You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
"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"
I'm seeing an awful lot of words from people who don't understand that they're essentially using special pleading to justify the episode. Or going "You can't do that because [PLOT EVENT]" which .. is a bad argument when people are arguing, at base, the plot is bad.
In sequence, though. Star Trek doesn't have fixed points in space-time. We've seen nothing bad happens to time itself when you alter them, just the sequence of events. Secondly, the only reason why the Annorax got away is because of writer fiat, which is when you start going 'If you never intended for us to catch up, then don't even have us fight it.'
Don't even get me started on the sheer incompetence of people manning the research lab and Starfleet itself. Seriously, how have we not been taken over by now? Also, if we can jump in time, why weren't any uptime time agencies acting? Seriously, writers, this is why temporal time-travel is never written as freely as it is in the Trek canon.
And now on to a point that bothers me..
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Nonsense. VOY's Relativity comes to mind pretty damned fast. DS9's Prophet is a good example of time manipulation working. Gary Seven, Yesterday's Enterprise - they are also time manipulation working. You want to avoid time travel plots for this exact reason, because you could have nulled the entire episode by jumping to two minutes after the Iconian truce and shooting Noye. I mean, sure he's temporally shielded, but the second it fails, he's *dead*. And if he comes after you to prevent it, well, you've got him in one point and uptime agencies can jump in and go "lol nope."
This was a fiat plot that relied on no one thinking rationally (for example, why didn't the MC go "<shipname>, intercept the Annorax!" or Walker go "the hell!?") and attempting to defend it requires not examining the writers lack of follow-through on implications of what happened.
Hmm... I don't want to dismiss the work of the devs or the writers in this case. I'm very happy that STO is going the direction of advancing the storyline. Still, people in here have brought up some valid points in respect to what seems like a problem with the temporal prime directive or at least its motives.
Anyone ever read Assimov's End of Eternity? Good book and I think STO should borrow to better explain some of the premise behind the Temporal Prime Directive. Not to spoil too move for anyone who hasn't read the book, but it turns out that the larger problem is that by changing the timeline so that everything is safer for humanity (or I guess the galaxy in this case), it doesn't allow for much in the way of evolution and creates a complacency that kills off the very thing that was meant to be protected. I think that should be the muse behind the Temporal Prime Directive is that by ensuring that the timeline isn't nixed in the past for one reason or another, we ensure that hardship occurs. Only through hardship do we better ourselves and get to a stronger future for the most of us
.. yes. Because we should let others die so we become stronger. That's a much more moral message. It's a nonaction principle, and suffers the same flaw as the Prime Directive. They both argue "Well, for all you know, that action might lead to evil occurring, so it's best to take no action."
Sadly, Idiot Plots are extremely common in time travel stories, because most writers are not good enough to know what to do with giving their characters total freedom from/power over causality. So you wind up with stuff like "fixed points" and other justifications which boil down to "Because!"
It can be argued that the "best" time travel story is one that erases itself from ever having happened.
A humorous take on all this can be found in the Simpson's Sixth Season's Episode 'Treehouse of Horror V', in the 'Time and Punishment' segment. Homer invents a time machine (a Toaster) goes back in time, does something to TRIBBLE up the timeline when he returns. He keeps trying to do it over and over again to correct things, until he gets back and everything seems normal. Except people now eat food with a lizard-like tongue. He just gives up and says basically 'Eh, close enough'.
'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.'
Knowing what we know, we can't go back in time and stop Noye before he becomes an issue? We can't go back and erase those logs so he never gets a chance to read them? Knowing what we know, we can't go back in time to prevent the Borg from (very, very conveniently) knocking out our temporal shielding and stop Noye's wife from ever disappearing?
Have to admit though that not being able to stop Noye is one of the few things that DOES make sense about the episode's plot.
And this making sense is conveniently provided by the plot device from Star Trek Voyager - aka Temporal Shielding.
Now that Noye is on Annorax inside it's Temporal Shield - NOTHING we do in the past would influence his current actions: we could kill him as a baby, but the vengeful adult Noye on Annorax will still be there, we could blow up the Annorax, when it is still being built, but Noye's Annorax inside its temporal shield will stay intact. The Temporal Shileding basically allows objects and living beings, that have no past and no future, exist. So until this particular Noye, which is leading the whole conspirancy, is taken out of the temporal shield - he will continue with his plan. Basically, we need to pull a Janeway from Year from Hell (maybe, not the same method, though).
Good point, but it does raise a very bad question: what if we go back in time and board the Annorax before Noye raises the shields, then shoot him with the shields up?
Frankly I just don't see it. It was out of our hands. What are we supposed to do about it?
Simple. When the Tox is in our hands after we recover it from the Tholians, we fly back and reignite the Na'khul star. If they complain, we say "look if you really want us to we can snuff it back out for you" but I highly doubt they'll complain too much about us cleaning up our mess and saving billions of their lives. THEN we go bury it on Risa.
I don't see why this is so difficult to grasp?
Keep this in mind: In "Stormbound" when the player helps Kal Dano recover the Tox Uthat from the Tholians, it wasn't the player who insisted on immediately taking it back to Risa without first reigniting the Na'Kuhl star - it was Kal Dano himself. Why would he refuse to reignite the star? Given the events of "Sunrise" I think it's because, even with the player and ship to protect him, Kal Dano was not confident that he could keep the Tox Uthat long enough to repair the Na'Kuhl star without the Tholians showing up to steal it again. His logic seemed to be that it's better to cut our losses by sacrificing just one inhabited system's star (the Na'Kuhl's) than to risk the Tholians taking the Uthat back yet again. and then destroying even more stars with it. Alas, Kal Dano never explicitly said as much in "Stormbound". In any case, barring some future revelation regarding the Na'Kuhl, I think we can chalk up this whole mess to being another case of a questionable story premise that could have easily been fixed with a couple of well-placed lines of dialogue. It's not the first time that's happened in Star Trek lore, and with another movie and now a TV series on the way, surely it won't be the last.
As for time travel more generally, Peter David's TNG novel Imzadi (still my favorite Trek novel from any series) presents what is to me the most rational and sound policy on temporal integrity possible. It could best be described as "my timeline, right or wrong." Basically it holds that, since every possible timeline has its own sets of "winners" and "losers", trying to determine which one is the "best" or the "correct" timeline is pointless, so the only way to avoid temporal chaos is simply to preserve one's own native timeline at all costs.
That certainly seems to be the aim of the Temporal Accords - to preserve the integrity of the timeline in which the Accords were enacted. The would-be signatories of the Accords are, presumably, the "winners" of that timeline (at least as of FSY 2769). Noye and the Na'Kuhl are the losers - hence their rebellion against the Accords. But if they succeed in altering the timeline in their favor, that just makes for different sets of winners and losers, and if those losers then rebel... well, I think you get the idea, and it brings us back to the idea of preserving your own timeline, and nothing more, as the only guarantor of temporal order and peace.
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
IIRC, it was mentioned in the movie. By taking two whales to the future they reduced the population in the past. Which may or may not have been a deciding factor on their extinction.
We used it to travel through time and end the Iconian war. There was no failure.
He was referring more to the use of time travel to 'fix' things, rather than usage in general, I believe.
Attempting to use time travel to make a timeline free of Iconia? Erased Noye's wife from existence, and therefore caused the issues currently happening. Attempting to use it to destroy the Iconians in the past? Sela did just that, and it turned out to have caused the war, 200,000 years in the making. We ended things in the present, but it was at cost of having started the war in the first place, directly thanks to our attempts to 'fix' things in our favor. Therefore, while technically a success, said cost makes it a failure at worst and a hollow victory at best... more-or-less anyway. I'd personally go with failure myself
^Everything similar was a failure in most cases, causing more problems than solutions, and that includes Noye's attempts to erase the Temporal Accords from existence; it will invariably fail one way or the other, as it must. Similar with the Na'kuhl star incident, if we tried to anyway
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I'm seeing an awful lot of words from people who don't understand that they're essentially using special pleading to justify the episode. Or going "You can't do that because [PLOT EVENT]" which .. is a bad argument when people are arguing, at base, the plot is bad.
In sequence, though. Star Trek doesn't have fixed points in space-time. We've seen nothing bad happens to time itself when you alter them, just the sequence of events. Secondly, the only reason why the Annorax got away is because of writer fiat, which is when you start going 'If you never intended for us to catch up, then don't even have us fight it.'
Don't even get me started on the sheer incompetence of people manning the research lab and Starfleet itself. Seriously, how have we not been taken over by now? Also, if we can jump in time, why weren't any uptime time agencies acting? Seriously, writers, this is why temporal time-travel is never written as freely as it is in the Trek canon.
The Research station in the Kyana is system should still be temporally shielded slightly out of phase with real time. Only Alliance officials who are aware of its existence, position, and phase variance would have access, which is why the Iconians were never able to attack it and why it was a safe harbor for our attack fleets.
And now on to a point that bothers me..
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Nonsense. VOY's Relativity comes to mind pretty damned fast. DS9's Prophet is a good example of time manipulation working. Gary Seven, Yesterday's Enterprise - they are also time manipulation working. You want to avoid time travel plots for this exact reason, because you could have nulled the entire episode by jumping to two minutes after the Iconian truce and shooting Noye. I mean, sure he's temporally shielded, but the second it fails, he's *dead*. And if he comes after you to prevent it, well, you've got him in one point and uptime agencies can jump in and go "lol nope."
This was a fiat plot that relied on no one thinking rationally (for example, why didn't the MC go "<shipname>, intercept the Annorax!" or Walker go "the hell!?") and attempting to defend it requires not examining the writers lack of follow-through on implications of what happened.
I don't know why Relativity comes to mind. That episode was about what we're talking about. Maintaining the timeline not changing it. Maintaining it is usually successful, attempts to change the timeline are what I say usually fail miserably. Funny fact, TIC seems to hate Janeway more than Kirk. Most temporal violations EVER. Which should've given us a heads up about Janeway now that I think about it.
Gary Seven I'm not sure that was time travel. He was from the past, an alien species could've just kept him alive that long. If it is time travel he may be a TIC agent.
There isn't a DS9 episode called Prophet, if you're referring to the species, they have temporal capabilities far beyond us. Perhaps it would do for me to specify anytime any normal corporeal sapient species tries to TRIBBLE with time, but I figured that went without saying.
Yesterday's Enterprise was AGAIN maintaining the current timeline, not changing it.
Assassinate him? Why not arrest him for crimes he will commit like Braxton? All we need is to make sure he never sets foot on the Annorax again.
That said, it won't get rid of the Noye already on the timeship.
The only problem with saying the writers haven't followed through (which if this was the end I would agree) is we're on what? Chapter 3 of this story? It's ongoing, so we don't actually know where this ends. And since it's a time travel story we don't actually know fully where it begins.
Zed: "Sucks, huh?"
Hmm... I don't want to dismiss the work of the devs or the writers in this case. I'm very happy that STO is going the direction of advancing the storyline. Still, people in here have brought up some valid points in respect to what seems like a problem with the temporal prime directive or at least its motives.
Anyone ever read Assimov's End of Eternity? Good book and I think STO should borrow to better explain some of the premise behind the Temporal Prime Directive. Not to spoil too move for anyone who hasn't read the book, but it turns out that the larger problem is that by changing the timeline so that everything is safer for humanity (or I guess the galaxy in this case), it doesn't allow for much in the way of evolution and creates a complacency that kills off the very thing that was meant to be protected. I think that should be the muse behind the Temporal Prime Directive is that by ensuring that the timeline isn't nixed in the past for one reason or another, we ensure that hardship occurs. Only through hardship do we better ourselves and get to a stronger future for the most of us
.. yes. Because we should let others die so we become stronger. That's a much more moral message. It's a nonaction principle, and suffers the same flaw as the Prime Directive. They both argue "Well, for all you know, that action might lead to evil occurring, so it's best to take no action."
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
I have a theory that the whale probe was sent by the Xindi Aquatics in the first place, which was supposed to be the first contact with the Xindi, but then Future Guy etc and the first contact came much sooner, so in the post Enterprise timeline the Whale probe wouldn't happen at all.
Except the Xindi in the 22nd century are fully capable of and willing to communicate with humans. Why would they have lost that capability in the 23rd century especially on a planet with four other sapient life forms.
It works just fine for me. Sure, I can understand what the author intended. I still think it stinks.
And that's perfectly fine, I'm not actually fond of this storyline at all.
The Annorax Paradox is waiting for you. Annorax took two hundred years doing that. It always failed. Every. Single. Time. What happened happened. And you cannot cheat the universe. When you do, you will pay the price. Or worse someone else will pay the price. It's The Law of Equivalent Exchange writ temporal. There comes a point where you have to accept what happened and move on.
Well no. He failed in his attempts up to a point. He could have found a solution a day or a week or a year or a century later. Time had no meaning to him. He literally has forever to figure it out. I believe he eventually would have.
I have no such delusions about success. Even he had started to believe that time was actively impeding him. You may be right and he restored his wife, but I think it would've taken so long he would've gone completely insane by then.
You can't just consider your own internal logic
Sure I can.
But that's the thing isn't it? It Failed, catastrophically.
We used it to travel through time and end the Iconian war. There was no failure.
The flaw is, that nothing changed. We didn't do one thing differently in our time travel. We didn't make a single alteration.
And like I said, if we had never time traveled to Iconia, then the war wouldn't have happened at all.
I think your memory is slipping.
No it isn't.
Then you're willfully ignoring what happened.
Doing precisely that is the reason that we first got Romulus assimilated and second, got the Tuterians assimilated and hidden in another dimension. This has already been tried and made things a lot worse.
So? Try another option. It's not like there are only 3 possible outcomes.
You assume there can be a positive outcome. Also the timeship only had a limited number of shots at that point.
Your argument fails though, you're using the actions of the alliance against a successor state three centuries later. That's the same as making arguments on modern United Nations policy based on the mistakes of the British Empire in the seventeenth century.
No, that isn't what I said at all.
It is exactly what you said. You've consistently criticized the alliance, which in 25th century parlance is the Delta Alliance to criticize the actions of the Temporal Accords, an act instituted by the much larger Galactic Union three centuries later. The Alliance is long gone.
Your interpretation is flawed.
Not to me.
Fortunately we aren't bound your interpretations of right and wrong.
Did we change anything in the past? No. You're associating our victory, or rather survival with changing the past. Nothing of the sort happened.
I guess I was the only one on Iconia 200,000 years ago.
Yeah we went. It was a predestination paradox. Everything that had happened there already happened. If we hadn't been there to save the Iconians then they either would've went extinct, or escaped with the world heart and not had a grudge against us at all. Sela wouldn't have been there to shoot Iconians, and Hobus never would've happened.
If there was an initial event, then time travel actually made the future worse, not better.
But we didn't do anything differently than we had before. We were still The Other who saved the Iconians, Sela still pissed them off, and they still lost the World Heart in the past. Meaning they still blew up Hobus annihilating Romulus, still antagonized the Undine on our behalf, thus triggering the Federation Klingon War, and leading us to the present.
Knowing what we know, we can't go back in time and stop Noye before he becomes an issue? We can't go back and erase those logs so he never gets a chance to read them? Knowing what we know, we can't go back in time to prevent the Borg from (very, very conveniently) knocking out our temporal shielding and stop Noye's wife from ever disappearing?
Have to admit though that not being able to stop Noye is one of the few things that DOES make sense about the episode's plot.
And this making sense is conveniently provided by the plot device from Star Trek Voyager - aka Temporal Shielding.
Now that Noye is on Annorax inside it's Temporal Shield - NOTHING we do in the past would influence his current actions: we could kill him as a baby, but the vengeful adult Noye on Annorax will still be there, we could blow up the Annorax, when it is still being built, but Noye's Annorax inside its temporal shield will stay intact. The Temporal Shileding basically allows objects and living beings, that have no past and no future, exist. So until this particular Noye, which is leading the whole conspirancy, is taken out of the temporal shield - he will continue with his plan. Basically, we need to pull a Janeway from Year from Hell (maybe, not the same method, though).
Good point, but it does raise a very bad question: what if we go back in time and board the Annorax before Noye raises the shields, then shoot him with the shields up?
Maybe the universe would just explode.
-R
No, if he dies inside the timeship with temporal shields up then he just dies. The crew can go back and get an older/younger Noye, but that one is dead.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above. Also the Timeship is what really lets the temporal genie out of the bottle since Starfleet has had access to time travel for over a century at this point. Although without the Timeship there may not be a need for the Temporal Accords either.
If we didn't use the Annorax for out trip back to Iconia then I'd say Incursion it away.
Frankly I just don't see it. It was out of our hands. What are we supposed to do about it?
Simple. When the Tox is in our hands after we recover it from the Tholians, we fly back and reignite the Na'khul star. If they complain, we say "look if you really want us to we can snuff it back out for you" but I highly doubt they'll complain too much about us cleaning up our mess and saving billions of their lives. THEN we go bury it on Risa.
I don't see why this is so difficult to grasp?
Keep this in mind: In "Stormbound" when the player helps Kal Dano recover the Tox Uthat from the Tholians, it wasn't the player who insisted on immediately taking it back to Risa without first reigniting the Na'Kuhl star - it was Kal Dano himself. Why would he refuse to reignite the star? Given the events of "Sunrise" I think it's because, even with the player and ship to protect him, Kal Dano was not confident that he could keep the Tox Uthat long enough to repair the Na'Kuhl star without the Tholians showing up to steal it again. His logic seemed to be that it's better to cut our losses by sacrificing just one inhabited system's star (the Na'Kuhl's) than to risk the Tholians taking the Uthat back yet again. and then destroying even more stars with it. Alas, Kal Dano never explicitly said as much in "Stormbound". In any case, barring some future revelation regarding the Na'Kuhl, I think we can chalk up this whole mess to being another case of a questionable story premise that could have easily been fixed with a couple of well-placed lines of dialogue. It's not the first time that's happened in Star Trek lore, and with another movie and now a TV series on the way, surely it won't be the last.
He was much more gung ho about hiding the thing than fixing the problem. Why he wouldn't just fix the star while having us cover him and then go home and destroy the thing is beyond me. Hiding it is very weird.
As for time travel more generally, Peter David's TNG novel Imzadi (still my favorite Trek novel from any series) presents what is to me the most rational and sound policy on temporal integrity possible. It could best be described as "my timeline, right or wrong." Basically it holds that, since every possible timeline has its own sets of "winners" and "losers", trying to determine which one is the "best" or the "correct" timeline is pointless, so the only way to avoid temporal chaos is simply to preserve one's own native timeline at all costs.
That certainly seems to be the aim of the Temporal Accords - to preserve the integrity of the timeline in which the Accords were enacted. The would-be signatories of the Accords are, presumably, the "winners" of that timeline (at least as of FSY 2769). Noye and the Na'Kuhl are the losers - hence their rebellion against the Accords. But if they succeed in altering the timeline in their favor, that just makes for different sets of winners and losers, and if those losers then rebel... well, I think you get the idea, and it brings us back to the idea of preserving your own timeline, and nothing more, as the only guarantor of temporal order and peace.
That makes sense. I can't think that constantly rewriting timelines is good for the health of the continuum.
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
IIRC, it was mentioned in the movie. By taking two whales to the future they reduced the population in the past. Which may or may not have been a deciding factor on their extinction.
Actually it was shown in the movie that if Kirk and company had gotten there a minute later, George and Gracie were gonna be whale blubber. Gillian repeatedly stated that she didn't think that they would survive in the wild, so it wasn't an issue of Kirk.
We used it to travel through time and end the Iconian war. There was no failure.
He was referring more to the use of time travel to 'fix' things, rather than usage in general, I believe.
Attempting to use time travel to make a timeline free of Iconia? Erased Noye's wife from existence, and therefore caused the issues currently happening. Attempting to use it to destroy the Iconians in the past? Sela did just that, and it turned out to have caused the war, 200,000 years in the making. We ended things in the present, but it was at cost of having started the war in the first place, directly thanks to our attempts to 'fix' things in our favor. Therefore, while technically a success, said cost makes it a failure at worst and a hollow victory at best... more-or-less anyway. I'd personally go with failure myself
^Everything similar was a failure in most cases, causing more problems than solutions, and that includes Noye's attempts to erase the Temporal Accords from existence; it will invariably fail one way or the other, as it must. Similar with the Na'kuhl star incident, if we tried to anyway
Correct. Maintaining the timeline or restoring it to our original experience always works, and is usually the goal in each circumstance. Attempting to alter the timeline to a more favorable outcome always fails or generates an unacceptable unintended consequence.
"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"
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
IIRC, it was mentioned in the movie. By taking two whales to the future they reduced the population in the past. Which may or may not have been a deciding factor on their extinction.
Actually it was shown in the movie that if Kirk and company had gotten there a minute later, George and Gracie were gonna be whale blubber. Gillian repeatedly stated that she didn't think that they would survive in the wild, so it wasn't an issue of Kirk.
Perhaps their deaths would have prevented other whales from dying? Ya'know the whole butterfly effect thing?
Forget time travel i find it more amusing that we have ships full of crews yet didn't think to bring back up nor since we now suspect him of treason we didn't send crews to guard the anarax time ship.
One thing that does interest me is future guy, we know he was a faction against the sphere builders which are now more or less confirmed to be crazy krenim's wife, so will we see him or worse IS IT US DUN DUN DUN
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
IIRC, it was mentioned in the movie. By taking two whales to the future they reduced the population in the past. Which may or may not have been a deciding factor on their extinction.
Actually it was shown in the movie that if Kirk and company had gotten there a minute later, George and Gracie were gonna be whale blubber. Gillian repeatedly stated that she didn't think that they would survive in the wild, so it wasn't an issue of Kirk.
Perhaps their deaths would have prevented other whales from dying? Ya'know the whole butterfly effect thing?
You mean George and Gracie's death in the news as the beloved San Francisco Aquarium's beloved attractions killed two days later would've sparked an outcry, that would've led to whales being properly protected? Maybe. But considering human beings in the 20 and 21st centuries I supremely doubt it.
I don't see any evidence it's a predestination paradox, but it's certainly not impossible.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
I have a theory that the whale probe was sent by the Xindi Aquatics in the first place, which was supposed to be the first contact with the Xindi, but then Future Guy etc and the first contact came much sooner, so in the post Enterprise timeline the Whale probe wouldn't happen at all.
Except the Xindi in the 22nd century are fully capable of and willing to communicate with humans. Why would they have lost that capability in the 23rd century especially on a planet with four other sapient life forms.
Well, I didn't say it was a great theory , but the Xindi Aquatics are the only Ceteceanoid Sentients we have actually seen in Trek, aside from the Earth Humpbacks, I was thinking perhaps the Terran whales were a lost colony of the XAquatics or something like that. Still your point about the Xindi's ability to communicate directly with humans is a good one.
Edit: Well I screwed up the quote thing on this post, guess thats what happens when you try to dig one piece out of a very long post. So for clarity, I made the comment about having a theory about the Xindi Aquatics and the whale probe, that got the response about Xindi communication ability, and the last paragraph is me again.[/quote]
It's fine. Elsewhere my long TRIBBLE posts are legendary.
That said, I'm hoping that an future Trek acknowledges the history of Cetacean Sapients. Supposedly on Earth we have Humpbacks and Dolphins, with Dolphins in Starfleet. I'd like to see more exotic species now that sci fi budgets and technology have grown.
Forget time travel i find it more amusing that we have ships full of crews yet didn't think to bring back up nor since we now suspect him of treason we didn't send crews to guard the anarax time ship.
One thing that does interest me is future guy, we know he was a faction against the sphere builders which are now more or less confirmed to be crazy krenim's wife, so will we see him or worse IS IT US DUN DUN DUN
Considering Noye's appearance at the signing of the Temporal Accords I have no doubt that he is Future Guy.
"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"
We should ask what the Unknown Arc User thinks about Temporal Mechanics.
'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.'
You can't just consider your own internal logic, but the established logic of the universe. Kirk saving Humpback Whales is the only successful time manipulation usage in Star Trek history.
Or maybe he accidentally caused the Whale Probe attack......
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
IIRC, it was mentioned in the movie. By taking two whales to the future they reduced the population in the past. Which may or may not have been a deciding factor on their extinction.
Whale hunters were already heading for George and Gracie, so it seems they wouldn't have made it.
Keep this in mind: In "Stormbound" when the player helps Kal Dano recover the Tox Uthat from the Tholians, it wasn't the player who insisted on immediately taking it back to Risa without first reigniting the Na'Kuhl star - it was Kal Dano himself. Why would he refuse to reignite the star?
I think it's much simpler. THe Na'Kuhl star was already dead and there was nothing he could reignite anymore with the tech he had.
The device the Tholians used before was not the Tox Uthat. It worked differently, much slower. The stuff going on there took so long that the species in the area around it took notice and send some people to analyze it, and the people on the world could study the phenomen and try to find a counter (even if it failed). The Na'Kuhl star went out rapidly, there wasn't any time to study things, it was just gone. Without some new star reignition tech or time travel, there wasn't anything to do anymore.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Considering Noye's appearance at the signing of the Temporal Accords I have no doubt that he is Future Guy.
i doubt noye is future guy, in enterprise the suliban faction was against the xindi and future guy help Arhcer learn about their plans.
Since Noye's wife is a sphere builder i doubt he would sabotage their efforts.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
I've always disliked time travel in story telling. Despite that I choose to focus on WHAT WAS GOOD about this featured Episode. The art department (if there's anyone besides taco, and if not props to just taco) did a great job on this episode. I love the map above the planet with the ringed planet off to the side. I would like to see more maps like this. This episode continues a general trend since DR in which (original non-recycled) space maps have definitely had their game stepped up. Thank you for creating these awesome maps!
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
I think it's much simpler. THe Na'Kuhl star was already dead and there was nothing he could reignite anymore with the tech he had.
The device the Tholians used before was not the Tox Uthat. It worked differently, much slower. The stuff going on there took so long that the species in the area around it took notice and send some people to analyze it, and the people on the world could study the phenomen and try to find a counter (even if it failed). The Na'Kuhl star went out rapidly, there wasn't any time to study things, it was just gone. Without some new star reignition tech or time travel, there wasn't anything to do anymore.
That seems the most plausible explanation, yes. Especially as it wouldn't be a matter that the player could realistically disagree with, unlike alternate explanations such as Kal Dano wanting to preserve his future history or being afraid the Tholians might overpower us.
The only problem is, the explanation is not given in the mission. Kal Dano and the player just leave to hide the Tox without discussion. We must assume such discussion took place off screen, its contents unknown, but obviously Dano must have convinced the player somehow not to try fixing the star at that time.
Of course, it is a bit of a forgotten technology scenario anyway...in DS9: Second Sight, Starfleet successfully developed star reignition tech based on protomatter that worked on a completely dead star. Time travel would not necessarily be required to fix the star at all.
I've always disliked time travel in story telling. Despite that I choose to focus on WHAT WAS GOOD about this featured Episode. The art department (if there's anyone besides taco, and if not props to just taco) did a great job on this episode. I love the map above the planet with the ringed planet off to the side. I would like to see more maps like this. This episode continues a general trend since DR in which (original non-recycled) space maps have definitely had their game stepped up. Thank you for creating these awesome maps!
I think it's much simpler. THe Na'Kuhl star was already dead and there was nothing he could reignite anymore with the tech he had.
The device the Tholians used before was not the Tox Uthat. It worked differently, much slower. The stuff going on there took so long that the species in the area around it took notice and send some people to analyze it, and the people on the world could study the phenomen and try to find a counter (even if it failed). The Na'Kuhl star went out rapidly, there wasn't any time to study things, it was just gone. Without some new star reignition tech or time travel, there wasn't anything to do anymore.
That seems the most plausible explanation, yes. Especially as it wouldn't be a matter that the player could realistically disagree with, unlike alternate explanations such as Kal Dano wanting to preserve his future history or being afraid the Tholians might overpower us.
The only problem is, the explanation is not given in the mission. Kal Dano and the player just leave to hide the Tox without discussion. We must assume such discussion took place off screen, its contents unknown, but obviously Dano must have convinced the player somehow not to try fixing the star at that time.
Of course, it is a bit of a forgotten technology scenario anyway...in DS9: Second Sight, Starfleet successfully developed star reignition tech based on protomatter that worked on a completely dead star. Time travel would not necessarily be required to fix the star at all.
Well that isn't part of this continuity either.
An interesting thought had occurred to me while out shopping. What if the Tox Uthat's method of killing a star is too complete for it to be reversed.
With the Lukari star (an incident I presume was a trap for Kal Dano and the Tox Uthat specifically the more I think about it) the Tholians used Trilithium, Protomatter, and other unsavory materials to kill the star. As Musrtrumridcully said apparently it took a very long time too at least a matter of weeks. The Tox Uthat when the Tholians used it got the job done A LOT faster. If it can't be reversed even with the Uthat, then Kal Dano's actions were somewhat logical.
But again, without that being mentioned in the episode at all, it just looks like garbage.
"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"
Starfleet might have run one experiment to reignite one particular star, but that doesn't have to mean they can do it with any type of star. Isn't part of the DS9 story there also saying that it took some time to find a candidate? Or am I confusing that with another science experiment?
But again, without that being mentioned in the episode at all, it just looks like garbage.
While I generally prefer things like this mentioned, they seem to take the "Don't Tell, Show" approach here. In the previous episode, we had spend basically half the mission analyzing the star. This time, the star suddenly changes. It seems not that difficult to infer that the Tox Uthat is a lot more effective at star destruction then the method the Tholians had before. Heck, why would they even bother with the Tox Uthat otherwise!
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Starfleet might have run one experiment to reignite one particular star, but that doesn't have to mean they can do it with any type of star. Isn't part of the DS9 story there also saying that it took some time to find a candidate? Or am I confusing that with another science experiment?
But again, without that being mentioned in the episode at all, it just looks like garbage.
While I generally prefer things like this mentioned, they seem to take the "Don't Tell, Show" approach here. In the previous episode, we had spend basically half the mission analyzing the star. This time, the star suddenly changes. It seems not that difficult to infer that the Tox Uthat is a lot more effective at star destruction then the method the Tholians had before. Heck, why would they even bother with the Tox Uthat otherwise!
hmm IIRC Kal Dano makes a short, cryptic statement about the Na'kuhl sun before leaving. "there's nothing we can do for them."
hmm IIRC Kal Dano makes a short, cryptic statement about the Na'kuhl sun before leaving. "there's nothing we can do for them."
I've just replayed the mission to check if I missed something, but nope, nothing.
I still believe the intent was to imply the star to be beyond salvation, which is why he's all "oh noes!" when the Tholians kill the star, instead of a more annoyed reaction. However, due to the various vocabulary used during the two episodes (revive, restart, fix), it failed and lead pretty much everyone to believe the dead star can be saved.
Once again, even a tiny additional dialog would be enough to solve this issue. "Oh no, we're too late, the star is now beyond salvation and we can't travel back or we'll create a paradox!"
hmm IIRC Kal Dano makes a short, cryptic statement about the Na'kuhl sun before leaving. "there's nothing we can do for them."
I've just replayed the mission to check if I missed something, but nope, nothing.
I still believe the intent was to imply the star to be beyond salvation, which is why he's all "oh noes!" when the Tholians kill the star, instead of a more annoyed reaction. However, due to the various vocabulary used during the two episodes (revive, restart, fix), it failed and lead pretty much everyone to believe the dead star can be saved.
Once again, even a tiny additional dialog would be enough to solve this issue. "Oh no, we're too late, the star is now beyond salvation and we can't travel back or we'll create a paradox!"
Yep that would fix it.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Fortunately we aren't bound your interpretations of right and wrong.
Nor are we bound by yours, thankfully. IMO this whole arc of time travel stinks. 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.
Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
Comments
Well wouldn't that be fun.
But the fact is that humanity caused the problem by hunting them to extinction, that was made pretty clearly to me. (The intended aesop among many) I wonder if the Xindi Aquatics had gone extinct if the whale probe would've visited Xindi Prime.
I wonder if Humpback whales have helped humans improve long range subspace communications...
In sequence, though. Star Trek doesn't have fixed points in space-time. We've seen nothing bad happens to time itself when you alter them, just the sequence of events. Secondly, the only reason why the Annorax got away is because of writer fiat, which is when you start going 'If you never intended for us to catch up, then don't even have us fight it.'
Don't even get me started on the sheer incompetence of people manning the research lab and Starfleet itself. Seriously, how have we not been taken over by now? Also, if we can jump in time, why weren't any uptime time agencies acting? Seriously, writers, this is why temporal time-travel is never written as freely as it is in the Trek canon.
And now on to a point that bothers me..
Nonsense. VOY's Relativity comes to mind pretty damned fast. DS9's Prophet is a good example of time manipulation working. Gary Seven, Yesterday's Enterprise - they are also time manipulation working. You want to avoid time travel plots for this exact reason, because you could have nulled the entire episode by jumping to two minutes after the Iconian truce and shooting Noye. I mean, sure he's temporally shielded, but the second it fails, he's *dead*. And if he comes after you to prevent it, well, you've got him in one point and uptime agencies can jump in and go "lol nope."
This was a fiat plot that relied on no one thinking rationally (for example, why didn't the MC go "<shipname>, intercept the Annorax!" or Walker go "the hell!?") and attempting to defend it requires not examining the writers lack of follow-through on implications of what happened.
.. yes. Because we should let others die so we become stronger. That's a much more moral message. It's a nonaction principle, and suffers the same flaw as the Prime Directive. They both argue "Well, for all you know, that action might lead to evil occurring, so it's best to take no action."
It can be argued that the "best" time travel story is one that erases itself from ever having happened.
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.'
Good point, but it does raise a very bad question: what if we go back in time and board the Annorax before Noye raises the shields, then shoot him with the shields up?
Maybe the universe would just explode.
-R
Keep this in mind: In "Stormbound" when the player helps Kal Dano recover the Tox Uthat from the Tholians, it wasn't the player who insisted on immediately taking it back to Risa without first reigniting the Na'Kuhl star - it was Kal Dano himself. Why would he refuse to reignite the star? Given the events of "Sunrise" I think it's because, even with the player and ship to protect him, Kal Dano was not confident that he could keep the Tox Uthat long enough to repair the Na'Kuhl star without the Tholians showing up to steal it again. His logic seemed to be that it's better to cut our losses by sacrificing just one inhabited system's star (the Na'Kuhl's) than to risk the Tholians taking the Uthat back yet again. and then destroying even more stars with it. Alas, Kal Dano never explicitly said as much in "Stormbound". In any case, barring some future revelation regarding the Na'Kuhl, I think we can chalk up this whole mess to being another case of a questionable story premise that could have easily been fixed with a couple of well-placed lines of dialogue. It's not the first time that's happened in Star Trek lore, and with another movie and now a TV series on the way, surely it won't be the last.
As for time travel more generally, Peter David's TNG novel Imzadi (still my favorite Trek novel from any series) presents what is to me the most rational and sound policy on temporal integrity possible. It could best be described as "my timeline, right or wrong." Basically it holds that, since every possible timeline has its own sets of "winners" and "losers", trying to determine which one is the "best" or the "correct" timeline is pointless, so the only way to avoid temporal chaos is simply to preserve one's own native timeline at all costs.
That certainly seems to be the aim of the Temporal Accords - to preserve the integrity of the timeline in which the Accords were enacted. The would-be signatories of the Accords are, presumably, the "winners" of that timeline (at least as of FSY 2769). Noye and the Na'Kuhl are the losers - hence their rebellion against the Accords. But if they succeed in altering the timeline in their favor, that just makes for different sets of winners and losers, and if those losers then rebel... well, I think you get the idea, and it brings us back to the idea of preserving your own timeline, and nothing more, as the only guarantor of temporal order and peace.
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My character Tsin'xing
Attempting to use time travel to make a timeline free of Iconia? Erased Noye's wife from existence, and therefore caused the issues currently happening. Attempting to use it to destroy the Iconians in the past? Sela did just that, and it turned out to have caused the war, 200,000 years in the making. We ended things in the present, but it was at cost of having started the war in the first place, directly thanks to our attempts to 'fix' things in our favor. Therefore, while technically a success, said cost makes it a failure at worst and a hollow victory at best... more-or-less anyway. I'd personally go with failure myself
^Everything similar was a failure in most cases, causing more problems than solutions, and that includes Noye's attempts to erase the Temporal Accords from existence; it will invariably fail one way or the other, as it must. Similar with the Na'kuhl star incident, if we tried to anyway
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I don't know why Relativity comes to mind. That episode was about what we're talking about. Maintaining the timeline not changing it. Maintaining it is usually successful, attempts to change the timeline are what I say usually fail miserably. Funny fact, TIC seems to hate Janeway more than Kirk. Most temporal violations EVER. Which should've given us a heads up about Janeway now that I think about it.
Gary Seven I'm not sure that was time travel. He was from the past, an alien species could've just kept him alive that long. If it is time travel he may be a TIC agent.
There isn't a DS9 episode called Prophet, if you're referring to the species, they have temporal capabilities far beyond us. Perhaps it would do for me to specify anytime any normal corporeal sapient species tries to TRIBBLE with time, but I figured that went without saying.
Yesterday's Enterprise was AGAIN maintaining the current timeline, not changing it.
Assassinate him? Why not arrest him for crimes he will commit like Braxton? All we need is to make sure he never sets foot on the Annorax again.
That said, it won't get rid of the Noye already on the timeship.
The only problem with saying the writers haven't followed through (which if this was the end I would agree) is we're on what? Chapter 3 of this story? It's ongoing, so we don't actually know where this ends. And since it's a time travel story we don't actually know fully where it begins.
Zed: "Sucks, huh?"
Primum Non Nocere
Except the Xindi in the 22nd century are fully capable of and willing to communicate with humans. Why would they have lost that capability in the 23rd century especially on a planet with four other sapient life forms.
And that's perfectly fine, I'm not actually fond of this storyline at all.
I have no such delusions about success. Even he had started to believe that time was actively impeding him. You may be right and he restored his wife, but I think it would've taken so long he would've gone completely insane by then.
The flaw is, that nothing changed. We didn't do one thing differently in our time travel. We didn't make a single alteration.
And like I said, if we had never time traveled to Iconia, then the war wouldn't have happened at all.
Then you're willfully ignoring what happened.
You assume there can be a positive outcome. Also the timeship only had a limited number of shots at that point.
It is exactly what you said. You've consistently criticized the alliance, which in 25th century parlance is the Delta Alliance to criticize the actions of the Temporal Accords, an act instituted by the much larger Galactic Union three centuries later. The Alliance is long gone.
Fortunately we aren't bound your interpretations of right and wrong.
Yeah we went. It was a predestination paradox. Everything that had happened there already happened. If we hadn't been there to save the Iconians then they either would've went extinct, or escaped with the world heart and not had a grudge against us at all. Sela wouldn't have been there to shoot Iconians, and Hobus never would've happened.
If there was an initial event, then time travel actually made the future worse, not better.
But we didn't do anything differently than we had before. We were still The Other who saved the Iconians, Sela still pissed them off, and they still lost the World Heart in the past. Meaning they still blew up Hobus annihilating Romulus, still antagonized the Undine on our behalf, thus triggering the Federation Klingon War, and leading us to the present.
No, if he dies inside the timeship with temporal shields up then he just dies. The crew can go back and get an older/younger Noye, but that one is dead.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above. Also the Timeship is what really lets the temporal genie out of the bottle since Starfleet has had access to time travel for over a century at this point. Although without the Timeship there may not be a need for the Temporal Accords either.
If we didn't use the Annorax for out trip back to Iconia then I'd say Incursion it away.
He was much more gung ho about hiding the thing than fixing the problem. Why he wouldn't just fix the star while having us cover him and then go home and destroy the thing is beyond me. Hiding it is very weird.
That makes sense. I can't think that constantly rewriting timelines is good for the health of the continuum.
Actually it was shown in the movie that if Kirk and company had gotten there a minute later, George and Gracie were gonna be whale blubber. Gillian repeatedly stated that she didn't think that they would survive in the wild, so it wasn't an issue of Kirk.
Correct. Maintaining the timeline or restoring it to our original experience always works, and is usually the goal in each circumstance. Attempting to alter the timeline to a more favorable outcome always fails or generates an unacceptable unintended consequence.
My character Tsin'xing
One thing that does interest me is future guy, we know he was a faction against the sphere builders which are now more or less confirmed to be crazy krenim's wife, so will we see him or worse IS IT US DUN DUN DUN
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
You mean George and Gracie's death in the news as the beloved San Francisco Aquarium's beloved attractions killed two days later would've sparked an outcry, that would've led to whales being properly protected? Maybe. But considering human beings in the 20 and 21st centuries I supremely doubt it.
I don't see any evidence it's a predestination paradox, but it's certainly not impossible.
Except the Xindi in the 22nd century are fully capable of and willing to communicate with humans. Why would they have lost that capability in the 23rd century especially on a planet with four other sapient life forms.
Well, I didn't say it was a great theory
Edit: Well I screwed up the quote thing on this post, guess thats what happens when you try to dig one piece out of a very long post. So for clarity, I made the comment about having a theory about the Xindi Aquatics and the whale probe, that got the response about Xindi communication ability, and the last paragraph is me again.[/quote]
It's fine. Elsewhere my long TRIBBLE posts are legendary.
That said, I'm hoping that an future Trek acknowledges the history of Cetacean Sapients. Supposedly on Earth we have Humpbacks and Dolphins, with Dolphins in Starfleet. I'd like to see more exotic species now that sci fi budgets and technology have grown.
Considering Noye's appearance at the signing of the Temporal Accords I have no doubt that he is Future Guy.
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.'
I think it's much simpler. THe Na'Kuhl star was already dead and there was nothing he could reignite anymore with the tech he had.
The device the Tholians used before was not the Tox Uthat. It worked differently, much slower. The stuff going on there took so long that the species in the area around it took notice and send some people to analyze it, and the people on the world could study the phenomen and try to find a counter (even if it failed). The Na'Kuhl star went out rapidly, there wasn't any time to study things, it was just gone. Without some new star reignition tech or time travel, there wasn't anything to do anymore.
Since Noye's wife is a sphere builder i doubt he would sabotage their efforts.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
The only problem is, the explanation is not given in the mission. Kal Dano and the player just leave to hide the Tox without discussion. We must assume such discussion took place off screen, its contents unknown, but obviously Dano must have convinced the player somehow not to try fixing the star at that time.
Of course, it is a bit of a forgotten technology scenario anyway...in DS9: Second Sight, Starfleet successfully developed star reignition tech based on protomatter that worked on a completely dead star. Time travel would not necessarily be required to fix the star at all.
The weird thing is that it has DarthMeowth's signature.
It was absolutely gorgeous.
Well that isn't part of this continuity either.
An interesting thought had occurred to me while out shopping. What if the Tox Uthat's method of killing a star is too complete for it to be reversed.
With the Lukari star (an incident I presume was a trap for Kal Dano and the Tox Uthat specifically the more I think about it) the Tholians used Trilithium, Protomatter, and other unsavory materials to kill the star. As Musrtrumridcully said apparently it took a very long time too at least a matter of weeks. The Tox Uthat when the Tholians used it got the job done A LOT faster. If it can't be reversed even with the Uthat, then Kal Dano's actions were somewhat logical.
But again, without that being mentioned in the episode at all, it just looks like garbage.
While I generally prefer things like this mentioned, they seem to take the "Don't Tell, Show" approach here. In the previous episode, we had spend basically half the mission analyzing the star. This time, the star suddenly changes. It seems not that difficult to infer that the Tox Uthat is a lot more effective at star destruction then the method the Tholians had before. Heck, why would they even bother with the Tox Uthat otherwise!
My character Tsin'xing
I still believe the intent was to imply the star to be beyond salvation, which is why he's all "oh noes!" when the Tholians kill the star, instead of a more annoyed reaction. However, due to the various vocabulary used during the two episodes (revive, restart, fix), it failed and lead pretty much everyone to believe the dead star can be saved.
Once again, even a tiny additional dialog would be enough to solve this issue. "Oh no, we're too late, the star is now beyond salvation and we can't travel back or we'll create a paradox!"
Yep that would fix it.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
My character Tsin'xing