I'm resurrecting this topic to get some discussion of the Temporal Cold War going. I know a lot of people are bothered by all the time-travel on this show, and concerned about the continuity within the timeline to the other shows, but let me try to explain why it doesn't bother me.

The Temporal Cold War, as laid out when the show started, was part of the show's premise, as much as being lost in the Delta Quadrant was part of Voyager's. The idea, as I've always seen it, is that we are not seeing the original timeline, as it appeared in Kirk's history book. What we are seeing is from the perspective of Daniels, or some other future observer, who is looking back from the future and seeing the changes being made to the timeline by other combatants in the TCW. This person (who we'll assume is still Daniels even though we just watched him die in "Storm Front") has a vested interest in protecting the timeline as we the viewers know it.

But a story told from Daniels's actual point of view would be pretty confusing, with time travel in every single episode, and almost no linear time other than Daniels's own experience. So instead, they've decided to play it from Archer's point of view. Someone in the affected time period, who only experiences the TCW on those occasions when it overlaps his experience. I think that's a really interesting way to tell a time-travel story, and some of the best Trek episodes have done that. (DS9's "The Visitor" comes to mind, with Sisko jumping forward in time but we see the story from Jake's perspective. Granted, that episode's biggest strength is the emotion of their relationship and not the mechanics of the plot, but still).

The good thing about this story-telling method is that it allows the writers to do things like put the Earth in peril from the Xindi in S3. I knew the Earth wouldn't be destroyed, but not because Earth couldn't be destroyed because it still existed in Kirk's time. I knew it only because I knew the heroes would win.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the issue of time travel in this series at large.

That's what I've suspected and hoped for since the beginning of the series once I realized things were going to be so far out of accepted Trek continuity that there would have to be some "let's put the time-space continuum in the shop" kinda work. I hoped this aspect - the affected timeline - would have been more obvious throughout the first three (sheesh - all those episodes, so little entertainment) seasons so that we'd know that the heroes primary mission, even if they weren't directly aware of it, was to correct things back to 'causal-set prime'.

I think they may have even gotten away with not doing that if Daniels had been a more interesting, entertaining and compelling character, but... he's a piece of plywood, so the writers needed to work harder. They didn't and damned Enterprise to be my MST3K fodder show.

Now, I'm not immediately spiteful of time travel episodes. I grew up watching time travel related shows and movies so it's just another storytelling foundation for me, not an immediately spite-worthy plot device. But... it has to be handled correctly and beyond the first few episodes of the entire series, it's felt like a fumble on Enterprise.

I've not give up yet. Haven't seen 4x01 yet so, like the foolishly loyal dullard I am, I'm hoping the possibility of seeing true unique quality on the time travel front isn't lost.

Remember Gary Seven [SEE: "Assignment: Earth" ST:TOS #2-26]? Now there was a guy who knew how to handle time travel! Too bad the PTB can't/won't bring him back.

The biggest problem on time travel for the trekverse is no one has laid down the law on how it should work. Various episodes contradict, implying more than one set of rules to the universe. Best shout out to the inconsistency is when Seven of Nine was reciting a list of different time paradox theories and giving examples. Is Trek in a liner, loop, or infinite possible parallels model. Each has different rules of logic, cause & effect. And then there’s that whole mess of some beings and technology can exist outside of time and not be affected by any of the goings on. Pass the migraine drugs.
Time travel paradox has been done well in Trek and other sci-fi so why can’t the writers do better? Just make up your minds on how the universe is put together to start with and stick with it.

I love me a good time travel story. I've enjoyed most of the ones on Star Trek. In the "Storm Front, Part I" thread, I actually listed several occasions of time travel to times around the 20th Century and I've enjoyed the majority of these episodes:



I liked both time-traveling movies (TVH and FC) a lot. I also like pseudo-time travel episodes, such as TNG's "Timescape," "Tapesty," DS9's "Children of Time," and VGR's "Year of Hell" and "Shattered."

I don't see that as a problem. Trek is, in a way, a sci-fi anthology show. Each episode is a different sci-fi concept, but it's connected by the same characters who live in a sci-fantasy world. So if the writers come up with a good time travel story, limiting themselves with a bunch of rules hampers their ability to tell a good story.

Besides which, they're constantly using different methods to time-travel. Who's to say that a different time travel method doesn't subject you to different rules? A wormhole turns into a pre-destination paradox, but a slingshot around the sun allows you to make changes (for example).

I agree with Miles O'Brien from a DS-9 episode where he sort-of slips in time. Talking to himself, they say in unison, "I hate temporal mechanics." I think...Maybe "I hate time travel..."

To add to the list, there was a TOS episode where they went back to a primordial age on one planet, and another, I think where they went back a few days ("Naked Time?").

Was Gary Seven a time traveller?

Technically, all faster-than-light travel is time travel, but that's another story.

If we go there in regard to Trek, then I just give up completely.

Cleo, I like your interpretation of the premise of the show, but I don't feel that they've really gotten that all across to the audience very well. If the TCW is such a primary plot point, then it should have gotten more attention than it has. More background, more explanation, better storytelling. As it stands, it's all very haphazard to me and not a clear and compelling storyline.

I think they were going for mysterious and intriguing and ended up with confusing and annoying.

Normally, I like time travel stories as well, but sticking the TCW at the end of the Xindi arc was, IMO, wrong. The Xindi arc should have been able to stand on it's own. Now, that was something that started with very little understanding, and look at the payoff. (Well, I liked it. A lot.) The characters showed some growth (and some regressed, I'm looking at you T'Pol). I don't see how the TCW can advance the characters or any futher stories.

Something that I've been trying to wrap my brain around lately is the whole AlienNazi premise. Even if Quantum and Co. manage to defeat them (and in turn the Nazis), they still have altered history. Wouldn't that mean that the crew of Enterprise is going to have knowledge that doesn't reconcile with the history books? Oh, yeah, the reset button.

Excuse me, I have to take some aspirin, I've got a headache.

ITA. I think the only good TCW eps were the series premiere and Shockwave, and I don't think they were that good. They just kept building up the "mystery" to a point where I knew they wouldn't be able to resolve it well (Storm Front, I'm looking at you).

Gary Seven wasn't a time traveller. The people he worked for grabbed a few humans a while back, trained them over generations, etc.

It might be interesting if they did keep the-Nazis-invading-the-U.S. (however unbelievable that is) timeline and this alteration led to something called the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. Just a thought.

But Archer's already mentioned the Eugenics Wars.

Has he? I totally didn't remember that.

So much for making this time travel stuff relevent as a prequel to the TOS world.

I usually like time travel. I loved "Year of Hell", even though admittedly most of that love was because I got to see Voyager get destroyed. In fact, I've actually been a fan of the TCW up to this point. But once I saw the Alien!Nazi all that changed. First of all, I was really hoping that the Season 4 premier would be the crew relaxing on Earth and dealing with their famlies and all of that stuff. But instead I saw the Alien!Nazi and I instantly knew that there would be no break, and that we were going immidiatly into some other thing. Secondly, "Storm Front" has just really confused me in regards to the TCW. If Daniel's was defeated, how could he bring Quantum and Enterprise back in time? If I was fighting a temporal war, the first thing I'd do to my enemies is take away their ability to time travel. I guess Vosk(?) didn't do that. And like other's have said, how is the timeline going to be fixed if Quantum and co. are too late from stopping the Nazi's from invading the U.S.? Either blowing up the Temporal Subway Station is going to be one HUGE Reset Button, or Quantum and qrew will just have to hope the altered timeline won't have too big an effect on their present. Personally, I hope it's the latter and we end up seeing the formation of the Terran Empire.

On another note, I've got a small time travel related question. During the Xindi arc, Daniels (I think) said that the Golden Girls had technology that let them look into the future, but didn't have actual time travel, and that's why they were using the Xindi. If that's true, then how did the Golden Girls send those Reptilians back in time to Chicago? Was that ever explained?

I think you nailed it, frenchtoast. They haven't executed as well as they should have. And the glacial pace has been frustrating.


I'm still hoping they'll tell us that the resolution of the Xindi arc actually caused the events that led to the Alienazi story, so it makes more sense that the crew got pulled into it right away.

Gilmel, he once mentioned that one of his ancestors was involved in an incident of the Eugenics Wars involving refugees in North Africa, I think.

As in, destroying the Spheres and stopping the Guardians opened the door for the Alienazi faction somehow?

See, that? would be good. Especially considering that the spheres were supposed to be around until the time of the Enterprise J and messing with them had to screw around with other stuff. If they actually somehow tie this into the Xindi arc so that it's not like they picked some random time to pull them all into the past, this episode may redeem itself yet.

One huge flaw I see in Storm Front II's impending reset button is that if they succeed, then everything resets as if the Alien Nazis never happened. But then wouldn't that mean Archer died on the Xindi weapon? How did he get from the weapon to the past anyway?

Or destroying the weapon or something like that, exactly.


Heh. Maybe that's why I take a brighter view of the TCW. Because I'm constantly going, "hey if they took what they did and put this spin on it, that would be cool."

Anyway, I really assume the events are connected, or else why would Daniels suddenly pull them here like that, unless he more or less had to catch them the very instant they resolved the Xindi threat?

I guess I had thought like some upthread that the Giant Reset Button would take them at least back to the beginning of the Xindi arc, if not the beginning of the whole damn series. Because the TCW was introduced in the very first episode, right?

I need to try out Cleo's temporal optimism when thinking about this.

It seems that the Alienazis are renegades to all the factions of the TCW. So if they reset them out, the TCW is still there, just not in as big a way.

My take on this was that the Vosk's (sp) alteration of the 20th century takes some time to ripple all the way up to the 31st century. Daniels might have been in "mid-flight," or traveling from the future to the past, as it were, during the alteration. Thus, as he was sliding into the past, his base in the 31st century was lost, so his body started to fade from the timeline as he moved through it. I'm not sure it's coming out as clearly in writing as it is in my head. I'm sort of invisioning Daniels using a sort of time tunnel into the past that's being corrupted as he's traveling. Thus, he can still affect time (move himself and the Enterprise into the 20th century) since he's already in the process, but with time altering around him, he can't stay temporally stable.

Anyway, just a thought. Of course, timeline alterations have been shown to be quick in "The City on the Edge of Forever" and in "Yesterday's Enterprise," so who knows?

Is optimism allowed at TWoP? Doesn't that undermine the snark?

It's all a matter of expectations and how your mind fills in the blanks. My inner Carl Sagen keeps beating his fists on the wall and sob pitifully. On that thought this past season PBS had a kick ass doc on time travel with an entire chapter of science vrs sci-fi using Star Trek examples for being ripped open by the uber brains. Muwahahah. Fun in a mind hurting kind of way. It was followed by string theory, ow.
Should changes in time be instant or trickle down? It depends on the universe model being used but it should always be consistent which we do not see here.
Well [/B]Cleo[B] I fail to see how the method of getting from point A to B would change the rules of the universe that A and B are in. Provided they are in the same universe to begin with. I could fly, walk, drive or bus from LA to NY but the choice does not change the rules of physics for the universe. At best we could say is the method changes the experience we have. Which is fine for the characters but for us the audience, we get the problems of the semi-omniscient viewpoint. We know and experience more than the characters get to. Where is that bottle of codeine?
I just want the TCW to end so we can move on to something else. I will personally break the knuckles of the writers if they go near time paradoxes again.

When Daniels first showed up in the Xindi arc, he said that it took time for the effects of a change in the past to ripple through the timeline, but in Shockwave, clearly the effect was instant. The writers pretty much use the rules that suit them best at the moment.

These are the times when I rejoice that I have a "literature" brain and not a "science" brain. I have not been bothered one iota about the time travel rules being impossible or inconsistent, because so far everything has served the story (such as it is). Apparently I have no "inner Carl Sagen."

Lucky you. Means you can focus on important things like character and plot.
Sometimes my art brain shuts up my science brain. "I don't care if it makes no sense, it looks cool!"
The primal brain goes," Shush!" every time Trip smiles. The crowd does ignore science brain when the writing is good enough to outshine the problems. Classic Trek is a good example. City on The Edge of Forever rocks. Where's the Guardian gate when you need it? Sad that a ring of stone can communicate the nuances of time better than Daniels. You would think beings like the Q would have something to say about mere mortals messing with forces they do not understand. I take that back. Do not want a Q episode on Enterprise; even if tormenting Archer would have its moments. How many omnipotent aliens are in the Trekverse? How many are outside of linear time? How many lost civilization ruins with time and space technology sitting around? So many missed opportunities.

While having Q on Enterprise would in all likelihood seriously fuck with continuity, it still doesn't stop me from wanting him to show up. Who else could add some much needed humor to Enterprise as well as Q could?



Not to mention the girlish giggles...

(Yes, sometimes I'm 12.)

You got to have optimism to counter the snark or the snark is no fun.

What past paradoxes are you objecting to?
Do we know what race the AlienNatzis are?

While I heartily agree that we need some humor, please don't invite Q back. We need a new annoying, er, I mean, wildcard character.

You don't need Q back. After all, wasn't the Alpha quadrant in Kirk's time lousy with Omnipotent-god-like-beings who liked to mess with the primitives just because it was fun?

Were have they been? If there has a reason for gratuitous time travel you'd guess they'd be perfect. Personally, I would've been more open to the time travel stuff if it had been a Q-like being getting his kicks at the expense of the Enterprise crew. His behavior would've made a lot more sense than Daniel's, that's for sure.

Hmm, now that I think about it...... I definitely agree. Both Daniels and Q confuse their respective Enterprise crew, so why not just let it be a Q playing with them rather than a Daniels popping in and out when he pleases to fix the timeline. (And for that matter, why does he recruit someone from the 22nd century to fix things? Why not just send a couple of 31st century people to the point just before the opposing force sends someone, and stop them without ever needing to come into contact with that time period's residents?)

I do think it would be interesting to see a non-linear being's view on these changing timelines. If it were on Bajor, we could see the Prophets be confused by it (see: the Milennium novel trilogy). Or what does Q think about people other than him threatening to erase humanity's past?

That said, I can live without Q visiting the NX-01.

Oooh, so not a good idea for this episode. I wish I wasn't so focussed on those things because I think they blew more than the science.

But that's not the same thing. I mean, take relativity. If you take that trip from LA to NY via any of those transportation methods, the effect of relativity will be so small that you won't notice it, because you really weren't traveling very fast. Your motion will be described by Newton's Laws, but that doesn't mean Einstein's relativity doesn't exist.

My analogy is pretty crummy, but my point is that if you try to compare certain aspects of physics to real-life observable things, the comparison doesn't always work out.

I was watching Voyager's "Relativity" today, which includes the concept of temporal psychosis - an illness caused by too much time travel. I don't think this gets a mention in any of the other time travel episodes, but I think it might explain a lot about Daniels.

I generally like the time travel episodes, and the way none of them really fit together doesn't really bother me. I think it's part of the charm of Trek that it's not consistent, as long as I don't think about it too hard. I totally agree with what Cleo said, way upthread:

Let Q come if he has to, when Trip is in charge. God knows whats gonna happen if Archer gets riled up more than he already is.

At least Trip plays the humor better

A discussion in the episode thread for The City On The Edge Of Forever got me thinking about how time travel is viewed in Star Trek. It seems that whenever various crew members go back in time in order to right wrongs, they end up taking actions that run the risk of screwing up the timeline in other ways. McCoy saved the life of an old woman dying of kidney disease. The whole crew of the Enterprise took a scientific researcher with them (Although, to be fair, that meant that she couldn't breed Camdens, so that may be for the best). The DS9 folks got involved in a bar fight.

Hell, even Kirk and Spock stealing clothes meant that money that would have gone for food in Depression-era America would have gone to replace the outfits instead.

So: What's with all this time travel? Why is it that while attempting to make everything right again, they all end up taking perfectly voluntary actions that run the major risk of making everything worse?

I've enjoyed most of the Time-Travel on the first four series. "City on the Edge of Forever," "Tapestry," and "Trials & Tribblations" routinely top fan favorites for the various series. I also enjoyed aspects of it in Voyager ("Shattered," "Future's End," "Year of Hell"), but I thought the concept of "Endgame" felt derived from "Timeless." First Contact and The Voyage Home were great movies.

Enterprise bugs with its (over)usage of time travel because it often makes me wonder just how the events are supposed to connect with the later shows. In essence, Archer et al.'s future was already written for us, the audience, so seeing Temporal Cold Wars, Xindi attacks, and even the Borg come from future interference was very offsetting. That said, "Twilight" I enjoyed.

In the end, time travel is fun for the "What-ifs" (Although there are only so many times I can see the "What if the Nazis had won" scenario).

I agree that TCW was a concept that was ill conceived, but the time travel Trek episode that I didn't like was DS9's Past Tense. I understand that one person can make a difference, but I just don't see how Gabriel Bell being remembered made such a huge impact, especially when you take into account that WWIII was still in the wings waiting to reset the planet. In addition, the timeline didn't change when the time travel took place, but "after" Bell's death in the past.

I already offered my opinion of the TCW in the old thread, which I guess sank down to the bottom somewhere. Rather than reproduce my post, I'll just link.

There are some problems with DS9's "Past Tense", but I tend to overlook them because those episodes led to one of the funniest in-jokes I've heard in all of Trek:

"Father, have you ever heard of the Bell Riots?"

I almost died laughing when those words came out of Nog's mouth in S4's "Little Green Men".

"All hew-mans look alike."

In answer to the original question, I guess Trek doesn't have the attitude toward time travel that, say, Ray Bradbury does (although he's dealing with a larger timeframe in his story), so the occasional saved old woman or swiped outfit is OK. But yeah, they should be more careful.

As Julian pointed out, if you really want to do something in the past, you can just assume you're in a "predestination paradox." (See also Montomery Scott, Transparent Aluminum).

Which led to one of the best reaction shots in the history of the franchise, in O'Brien's repsonse to Bashir's question of "How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and found out I'd never existed?"

Here's the thing about the predestination paradox:

If it exists, then McCoy would have been meant to save Edith Keeler from the car.

If it does not exist, then they should have made every attempt to have as little impact as possible during the 20th century. And that includes the 'transparent aluminum" formula.

I'm more worried about annoying mariine biologist lady. There seemed to be little concern about ripping her from the past. I mean, it's entirely possible that they looked at her and decided to do the 20th century a favor by taking her on, but wasn't there the slightest possibility that she needed to stick around for some reason or another?

If you've ever seen 7th Heaven, I think you know that she serves no purpose whatsoever.

ErisRising, do your either/or comments apply to only this situation or the concept of predestination paradoxes in general? Because if it's the latter, the impression I got from "Trials and Tribble-ations" was that while predestination paradoxes do exist, not every time-travel incident can be attributed to one.

Fair enough. But that puts anyone with time travel capability into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.

Didn't Bashir say, "I'd like to see your face..." which would be impossible if he never existed, of course.

Maybe Dr. Taylor was supposed to save the whales. Try that one for a paradox. And maybe Kirk was supposed to stop McCoy...eh. See the thread title.

Yeah, there are a bunch of conflicting rules to time travel.

1) If you do something you weren't supposed to do, you'll change the future.

2) On the other hand, if you're in a "predestination paradox," and you don't do something that you were supposed to do, you'll also change the future.

3) There's no way to tell between cases 1 and 2.

4) To make matters worse, if you do change the future, things might turn out (i) worse, (ii) better, (iii) not materially different, or (iv) disasterously worse.

None of that really bothers me - why should time travel be simple. What does bother me is why we don't see more time travel. Time travel is technologically possible, if difficult, using TOS level technology, and the Borg seem to have it more or less perfected. I've never understood why the Romulans/Borg/whomever don't go back a thousand years (starting somewhere where the Enterprise can't see them), then flown over and conquered Earth.

Alternately, if the Roms want to avoid paradox, they could fly a colony ship back 100,000 years and set up a secret Romulan civilization someplace where no one has yet explored. By the time that civilization revealed itself, it should have significant tech advantages over the Feds.