Things Enterprise can use from other Trek series

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Well, maybe not in the [iost_uid0]first[/iost_uid0] place... But it was in [iost_uid0]some[/iost_uid0] place... time... dimension... whatever. It was... would have been...

Never mind.[/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]They seem to be very fond of just 're-setting' time in [iost_uid0]Voyager[/iost_uid0] - it happened in the episode just mentioned, plus several others ("Year of Hell" being the only one that I can remember right now).[/colorost_uid0]

[Michiel]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]It also happened in Relativity.

Resetting time is the best way to repair damage to the time-line caused by time-travel.

Relativity though, as well as many many many other episodes make absolutely no sense. At one point they had captured 3 versions of the same criminal, each from a different time-period. They were to be 'reintegrated' before the trial, but I keep thinking. If they captured the criminal from the earliest time-period, the other two would never have existed. In fact, the whole episode would probably never have existed. It would, again, cause a temporal paradox. They have some strange explanations for all this. Each episode another, but I still like Daniëls explanation best.

[quoteost_uid0]You're thinking of time-travel like we're in some H.G. Wells novel. We're not. It's far more complicated. There's no way for you to understand.[/quoteost_uid0]

I changed my sig. [/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]*coughcoughCOP-OUTcoughcough*

Well, it is.[/colorost_uid0]

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]*coughcoughCOP-OUTcoughcough*
[/quoteost_uid0]

"But that ship, and all the Borg on it..."

"Jean-Luc, you think in such limited three-dimensional terms."

You were saying?[/colorost_uid0]

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Edit: Ignore this, folks, nothing to see here, just a little server glitch. Move on, move on, it's all over.[/colorost_uid0]

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I would add something intelligent to this conversation, but my brain has turned to mush from all the temporal tangling, so I won't.[/colorost_uid0]

[Katy Jane]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0="Michiel"]It also happened in Relativity.[/quoteost_uid0]
and "time and again"
and does "futures end" count?
how about "timeless"
and oh yeah "endgames"! :swear:[/colorost_uid0]

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I have the Star Trek Communicator's special on time travel episodes stashed somewhere in my drawer. There are TOO many time travel episodes to count with my fingers. And yes, I agree that the Big Reset Button plot device is a MAJOR cop-out, because it means that the writers can get away with anything without consequence!

Star Trek is not the only series which does this. "The Locket" from Farscape, for example, is one of the biggest reset button episodes I have [iost_uid0]ever[/iost_uid0] seen, aside from maybe "Year of Hell".[/colorost_uid0]

[NAHTMMM]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I don't like reset buttons either, for the most part. And there are a lot of them in the ST novels, which isn't too surprising I suppose since the writers mostly seem to feel they can't mess up the continuity too badly for those who come afterwards.

I freely admit that my reaction to a particular reset is biased by my reaction to the story in which it occurs. I fully believe that the one in [iost_uid0]Here There Be Dragons[/iost_uid0], a novel which I consider below-average, is contrived and unnecessary. The author doesn't even bother to show much disappointment on the characters' part.
One could justifiably claim there's a reset in [iost_uid0]Ishmael[/iost_uid0] (which I really like, and which [iost_uid0]is[/iost_uid0] a time travel story), but that reset was actually an interesting reaction on the part of the character who was affected.[/colorost_uid0]

[Nan]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I once figured out that the only way the past could be altered to your benefit is that it was done so by someone who was completely and wholly unconnected to you.

See, if you went back in time to, say, kill Stalin, history from the point of his "new" death would change.

Because of the change, the circumstances of your life and your parent's lives would change, and you, A.) may never be born, or B.) never experience the circumstance which would create the scenario of you even WANTING to kill Stalin.

In which case, you would never go back in time to kill him. Meaning, he would not be dead. Meaning, you would then return to the original line of events which propelled you on the course to kill Stalin. At which point, you would be stuck in a loop.

Anyway, you can't change time. There are too many unknown variables. The... whassitcalled... the Uncertainty Principle. Events have been set since the beginning of the universe ion the level of interacting energy and matter, we can never just SEE what's going to happen. The only reason why we can make choices is because we are not aware of those subatomic particles, even though they do have an effect.

It's kind of like the Matrix. But different.

The only conceivable way I could think of that a person could willy nilly change time is if they had somehow been pushed OUTSIDE the regular flow of time and space in some freaky parallel universe, where the various laws of the universe would not affect them. But then they'd probably be all out of step with time and never age, or age too quickly, etc.

So, all in all... time travel = too damn hard to figure out. [/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]There also the fact that it would (and this has just occured to me) unbalance the weight of matter in the universe. 'Cos, you see, if you jump back then you'd be removing matter from your time and adding it to the universe of the prevoius time that you were visiting. I'm not exactly sure what effect it would cause, but's it's bound to do something bad, even if it was only over the long term.

Frankly I'm all in favour of accepting the Vulcan Science Directorate's conclusion that time travel is impossible and that I've just haluncinated anything I've ever read or seen that involved people time traveling in any way.

The eagle-eyed among you may notice that this does not include "Timescape".[/colorost_uid0]

[NAHTMMM]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0="PointyHairedJedi"]There also the fact that it would (and this has just occured to me) unbalance the weight of matter in the universe. 'Cos, you see, if you jump back then you'd be removing matter from your time and adding it to the universe of the prevoius time that you were visiting.[/quoteost_uid0]
It wouldn't be any worse than if you had set a bowling ball at the origin of a Cartesian grid painted on the floor, then returned and put it somewhere else on the y-axis. Time is just another axis (or set of axes), like the x-axis that you just deprived of mass, the ordinates of which when taken with all other coordinates define a particular place, time, and whatever else needs defining, in a spacetime continuum.

Now, if you were to remove a nontrivial amount of mass from one universe and scatter it around another universe so that it couldn't be measured or returned, I agree, you'd have messed up a universe or two pretty badly.[/colorost_uid0]

[Michiel]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Well, if you travel ten minutes back in time, and then just wait out those ten minutes in a dark corner untill you see yourself travel back in time, (this would be like Harry Potter 3), you'd actually be adding mass to the total 4-axis spacetime-continuüm (4 dimensions, width, height, depth and time).

If you weigh 75kg, you'd add 75kg to ten minutes ago, but that'd only last for 10 minutes, because then the first you travels back in time. :smile: So that would add a total of 45000 KgSeconds to the spacetime-continuüm. (I'm not sure if that unit exists, theoratically, but it would in temporal mechanics ) You wouldn't be taking mass away from your current time. This would even work if you go back a 100 years. You die, decompose, and your mass stays in the universe.

On the other hand, if you go back in time, like a 100 years, and go back later it depends. If the time you would go back to travels forward like the time you spend in the past, it'd be like PHJ said. You'd take mass away from your time, and add mass to the past, but the total mass of the spacetime-continuüm would stay the same. But if you travel back a 100 years, then travel back to the exact moment you originally left, you'd again add mass to the total spacetime-continuüm, like in the 10-minutes-example.[/colorost_uid0]

[Nan]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]The only way I can figure that you could time travel would be to go to the future. You could return to your own time frame but only to AFTER you'd left for the future.

Cue "special time" HHGTTG verbage. [/colorost_uid0]

[Michiel]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]The only way I can figure that you could time travel would be to go to the future. You could return to your own time frame but only to AFTER you'd left for the future.[/quoteost_uid0]

I don't understand, why is that? There could still be a temporal paradox.

And the thing about travel to the future... I could never travel 70 years to the future and see myself as an old man, because if that were possible, time would somehow 'know' I'd ever travel back. In Back To The Future, you can run into your future self, but there are also movies/episodes where, if you travel 70 years to the future, you'd end up in a time where you misteriously disappeared 70 years ago , as it should be, of course.[/colorost_uid0]

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]But if you have disappeared, the same problem still applies, because you would know that you didn't travel back. Or you would still have disappeared, even in your own time. Then you could never travel back, except for if you figure you can't change your own past and therefor must hide and live as a hermit, so that no-one would know you're still there.

[quoteost_uid0]... anything I've ever read or seen that involved people time traveling in any way.[/quoteost_uid0]
Have you?[/colorost_uid0]

[Michiel]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]But if you have disappeared, the same problem still applies, because you would know that you didn't travel back. Or you would still have disappeared, even in your own time. Then you could never travel back, except for if you figure you can't change your own past and therefor must hide and live as a hermit, so that no-one would know you're still there.[/quoteost_uid0]

That's not what I mean. What I mean is that if you travel to the future without anyone knowing it (maybe without anyone knowing time travel even exists), they'd think you've dissapeared. So by traveling to the future, you've changed it. When you travel back to your own time, the original time-line would be restored, and you wouldn't have 'dissapeared', because.. there you are.

My point is, you could never travel to the future and see your future self.[/colorost_uid0]

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Why not? You haven't disappeared if you travel back right?

[iost_uid0]My[/iost_uid0] point is, you can't go to the future, find out you have disappeared, and then go back to go on with your life.[/colorost_uid0]

[Michiel]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]Why not? You haven't disappeared if you travel back right?[/quoteost_uid0]

But [iost_uid0]time[/iost_uid0] doesn't 'know' you are ever going to travel back, right? Your traveling to the future made you disappear, if you travel back to the exact moment you left, you'd never have disappeared.[/colorost_uid0]