“Let's get started before my headache gets any worse.”
February 13, 2016 7:05 AM   Subscribe

Trek at 50: The quest for a unifying theory of time travel in Star Trek by Xaq Rzetelny [Ars Technica]

It's 2016, meaning we now have many examples of Trek's time paradoxes to explore.
Time travel, while perhaps one of the most interesting devices in the series, is also confusing, befuddling, and inconsistent. In the words of Captain Janeway, “the future is the past, the past is the future; it all gives me a headache.” While we can’t get too deep into the purported mechanisms behind Trek time travel—they rely on things like “chronotons” whose nature real-world science has sadly yet to discover—it's still interesting to ponder time travel's effects. How does it affect the present? Is interference with the past a predestined part of history? Do alterations in the past get mixed into the current timeline?
posted by Fizz (33 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Simple, it's built into the DNA of the tribbles, and you know how logical them guys are, if ya know what I mean, nudge nudge.
posted by sammyo at 7:09 AM on February 13, 2016


There's a reason it's a big ball of timey wimey stuff...
posted by Artw at 7:09 AM on February 13, 2016


Am I going to read this? Have I always read it? Is there an alternate universe where another version of me doesn't read this and goes on to kill Hilter, making me eligible to be the Republician nominee? No fate but what we make?
posted by nubs at 7:23 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Q, being able to change the laws of physics, occasionally tinkers with the nature of time travel because, fuck it, he's Q, why not. Boom, done.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:26 AM on February 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


This will not be resolved until the Trek / Dr. Who crossover is finally made.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:31 AM on February 13, 2016


Q is just a manifestation of the race of tribbles.
posted by sammyo at 7:32 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


It will all make sense maybe in a year, maybe yesterday.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:35 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise tribble." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise tribble standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever, " said the old lady. "But it turtles tribbles all the way down!”
posted by Fizz at 7:37 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


If I ever wrote a time travel thing where the theory of how time travel works is important, and let's face it there's every reason not to, then time is going to be a directed acrylic graph and modifying is going to be like modifying a git repository.
posted by Artw at 7:38 AM on February 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


directed acrylic graph

I say it's more like an abstract oil based graph, all swirly and open to interpretation.
posted by sammyo at 7:53 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Okay, now I'm going to base it on predictive text...
posted by Artw at 7:59 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Like Captain Janeway. I had a headache before I started reading this article, but by the time I was done, the headache was gone. Which clearly means that my great-great-grandchild came back through a temporal vortex, administered some Headache-B-Gone future remedy, and then returned to their own timeline by going back to the distant past before traveling to the future, thus assuring that I would never remember their presence here, only the blissful relief of the nauseating ache in my cranium. Thanks, Trek!
posted by briank at 7:59 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


This will not be resolved until the Trek / Dr. Who crossover is finally made.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:31 AM


The crossover will have been glorious and was will be unforgettable.
posted by seraphine at 8:23 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


My favorite time-travel related exchange of all time, from Stephen King's book 11/22/63 :
[...] I remembered a hoary old time-travel paradox and pulled it out. "Yeah, but what if you went back in time and killed your own grandfather?"
He stared at me, baffled. "Why the fuck would you do that?"
And paradoxes are never mentioned again for the entirety of the book.
posted by panama joe at 8:28 AM on February 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
posted by selfnoise at 9:02 AM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


an alternate universe where another version of me doesn't read this and goes on to kill Hilter,

This is the alternative universe. You did kill Hilter.
posted by howfar at 9:08 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Short answer: it's commercial fiction, sometimes shit had to be just, like, made up because the deadline was there and there wasn't enough time or money to come up with something better.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:10 AM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


On future Tinder, killing Hitler pics are the new tiger pics.
posted by panama joe at 9:23 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


No need for Star Trek to kill Hitler, Star Wars already took care of that.
posted by 1367 at 9:37 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]



This is the alternative universe. You did kill Hilter.


Yeah, but he was supposed to kill Hitler. Details!

In the meantime, I hatched my own time-travel plan, which involved carefully manipulating the most stridently anti-Communist nation on Earth into teaming up with the biggest Communist nation on Earth to not only kill Hitler but to bring his whole regime down--the little detail that all those tiresome "well why don't you just shoot him" people seem to forget--but do I get any credit? Noooooooooooooooooo.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:54 AM on February 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


I don't want to start talking about time travel shit. Because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.
--Rian Johnson, Looper(2012)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:02 AM on February 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


I like the idea that in a time-travel-enabled future, killing Hitler is kind of a thrill-seeker's hobby, sort of akin to skydiving.

Like, if you only want to do it once and don't want to take too many chances, you'd kill him in his art school days -- sort of the Hitler-killing equivalent of a tandem jump.

But let's face it, how satisfying can that be? I mean, yeah, you're still killing Hitler, and yeah, he's still Hitler, but he's kind of this pathetic art school chump at that point. Not much of a challenge. Plus he hasn't really done anything bad yet. So the real Hitler-killing adventurers would go for a daring assassination attempt deep into the final solution era. Now that would be a satisfying Hitler death.

Of course, then you'd have the Hitler-killing equivalent of speedrunners -- those videogame experts who do wacky shit like trying to get through all of Super Mario Brothers in four minutes without killing anything. These would be the folks who would try to divert young Hitler away from the path to Naziism. I could see a top-ranking art instructor from the future trying to turn young Hitler into an actually talented artist. You know, give him instruction, introduce him to the art world, set him up with exhibitions, and who knows? Maybe convince him to emigrate to America and join the burgeoning art scene there. Get him as far from the scene of the crime as possible.

Again, though, the younger you start with Hitler, the easier it would be to divert him. The real thrill-seekers would drop in on Hitler right when he's feeling most victorious, and try to convince him to just give up all the final solutioning and world dominating and become a man of peace. Maybe run off to India to seek enlightenment or something. Now that would be some next-level shit.
posted by panama joe at 10:04 AM on February 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


It's been a great franchise, and I have high hopes for the new TV series, but if time travel was possible I'd want to do one thing - go back and change that poxy name to something snappier than Wagon Train To The Stars.
posted by Devonian at 10:10 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


If I ever wrote a time travel thing where the theory of how time travel works is important,

It only works if it's agents from the future traveling back to annihilate their own "reality", which I can understand, I get the urge fairly regularly. There's no traveling the other way because, bluntly, the future hasn't happened yet. It doesn't exist. It stands to reason.

As for when to kill Hilter, the obvious time is that roughly six month stretch in 1918 after he had been blinded (temporarily it turns out) in a gas attack. Except, wait a second, that now seems to have been a lie, dreampt up to portray him as the war hero he never was. Somebody needs to go back and sort this shit out. But don't change anything!!!
posted by philip-random at 10:17 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


After time-travel technology was invented, the first target of an "improve the timeline" program as a proof of concept was one Winston P. Albers, a low-level junior minister, the political rival of a minor bureaucrat in a backwater hamlet. After his assassination, the universe, following the law of Conservation of Bullshit, replaced Winston with another candidate who was slightly worse.

The situation spiraled from there. We don't see any evidence for time travel today because once escalating attempts to repair the timeline resulted in the universe producing Hitler, authorities destroyed all existing time machines and burned the plans.
posted by Mrs. Davros at 11:06 AM on February 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


... or, Hitler-killing time-travelers discover that in the absence of an actual Hitler, Nazi engineers invent a Mecha Hitler to lead them. Mecha Hitler not only has infinite endurance (and thus no need to resort to meth and smack), but is entirely impervious to Russian winters. The time-travelers create Castle Wolfenstein 3D and plant it in 1990s USA as a dire warning of what happens when you mess with the space-time continuum.

The only thing worse than Hitler is Mecha Hitler.
posted by panama joe at 11:18 AM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


"You can't rewrite history! Not one line!" - the Doctor to Barbara in 1964

"Let's fuck around with some dude's timeline for Christmas" - the Doctor in 2010.

What I'm saying is that 50 years of a TV show mean the rules change a lot.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:49 AM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


What I'm saying is that 50 years of a TV show mean the rules change a lot.

That's the genius of this approach. It actually incorporates the disparate rules that different episodes have played with.

Apparently things like Hitler and The Phantom Menace are strongly entangled with this timeline.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:22 PM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, but he was supposed to kill Hitler. Details!

While this thread has not succeeded in killing Hitler, at least someone managed to assassinate my joke.

;)
posted by howfar at 12:59 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Point of order- discussions of Hitler's military service should go in the W.W.I forum. Likewise, discussions of his art career should go in the early 20th century Vienna forum. Could we PLEASE try to keep discussions in the proper place?
posted by happyroach at 1:13 PM on February 13, 2016 [14 favorites]


One of my all-time favorites, happyroach.

ALL time.
posted by merelyglib at 2:00 PM on February 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's easy to travel to the future, just accelerate to as close to the speed of light as you like. At your destination, slam the anchors on. Bingo. You're in the future. Depending on your velocity profile you can go as far forwards as you like as fast as you like. No mucking about with dodgy physics, neither.

Trek and every other space opera with warp engines or the equivalent actually spend most of their antiscience coin denying that time travel exists and works perfectly well in the Einsteinian universe. Wormhole/warp gate versions have their own issues with causality, but straightforward denial works just as well there too.

(As I understand Einstein-Rosen bridges, you can go in one side and meet someone who's just gone in the other, but neither of you can then leave or communicate with the outside. I don't know - and I don't think anyone else does, either - whether in the space-time system of an ERB (not Edgar Rice Burroughs) you can have further singularities, but it's pleasant to think of intrepid and committed explorers Russian Dolling it down ever more one-way streets to stranger and stranger places. The Matryoshka Drive... that has a nice ring to it...)
posted by Devonian at 3:20 PM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Star Trek time travel is whatever the writers need it to be for that episode. That is how it has been, is, and ever will be.

Trying to establish a coherent ToE for Star Trek time travel? That way, madness lies. (And we are talking the kind of madness that Lovecraftian heroes are terrified by.)
posted by Samizdata at 11:35 AM on February 14, 2016


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