk's era (Trials & Tribble-ations).

[Admiral Mercury]

So according to you, Section 31 was quite content to let the war continue? The same war that Bashir and co would eventually lead (even after the federation retook DS9) to a total defeat and nine hundred billion dead..

And yet....they are willing to travel back and change time when a fictional Imperial invasions...results in a total Federation defeat but probably lesscasualties? Thank goodness you don't work in strategic plannign anywhere, we'd have WW3 by monday week. "Yes, it'll be a bit bad for us but we'll totally be the best power after the dust settles!"

And here's a final nail in your arguments coffin. The 31st century Feds have their Temporal Accords and act to protect them. Since you are trying to actively change the timeline, they may well decide to stop your retarded ass.

And you didn't adress the point about phasers working when fired through the Guardian.

I'm not saying that that's what I would do, or even that it's a good idea. I'm saying that within the warped world of Section 31, they would likely find it an appealing situation to be in.

The Feds existing in the 31st century necessarily means the survival of the Federation in the present. The Empire, therefore, can't win or can't win so devastatingly as to destroy the Federation. The only method for winning a war against the empire given numerical and technological disadvantages is with PTs and the Guardian. Therefore, the Feds of the 31st century must be okay with the move since it ensured their very existance.

I'm not going to seriously defend the Phasers-through-Guardian proposition. It was a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

It's actually no more or less plausible than your current suggestion.

Thank you

We never got a reason from Mercury as to why the Federation didn't use time travel to reduce their losses at Wolf 359.
Maybe Section 31 thought they should do nothing because the UFP was somehow better off after losing all those ships?
I really don't see how inventing the Defiant justifies not using time travel- they could have just as easily handed blueprints over to it while in the past, giving themselves the benefit of the war without the massive loss of life...

The Federation was on a peace footing after Khitomer. It wouldn't be enough to give them the blueprints for the Defiant. The Federation needed an event to shake them out of their complacency. A threat shows up in the Borg and the Federation builds a dedicated warship. But even the looming Borg threat isn't enough to get the Feds to seriously consider moving towards a more militant stance. When the Borg don't end up being immediate existential threat what happens to the Defiant? Put in dry dock orbiting Mars for years. The Dominion threat is at first only enough to get the ship back on active duty. It takes a fucking war to get them to start mass producing their most powerful ship.

[Eternal_Freedom]

So according to you, Section 31 was quite content to let the war continue? The same war that Bashir and co would eventually lead (even after the federation retook DS9) to a total defeat and nine hundred billion dead..

And yet....they are willing to travel back and change time when a fictional Imperial invasions...results in a total Federation defeat but probably lesscasualties? Thank goodness you don't work in strategic plannign anywhere, we'd have WW3 by monday week. "Yes, it'll be a bit bad for us but we'll totally be the best power after the dust settles!"

And here's a final nail in your arguments coffin. The 31st century Feds have their Temporal Accords and act to protect them. Since you are trying to actively change the timeline, they may well decide to stop your retarded ass.

And you didn't adress the point about phasers working when fired through the Guardian.

I'm not saying that that's what I would do, or even that it's a good idea. I'm saying that within the warped world of Section 31, they would likely find it an appealing situation to be in.

The Feds existing in the 31st century necessarily means the survival of the Federation in the present. The Empire, therefore, can't win or can't win so devastatingly as to destroy the Federation. The only method for winning a war against the empire given numerical and technological disadvantages is with PTs and the Guardian. Therefore, the Feds of the 31st century must be okay with the move since it ensured their very existance.

I'm not going to seriously defend the Phasers-through-Guardian proposition. It was a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Given the five hundred year gap it's entirely possible that the Federation resurrects itself. Indeed, Bashir predicts such a thing three or four generations after the expected Dominion victory. So, no, the existence of a Federation in the 31st century does NOT garuntee the survival of the 24th century Federation.

Aside from that, there are more ways to win a war than obliterating your enemy. Perhaps the Federation might use their admittedly impressive diplomatic skills rather than jumping straight to a war footing? Only psychotic idiots prefer war to peace.

Oh, and mass-producing Defiants? We see, what, five of them? Defiant, Valiant, Sao Paulo and those two that helped chase down Prometheus.

And I note you once again fail to address the point that no one in Starfleet even considers using time travel to avoid a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Dominion.

[Darth Tedious]

The existance of the Federation in the 31st Century is a complete red herring.

By the same logic:

At no point in the SW timeline does any massive fleet of ISDs (including a Death Star) go missing when it is destroyed on a mission of conquest in another galaxy.
Therefore:
Any such attack must have been a complete success, with the fleet (and Death Star) returning home un-destroyed.

Such logic is completely useless in a versus scenario, as the battle between franchises never actually took place at any point in either timeline.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Regarding the Defiants, in addition to the unnamed ones recapturing the Prometheus, there were a few in the second fleet, and also in the finale of Endgame. Of course for all we know they could easily be the same ones.

Link

Given how rarely they appear in actual battles though, it's clear they're still in the minority- hell, the Feds are having to use more Excelsiors and Mirandas since they're having to use every ship they can get. The Excelsiors might be useful if they had the same upgrades as the Lakota, but it doesn't look like they do- I don't recall any firing Quantum torpedoes.

[Admiral Mercury]

Psh! Typical "What you see is what you get" thinking. Let's see what Mr. Wong thinks of that sort of thing: "It should be noted that the most common Federation cultist objection is that we never see hundreds or thousands of Imperial warships in one place at one time during the original trilogy. Frankly, this line of argument betrays a staggering lack of analysis."

But of course when it's Trek it's "Since we don't see more than 5 Defiant-class ships there must not be more than 5 Defiant-class ships." Even though simple analysis would show otherwise. Hell, it's so obvious that I don't even want to waste my time writing it out, but since you'll say I can't, I must.

The Federation needs strong ships to win the Dominion War,
The Defiant-Class is their strongest ship,
Therefore the Federation must have had a priority in building Defiant-Class ships.

The Federation built more than 5 ships during the Dominion War,
Therefore they must have built more than 5 Defiant-class ships.

The Federation built more than 5 Defiants,
We only see about 5 Defiants in the TV shows,
Therefore there are Defiant-class ships in Starfleet that we do not see.

QED, bitches.

And that's not even mentioning the Defiants that would likely be constructed after the war to remain on par with the Klingons and Romulans who would also likely be rebuilding their forces.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Did I claim they only built 5? No, I said we only see five (which was wrong, I forgot the other ones we see but there may be duplicates). If we assume all the unnamed ones are different ships then we see perhaps ten such ships. Given that you say Defiant class ships were "mass produced" we shoudl expect to see a lot more of the class than we do. Hence, the production is not as widespread as you claim.

The comparison to ISD's is a red herring. Yes, we never see 25,000 ISD's grouped together, but aside from the Executor and the Death Stars, every Imperial warship we see is an ISD, which makes them a lot more ubiquitous than the Defiants. Also, while not seen on-screen, the number of ISD's is given in other cannon sources whilst I cannot find any ST cannon that says the Defiants were mass-produced.

I have a suspicion that while the Defiants are indeed highly capable ships, they are correspondingly very expensive to build (and thats expensive in resource terms, not money). Also, I question your assertion that Defiants are the Federation's strongest ship. We see Galaxy class ships doing very well in a number of battles, Third Bajor and First Chin'toka to name but two. We also have the existence of the Enterprise-E, supposedly the Federations "most advanced starship" at the time of STFC according to Geordi (which means he ranks it over the Defiant btw) and yet we never see Sovereign class ships in the war, or mass produced.

[chitoryu12]

Mercury, you've been ignoring my posts. I'll post my arguments one more time, just in case you missed them. If not, I'll assume it's intentional.

If your reason for the Federation not simply using time travel as a deus ex machina over and over to solve all of their problems is "Politics," what makes you automatically assume that they'll turn to it to destroy invading Imperials instead of politicking more?

How do you solve the problem of the Imperials' massive speed and firepower allowing them to rapidly fly to the biggest and most important Federation planets and bombard them with enough energy to slag the surface of the planet before any defending Federation forces are able to locate the Guardian of Forever or engage in a convenient slingshot?

Why do you assume the Guardian of Forever will even be WILLING to help them, when its name and actions both show that it acts to preserve the timeline as best as possible rather than letting some random guys in spandex throw photon torpedoes through it so they can win a war easier?

Your entire argument is based on every single one of these assumptions falling perfectly into place. It assumes that the Guardian of Forever (with no precedent, and indeed heavy implications of the exact OPPOSITE) will be willing to let the Federation use it as a convenient method to win the war, that the Imperials' ability to cross the Alpha Quadrant in hours and carry enough firepower to blow apart any resistance it faces will not factor in at all, and that the Federation (who you yourself said didn't resort to time travel and let millions die and a war drag on because of political interference) will immediately send captains to the Guardian and slingshotting around the sun to solve all of their problems.

To add to that, just what would you DO with time travel if you were able to go back? If you travel back in time to 3000 years before the Battle of Yavin, you'll still find a technology base that's eons ahead of Trek. The Empire will be just as strong at the start as it will during the theoretical invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. Will you try to go all the way back to the first settlements of Coruscant and nuke them? There's still an entire galaxy for you to interfere with. It's not as simple as bombing Earth in the 1960s to try and destroy the Federation before it begins, because the Galactic Empire (read the name carefully) isn't dependent on a single planet.

The New Essential Chronology lists the Rakata having an intergalactic empire as early as 30,000 BBY. Can you go back a time when Earth was still in the paleolithic age and try to fight an empire powerful enough to span an entire galaxy in the hopes of defeating the Imperials?

[Stark]

Psh! Typical "What you see is what you get" thinking. Let's see what Mr. Wong thinks of that sort of thing: "It should be noted that the most common Federation cultist objection is that we never see hundreds or thousands of Imperial warships in one place at one time during the original trilogy. Frankly, this line of argument betrays a staggering lack of analysis."

But of course when it's Trek it's "Since we don't see more than 5 Defiant-class ships there must not be more than 5 Defiant-class ships." Even though simple analysis would show otherwise. Hell, it's so obvious that I don't even want to waste my time writing it out, but since you'll say I can't, I must.

The Federation needs strong ships to win the Dominion War,
The Defiant-Class is their strongest ship,
Therefore the Federation must have had a priority in building Defiant-Class ships.

The Federation built more than 5 ships during the Dominion War,
Therefore they must have built more than 5 Defiant-class ships.

The Federation built more than 5 Defiants,
We only see about 5 Defiants in the TV shows,
Therefore there are Defiant-class ships in Starfleet that we do not see.

QED, bitches.

And that's not even mentioning the Defiants that would likely be constructed after the war to remain on par with the Klingons and Romulans who would also likely be rebuilding their forces.

This is the best post ever.

Where in this ironclad logic do you fit all the ships the Federation built that weren't strong, or successful, or widely produced? Did they need abortions like the Norway and the Steamrunner? Surely they should have built Defiants instead!

[Admiral Mercury]

Mercury, you've been ignoring my posts. I'll post my arguments one more time, just in case you missed them. If not, I'll assume it's intentional.

This post is just for you!

If your reason for the Federation not simply using time travel as a deus ex machina over and over to solve all of their problems is "Politics," what makes you automatically assume that they'll turn to it to destroy invading Imperials instead of politicking more?

Because it's stupid to think that the federation is going to try politicking with a force that just BDZ'd Earth. In all of these versus scenarios the Imperial invasion is always a blitzkrieg type ultra-fast throw everything you got at them to win early. The motives and goals of the Empire would be instantly apparent and thus no need to try politicking since everyone would know it wouldn't work.

How do you solve the problem of the Imperials' massive speed and firepower allowing them to rapidly fly to the biggest and most important Federation planets and bombard them with enough energy to slag the surface of the planet before any defending Federation forces are able to locate the Guardian of Forever or engage in a convenient slingshot?

Evidence from the episode Yesteryear implies that there's a persistent Federation interest in the Guardian and thus likely a persistent Federation presence in the system. Now, unless the Empire knows what planet the Guardian is on and even why it's important, it's unlikely that the invasion fleet would get to it before the Feds there could begin time travel operations.

Why do you assume the Guardian of Forever will even be WILLING to help them, when its name and actions both show that it acts to preserve the timeline as best as possible rather than letting some random guys in spandex throw photon torpedoes through it so they can win a war easier?

I actually addressed this very point in a previous post.

The Guardian of Forever has never not co-operated, even when the timeline was altered. In City on the Edge of Forever, The Guardian doesn't care that time has been changed when McCoy goes back in time. Nor does he care about how Kirk and Company don't set the timeline back exactly as it was. Edith dies as per the timeline, but so does a random homeless person. He's killed by McCoy's phaser. The timeline was thus de facto changed. The Guardian also didn't have a problem with the Federation using it to go back in time for research even when that research resulted in the change in timeline. The desire to keep the timeline intact has always been of the people and not the Guardian.

And I can add to that by stating if the Guardian was so keen on preventing the timeline from changing, why didn't he send McCoy back to the present before he had a chance to change the timeline in the first place? Bringing people back is a power the Guardian has. Yet he doesn't use it to stop the timeline from being fucked over. The only people who have ever been shown to care about the timeline are everyone who's ever interacted with the Guardian, but not the Guardian itself. Dude, it's just a name. Don't read too much into it.

Your entire argument is based on every single one of these assumptions falling perfectly into place. It assumes that the Guardian of Forever (with no precedent, and indeed heavy implications of the exact OPPOSITE) will be willing to let the Federation use it as a convenient method to win the war, that the Imperials' ability to cross the Alpha Quadrant in hours and carry enough firepower to blow apart any resistance it faces will not factor in at all, and that the Federation (who you yourself said didn't resort to time travel and let millions die and a war drag on because of political interference) will immediately send captains to the Guardian and slingshotting around the sun to solve all of their problems.

All these debates have some level of assumptions. Like the assumption that Imperial hyperdrive would even be useful in a galaxy that was more or less uncharted by the Imperials. Indeed, if the Imperials just rocked on up into the Milky Way without having first spent the necessary months or even years plotting both the location of every star system in the quadrant and safe hyperroutes, they would likely lose the vast majority of their ships.

But even then these assumptions are much smaller than ones made by Star Wars fans. Let's break it down:

The Guardian has never once refused to perform an action based on request. There's no reason to assume that it suddenly would now.
The Imperials speed would be pretty meaningless actually, since there would likely already be Feds at the Guardian, and any captain that happens to be by any star can slingshot of his own initiative (ST4).

To add to that, just what would you DO with time travel if you were able to go back? If you travel back in time to 3000 years before the Battle of Yavin, you'll still find a technology base that's eons ahead of Trek. The Empire will be just as strong at the start as it will during the theoretical invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. Will you try to go all the way back to the first settlements of Coruscant and nuke them? There's still an entire galaxy for you to interfere with. It's not as simple as bombing Earth in the 1960s to try and destroy the Federation before it begins, because the Galactic Empire (read the name carefully) isn't dependent on a single planet.

The New Essential Chronology lists the Rakata having an intergalactic empire as early as 30,000 BBY. Can you go back a time when Earth was still in the paleolithic age and try to fight an empire powerful enough to span an entire galaxy in the hopes of defeating the Imperials?

I thought I explained the exact nature of the Guardian operation in my first post. Use it to send PTs or QTs into the largest and most powerful imperial ships as they first arrive in the Galaxy. It wouldn't matter how powerful the Empire is after that. If they come up against a force that can destroy their Death Stars and SSDs seemingly instantly and without any warning they will turn back.

[Darth Tedious]

I think you'll find most people here don't believe that the Empire could simply blitz through the Milky Way without mapping it first.
Noone has made that claim.

You'll also find noone right here has claimed that the Empire would send thousands of ISDs off into another galaxy that they've never even heard of. This is entirely your strawman, you made it all by yourself.
The very idea that the Empire would send a Death Star (built to enforce Tarkin Doctrine in the GFFA, not for intergalactic conquest) on a mission against the Federation, which only you have suggested here, is preposterous.

[Admiral Mercury]

I'm basing my claims around the timetable and strategy found here:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tac ... paign.html
(I was a bit off with the SSDs and Death Stars)

Though if you'd like to hammer out a different example scenario for imperial invasion we can go from there.

[Darth Tedious]

Eh, the main page is 10 years old, I didn't think anyone bothered to pay attention to it anymore.

I honestly do think it highly unlikely that the Empire would send any huge invasion, at least not without already having scouted ahead and mapped/assessed the area (probably including making contact with the locals).
The Empire may have a massive amount of ISDs, but they're already spread thin oppressing the GFFA. Sparing any portion of the fleet to conquer portions of another galaxy would only lessen their ability to control the one they have.
That said, this presumes the Empire even has a way of getting to the MW. Save some sort of temporal wormhole or act of Q, there's really no way of that happening anyway. It's not like they had intergalactic travel.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm basing my claims around the timetable and strategy found here:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tac ... paign.html
(I was a bit off with the SSDs and Death Stars)

Though if you'd like to hammer out a different example scenario for imperial invasion we can go from there.

Bullshit- had you actually read that page, you'd see that in the first fucking sentence it's stated that the Imperials already have starcharts of the Milky Way galaxy. Also, you assume that the Empire will carry out BDZs straight away, the same page states that the Imperials are going to start with soft targets, small scale, and low casualty count of this operation will be misinterpreted by Federation policitians as an Imperial reluctance to engage in a full-scale war- not exactly grounds to go straight to time travel

The Guardian has never once refused to perform an action based on request. There's no reason to assume that it suddenly would now.

And the Federation has never once used time travel to win a war. There's no reason to assume it suddenly would now

[chitoryu12]

More to the point, the Guardian has been seen exactly once in canon, in "The City on the Edge of Forever." The Animated Series and various short stories and novels where it reappeared are non-canon. Its use in this one episode is the only one that applies, so saying "It has never refused a request before" is hardly meaningful as it has only been used intentionally to travel back in time once. On the other hand, the Federation has had billions and billions of lives lost that (according to you) could have been solved through time travel but were allowed to die thanks to politics, but upon the appearance of yet another major alien power they will promptly seek out the Guardian and it will allow them to begin flinging torpedoes into it to destroy everyone and win the war.

Your point is a whole lot of bullshit.

[Crazedwraith]

Star Trek canon has gone through changes. Sometimes TAS was considered canon, sometimes it wasn't. But the episode with the Guardian Of Forever 'Yesteryear' is always considered canon. It's that good and important an exploration of Spock's backstory.

[avatarxprime]

I have a suspicion that while the Defiants are indeed highly capable ships, they are correspondingly very expensive to build (and thats expensive in resource terms, not money). Also, I question your assertion that Defiants are the Federation's strongest ship. We see Galaxy class ships doing very well in a number of battles, Third Bajor and First Chin'toka to name but two. We also have the existence of the Enterprise-E, supposedly the Federations "most advanced starship" at the time of STFC according to Geordi (which means he ranks it over the Defiant btw) and yet we never see Sovereign class ships in the war, or mass produced.

I would agree with this. From what we saw of the Dominion War, there were a lot more combat refit Galaxies being built than Defiants. Also the Sovereign class likely represents the pinnacle of Fed tech, but that doesn't mean it needs to be the best warship they have as it still appears to be more of an all-rounder like the regular Galaxy class ships. However, Admiral Mercury is forgetting the Akira class in all of this as well, another post-Borg combat ship, which actually has 5 more torpedo launchers than the Sovereign class.


As to the issue of time travel, both altering your own past and the Many Worlds seem to be in play. We know from Parallels that alternate "quantum worlds" exist, with one world for every possible outcome from every possible decision anyone could ever make. However, things like Year of Hell from VOY or the Temporal Cold War would seem to favor the "you change your own past" idea of time travel. I think the most important episode in this regard is likely We'll Always Have Paris with the Manheim Effect. In the episode an old friend of Picard's was messing around with time and gravity to open a "window" to another parallel world. The scientist behind it succeeds, but it messes with time in a large vicinity around the experiment with time looping on itself and temporal doubles of the characters randomly appearing. It also nearly kills him the scientist. It would seem that with time travel in the Star Trek universe, you can't necessarily be 100% sure whether you're going to travel into your own past and be able to make changes or get pushed into an alternate universe. That would easily explain why the Federation is extremely cautious about time travel and why even less scrupulous powers would also be wary of just randomly trying to go back in time to try and produce more favorable outcomes. Trek 2009 is actually an example of this, the producers say that the '09 world is another quantum parallel world, which both Spock and the Narada being sent to it because of their attempt at traveling into the past.

[Patrick Degan]

I thought I explained the exact nature of the Guardian operation in my first post. Use it to send PTs or QTs into the largest and most powerful imperial ships as they first arrive in the Galaxy. It wouldn't matter how powerful the Empire is after that. If they come up against a force that can destroy their Death Stars and SSDs seemingly instantly and without any warning they will turn back.

Really?

"If we could somehow travel back to the day before yesterday, and..."

"Prevent the accident from happening in the first place."

"Guardian, is it possible to change the speed at which Yesterday passes?"

"I WAS MADE TO OFFER THE PAST IN THIS MANNER. I CANNOT CHANGE."

The Guardian of Forever was designed by its builders to flash through historical periods by decades. This function, as the Guardian itself testifies, could not be altered. Furthermore, there is no way to accurately fix a date to step into. The best estimate Kirk and Spock could manage, trying to find McCoy, was a date within a month of his arrival in 1930 New York.

Too bad, kid. The Guardian would not be a reliable mechanism for your scheme. Don't like that? Argue it with Harlan Ellison.

[Admiral Mercury]

More to the point, the Guardian has been seen exactly once in canon, in "The City on the Edge of Forever." The Animated Series and various short stories and novels where it reappeared are non-canon. Its use in this one episode is the only one that applies, so saying "It has never refused a request before" is hardly meaningful as it has only been used intentionally to travel back in time once. On the other hand, the Federation has had billions and billions of lives lost that (according to you) could have been solved through time travel but were allowed to die thanks to politics, but upon the appearance of yet another major alien power they will promptly seek out the Guardian and it will allow them to begin flinging torpedoes into it to destroy everyone and win the war.

Your point is a whole lot of bullshit.

I thought I explained the exact nature of the Guardian operation in my first post. Use it to send PTs or QTs into the largest and most powerful imperial ships as they first arrive in the Galaxy. It wouldn't matter how powerful the Empire is after that. If they come up against a force that can destroy their Death Stars and SSDs seemingly instantly and without any warning they will turn back.

Really?

"If we could somehow travel back to the day before yesterday, and..."

"Prevent the accident from happening in the first place."

"Guardian, is it possible to change the speed at which Yesterday passes?"

"I WAS MADE TO OFFER THE PAST IN THIS MANNER. I CANNOT CHANGE."

The Guardian of Forever was designed by its builders to flash through historical periods by decades. This function, as the Guardian itself testifies, could not be altered. Furthermore, there is no way to accurately fix a date to step into. The best estimate Kirk and Spock could manage, trying to find McCoy, was a date within a month of his arrival in 1930 New York.

Too bad, kid. The Guardian would not be a reliable mechanism for your scheme. Don't like that? Argue it with Harlan Ellison.

Seriously, the episode I'm basing this off of "Yesteryear" from the Animated series is canon. It's description of the Guardian is therefore also canon!

"Although Michael and Denise Okuda originally decided that the animated series would not be canonical, they also stipulated that this episode is the only exception, stating their reasoning as "partly because it is reinforced by material in 'Unification, Part I' [sic] and 'Journey to Babel', but also because of Fontana's pivotal role in developing the background for the Spock character in the original Star Trek series." (Star Trek Chronology, 1st ed., p. 30) It is not only the Okudas who accept the events of this episode to be canonical; many other production staffers also do. (Star Trek Monthly issue 6, p. 22, et al.) Even Gene Roddenberry reportedly regarded the episode as canon. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 37, No. 2, p. 37) "

To quote a forum regular:

Star Trek canon has gone through changes. Sometimes TAS was considered canon, sometimes it wasn't. But the episode with the Guardian Of Forever 'Yesteryear' is always considered canon. It's that good and important an exploration of Spock's backstory.

[Darth Tedious]

Was City On The Edge Of Forever decanonised at any stage?
Whether or not Yesteryear was considered canon (which seems debatable), you still have to deal with the fact that a TOS episode contradicts your theory.

[Patrick Degan]

If "Yesteryear" is canon, the ORIGINAL episode featuring the Guardian —"City On The Edge Of Forever"— certainly is, and it flatly disallows the scheme you are proposing.

You have no argument, kid.

[TheHammer]

I've long argued that "time travel" is a misnomer in the Trek-verse, and is instead dimension travel to parallel universes at a different point in history. The "temporal prime directive" is actually a logical extension of the trek prime directive of non interference in another universe's events, rather than self preservation of ones own timeline.

If time travel within a single timeline were truly possible, then all of history would already account for all instances of time travel. You would not be able to go back and "change history", rather you'd simply become part of the history you already know. Otherwise, The problem of the butterfly effect, along with the obvious paradox implementations of changing history should be obvious. The 2002 movie version of "The Time Machine" touches upon this quite well, because obviously if it were possible to change history, the events that would lead one to want to change history, to know what to change, and to make the effor to do so would cease to exist. Even if the federation could go back in time to "destory the empire at its infancy" with super advanced weapons from the future, as soon as this was done the reason to go back and do so would cease to exist and thus the time travel would never occur.

Technobable explanations along the lines of "temporal wakes" etc are the stretch given the more likely many worlds explanation. It's the best explanation for why when upon returning to their "original time" characters from Trek find that history isn't exactly as they remembered it. That's because they remember history from an alternate universe. If they were to carry a history book with them on their "time travel" it would not change, it would simply be different from all the other history books in this new universe.

[Aharon]

@TheHammer
Time Travel within a singe timeline could look like this (from an article on causal universes by Yudkowsky), using the Potterverse time travel s an example:

If a time machine does allow for changing history, it's easy to imagine how to compute it; you could easily write a computer program which would simulate that universe and its time travel, given sufficient computing power. You would store the state of the universe in RAM and simulate it under the programmed 'laws of physics'. Every nanosecond, say, you'd save a copy of the universe's state to disk. When the Time-Changer was activated at 9pm, you'd retrieve the saved state of the universe from one hour ago at 8pm, load it into RAM, and then insert the Time-Changer and its user in the appropriate place. This would, of course, dump the rest of the universe from 9pm into oblivion - no processing would continue onward from that point, which is the same as ending that world and killing everyone in it.



This would allow time travel specifically to change the past. Of course, time travel was never shown to work this way in Trek.

[TheHammer]

@TheHammer
Time Travel within a singe timeline could look like this (from an article on causal universes by Yudkowsky), using the Potterverse time travel s an example:

If a time machine does allow for changing history, it's easy to imagine how to compute it; you could easily write a computer program which would simulate that universe and its time travel, given sufficient computing power. You would store the state of the universe in RAM and simulate it under the programmed 'laws of physics'. Every nanosecond, say, you'd save a copy of the universe's state to disk. When the Time-Changer was activated at 9pm, you'd retrieve the saved state of the universe from one hour ago at 8pm, load it into RAM, and then insert the Time-Changer and its user in the appropriate place. This would, of course, dump the rest of the universe from 9pm into oblivion - no processing would continue onward from that point, which is the same as ending that world and killing everyone in it.

This would allow time travel specifically to change the past. Of course, time travel was never shown to work this way in Trek.

The very scenario you described illustrates two separate timelines. I realize that in some scifi implementations that the original timeline is destroyed, but that leaves some rather sloppy loose ends with the paradox of how could a time traveler from a destroyed universe still exist if his timeline was destroyed before his birth? I stand by the assertion that the only way a single timeline scenario can exist with time travel is if all of history already accounts for every incident of said time travel and changing the past is impossible - the traveller would simply become part of the history they already know and remember.

[TOSDOC]

The 2002 movie version of "The Time Machine" touches upon this quite well, because obviously if it were possible to change history, the events that would lead one to want to change history, to know what to change, and to make the effor to do so would cease to exist. Even if the federation could go back in time to "destory the empire at its infancy" with super advanced weapons from the future, as soon as this was done the reason to go back and do so would cease to exist and thus the time travel would never occur.

Spoiler

It should be pointed out that you're describing two separate cause and effect scenarios here. In The Time Machine, Hardigan's invention of the time machine was a DIRECT result of his fiance's death, and thus why he could not use it to alter her death, because if she lived the machine would not have been invented. Mercury is describing a scenario where the means to travel through time already exists BEFORE the Federation's need of it in a fight against the Empire, not a scenario where time travel through the Guardian was invented by the Federation to counter the Empire.