STAR TREK: PICARD Official Trailer

Trek has generally avoided outright paradoxes in its time travel. We don't know how they'll resolve this one.

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There is an incidence of a very clear paradox in DS9. A Bajoran poet and writer comes out of the wormhole, and the Bajoran start believing that he is the true Emissary. It also clears up a mystery on how he disappeared, and never finished his most famous work. However, it turns out that he isn't the real Emissary, and was just send to help Sisko understand his role better, and the Prophets return him to the past. Where he finishes his greatest work. Major Kira remembers that it was an unfinished work, but when she checks the historical data, she finds the work completed and that the poet didn't disappear.

In the end, we can speculate endless what would "logically" happen. CBS and Paramount seemed to go with the Prime Timeline still being around to tell new stories in it, even after the destruction of Hobus. Everything in the TV shows, including Discovery and Picard are supposed to be Prime Timeline. Of course, only until further notice. Retcons are always possible.

Umbran said:

The events of ST: Into Darkness contain some evidence that this is, in fact, the case - Khan has access to technology that does not work in the prime timeline, even in the Voyager era - transporter action across interstellar distances. Khan couldn't produce that in the Prime timeline, nor could the Klingons. Nero, who is from the Prime timeline, didn't have that tech. So, where did this come from?

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That is explained in-universe. Scotty eventually manages to create a transporter equation that will allow transporters to be used across vast distances, and in/out of warp drive. This was in the far future, probably after the end of DS9.

Spock then takes that knowledge back in time to the Kelvin timeline, and is able to use it to modify a transporter there. It subsequently falls into Khan's hands via Section 31, and he uses it (perhaps further modified through his intellect) for even longer-range transport.

No, you misunderstand - as you yourself noted - in typical Trek time travel, the prime timeline now *no longer exists*. How things played out in the original timeline is irrelevant. We are not considering how things play out in the Kelvine timeline. In the Kelvin timeline, Nero travels back in time.

Except, in the Kelvin Timeline, there may be no need, or even no possibility, for Nero to travel back in time. PARADOX!

Trek has generally avoided outright paradoxes in its time travel. We don't know how they'll resolve this one. That resolution may lead to an answer to what's going on in Picard's show.

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No, those paradoxes are par for the course in Star Trek time travel. In City on the Edge of Forever McCoy goes back in time and changes the timeline so that humanity never went to the stars. It doesn't matter that McCoy in the new timeline had no way of ever reaching the Guardian of Forever in order to go back in time, or even that he may never have existed, because he's not the McCoy who went back in time.

This isn't "self-correcting" so much as noting that, for purposes of what makes Picard's show happen... the changes may not matter.

Yes, Kirk dies instead of Spock. But, just like before, we get the dead one back anyway. No net change. And so, the Enterprise gets to be NCC-1701-A a bit earlier -that's a name. Big whoop. Kirk and Spock and McCoy and Scotty can still go gallivanting around the galaxy, like before. No big deal. They are still around to get whales in Trek 4, for example.

What changes happen that would make it so that Picard never makes it to the captain's chair? I can't think of any that do so clearly.

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I mean, logically, Picard and everyone in the later series wouldn't exist in recognisable form. Chaos theory would dictate that anyone conceived after the timeline was changed would have the circumstances of their conception altered in minor or major ways, leading to them at best being replaced by what are genetically their twin or non-twin siblings.

But hey, that's not how time travel in fiction generally works, so sure, there may be an alt-history Picard in a rather different looking universe who had some rather different experiences than ours did. But do you think that's really the Picard they want to write about?

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

There is an incidence of a very clear paradox in DS9. A Bajoran poet and writer comes out of the wormhole, and the Bajoran start believing that he is the true Emissary. It also clears up a mystery on how he disappeared, and never finished his most famous work. However, it turns out that he isn't the real Emissary, and was just send to help Sisko understand his role better, and the Prophets return him to the past. Where he finishes his greatest work. Major Kira remembers that it was an unfinished work, but when she checks the historical data, she finds the work completed and that the poet didn't disappear.

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That's not really a logical paradox - that's merely the typical memory-discontinuity found in anyone involved with time travel. It is not so much a paradox as a trope.

I'm talking about outright Grandfather Paradox stuff, where the actions taken during time travel make the action of time travel outright impossible.

In the end, we can speculate endless what would "logically" happen.

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Yes. And it is fun to do so. Please don't try to stop us, for we will trample over you if you get in the way.

MarkB said:

That is explained in-universe. Scotty eventually manages to create a transporter equation that will allow transporters to be used across vast distances, and in/out of warp drive. This was in the far future, probably after the end of DS9.

Spock then takes that knowledge back in time to the Kelvin timeline, and is able to use it to modify a transporter there. It subsequently falls into Khan's hands via Section 31, and he uses it (perhaps further modified through his intellect) for even longer-range transport.

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That certainly wasn't in the movie. And sounds pretty tortured, as I don't think we see Spock ever use such a device on screen. It sounds like writers realizing they had introduced things that would give fans apoplexy, and screwing on a solution in a novelization or comic book after the fact and claiming that makes it better.

And, thankfully, Trek has always been incredibly loose with its canon - if it isn't on a screen, don't count on it.

While I'll posit and consider possible solutions, I actually expect they'll simply say, "Yes, usually, time travel hasn't created alternate timelines. This time it did. Spock fell in a black hole, and was gone, and that's it."

No, those paradoxes are par for the course in Star Trek time travel. In City on the Edge of Forever McCoy goes back in time and changes the timeline so that humanity never went to the stars. It doesn't matter that McCoy in the new timeline had no way of ever reaching the Guardian of Forever in order to go back in time, or even that he may never have existed, because he's not the McCoy who went back in time.

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Hm. Point. I'll have to think about that one.

I mean, logically, Picard and everyone in the later series wouldn't exist in recognisable form. Chaos theory would dictate...

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Um, no. That's not how chaos theory works at all. Chaos theory is about the dynamics of some particular kinds of systems, whose parts are very easy to specify, but whose behaviors are highly dependent upon initial conditions, such that predicting their behavior in the long term is nigh impossible.

We do not know how dependent on initial conditions the history of the Federation, and its planetary populations, are. They are very much not "easy to specify", if nothing else.
There are two basic models for fictional time travel, one is as you describe - any tiny change amplifies astoundingly. The other is that a great many things aren't that dependent on the interactions of a few individuals (meaning, the protagonists). In the latter, most of the universe marches on, hardly noticing the human drama.

Heh. Maybe Discovery changed history.

Umbran said:

That certainly wasn't in the movie. And sounds pretty tortured, as I don't think we see Spock ever use such a device on screen. It sounds like writers realizing they had introduced things that would give fans apoplexy, and screwing on a solution in a novelization or comic book after the fact and claiming that makes it better.

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It was in the movie. In the first movie Spock explains to Scotty that the transporter formula he's using is one that he will invent in the future. He doesn't specify when, but as you pointed out, they weren't using transporters that way during any of the subsequent TV series, so we'd have to assume it was after them.

And then, in the second movie, after Khan uses a transporter to beam to the Klingon homeworld, Scotty complains loudly about how Khan got hold of his transporter beaming equation, letting us as the audience know that this is how he was able to make such a long-range transport.

Um, no. That's not how chaos theory works at all. Chaos theory is about the dynamics of some particular kinds of systems, whose parts are very easy to specify, but whose behaviors are highly dependent upon initial conditions, such that predicting their behavior in the long term is nigh impossible.

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It applies to any and all systems of sufficient complexity. It certainly applies to genetics, whose building blocks are specific, but whose outcomes very enormously depending upon initial conditions.

Nudge those initial conditions even slightly, and a different spermatozoon fertilises the same egg. Genetic result: A person who, if you ran a genetic comparison to their original-universe counterpart, would show as being a twin sibling. At the very least, it's a straight coin-flip whether a person's alt-universe counterpart would be the same sex as they are.

Vary them more (and the vagaries of cellular formation mean that, for anyone conceived more than a few months after the propagation of the triggering event, not only the sperm but also the ovum will be effectively different than their original-universe equivalents), and a genetic comparison to their original-universe counterpart would peg them merely as siblings, not even twin siblings.

And that's assuming that peoples' lives continue to proceed so nigh-identically that the dates of those conceptions tally up identically to those dates in the original universe. Pretty soon, they won't - even tiny changes in initial circumstances will lead to massive accumulations of differences to how peoples' daily lives play out - and the result will be kids born at different times, in different circumstances, and some being born who wouldn't exist in the original universe, and vice versa.


But, as I said, that's just how it would work in reality if such a thing were possible. In TV-land they don't want it to work that way, because they want to explore the different ways their cast's lives would play out, not the lives of the complete strangers who replaced them.

MarkB said:

It was in the movie. In the first movie Spock explains to Scotty that the transporter formula he's using is one that he will invent in the future. He doesn't specify when, but as you pointed out, they weren't using transporters that way during any of the subsequent TV series, so we'd have to assume it was after them.

And then, in the second movie, after Khan uses a transporter to beam to the Klingon homeworld, Scotty complains loudly about how Khan got hold of his transporter beaming equation, letting us as the audience know that this is how he was able to make such a long-range transport.

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Okay, so two lines across two movies are used to establish this? And one of them is really speculation on Scotty's part? Not what I call a solid establishment of the truth.

But, fine. I'll allow that the long-range transporter, while genre-breaking, does not stand as great support of how they aren't in the same universe.

It applies to any and all systems of sufficient complexity. It certainly applies to genetics, whose building blocks are specific, but whose outcomes very enormously depending upon initial conditions.

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It sounds a lot like you are confusing, "Too many variables to account for," and, "chaos theory." You seem to be confusing "complicated" with "extremely sensitive to initial conditions."

The human body (or any multi-cellular organism) is astoundingly complex. Trillions of cells doing their own thing. However, your system is *NOT* all that sensitive to initial conditions - wake up in the morning after sleeping on your left side, or your right side, and it doesn't really make much difference. The body maintains homeostasis, and continues on largely unaffected by small changes.

This compared to a three-body problem, or a damped & driven oscillator, which are incredibly simple systems, but if you do the experiment twice, with a a couple millimeters different placement, and you get completely different results over time.

Lots of seemingly complicated systems are such that differences in initial conditions are corrected for, or dampened away. Many others are such that a small differences in initial conditions lead to small and/or predictable differences in final state. Neither of these are chaotic, and chaos theory does not apply to them.

None of us have traveled in time and changed the past, right? So, none of us can say if the progress of history is really all that sensitive to conditions.

Nudge those initial conditions even slightly, and a different spermatozoon fertilises the same egg. Genetic result: A person who, if you ran a genetic comparison to their original-universe counterpart, would show as being a twin sibling.

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So, is your contention that the overall course of history depends on the detailed content of a person's DNA? That seems a little severe.

We could go very deeply into nature vs nurture here. A person who is at worst Picard's twin is raised with Picard's parents, with Picard's basic life. You think this person is destined to be very different from Picard? I am not convinced.

But, be that as it may, I don't think this will be an issue. I think they are going to (and actually always have) consider the Kelvin timeline *separate* from the Prime, with no impact upon it. I think that was actually the point of having the time travel plot - that they could have a series of movies that *didn't* infringe on their ability to have stories set in the usual canon.

Doubly so now that it looks like the Kelvin timeline movies are done. They aren't going to hitch themselves to a movie timeline that petered out. The movies exist, but have no plot relevance for the Prime Canon.

Why am I so disinterested in this? Seems like it’s kinda in my enjoyment wheelhouse. Oh well.

cmad1977 said:

Why am I so disinterested in this?

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Only you can answer that.

cmad1977 said:

Why am I so disinterested in this?

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Lack of any real information? The trailer doesn't really give us much clue what the series is actually going to be like. At this point it could be anything from an action packed retrospective anthology to a slow paced introspective character study.