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"You Can't Go Home Again"

ambassadorkael#6946 ambassadorkael Member, Administrator Posts: 2,673 Community Manager
The battle to save time is a difficult one, and leads to some difficult moral questions. New Temporal Agents learn this from Daniels himself in our latest fiction blog!


https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11014053

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  • captaind3captaind3 Member Posts: 2,449 Arc User
    I appreciate the description of why you have to limit unnecessary Temporal Incursions. Creating more alternate realities takes energy away from all reality. It's like that Jet Li Movie The One in reverse.

    So the risk is universal collapse.
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    "Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many — they are few"
  • njodeath#7166 njodeath Member Posts: 28 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    “No,” said Daniels flatly. “Banis’ death galvanizes otherwise uncommitted parties to stand against the Terra Prime faction and other xenophobic ultranationalist groups.

    Do I detect a little 21st century politics here? I'm not to fond of it (That's why I have zone chat shutoff) but it is in keeping with Roddenberry's vision for the original show eg. S3 E15 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. So I applaud the effort.
  • herrgis#1415 herrgis Member Posts: 76 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    Setting 21c politics aside, variations on this theme are explored multiple times across the all the Trek series with TOS ep s1e28: The City on the Edge of Forever perhaps paralleling this work.

    After jumping into 1930s Earth, McCoy is saved from a drug overdose by a kind, gentle woman named Edith Keeler. In a twist of fate it is learned that Kirk must stop a healthy McCoy from preventing Keeler's death (she dies in the "correct" timeline). If Edith survives, her peaceful outlook (aka pacifist ideals) go on to delay the entry of the US into WW2 and Germany conquers the world.

    Spock sets the record straight: "Edith Keller must die" to prevent the deaths of millions who have yet to be born. Kirk is of course torn between letting her die or saving the woman who saved his friend (and being Kirk he has an emotional attachment to Edith).

    It is perhaps almost always more palatable to want to stop an assassin from killing a 'good person' than it is to let a 'good person' die to achieve an even greater good. Logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh those of the few, or one; but logic (especially temporal logic) can be a bitter pill for Keero to swallow.
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  • lordgyorlordgyor Member Posts: 2,820 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    (Political comments moderated out. - BMR)

    And the idea that making alternate universes uses up energy makes no sense, why doesn't the prime universe notice that energ(Poliy is diminished every time one is created.

    It also makes no sense from a physic stand point as the universe has net zero energy and any universe created would also have net zero energy. What that means is that the multiverse creates equal amounts of energy (like heat for example) and negative energy (like gravity), leading to net zero energy. Kind of like having a thousand dollars in cash but owing the bank a thousand dollars as well means you have net zero money.
    Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
  • khan5000khan5000 Member Posts: 3,007 Arc User
    I didn’t get the Trump jab people are mentioning. However if you watch season Enterprise season 4 towards the end the crew did have to deal with xenophobia
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    Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
  • horusx09horusx09 Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    (Political comments moderated out. - BMR)
    Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
  • captaincelestialcaptaincelestial Member Posts: 1,925 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    (Response to moderated comments removed. - BMR)
  • thunderfoot#5163 thunderfoot Member Posts: 4,540 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    (Political comments moderated out. - BMR)
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  • horusx09horusx09 Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    (Response to moderated comments removed. - BMR)
  • baddmoonrizinbaddmoonrizin Member Posts: 10,242 Community Moderator
    People, we're not going to go there with the political comments or flaming/trolling comments.
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  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    This is curiously similar to the Grand Unified Theory of Time Travel(tm) I developed for a fanfic a couple years ago.
    starswordc wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    In TOS: "City On the Edge of Forever", McCoy's actions in the past deleted the Star Trek timeline. Kirk and Spock had to use the Guardian to stop him in order to restore it.

    In TOS: "Assignment: Earth!", it was implied that if they hadn't interfered with Gary Seven's actions, that too would have erased their original timeline.

    In DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", we were introduced to the "predestination paradox" - if Sisko et al hadn't interfered, Darvin's plan to destroy K-7 with an explosive tribble(!) would have gone off without a hitch. (They were also responsible for Kirk getting pelted in the head with tribbles in the original TOS episode...)

    In TNG: "Parallels", we were introduced to an entire sheaf of multiverses, each with a slightly (or more than slightly) differing history, as Worf slid through them uncontrollably.

    In DS9: "Past Tense", Sisko's presence altered history, but only to the extent that he was substituted for Bell in the history books.

    In the last part of the Klingon War arc, the Federation player does see history being rewritten - when they arrive, the Worvig is about to destroy the Enterprise, which your new database informs you is the trigger event that will lead to the fall of the Federation and Klingon Imperial dominance in the quadrant. Your efforts are bent toward not merely rescuing Miral Paris, but also saving Enterprise so that the Federation is still there.

    Basically, in Trek time travel works in whatever fashion the script demands. There is no consistent theory of time travel. (It's one way to avoid invoking Niven's Law of Time Travel, though.)

    And combine that with the fact that the "many worlds" versions, including the mirror universe, still tend to look like the prime universe at least a little bit. It's this kind of inconsistency that led me to completely discard all canonical explanations when I wrote "Brother on Brother, Daughter on Mother'' for a ULC a while back. (I was also partly inspired by the Farscape episode "... Different Destinations".)

    Here's my theory: there is an overall timestream of an infinite number of timelines, each of them "strands" in a "rope" of infinite length (but a single point of origin, that being the Big Bang). The strands of a rope are all slightly offset from one another, but if you pull on the rope (i.e. the natural forward flow of time), the strands tend to move in the same direction, hence the "temporal inertia" property that's sometimes present (e.g. Annorax in "Year of Hell" complaining about it feeling like time itself was resisting him). Time travel is possible within a given strand, but if any changes made are small enough that the immediate result closely resembles the original version, future events will still play out the same (hence why Sisko impersonating Gabriel Bell and Kirk et al. ensuring Edith Keeler's death restores the timeline to its original form).

    HOWEVER! A major change to past events, such as the STFC Borg incursion or Nero's little misadventure, will cause the timeline to split, or "fray". The new timeline is still attached at one end and so it still gets pulled along by the rope, but it's jutting out at an angle and so events are often very different.

    You know what happens when a rope frays? It becomes weaker. You keep fraying it again and again and again, you'll weaken it further, and if you weaken it so far that it breaks? Well, according to the Starfleet temporal agent in my story, that's what happened to the timeline containing the canonical version of ENT and the Temporal Cold War: they caused so much damage to time itself that that entire timeline collapsed and therefore, from the POV of normal people in "my" prime timeline, never happened. ("My" timeline's corresponding events are a variation of the fanfic Reimagined Enterprise where Jonathan Archer is played by Mike Colter and is a UE ambassador-at-large attached to NX-01, which is commanded by a Taiwanese fellow named Chen Hwai.)

    And this comes to the point of the story: I was trying to create a real imperative beyond mere regime protection for there to be timecops and a Temporal Prime Directive. This way, any hypothetical "time war" isn't just "good guys v. terrorists" or whatever, it's about protecting everybody in the universe from literally being erased from existence.

    "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
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  • khan5000khan5000 Member Posts: 3,007 Arc User
    Hmmm makes sense
    Your pain runs deep.
    Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
  • zedbrightlander1zedbrightlander1 Member Posts: 14,762 Arc User
    “No,” said Daniels flatly. “Banis’ death galvanizes otherwise uncommitted parties to stand against the Terra Prime faction and other xenophobic ultranationalist groups.

    Do I detect a little 21st century politics here? I'm not to fond of it (That's why I have zone chat shutoff) but it is in keeping with Roddenberry's vision for the original show eg. S3 E15 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. So I applaud the effort.

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    Lokai: You monotone humans are all alike.
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  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    Don't forget Enterprise S3 E12, 'Chosen Realm'.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
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