Sela, if cryptic did a mission to where we use the annorax to erase Sela, then the timeline will be restored and everything will be normal. Tuturians can come back, Romulus restored Kelvin timeline averted. Lets do it!
Lets fix the timeline, and save Romulus.
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1. Erasing Sela would not guarantee the return of the Tutarians; after all, using the Annorax on the Borg Transwarp Network to 'reset' time and 'save' Romulus from the Borg is what caused the Tutarians to be lost in the first place.
2. Erasing Sela would have a serious impact on Klingon-Federation relations since Sela was the driving force for much of Duras and his sister's actions in the 2360's, including providing supplies to Duras-loyal forces during the Klingon Civil War until the Picard Blockade prevented it. Without Sela, Duras might not have even attempted to make a bid for the Chancellorship, which would alter Worf's relations with the Empire and could easily change the course of the Dominion War if he were, say, married to K'Ehlayr and not on DS9 during the War.
Essentially, you're making the same mistakes that were made in "Butterfly", focusing on a desired end result (No Iconians, Saving Romulus) without considering the ripple effect. If you'll recall, in one of the blogs, it was revealed that Ad'ranna and the other Romulans on the project had made hundreds of simulations with the intent of restoring Romulus - they all either failed or, as happened in the mission, left Romulus in a worse-off situation than simply being destroyed. To paraphrase what was traditionally said in Earth monarchies when a ruler died and their heir took the throne...
"Romulus is dead, long live New Romulus."
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The way the storyline goes and the end of the iconion war arc are kinda proof and then the start of the temporal cold war basically is with the sphere builders and that one krenim who lost his wife do to the krenim device. All that happened because of Sela. But your right about one thing time would take a different course. So its possible it could be worse off then before and its possible that the romulans could have messed up the timeline for themselves leading up the creation of sela.
An easier example to consider is this statement: "if Elvis Presley hadn't overdosed in 1977, he'd still be alive today." That's pretty obviously flawed, isn't it? (Because there's no possibility whatsoever that, in the ensuing 39 years, he wouldn't have fallen off a ladder, been in a car accident, died of a heart attack at the age of 52, or--given his tendencies at the time--simply overdosed a year [if not a week] later, right?)
But, just playing along--OP, how do you suggest we "erase" Sela? Her existence is already the result of a corrupted timeline; Tasha Yar should have been re-eliminated from the timeline in "Yesterday's Enterprise," but Picard and Guinan let their feels override their thinks, and thus Sela was (eventually) born. If you couldn't (somehow) intervene to convince Guinan or Picard to do the smart thing instead of the "right" thing--and I don't think you could--then you could only do murder to change events. Which person will be your target, then? Tasha? Sela's Romulan father? Sela herself? At what point in her life? Perhaps the Annorax device could have (somehow) prevented the temporal anomaly that caused the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise" in the first place. Unfortunately, doing that might have prevented the invention of the device in the first place.
Here's the thing, though, and it's at the core of all temporal paradoxes: if historical events provoke you to go back in time to change the event--then there's no need for you to go back to change the event, and so you don't. So the event happens. Worse, and taking the specific question at hand as an example--you can't predict the course of the timeline after Sela is removed. That point was illustrated in the game, as it was in Voyager: the situation is too computationally complex for one to determine the outcome, and something will always be different than your desired outcome. Annorax himself discovered that the hard way, didn't he?
Hans Moravec wrote this:
For the purposes of Star Trek as a story-telling device that clearly doesn't hold, because we have those nice folks from the 29th century squiring us around to make sure that we "fix" the timeline--but on the other hand, maybe it does. The accumulation of all those attempts to correct the "Sela situation" merely average out (a Feynman "sum over histories," if you will) to a timeline in which everything plays out as we know it to have happened. We can't change the past--we can only reinforce it.
Another solution, that I can't believe wasn't explored, is... we know where the Iconians ran off to, even gave it a name, yet we didn't return to them the World Heart (or whatever it was called) in the past so that they'd not become so hellbent on this path of war? Don't need to do anything to Sela then as by that time she'd realized "in that moment, she TRIBBLE up" and was likely going to do jack all to stop you. But, as with the Sela solution, the repercussions of an unexploded Romulus loom in the 'future'.
After not taking Sela with him/her, the "Other" (i.e. we) was able to successfully evacuate the Iconians. The Iconians as a race didn't get as resentful as in the other timeline and learned from the experience while keeping a lot of power. They were able, however, to hit back against their conquerors, and regain their old strong empire.
To avoid any wars ever again, they started scouting for worlds with emerging civilizations and genetically engineered them so they lost all will to fight for or against whatsoever. Of course, to save them from their lack of fighting prowess, the Iconians sent some Heralds to each world to control and rule the planet. This also happened on Earth, Qo'nos, even Breen. (And the completely different history of Earth with total lack of large scale wars and colonization, not even the Migration Period, is another story altogether). And in what we call 2410 (they don't for a lack of Christianity) everybody is happily and smiling all the time under actually benevolent Iconian control. Not unlike the Borg, or the Matrix, or many-a book of classic dystopian SciFi.
Completely made up on the spot? Yes. And thus not very likely. But neither is it likely that only the one change we made throughout history and the directly attributable consequences would change, while everything else stays the same. Outside of fiction at least that is nigh impossible. And within the STO universe it more or less happens, but it is (almost) always accounted for that we cannot control every ripple, not ever foresee them.
There probably is some kind of "global regression", with which I mean that events and main characteristics will gravitate towards a certain outcome on the large scale - i. e. the long run and a view on the whole galaxy - but even then, the variation in detail will grow beyond all limits, making the other world completely unrecognizable to us if the difference happened long enough ago (like, say, 200,000 years). This of course should already hold for the mirror universe, so you can wriggle around how it (necessarily for storytelling) ain't like that in fiction. But changes all across the board will confuse you.
As an example for how unpredictable even short time minor events can be: wolves have been reintroduced to the Yellowstone region, and now the rivers changed beds as a consequence of that. (Short and oversimplified version: Wolves made herbivores change behavior since they didn't want to end up as wolf food, which meant that vegetation was eaten instead of growing in different places, which changed where the ground is stabilized by roots and where it isn't, which changes where water goes). Maybe this would have happened anyway in the long run, or will be undone in the long run. But we can only foresee general trends, not so much individual variance.
So in the end, leaving Sela behind may even have the desired effect, and we will have a Federation and the two Empires (and/or RomRep) at this time. But nobody you know would exist, and every place would be different enough so you don't know it anymore.
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Quite.
The problem with any "change the past" hypothesis is that it assumes the present is the worst possible situation. The Iconian War may have been devastating, but the "future history" of STO suggests that it laid the foundations for the future Galactic Alliance and what appears to be an era of galactic peace.
Even if a scheme to avert the Iconian War and destruction of Romulus succeeded perfectly, it could still result in (say) a renewed Romulan / Federation conflict which - being much more drawn out - could actually be *more* destructive to both parties.
Hence, the Temporal Agencies' plan - preserve the known timeline, for better or worse - is actually the only one that approaches rational behaviour.
Exactly. For good examples of that, I recommend the "Fox" Duology by Niles and Dobson ("Fox On The Rhine" and "Fox At The Front") where Hitler's death by a successful Valkyrie plot, instead of ending the war, results in Himmler taking control over Germany and causes a chain of events that prove that WWII could have gone worse or the short story "Billy Mitchell's War" from the "Alternate Generals" collection where US Army Air Corps General Mitchell lives, but is assigned to Hawai'i where aggressive defense on Dec 7, '41 results in the destruction of the Japanese ships and planes before they can attack. Good, right? Wrong. America is now seen as the aggressor, millions refuse to go to war and Japan conquers most of the Pacific region.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Certainly if I was to do it, I'd be bringing some friends with me and doing some full blown Illuminati style manipulation of every world government to stop anything undesirable happening and to note what the changes are as they happen.
Changing the past, then changing it back doesn't always set it the way it's supposed to be.
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And that could destabilize everything in ways you can't even fathom.
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Blame it on the Na'kuhl by borrowing some of their ships. It's a win-win scenario .
It doesn't matter who the blame is on, it could severely destabilize entire quadrants. Can't just go "blame X and things will be all fine and dandy!" You don't know what removing Romulus will do. And the Iconians, who knows something worse doesn't step into the breech?
You simply don't know. You just assume it will be fine.
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I agree. Any way you look at it, something must be done about those Romulans and their treachery.
Great...
Then we have the Vulcan Star Empire taking over the galaxy because they feel it's the only 'logical' answer to the chaos and confusion caused by so many different species each with their own outlook and belief system...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Between Vulcans and Borg it could be a pretty dry future of equally dry conversations. Who would assimilate who?
This is the issue which is meantioned up-thread: Event A does not happen, meaning Event B does not happen, instead, event b happens, which could lead to other unintended and potentially worse scenarios... Kill Hitler, and someone worse takes over... Prevent Elvis from ODing, and he dies a week drink-driving, killing not only himself, but his wife, child, and the family who were in the car he collides with...
Preventing what you consider 'undesirable' might make you think you'll feel like the hero who saved the world, but truth is, you could potentially be making it worse, due to your ego*'s need to control things...
*Psychologically speaking...
Short version; Kill Hitler before he can take over Germany, no World War II, no "Operation Barbarossa" to devour Soviet military strength, when World War II finally happens between the Anglo-American Allies and Russia, it's on a far more destructive technological level than the US/UK/USSR versus Third Reich version...
Kill Sela, we could just as easily end up with Hakeev as Emperor, you know...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The short answer is you can't cause CBS said so.....
https://engadget.com/2012/04/23/captains-log-interview-with-star-trek-onlines-lead-writer-chr/
Relavant section....
Let's, say, for example, the classic one....I go back in time and kill Crash Dragon's (no ill will meant, Crashy, just need an example for this bit ), grandpa. I don't 'change time', I make a new reality. the old one still exists.....Crashy's grandpa was not killed, and Crashy is alive and well himself, munching on keyboards and all. It's me who disappeared, and no body has a clue as to what happened to me, and I am now, at worst, cut off from going back to the original time line, and living in a new one where Crashy's grandpa is dead, and Crashy might not be born, now...and that there's gonna be two of me....myself and the future me being born later on. Not to mention other side effects....people influenced by interactions with Crashy's grandpa, and Crashy himself later on...now prevented from happening. Maybe Crashy's grandpa helping 2 people meet each other and later have a family in the original time line, it's possible, now, those 2 people won't meet and not have a family.
It's like a big room of dominoes, take one or two dominoes out of the set up and the other one's might not fall over along with the ones set in motion before.
Perhaps this could make an excellent test bed for further experimentation .
Using other timelines as testbeds, isn't that basically what the Tutarians are doing in "Terminal Expanse"?
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...