Time travel is a legitimate tactic.

[Batman]

Since when is Dooku a droid?I know I don't pay much in the way of attention to the prequel era but I DO think something like this would have popped up during TCW.

[Metahive]

You know, guys, there's nothing stopping the 31sters from simply offing Dooku (or anyone else, really) too should he be too much of a problem. Face it, their time-space displacement tech is a total gamebreaker when it comes to the SW universe.

[Jedipilot24]

You know, guys, there's nothing stopping the 31sters from simply offing Dooku (or anyone else, really) too should he be too much of a problem. Face it, their time-space displacement tech is a total gamebreaker when it comes to the SW universe.

Did you even read my post? The Temporal Butterflies don't always flap in your favor. In Year of Hell, Annorax learned that the hard way. He had a ship that could wipe out entire races but no matter how many changes he made, he still could never get his wife back.

The Sphere Builders tried to alter their future and instead they made it MUCH WORSE; they brought about their own defeat MUCH EARLIER!

There's no reason to think that offing Palpatine and Dooku would be an automatic game-over in the SW universe and completely prevent the rise of the Empire; offing Hitler would not have prevented the rise of Nazi Germany and may, in fact, have made it more stable. That is why the 31sters won't get involved; because, for all they know, they could just make things a lot worse. Daniels didn't expect that bringing Archer to the future would destroy the timeline, but it did and it took him completely by surprise; altering the timeline made things MUCH WORSE!

When the Temporal Cold War heated up, so many bad things happened in Earth's history that Nazi Germany somehow became able to do the impossible and invade the United States.

So the 31sters will not get involved against the Empire because they won't want to take the risk that their interference would make things MUCH WORSE.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I had a thought about the whole Shockwave time line fuckery. Namely, Daniels said everything went to hell because he took Archer off the Enterprise so he wasn't around to do whatever he did to make the future a nice place. Unless I'm mistaken, this implies that they never planned to return him to the timeline, or else history would record that he disappeared and then returned later, not that he disappeared for good so the Federation never happened.. If they wanted to keep him safe couldn't they just grab him from that turbolift and return him to Enterprise after the crisis is over?

[Jedipilot24]

I had a thought about the whole Shockwave time line fuckery. Namely, Daniels said everything went to hell because he took Archer off the Enterprise so he wasn't around to do whatever he did to make the future a nice place. Unless I'm mistaken, this implies that they never planned to return him to the timeline, or else history would record that he disappeared and then returned later, not that he disappeared for good so the Federation never happened.. If they wanted to keep him safe couldn't they just grab him from that turbolift and return him to Enterprise after the crisis is over?

Not sure since we don't really know how it happened, but you address one of my points while completely ignoring the rest.

[Metahive]

I give you a hint: meddling in one's own history is different from meddling in that of another galaxy. Since the ST and SW galaxy share no history, all of SW's history is fair game.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I had a thought about the whole Shockwave time line fuckery. Namely, Daniels said everything went to hell because he took Archer off the Enterprise so he wasn't around to do whatever he did to make the future a nice place. Unless I'm mistaken, this implies that they never planned to return him to the timeline, or else history would record that he disappeared and then returned later, not that he disappeared for good so the Federation never happened.. If they wanted to keep him safe couldn't they just grab him from that turbolift and return him to Enterprise after the crisis is over?

Not sure since we don't really know how it happened, but you address one of my points while completely ignoring the rest.

I wasn't trying to address any of your points, I was throwing out an idea I had.

[Jedipilot24]

I give you a hint: meddling in one's own history is different from meddling in that of another galaxy. Since the ST and SW galaxy share no history, all of SW's history is fair game.

In what sense is it 'fair game?' Meddling in history has a tendency to backfire horribly regardless of who's history it is and who is doing the meddling. If someone from ST tries to meddle in SW history to prevent the Galactic Empire from coming to existence, then they've got a good chance of only making things worse instead. How many times do I have to repeat that?

[Metahive]

In what sense is it 'fair game?' Meddling in history has a tendency to backfire horribly regardless of who's history it is and who is doing the meddling. If someone from ST tries to meddle in SW history to prevent the Galactic Empire from coming to existence, then they've got a good chance of only making things worse instead. How many times do I have to repeat that?

Asserting shithead is asserting shit.

They drop Palpatine in a black hole after Geonosis I, they put Dooku down by sabotaging his solar sailship and have him fly into a star, they blow up Yoda's cruiser while he's en route to Toydaria, they deploy a nuclear bomb in the Jedi temple while they're discussing the recent tragedies and if necessary do the same to the republican and seperatist councils while they convene. End result: Total chaos. Anarchy reigns No more threat from the SW galaxy for the foreseeable future. And whenever some strongman is poised to unify the galaxy again, they can throw him into the dark of space as well.

Face it, the SW galaxy is a sitting duck to the 31st century time-space displacement and observation technology. How about instead of appealing to (wholly fictional and arbitrary) "rules" of time-manipulation you instead tell me how the SW universe would deal with an enemy that can get them wherever and whenever they stand and who can observe their every action? Go and put some work behind it, you shitlicking dickbooger.

[Jedipilot24]

In what sense is it 'fair game?' Meddling in history has a tendency to backfire horribly regardless of who's history it is and who is doing the meddling. If someone from ST tries to meddle in SW history to prevent the Galactic Empire from coming to existence, then they've got a good chance of only making things worse instead. How many times do I have to repeat that?

Asserting shithead is asserting shit.

They drop Palpatine in a black hole after Geonosis I, they put Dooku down by sabotaging his solar sailship and have him fly into a star, they blow up Yoda's cruiser while he's en route to Toydaria, they deploy a nuclear bomb in the Jedi temple while they're discussing the recent tragedies and if necessary do the same to the republican and seperatist councils while they convene. End result: Total chaos. Anarchy reigns No more threat from the SW galaxy for the foreseeable future. And whenever some strongman is poised to unify the galaxy again, they can throw him into the dark of space as well.

Face it, the SW galaxy is a sitting duck to the 31st century time-space displacement and observation technology. How about instead of appealing to (wholly fictional and arbitrary) "rules" of time-manipulation you instead tell me how the SW universe would deal with an enemy that can get them wherever and whenever they stand and who can observe their every action? Go and put some work behind it, you shitlicking dickbooger.

There's no need to resort to insults.

I have not described arbitrary 'rules' of time-manipulation; I have described some general principles of counterfactual history: the more you change, the more that will change, and it won't always be to your benefit.

And incidentally the answer is Force Precognition; yes, I admit that it can be unreliable but neither can it be completely ignored, particularly in the case of an immediate, large-scale threat like a nuclear bomb in their own temple--which is in the heart of planet-sized city. If you are going to give the 31sters so much knowledge of the SW galaxy, then the Jedi should also gain some awareness of the new threat. Congrats, your bombs just got disarmed by the Jedi.
Also, it's never been established if the 31sts temporal transporters can beam through shields; we already know that the 29th century version couldn't (from Relativity) and the only thing seen on screen to distinguish the two is the improved safety rate.
Coruscant has planetary shields.
The scope and capability of the 31sters temporal observation technology has never been observed, all of we have seen on screen is Daniels little device and that only seemed to show general information. Why are you giving them arbitrary abilities? As you yourself pointed out, watching them manipulate their own history is very different from manipulating the history of an entirely different galaxy and one that they had no prior contact with.

[Metahive]

I have not described arbitrary 'rules' of time-manipulation; I have described some general principles of counterfactual history: the more you change, the more that will change, and it won't always be to your benefit.

What was that with you treating the "Butterfly of Doom" as some sort of proven fact? That time manipulation would only ever make things worse?

And incidentally the answer is Force Precognition; yes, I admit that it can be unreliable but neither can it be completely ignored, particularly in the case of an immediate, large-scale threat like a nuclear bomb in their own temple--which is in the heart of planet-sized city.

Force precognition is completely unreliable, everyone in the movies who relies on it (Anakin, Palpatine) never quite foresees the worst bits of it (the parts where they get shafted). So it can be ignored as an effective countermeasure and the Jedi have been deprived of it anyway due to Palpatine's machinations.

If you are going to give the 31sters so much knowledge of the SW galaxy, then the Jedi should also gain some awareness of the new threat.

This isn't about being fair, you dumbass. This is about how the SW could possible deal with a technology that's completely beyond them. Force precognition is extremely vague and seems to be the greek type (as in "inevitable events to come") anyway.

Also, it's never been established if the 31sts temporal transporters can beam through shields; we already know that the 29th century version couldn't (from Relativity) and the only thing seen on screen to distinguish the two is the improved safety rate.
Coruscant has planetary shields.

The Enterprise has navigational deflectors, so its hull doesn't get perforated by microasteroids while traveling at warp. So yes, the technology of the 31sters can pierce shields. Even better, the displacement leaves absolutely no measurable trace, so whatever method they use, it only barely interacts with the targeted space anyway. It seems it doesn't have to pierce anything at all.

SW's shields are not an obstacle.

The scope and capability of the 31sters temporal observation technology has never been observed, all of we have seen on screen is Daniels little device and that only seemed to show general information. Why are you giving them arbitrary abilities? As you yourself pointed out, watching them manipulate their own history is very different from manipulating the history of an entirely different galaxy and one that they had no prior contact with.

Bullshit. In Stormfront they pinpoint exactly when and where the Nah'kul would perform their little stunt that would eventually grow into the Temporal Cold War and do what I suggested they do to the SW galaxy, solve the problem at its root which worked out perfectly for them I might add (no butterfly of doom here).

Tell me, why wouldn't they be able to observe SW history? If there's a point in the future where a wormhole connects the two galaxies and they foresee an imperial fleet rampaging through their homespace, why wouldn't they be able to trace their history back? The Krennim could do so once they detected an anomaly within their much more primitive time-space matrix, so what's stopping the 31sters with their much more refined tech?

[Jedipilot24]

What was that with you treating the "Butterfly of Doom" as some sort of proven fact? That time manipulation would only ever make things worse?

I didn't say that that was the only thing that was the only thing that would happen, only that it could happen and had to be considered in any time manipulation scenario. Yes if you change the past you might make things better, but you could also make them much worse.

And incidentally the answer is Force Precognition; yes, I admit that it can be unreliable but neither can it be completely ignored, particularly in the case of an immediate, large-scale threat like a nuclear bomb in their own temple--which is in the heart of planet-sized city.

Force precognition is completely unreliable, everyone in the movies who relies on it (Anakin, Palpatine) never quite foresees the worst bits of it (the parts where they get shafted). So it can be ignored as an effective countermeasure and the Jedi have been deprived of it anyway due to Palpatine's machinations.[/quote]
But if you go and suddenly drop Palpatine into a black hole, then the Jedi won't have any problems will they?

This isn't about being fair, you dumbass. This is about how the SW could possible deal with a technology that's completely beyond them. Force precognition is extremely vague and seems to be the greek type (as in "inevitable events to come") anyway.

I never said anything about fairness, only that it seems unlikely for the 31sters to get so much information while still remaining totally unknown.

The Enterprise has navigational deflectors, so its hull doesn't get perforated by microasteroids while traveling at warp. So yes, the technology of the 31sters can pierce shields. Even better, the displacement leaves absolutely no measurable trace, so whatever method they use, it only barely interacts with the targeted space anyway. It seems it doesn't have to pierce anything at all.

SW's shields are not an obstacle.

Oh come. It's been established time and again in Trek that Navigational Deflectors =/= shields. If they did, then the Enterprise wouldn't still have been using reinforced hull plating as its primary defense against hostiles. I will repeat, in Relativity, the 29thers could only beam Seven to and from points in history where Voyager's shields were down; even simple force-fields stop them. We do not see anything in Enterprise to distinguish the 31st century version of this technology, except for the fact that its much safer to use. In the absence of more information, I prefer the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions.

Bullshit. In Stormfront they pinpoint exactly when and where the Nah'kul would perform their little stunt that would eventually grow into the Temporal Cold War and do what I suggested they do to the SW galaxy, solve the problem at its root which worked out perfectly for them I might add (no butterfly of doom here).

Tell me, why wouldn't they be able to observe SW history? If there's a point in the future where a wormhole connects the two galaxies and they foresee an imperial fleet rampaging through their homespace, why wouldn't they be able to trace their history back? The Krennim could do so once they detected an anomaly within their much more primitive time-space matrix, so what's stopping the 31sters with their much more refined tech?

The 'anomaly' the Krenim picked up was a ship with temporal shields that shouldn't have them and, by all appearances, the Krenim picked that up with normal subspace sensors.

The 31sters pinpointed where the Nah'kul would start everything because they were working with their own history; it had already happened from their perspective so of course they would be able to figure out where it started. That doesn't necessarily mean that the 31sters can read alternate futures the way the Spherebuilders can. We simply don't see them doing it; moreover, if the 31sters did have that technology, then they would have foreseen the possible devastation that would result from grabbing Archer. They didn't foresee it, so they don't have that technology; but that doesn't prevent them from understanding--simply by analyzing their own historical records--that Archer is VERY IMPORTANT and so should be protected at all costs. That, in fact, was probably why they put Daniels on his ship in the first place.

But the 31sters wouldn't have access to the historical records of a galaxy they never encountered before and simply finding a wormhole to that galaxy would not instantly give them those records. And since they can't predict the future, they wouldn't think to start meddling in the Galactic Empire's history until after the Empire has already attacked them. Yes, both the 31sters and the 29thers have some ability to scan time, but all appearances on screen have only shown that technology detecting anomalies in their own past; never in their future. The only temporal faction that showed any ability to predict the future was the Spherebuilders and they still managed to lose.

[Jedipilot24]

sorry for the double post, but I just noticed a mistake. Fixed now:

Force precognition is completely unreliable, everyone in the movies who relies on it (Anakin, Palpatine) never quite foresees the worst bits of it (the parts where they get shafted). So it can be ignored as an effective countermeasure and the Jedi have been deprived of it anyway due to Palpatine's machinations.

But if you go and suddenly drop Palpatine into a black hole, then the Jedi won't have any problems will they?

I will also point out that expecting a 22nd century Navigational Deflector to block 31st century temporal transporters is like expecting a plywood shield to block an assault rifle.
Coruscant has a planetary shield that is capable of momentarily resisting a Death Star blast. How can you equate that with the Enterprise's navigational deflector, which never protected it from anything EXCEPT space dust?

The Navigational Deflector is the technobabble Swiss Army Knife of Star Trek; but it is still repeatedly described as a distinctly separate system from the Deflector Shields.

[Metahive]

I didn't say that that was the only thing that was the only thing that would happen, only that it could happen and had to be considered in any time manipulation scenario. Yes if you change the past you might make things better, but you could also make them much worse.

Backpedaling ass is backpedaling.

But if you go and suddenly drop Palpatine into a black hole, then the Jedi won't have any problems will they?

Of course they will even then since Force precog sucks balls. Yeah, just ignore that canon has precognition backfire horribly for all relying on it.

I never said anything about fairness, only that it seems unlikely for the 31sters to get so much information while still remaining totally unknown.

Once the Empire shows up on their radar they have all the time in the world to gather intelligence. That's your privilege when you have time at your beck and call.

Oh come. It's been established time and again in Trek that Navigational Deflectors =/= shields. If they did, then the Enterprise wouldn't still have been using reinforced hull plating as its primary defense against hostiles. I will repeat, in Relativity, the 29thers could only beam Seven to and from points in history where Voyager's shields were down; even simple force-fields stop them. We do not see anything in Enterprise to distinguish the 31st century version of this technology, except for the fact that its much safer to use. In the absence of more information, I prefer the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions.

29th century limitations are completely irrelevant. It's like saying that because the NX-01 was capped at warp 5 the NCC-1701D couldn't possibly be any faster. There's 200 years between them, shithead. Also, 29th century time-displacement tech is way more primitive and has a rather obvious transporter effect when engaged. 31st century's has none. Whatsoever. Stop ignoring this point.

Also, they were able to transport an entire spaceship over hundreds of years worth of time and billions of kilometers in Zero Hour. Do you really think a measly forcefield is a challenge for them?

The 'anomaly' the Krenim picked up was a ship with temporal shields that shouldn't have them and, by all appearances, the Krenim picked that up with normal subspace sensors.

Forgot that Voyager's own timeline was part of their time-space matrix when Chakotey worked together with Annorax to get Voyager out of the year of hell? That's what I'm talking about. Once it's a blip its whole history is laid bare and the Krennim aren't even as advanced as the 31sters.

The 31sters pinpointed where the Nah'kul would start everything because they were working with their own history; it had already happened from their perspective so of course they would be able to figure out where it started. That doesn't necessarily mean that the 31sters can read alternate futures the way the Spherebuilders can. We simply don't see them doing it; moreover, if the 31sters did have that technology, then they would have foreseen the possible devastation that would result from grabbing Archer. They didn't foresee it, so they don't have that technology; but that doesn't prevent them from understanding--simply by analyzing their own historical records--that Archer is VERY IMPORTANT and so should be protected at all costs. That, in fact, was probably why they put Daniels on his ship in the first place.

Dude, they could read the timeline of the spherebuilders who are extra-dimensional! If they can do that why should a mere different galaxy be any harder to read?

But the 31sters wouldn't have access to the historical records of a galaxy they never encountered before and simply finding a wormhole to that galaxy would not instantly give them those records. And since they can't predict the future, they wouldn't think to start meddling in the Galactic Empire's history until after the Empire has already attacked them. Yes, both the 31sters and the 29thers have some ability to scan time, but all appearances on screen have only shown that technology detecting anomalies in their own past; never in their future. The only temporal faction that showed any ability to predict the future was the Spherebuilders and they still managed to lose.

re: all the time in the world to do stuff due to having time at their beck and call. Stop ignoring that.

Also, how do you know they can't predict the future? They obviously can otherwise they wouldn't try to create a better one for themselves.

I will also point out that expecting a 22nd century Navigational Deflector to block 31st century temporal transporters is like expecting a plywood shield to block an assault rifle.
Coruscant has a planetary shield that is capable of momentarily resisting a Death Star blast. How can you equate that with the Enterprise's navigational deflector, which never protected it from anything EXCEPT space dust?

It doesn't matter, the technology only interacts with the intended target re: no measurable effect whatsoever (ie it obviously doesn't brute-force itself through). The only defense is having time-manipulation tech on your own which the Empire lacks completely.

Face it, the 31sters can ruin the Empire's day pretty badly if they want to.

[Jedipilot24]

Forgot that Voyager's own timeline was part of their time-space matrix when Chakotey worked together with Annorax to get Voyager out of the year of hell? That's what I'm talking about. Once it's a blip its whole history is laid bare and the Krennim aren't even as advanced as the 31sters.

Where are you getting this? Yes, Chakotay share some information about Voyager's travel through and near the Krenim's territory. That doesn't mean that the Krenim learned everything there is to know about the Federation; even Chakotay wouldn't know all that.

Dude, they could read the timeline of the spherebuilders who are extra-dimensional! If they can do that why should a mere different galaxy be any harder to read?

Where are you getting this? Daniels and the 31sters know the Spherebuilders objectives, something about their temporal technology, as well as the fact that in one timeline, which is Daniels past, they almost succeeded. That is all that is revealed about them and most of it can be reasonably deduced from the fact that the Spherebuilders ultimately failed, so of course they would want to try to change things. This does not mean that the 31sters know everything about the Spherebuilders history, why would they?

Also, how do you know they can't predict the future? They obviously can otherwise they wouldn't try to create a better one for themselves.

They didn't predict what would happen when they brought Archer to the future.

It doesn't matter, the technology only interacts with the intended target re: no measurable effect whatsoever (ie it obviously doesn't brute-force itself through). The only defense is having time-manipulation tech on your own which the Empire lacks completely.
Face it, the 31sters can ruin the Empire's day pretty badly if they want to.

Not really; the 31sters would first have to gain a significant amount of information about the Empire, information that would not be commonly available to the average citizen and they would be starting with zip. As we see in the first time Daniels shows Temporal Observatory to Archer, they would have to send people to do this research in person.
But lets assume for the same of argument that they manage to get people to Obroa-Skai, the biggest library in the SW galaxy, and spend an indefinite amount of time researching there. So what, they still wouldn't learn what they really need to know: information about the Emperor's personal movements. The only thing they would learn on that topic is that the Emperor spends almost all of his time in the Imperial Palace. And when they start researching the Clone Wars period, it won't be long before they are visited by the ISB which has flagged or otherwise restricted almost everything to do that time period. Those measures are aimed at revealing dissidents, but they'll work just as well against time traveling interlopers. Time-travel to before the ISB existed also won't work because during the Clone Wars, information about the Chancellor's movements would have been highly restricted for security reasons.

So what are they going to do, nuke the palace? Where in the Imperial Palace do they plant the nuke? They won't have the schematics, if schematics even exist which I doubt because even people who worked there often got lost--the Emperor liked it that way.
So what do they do now? Send people to Coruscant and try to scan the Imperial Palace? Good luck doing that without being detected since the Emperor has other enemies he does know about who also might want to nuke the palace--like Rebel extremists for example?
How about using the temporal transporter to beam the entire palace into the vacuum of space? The Palace is 3 kilometers high and 20 kilometers wide and that's just the above-ground part. Good luck with that.

How about trying to nuke the Senate during the Clone Wars? Again you get the problem of the lack of publically available schematics, for obvious security reasons. And speaking about security, the Senate has lots of it. Even with his "Insider Information" Cad Bane only succeeded because Anakin had given his lightsaber to Padme.

[Connor MacLeod]

The problem with time travel isn't so much the legitimacy of the tactic, its that in vs debates terms its used as a gimmick to 'WIN' the debate. There's no discussion or analysis of time travel in the context of advantages and disadvantages, the costs and infrastructure required to pull it off, the dangers and drawbacks, things like that. It takes something that as a 'tactic' should be discussed in a complicated manner and tries to reduce it to comic-book superpower level (EG on the levle of functionally idiotic 'superman's 'super-pizza making' powers, or batman's gimmicky 'with preparation' meme-crap - something that is mindless and essentially devalues the concept to meaninglessness.)

More people would probably be less intransigent about the time travle shit if it wasn't employed as some sort of 'win button', but to be fair ST is hardly the only franchise with examples of that mentality.

[Stark]

The downsides of time travel in debate arguably stems from it's narrative use. Nobody ever says 'my amazing time machine can move 170kilos up to 9 years per hour and sustain 19.7 kilorassilons of paradox before failing'. They just say 'whee look pa I went back in time and it was like, CRAZY'. The discussion is then limited to 'I use time travel to cancel your time travel' and 'na uh fourth law of time subparagraph b says free passage of the time tunnel is guaranteed' and 'I time travel to before the laws of time and cancel them lol'.

Even if the support or problems involved in time travel are discussed there is generally not enough information to understand the limitations, so it's poor for debates.

[Connor MacLeod]

My memory of Trek WRT time travel isnt the best, but more often than not we tend to see it used more as a 'last resorts' desperation tactic more than anything. ITs not like its a routine part of their day to day life or anything (although there seem to be departments where it is regulated, and there is always the 'future' Federation, who is pretty nebulous.) Time travel always struck me as something they would use if they have to, but only when the situation was most dire (the existence of the federation or the galaxy being at stake, like in STIV), and it probably would have all manner of consequences even then (Which I remember being a possible issue from DS9)

But that really isn't how we see it used in vs debating, where it comes across like the Federation are nascent Time Lords or something. Part of me blames it on the way STar Trek technology is regarded in general (by both sides really). There is such contempt for it (not without reason mind) that it makes trivializing it one way or another either way (EG literally treating it like superpowers or magic, or assuming its nonsense.) rather than trying to actually make sense of it.

[Stark]

That's how the narrative use impacts how we see it. I mean when it's used to win or solve complex problems its natural it's that people will imagine it useful for solving problems and fixing bad things. I think beyond 'there are probably limitations' there's not much to say and thus using it in a debate basically dooms that debate to be a slap fight around what people believe those limits are.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Since when is Dooku a droid? I know I don't pay much in the way of attention to the prequel era but I DO think something like this would have popped up during TCW.

My bad, I meant to say it would mean droids as the occupying force

[jwl]

From looking a memory alpha, this time machine is apparently on some random planet in the middle of nowhere. Do the federation have any people stationed on this planet to instantly make use of the thing, or do they have to travel there? If they have to travel, who's going to get there first, the federation, or the empire (after they've captured and interrogated people about the plan to use it)? It is to my understanding it takes a long time for federation ships to travel around the galaxy.

[Admiral Mercury]

Wow, this thread really went in some different directions. Pretty interesting debate, all things considered. Though briefly touching back to my original point, I would like to say that I now accept the Wongian interpretation of time travel in Star Trek at least as far as the Guardian of Forever is concerned. Therefore, my original scenario would not work as planned.