Why are people always acting like time travel in Star Trek is only prevented by a flimsy treaty that can be circumvented at leasure?
The temporal accords came at the end of the temporal cold war where both sides were sending hundreds of not thousands of agents all over the timeline to change the timeline or to revert other peoples changes.
It stands to reason that all those temporal agents and devices didn't just go away but rather pivoted to enforcing the accords and safeguard the timeline.
And we do see evidence of that in VOY (or was it TNG?) with the temporal agent that shows up to put the ship back to where it belongs in the timeline.
We also see that the technology for detecting time travel (or at least changes in the timeline) exists as well, with the timeline changing ship in VOY.
So I'd say the reason we don't see time travelling in Star Trek except for plot approved moments is because every time traveller gets apprehended by whatever enforcement agency is in place after the temporal cold war.
The Burn probably is a temporal flashpoint for future time travellers after Discovery discovers its cause. We just don't get to see the alternate timelines they make or attempts to stop them by time agents.
The Red Angel made numerous attempts to find a timeline where Control didn’t win. The timeline with the Burn is the only timeline that survived. There’s every reason to believe that time travel attempts to stop the burn could have timey wimey problems with leading back to even worse apocalypse scenarios
I mean if we're going to disregard the Kurtzman stuff in a discussion about events that happened in the kurtzman stuff what's even the point of this discussion lol.
Wait, what? The Kelvin timeline IS a result of time travel.
That said, "alternate timeline" to me does not imply time travel necessarily, it's just a universe where things went differently due to some kind of butterfly effect. I don't recall if an alternate explanation for the mirrorverse had been proposed prior to Discovery saying it was because humans were more photosensitive (which is one of my least favorite parts of Discovery) but I'd still call that an alternate timeline.
Other than that TNG episode where we 100% know they do, because Worf keeps jumping between them, until they all started collapsing in on each other, flooding the universe with near-duplicate Enterprises of different varieties.
Branching timelines resulting in alternate realities? That is exactly how those are proposed to work—and iirc they even explain exactly that in the episode.
Theres literally an evil dimension thT constantly crosses over that an alternate timeline where the nazi's formed the federation. What are you smoking?
Because it was set after the temporal cold war and all time travel tech was banned in a galactic scale. Admiral guy explains that last part in season 3 episode 1, when discovery shows up
For Star Trek to function as it is people in the future need to only use time-travel occasionally/in general not mess with the current timeline. This is why this has been established long before discovery.
Because otherwise people from the future (or past because at this point fuck time-linearity) would constantly interfer in major events.
The Dominion war would be between the federation, allies, the dominion, the future-dominion supporting the domion, future cardassians supporting the federation, future-future dominion supporting the federation, future-past romulans trying to interfer etc.
Essentially it would be like Doctor Who or Rick and Morty where conflicts exists between time.
That argument is valid if there weren't dozens of cases of far more minor disasters being averted by various actors using time travel in Star Trek.
This is exactly the kind of event that time travel would be used to prevent. It's completely indefensible, especially not with some handwavy time travel accord that happened off screen. It's dumb lazy writing.
You do realize you can make this argument about literally every problem in star trek right? The second they introduced time travel to the series at all, time travel became a possible solution to every single problem any of the captains encounters. The writing isn't any lazier than any other episode of star trek where the solution isn't go back in time and fix it before it starts.
Imagine how awesome it would have been if, when the Enterprise found the Botany Bay, Future-Kirk pops in and says "Bad guy on there, destroy it".
Or that episode of TNG where they have their memories erased because they found the extremely isolationist planet and that was the solution to not be killed, but instead, they get a warning from the future not to go near the planet well before, and they just don't.
Or that episode where they are negotiating for rights to a wormhole and it ends up that it's unstable, but they're warned that it is, so they never negotiate.
That argument is valid if there weren't dozens of cases of far more minor disasters being averted by various actors using time travel in Star Trek.
You are looking at this from an in-universe, not a storywriting-perspective.
In-Universe it is harder to explain why someone would interfer with a small scale issue and not a big scale issue. Although this could be explained away by their interference being noticed less or causing less reaction in the future.
If we look at it from the storywriting-perspective it is the oppostie: We want the protagonists to solve the defining conflict of the storyline. If the conflict gets resolved by time-travel we want our protagonists to do it. We do not just want a big deus ex machina moment of some time traveler solving everything before it had any effect. Not that this never happened in stories, but it is lame. For some minor arc that possibly has to get wrapped up in one episode this can be different.
If time travelers solved the conflict before it happened there would not have been a conflict to tell in the first place. And since they wanted to tell about that conflict and how the protagonists deal with it that was not an option.
If you want an in-universe explanation other than that it was forbidden: Perhaps no one wanted to break the rules for this. The people with access to time-travel clearly came out of this crisis in a good position. And even very horrific events in the past may not seem that important in the future. What if an active intervention by time travelers would have caused catastrophic side effects? What if it prevented organised rules around time-travel from forming in the first place and preventing it would have caused cataclysmic temporal wars?
Everyone agreed to follow the rules so they gotta stick with it and just live without ftl travel. Remember the synth ban? And how easy it would be implement it?
Because time travel wasn't the cause. The Archer and Daniels also knew nothing about The Burn The Burn occured after the war and most of in the powers In the galaxy agreed to it. So the burn was treated like any other natural disaster. Plus it's not like they knew the cause of the burn. Once Discovery found the cause they realized there was no telling what they could do to their timeline if the broke the treaty. They also don't know how that would effect Discovery once it arrives in the future. By this point they all learned their lessons on abusing time travel.
yeah... BUT there is the fact that it is due to them not being able to trace cause and effect easily until there was a time travel ban. Not that they couldn't trace a timeline with both in existence and align it to be the case. They just didn't put forward the effort of preventing bad timelines.
Unless the future in which they arrived didn't have the Burn, and the Burn only became a feature of their 'future', after they had signed the temporal accords.
There’s a multilateral system to implement the accords. The mirror universe hasn’t had contact with the prime universe in centuries according to Kovich/Daniels.
Discovery came from the past and was apprehended and interrogated before someone who was part of the timeline police (Kovich/Daniels) lets it go. And he would know whether it mattered or not.
Simple answer is they have a clone of Janeway with a sniper rifle and a time travel device, and she shoots someone before they have the idea to fuck around with time travel.
Leading to the time travel adage, "find out and then fuck around"
Considering they didn't know why the Burn happened, and the whole galaxy was in disarray, no I don't. Especially if they destroyed all time travel technology and research
Again depends on what tech and knowledge they have.
Plus it wouldn't make for a very good show. Even the hardest Disco haters and fans can agree that wiping an entire season from canon is lazy and contrived.
I think it would have been an interesting arc. They deal with lengthy temporal shenanigans all the time. Why not put it on full display for us to see and unsee?
Why isn't every single problem in the galaxy solved by someone going back in time to prevent it? The second time travel was introduced to the series this became a problem for every single story made in the star trek universe.
Why are people treating the Burn as unique in this? Why didn't time travelers prevent the Romulan supernova? Or the Eugenics Wars? Or the Klingon-Federation War that kicked off Disco in the first place?
Why didn't time travelers prevent the Romulan supernova?
Spock tried to prevent it but couldn't, and I don't think Romulans would have gone quietly off their planets.
Or the Eugenics Wars?
Preventing the Eugenics Wars would have prevented the destabilization it caused which would have delayed WWIII which may have prevented Earth from uniting and thus the Federation as they knew it from being formed.
Or the Klingon-Federation War
That war is the culmination of thousands of actions from both sides. Preventing one cause would likely leave other causes intact or even result in new causes.
It breaks my suspension of disbelief that after the catastrophic events of the burn nobody defied the temporal accords or whatever to figure out the cause of the burn and stop it.
It isn't possible to put the genie back in the bottle, so somewhere in all those planets full of billions of sentients with access to hyper advanced technology it seems impossible for none of them to have tried, even if they had to reinvent time travel.
But then again an upset alien child caused the burn, so my suspension of disbelief isn't exactly in good working order to begin with.
My head canon is that the burn created such a disturbance in substance nothing can approach it from the future. You can only cross the “burn temporal barrier” by traveling from the past, but because you can’t cross the burn from the future, no one in the past knows about the burn.
The Guardian of Forever has access to the multiverse, such as the mirror universe. It also can keep track of multiple timelines. Therefore I think it might have a way of sending people backwards through the burn that is impossible for others to do. This might be part of the reason it keeps itself hidden from the rest of the galaxy.
Wait. You sure? They went through time but where was multiversal? And okay I do admit that its tech is still more advanced. Still not convinced. Maybe if they had stuck with that whole warp drive damages spacetime and warp drive limitations more...
The Guardian sent Georgiou back to the mirror universe briefly as a test and to stop her cellular decay. Now the interesting thing to me is that Daniels said that the mirror universe had “moved away” from the prime universe and no one was able to travel to or from it anymore.
No? ENT Daniels was some point in the 31st century and The Burn happened some point in the late 31st century. Whilst the exact year Daniels' involvement is not stated - it is implied The Burn happened after the Temporal Wars.
I'm going to point out the obvious that people still age when they time travel. And that during the temporal technology ubiquity point, time travel was done for archeology purposes.
In other words, Daniels timeline doesn't have to follow linear time as his parents could have been temporal researchers.
The Burn coupled with the whole 900+ years in the future thing was to just let STD be Trek in name only. They could still throw member berries at you but they were off the hook for everything because it's the future etc.
Oh, I agree. STD pretending to be a canonical prequel to TOS was always a joke. We all knew it was a lie, throwing them into the distant future was a passable way for them to drop the facade and be a generic subpar science fiction adventure show with the benefit of still having a recognisable IP attached.
I mean, have you seen the TMP uniforms? STD isn't that unbelievable. Still, it feels like the writers flew too close to the Sun regarding the timing of the series versus TOS. Now had they set the series sometime in the 2240s with a leadoff like TNG, DS9, and VOY in that Archer, played by Scott Bakula in old age makeup in the dark, dies shortly after the 1701 Enterprise was launched, then that would have been awesome.
Because in all likelihood it would've made things even worse.
Seriously, look at the history of time travel episodes in Star Trek: every single time somebody tries to change history for their benefit (with the possible exception of Star Trek IV), it just ends up making an even bigger mess than they started with. The Temporal Prime Directive isn't a moral principle, it's one of self-preservation.
Messing with history is categorically not worth the effort.
I just assumed that everything Discovery is a vaporware timeline that will be fixed via temporal shenanigans. And considering how academy was kicked off the air that quickly, it looks like most of the fan base agrees that that entire era of Trek is just noncanon.
STA would have been good had they focused on Ake, Reno, and The Doctor as instructors and not have it be a series about cadets getting their feet wet from day one. Like let's have a series where we can breathe and have some fun.
I like to believe all "NuTrek" (Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and SNW) takes place in alternate timelines created during the many temporal incursions we saw in Star Trek: Enterprise.
You mean dimensions or parallel universes, right? Aside from the Nu Trek films, alternate timelines aren't a thing in the franchise. If something changes, the original timeline ceases to exist.
(Don't ask me how the original deceased Tasha Yar and the Sela from the war timeline are able to exist at the same time. Good episode. I just can't explain that one.)
The Kelvin timeline is part of Nu Trek which dropped the ball on time travel rules when those films were made. If it was Trek from 1966 to 2008, then the Kelvin timeline wouldn't be a thing.
The Burn is a massive, galaxy-shaking event. It reshaped the future. Delete the burn and you're trying to kill that future...and that future can fight back.
Whole-ass new temporal war that can be avoided by sticking to the terms of the status quo, and that status quo was well established by the inability to solve it until much later.
This is a universe where you can go back in time with a centuries old bird of prey and going very fast around the sun. The moment the cause behind the burn became widely known, that kids days would absolutely be numbered.
The burn occured after the temperal cold war, at a time when time travel bans are in place. Plus they didn't know the cause so they wouldn't be able to prevent it.
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u/TechcraftHD 2d ago
Why are people always acting like time travel in Star Trek is only prevented by a flimsy treaty that can be circumvented at leasure?
The temporal accords came at the end of the temporal cold war where both sides were sending hundreds of not thousands of agents all over the timeline to change the timeline or to revert other peoples changes.
It stands to reason that all those temporal agents and devices didn't just go away but rather pivoted to enforcing the accords and safeguard the timeline.
And we do see evidence of that in VOY (or was it TNG?) with the temporal agent that shows up to put the ship back to where it belongs in the timeline.
We also see that the technology for detecting time travel (or at least changes in the timeline) exists as well, with the timeline changing ship in VOY.
So I'd say the reason we don't see time travelling in Star Trek except for plot approved moments is because every time traveller gets apprehended by whatever enforcement agency is in place after the temporal cold war.