Tomorrow is Yesterday time-travel illogic

[CommanderJMic]

I just saw Tomorrow is Yesterday for the first time in a long time yesterday...can someone explain to me how Capt. Christopher and the sergeant were returned to their time without them having knowledge of what happened on the Enterprise? I heard what the characters said, but it made no sense to me, especially in relation to later time travel logic put forth by TNG, DS9, etc.

(I understand that DC Fontana wasn't thinking of the yet-to-be-created larger scope of the Star Trek universe when she wrote the script, but the entire explanation just made no sense to me.)

Thanks!

 

[SonicRanger]

No, it makes no sense -- at least not from our current TV/movie/storytelling standards... Now, whether time travel stories can ever make sense is another issue.

 

[CommanderJMic]

Well, in my mind, City on the Edge of Forever makes sense, as do many other of Trek's time travel stories. This one, not so much.

 

[Timo]

Oh, it makes perfect sense...

Kirk has two 20th century people aboard who know way too much. His science officer has concoted a plan wherein the Enterprise will return to a past timeline where duplicates of those two people are happily alive, and will continue to do so without assistance from our heroes. The two people aboard thus have no place in their original world, and would have difficulty adapting to Kirk's.

Kirk has two choices. Summon an execution squad to the shuttle deck - or tell the shipboard Christopher that there is a technobabble solution, then beam him painlessly to oblivion.

Really, the scene where the "solution" of beaming is suggested all but supports this interpretation. See how Scotty looks incredulously at Spock when the Vulcan sprouts his utter nonsense of a theory; see understanding spread on his face; see the eager nodding as he tries to convince Christopher that Spock is indeed making sense.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[erastus25]

Altering the timelines at all in Star Trek would seem to be impossible.

 

[Noname Given]

A better question would be - when they are 'beamed' back into themseves phisically; why didn't their body mass double?

All hail YATI

 

[Trekwatcher]

Agreed all around-this was always a bit clunky.

 

[Woulfe]

What we need is a Dr. Emmet L. Brown style chart to explane it in a way that'll make logic out of the illogical time-travel in the episode in question, Spock explaneing it is too hard for us simple human beings to understand.

Alternate time line ________________
Original time line _________________\____________

See isn't that a lot simpler to wrap your head around ?

 

[UssGlenn]

While it doesn't explain all the problems, the fact that the beam down is done while in time warp can be used to explain some of it, the memories for instance. I don't have anything to fix the suddenly non-destroyed airplane.

 

[Woulfe]

^ In the new time-line there's no Enterprise, no Enterprise, no tractor beam, no tractor beam, no destroyed jet, see it can be said in simple terms after all, eh ?

 

[Plum]

Woulfe said:
What we need is a Dr. Emmet L. Brown style chart to explane it in a way that'll make logic out of the illogical time-travel in the episode in question, Spock explaneing it is too hard for us simple human beings to understand.

Alternate time line ________________
Original time line _________________\____________

See isn't that a lot simpler to wrap your head around ?

That has got to be a classic internet post. Well done, frackin' brill!

And I noticed that when it comes to the science, TOS time travel seems to look on time as a 'river with eddies' (Spock-CoTEoF). But when Braga was doing TNG he followed the current time quantum theories of diverse timelines.

The 'Mirror, Mirror' story seems not to have any science behind it. Merely the common belief of another world living with ours, spirits, fairies, elves, the dead, ancestors, etc. Or so I gather imho.

 

[Woulfe]

Plum said:

Woulfe said:
What we need is a Dr. Emmet L. Brown style chart to explane it in a way that'll make logic out of the illogical time-travel in the episode in question, Spock explaneing it is too hard for us simple human beings to understand.

Alternate time line ________________
Original time line _________________\____________

See isn't that a lot simpler to wrap your head around ?

That has got to be a classic internet post. Well done, frackin' brill!

And I noticed that when it comes to the science, TOS time travel seems to look on time as a 'river with eddies' (Spock-CoTEoF). But when Braga was doing TNG he followed the current time quantum theories of diverse timelines.

The 'Mirror, Mirror' story seems not to have any science behind it. Merely the common belief of another world living with ours, spirits, fairies, elves, the dead, ancestors, etc. Or so I gather imho.

The reason it works is because BTTF used a visual aid to show how time-travel works, when I sat in the theater I was like there's no way they could explane it to the average shmuck in a way they would understand....

Then in part two, the good doctor brought out a piece of chalk and a black board and EXPLANED it in a way that anyone could understand by drawing it as he was explaneing it, it was brilliant solution to the complexity that is time-travel itself.

- W -
* Namely I just did what the good doctor did, used a visual aid to show what happened in the episode, more or less *

 

[Timo]

Of course, Doc Brown actually had it all wrong in BTTF2. The time travel logic in those movies did not involve separate tracks at all - it apparently involved a single timeline only, plus a time machine that dragged the effects of timeline change in its wake. If there really had been separate, branching timelines, the effects of changes would not have been nibbling at McFly's heels.

Apparently, the whole track thing was a chronic obsession of Brown's, the result of him being denied toy trains in his tender youth. That's why he kept building those scale models, too. When he finally got a locomotive of his very own, the truth of time travel also dawned on him, as he states in BTTF3...

As for Trek, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the logic of time travel depends on the type of time machine being used. Slingshotting creates branch-type effects, use of the Guardian or the Orb of Implausible Plots creates single-timeline effects, and so forth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Candlelight]

Timo said:
Of course, Doc Brown actually had it all wrong in BTTF2. The time travel logic in those movies did not involve separate tracks at all - it apparently involved a single timeline only, plus a time machine that dragged the effects of timeline change in its wake. If there really had been separate, branching timelines, the effects of changes would not have been nibbling at McFly's heels.

It also ignores it's own plot hole of how Biff Senior returned to 2015 but in the wrong timeline.

OR why he even bothered to return at all.

 

[Timo]

...If there's only one timeline to choose from, the one that Marty's latest hijinks have shot to hell and back, then it makes sense that Biff Sr would return to the "wrong" timeline - the only one possible.

As for why he returned... Well, he isn't a rocket scientist from the von Braun family.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

The only answer for a closed time loop is that it has to be self consistent to exist.

 

[Hambone]

Kirk and company sure could have saved themselves a lot of trouble in this episode if they would have just held the pilot and the sergeant in the transporter, like they did the Klingons in "Day of the Dove". They should have realized they couldn't bring anyone from 1969 on board the Enterprise without causing trouble. Didn't these guys read science fiction when they were kids?!!

I still like this episode, though. It's one of my favorites.

 

[Timo]

It might be that something that controlled would require a functional starship, not one that has been through the grinder of time travel.

Remembering the psychedelic effects in ST4, it might also be that such an approach would require a functional captain, not one whose mind has been through said grinder...

On a more technobabbly note, one probably can't hold people in a transporter forever. The decision on whether to materialize or disperse the Klingons in "Day of the Dove" may have been an acute one, as keeping them in there would automatically mean death penalty.

Kirk could not have kept Christopher and the Sergeant in the transporter forever, then. And returning them as soon as possible would still leave them with some pretty odd memories, whereas inviting them aboard and explaining a few things to them might result in mutual understanding and a conspiracy of silence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Timo said:
...If there's only one timeline to choose from, the one that Marty's latest hijinks have shot to hell and back, then it makes sense that Biff Sr would return to the "wrong" timeline - the only one possible.

The timeline was already starting to change. Notice how Biff Sr. is obviously in pain when he comes back? In a deleted scene, he *vanishes*. The timeline was changing around them as we watched. (Which was probably the reason that neighborhood was so run-down in the first place.)

 

[Ronald Held]

The transport buffer has a finite timespan. How much worse would it be to rematerialize them when convenient? It could make the timeline even more divergent.