New Star Trek

[LordBest]

So going by what is Canon... What has been on screen, the future has changed and Next gen is gone.

I disagree, I think the intent of the alternate reality bit is to let the canon-obsessed have our cake and eat it. We have the already established canon of TOS, TNG DS9 and VOY being preserved in a seperate timeline and a new canon established.

At the very least they have given us all something to debate about for years to come.

 

[Matt Deckard]

It's about time, not dimensions, and unless you want to accept what the man on the street says on occasion to defend an arguement over what is in a book or a magazine, I'd stick with the logic that what is on screen is what has happened in the show. What is on screen is the only thing that carries weight. The past future has been erased so now we only have the new future. Listen to Doc Brown in Back To The Future III "The future hasn't been written."



Rest In Peace

STAR TREK
THE NEXT GENERATION
1987 - 2009

 

[LordBest]

The film also stated it was an alternate reality, not just time travel. Perhaps a symptom of the fact they fell through an artificial black hole or what have you. All I am saying is they clearly intend to keep original canon 'real' and relatively unchanged, and there is enough ambiguity from what is explained on screen to allow that to be possible.
Edit:
http://screenrant.com/star-trek-movie-takes-place-alternate-timeline-vic-4546/
This will be one of the debates which will polarise Trekkers for the rest of time, I think. Personally I'm willing to accept the premise that both realities co-exist, but thats me.

It's about time, not dimensions, and unless you want to accept what the man on the street says on occasion to defend an arguement over what is in a book or a magazine, I'd stick with the logic that what is on screen is what has happened in the show. What is on screen is the only thing that carries weight. The past future has been erased so now we only have the new future. Listen to Doc Brown in Back To The Future III "The future hasn't been written."



Rest In Peace

STAR TREK
THE NEXT GENERATION
1987 - 2009

 

[Dr Doran]

At least we know that in this dimension (i.e. our own, the one we are presently occupying and writing in) -- in its future, I mean -- time travel will never be invented. Or if it will be invented, that will create different pasts than the one we know about. Because if it will be invented, then people will already have gone into the past. Lots of people. As tourists, etc. And there would have to be SOME mention of time travelers in some old texts somewhere -- and there isn't. SOMEONE would have had to mention it: Herodotus, someone like that. "These people say they come from the time yet-to-be when everything is made of metal and chariots push themselves."

The single event that the most people would most want to visit would be the crucifixion of Jesus. And there is not a single mention of any truly strange strangers there. And there is no mention in any text in the history of the entire world of any stranger visiting from the future (from the "anthropoi essomenoi," the "men yet to be" as Homer would phrase it). No Latin historian or incidental writer ever mentions any "peregrinatores temporis" or anything like that either. I cannot believe that it would be possible to be completely, 100% private about one's origin if one plopped into the past.

I believe we can fairly confidently state that if time travel will ever actually be invented, travelers who go back in time will, by that act, have created other dimensions altogether -- dimensions separate from the one that we live in, dimensions in which travelers from the future will be mentioned in Herodotus and other writers, somewhere in at least a single one of the huge corpus of ancient and medieval and Renaissance texts we possess.

That's my logic, at least.

 

[Senator Jack]

The single event that the most people would most want to visit would be the crucifixion of Jesus.

How do you get tickets for that?

 

[Dr Doran]

How do you get tickets for that?

fftopic: Just show up a month before it supposedly happens in the town where it is thought to have happened, and ask if there are any triple crucifixions scheduled, I guess. Supposedly big crowds were there, so no tickets necessary.

A short story called "Behold the Man" (I believe) concerns exactly this topic -- time travelers at Jesus' crucifixion. I do think that would be the single event to draw the greatest number of time travelers.

And now back to STAR TREK -- I forgot to mention -- I loved Uhura's miniskirt/dress thing. I like the idea that the 60s style is coming back in that period - - even if I were to take it on a strictly realistic level, clearly fashions do cycle back. I NEVER thought I'd see bell bottoms, afro haircuts on persons of various ethnicities, and big 70s sunglasses again, but here they are back.

(We can only hope for a Blade Runner/Gattaca future which is enjoying a 1940s stylistic revival, or a Brazil/1984 future "enjoying" a 1930s revival.)

 

[vintage68]

I for one really enjoyed it, and thought it brought a breath of fresh air in to a series that had become stale and, dare I say, somewhat.....inbred?

 

[scottyrocks]

As said in the movie, it's time that has been altered. And like in Quantum Leap, Spock like Sam changed time to the point where there was no future that resembled their own to go back to. This means no DS-9 and Voyager as well. It's all there on the screen. Spock says it himself and the crew agrees... Time has been changed and the future from this point on is altered.

Goodbye Next Generation

Not necessarily. Just because an aspect of the past is changed doesnt automatically mean that all future events will be changed. Im not talking about DS9 or TNG in particular, but ceratin (some? many?) things certainly could unfold the same way in different futures.

 

[scottyrocks]

At least we know that in this dimension (i.e. our own, the one we are presently occupying and writing in) -- in its future, I mean -- time travel will never be invented. Or if it will be invented, that will create different pasts than the one we know about. Because if it will be invented, then people will already have gone into the past. Lots of people. As tourists, etc. And there would have to be SOME mention of time travelers in some old texts somewhere -- and there isn't. SOMEONE would have had to mention it: Herodotus, someone like that. "These people say they come from the time yet-to-be when everything is made of metal and chariots push themselves."

The single event that the most people would most want to visit would be the crucifixion of Jesus. And there is not a single mention of any truly strange strangers there. And there is no mention in any text in the history of the entire world of any stranger visiting from the future (from the "anthropoi essomenoi," the "men yet to be" as Homer would phrase it). No Latin historian or incidental writer ever mentions any "peregrinatores temporis" or anything like that either. I cannot believe that it would be possible to be completely, 100% private about one's origin if one plopped into the past.

I believe we can fairly confidently state that if time travel will ever actually be invented, travelers who go back in time will, by that act, have created other dimensions altogether -- dimensions separate from the one that we live in, dimensions in which travelers from the future will be mentioned in Herodotus and other writers, somewhere in at least a single one of the huge corpus of ancient and medieval and Renaissance texts we possess.

That's my logic, at least.

One aspect of quantum physics is the idea that at any point in time, any decision you make will forever alter future events - IOW, alternate realities. And we accept it for what it is because it unfolds the way it does.

If someone, or lots of someones, have traveled back in time, we might not even know it, as our immediate realities would change, and we would just go on with our lives. The time traveler(s) may not even have been identified as such. They could have just 'wandered into town,' and then departed.

What blows a Mac-truck sized hole in that theory, however, is that some of us would just simply cease to exist if enough people went back in time and did things that would result in a huge alteration of future events.

However, each time that the present changed because someone went back in time and, lets say, prevented the murder of an Adolf Hitler or Napoleon, we'd never know it because our memories of what has happened in 'our' past would be the norm.

Fun stuff, eh?

 

[anon`]

It's about time, not dimensions, and unless you want to accept what the man on the street says on occasion to defend an arguement over what is in a book or a magazine, I'd stick with the logic that what is on screen is what has happened in the show. What is on screen is the only thing that carries weight. The past future has been erased so now we only have the new future. Listen to Doc Brown in Back To The Future III "The future hasn't been written."



Rest In Peace

STAR TREK
THE NEXT GENERATION
1987 - 2009

With all due respect Matt, your logic is severely flawed.

It assumes that there can be only one "reality", requires that one accepts it is possible to travel back in time and somehow alter the events that history (accurately, for our purposes) records, thus rewriting the future. However, because the future has been altered (destroyed, one might say), the future individual who traveled back in time and made the change will cease to exist because they have destroyed the present from which they came.
This differs from the standard theory of time travel: that all time travel creates closed-loop paradoxes. This also assumes that there is only one "reality". And can be summed up--with all respect to Peter Pan and Leoben--as "All this has happened before. All this will happen again." This is your traditional ontological and/or predestination paradox, and it pops up all over the place in the genre.

To highlight the difference here, consider the hunter, a well-known example of such a paradox: a man is out hunting when he is shot by another individual. He survives, but it crippled. As a result of this, he devotes his life to creating a time machine, and 30 years later is successful in his endeavour. With his new time machine, he travels 30 years into the past, intending to shoot the man who shot him, but first.
Typically, this story continues on to explain the paradox: he finds the other man in the forest and shoots him, only to discover that he has shot himself, 30 years in the past. Thus, the he was the "original" shooter.
If, however, the shooter was someone else entirely, and the future man succeeded in shooting him before he (the time traveler) was shot, then he would never have been left crippled and would never have set about to invent a time machine and thus, would never have gone back in time to save himself from being shot.

When the paradox ceases to be a closed loop, it collapses on itself. This is true in all cases, unless one accepts that there are an more than one "realities" in play. It follows that, at any instant in time, an infinite number of alternate realities are brought into existence based on how any "thing" within the present is interacting with the universe around it. This is the only logical way to explain the new Star Trek film, even if you don't care about preserving the canon: even if we accept that Nero will eventually be born into this "new" reality, and that the star still goes supernova, and he is still pulled 150-odd years into the past in the effort to prevent it... he achieved his aim in the film. So when he is born into this "new reality"... there will be no Vulcan. One can argue that when he is thrown back in time it will be there, but that fails to explain why the future would be altered on his first trip back in time, but not on all subsequent trips back. If the theory works, as they say, it works.

Credit where it is due, however: it is true that there will very likely be no TOS, TNG, etc (at least, as we knew them) in this new reality. But it doesn't mean that the established material we already know just suddenly blinked out of all existence.

Anyway, as much fun as discussing theoretical physics is, the entire plot was kinda wrecked by the fact that we're supposed believe that a race of people capable of interstellar, faster-than-light travel somehow couldn't detect that a star was about to go supernova. That isn't exactly a process that occurs overnight, after all.

 

[scotrace]

Saw it last night - LOVE.

 

[Slim Portly]

Saw it last night - LOVE.

That's it? You aren't going to argue with anyone? Sheesh.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

I for one really enjoyed it, and thought it brought a breath of fresh air in to a series that had become stale and, dare I say, somewhat.....inbred?

Totally agree, saw it today and thought it was excellent. Thoughts the new "Bones" and "Scotty" were superb. Looking forward to more future films.

 

[Matt Deckard]

It was made clear as crystal to you all by Doc Brown in Back to The Future II when the Doc explained that by Biff going back to the 50's and giving himself the Sports Almanac, he changed the 1985 to which the Doc and Marty returned. When Marty asked why they couldn't go back to the future to get the Almanac before old Biff got ahold of it, the Doc told Marty that that future was now changed and they'd have to go back to 1955 to get the almanac from the old Biff that took it from the future that no longer exists.

Also, in Star Trek, before Kirk and Scotty beam to the Enterprise, Kirk tells old Spock that being back in time and helping them out is cheating. Spock infers that he learned that trick from an old friend, referring to going and getting the Whales in Trek IV. They explained that there is now an alternate reality, the old reality is no more. Spock like Marty cannot go back to a future where everything is as it was, he can however go to a future where Vulcan is still destroyed. This is a movie about time travel and not about dimensions.

Rest In Peace

STAR TREK
DEEP SPACE NINE
1993 - 2009

I disagree, I think the intent of the alternate reality bit is to let the canon-obsessed have our cake and eat it. We have the already established canon of TOS, TNG DS9 and VOY being preserved in a seperate timeline and a new canon established.

At the very least they have given us all something to debate about for years to come.

Nothing debatable about what's on screen. If you want to believe in a heretical new universe where there is a Next generation that's fine, yet it won't be part of Star Trek and will be made up by each individual. In effect an imaginary Trek for people who don't want to believe what they've seen.

 

[anon`]

Also, in Star Trek, before Kirk and Scotty beam to the Enterprise, Kirk tells old Spock that being back in time and helping them out is cheating. Spock infers that he learned that trick from an old friend, referring to going and getting the Whales in Trek IV. They explained that there is now an alternate reality, the old reality is no more. Spock like Marty cannot go back to a future where everything is as it was, he can however go to a future where Vulcan is still destroyed. This is a movie about time travel and not about dimensions.

Yes, but the whale thing was a closed loop.

I hope you're being facetious with this. Especially since it doesn't take much thinking at all to comprehend that "alternate" is not synonymous with "mutually exclusive".

If not, well then I give up, because you'll never understand it.

So how about that onboard brewery, huh? [huh]

 

[John in Covina]

Yes, but the whale thing was a closed loop.

I hope you're being facetious with this. Especially since it doesn't take much thinking at all to comprehend that "alternate" is not synonymous with "mutually exclusive".

If not, well then I give up, because you'll never understand it.

So how about that onboard brewery, huh? [huh]

So a time line that doesn't exist because it was changed still exists but it's not there anymore in that dimension? Where does it go?

If I could save time in a bottle? If words could make wishes come true?

 

[Lensmaster]

I'm getting dizzy reading all this explanation of science that doesn't exist. I loved the movie. The plot was a little thin. But the character development based on the actors in TOS was great. You can all go on and argue how an alternate history saves all the other series and movies for the fanboys. I dismissed all the plot issues explaining how this was a new history and just enjoyed it as a new telling of stories about this collection of characters on a ship called the Enterprise. To me this is completely unrelated to all the other Star Treks. After all this is, hopefully the start of a new series of movies. The Superman movies of the 70's had no connection to the George Reeves series. All the Tarzan movies that have been made over the years didn't have to justify their movies in relation to the "canon" of the Johnny Weissmuller movies, which had very little to do with the books they were based on.

 

[cooncatbob]

I love the movie but thought the science behind the plot was very dodgy.
The Romulan home world was destroyed by a Super Nova?
Only super massive star go super nova, super massive star don't have planets that can support life and even if they did they give a long warning before they blow. Long enough to evacuate the planet.
Also why was Ambassador Spock piloting the ship with the "Red Matter" he's no longer in Star Fleet, and why did Nero consider a star blowing up Spock's fault?
How is it that a "mining ship" from the future is more powerful then a fleet of "War Ships"?
What was Nero doing for the 25 years from James Kirk's birth till he joined Star Fleet, his ship would have needed maintenance and to be to be resupplied.
I enjoyed the movie when I watch it but once I got home and started thinking I realized the plot had more holes then Swiss Cheese.
Why can't they get "Real" Science Fiction writer to write the screen plays for these movies.

 

[Macheath]

I love the movie but thought the science behind the plot was very dodgy.
The Romulan home world was destroyed by a Super Nova?
Only super massive star go super nova, super massive star don't have planets that can support life and even if they did they give a long warning before they blow. Long enough to evacuate the planet.
Also why was Ambassador Spock piloting the ship with the "Red Matter" he's no longer in Star Fleet, and why did Nero consider a star blowing up Spock's fault?
How is it that a "mining ship" from the future is more powerful then a fleet of "War Ships"?
What was Nero doing for the 25 years from James Kirk's birth till he joined Star Fleet, his ship would have needed maintenance and to be to be resupplied.
I enjoyed the movie when I watch it but once I got home and started thinking I realized the plot had more holes then Swiss Cheese.
Why can't they get "Real" Science Fiction writer to write the screen plays for these movies.

Another thing:

-What was the point of drilling into the planet's cores? A black hole created on the surface and and black hole in the core would both destroy the planet. Seems like the drill was nothing more than a plot device.


The fact that I didn't start thinking about any of these inconsistencies until after the movie is a testament to its great story telling.

Still, I wish there weren't so many holes to ponder, since they make a second viewing a film much less enjoyable.

 

[Lone_Ranger]

Why can't they get "Real" Science Fiction writer to write the screen plays for these movies.

The writing would be considered " too cerebral."