And yet that's not how it ever worked in canon. In canon, getting rid of the means of time travel simply reverts the timeline to the default, pre-temporal meddling settings, i.e. the timeline that existed before a bunch of terrorists and tyrants* decided to start altering it to benefit themselves. See for example "Time and Again" and "Year of Hell" (original flavor, not Cryptic's ripoff of it).
* Remember, who, exactly, decided that one particular post-time travel iteration of events was correct? The people whom that timeline put into power. Which is a complete perversion of the Federation's supposed founding ethos: that the ends do NOT automatically justify the means.
You seem to forget that the only reason why destroying the Annorax in Year of Hell reverted the timeline is because the Annorax(then) wasn't a time machine itself, nor does it primary work via time travel. The Annorax is a device that erases things from time, and erases the reason why they existed in the first place. The Annorax erased itself, which means it erased its own existence, and the very reason why it existed in the first place. Year of Hell in Voyager wasn't time travel, and Noye in STO didn't use the Annorax for its time erasing capabilities, and instead used it for simple time travel, much like it was modified to do during Midnight. It's quite literally not the same thing.
Tell me, how do you rationalize the result of "Time and Again", where Janeway stopping the event that brought her back in time to begin with reverted the events of the episode out of existence?
See also "Storm Front": the actions of Archer eliminate much of the time war. (Which reminds me, whose godawful idea was it to re-fight that idiot Archer's battles, of all people?)
There's your precedent right there. Eliminate the means for time travel before they can be used, you eliminate the time travel. Hell, all the protagonists have to do to end the temporal stupidity war for good before it starts is dismantle the Mary Sueperweapon in our present, before Noye can use it. The Temporal Accords signatories don't like it? Cry me a phekk'ta river, because Picard has the answer to that one, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2U4pssEqHY
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Tell me, how do you rationalize the result of "Time and Again", where Janeway stopping the event that brought her back in time to begin with reverted the events of the episode out of existence?
See also "Storm Front": the actions of Archer eliminate much of the time war. (Which reminds me, whose godawful idea was it to re-fight that idiot Archer's battles, of all people?)
There's your precedent right there. Eliminate the means for time travel before they can be used, you eliminate the time travel. Hell, all the protagonists have to do to end the temporal stupidity war for good before it starts is dismantle the Mary Sueperweapon in our present, before Noye can use it. The Temporal Accords signatories don't like it? Cry me a phekk'ta river, because Picard has the answer to that one, too.
I already explained all of those situations in the second part of the post(which you ever so conveniently decided to edit out) as well as posts after that. If you aren't going to bother actually responding to everything written, don't bother.
Trying to eliminate the Annorax before Noye can use it will, again, create an endless paradox loop that time itself will demand be resolved, much like it forcibly resolved the paradoxes seen in earlier and later Trek shows, and, much as like all other trek shows, it will demand the paradox be solved by making what was originally going to happen, happen anyways. The DTI, and the Temporal Accords signatories wouldn't even have to do anything to fix it, Time itself would contrive some situation in which someone, somewhere, makes it happen.
Also, Picard is right in that mortals have no right to play god in the timeline... but mortals aren't doing it... TIME itself is. That Time contrives mortals to do it is within its right.
Really? Sure looks like mortals are playing god to me.
And, I find it ironic you complain about the DTI having an "ends justify the means" attitude to this, and say it goes against everything the Federation stands for... but then in this very post literally suggest an "ends justify the means" measure to get around it. Not to mention your past suggestion of "ends justify the means" excuse for committing the worst war crimes possible against the Iconians. You flip flop harder your morals, for whatever best suits you at the moment, then anyone else.
Hardly. I simply have a less emotionally motivated definition as to what constitutes a war crime. Unprovoked attacks on noncombatants would constitute a criminal act. However:
The participants in the time war are attacking noncombatants, i.e. our characters, who had no involvement in their war until they dragged us into it. Eliminating the means for them to involve us is an act of self-defense.
The Iconians of the present are anything but noncombatants. They are the leaders of an invading military who initiated hostilities with the unprovoked murder of over 14 billion people, and kept on killing people indiscriminately until they got what they wanted. Until the war ended on that godawful note, they were legitimate military targets. Killing their present-day selves is, again, an act of self-defense, and destroying the Herald Sphere is no different than attacking an enemy military base, just more final.
ETA: Though I don't deny my distaste for the writers' heavy-handed attempt to justify their selected ending with the notion that we're suddenly supposed to find the Iconians sympathetic based on their past selves after everything they've done in the present.
/deathtotheeditmonster
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Really? Sure looks like mortals are playing god to me.
Mortals are doing nothing beyond what time contrives them to do. In the end, it is time itself directing the hands of everyone during these time travel paradox situations. Just as it fought back against Annorax, and Nero's, actions. Time will correct itself by whatever means necessary, DTI or not.(though the DTI is a natural result of these actions and are basically nothing more then the pawns of the "will" of time itself)
We can no more successfully go back and time and stop Noye from taking the Annoarx, then he can actually go back and destroy the Federation. Those who use time to try to usurp other's freewill, even if that will is to try to alter time, will always find themselves being forced to undo their actions, have someone undo their actions, or be forced to carry out the will of the person they stole from, because TIME ITSELF demands it. Even Annorax still had the ability to build his ship and change things, he just chose not too, and instead decided to spend more time with his wife then his work, in the new timeline.
This is why we had to capture Noye at Procyon V, a stable time loop he himself created, where his capture undoes everything he did, without taking away his original free will to steal the Annorax in the first place.
And there's the flaw in your logic. If time itself is fighting back against being changed, then there's no need for timecops in the first place. No matter what they do, everything will return to more or less the same predetermined course and their existence only makes things worse for the bystanders. Like I said before: the timecops are the anomaly.
See, this is the inherent problem with trying to make time travel a major plot element without carefully thinking through the implications and establishing clear rules. It takes all of five seconds to think of a way to break the story in half and show it up for the half-baked bullsh*t excuse for pewpew it really is.
And for crying out loud, if you're going to go to such lengths to suggest that time is somehow a living force that can try to heal itself? Why don't we go a step further and say what you're really thinking? "God decreed that these events would happen in such and such a shape at such and such a time."
Oh wait, this is Star Trek and we're not supposed to believe in God, either. Hmmm...
The participants in the time war are attacking noncombatants, i.e. our characters, who had no involvement in their war until they dragged us into it. Eliminating the means for them to involve us is an act of self-defense.
That literally doesn't matter, and amounts to a 1st grader's excuse of "well he threw sand in my eyes first!" except now its "I knew he was going to throw sand in my eyes due to time travel, so I did it to him first!"
Except this isn't first-graders with a limited understanding of fighting over a sand pit. This is adults, who being adults, should know better, coming back in time hundreds of years and inflicting mayhem on an unsuspecting time period to advance their own goals in their home period. The Lukari nearly had their sun killed, the Present!Na'Kuhl did have their sun killed, there's the various people Noye and the Future!Na'Kuhl killed in their rampages, and there's the collateral damage of Daniels's various half-baked efforts to mitigate the aftereffects of their attacks instead of decisively stopping them.
So no, this is less like first-graders throwing sand and more like the protagonists as the Third World during the Cold War, only unlike the Third World, we actually have the means to defend our (temporal) sovereignty against the West and the East trying to ram their preferences down our throats, if only Cryptic would let us.
Like Picard said, "Perhaps I don't give a damn about your past because it's my future, and as far as I'm concerned it hasn't been written yet!"
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Problem with trying to preempt the rise of the TLF. In order to do that, the Annorax needs to be destroyed in our time. Problem being, if that happens, the probable future outcome is significantly WORSE. Lose the Annorax, the events that stop the Iconian advance don't happen. Those events don't happen, and it's game, set, match for us. We lose the Iconian War, we end up either dead or subjugated on Iconia.
As to time fixing itself, imagine it as a human body. Can it partially recover from minor incidents, like the Narada incursion? Yes, but not without damage (note how different the Kelvin timeline is from the prime). Problem is that if someone deliberately continues to meddle in the process (tantamount to, say, reopening wounds as they try to heal), then things will slip further and further out of hand. Plus, there's the Sphere Builders, who, if they win, permanently destroy all non-SB life in the afflicted areas.
Except that's the entire point Pat, the timeline is itself a paradox, that only works because Alternate Yar came to our timeline, and whose being a paradox is needed to ensure the Kelvin timeline exists.
Attempting to remove said paradoxes only means you are removing the natural order of time itself, and nobody has the moral or ethical right to do so.
One fun, but sanity testing, thought experiment is to make a list of all the times that time travel was used. Then attempt to figure out the state of the universe before hand. Go back far enough and well... would the Federation even exist?
Except that's the entire point Pat, the timeline is itself a paradox, that only works because Alternate Yar came to our timeline, and whose being a paradox is needed to ensure the Kelvin timeline exists.
Attempting to remove said paradoxes only means you are removing the natural order of time itself, and nobody has the moral or ethical right to do so.
One fun, but sanity testing, thought experiment is to make a list of all the times that time travel was used. Then attempt to figure out the state of the universe before hand. Go back far enough and well... would the Federation even exist?
Since temporal incursions seem to be stacked sequentially in canon, I think the "purest" timeline we could get to would be the movies before ST4. TOS was pretty scrupulous about the fact their job as Starfleet officers was to correct the results of time travel, not inflict them.
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
And there's the flaw in your logic. If time itself is fighting back against being changed, then there's no need for timecops in the first place.
Incorrect, because time is, itself, and abstract entity, that has no real means to manipulate itself.
Time has to be manipulated by others, which is why it manipulates others in order to manipulate itself back into what it deems as correct. Be it by having Archer stop Vosk, having Kirk and company being left unaffected by the timeline change so the Guardian could send them back to fix what they changed, having the Enterprise just so being caught in the temporal wake of the borg's actions so they could fix First contact, be it by having the huge serious of events that led to Annorax's ship being destroyed. BE IT THE TIME COPS THEMSELVES, this is how time fixes itself. The Timecops ARE the manifestation of time's own will to be fixed. They are, ultimately, not the anomaly, but the literal cure. Which is why time has proceeded as it should under their watch.
Oh wait, this is Star Trek and we're not supposed to believe in God, either. Hmmm...
What is Q, or the Bajoran Prophets, or any number of insanely powerful beings that have the literal powers to create and destroy life on a whim.
And no, despite your crazy strawman, god isn't needed for this argument.
I was in fact referencing a point Chuck Sonnenburg of SF Debris made regarding the dogmatic view of the Prime Directive, exemplified by Phlox's assertion in "Dear Doctor" that "nature's course" was that the Valakians were fated for extinction (the video got lost in one of his recent server migrations). Which he compared to both saying that "God destined the Valakians for extinction", and being like standing next to a baby locked in a burning car and not doing anything about it on grounds that nature was taking its course.
Then why are you suggesting they take that path that would only be reasonable to the person that didn't know better? Doing to your enemy what your enemy did to you isn't knowing better, its just making the same mistake.
-The Lukari nearly but didn't, and in doing so, it allowed them to come out into the greater galactic stage, and achieve something more.
The Lukari were already researching warp ships and were aware of the Ferengi and Tzenkethi. They would have entered the galactic stage either way.
-The Na'khul only lost their sun because they chose to attempt to usurp the free will of the Tholians, so The Tholians struck back and did the same to them. The loss of the Na'Khul's sun was their own doing, which is why it wasn't changed back, same with the Sphere Builders. Their attempts to destroy the Federation before it began was, ultimately, the trigger that led to the series of events that led to the Alliance finding them, building the Annorax, and erasing them in the first place. Their own attempts to usurp other's free will bit them in the ****, and so they have no one to blame but themselves.
The Na'Kuhl of the present didn't do one damn bit of violence to anyone (except themselves via their own authoritarian government). The attack on them was unprovoked, as was the attack by the Na'Kuhl of the future against the Tholians. (As indeed was the invasion by the Present!Iconians, and Sela shooting a couple of the Past!Iconians.)
See, this is the thing you're failing to comprehend. Just as the son cannot be held accountable for crimes committed by the father, the father cannot be held accountable for crimes committed by the son. A resolution that relies on people being punished for crimes they didn't commit is inherently unjust, and as a Starfleet officer I am obliged to fight that. Similarly, as a Klingon officer, batlh demands I do something about it or I am an honorless petaQ, and as a Romulan mnhei'sahe demands that I do something about it because my actions are supposed to be of benefit to everyone concerned.
-You can't defend yourself from others trying to ram their ideals down your throat by doing the same to them beforehand via time travel. That is hypocrisy.
Think less "hypocrisy" and more "nuclear disarmament". Eliminating the means for time travel is a net benefit for everyone. It stops people in the present from TRIBBLE with past or future, and it forces the people in the future to make the extra step of coming up with their own means instead of just picking up an abandoned superweapon their Neglectful Precursors left lying around.
And Picard was a massive hypocrite who constantly tried to preach things he went back on all the time. His word was as fluid as his morals, aka, like water.
Ad hominem. Attack the point he made, not the man.
/deathtotheeditmonster
Post edited by starswordc on
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Problem with trying to preempt the rise of the TLF. In order to do that, the Annorax needs to be destroyed in our time. Problem being, if that happens, the probable future outcome is significantly WORSE. Lose the Annorax, the events that stop the Iconian advance don't happen. Those events don't happen, and it's game, set, match for us. We lose the Iconian War, we end up either dead or subjugated on Iconia.
As to time fixing itself, imagine it as a human body. Can it partially recover from minor incidents, like the Narada incursion? Yes, but not without damage (note how different the Kelvin timeline is from the prime). Problem is that if someone deliberately continues to meddle in the process (tantamount to, say, reopening wounds as they try to heal), then things will slip further and further out of hand. Plus, there's the Sphere Builders, who, if they win, permanently destroy all non-SB life in the afflicted areas.
If you lose the Annorax (as in destroy it before it's built) there's NO ICONIAN ADVANCE AT ALL.
No Iconian Advance,
No War with the Undine/Species 8472
NO Undine penetration of Starfleet.
NO Temporal Liberation Front.
see, what you're maybe not getting, is that all those wars? they're treating the inflammation from a wound...that was self-inflicted. pull the linchpin, and those events don't happen and therefore don't need to be defended against.
Without the Annorax, Noye's wife's people aren't wiped from the timeline. Without the Annorax, the last dozen or so Iconians die with Iconia, the dyson spheres don't get built and the subspace aliens don't get driven into subspace because their ancestors were fooling around with Omega bomb particles and tetryon waves, without the motivator for the TLF, nobody gives the Na'Kuhl the tech to travel into the past, and so they don't attack the Tholians, the tholians don't get attacked, so they don't retaliate by extinguishing suns-starting with the Na'Kuhl's star, so there's another link broken, another few billion people in the present/near past thta aren't exterminated.
the only thing that REALLY changes in this whole thing,is that the faction controlling your 'time cops' never gets the excuse to start meddling in the past in the first place, and you're no longer guaranteed a future with the FEderation Triumphant over Alles.
But would happen if all those invading aliens get access to the Iconian technology and the Iconian World Heart? Would this still be the universe we remember, or something entirely different, a universe controlled by the aliens that eradicated the Iconians?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
To clarify my argument about the various sub-conflicts somewhat: you're conflating two separate groups, e.g. the Na'Kuhl of the present and the Na'Kuhl of the future, into being a single faction. The one has not committed the acts that the other committed and should not be held accountable for them. In the same vein I oppose Sela's attempt to kill the Iconians of the past: the Iconians of -200,000 BCE didn't blow up Hobus, the Iconians of 2387 CE did (even though they are technically the same individuals, they've been changed by the intervening 200 millennia). You see where I'm going with this?
"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"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Comments
Tell me, how do you rationalize the result of "Time and Again", where Janeway stopping the event that brought her back in time to begin with reverted the events of the episode out of existence?
See also "Storm Front": the actions of Archer eliminate much of the time war. (Which reminds me, whose godawful idea was it to re-fight that idiot Archer's battles, of all people?)
There's your precedent right there. Eliminate the means for time travel before they can be used, you eliminate the time travel. Hell, all the protagonists have to do to end the temporal stupidity war for good before it starts is dismantle the Mary Sueperweapon in our present, before Noye can use it. The Temporal Accords signatories don't like it? Cry me a phekk'ta river, because Picard has the answer to that one, too.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Hardly. I simply have a less emotionally motivated definition as to what constitutes a war crime. Unprovoked attacks on noncombatants would constitute a criminal act. However:
ETA: Though I don't deny my distaste for the writers' heavy-handed attempt to justify their selected ending with the notion that we're suddenly supposed to find the Iconians sympathetic based on their past selves after everything they've done in the present.
/deathtotheeditmonster
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
See, this is the inherent problem with trying to make time travel a major plot element without carefully thinking through the implications and establishing clear rules. It takes all of five seconds to think of a way to break the story in half and show it up for the half-baked bullsh*t excuse for pewpew it really is.
And for crying out loud, if you're going to go to such lengths to suggest that time is somehow a living force that can try to heal itself? Why don't we go a step further and say what you're really thinking? "God decreed that these events would happen in such and such a shape at such and such a time."
Oh wait, this is Star Trek and we're not supposed to believe in God, either. Hmmm...
Except this isn't first-graders with a limited understanding of fighting over a sand pit. This is adults, who being adults, should know better, coming back in time hundreds of years and inflicting mayhem on an unsuspecting time period to advance their own goals in their home period. The Lukari nearly had their sun killed, the Present!Na'Kuhl did have their sun killed, there's the various people Noye and the Future!Na'Kuhl killed in their rampages, and there's the collateral damage of Daniels's various half-baked efforts to mitigate the aftereffects of their attacks instead of decisively stopping them.
So no, this is less like first-graders throwing sand and more like the protagonists as the Third World during the Cold War, only unlike the Third World, we actually have the means to defend our (temporal) sovereignty against the West and the East trying to ram their preferences down our throats, if only Cryptic would let us.
Like Picard said, "Perhaps I don't give a damn about your past because it's my future, and as far as I'm concerned it hasn't been written yet!"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
As to time fixing itself, imagine it as a human body. Can it partially recover from minor incidents, like the Narada incursion? Yes, but not without damage (note how different the Kelvin timeline is from the prime). Problem is that if someone deliberately continues to meddle in the process (tantamount to, say, reopening wounds as they try to heal), then things will slip further and further out of hand. Plus, there's the Sphere Builders, who, if they win, permanently destroy all non-SB life in the afflicted areas.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
My character Tsin'xing
Since temporal incursions seem to be stacked sequentially in canon, I think the "purest" timeline we could get to would be the movies before ST4. TOS was pretty scrupulous about the fact their job as Starfleet officers was to correct the results of time travel, not inflict them.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
This is fun! What other iterations of this can you come up with?
I was in fact referencing a point Chuck Sonnenburg of SF Debris made regarding the dogmatic view of the Prime Directive, exemplified by Phlox's assertion in "Dear Doctor" that "nature's course" was that the Valakians were fated for extinction (the video got lost in one of his recent server migrations). Which he compared to both saying that "God destined the Valakians for extinction", and being like standing next to a baby locked in a burning car and not doing anything about it on grounds that nature was taking its course.
EDIT: Found it. http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/e113.php
The Lukari were already researching warp ships and were aware of the Ferengi and Tzenkethi. They would have entered the galactic stage either way.
The Na'Kuhl of the present didn't do one damn bit of violence to anyone (except themselves via their own authoritarian government). The attack on them was unprovoked, as was the attack by the Na'Kuhl of the future against the Tholians. (As indeed was the invasion by the Present!Iconians, and Sela shooting a couple of the Past!Iconians.)
See, this is the thing you're failing to comprehend. Just as the son cannot be held accountable for crimes committed by the father, the father cannot be held accountable for crimes committed by the son. A resolution that relies on people being punished for crimes they didn't commit is inherently unjust, and as a Starfleet officer I am obliged to fight that. Similarly, as a Klingon officer, batlh demands I do something about it or I am an honorless petaQ, and as a Romulan mnhei'sahe demands that I do something about it because my actions are supposed to be of benefit to everyone concerned.
See previous point about "nature taking its course" arguments.
Think less "hypocrisy" and more "nuclear disarmament". Eliminating the means for time travel is a net benefit for everyone. It stops people in the present from TRIBBLE with past or future, and it forces the people in the future to make the extra step of coming up with their own means instead of just picking up an abandoned superweapon their Neglectful Precursors left lying around.
Ad hominem. Attack the point he made, not the man.
/deathtotheeditmonster
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
But would happen if all those invading aliens get access to the Iconian technology and the Iconian World Heart? Would this still be the universe we remember, or something entirely different, a universe controlled by the aliens that eradicated the Iconians?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/