Picking up on the theme from yesterday (and thanks to the inspiration from Steve Newton!), what better way to begin another revolution around the star Sol than by examining how one of the most successful science fiction franchises handled time travel. Was it a "closed loop" storyline or a "branching stream" yarn? Or a little of both? Let's see ...
I'm not as familiar with The Original Series (TOS) as the subsequent spin-offs, but the time travel stories are pretty well done. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" in TOS's first season invokes "closed loop" time geometry in that an accident catapults Kirk and co. to the 1960s. An Air Force pilot sees the Enterprise and he's later taken on board the ship. But how to prevent him from "polluting" the timeline if he's returned? Apparently "Bones" McCoy's medical science isn't good enough to erase the pilot's short term memory, so Kirk uses a more drastic method: They'll "recreate" the conditions that brought them to the 20th century in the first place (the 'ol "slingshot around the sun," natch). In the process, the pilot is returned to his jet just as he "thinks" he sees the Enterprise, and the NCC-1701 is shunted back to the 23rd century.
The classic "Space Seed" which introduced to Ricardo Montalban's "Khan" character wasn't so much a time travel story (well, Khan did sleep off a couple hundred years in suspended animation) as much as how its backstory had to be "retconned." Khan was the product of genetic engineering and presided over the "Eugenics Wars" of the 1990s. However, it seems the planet didn't suffer overmuch as the "Voyager" episode "Future's End" takes place in 1996 and there's nary a mention of the trouble Khan and his supermen caused (or were causing). This would seem to indicate a "branching stream" geometry whereby Khan's antics occurred in another timeline. The issue of Voyager's late 20th century appearance on Earth I'll discuss in the "Voyager" segment later on.
"The City on the Edge of Forever" is usually considered to be the finest of the original series. A deranged Bones ("Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a junkie!") jumps through a time portal, and suddenly the Enterprise vanishes from the sky above Kirk and Spock who were in pursuit of the doc. This right here indicates a "closed loop" time structure since Bones' meddling in the past changed Kirk's and Spock's present. The pivotal moment was Bones saving Edith Keeler (at left), a pacifist, from certain death. She winds up leading a movement which delays the US from entering World War II. This allows Hitler time to develop the A-bomb first, and the Nazis end up ruling the globe. Kirk and Spock, while tracking down McCoy in the 1930s, realize they'll have to let Edith die to preserve the timeline. The real bummer is that Kirk had fallen in love with her.
Season Two's "Mirror, Mirror" isn't so much a time travel offering as it is an alternate reality story. What's telling here, as I mentioned in my original post, is that Trek plays it both ways with time travel -- they make use of both "closed loop" and "branching stream" time geometry. The very existence of alternate realities allows for "branching streams" to be created by meddling with the past. Which makes one wonder why the need to "correct" interactions in the past even is addressed, then. (I've wondered a few times if the "Galactic Empire" of the Mirror Universe could have been the result of Bones's interference in "City on the Edge of Forever" -- interference that wasn't "corrected" by Kirk and Spock. But we saw that it was corrected, so ...!)
"Assignment: Earth" also applies "closed loop" geometry. While on assignment(!!) to travel back in time to "discover" how Earth managed to avoid blowing itself to bits during the early nuclear age, Kirk and co. discover that an alien-trained human is in large measure responsible for just what Kirk is trying to find out! The mysterious Gary Seven has to destroy a US-launched oribtal bomb in order to scare the nuclear-armed nations from attempting to put bombs in space. He succeeds, despite Kirk and Spock's meddling. This ultimate success "preserves" the timeline in this "closed loop" tale. (Too bad that Earth does go on to fight a devasting Third World War in the mid-21st century which kills approximately 600 million, as told in the TOS's "The Savage Curtain" and the 8th Trek film "Star Trek: First Contact." One wonders why Starfleet sent Kirk and crew back in time for the "investigation" of "Assignment: Earth" when it should've been in the Federation's history books that Earth almost didn't survive blowing itself to smithereens!)
One of the last episodes, "All Our Yesterdays" (which, admittedly, I barely remember viewing), deals almost exclusively with time travel, but it is not evident whether "closed loop" or "branching stream" architecture is applied. A "librarian" on a planet is saving many people of his doomed globe by sending them via time machine to their past. Whether this will ultimately save them is unknown as their sun eventually goes nova. Perhaps in a "branched" timeline, resulting in arrivals from the future, a method will be discovered to prevent their star from exploding.
Posted by Hube at January 1, 2008 11:32 AM | TrackBack
Nice summary. Of course, any series that allows for faster than light travel by definition includes time travel. Most just ignore this important fact. Kudos to Star Trek for taking it somewhat seriously within the bounds of a popular series.
Posted by: Alan Coffey at January 1, 2008 12:00 PMThanks Alan.
Actually, by its very existence, FTL gets around the time travel (or, more accurately, time dilation) effects of high velocity, yet slower-than-light, journeys by essentially "folding" space. After all, when Kirk, Picard or whoever eventually make their way back to Earth, only the objective time of their travels has passed.
Posted by: Hube at January 1, 2008 12:08 PMOne wonders why Starfleet sent Kirk and crew back in time for the "investigation" of "Assignment: Earth" when it should've been in the Federation's history books that Earth almost didn't survive blowing itself to smithereens!
Because Gene Roddenberry really wanted that Gary Seven spin-off, dammit!!
This allows Hitler time to develop the A-bomb first, and the Nazis end up ruling the globe. Kirk and Spock, while tracking down McCoy in the 1930s, realize they'll have to let Edith die to preserve the timeline. The real bummer is that Kirk had fallen in love with her.
But on the plus side, we got to watch Joan Collins die!
Posted by: Paul Smith at January 1, 2008 12:49 PMSince there is nothing but space/time, FTL = Time Travel. When they fold space, they fold time as well. Ugly physics.
Maybe the string theorists are right.... Very small dimensions that don't "unwrap" during the big bang may allow for movement within them, for VERY SMALL things (like information?).
Nice topic. You are obviously much better versed in Scifi than I am. I enjoy it though, and enjoy your writings on the matter(pun intended).
Posted by: Alan Coffey at January 1, 2008 12:57 PMAlan: As I understand it, if you "fold" space, in essence you are diminishing the distance (space) without much effect on time at all. Look at the "fold the paper in half" example. Distance (space) is reduced to mere millimeters (if there are two dots on opposite sides of the page) from about one foot. If you are saying that time is affected by [drastically] shortening the distance between two points, then technically you're correct -- you'll arrive much sooner than with a non-FTL drive, at least objectively!
Of course, then, there's "hyperspace" which essentially is traveling between dimensions. The distance (space) between two points is drastically diminished by "skipping" travel across normal space. Time elapsed can be anywhere from zero (see Joe Haldeman's The Forever War to whatever, like three days per light year in Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories.
Posted by: Hube at January 1, 2008 01:27 PMHube:
Here is the perspective from which I write:
"We have said, up to now, that matter distorts, or causes a curvature of, the space-time continuum in its vicinity. According to Einstein’s ultimate vision, a piece of matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum. In other words, according to Einstein’s ultimate vision, there are no such things as “gravitational fields” and “masses”. They are only mental creations. No such things exist in the real world. There is no such thing as “gravity” - gravity is the equivalent of acceleration, which is motion. There is no such thing as “matter” - matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum. There is not even such a thing as “energy” - energy equals mass and mass is space-time curvature.
What we considered to be a planet with its own gravitational field moving around the sun in an orbit created by the gravitational attraction (force) of the sun is actually a pronounced curvature of the space-time continuum finding its easiest path through the space-time continuum in the vicinity of a very pronounced curvature of the space-time continuum.
There is nothing but space-time and motion and they, in effect, are the same thing. "
Things are frequently different in fiction though :)
From http://blog.alancoffey.com/?p=176
Posted by: Alan Coffey at January 1, 2008 02:19 PMOh, and hyperspace may well be the string theory dimensions... Who knows.
Posted by: Alan Coffey at January 1, 2008 02:20 PMWhoa. That's heavy duty stuff.
Posted by: Hube at January 1, 2008 02:45 PMI'm so glad someone jumped in and mentioned the hyperspace concept - having spent much of my vacation watching Babylon 5, this was the theory that sprang first to my mind. It's more akin to a rip in space, or a controlled wormhole phenomenon, than folding space, which could very well result in losing time as well.
Theoretically, of course ;-)
Posted by: Bronwen at January 1, 2008 06:21 PMNice post Hube.
As for Khan, my brother read a trilogy of novels of which the first two were concerned with retconning the Eugenics Wars into the actual history of the late 20th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eugenics_Wars:_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Khan_Noonien_Singh
Posted by: Ryan S. at January 1, 2008 08:06 PMIt seems appropriate (credit to my father, though I have no idea where he heard it)
There was once a young lady named Bright,
Who could travel faster than light,
She went out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned the previous night.
As I recall from my Trekkie days, the warp drive on the Enterprise actually worked by taking the Enterprise into another dimension so the normal laws of space/time didn't apply. So Alan's points while being true in the real world don't actually apply to the Star Trek world.
Posted by: Paul Smith at January 2, 2008 12:16 PM"There was once a young lady named Bright,
Who could travel faster than light,
She went out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned the previous night."
I first heard these words on the 80's group, Alphaville's 1986 album, Afternoons in Utopia.
Posted by: boerinballingskap at September 30, 2009 09:15 AM