I think part of his point was that the very creation of your time machine would disrupt your solution from ever occurring.
Somehow I think that trying for a million years getting down to the minutiae of vaporizing random pebbles in space in order to generate the outcome you want would drive a man insane...or conversely would require insanity to begin with.
The problem also becomes when like with Annorax someone develops a defense against you. When a species like the Na'khul and the Tholians, and the Krenim, and the Tuterians develop their own time travel and begin to do the same thing to you.
Trying to cheat history.
And this is why time travel story arcs are a bad idea IMO.
Well...yeah. I think we're in agreement on that right?
"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"
It doesn't matter how many simulations you run when those simulations are based on incomplete data. The law of unintended consequences was on full display in Butterfly when our simulations showed a great result and the real incursion was bad news because the real galaxy had stuff nobody knew about to program into the simulation. Garbage in, garbage out just as with any data calculation.
You're still aboard a ship shielded by the passage of time. You literally have forever to keep trying. Eventually you'll get it right.
that didn't work for Annorax.... thus the logical conclusion is that this is the end result of trying to make history "perfect":
The point of Annorax in the episode was that attempting to have complete control over time would never turn out the way you wanted it to. Every time he altered the time line his goal was never achieved. He managed to restore the kremin empire almost fully but his wife always remained lost.
Only when his ship was destroyed and his quest failed was the timeline with her alive restored, and with her alive he decided to fore go putting in all his effort to make the ship. The episode was written so that his quest was a fools errand and that like Capt Ahab the more he obsessed over his goal the more it slipped through his fingers until it consumed him in the end.
that didn't work for Annorax.... thus the logical conclusion is that this is the end result of trying to make history "perfect":
I'm sure he would have got there eventually. Didn't he hit 98% at one point?
98% of the Krenim Imperium restored and no sign of his wife nowhere.
I liked when he actually zapped the homeworld of an enemy out of existence. In that timeline his wife died of an illness that interacting with that species had introduced an immunity to that disease originally.
Annorax started to think that time was trolling him.
"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"
The point of Annorax in the episode was that attempting to have complete control over time would never turn out the way you wanted it to. Every time he altered the time line his goal was never achieved. He managed to restore the kremin empire almost fully but his wife always remained lost.
Only when his ship was destroyed and his quest failed was the timeline with her alive restored, and with her alive he decided to fore go putting in all his effort to make the ship. The episode was written so that his quest was a fools errand and that like Capt Ahab the more he obsessed over his goal the more it slipped through his fingers until it consumed him in the end.
98% of the Krenim Imperium restored and no sign of his wife nowhere.
I liked when he actually zapped the homeworld of an enemy out of existence. In that timeline his wife died of an illness that interacting with that species had introduced an immunity to that disease originally.
Annorax started to think that time was trolling him.
And this is why it was a great episode. Because the time aspect was used as a plot device to make a point, but it really was about something else entirely. That works. Making it the central part of not only one but two story arcs doesn't work. It makes no sense and in addition, STO isn't really making a point - they somehow rehash Annorax's story, but not really.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
The point of Annorax in the episode was that attempting to have complete control over time would never turn out the way you wanted it to. Every time he altered the time line his goal was never achieved. He managed to restore the kremin empire almost fully but his wife always remained lost.
Only when his ship was destroyed and his quest failed was the timeline with her alive restored, and with her alive he decided to fore go putting in all his effort to make the ship. The episode was written so that his quest was a fools errand and that like Capt Ahab the more he obsessed over his goal the more it slipped through his fingers until it consumed him in the end.
98% of the Krenim Imperium restored and no sign of his wife nowhere.
I liked when he actually zapped the homeworld of an enemy out of existence. In that timeline his wife died of an illness that interacting with that species had introduced an immunity to that disease originally.
Annorax started to think that time was trolling him.
And this is why it was a great episode. Because the time aspect was used as a plot device to make a point, but it really was about something else entirely. That works. Making it the central part of not only one but two story arcs doesn't work. It makes no sense and in addition, STO isn't really making a point - they somehow rehash Annorax's story, but not really.
That may have been while the Temporal Cold War arc failed as well.
They shoehorned it in because the big wigs wanted time travel to make it more futuristic. Because apparently Star Trek was so successful that simple space travel was old hat.
So they threw in an arc that had no thematic point and disrupted what they were originally planning to do. Archer and his crew weren't even actors, they were basically victims trying to defend themselves but they didn't know against who, how, or why.
Starfleet: Timecops :The Series itself would be decent and likely explore a lot of the nuances we've been discussing. But Star Trek is also usually about more than just the plot the characters are going through. It's not just the how and the what, but the why and the what did or have we learned that makes the way we responded to this better than we would've years ago and why is that response better?
This storyline unfortunately exists as a predestination...well it's not even a paradox it's just a history of future's past that's playing out in our present.
Futureproof is just getting started so I can't say that they don't have a point, they just haven't made it yet. The previous Krenim Temporal Weapons Ship episodes were to show that you can't cheat history, it always takes something else. Midnight's point was sticking to your principles is important even in the worst of times, and those principles can actually save you. In the characters of T'Khet and Sela we get two examples that allowing yourself to be swallowed in rage and grief and acting from that place only makes things worse, as in both cases their revenge directly led to them losing something precious, M'Tara and the World Heart; and Romulus respectively. And of course as a last time always wins message, since it was a predestination paradox it always had and always will.
"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"
Making it the central part of not only one but two story arcs doesn't work. It makes no sense and in addition, STO isn't really making a point
Replace "Timetravel between the Iconian War and the Temporal Cold War" with "Nuclear weapons between WWII and the real Cold War" and you pretty much have the how and why this arc does work.
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Nuclear weapons don't let you travel back in time and change stuff.
No but they do threaten to destroy all civilization which, you may be interested to know, was a comment made in the latest mission.
And, you will also know, as a more general point that just about every time travel story in Star Trek results in history changing by degrees if it was affected at all, with the original effort ultimately failing to produce the desired result.
See.
City on the Edge of Forever
Year of Hell (Parts 1 and 2)
All Good Things
Trials and Tribble-ations
Enterprise (the entire TV series)
First Contact
Star Trek (2009) (from the Romulan perspective)
Even The Voyage Home didn't really change anything about the past, it used time travel to circumvent an immediate problem caused by past neglect (and no, two mammals cannot repopulate a species by themselves, and especially not whales). So, you should probably let go of this little hang up you have about time travel in fiction. You really couldn't be any more off base about how this IP or even this game uses it. And in the broader genre, making a designer history is not how time travel stories play out [see. what happens in Asimov's End of Eternity or Pratchett's Night Watch.] You see those ideas developed and maintained in stories about predicting the future (ex. Foundation, Dune), but not time travel. You have entirely the wrong idea. I don't like to say that, but it's the most applicable word to use here.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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Is there any way we can get a like button for the forums just for this post?
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So did the Genesis device, or trilithium, or photon torpedoes, viruses... the list goes on. Any of which I believe is a better example of the point you were trying to convey.
No, for the very simple fact that "The Temporal Cold War" has a rather obvious implication for the doomsday device involved.
I think you need to read more. I'm not at all off base when expressing my personal opinion.
You can express your personal opinion freely but the statement that opinion makes can be taken as likely "correct" or "incorrect" based on how it relates to the game, plot, IP, can genre. Here's a list of examples explaining to you why your statement is wrong. Now, that should be qualified as "Wrong from the standpoint of what can be said in a discussion." IE. it is a subjective assertion that "you are wrong." But it's entirely consistent with the examples provided so far. In Star Trek people typically don't go back and change history however they like. Many have tried, but almost all (if not actually all) failed.
Expression, that's perfectly fine and to each his own. But others are free to express what they think too and when you say something that is off base you can expect others to chime in and point out why that's (arguably) the case. Feel free to believe what you want to believe, but if you're just looking for a platform to speak twitter is a better format that a forum (there tends to be more back and forth here).
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I'm all for debating why or why not time travel stinks as a story arc.
Really?
I think you need to read more. I'm not at all off base when expressing my personal opinion.
I generally don't like time travel stories. It's a personal preference. If you enjoy stories with time travel, kudos to you, I'm happy for you.
I've never denied that Star Trek hasn't had time travel stories. Of course it has. All I've said was I don't particularly care for them. I don't "need" to change my opinion on it, no matter what you say. Feel free to disagree.
Where's the debate about the topic here?
You've certainly made how you feel very clear (and we're both totally fine with that, so we can set that point aside as resolved) but you didn't actually get around to making any statements about how time travel works in the genre (which was the focus of my post you were replying to.) Yes, it exists in the IP, but that's not really an active discussion point. It's...well, stating the obvious when discussion should have (hopefully) moved into more the mechanics than the basic fact of the situation.
There is nothing wrong about disagreement. But continuing to state nothing but that (instead of letting a non-reply speak your mind for you) isn't really a discussion about time travel.
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Considering how just about every crew in ST has had to deal with time travel, it's not surprising it made it's way into this game. And the fact we've basically done every facet of star trek, meant that time travel was bound to show up and be a major arc.
Though we have left a lot undone and need to fix, like the mirror incursions, Borg and a few other loose ends.
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What else would you like to talk about? Can you be more specific?
And, you will also note, as a more general point that just about every time travel story in Star Trek results in history changing by degrees if it was affected at all, with the original effort ultimately failing to produce the desired result.
I'll let you have another go at this one, which was directed pretty much at this little comment.
...don't let you travel back in time and change stuff.
With the point being that your complaint about time travel stories (to elaborate, that they inevitably unleash an endless series of possible modifications) isn't valid (as with most slippery slope arguments) because the starting premise is faulty. Time travel stories don't tend to get out of hand in actual practice (see. Star Trek, End of Eternity, The Time Machine) as the "infinite series" usually never happens as the result of "fate," unforeseen complication, or the actions of the protagonist. What you've complained about (ie. anyone being able to decide just what history they want after the fact and changing what's necessary to produce it) is completely atypical of time travel stories (see. all the examples, the point is pretty much that it never works out) but those about predicting the future (the aforementioned Dune, Foundation) for which the specific criticisms of time travel plot mechanics don't apply.
So where's the problem (besides a matter of taste)?
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So in my playthrough of Tide and Time this week I pic'ed out some choice points the mission gave us.
This is a very telling bit about temporal science in the Star Trek Universe. Apparently too much temporal tampering puts a strain on the time space continuum and thus causes things to physically unravel. This would mean there's a limit to how many temporal incursions occur before you cause a cataclysm.
This is consistent with the ending of Stormfront with Archer and Daniels literally watching the timeline snap back into place and correct itself.
It would be hilarious if time travel and timelines were literally like a ball of string, and temporal incursions were like tying knots in the string. Maybe it's a cosmic string.
So here Walker says that it's worse for all species without the Temporal Accords and the Galactic Union.
Can't believe I didn't grasp the importance of this the first time through. Apparently the attack on the Na'khul was a vital moment on the path to the Temporal Accords. Without which we already learn we get a Temporal War that gets messy for all parties involved.
Clearly Noye wasn't able to get the full story about what happened when we tried to TRIBBLE with the timeline the first time saying we murdered his wife. Hell, if I was gonna murder anyone it was Noye. Clauda on the other hand was an absolute jewel.
And, you will also know, as a more general point that just about every time travel story in Star Trek results in history changing by degrees if it was affected at all, with the original effort ultimately failing to produce the desired result.
See.
City on the Edge of Forever
Year of Hell (Parts 1 and 2)
All Good Things
Trials and Tribble-ations
Enterprise (the entire TV series)
First Contact
Star Trek (2009) (from the Romulan perspective)
Even The Voyage Home didn't really change anything about the past, it used time travel to circumvent an immediate problem caused by past neglect (and no, two mammals cannot repopulate a species by themselves, and especially not whales). So, you should probably let go of this little hang up you have about time travel in fiction. You really couldn't be any more off base about how this IP or even this game uses it. And in the broader genre, making a designer history is not how time travel stories play out [see. what happens in Asimov's End of Eternity or Pratchett's Night Watch.] You see those ideas developed and maintained in stories about predicting the future (ex. Foundation, Dune), but not time travel. You have entirely the wrong idea. I don't like to say that, but it's the most applicable word to use here.
City on the Edge of Forever - No change, corrected McCoys accidental incursion
Year of Hell- Wiped out Annorax's myriad Incursions
All Good Things- More than likely a portable reality created wholly by Q with no effect on normal reality like Tapestry
Trials and Tribble-ations- Preserving the original timeline, also letting Sisko meet Kirk
Enterprise- Whoo boy.
First Contact- Preserving the original timeline and correcting the Borg's Incursion
Star Trek 2009- TIC and DTI must've TRIBBLE their pants on that event. That ended up being a massive temporal incursion. Vulcan destroyed, completed transwarp introduced to the Federation a century and a half in advance (which is the only way to rationalize the fact that the writers have NO IDEA about the size of space, and established travel times in Star Trek, or even in system space), fortunately we know the original timeline is unaffected
Don't forget Yesterday's Enterprise an inadvertent Temporal Incursion that resulted in Sela.
Star Trek is generally speaking firmly on the side of preserve the timeline you have.
Whales no, but RABBITS can!
In the case of George and Gracie I can only imagine that Federation science would've been used to assist them in randomizing their gene code from their offspring, cloning, to help them get to a greater genetic base to restore their species.
"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"
Still no idea what you're on about. I'm not disagreeing with how time travel is portrayed in Star Trek.
Here it is again with a minimum of text.
This little thing:
travel back in time and change stuff.
...isn't how time travel stories typically work out so holding that idea against this episode and in-progress series, as for example (and this is just an example)...
it's poorly written and not very well thought out in my opinion. The Pastak can hop around to any point in time, yet we can't go back 5 minutes before Noye steals the Annorax to stop him? Come on. That's going beyond suspension of disbelief. It's more suspension of stupidity
...is completely irrational.
If you don't see the point that's your own choice and not something I can help you along through. Disagree? Sure, you're welcome to it. But I'm still going to maintain (with reasoned examples) that you've got the wrong idea.
In the case of George and Gracie I can only imagine that Federation science would've been used to assist them in randomizing their gene code from their offspring, cloning, to help them get to a greater genetic base to restore their species.
Whales also have relatively low fecundity (their populations don't bounce back rapidly.) And genetic diviersity isn't really the problem, it's getting around inbreeding depression which would require genome-wide engineering that the FED implicitly should have strong reservations about (see. Eugenics.)
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I do disagree here and don't believe I have the wrong idea. We've seen that people do in fact use time travel to change history in Star Trek (whether by accident or ill intent), so it is possible to do within the IP. Again, this is just my personal opinion.
Well, I see it this way: the basic idea of changing history is possible but its a question of impact. You can change things but those changes are always made to be problematic. Even with straight forward corrections (First Contact, Trials and Tribble-ations) things don't resolve in quite the same way (see. borg in ENT.) So responses using time travel by protagonists are almost always limited, especially if they have some awareness of the problems of time travel. A conventional solution would almost always be the favored approach if it's possible, such as now (Noyes hasn't tried to really change anything yet). And its use by antagonists is always going to end badly for them (so following their example isn't something we should throw out there as an item to really consider).
So, in the realm of theoretical possibility there's an endless series of back-and-forth, I change this because you changed that, temporal shenanigans that invalidates all plot but it's pretty much the point of time travel in fiction that such craziness doesn't happen (even now the possibility is only a vague reference to justify the Temporal Accords, and it'll likely stay just as that even as we'll probably sort out more incursions in the next missions.) A way to think about it may be that time travel as a plot device is self canceling, the more you try to add the less you have at the end (so its use should always be considered as a self-limiting quantity, it doesn't keep happening). :P
And I would say "irrational" just because of that idea of things getting out of hand doesn't ultimately happen in time travel Star Trek/sci-fi. From a narrative point of view (which might be the key difference in POV here) time travel plots typically just work to flip beginning-end causality (such as happened in Midnight), place characters in different time periods (ex. Time's Arrow or Futurama), or place established characters in alternative histories (ex. Yesterday's Enterprise or ST2009, basically doing the job of another Mirror Universe).
So bringing up the worst logical outcome of time travel (as a serious argument for why it doesn't work well) doesn't make too much sense to me (which seems like a much better way of putting it now) because I really can't see how that could happen for a written story.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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Still no idea what you're on about. I'm not disagreeing with how time travel is portrayed in Star Trek.
Here it is again with a minimum of text.
This little thing:
travel back in time and change stuff.
...isn't how time travel stories typically work out so holding that idea against this episode and in-progress series, as for example (and this is just an example)...
it's poorly written and not very well thought out in my opinion. The Pastak can hop around to any point in time, yet we can't go back 5 minutes before Noye steals the Annorax to stop him? Come on. That's going beyond suspension of disbelief. It's more suspension of stupidity
...is completely irrational.
If you don't see the point that's your own choice and not something I can help you along through. Disagree? Sure, you're welcome to it. But I'm still going to maintain (with reasoned examples) that you've got the wrong idea.
In the case of George and Gracie I can only imagine that Federation science would've been used to assist them in randomizing their gene code from their offspring, cloning, to help them get to a greater genetic base to restore their species.
Whales also have relatively low fecundity (their populations don't bounce back rapidly.) And genetic diviersity isn't really the problem, it's getting around inbreeding depression which would require genome-wide engineering that the FED implicitly should have strong reservations about (see. Eugenics.)
I disagree wholeheartedly.
There's a vast difference between trying to perfect the species via genetic enhancement and assisting a species that just saved our hides in repopulating safely. Especially since it's a species we foolishly annihilated. Frankly I would think that humanity would be a little excessively gung ho about restoring the Humpback Whale population. Of course in the event of any conflict of interest, we can just ask George and Gracie what they want.
Federation medicine, science, and ethics does still allow for genetic modification of a fetus for the purpose of removing birth defects. But not the enhancement of an individual. This was seen in TNG: Genesis where Crusher activated a gene that produces a T-Cell that would normally have fought off the infection Barclay had, VOY: The Fight where Chakotay mentioned having a gene suppressed that in his family makes them prone to hallucinations, and VOY:Lineage where The Doctor gave Miral Paris a prenatal genetic modification to correct a congenital spinal deviation.
I would imagine that it would require extensive observation for generations, but the data would likely more than make up for any trouble considering that helping a species repopulate will likely pop up again at some point.
"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"
There's a vast difference between trying to perfect the species via genetic enhancement and assisting a species that just saved our hides in repopulating safely. Especially since it's a species we foolishly annihilated. Frankly I would think that humanity would be a little excessively gung ho about restoring the Humpback Whale population. Of course in the event of any conflict of interest, we can just ask George and Gracie what they want.
1. This is a very wide tangent, don't get too emotionally invested in it here.
2. For the sake of clarity (I'm not going to entertain a long-running discussion on this subject): the question definitely isn't motivation but technology. Preserving a species is very much in the FED ethos (you'll note that I made no comment about that) but the techniques that are absolutely required to do it probably wouldn't have been developed sufficiently in FED society to the point where their engineering could prune the entire set of deleterious recessive alleles responsible for inbreeding depression from a whole genome (there's no acceptable analog to this in the TV shows) with essentially only two examples because that has direct applications to a practice that had disastrous consequences for at least one FED founding member. The will to help would undoubtedly be there but as we know from conservation efforts today that's insufficient to overcome massive biological problems with limited technology and resources.
This is entirely in the realm of speculation but as one who does have some firm ground on which to speculate on this very topic (more so than time travel for example), it's unlikely that the FED could have restored the species by themselves. Never the less, it's nicely assumed that they did (I think there's a background comment at STA in STO about seeing whales in SF bay) but if you follow through with the idea (with the proper background) there's definite problems with it (for a self-consistent fictional reality. For the sake of what feels best I'm sure the humpbacks came back but if we're going to approach this more dispassionately one does have to question that assumption.)
would imagine that it would require extensive observation for generations, but the data would likely more than make up for any trouble considering that helping a species repopulate will likely pop up again at some point.
You also might want to think about the reproductive rate and developmental time of humpback whales. Practically speaking, you wouldn't have any significant observational data from this idea. So during the period when rooting out significant problems was most key (ie. when they could be fixed in the population without an alternative) you wouldn't have any capacity to detect them (except by analyzing and extrapolating the genome, modeling all developmental possibilities, finding those genes responsible for depressive outcomes when expressed as a homozygote, and then creating alternatives [somehow, and that's a big somehow] which wouldn't create other problems in some way [computer programmers may be able to sympathize a bit with this one]. Unless the FED was already in the business of making these kinds of total, genome wide modifications (and from the TV shows, they aren't even by VOY) bringing them to bear on a humpback whale conservation project can't be reasonably expected.)
I'm sorry, but again as nice as the ending to The Voyage Home was there is a bitter after taste if you think it through a bit more. I suspect no one else has to this extent (hence, why we can assume the FED in Star Trek magicked away a truly colossal problem in evo-devo) but there you go.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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Well...yeah. I think we're in agreement on that right?
My character Tsin'xing
Only when his ship was destroyed and his quest failed was the timeline with her alive restored, and with her alive he decided to fore go putting in all his effort to make the ship. The episode was written so that his quest was a fools errand and that like Capt Ahab the more he obsessed over his goal the more it slipped through his fingers until it consumed him in the end.
98% of the Krenim Imperium restored and no sign of his wife nowhere.
I liked when he actually zapped the homeworld of an enemy out of existence. In that timeline his wife died of an illness that interacting with that species had introduced an immunity to that disease originally.
Annorax started to think that time was trolling him.
And this is why it was a great episode. Because the time aspect was used as a plot device to make a point, but it really was about something else entirely. That works. Making it the central part of not only one but two story arcs doesn't work. It makes no sense and in addition, STO isn't really making a point - they somehow rehash Annorax's story, but not really.
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That may have been while the Temporal Cold War arc failed as well.
They shoehorned it in because the big wigs wanted time travel to make it more futuristic. Because apparently Star Trek was so successful that simple space travel was old hat.
So they threw in an arc that had no thematic point and disrupted what they were originally planning to do. Archer and his crew weren't even actors, they were basically victims trying to defend themselves but they didn't know against who, how, or why.
Starfleet: Timecops :The Series itself would be decent and likely explore a lot of the nuances we've been discussing. But Star Trek is also usually about more than just the plot the characters are going through. It's not just the how and the what, but the why and the what did or have we learned that makes the way we responded to this better than we would've years ago and why is that response better?
This storyline unfortunately exists as a predestination...well it's not even a paradox it's just a history of future's past that's playing out in our present.
Futureproof is just getting started so I can't say that they don't have a point, they just haven't made it yet. The previous Krenim Temporal Weapons Ship episodes were to show that you can't cheat history, it always takes something else. Midnight's point was sticking to your principles is important even in the worst of times, and those principles can actually save you. In the characters of T'Khet and Sela we get two examples that allowing yourself to be swallowed in rage and grief and acting from that place only makes things worse, as in both cases their revenge directly led to them losing something precious, M'Tara and the World Heart; and Romulus respectively. And of course as a last time always wins message, since it was a predestination paradox it always had and always will.
Replace "Timetravel between the Iconian War and the Temporal Cold War" with "Nuclear weapons between WWII and the real Cold War" and you pretty much have the how and why this arc does work.
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No but they do threaten to destroy all civilization which, you may be interested to know, was a comment made in the latest mission.
And, you will also know, as a more general point that just about every time travel story in Star Trek results in history changing by degrees if it was affected at all, with the original effort ultimately failing to produce the desired result.
See.
City on the Edge of Forever
Year of Hell (Parts 1 and 2)
All Good Things
Trials and Tribble-ations
Enterprise (the entire TV series)
First Contact
Star Trek (2009) (from the Romulan perspective)
Even The Voyage Home didn't really change anything about the past, it used time travel to circumvent an immediate problem caused by past neglect (and no, two mammals cannot repopulate a species by themselves, and especially not whales). So, you should probably let go of this little hang up you have about time travel in fiction. You really couldn't be any more off base about how this IP or even this game uses it. And in the broader genre, making a designer history is not how time travel stories play out [see. what happens in Asimov's End of Eternity or Pratchett's Night Watch.] You see those ideas developed and maintained in stories about predicting the future (ex. Foundation, Dune), but not time travel. You have entirely the wrong idea. I don't like to say that, but it's the most applicable word to use here.
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Is there any way we can get a like button for the forums just for this post?
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No, for the very simple fact that "The Temporal Cold War" has a rather obvious implication for the doomsday device involved.
You can express your personal opinion freely but the statement that opinion makes can be taken as likely "correct" or "incorrect" based on how it relates to the game, plot, IP, can genre. Here's a list of examples explaining to you why your statement is wrong. Now, that should be qualified as "Wrong from the standpoint of what can be said in a discussion." IE. it is a subjective assertion that "you are wrong." But it's entirely consistent with the examples provided so far. In Star Trek people typically don't go back and change history however they like. Many have tried, but almost all (if not actually all) failed.
Expression, that's perfectly fine and to each his own. But others are free to express what they think too and when you say something that is off base you can expect others to chime in and point out why that's (arguably) the case. Feel free to believe what you want to believe, but if you're just looking for a platform to speak twitter is a better format that a forum (there tends to be more back and forth here).
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Really?
Where's the debate about the topic here?
You've certainly made how you feel very clear (and we're both totally fine with that, so we can set that point aside as resolved) but you didn't actually get around to making any statements about how time travel works in the genre (which was the focus of my post you were replying to.) Yes, it exists in the IP, but that's not really an active discussion point. It's...well, stating the obvious when discussion should have (hopefully) moved into more the mechanics than the basic fact of the situation.
There is nothing wrong about disagreement. But continuing to state nothing but that (instead of letting a non-reply speak your mind for you) isn't really a discussion about time travel.
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Though we have left a lot undone and need to fix, like the mirror incursions, Borg and a few other loose ends.
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http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
I'll let you have another go at this one, which was directed pretty much at this little comment.
So where's the problem (besides a matter of taste)?
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This is a very telling bit about temporal science in the Star Trek Universe. Apparently too much temporal tampering puts a strain on the time space continuum and thus causes things to physically unravel. This would mean there's a limit to how many temporal incursions occur before you cause a cataclysm.
This is consistent with the ending of Stormfront with Archer and Daniels literally watching the timeline snap back into place and correct itself.
It would be hilarious if time travel and timelines were literally like a ball of string, and temporal incursions were like tying knots in the string. Maybe it's a cosmic string.
So here Walker says that it's worse for all species without the Temporal Accords and the Galactic Union.
Can't believe I didn't grasp the importance of this the first time through. Apparently the attack on the Na'khul was a vital moment on the path to the Temporal Accords. Without which we already learn we get a Temporal War that gets messy for all parties involved.
Clearly Noye wasn't able to get the full story about what happened when we tried to TRIBBLE with the timeline the first time saying we murdered his wife. Hell, if I was gonna murder anyone it was Noye. Clauda on the other hand was an absolute jewel.
City on the Edge of Forever - No change, corrected McCoys accidental incursion
Year of Hell- Wiped out Annorax's myriad Incursions
All Good Things- More than likely a portable reality created wholly by Q with no effect on normal reality like Tapestry
Trials and Tribble-ations- Preserving the original timeline, also letting Sisko meet Kirk
Enterprise- Whoo boy.
First Contact- Preserving the original timeline and correcting the Borg's Incursion
Star Trek 2009- TIC and DTI must've TRIBBLE their pants on that event. That ended up being a massive temporal incursion. Vulcan destroyed, completed transwarp introduced to the Federation a century and a half in advance (which is the only way to rationalize the fact that the writers have NO IDEA about the size of space, and established travel times in Star Trek, or even in system space), fortunately we know the original timeline is unaffected
Don't forget Yesterday's Enterprise an inadvertent Temporal Incursion that resulted in Sela.
Star Trek is generally speaking firmly on the side of preserve the timeline you have.
Whales no, but RABBITS can!
In the case of George and Gracie I can only imagine that Federation science would've been used to assist them in randomizing their gene code from their offspring, cloning, to help them get to a greater genetic base to restore their species.
Here it is again with a minimum of text.
This little thing: ...isn't how time travel stories typically work out so holding that idea against this episode and in-progress series, as for example (and this is just an example)... ...is completely irrational.
If you don't see the point that's your own choice and not something I can help you along through. Disagree? Sure, you're welcome to it. But I'm still going to maintain (with reasoned examples) that you've got the wrong idea.
Whales also have relatively low fecundity (their populations don't bounce back rapidly.) And genetic diviersity isn't really the problem, it's getting around inbreeding depression which would require genome-wide engineering that the FED implicitly should have strong reservations about (see. Eugenics.)
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Well, I see it this way: the basic idea of changing history is possible but its a question of impact. You can change things but those changes are always made to be problematic. Even with straight forward corrections (First Contact, Trials and Tribble-ations) things don't resolve in quite the same way (see. borg in ENT.) So responses using time travel by protagonists are almost always limited, especially if they have some awareness of the problems of time travel. A conventional solution would almost always be the favored approach if it's possible, such as now (Noyes hasn't tried to really change anything yet). And its use by antagonists is always going to end badly for them (so following their example isn't something we should throw out there as an item to really consider).
So, in the realm of theoretical possibility there's an endless series of back-and-forth, I change this because you changed that, temporal shenanigans that invalidates all plot but it's pretty much the point of time travel in fiction that such craziness doesn't happen (even now the possibility is only a vague reference to justify the Temporal Accords, and it'll likely stay just as that even as we'll probably sort out more incursions in the next missions.) A way to think about it may be that time travel as a plot device is self canceling, the more you try to add the less you have at the end (so its use should always be considered as a self-limiting quantity, it doesn't keep happening). :P
And I would say "irrational" just because of that idea of things getting out of hand doesn't ultimately happen in time travel Star Trek/sci-fi. From a narrative point of view (which might be the key difference in POV here) time travel plots typically just work to flip beginning-end causality (such as happened in Midnight), place characters in different time periods (ex. Time's Arrow or Futurama), or place established characters in alternative histories (ex. Yesterday's Enterprise or ST2009, basically doing the job of another Mirror Universe).
So bringing up the worst logical outcome of time travel (as a serious argument for why it doesn't work well) doesn't make too much sense to me (which seems like a much better way of putting it now) because I really can't see how that could happen for a written story.
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I disagree wholeheartedly.
There's a vast difference between trying to perfect the species via genetic enhancement and assisting a species that just saved our hides in repopulating safely. Especially since it's a species we foolishly annihilated. Frankly I would think that humanity would be a little excessively gung ho about restoring the Humpback Whale population. Of course in the event of any conflict of interest, we can just ask George and Gracie what they want.
Federation medicine, science, and ethics does still allow for genetic modification of a fetus for the purpose of removing birth defects. But not the enhancement of an individual. This was seen in TNG: Genesis where Crusher activated a gene that produces a T-Cell that would normally have fought off the infection Barclay had, VOY: The Fight where Chakotay mentioned having a gene suppressed that in his family makes them prone to hallucinations, and VOY:Lineage where The Doctor gave Miral Paris a prenatal genetic modification to correct a congenital spinal deviation.
I would imagine that it would require extensive observation for generations, but the data would likely more than make up for any trouble considering that helping a species repopulate will likely pop up again at some point.
1. This is a very wide tangent, don't get too emotionally invested in it here.
2. For the sake of clarity (I'm not going to entertain a long-running discussion on this subject): the question definitely isn't motivation but technology. Preserving a species is very much in the FED ethos (you'll note that I made no comment about that) but the techniques that are absolutely required to do it probably wouldn't have been developed sufficiently in FED society to the point where their engineering could prune the entire set of deleterious recessive alleles responsible for inbreeding depression from a whole genome (there's no acceptable analog to this in the TV shows) with essentially only two examples because that has direct applications to a practice that had disastrous consequences for at least one FED founding member. The will to help would undoubtedly be there but as we know from conservation efforts today that's insufficient to overcome massive biological problems with limited technology and resources.
This is entirely in the realm of speculation but as one who does have some firm ground on which to speculate on this very topic (more so than time travel for example), it's unlikely that the FED could have restored the species by themselves. Never the less, it's nicely assumed that they did (I think there's a background comment at STA in STO about seeing whales in SF bay) but if you follow through with the idea (with the proper background) there's definite problems with it (for a self-consistent fictional reality. For the sake of what feels best I'm sure the humpbacks came back but if we're going to approach this more dispassionately one does have to question that assumption.)
You also might want to think about the reproductive rate and developmental time of humpback whales. Practically speaking, you wouldn't have any significant observational data from this idea. So during the period when rooting out significant problems was most key (ie. when they could be fixed in the population without an alternative) you wouldn't have any capacity to detect them (except by analyzing and extrapolating the genome, modeling all developmental possibilities, finding those genes responsible for depressive outcomes when expressed as a homozygote, and then creating alternatives [somehow, and that's a big somehow] which wouldn't create other problems in some way [computer programmers may be able to sympathize a bit with this one]. Unless the FED was already in the business of making these kinds of total, genome wide modifications (and from the TV shows, they aren't even by VOY) bringing them to bear on a humpback whale conservation project can't be reasonably expected.)
I'm sorry, but again as nice as the ending to The Voyage Home was there is a bitter after taste if you think it through a bit more. I suspect no one else has to this extent (hence, why we can assume the FED in Star Trek magicked away a truly colossal problem in evo-devo) but there you go.
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