'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.'
Also, in-universe, the main answer would be "We are willing to try, but they won't let us". I'm talking about their government and the higher-ups, as I'm sure the rest of the population is more than willing to accept the help, heck they're even willing to help us fight the temporal terrorists.
The Na'khul incident only happened in the first place because the Na'khul were so violently xenophobic even before. Contrast with - arrgh, now I forget the name of the other group whose star was impacted by the Tox Uthat. They worked with alien representatives (that is, our player character and the device's inventor) to prevent the destruction of their own sun. The Na'khul blocked our efforts at every turn, and as a consequence lost their star - and they're unwilling even several centuries afterward to accept their share of the responsibility for the issue.
There's also the fact that altering the timeline, even in seemingly-beneficient ways, can have far-reaching and unpredictable effects. Remember when we were trying to prevent the Iconian War from even happening? The best result we got from that was a Romulus that had been completely assimilated by the Borg, with the rest of the quadrant struggling mightily to avoid their fate. Who knows what could happen to the balance of powers in the Alpha Quadrant had the Na'khul not suffered the fate they did? We might restore their sun, only to find that this leads to an alliance with the Gamma Jem'Hadar, the resurgence of the Dominion, and the total collapse of both Federation and Empire less than a century hence!
Personally, I'm going to lend an ear to the guys who have experience with timeline alteration and its prevention...
simple answer, we go back in time and step on the first tholian to evolve. problem solved
It's a crystalline species. What if they evolved underground in the mantle of their Demon class homeworld? Besides somehow I think we'll lose more than Tholian Silk. Who moves into their territory?
The Na'khul incident only happened in the first place because the Na'khul were so violently xenophobic even before. Contrast with - arrgh, now I forget the name of the other group whose star was impacted by the Tox Uthat. They worked with alien representatives (that is, our player character and the device's inventor) to prevent the destruction of their own sun. The Na'khul blocked our efforts at every turn, and as a consequence lost their star - and they're unwilling even several centuries afterward to accept their share of the responsibility for the issue.
There's also the fact that altering the timeline, even in seemingly-beneficient ways, can have far-reaching and unpredictable effects. Remember when we were trying to prevent the Iconian War from even happening? The best result we got from that was a Romulus that had been completely assimilated by the Borg, with the rest of the quadrant struggling mightily to avoid their fate. Who knows what could happen to the balance of powers in the Alpha Quadrant had the Na'khul not suffered the fate they did? We might restore their sun, only to find that this leads to an alliance with the Gamma Jem'Hadar, the resurgence of the Dominion, and the total collapse of both Federation and Empire less than a century hence!
Personally, I'm going to lend an ear to the guys who have experience with timeline alteration and its prevention...
Wrong. The Na'kuhl incident happened because a time traveler brought an advanced superweapon back with him to our time and failed to secure it. His meddling in the timestream was the immediate cause of the Na'kuhl disaster, if he hadn't come back in time it wouldn't have happened. But the Temporal Authority is ok with that instance of time manipulation because reasons, and has actively prevented anyone from fixing the so-called "unintentional" side effect that is the destruction of Na'kuhl. It wouldn't take much, you know, just post a few more ships around the Na'kuhl star at the right time to prevent the Tholians from taking their shot. The TA not only has chosen not to, it has chosen to prevent anyone else from doing it either. Why?
It's a superweapon in the same way Red Matter is. It also is able to restore as well as destroy. It's weapon in the same way as an airplane is. Fine until someone hijacks it.
The Temporal Authority was alright with him fixing the Lukari star because it dying was a temporal incursion. Apparently the destruction of the Na'khul star is not.
Don't give me this "maybe if the Na'kuhl don't die bad things will happen" crock of bantha poodoo, if that's the case then Walker damned well owes us an explanation of just what that catastrophe is and why there's no other way to prevent it than at the cost of billions of Na'kuhl lives.
I agree.
However we don't know the casualty numbers on Na'khul. This isn't the destruction of Romulus. For a warp capable species they do have time to evacuate and ways to stay warm. Of course I consider the destruction of the life forms in their biosphere equally heinous.
But yes Walker certainly owes us an explanation as a matter of fact he owed it to us last week....and since he has a time machine he needs to hop to.
Again, would you accept "because we said so" if it was Earth and Sol to be sacrificed? Would an alien even finish getting "Your sun and planet and billions of your people need to die because--" out of their mouths before we reached for the phaser firing controls? I think the hell not. Why is it ok for us to fight to save our world and people and others need to just lay down and die instead? Explain this double standard, please. I'll wait.
You would think wrong.
If the alternative is the destruction of my planet or all planets there is something to consider. As much as I love her, the ongoing survival of the human race takes precedent. The Na'khul went homeless, not extinct. Not all of us are as barbarously defensive as you think.
First of all you're standing there on the Na'khul side ignoring the fact that it's your species that would be on the receiving end of the alternative.
If all things are equal, and everyone is behaving in the best interest of their own species or nation, and we happen to be at cross purposes then what?
Hypothetically, if the Na'khul star doesn't die, and the Na'khul go on to be a temporal superpower that wipes out every other major power in a quest to secure their future, then how were the Tholians wrong to destroy their star? Under your logic they had every right to defend their future right? As for the Federation and the Galactic Union, the alternative would then be to intervene on the Na'khul's behalf and then get annihilated in the ensuing conflict.
There's also the possibility that in order for all species to survive, the temporal war has to be fought to a resolution.
Fascinating enough, with the last episode, it appears the Na'khul star isn't as dead as we thought.
My biggest beef is why the PC and Kal Dano try to restore the Star instead of just hiding the Tox Uthat. They had recovered it, so why couldn't they use it?
If Kal Dano had said that there was too much damage to the star to risk using the Tox Uthat, then that would be fine. But otherwise there is a rather big plot hole with regards to this.
Basically it all comes down to the infinite paradox theory. Everytime you correct an error in.the timeline a new one crops up. The reason is simple to fix a paradox you must create a paradox and the loop never ends. Eventually you wind up with a tangled mess in the timeline that can't be fixed anymore and that's when everything goes wrong. As the Captian of the Annorax said "It's like time begins fighting back"
Actually...that was Annorax. We never learned the name of the original Temporal Weapons Ship.
My biggest beef is why the PC and Kal Dano try to restore the Star instead of just hiding the Tox Uthat. They had recovered it, so why couldn't they use it?
Look at how the Lukari star looks when we save it, and how the Na'Khul star looks when we do not save it.
The devices used to destroy the respective stars were different. There is no reason to assume that the same device can fix both. There must be a reason why the Tholians used the Tox Uthat on the Na'Khul star instead of whatever they used on the Lukari star. (and why they use a star-destruction in the first place to attract Kal Dano's attention to get the Tox Uthat.)
It's unfortunately not spelled out in the mission explicitely, but it seems very likely to me that whatever the Tox Uthat does cannot be undone with Kal Dano's device. It's either just too late, or very different.
That's the theory that works the best, but they skipped it, why is beyond me. There's no need for this absurd moral quandary.
Anyways... I still don't get why people keep saying there are billions of dead Na'kuhl....
They probably assume that the death of their star would kill them off quickly. But as far as we know, it "just" stopped its fusion process. That means the planet will basically slowly cool off, and most plant life will probably die off quickly and then animal life. But if the Na'kuhl are sufficiently technologiycally advanced, they might be able to use replicators, life support systems to bridge the time until they can leave their home world with a starship.
But ... realistcally, evacuating the population of a whole planet with billions of inhabitants would definitely be a momentous task. Even with transporter technology. It would probably be quite realistic to assume that a lot of people will simply die from nutrient deficiencies or outright starvation or cold as they wait to get to a better place.
Oh definitely agreed. But a warp capable civilization should be able to pull it off. According to the Path to 2409 the evacuation of Romulus (18 billion people) was slated at six to eight weeks.
The Na'khul could've probably done it faster if they had accepted help.
Don't know if it has already been pointed out already; but if one exception was made for the, Na'Kuhl, would not the Romulan's demand an exception of their own?
If Romulus was retroactively saved via temporal intervention, this would pretty mess up the whole line of events that have already taken place since that incident.
I'm sure the exception line would grow very quickly.
Cause then Captain Archer wouldn't have become the guy who killed Alien Hitler.
I thought that was a hilarious moment in the FE. I didn't really watch ENT to know if that's a nod to an episode, but in the FE, this whole mission is building up for us to deal with Space Hitler, then Walker just says, "Oh, hold a minute... Captain Archer just killed him a few hundred years ago, LOLOLOL!"
Zed's dead, baby, Zed's dead...
I knew what happened, but it was hilarious because as soon as Vosk left, history happened in that instant. Mind you Kal Dano told us to look up Archer's logs on the Temporal Cold War, which means Dano and Walker actually exist in completely different time frames.
Come to think of it....consider the following. Dano and Daniels both wear one kind of Temporal Uniform, the thing with all the piping around it. While the Pastak crew and the Relativity crew wear a different one. What if they're from different incarnations of the Temporal Integrity Authority, one from a timeline unaffected by the Temporal Cold War as it is before the Na'khul star's destruction, and another from after the Na'khul star is destroyed. With both separate kinds of Temporal Agents still actively operating in the past simultaneously from their separate timelines.
My biggest beef is why the PC and Kal Dano try to restore the Star instead of just hiding the Tox Uthat. They had recovered it, so why couldn't they use it?
Look at how the Lukari star looks when we save it, and how the Na'Khul star looks when we do not save it.
The devices used to destroy the respective stars were different. There is no reason to assume that the same device can fix both. There must be a reason why the Tholians used the Tox Uthat on the Na'Khul star instead of whatever they used on the Lukari star. (and why they use a star-destruction in the first place to attract Kal Dano's attention to get the Tox Uthat.)
It's unfortunately not spelled out in the mission explicitely, but it seems very likely to me that whatever the Tox Uthat does cannot be undone with Kal Dano's device. It's either just too late, or very different.
I believe Kal Dano's device was the Tox Uthat. I am thinking he couldn't use it because the Tox Uthat is a "one-way" device. No reset button.
Quite possible. it's not clear, though he says the way he uses his Quantum Phase Inhibitor is nt how it's usually used when rescuing the Lukari star. So maybe "Tox Uthat" is the Tholian name for it? It doesn't seem his name for it...
There's absolutely no question Kal Dano is the inventor of the Tox Uthat/Quantum Phase Inhibitor. The Tholians didn't name it that as they don't actually use vocal chords. It might be the name the time travelers in the original episode named it. Or perhaps it's Na'khul for Doomsday Device.
This is what makes stormbound an even bigger mess.
I don't see how its a mess.
The Tox Uthat can bring back stars that are starting to fail, such as the Lukari's, but cant bring back stars that have already failed entirely, like the Na'Khul.
Its pretty basic, but once again, people are trying to make it more complex then it is.
The only problem is that detail wasn't made clear. DarthMeow wouldn't be nearly so furious if Kal Dano had one line added, "The Tox Uthat is too efficient, the Na'khul star is beyond even my repair now." At that point getting rid of the damned thing before the next wave of Tholians shows up is prudent instead of a situation where you're tugging at his arm saying, "But wait, what about the star...the star Kal, The Star! It's dying, the Na'khul are gonna lose their homeworld, Kal, why are we going to the past now, when the Na'khul star is dying??!?" I wrote that in Kirk's voice.
Also, in-universe, the main answer would be "We are willing to try, but they won't let us". I'm talking about their government and the higher-ups, as I'm sure the rest of the population is more than willing to accept the help, heck they're even willing to help us fight the temporal terrorists.
The Prime Directive line has definitely been drawn in the sand by the Na'khul, no getting around that.
There is one thing that hasn't been answered though.
Vosk has a fleet of 29th century warships armed to the teeth and filled with die hard battle ready fanatics.
Umm...why hasn't he simply gone back in time and defeated the Tholian fleet that attacked Na'khul. If he's going to engage in a law breaking activity from the future, why not immediately perform the one action that the law abiding Na'khul are petitioning for? To actually stop the Na'khul star from being destroyed? That said, in his timeline, for some reason the Na'khul star is a zombie instead of a corpse, a brown dwarf instead of a black hole.
Of course we're missing something, it hasn't happened yet.
"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"
Frankly, the player character has become space hitler wiping out anyone who doesn't recognize him/her as the center of the galaxy. If there was a principle in protecting the natural timeline, the Tuterians, who got wiped out by time manipulation, and the Nakuhl, would be protected.
We see the foundations of this alliance between the three factions in this last episode. Who are the delegates? A bunch of executive branch leaders and military officers. Only a few ambassadors, no legislators. The US Constitution for one requires all treaties be ratified by 2/3rds of the Senators present. Most countries have something similar. Longstanding treaties are typically enacted by some kind of legislative branch. That's because even if an executive won the last election, he/she doesn't speak for *everybody*. The function of an executive branch is to do the things where time is of the essence and you can't discuss things, like running a war. Their weakness is that because they minimize the number of decision-makers, they also minimize the amount of conversation between them and the masses. They are actually quite lousy at longstanding treaties, because often times they have opposition groups that disagree with what their 'leader' signs. Frankly, it's committees like this that cause groups like the Marquis to be created.
The delegates are also arrogant. You have the part where D'Tan quotes the Bible "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares". Funny thing about the context of that passage, it refers to the time after what Christians call the Second Coming of Christ, right after where it says that lions will stop eating lambs and that poisonous snakes won't be dangerous. It's referring to a state of heaven on earth brought about by the direct intervention of God, a state that is unnatural by the current order of the universe and humanly impossible to obtain. There might be a bunch of aliens in the room, but there are no gods present. It actually takes an incredible amount of hubris to think a committee could stop wars from happening, any more than they could stop basic predator-prey relationships in nature.
So, what you have is a few dozen of the player's war buddies getting in a room and deciding the fate of the galaxy. Even though they were appointed by different factions, by this point, they're all closer to each other than they are to the people they claim to represent. They can manipulate time now, and as I pointed out, they aren't interested in preserving the natural timeline. So which timeline are they trying to protect? Why ofcourse, any timeline which preserves the precious alliance drafted up by the executive and military leaders who are all war buddies, without the input from the people! Captain Walker even said so.
So, they're a cabal, in charge of an empire, which they brutally enforce by temporal manipulation.
That said, in his timeline, for some reason the Na'khul star is a zombie instead of a corpse, a brown dwarf instead of a black hole.
Which sounds weird to me, too.
Is the Tox Uthat supposed to make any star it destroys in a black hole? Or was the Na'khul star really supposed to be massive enough to become a black hole? It seems unlikely that it could be the home star of an advanced civilization, considering stars massive enough to become a black hole tend to last "only" a few hundred million years, and evolution seems to take longer than that to create complex lifeforms.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The delegates are also arrogant. You have the part where D'Tan quotes the Bible "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares". Funny thing about the context of that passage, it refers to the time after what Christians call the Second Coming of Christ, right after where it says that lions will stop eating lambs and that poisonous snakes won't be dangerous. It's referring to a state of heaven on earth brought about by the direct intervention of God, a state that is unnatural by the current order of the universe and humanly impossible to obtain. There might be a bunch of aliens in the room, but there are no gods present. It actually takes an incredible amount of hubris to think a committee could stop wars from happening, any more than they could stop basic predator-prey relationships in nature.
I think somebody needs to replay that mission. D'tan quotes that, yes - and then he notes that they'll need both swords and plowshares.
So, what you have is a few dozen of the player's war buddies getting in a room and deciding the fate of the galaxy. Even though they were appointed by different factions, by this point, they're all closer to each other than they are to the people they claim to represent. They can manipulate time now, and as I pointed out, they aren't interested in preserving the natural timeline. So which timeline are they trying to protect? Why ofcourse, any timeline which preserves the precious alliance drafted up by the executive and military leaders who are all war buddies, without the input from the people! Captain Walker even said so.
So, they're a cabal, in charge of an empire, which they brutally enforce by temporal manipulation.
I should think galactic peace is in the best interests of everyone except warmongers. Even the Klingons are okay with it, for crying out loud!
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Cant bother to quote but someone said something about Kal Dano and Walker from different time frame. Well, Kal, just like that person have observed had uniform like Daniels, 31th century uniform if I am not mistaken. While Walker wear the 29th century.
Hast thou not gone against sincerity
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
From a theme perspective the game is simply tying its story with episodes from the shows. As others have already stated: Archer killing General Vosk and Picard finding the Tox Uthat.
I think you are jumping the gun here. The story arc isn't finished yet. Maybe at the conclusion you will get your kiddy happy ending, lol. Just wait.
Wrong. The Na'kuhl incident happened because a time traveler brought an advanced superweapon back with him to our time and failed to secure it. His meddling in the timestream was the immediate cause of the Na'kuhl disaster, if he hadn't come back in time it wouldn't have happened. But the Temporal Authority is ok with that instance of time manipulation because reasons, and has actively prevented anyone from fixing the so-called "unintentional" side effect that is the destruction of Na'kuhl. It wouldn't take much, you know, just post a few more ships around the Na'kuhl star at the right time to prevent the Tholians from taking their shot. The TA not only has chosen not to, it has chosen to prevent anyone else from doing it either. Why?
You do know there is no wrong or right answer... right? His point is just as valid as yours. If you remember a similar thing happened to another species, the ones from the Sunrise episode. Except they were open to communication and willing to aid us in helping them which worked out. If the Na'kuhl were not xenophobic and took the same approach things would have been different. Or it might have not made a difference. The point is there is no right or wrong answer because there are so many possibilities and outcomes. Maybe the Temporal Agency is still researching a better route to take but until then this is the lesser of the two evils. You can postulate that if you save the Na'kuhl another species will take their place. So there would always be one species that has to die. Maybe in another instance its humans who have to die not the Na'kuhl.
Don't give me this "maybe if the Na'kuhl don't die bad things will happen" crock of bantha poodoo, if that's the case then Walker damned well owes us an explanation of just what that catastrophe is and why there's no other way to prevent it than at the cost of billions of Na'kuhl lives.
That crock is given to you and you will take it, and deal with it. However... he should be able to explain in further detail why it has to go this route. Unfortunately... that would probably have to be done through creative writing published on the website rather than in-game as that would take too much resources. So ask for that instead.
Again, would you accept "because we said so" if it was Earth and Sol to be sacrificed? Would an alien even finish getting "Your sun and planet and billions of your people need to die because--" out of their mouths before we reached for the phaser firing controls? I think the hell not. Why is it ok for us to fight to save our world and people and others need to just lay down and die instead? Explain this double standard, please. I'll wait.
Same reason why we can allow the stationing troops around the globe and wage war and no one can do anything about it other than talk. This is the mentality here in America and Crytpic is not immune to it. If this were a European based producer (preferably around Scandinavian region) it would be different story, or they might simply catering to this mentality as well, lol.
Post edited by stolts on
The first Belfast was commanded by Captain Ve'Kal Shon until its destruction in 2409. A new ship was commissioned bearing the same name and registry as special dispensation to then newly promoted Captain Edward XIII for his pivotal role during the renewed Dominion War.
Exactly. One or two episodes like the one in returning to the 23rd century were fine, but to build on it the whole story is a big mistake . One plot hole overlaps the other . I hope this was the last episode of time travel , we let escape Vosk so he could deal with Archer. Please end. I bet that if players wanted a story about ENT , it certainly was not something with time travelers.
I hope that the Cardassians will come soon and take with them the Ferengi and we returned to the good old politics and colonial skirmishes.
I do not want to hide super powerful weapons of the future somewhere in the cave. Again.
I think somebody needs to replay that mission. D'tan quotes that, yes - and then he notes that they'll need both swords and plowshares.
Okay, I'll admit it's the real life politicians who think they are messiahs and we don't need armies any more. (and if you contest that statement, I can point to a ton of unemployed soldiers.) But, we're going off topic, so I'll concede the one about the delegates being messianic.
I should think galactic peace is in the best interests of everyone except warmongers. Even the Klingons are okay with it, for crying out loud!
I'll reference the other scifi saga and quote Darth Vader: "I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new empire!". "Peace" can be a word used by tyrants to describe unopposed tyranny. This goes back to what I said about the room being filled with executives, and we can use the Klingons as an example.
The *Chancellor* wants the alliance, not necessarily the *Klingons* as a whole. As an executive, his job is to 'close enough' to the people's will for something like "We don't want to be wiped out by the Iconians", but for something like "this is what our foreign policy will be like for the next 300 years", he should be getting the earnest support of the vast majority of High Council before he can claim to be speaking for "all Klingons", and the High Council doesn't even have a seat at the table.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
Suppose there is a Klingon House that hates the Chancellor's House and his guts, oppose this treaty, but simply lack the political power to remove him from office entirely, immediately. The High Council isn't consulted, so they can't stop it from being signed. So, they make their case, build political support, eventually get ahold of the chancellor seat and have the treaty overturned in the future. What happens then? Well, then the President of the Federation and Preconsul of the Romulans don't like that because it threatens their 'galactic peace', they give a wink to the Tholians, the Tholians go back in time, nuke the troublesome House before it even exists, and then Captain Walker shows up and says it was "meant to happen" because "the alternative isn't pretty". Their only principle seems to be 'protect the alliance', not 'preserve the timeline which is natural'.
Be careful what you wish for. For example, see the effects this may have by looking to Earth History. The use of the 'liberum veto' in the Polish Parliament (Sejm) during the 17th and 18th Century resulted in few decisions being made. As it was construed any single member of the Sejm had an absolute veto on any resolution or topic before them. In current times 'Polish Parliament' is mostly used to describe 'an assembly that is too easy for minorities or individuals to disrupt and/or has too many parties present for meaningful and orderly debate and decision-making to take place.'
Proconsul is the word you are looking for.
Post edited by ltminns on
'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.'
Actually, I'm pretty sure J'mpok wouldn't even be trying to do this if he didn't have the support of 'the vast majority of the High Council'. One can assume that the Federation Council is of a similar opinion - until we hear otherwise, I'm willing to accept the possibility that there are very few complaints about the signing of the treaty from within the Federation or the Empire.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
You really have no evidence for that TBH.
Also, the Klingon High Council is dead, killed by M'tara just a few months back. Even if they weren't, the dissenting houses were killed back in the early Klingon faction missions.
Nothing indicates that the current great houses/high council don't agree with him, and the same is true for the Feds and Rom Rep.
Exactly.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I think somebody needs to replay that mission. D'tan quotes that, yes - and then he notes that they'll need both swords and plowshares.
Okay, I'll admit it's the real life politicians who think they are messiahs and we don't need armies any more. (and if you contest that statement, I can point to a ton of unemployed soldiers.) But, we're going off topic, so I'll concede the one about the delegates being messianic.
I should think galactic peace is in the best interests of everyone except warmongers. Even the Klingons are okay with it, for crying out loud!
I'll reference the other scifi saga and quote Darth Vader: "I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new empire!". "Peace" can be a word used by tyrants to describe unopposed tyranny. This goes back to what I said about the room being filled with executives, and we can use the Klingons as an example.
The *Chancellor* wants the alliance, not necessarily the *Klingons* as a whole. As an executive, his job is to 'close enough' to the people's will for something like "We don't want to be wiped out by the Iconians", but for something like "this is what our foreign policy will be like for the next 300 years", he should be getting the earnest support of the vast majority of High Council before he can claim to be speaking for "all Klingons", and the High Council doesn't even have a seat at the table.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
Suppose there is a Klingon House that hates the Chancellor's House and his guts, oppose this treaty, but simply lack the political power to remove him from office entirely, immediately. The High Council isn't consulted, so they can't stop it from being signed. So, they make their case, build political support, eventually get ahold of the chancellor seat and have the treaty overturned in the future. What happens then? Well, then the President of the Federation and Preconsul of the Romulans don't like that because it threatens their 'galactic peace', they give a wink to the Tholians, the Tholians go back in time, nuke the troublesome House before it even exists, and then Captain Walker shows up and says it was "meant to happen" because "the alternative isn't pretty". Their only principle seems to be 'protect the alliance', not 'preserve the timeline which is natural'.
I think you're assuming a bit too much here. Any major political decision will need a lot of finely tuned contract, rules, laws and regulations. A Chancellor, a President and a Praetor (or whatever D'Tan is called) are not going to make this around a conference table. They need at minimum a gigantic staff of bureacrats to work things out, but most likely also need to discuss that with other officials and representatives.
There was dialog in the Temporal Accords episode that said that most of the work had already been done - the event that came under attack was the formal signing of something that had been planned and discussed way before.
The peace conference we attended in this episode was most likely either something that would launch a lot of future talks and treaties, or that was at the end of lots of discussions.
Just like it works on contemporary dealings. Just because there is a photo op where 12 presidents and chancellors or other heads of state are entering a room or leave with wih some decision doesn't mean that this is all that has happened to get there. And it certainly doesn't mean they got to decide anything alone.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Anyways... I still don't get why people keep saying there are billions of dead Na'kuhl....
They probably assume that the death of their star would kill them off quickly. But as far as we know, it "just" stopped its fusion process. That means the planet will basically slowly cool off, and most plant life will probably die off quickly and then animal life. But if the Na'kuhl are sufficiently technologiycally advanced, they might be able to use replicators, life support systems to bridge the time until they can leave their home world with a starship.
But ... realistcally, evacuating the population of a whole planet with billions of inhabitants would definitely be a momentous task. Even with transporter technology. It would probably be quite realistic to assume that a lot of people will simply die from nutrient deficiencies or outright starvation or cold as they wait to get to a better place.
"Slowly cool off," yes. As in, come back in a few billion years and then we'll talk.
Realistically, the mass of a star would take so long to cool off that the universe is not yet old enough for any dead stars to have gone entirely dark. EDIT: Black holes notwithstanding.
What the Tox did in the missions is pure space magic.
Don't give me this "maybe if the Na'kuhl don't die bad things will happen" crock of bantha poodoo, if that's the case then Walker damned well owes us an explanation of just what that catastrophe is and why there's no other way to prevent it than at the cost of billions of Na'kuhl lives.
However we don't know the casualty numbers on Na'khul. This isn't the destruction of Romulus. For a warp capable species they do have time to evacuate and ways to stay warm. Of course I consider the destruction of the life forms in their biosphere equally heinous.
But yes Walker certainly owes us an explanation as a matter of fact he owed it to us last week....and since he has a time machine he needs to hop to.
The Tox Uthat can bring back stars that are starting to fail, such as the Lukari's, but cant bring back stars that have already failed entirely, like the Na'Khul.
Its pretty basic, but once again, people are trying to make it more complex then it is.
The only problem is that detail wasn't made clear. DarthMeow wouldn't be nearly so furious if Kal Dano had one line added, "The Tox Uthat is too efficient, the Na'khul star is beyond even my repair now." At that point getting rid of the damned thing before the next wave of Tholians shows up is prudent instead of a situation where you're tugging at his arm saying, "But wait, what about the star...the star Kal, The Star! It's dying, the Na'khul are gonna lose their homeworld, Kal, why are we going to the past now, when the Na'khul star is dying??!?" I wrote that in Kirk's voice.
There is one thing that hasn't been answered though.
Vosk has a fleet of 29th century warships armed to the teeth and filled with die hard battle ready fanatics.
Umm...why hasn't he simply gone back in time and defeated the Tholian fleet that attacked Na'khul. If he's going to engage in a law breaking activity from the future, why not immediately perform the one action that the law abiding Na'khul are petitioning for? To actually stop the Na'khul star from being destroyed? That said, in his timeline, for some reason the Na'khul star is a zombie instead of a corpse, a brown dwarf instead of a black hole.
Of course we're missing something, it hasn't happened yet.
THANK YOU! I'm glad someone else gets it.
I always got it Darth. Even if I don't agree with your reaction I fully understand it and it's a valid logical question. I counsel patience on this, but there are certainly maddening decision points that don't make sense. Pitfalls that could've been easily EASILY avoided.
Frankly, the player character has become space hitler wiping out anyone who doesn't recognize him/her as the center of the galaxy. If there was a principle in protecting the natural timeline, the Tuterians, who got wiped out by time manipulation, and the Nakuhl, would be protected.
We see the foundations of this alliance between the three factions in this last episode. Who are the delegates? A bunch of executive branch leaders and military officers. Only a few ambassadors, no legislators. The US Constitution for one requires all treaties be ratified by 2/3rds of the Senators present. Most countries have something similar. Longstanding treaties are typically enacted by some kind of legislative branch. That's because even if an executive won the last election, he/she doesn't speak for *everybody*. The function of an executive branch is to do the things where time is of the essence and you can't discuss things, like running a war. Their weakness is that because they minimize the number of decision-makers, they also minimize the amount of conversation between them and the masses. They are actually quite lousy at longstanding treaties, because often times they have opposition groups that disagree with what their 'leader' signs. Frankly, it's committees like this that cause groups like the Marquis to be created.
The delegates are also arrogant. You have the part where D'Tan quotes the Bible "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares". Funny thing about the context of that passage, it refers to the time after what Christians call the Second Coming of Christ, right after where it says that lions will stop eating lambs and that poisonous snakes won't be dangerous. It's referring to a state of heaven on earth brought about by the direct intervention of God, a state that is unnatural by the current order of the universe and humanly impossible to obtain. There might be a bunch of aliens in the room, but there are no gods present. It actually takes an incredible amount of hubris to think a committee could stop wars from happening, any more than they could stop basic predator-prey relationships in nature.
So, what you have is a few dozen of the player's war buddies getting in a room and deciding the fate of the galaxy. Even though they were appointed by different factions, by this point, they're all closer to each other than they are to the people they claim to represent. They can manipulate time now, and as I pointed out, they aren't interested in preserving the natural timeline. So which timeline are they trying to protect? Why ofcourse, any timeline which preserves the precious alliance drafted up by the executive and military leaders who are all war buddies, without the input from the people! Captain Walker even said so.
So, they're a cabal, in charge of an empire, which they brutally enforce by temporal manipulation.
The Tuterian tragedy, was an unexpected side effect of an ill conceived attempt to save Romulus. If there's one thing that the last year should've taught all parties involved it's that you can't go back. Keep in mind that the player character basically opposed the temporal tampering from the get go.
I'm curious why do you think that the Federation would send the entire 163+ members of the Federation Council? This is how these things work. You elect a single leader to be the go to representative in these situations. They go negotiate, and report back to the legislature which then verifies or modifies the agreement. This is the opening meeting not the final decision. The Romulans are the same, though it should be noted they basically sent to heads of state as it's D'Tan and Obisek representing the Remans. I would however like to meet the New Romulan Senate.
As for the Klingons, they are a feudal society not a democratic one, the Council exists to advise the Chancellor, but they do what he says. They apparently had a poor experience with democracy when they tried it centuries ago.
You think that having more people at the conference would be a good idea, but I take the opposite view. You don't want "Too many cooks in the kitchen." The legitimate heads of the three primary states and representatives of their allies of interest are present. Nobody said anything about final decisions.
D'Tan continued to say that we'll need both swords and plowshares by the time we're done. Interesting that he quoted the Bible, recall he also kept a painting depicting the expulsion from paradise. "A reminder that all things must end." Spock digs Biblical symbolism.
The timeline they're trying to protect is the current one they live in. It's been seen that trying to alter that timeline has only made things worse. As Walker is trying to preserve his timeline.
That said, in his timeline, for some reason the Na'khul star is a zombie instead of a corpse, a brown dwarf instead of a black hole.
Which sounds weird to me, too.
Is the Tox Uthat supposed to make any star it destroys in a black hole? Or was the Na'khul star really supposed to be massive enough to become a black hole? It seems unlikely that it could be the home star of an advanced civilization, considering stars massive enough to become a black hole tend to last "only" a few hundred million years, and evolution seems to take longer than that to create complex lifeforms.
No. It's only logical...sort of. It's a weird bit of science to sift through.
For those who don't know-
All stars exist in a state of heliostatic equilibrium. The weight of the star is so great it wants to implode, but that is counteracted by a constant thermonuclear explosion in the center pushing it out. Just like a balloon, the gravity is the elasticity of the rubber, the fusion core is the air pushing out.
A black hole is born when a star of sufficient mass runs out of hydrogen fuel to burn. At that point the gravity wins and crushes the core's remains instantly into a black hole. Then said black hole begins eating its way out triggering a gamma ray burst supernova and yada yada yada.
The Na'khul star essentially suffered this as the explosion inside of it stopped, but perhaps due to some property of how the Tox Uthat functions, the star didn't die instantly and thus didn't implode in the normal catastrophic fashion. But apparently it was expected to crush down into a black hole gradually, because it was still a star with sufficient weight. On the other hand, stars large enough to become black holes naturally usually don't have planets that support humanoid life or even Class M planets, their radiation is way too powerful.
So we have to look at this from the opposite perspective. The Tox Uthat when used on a star as the Tholians did can actually make a black hole out of a smaller star. Which makes it even more terrifying. Instead the star has become some sort of red dwarf. Curiouser and curiouser.
Cant bother to quote but someone said something about Kal Dano and Walker from different time frame. Well, Kal, just like that person have observed had uniform like Daniels, 31th century uniform if I am not mistaken. While Walker wear the 29th century.
That was me. So Kal Dano and Daniels are from further in the future. That also explains why they operate solo instead of with a crew. Which makes it funny that Walker was responding to a distress call from someone in his future. Thanks, I had forgotten that.
Exactly. One or two episodes like the one in returning to the 23rd century were fine, but to build on it the whole story is a big mistake . One plot hole overlaps the other . I hope this was the last episode of time travel , we let escape Vosk so he could deal with Archer. Please end. I bet that if players wanted a story about ENT , it certainly was not something with time travelers.
I hope that the Cardassians will come soon and take with them the Ferengi and we returned to the good old politics and colonial skirmishes.
I do not want to hide super powerful weapons of the future somewhere in the cave. Again.
The people watching Enterprise didn't even want a time travel story.
I think somebody needs to replay that mission. D'tan quotes that, yes - and then he notes that they'll need both swords and plowshares.
Okay, I'll admit it's the real life politicians who think they are messiahs and we don't need armies any more. (and if you contest that statement, I can point to a ton of unemployed soldiers.) But, we're going off topic, so I'll concede the one about the delegates being messianic.
Make sure that you delineate clearly between someone who thinks we don't need armies and someone who doesn't want to fight unnecessary wars. There's a difference there.
Unemployed soldiers are a completely different problem born of a separate ineptitude.
I should think galactic peace is in the best interests of everyone except warmongers. Even the Klingons are okay with it, for crying out loud!
I'll reference the other scifi saga and quote Darth Vader: "I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new empire!". "Peace" can be a word used by tyrants to describe unopposed tyranny. This goes back to what I said about the room being filled with executives, and we can use the Klingons as an example.
Everyone knows that, that doesn't mean it applies to every executive. And Vader wasn't even an executive he was just a general who was manipulated by an old man.
Oh by the way, that old man who was Emperor was put into place legally by the full might and authority... of a legislature.
The *Chancellor* wants the alliance, not necessarily the *Klingons* as a whole. As an executive, his job is to 'close enough' to the people's will for something like "We don't want to be wiped out by the Iconians", but for something like "this is what our foreign policy will be like for the next 300 years", he should be getting the earnest support of the vast majority of High Council before he can claim to be speaking for "all Klingons", and the High Council doesn't even have a seat at the table.
Do you not know how Klingon politics work?
If the Chancellor wants the alliance then the Klingons will enter the alliance. Just as when this Chancellor wanted a war with the Federation he killed the Chancellor that didn't want the war with the Federation and then they went to war.
Klingons don't give a damn about the popular vote, they care about strength. If the council doesn't want to go along with it, then there's gonna be a fight, someone's gonna die, and the winner gets his way. If no one wants to fight, then the Chancellor gets his way.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
Again, your assumption is completely baseless this is the opening negotiation of the alliance not the final say. This isn't a crisis situation like the Iconian War or the Delta Alliance where there were enemies breathing down our necks. This more like the meetings on Earth prior to the formation of the Coalition of Planets.
Suppose there is a Klingon House that hates the Chancellor's House and his guts, oppose this treaty, but simply lack the political power to remove him from office entirely, immediately. The High Council isn't consulted, so they can't stop it from being signed. So, they make their case, build political support, eventually get ahold of the chancellor seat and have the treaty overturned in the future. What happens then? Well, then the President of the Federation and Preconsul of the Romulans don't like that because it threatens their 'galactic peace', they give a wink to the Tholians, the Tholians go back in time, nuke the troublesome House before it even exists, and then Captain Walker shows up and says it was "meant to happen" because "the alternative isn't pretty". Their only principle seems to be 'protect the alliance', not 'preserve the timeline which is natural'.
If several houses or one house of sufficient strength don't like it and want to make an issue of it, then there's a civil war...and the winner gets his way.
Klingons don't argue amongst themselves like that and they don't let it simmer too long. The war will come swiftly.
As for the Federation and Proconsul, your scenario doesn't have a remote chance of happening. It doesn't have to. Any power outside the alliance would basically be fending for themselves or facing the rest of the alliance. There's also a matter of culture. Klingons under normal circumstances would never weaponize time travel. Kagran authorized it as a matter of pragmatism and survival. And when he was faced with actually altering the timeline, he decided not to.
What a member of that house was the engineer that made that modification to the IKS Ki'tang? In that case removing him from the timeline means we lose the Dominion War. Part of the reason for the alliance and the Temporal Accords is that we learned that TRIBBLE with the timeline never works out well.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
You really have no evidence for that TBH.
Also, the Klingon High Council is dead, killed by M'tara just a few months back. Even if they weren't, the dissenting houses were killed back in the early Klingon faction missions.
Nothing indicates that the current great houses/high council don't agree with him, and the same is true for the Feds and Rom Rep.
I would imagine by now the great houses have sent new representatives to the Council, likely the eldest sons of those murdered warriors.
"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 Merovingian: Yes, of course. Who has time? Who has the time? But then if we never *take* time, how can we have time?
The question is, do *you* know why you are here?
What is the reason? Soon the why and the reason are gone and all that matters is the feeling. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it; but it is of course a lie. Beneath our poised appearance we are completely out of control.
You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.
Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
I have told you. We are all victims of causality. I drank too much wine, therefore I must take a leak. Cause and effect.
Okay, @darthmeow504 and everyone else--stand back, I'm going to try science.
If you don't know what the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox is, and you haven't heard of Bell's Inequality, go check them out--I'll wait.
Back? Good.
Taken together (and with a couple of other bits that are even more difficult to sort), these concepts present physicists with a fairly unsavory sticking point: either Quantum Mechanics is a correct model of the universe, or the future is as fixed as the past (i.e.; we have no free will).
Wait--how could the future be fixed?
Thought experiment time: once upon a time in the last century, Richard Feynmann (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1965) suggested that it was legitimate to view a positron as an electron moving backwards through time. (One could view all anti-matter this way--an anti-proton is just a proton moving backwards though time, etc.) Let's suppose for a moment that an electron and positron collide, creating a photon. We can map it out like this:
e- =={things that happen to the electron in the past}=> {photon} <={things that happen to the positron in the future}== e+
At the point of collision, the electron has a past history in which all of the interactions that it had led it to the place where it interacted with the positron; the positron has a future history which leads it to the place where it interacts with the electron. Said another way, each particle has a relative past that brought it to the point of collision. The relative past of the positron is our future. In order for the positron to to arrive at the proper location in space and time, its relative past must be as fixed as that of the electron.
Note that this doesn't inhibit multiple timelines. It just implies that the future of a given timeline--in fact, the entire extent of it--is fixed. The future just seems interesting and unpredictable because you haven't been through all of your part of it yet. More to the point, the 25th century is the past when viewed from the 29th century in any timeline. Everything between the 19th and 29th centuries (for example) has already happened--we as short-lived, non-time-traveling individuals just don't get to see very much of it. The entire timeline, from Big Bang to Eschaton, already exists. If the Tholians damage the Na'kuhl's star using the Tox Uthat from the future, that's perfectly permissible because paradoxes are no longer possible. The play was written, the actions blocked, and the curtain raised. Now we just all play our parts--even if we only learn our lines scene-by-scene as the play progresses.
In different timelines, there's a different fixed set of conditions and actions. The only way the future "changes" for you is if you swap timelines. Star Trek (and science fiction in general) has any number of characters who say something like "wait--don't tell me my future!" Those individuals certainly act like the future is fixed--we assume they have reason to do so. In order for this Temporal Authority in which Walker serves to have any continuity at all, it can't be eliminated by any attempted machinations in the past--otherwise it can't act to preserve itself. (Luckily, it doesn't have to.)
So, the reason no one can restore the star to the Na'kuhl is that we're not in the correct timeline for that (if such a timeline exists). It can't happen because it didn't happen; it can't happen because that's not part of the "play." As a certain Doctor might suggest: "fixed point in time." His counterpart, a particular Mr. Hunter, might follow with "time wants to happen."
(When Agent Daniels shows Archer the Enterprise-J, he misspeaks; that's not a possible future--it's the future of a possible timeline.)
Disclaimer: okay--while it's legitimate in some ways to view a positron as an electron moving backward in time, no one currently believes that's a correct description of the universe. The second law of thermodynamics shows that time symmetry is broken all the, uh, time--so positrons aren't likely to be electrons going backwards in time. Likewise, no one believes the future is fixed; a failure of Quantum Mechanics on that level would be pretty devastating.
Nevertheless, in the Star Trek universe, QM and Relativity have clearly been replaced by larger, more correct theories of physics and chemistry (or just outright ignored), otherwise they just can't do those things they do. Maybe the future in that universe is less fluid than ours. Most of the technology in Star Trek is impossible (or highly improbable) according to our present understanding of physics--but those are the tools with which the writers are allowed to write stories. Time travel stories are the most difficult to write with any sort of internal consistency. Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation already established the canon of the Temporal Cold War (and other related events), and we have to play along with it.
Maybe you should just repeat to yourself "it's just a game--I should really just relax."
Anyways... I still don't get why people keep saying there are billions of dead Na'kuhl....
They probably assume that the death of their star would kill them off quickly. But as far as we know, it "just" stopped its fusion process. That means the planet will basically slowly cool off, and most plant life will probably die off quickly and then animal life. But if the Na'kuhl are sufficiently technologiycally advanced, they might be able to use replicators, life support systems to bridge the time until they can leave their home world with a starship.
But ... realistcally, evacuating the population of a whole planet with billions of inhabitants would definitely be a momentous task. Even with transporter technology. It would probably be quite realistic to assume that a lot of people will simply die from nutrient deficiencies or outright starvation or cold as they wait to get to a better place.
"Slowly cool off," yes. As in, come back in a few billion years and then we'll talk.
Realistically, the mass of a star would take so long to cool off that the universe is not yet old enough for any dead stars to have gone entirely dark. EDIT: Black holes notwithstanding.
What the Tox did in the missions is pure space magic.
Indeed, the fact that it didn't supernova due to the collapse of hydrostatic equilibrium is much more concerning.
The fact is that it's a Quantum Phase Inhibitor, which means a device that prevents phase transitions of matter at the quantum level. No solid-liquid-gas-Bose shifts. I would presume it also prevents things like fusion and plasma from ionizing.
So y'know...any sufficiently advanced technology.
"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 curious why do you think that the Federation would send the entire 163+ members of the Federation Council? This is how these things work. You elect a single leader to be the go to representative in these situations. They go negotiate, and report back to the legislature which then verifies or modifies the agreement. This is the opening meeting not the final decision. The Romulans are the same, though it should be noted they basically sent to heads of state as it's D'Tan and Obisek representing the Remans. I would however like to meet the New Romulan Senate.
Well, obviously they would send delegates and not the entire senates. Those delegates would be ambassadors appointed by the senates, not sitting executives, not military personnel.
Why do I assume that these guys don't have overwhelming majority of popular support? Because when does that ever happen? They typically manage to squeak out getting 51% to agree that they are less incompetent than the other guy on a single day, then use that to say "I speak for the people. My opinions are everyone's opinions" for the next several years of their term.
Do you not know how Klingon politics work?
If the Chancellor wants the alliance then the Klingons will enter the alliance. Just as when this Chancellor wanted a war with the Federation he killed the Chancellor that didn't want the war with the Federation and then they went to war.
Klingons don't give a damn about the popular vote, they care about strength. If the council doesn't want to go along with it, then there's gonna be a fight, someone's gonna die, and the winner gets his way. If no one wants to fight, then the Chancellor gets his way.
If several houses or one house of sufficient strength don't like it and want to make an issue of it, then there's a civil war...and the winner gets his way.
*edited for brevity*
The Klingons are still a warp-capable species, not a flat feudal trope. Even in feudal times, not *every* regime change required a war. Sometimes all it takes is a big house changing sides, but it really isn't irrelevant. Even if it were a civil change in leadership in the Federation or the Republic, there will always be two other factions, so the alliance still exists. What matters are their principles, and you summed those principles up nicely:
The timeline they're trying to protect is the current one they live in.
EXACTLY.
The only timelines they give a damn about are the ones in which they win. And, they aren't above letting manipulations occur as long as it helps them to win, even if it's genocide.
If that's their principles, then they aren't above using it to un-history any and all cases of political opposition at home. Some guy wants to run against the President of the Federation? That's a threat to the alliance. Better go back in time and stop him from living, for galactic peace of course. The Tholians are always willing to help.
I'm curious why do you think that the Federation would send the entire 163+ members of the Federation Council? This is how these things work. You elect a single leader to be the go to representative in these situations. They go negotiate, and report back to the legislature which then verifies or modifies the agreement. This is the opening meeting not the final decision. The Romulans are the same, though it should be noted they basically sent to heads of state as it's D'Tan and Obisek representing the Remans. I would however like to meet the New Romulan Senate.
Well, obviously they would send delegates and not the entire senates. Those delegates would be ambassadors appointed by the senates, not sitting executives, not military personnel.
Why do I assume that these guys don't have overwhelming majority of popular support? Because when does that ever happen? They typically manage to squeak out getting 51% to agree that they are less incompetent than the other guy on a single day, then use that to say "I speak for the people. My opinions are everyone's opinions" for the next several years of their term.
"Obviously they would send delegates not entire senates, those delegates would be Ambassadors"
You mean like Ambassador T'pela of Vulcan and Ambassador Kren of Bajor? They were there. Right next to Ulish, Rugan Skyll, and Surah. And of specific note in Starfleet, all Starfleet Captains are front line Ambassadors. The diplomatic core isn't going to be out there on the frontier, Starfleet Officers are trained to serve as diplomats especially when it comes to the all important First Contact mission. And while Starfleet is the Federations defense arm, they're scientists and explorers first.
Klingons of note are almost all military personnel, even their ambassadors.
The Romulans were hosting the event so I imagine many of the background people were ambassadors.
51%? Yes, that's democracy. Majority, even a simple majority rules. That said, considering the fact that two years ago the Federation was embroiled in a bitter fight with the Klingon Empire, and now we've been victorious in four successive major conflicts (victory over the Borg and the Vaadwuar, detente with the Undine, and peace with the Iconians) in an alliance with them and the Romulan Republic I imagine there would be wide spread support for expanding the scope of that alliance, especially if it will prevent further conflicts between the three great powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. I would be surprised at significant opposition to the concept, the devil of course is in the details.
Do you not know how Klingon politics work?
If the Chancellor wants the alliance then the Klingons will enter the alliance. Just as when this Chancellor wanted a war with the Federation he killed the Chancellor that didn't want the war with the Federation and then they went to war.
Klingons don't give a damn about the popular vote, they care about strength. If the council doesn't want to go along with it, then there's gonna be a fight, someone's gonna die, and the winner gets his way. If no one wants to fight, then the Chancellor gets his way.
If several houses or one house of sufficient strength don't like it and want to make an issue of it, then there's a civil war...and the winner gets his way.
*edited for brevity*
The Klingons are still a warp-capable species, not a flat feudal trope. Even in feudal times, not *every* regime change required a war. Sometimes all it takes is a big house changing sides, but it really isn't irrelevant. Even if it were a civil change in leadership in the Federation or the Republic, there will always be two other factions, so the alliance still exists. What matters are their principles, and you summed those principles up nicely:
But what you have said contradicts what has been shown of the Klingons and unlike a lot of species we know them very well.
A Chancellor is often already in trouble if he doesn't have the support of the High Council before he starts. Chancellors who make unpopular decisions usually wind up dead shortly.
I wasn't saying every regime change requires war. In fact, I specifically said that that's ONLY if there is a significant opposing power, referring specifically to the Duras and their political control over half of the council. But the change that usually occurs is an open challenge to the chancellor, and a duel to the death as occurred in Gowron's time, and is exactly how J'mpok came to power when he killed Martok.
And again it's Klingon history, they tried democracy and it blew up in their face and they swore never to try it again.
The timeline they're trying to protect is the current one they live in.
EXACTLY.
The only timelines they give a damn about are the ones in which they win. And, they aren't above letting manipulations occur as long as it helps them to win, even if it's genocide.
If that's their principles, then they aren't above using it to un-history any and all cases of political opposition at home. Some guy wants to run against the President of the Federation? That's a threat to the alliance. Better go back in time and stop him from living, for galactic peace of course. The Tholians are always willing to help.
What sane person would attempt to protect a timeline where they get killed off? And is that even possible?
And as I said, they've learned lessons. The last time they tried to improve their timeline (by trying to restore Romulus) they got the Tuterians assimilated. The Alliance's position is no more changes. Which is perfectly fine by me. Note nobody tried to go back in time five minutes and kill Krog before she shoots at the president and kills Shavaa.
You're sitting here making up scenarios of people manipulating time travel for their own political benefit when the alliance is trying to make sure nothing gets changed by anyone and taking action to prevent changes.
And we still don't know what the heck the Tholians are up to. What we have learned however is trying to change the timeline to reverse it, is much more likely to make things work. And as it turns out, the Na'khul star isn't as dead as we thought.
Post edited by captaind3 on
"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"
They got the Tuterians assimilated, actually, not the Lukari. (If even that - obviously some of the Tuterians survived, it's just that instead of remaining in our spacetime they've been forced into subspace like the Solanae.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Okay, @darthmeow504 and everyone else--stand back, I'm going to try science.
If you don't know what the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox is, and you haven't heard of Bell's Inequality, go check them out--I'll wait.
Back? Good.
Taken together (and with a couple of other bits that are even more difficult to sort), these concepts present physicists with a fairly unsavory sticking point: either Quantum Mechanics is a correct model of the universe, or the future is as fixed as the past (i.e.; we have no free will).
Wait--how could the future be fixed?
Thought experiment time: once upon a time in the last century, Richard Feynmann (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1965) suggested that it was legitimate to view a positron as an electron moving backwards through time. (One could view all anti-matter this way--an anti-proton is just a proton moving backwards though time, etc.) Let's suppose for a moment that an electron and positron collide, creating a photon. We can map it out like this:
e- =={things that happen to the electron in the past}=> {photon} <={things that happen to the positron in the future}== e+
At the point of collision, the electron has a past history in which all of the interactions that it had led it to the place where it interacted with the positron; the positron has a future history which leads it to the place where it interacts with the electron. Said another way, each particle has a relative past that brought it to the point of collision. The relative past of the positron is our future. In order for the positron to to arrive at the proper location in space and time, its relative past must be as fixed as that of the electron.
Note that this doesn't inhibit multiple timelines. It just implies that the future of a given timeline--in fact, the entire extent of it--is fixed. The future just seems interesting and unpredictable because you haven't been through all of your part of it yet. More to the point, the 25th century is the past when viewed from the 29th century in any timeline. Everything between the 19th and 29th centuries (for example) has already happened--we as short-lived, non-time-traveling individuals just don't get to see very much of it. The entire timeline, from Big Bang to Eschaton, already exists. If the Tholians damage the Na'kuhl's star using the Tox Uthat from the future, that's perfectly permissible because paradoxes are no longer possible. The play was written, the actions blocked, and the curtain raised. Now we just all play our parts--even if we only learn our lines scene-by-scene as the play progresses.
In different timelines, there's a different fixed set of conditions and actions. The only way the future "changes" for you is if you swap timelines. Star Trek (and science fiction in general) has any number of characters who say something like "wait--don't tell me my future!" Those individuals certainly act like the future is fixed--we assume they have reason to do so. In order for this Temporal Authority in which Walker serves to have any continuity at all, it can't be eliminated by any attempted machinations in the past--otherwise it can't act to preserve itself. (Luckily, it doesn't have to.)
So, the reason no one can restore the star to the Na'kuhl is that we're not in the correct timeline for that (if such a timeline exists). It can't happen because it didn't happen; it can't happen because that's not part of the "play." As a certain Doctor might suggest: "fixed point in time." His counterpart, a particular Mr. Hunter, might follow with "time wants to happen."
(When Agent Daniels shows Archer the Enterprise-J, he misspeaks; that's not a possible future--it's the future of a possible timeline.)
Disclaimer: okay--while it's legitimate in some ways to view a positron as an electron moving backward in time, no one currently believes that's a correct description of the universe. The second law of thermodynamics shows that time symmetry is broken all the, uh, time--so positrons aren't likely to be electrons going backwards in time. Likewise, no one believes the future is fixed; a failure of Quantum Mechanics on that level would be pretty devastating.
Nevertheless, in the Star Trek universe, QM and Relativity have clearly been replaced by larger, more correct theories of physics and chemistry (or just outright ignored), otherwise they just can't do those things they do. Maybe the future in that universe is less fluid than ours. Most of the technology in Star Trek is impossible (or highly improbable) according to our present understanding of physics--but those are the tools with which the writers are allowed to write stories. Time travel stories are the most difficult to write with any sort of internal consistency. Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation already established the canon of the Temporal Cold War (and other related events), and we have to play along with it.
Maybe you should just repeat to yourself "it's just a game--I should really just relax."
If everything above the Disclaimer is assumed to be true in universe, then there is no need for Daniels, Walker, et.al to exist, or to even care what 'temporal agents' of other factions do because no matter what they do it results in the same exact future they already enjoy. The best these temporal agents could do is to go sideways into a parallel dimension with a future more to their liking, which would leave 'our' universe intact and unaltered. That's a win/win, because in that other universe, there is not a thing Daniels and company can do to alter that universe's timeline.
I have to assume that Trek's time travelers know what they are talking about, and that time is fluid. Perhaps, like a mighty river, it seeks a particular route because 'temporal terrain' guides it that way, but rivers can be dammed, or their courses altered with proper effort. (Heck, the Colorado doesn't even make it to the sea anymore, unless you count the part that goes there via Los Angeles' sewer system.)
Of course, how much of a consolation would it be to travel in the past and only end up in a parallel timeline, knowing that your "real" girlfriend is still dead? (And wouldn't the alternative timeline's you still wan to stay together with his still alive girlfriend? Do you need to kill and replace him?)
The twist I haven't seen yet with time travel is a "pseudo-time-travel" machine. If you activate it, you just think you traveled back in time and changed the world in some way. There will be even a log of what the alleged original timeline was to be like...
So the "pseudo time machine" claims the butterfly effect restored history to the point it was identical to the events you already knew? It would be very easy to disprove that though (say, kill a major historical figure, they'd clearly not have been killed in the "new" timeline.
However, there is a slight variation on that which is commonly used and does work out. Basically, somebody thinks they are going to change history, but instead they create the events they were trying to "prevent" but somehow change their nature so that the observation remains the same and your reason to time travel remains intact, but you have ultimately changed history (or have you? Were you always destined to loop round). That's also a solution to the dead girlfriend problem. You just make it look like she's dead while you secretly run off with her and leave your mourning younger self to build a time machine and "save" her.
The alternative of course is to actually change history but in the process create a temporal loop (for example, saving "your" girlfriend right in front of your alternate self, then telling your alternate self you are them from the future and they should build a time machine to save their girlfriends life, they'll spend so much time fearing temporal paradoxes that you can continue the relationship with what is now *your* girlfriend while your alternate self nerds out over their time machine, and they go backwards in time and create a never ending loop of the new events you have orchestrated).
These are both variations of what is known as the "bootstrap paradox". Worth having a look into. Of course, it's possible the loop could collapse as described previously, but the beauty of it is that if the loop did collapse it would just create itself again (provided you could create it in the first place, but if it's an alternate universe rather than the past that doesn't matter).
Comments
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.'
The Lukari.
It's a crystalline species. What if they evolved underground in the mantle of their Demon class homeworld? Besides somehow I think we'll lose more than Tholian Silk. Who moves into their territory?
It's a superweapon in the same way Red Matter is. It also is able to restore as well as destroy. It's weapon in the same way as an airplane is. Fine until someone hijacks it.
The Temporal Authority was alright with him fixing the Lukari star because it dying was a temporal incursion. Apparently the destruction of the Na'khul star is not.
I agree.
However we don't know the casualty numbers on Na'khul. This isn't the destruction of Romulus. For a warp capable species they do have time to evacuate and ways to stay warm. Of course I consider the destruction of the life forms in their biosphere equally heinous.
But yes Walker certainly owes us an explanation as a matter of fact he owed it to us last week....and since he has a time machine he needs to hop to.
You would think wrong.
If the alternative is the destruction of my planet or all planets there is something to consider. As much as I love her, the ongoing survival of the human race takes precedent. The Na'khul went homeless, not extinct. Not all of us are as barbarously defensive as you think.
First of all you're standing there on the Na'khul side ignoring the fact that it's your species that would be on the receiving end of the alternative.
If all things are equal, and everyone is behaving in the best interest of their own species or nation, and we happen to be at cross purposes then what?
Hypothetically, if the Na'khul star doesn't die, and the Na'khul go on to be a temporal superpower that wipes out every other major power in a quest to secure their future, then how were the Tholians wrong to destroy their star? Under your logic they had every right to defend their future right? As for the Federation and the Galactic Union, the alternative would then be to intervene on the Na'khul's behalf and then get annihilated in the ensuing conflict.
There's also the possibility that in order for all species to survive, the temporal war has to be fought to a resolution.
Fascinating enough, with the last episode, it appears the Na'khul star isn't as dead as we thought.
Precisely. It was extremely sloppy.
Actually...that was Annorax. We never learned the name of the original Temporal Weapons Ship.
That's the theory that works the best, but they skipped it, why is beyond me. There's no need for this absurd moral quandary.
It's not the simplest solution...it's just the best solution.
As I understand it the Tholian Assembly operates as a single unit across multiple quantum timelines and maybe even future and past.
Oh definitely agreed. But a warp capable civilization should be able to pull it off. According to the Path to 2409 the evacuation of Romulus (18 billion people) was slated at six to eight weeks.
The Na'khul could've probably done it faster if they had accepted help.
I'm sure the exception line would grow very quickly.
I knew what happened, but it was hilarious because as soon as Vosk left, history happened in that instant. Mind you Kal Dano told us to look up Archer's logs on the Temporal Cold War, which means Dano and Walker actually exist in completely different time frames.
Come to think of it....consider the following. Dano and Daniels both wear one kind of Temporal Uniform, the thing with all the piping around it. While the Pastak crew and the Relativity crew wear a different one. What if they're from different incarnations of the Temporal Integrity Authority, one from a timeline unaffected by the Temporal Cold War as it is before the Na'khul star's destruction, and another from after the Na'khul star is destroyed. With both separate kinds of Temporal Agents still actively operating in the past simultaneously from their separate timelines.
Whoa.
There's absolutely no question Kal Dano is the inventor of the Tox Uthat/Quantum Phase Inhibitor. The Tholians didn't name it that as they don't actually use vocal chords. It might be the name the time travelers in the original episode named it. Or perhaps it's Na'khul for Doomsday Device.
The only problem is that detail wasn't made clear. DarthMeow wouldn't be nearly so furious if Kal Dano had one line added, "The Tox Uthat is too efficient, the Na'khul star is beyond even my repair now." At that point getting rid of the damned thing before the next wave of Tholians shows up is prudent instead of a situation where you're tugging at his arm saying, "But wait, what about the star...the star Kal, The Star! It's dying, the Na'khul are gonna lose their homeworld, Kal, why are we going to the past now, when the Na'khul star is dying??!?" I wrote that in Kirk's voice.
The Prime Directive line has definitely been drawn in the sand by the Na'khul, no getting around that.
There is one thing that hasn't been answered though.
Vosk has a fleet of 29th century warships armed to the teeth and filled with die hard battle ready fanatics.
Umm...why hasn't he simply gone back in time and defeated the Tholian fleet that attacked Na'khul. If he's going to engage in a law breaking activity from the future, why not immediately perform the one action that the law abiding Na'khul are petitioning for? To actually stop the Na'khul star from being destroyed? That said, in his timeline, for some reason the Na'khul star is a zombie instead of a corpse, a brown dwarf instead of a black hole.
Of course we're missing something, it hasn't happened yet.
We see the foundations of this alliance between the three factions in this last episode. Who are the delegates? A bunch of executive branch leaders and military officers. Only a few ambassadors, no legislators. The US Constitution for one requires all treaties be ratified by 2/3rds of the Senators present. Most countries have something similar. Longstanding treaties are typically enacted by some kind of legislative branch. That's because even if an executive won the last election, he/she doesn't speak for *everybody*. The function of an executive branch is to do the things where time is of the essence and you can't discuss things, like running a war. Their weakness is that because they minimize the number of decision-makers, they also minimize the amount of conversation between them and the masses. They are actually quite lousy at longstanding treaties, because often times they have opposition groups that disagree with what their 'leader' signs. Frankly, it's committees like this that cause groups like the Marquis to be created.
The delegates are also arrogant. You have the part where D'Tan quotes the Bible "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares". Funny thing about the context of that passage, it refers to the time after what Christians call the Second Coming of Christ, right after where it says that lions will stop eating lambs and that poisonous snakes won't be dangerous. It's referring to a state of heaven on earth brought about by the direct intervention of God, a state that is unnatural by the current order of the universe and humanly impossible to obtain. There might be a bunch of aliens in the room, but there are no gods present. It actually takes an incredible amount of hubris to think a committee could stop wars from happening, any more than they could stop basic predator-prey relationships in nature.
So, what you have is a few dozen of the player's war buddies getting in a room and deciding the fate of the galaxy. Even though they were appointed by different factions, by this point, they're all closer to each other than they are to the people they claim to represent. They can manipulate time now, and as I pointed out, they aren't interested in preserving the natural timeline. So which timeline are they trying to protect? Why ofcourse, any timeline which preserves the precious alliance drafted up by the executive and military leaders who are all war buddies, without the input from the people! Captain Walker even said so.
So, they're a cabal, in charge of an empire, which they brutally enforce by temporal manipulation.
Is the Tox Uthat supposed to make any star it destroys in a black hole? Or was the Na'khul star really supposed to be massive enough to become a black hole? It seems unlikely that it could be the home star of an advanced civilization, considering stars massive enough to become a black hole tend to last "only" a few hundred million years, and evolution seems to take longer than that to create complex lifeforms.
I think somebody needs to replay that mission. D'tan quotes that, yes - and then he notes that they'll need both swords and plowshares.
I should think galactic peace is in the best interests of everyone except warmongers. Even the Klingons are okay with it, for crying out loud!
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
I think you are jumping the gun here. The story arc isn't finished yet. Maybe at the conclusion you will get your kiddy happy ending, lol. Just wait.
You do know there is no wrong or right answer... right? His point is just as valid as yours. If you remember a similar thing happened to another species, the ones from the Sunrise episode. Except they were open to communication and willing to aid us in helping them which worked out. If the Na'kuhl were not xenophobic and took the same approach things would have been different. Or it might have not made a difference. The point is there is no right or wrong answer because there are so many possibilities and outcomes. Maybe the Temporal Agency is still researching a better route to take but until then this is the lesser of the two evils. You can postulate that if you save the Na'kuhl another species will take their place. So there would always be one species that has to die. Maybe in another instance its humans who have to die not the Na'kuhl.
That crock is given to you and you will take it, and deal with it. However... he should be able to explain in further detail why it has to go this route. Unfortunately... that would probably have to be done through creative writing published on the website rather than in-game as that would take too much resources. So ask for that instead.
Same reason why we can allow the stationing troops around the globe and wage war and no one can do anything about it other than talk. This is the mentality here in America and Crytpic is not immune to it. If this were a European based producer (preferably around Scandinavian region) it would be different story, or they might simply catering to this mentality as well, lol.
The first Belfast was commanded by Captain Ve'Kal Shon until its destruction in 2409. A new ship was commissioned bearing the same name and registry as special dispensation to then newly promoted Captain Edward XIII for his pivotal role during the renewed Dominion War.
Exactly. One or two episodes like the one in returning to the 23rd century were fine, but to build on it the whole story is a big mistake . One plot hole overlaps the other . I hope this was the last episode of time travel , we let escape Vosk so he could deal with Archer. Please end. I bet that if players wanted a story about ENT , it certainly was not something with time travelers.
I hope that the Cardassians will come soon and take with them the Ferengi and we returned to the good old politics and colonial skirmishes.
I do not want to hide super powerful weapons of the future somewhere in the cave. Again.
Okay, I'll admit it's the real life politicians who think they are messiahs and we don't need armies any more. (and if you contest that statement, I can point to a ton of unemployed soldiers.) But, we're going off topic, so I'll concede the one about the delegates being messianic.
I'll reference the other scifi saga and quote Darth Vader: "I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new empire!". "Peace" can be a word used by tyrants to describe unopposed tyranny. This goes back to what I said about the room being filled with executives, and we can use the Klingons as an example.
The *Chancellor* wants the alliance, not necessarily the *Klingons* as a whole. As an executive, his job is to 'close enough' to the people's will for something like "We don't want to be wiped out by the Iconians", but for something like "this is what our foreign policy will be like for the next 300 years", he should be getting the earnest support of the vast majority of High Council before he can claim to be speaking for "all Klingons", and the High Council doesn't even have a seat at the table.
Even if well intentioned, this is a cabal of executives and military types who aren't consulting their legislatures.
Suppose there is a Klingon House that hates the Chancellor's House and his guts, oppose this treaty, but simply lack the political power to remove him from office entirely, immediately. The High Council isn't consulted, so they can't stop it from being signed. So, they make their case, build political support, eventually get ahold of the chancellor seat and have the treaty overturned in the future. What happens then? Well, then the President of the Federation and Preconsul of the Romulans don't like that because it threatens their 'galactic peace', they give a wink to the Tholians, the Tholians go back in time, nuke the troublesome House before it even exists, and then Captain Walker shows up and says it was "meant to happen" because "the alternative isn't pretty". Their only principle seems to be 'protect the alliance', not 'preserve the timeline which is natural'.
Proconsul is the word you are looking for.
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.'
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Exactly.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I think you're assuming a bit too much here. Any major political decision will need a lot of finely tuned contract, rules, laws and regulations. A Chancellor, a President and a Praetor (or whatever D'Tan is called) are not going to make this around a conference table. They need at minimum a gigantic staff of bureacrats to work things out, but most likely also need to discuss that with other officials and representatives.
There was dialog in the Temporal Accords episode that said that most of the work had already been done - the event that came under attack was the formal signing of something that had been planned and discussed way before.
The peace conference we attended in this episode was most likely either something that would launch a lot of future talks and treaties, or that was at the end of lots of discussions.
Just like it works on contemporary dealings. Just because there is a photo op where 12 presidents and chancellors or other heads of state are entering a room or leave with wih some decision doesn't mean that this is all that has happened to get there. And it certainly doesn't mean they got to decide anything alone.
Realistically, the mass of a star would take so long to cool off that the universe is not yet old enough for any dead stars to have gone entirely dark. EDIT: Black holes notwithstanding.
What the Tox did in the missions is pure space magic.
I always got it Darth. Even if I don't agree with your reaction I fully understand it and it's a valid logical question. I counsel patience on this, but there are certainly maddening decision points that don't make sense. Pitfalls that could've been easily EASILY avoided.
The Tuterian tragedy, was an unexpected side effect of an ill conceived attempt to save Romulus. If there's one thing that the last year should've taught all parties involved it's that you can't go back. Keep in mind that the player character basically opposed the temporal tampering from the get go.
I'm curious why do you think that the Federation would send the entire 163+ members of the Federation Council? This is how these things work. You elect a single leader to be the go to representative in these situations. They go negotiate, and report back to the legislature which then verifies or modifies the agreement. This is the opening meeting not the final decision. The Romulans are the same, though it should be noted they basically sent to heads of state as it's D'Tan and Obisek representing the Remans. I would however like to meet the New Romulan Senate.
As for the Klingons, they are a feudal society not a democratic one, the Council exists to advise the Chancellor, but they do what he says. They apparently had a poor experience with democracy when they tried it centuries ago.
You think that having more people at the conference would be a good idea, but I take the opposite view. You don't want "Too many cooks in the kitchen." The legitimate heads of the three primary states and representatives of their allies of interest are present. Nobody said anything about final decisions.
D'Tan continued to say that we'll need both swords and plowshares by the time we're done. Interesting that he quoted the Bible, recall he also kept a painting depicting the expulsion from paradise. "A reminder that all things must end." Spock digs Biblical symbolism.
The timeline they're trying to protect is the current one they live in. It's been seen that trying to alter that timeline has only made things worse. As Walker is trying to preserve his timeline.
No. It's only logical...sort of. It's a weird bit of science to sift through.
For those who don't know-
All stars exist in a state of heliostatic equilibrium. The weight of the star is so great it wants to implode, but that is counteracted by a constant thermonuclear explosion in the center pushing it out. Just like a balloon, the gravity is the elasticity of the rubber, the fusion core is the air pushing out.
A black hole is born when a star of sufficient mass runs out of hydrogen fuel to burn. At that point the gravity wins and crushes the core's remains instantly into a black hole. Then said black hole begins eating its way out triggering a gamma ray burst supernova and yada yada yada.
The Na'khul star essentially suffered this as the explosion inside of it stopped, but perhaps due to some property of how the Tox Uthat functions, the star didn't die instantly and thus didn't implode in the normal catastrophic fashion. But apparently it was expected to crush down into a black hole gradually, because it was still a star with sufficient weight. On the other hand, stars large enough to become black holes naturally usually don't have planets that support humanoid life or even Class M planets, their radiation is way too powerful.
So we have to look at this from the opposite perspective. The Tox Uthat when used on a star as the Tholians did can actually make a black hole out of a smaller star. Which makes it even more terrifying. Instead the star has become some sort of red dwarf. Curiouser and curiouser.
That was me. So Kal Dano and Daniels are from further in the future. That also explains why they operate solo instead of with a crew. Which makes it funny that Walker was responding to a distress call from someone in his future. Thanks, I had forgotten that.
The people watching Enterprise didn't even want a time travel story.
Make sure that you delineate clearly between someone who thinks we don't need armies and someone who doesn't want to fight unnecessary wars. There's a difference there.
Unemployed soldiers are a completely different problem born of a separate ineptitude.
Everyone knows that, that doesn't mean it applies to every executive. And Vader wasn't even an executive he was just a general who was manipulated by an old man.
Oh by the way, that old man who was Emperor was put into place legally by the full might and authority... of a legislature.
Do you not know how Klingon politics work?
If the Chancellor wants the alliance then the Klingons will enter the alliance. Just as when this Chancellor wanted a war with the Federation he killed the Chancellor that didn't want the war with the Federation and then they went to war.
Klingons don't give a damn about the popular vote, they care about strength. If the council doesn't want to go along with it, then there's gonna be a fight, someone's gonna die, and the winner gets his way. If no one wants to fight, then the Chancellor gets his way.
Again, your assumption is completely baseless this is the opening negotiation of the alliance not the final say. This isn't a crisis situation like the Iconian War or the Delta Alliance where there were enemies breathing down our necks. This more like the meetings on Earth prior to the formation of the Coalition of Planets.
If several houses or one house of sufficient strength don't like it and want to make an issue of it, then there's a civil war...and the winner gets his way.
Klingons don't argue amongst themselves like that and they don't let it simmer too long. The war will come swiftly.
As for the Federation and Proconsul, your scenario doesn't have a remote chance of happening. It doesn't have to. Any power outside the alliance would basically be fending for themselves or facing the rest of the alliance. There's also a matter of culture. Klingons under normal circumstances would never weaponize time travel. Kagran authorized it as a matter of pragmatism and survival. And when he was faced with actually altering the timeline, he decided not to.
What a member of that house was the engineer that made that modification to the IKS Ki'tang? In that case removing him from the timeline means we lose the Dominion War. Part of the reason for the alliance and the Temporal Accords is that we learned that TRIBBLE with the timeline never works out well.
I would imagine by now the great houses have sent new representatives to the Council, likely the eldest sons of those murdered warriors.
The Merovingian: Yes, of course. Who has time? Who has the time? But then if we never *take* time, how can we have time?
The question is, do *you* know why you are here?
What is the reason? Soon the why and the reason are gone and all that matters is the feeling. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it; but it is of course a lie. Beneath our poised appearance we are completely out of control.
You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.
Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
I have told you. We are all victims of causality. I drank too much wine, therefore I must take a leak. Cause and effect.
If you don't know what the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox is, and you haven't heard of Bell's Inequality, go check them out--I'll wait.
Back? Good.
Taken together (and with a couple of other bits that are even more difficult to sort), these concepts present physicists with a fairly unsavory sticking point: either Quantum Mechanics is a correct model of the universe, or the future is as fixed as the past (i.e.; we have no free will).
Wait--how could the future be fixed?
Thought experiment time: once upon a time in the last century, Richard Feynmann (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1965) suggested that it was legitimate to view a positron as an electron moving backwards through time. (One could view all anti-matter this way--an anti-proton is just a proton moving backwards though time, etc.) Let's suppose for a moment that an electron and positron collide, creating a photon. We can map it out like this:
e- =={things that happen to the electron in the past}=> {photon} <={things that happen to the positron in the future}== e+
At the point of collision, the electron has a past history in which all of the interactions that it had led it to the place where it interacted with the positron; the positron has a future history which leads it to the place where it interacts with the electron. Said another way, each particle has a relative past that brought it to the point of collision. The relative past of the positron is our future. In order for the positron to to arrive at the proper location in space and time, its relative past must be as fixed as that of the electron.
Note that this doesn't inhibit multiple timelines. It just implies that the future of a given timeline--in fact, the entire extent of it--is fixed. The future just seems interesting and unpredictable because you haven't been through all of your part of it yet. More to the point, the 25th century is the past when viewed from the 29th century in any timeline. Everything between the 19th and 29th centuries (for example) has already happened--we as short-lived, non-time-traveling individuals just don't get to see very much of it. The entire timeline, from Big Bang to Eschaton, already exists. If the Tholians damage the Na'kuhl's star using the Tox Uthat from the future, that's perfectly permissible because paradoxes are no longer possible. The play was written, the actions blocked, and the curtain raised. Now we just all play our parts--even if we only learn our lines scene-by-scene as the play progresses.
In different timelines, there's a different fixed set of conditions and actions. The only way the future "changes" for you is if you swap timelines. Star Trek (and science fiction in general) has any number of characters who say something like "wait--don't tell me my future!" Those individuals certainly act like the future is fixed--we assume they have reason to do so. In order for this Temporal Authority in which Walker serves to have any continuity at all, it can't be eliminated by any attempted machinations in the past--otherwise it can't act to preserve itself. (Luckily, it doesn't have to.)
So, the reason no one can restore the star to the Na'kuhl is that we're not in the correct timeline for that (if such a timeline exists). It can't happen because it didn't happen; it can't happen because that's not part of the "play." As a certain Doctor might suggest: "fixed point in time." His counterpart, a particular Mr. Hunter, might follow with "time wants to happen."
(When Agent Daniels shows Archer the Enterprise-J, he misspeaks; that's not a possible future--it's the future of a possible timeline.)
Disclaimer: okay--while it's legitimate in some ways to view a positron as an electron moving backward in time, no one currently believes that's a correct description of the universe. The second law of thermodynamics shows that time symmetry is broken all the, uh, time--so positrons aren't likely to be electrons going backwards in time. Likewise, no one believes the future is fixed; a failure of Quantum Mechanics on that level would be pretty devastating.
Nevertheless, in the Star Trek universe, QM and Relativity have clearly been replaced by larger, more correct theories of physics and chemistry (or just outright ignored), otherwise they just can't do those things they do. Maybe the future in that universe is less fluid than ours. Most of the technology in Star Trek is impossible (or highly improbable) according to our present understanding of physics--but those are the tools with which the writers are allowed to write stories. Time travel stories are the most difficult to write with any sort of internal consistency. Enterprise and Star Trek: The Next Generation already established the canon of the Temporal Cold War (and other related events), and we have to play along with it.
Maybe you should just repeat to yourself "it's just a game--I should really just relax."
why not give the na'kuhls star back?...because of reasons.
really that does some it up
Indeed, the fact that it didn't supernova due to the collapse of hydrostatic equilibrium is much more concerning.
The fact is that it's a Quantum Phase Inhibitor, which means a device that prevents phase transitions of matter at the quantum level. No solid-liquid-gas-Bose shifts. I would presume it also prevents things like fusion and plasma from ionizing.
So y'know...any sufficiently advanced technology.
STARS, SUPERNOVAS AND NEUTRON STARS
Well, obviously they would send delegates and not the entire senates. Those delegates would be ambassadors appointed by the senates, not sitting executives, not military personnel.
Why do I assume that these guys don't have overwhelming majority of popular support? Because when does that ever happen? They typically manage to squeak out getting 51% to agree that they are less incompetent than the other guy on a single day, then use that to say "I speak for the people. My opinions are everyone's opinions" for the next several years of their term.
*edited for brevity*
The Klingons are still a warp-capable species, not a flat feudal trope. Even in feudal times, not *every* regime change required a war. Sometimes all it takes is a big house changing sides, but it really isn't irrelevant. Even if it were a civil change in leadership in the Federation or the Republic, there will always be two other factions, so the alliance still exists. What matters are their principles, and you summed those principles up nicely:
EXACTLY.
The only timelines they give a damn about are the ones in which they win. And, they aren't above letting manipulations occur as long as it helps them to win, even if it's genocide.
If that's their principles, then they aren't above using it to un-history any and all cases of political opposition at home. Some guy wants to run against the President of the Federation? That's a threat to the alliance. Better go back in time and stop him from living, for galactic peace of course. The Tholians are always willing to help.
You mean like Ambassador T'pela of Vulcan and Ambassador Kren of Bajor? They were there. Right next to Ulish, Rugan Skyll, and Surah. And of specific note in Starfleet, all Starfleet Captains are front line Ambassadors. The diplomatic core isn't going to be out there on the frontier, Starfleet Officers are trained to serve as diplomats especially when it comes to the all important First Contact mission. And while Starfleet is the Federations defense arm, they're scientists and explorers first.
Klingons of note are almost all military personnel, even their ambassadors.
The Romulans were hosting the event so I imagine many of the background people were ambassadors.
51%? Yes, that's democracy. Majority, even a simple majority rules. That said, considering the fact that two years ago the Federation was embroiled in a bitter fight with the Klingon Empire, and now we've been victorious in four successive major conflicts (victory over the Borg and the Vaadwuar, detente with the Undine, and peace with the Iconians) in an alliance with them and the Romulan Republic I imagine there would be wide spread support for expanding the scope of that alliance, especially if it will prevent further conflicts between the three great powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. I would be surprised at significant opposition to the concept, the devil of course is in the details.
But what you have said contradicts what has been shown of the Klingons and unlike a lot of species we know them very well.
A Chancellor is often already in trouble if he doesn't have the support of the High Council before he starts. Chancellors who make unpopular decisions usually wind up dead shortly.
I wasn't saying every regime change requires war. In fact, I specifically said that that's ONLY if there is a significant opposing power, referring specifically to the Duras and their political control over half of the council. But the change that usually occurs is an open challenge to the chancellor, and a duel to the death as occurred in Gowron's time, and is exactly how J'mpok came to power when he killed Martok.
And again it's Klingon history, they tried democracy and it blew up in their face and they swore never to try it again.
What sane person would attempt to protect a timeline where they get killed off? And is that even possible?
And as I said, they've learned lessons. The last time they tried to improve their timeline (by trying to restore Romulus) they got the Tuterians assimilated. The Alliance's position is no more changes. Which is perfectly fine by me. Note nobody tried to go back in time five minutes and kill Krog before she shoots at the president and kills Shavaa.
You're sitting here making up scenarios of people manipulating time travel for their own political benefit when the alliance is trying to make sure nothing gets changed by anyone and taking action to prevent changes.
And we still don't know what the heck the Tholians are up to. What we have learned however is trying to change the timeline to reverse it, is much more likely to make things work. And as it turns out, the Na'khul star isn't as dead as we thought.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
If everything above the Disclaimer is assumed to be true in universe, then there is no need for Daniels, Walker, et.al to exist, or to even care what 'temporal agents' of other factions do because no matter what they do it results in the same exact future they already enjoy. The best these temporal agents could do is to go sideways into a parallel dimension with a future more to their liking, which would leave 'our' universe intact and unaltered. That's a win/win, because in that other universe, there is not a thing Daniels and company can do to alter that universe's timeline.
I have to assume that Trek's time travelers know what they are talking about, and that time is fluid. Perhaps, like a mighty river, it seeks a particular route because 'temporal terrain' guides it that way, but rivers can be dammed, or their courses altered with proper effort. (Heck, the Colorado doesn't even make it to the sea anymore, unless you count the part that goes there via Los Angeles' sewer system.)
So the "pseudo time machine" claims the butterfly effect restored history to the point it was identical to the events you already knew? It would be very easy to disprove that though (say, kill a major historical figure, they'd clearly not have been killed in the "new" timeline.
However, there is a slight variation on that which is commonly used and does work out. Basically, somebody thinks they are going to change history, but instead they create the events they were trying to "prevent" but somehow change their nature so that the observation remains the same and your reason to time travel remains intact, but you have ultimately changed history (or have you? Were you always destined to loop round). That's also a solution to the dead girlfriend problem. You just make it look like she's dead while you secretly run off with her and leave your mourning younger self to build a time machine and "save" her.
The alternative of course is to actually change history but in the process create a temporal loop (for example, saving "your" girlfriend right in front of your alternate self, then telling your alternate self you are them from the future and they should build a time machine to save their girlfriends life, they'll spend so much time fearing temporal paradoxes that you can continue the relationship with what is now *your* girlfriend while your alternate self nerds out over their time machine, and they go backwards in time and create a never ending loop of the new events you have orchestrated).
These are both variations of what is known as the "bootstrap paradox". Worth having a look into. Of course, it's possible the loop could collapse as described previously, but the beauty of it is that if the loop did collapse it would just create itself again (provided you could create it in the first place, but if it's an alternate universe rather than the past that doesn't matter).