The Star Trek universe works on the idea that everything that happened in the past has already happened. People saying things means nothing. Any records that have incorrect dates are because most records were corrupted or lost in WW3. The timeline in all of the shows is and has always been the same timeline with the exception of when they have gone to alternate realities. When they return to the present it is always the same present that they left.
I like the idea that since time travel is so easy in the Star Trek universe, there are little alterations happening nearly constantly. So rather than several distinct timelines, it's just reality shifting and changing. Temporal investigations thinks they're staying on top of it, but they only notice when something big happens. Most changes just go completely unnoticed. It's a neat explanation that fits with the abundance of time travel plots in Star Trek and can explain basically any subtle discontinuity between shows.
This happens in STO in one mission. You stop an assassination attempt only for Captain Walker to show up after the fact saying something about a temporal shift. Your response is something along the lines of "Yeah. We took care of it."
That’s a fundamental change I have serious problems with because of the showrunners literally saying that the Gorn are evil. The entire point of that original Gorn episode Arena was to illustrate that no species is evil, just misunderstood or operating from a different moral perspective. That’s THE essence of Star Trek and dumbing the Gorn down to xenomorph knock offs kind of taints the spirit in which they were meant to be depicted. Visually I have no problem with their redesign but conceptually it bothers me.
@@langleymneely 100% agree about the SNW Gorn ruining the very Star Trek theme of "Arena." I would like the new Gorn much better if they had been a new species of alien life, and not "the" Gorn.
@@jp6869 I honestly prefer the rubber suit over the design and CGI of the new Gorn. I'm sure a practical Gorn (with CG enhancements) could be made today that would be superior to both the OG and the new Gorn.
This pretty much sums up how I feel on the whole timelines thing. I used to be far more concerned with timelines and continuity until I started delving into the lore in depth then realised there's holes all over the place anyway. So yeah, I 100% agree that the broad strokes lining up is the more important thing to maintain. I still enjoy trying to map it all out however, but ultimately I just have to accept (for example) that if its official that TOS takes place after SNW, then discrepancies or no, it do take place after SNW.
You gave up on timelines because ST world today is so broken there is no point to explaining anything anymore. It is just one big mess. The plotholes of past were worth exploring and explaining because they were just holes. But today state is just one pille of junk not worth even watching.
@@prolamer7Okay then, stop wasting your time watching. The rest of us will find our personal joy in the whole of Star Trek, wherever it may be. Live long and prosper 🖖.
@@JuanitasGrandaughter I already stopped watching new serries. Do you want to take my free speach away, to silence me? Because you have no arguments? The new stuff just is not Star Trek. It lacks everything old one had.
@@prolamer7 You are absolutely welcome to your free speech, your opinion and your defensive attitude. Have fun. I feel secure in acknowledging that some of the population is enjoying the ride rather than judging. Cheers!
I think the temporal cold war is just a way for writers to have an in universe justification for retconing the prime timeline. We've seen that it is possible to change the timeline without creating a splinter universe. There's an episode in TNG where they deal with something like this but I dont remember the name right now.
ENT's cold war couldn't retcon the Prime timeline. The Prime timeline didn't exist until JJ created the idea of it in 2009. Keep in mind, JJ took something that at the time he was unable to use... Spock. Specifically Lenard Nimoy's Spock. All the marketing around his character referred to him as Prime Spock which is an important marketing distinction for legal reasons. The idea of the Prime Timeline with no explanation, save for Nimoy's involvement did not state that Prime covered the shows of TOS to ENT... As JJ sneakily admitted through his script... "Oh... I... Implied..." When Prime was created, it was in reference to a timeline and continuity that had never been committed to screen leaving the audience to pull from what they knew. And what they knew was Classic Trek that filled in the gaps JJ left with his light of hand that allowed him to do no work in telling the audience what Prime was.
“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.” - Doctor Who
Long before {sic} The Doctor said that, Douglas Adams wrote that reality is a "whole sort of general mish-mash" which punier creatures use "perception filters" to observe; creatures without such perception filters, being depicted as timeless & terrifying endgame monsters.
years ago, i started realizing that it's all overlapping sets of timelines - there's enough time travel in the original series to justify that - i started to see the continuity errors as temporal incursions and realized that every single series has had time travel shenanigans!! so i've LONG waited for a vid like this - thanks Tyler!!!! srry about your bachelors degreee lol (i literally loled)
Not just each show; due to conceptual differences between the writers of one episode to the next, there are enough flagrant flip-flops in attitude, established tech, & clerical data, to warrant the assumption that we were shown _at least_ two Kirks captaining on TOS, three or four Picard TNGs, etc. The downside is that people who hate time travel stories may never feel that anything matters, in such a case (any realities being replaceable drops in a bucket); however, the upside is that any narrative inconsistencies a series exhibits, can be set aside with "canonically, multiple parallel timelines are happening, & sometimes our change of view is not revealed until later: therefore, maybe that flaw in this episode will be retconned into making sense, by a future episode of this or another Trek series". Trek's parallel timelines bump & rub so much they reproduce season by season.
I prefer the theory that all of Star Trek, from ToS to DS9, is just a bunch of Starfleet propoganda intended to romanticize space exploration and downlplay the dangers of it. That, I think, extends to what we see of the "history" of earth in particular, and the vulcans' history also, to a lesser extent. This covering up of the real history keeps most humans from asking too many questions about their own past, some of which might be very uncomfortable for Starfleet and the government of earth to answer. The only series that is less made-up, because it'd be too hard to hide most of the events, is DS9, except that the dominion war is almost all just pure fiction, as far as tactics and overall strategy goes, as no warfighting force can make that many terrible decisions and still win the war.
With as much time travel shenanigans that happen each series, it's a wonder the timeline hasn't completely fractured. Every Trek series spends at least two episodes and a two-parter doing time travel.
If they would have not messed with it in the 1st place starting in 2009, everything might be still great, and we wouldn’t be talking about it right now.
The timeline is like a stream. Throw a boulder into it and it will block the flow and divert it in another direction. Throw a few pebbles in and it will cause some ripples, but the stream will keep flowing in the same direction.
One additional detail i found interesting in the SNW episode is the comment that history seems to be pushing back against timeline changes. It gave the sense that, rather than small changes in the past culminating in massive future changes in most instances, it takes truly monumental changes to substantially alter the future, and even then such changes may be more subtle than intended. Edit: In hindsight, there is one episode that does depict the timeline changing substantially from a seemingly minor alteration, City on the Edge of Forever. This episode (and technically its TAS followup) involves seemingly minor changes that cause lasting alterations of greater significance. This raises the possibility: could the Guardian of Forever itself be what is holding the timeline together.
makes me remember the Voyager episode where an alien is altering the timeline to save his family from death. He has and does restore his Empire to a point in time where it is dominant force in the region and more, but his family is still dead due to the war. He sacrifices an entire empire, even more empires and races within the galaxy over and over again yet for some unfathomable reason he can never get what he's after. Its not until he realises the timeship is the source of the paradox. In any continuity for him to posess it, the war where his family ends up dying must happen one way or the other, prompting him to use board and use the ship. He surrenders, the ship explodes, resetting the timeline where Voyager doesnt even meet them. Instead we see the same commander again, this time without the chronoship, where he escorts Voyager out of the Empire's border without aggression.
My stance is, and has been for many years now, that the TOS timeline has been altered by the constant time travelling through the TNG era in particular, but the first biggest change came about in First Contact, which led to the timeline which we see in ENT (where the NX-01 was named after the 1701-E), and the timeline was further altered by the Temporal Cold War, which leads us into DISCO, etc (including the revised future on everything post-FC). Which is why suddenly in Nemesis the NX-01 did exist in Trek's history, although never seen or mentioned before (and let's be honest, if ENT always happened, there is no way in hell the NX-01's role in the founding of the Federation would have been ignored considering the importance of the Enterprise legacy).
@@dustojnikhummer Very much so. And the writers even confirmed it in SNW when they put in the line about how temporal agents (and thus, one can easily assume, the temporal cold war) have altered the order of events.
@@dustojnikhummer Very much so. And the writers even confirmed it in SNW when they put in the line about how temporal agents (and thus, one can easily assume, the temporal cold war) have altered the order of events.
@@replimatreviews honestly i like to think that after the xindi war and mining colony incident the temporal agents switched from fixing to timeline to putting bandaids on it to try and mitigate the damage done because of how irreversibly fucked it got
The timeline was broken in the very first ep of Enterprise. It was further polluted when the Mirror Universe Tholiams pulled the Connie class Defiant back in time. Everything since then that has changed can be explained by those two incidents
And I am fine with it. If it means that we see more touch screens and zippers in their uniforms, then its a plus in my books. And them having more media in the future.
@@acmenipponair If you mean the borg guys found at the north pole...theres some indication thats a predestined temporal event. "Broken Bow" absolutely isnt. It in no way resmebles first contact with the Klingons as described by Picard
This is a great video. Yesterday I was debating this online with someone about this. He couldn't acknowledge that Strange New Worlds confirmed that the timeline had been altered.
The idea that the timeline is altered is the best route they could've gone. This way TOS can remain its own thing and Discovery officially hasn't infected anything. The Discoverse is in its own universe, similar to the Kelvin timeline.
Separate timelines is just an excuse for the writers to do what they want. Yes, a lot of canon in TOS was written in the 1960's and events that happened in 1996 (Khan) must be overlooked, since we are clearly in 2023. But, canon is a big part of what made Star Trek great. It treated the world of Trek and its characters as if they were real. If there was time travel in TOS it didn't really change anything. Today's writers are not real fans of the Star Trek world and I honestly believe they are too lazy to do the proper research and don't care if they rewrite canon because it is so much easier for them to change things to suit their needs for getting a script into production.
Not just the Voyager 6 probe (that program must have been VERY different to our one!) but also the launch of NOMAD and those amazing improvements to sub-light engines in 2018 - we all remember those, right? 😉
I remember saying that about "the third Chinese moon mission", when I was 12. Nowadays in my own sci-f back story, World War 3 just ended right now. ！歳蛮！歳蛮！歳蛮
@@NextWorldVR Saying that the Star Trek universe has NOTHING to do with our actual universe is one of the silliest comments I've heard of, in many years regarding Star Trek. There are numerous people, images, references and callbacks to real world events, from TOS all the way up to SNW. The differences (as well as a the commonalities) are precisely the subject of conversation in the video.
You remind of a fifth season episode of Doctor Who when the 11th Doctor discovers that his companion, Amy, has no memory of the Earth being stolen along with 25 other worlds. Turned it had something to do with current storyline.
There's one point I think most people on either side of this often don't seem to fully understand: It's a fictional show, about people and places and things that aren't real. It can never be both fun and perfectly consistent, because there's a limit to what human story-tellers can account for in their minds when telling stories. Not only does that mean it's silly to get upset over every continuity error, it also means it's kind of silly to think such errors need to be explained away. If someone happens to find nitpicking fun then more power to them, but it can be a lot easier to enjoy a good story if the plot holes are simply acknowledged as plot holes and forgiven if they don't hurt the narrative and/or seem intentionally disrespectful.
Yea, people don't fully understand that its fiction, except for you. What an intelligent comment, we all definitely needed to hear that. Who cares about logical consistency when it comes to fiction, that doesn't matter even in the slightest. What really matters is fanboying for a dead franchise that being picked apart by vulturous corporate entities for a quick profit. We're so lucky to have someone as smart as you to inform the rest of us utter morons, who can't even figure out that fiction isn't real...🖕🖕
Great job Tyler, which happens to be my middle name, you not only put into words what I've been speculating for thirty years. But you did it GREAT and way more in depth than I could have done. So, I absolutely agree with you. I will probably watch this one again and again because there's so much to unwrap. I've always known that Star Trek occurs in an altered timeline from ours, but that every episode featuring travel in time to the past also changes things . Sometimes significantly. It kinda makes me mad when people complain about retcons and other inconsistencies. It's a multi timeline multiverse that we're watching for Khan's sake. I really like your development of these ideas and you're a funny guy, too. I dig it. And since you're a fellow ginger, nerd, and trekkie, I feel almost like you could be a brother from another mother. Thanks for this video as well as the other ones about timeline changes. Have a great day. You got a fan over here in Colorado. 😅
Yep. I think they'll meet that deadline, but they're most definitely gonna take their time. As they should, but we should have already been back anyway
I always felt Star Trek was a glimpse of a more prosperous future. A story meant to inspire us down a similar path. I've never had a problem with the retcons. Only some of the writing, cough, cough, Picard, cough...
The Enterprise show wanted its cake and to eat it too. The Temporal Cold War changed the timeline (or created an alternate reality). However the infamous finale These Are the Voyages made it clear that the show was, somehow, part of the same timeline as TOS and TNG. My theory is that every time there is time travel an alternate reality is created. Some realities look more like the reality the traveler left depending on the changes. As for Discovery, that was different due to the Red Angel which we didn’t learn about until Season Two.
Don't forget about the Star Trek: First Contact Borg that were woken up from the ice in Star Trek: Enterprise. That too would mean the TNG timeline lines up to ENT's. Especially because the Enterprise-E could return to its future. And that kind of can't be a different timeline either, because we saw an assimilated Earth before Picard and co. did their thing in the past. (It's headache inducing.) And then we've got the Enterprise novels, which present different dates than ENT's finale and makes the death of a character a scheme to go undercover because of the upcoming Earth-Romulan War. And that information is found by Sisko's kid after DS9! (I do know that the novels aren't seen as hard canon, but still.)
It’s always been an alternate reality/timeline. I feel like the decision to add real world events as we moved through the future history TOS mapped out was fueled by the writers to keep Trek feeling connected to our future. Look too hard at it & you’ll go cross eyed, but at arm’s length it’s pretty easy to roll with the changes. Trek is aspirational & optimistic sci-fi. Gene wanted it to explore the human condition as well as inspire us to do better.
I agree, since in the Star Trek world there probably wasn't a show called Star Trek depicting the "real" future. Personally, I think a hand wave is the best way to keep the show fresh and fitting with the contemporary world. Our modern history already surpasses TOS and even TNG personal computers, the internet, and our usage of tablets, phones and our development of text to speech software, just as 1 example, have informed some of the changes in the modern show. Nobody in TNG swiped their padd with their finger the way they do in SNW. One little detail that was missed in the video was that Data referenced the reunification of Ireland as happening in 2024. I know we're not quite there yet, but I really doubt that's something that's going to happen next year. That reference was actually removed from the UK airing of the episode ("The High Ground") to avoid offending folk. Honestly, I think you just have to roll with it. My personal opinion is that it's not an alternate timeline, but an altered one. Every time travel episode of pretty much any franchise warns of stepping on butterflies, and I doubt it would be possible to time travel without doing it. If a new timeline is created when that happens, as in the MCU, then there would be no need for temporal accords or temporal investigations, since the new timeline would pop into existence without affecting the timeline the travellers came from. In that view of time travel, you could never get back to the timeline you left, because you'd return to the new timeline you created. The "prime" universe would always be safe, so no need to ban time travel. However, if that were true, then the history of the prime universe would record the destruction of the Enterprise D with all hands lost when it collided with the Bozeman. Kirk and his landing party would have blipped out of existence as soon as they entered the Guardian of Forever, never to be heard of again. Now I'm getting a temporal headache. My bottom line, I want modern Trek to be exciting, new, and able to tell whatever stories it wants to, without having to worry about what Unnamed Ensign #3 said in the 1960s, back when Star Trek wasn't a major franchise, but was a silly little space show that would soon be cancelled and moved on from. They weren't planning then for how this would lead to SNW or any of the rest of it. At the very worst, if some people can't watch the show anymore because of the changes, the "original" timeline is still there, on bluray, on streaming services, and unlike Doctor Who we have every episode, and presumably always will. Personally, I want to push on and have bold new adventures and not be beholden to canon. Time travel can be a handy plot device.
The game Star Trek Online has the actor who played Daniels in Enterprise, also voices the character Daniels in the game. Archer is also mentioned by Daniels in the game.
Resetting the date for The Eugenics War seems necessary, in a way that retconning The Gorn does not. TOS and SNW can't operate in the same timeline/universe, since it's clear The Federation, and those crew members that also served under Pike, including Spock, Uhura, M'Benga, Chapel and Scotty all have extensive knowledge of The Gorn, yet they are unknown to Kirk in "Arena". Kirk's detailed log explains his first impressions of his Gorn opponent, which would seem silly considering Spock and Scotty's firsthand knowledge from five years prior. Even Kirk's brother has been captured by The Gorn, and it seems like a story he would tell James. Now, Star Trek: SNW can fix all this with a temporal event that resets things to TOS canon, just like we saw several times on Voyager.
Two options: Option 1: Time alterations push pivotal canon events back. Option 2: Everything is canon "from a certain point of view." Each show has its own self-contained canon.
I look at it more that the prime timeline is a little more malleable than previously thought. We already know some time travel events result in entire new timelines, while others seemingly don't affect it. Even in SNW, the fact that Laan couldn't return to her timeline until it was restored, is evidence of this. It's almost as if the universe course corrects itself to protect future events in the timeline itself. So it's still the prime timeline, and it's following the example set during the Berman era.
Or multiverse, timeline just cross over at points, some timeline changes are temporary, some are permenant, for example the timeline we see in All Good Things, that's one timeline on how things WOULD have played out if the temporal anomaly wasn't dealt with, if the ENterprise -D wasn't half destroyed in Generations, but because of Q Picard manages to fix the issue but erases that timeline, but he still remembers his jumps, in that timeline the ENterprise-E still arrived fromt he future and helped Cochrane launch his ship. However there's still some quantum bullshit that occurs resulting in multiple timelines like Nero's ship the Narada going back in time creating the Kelvin Timeline. I see it as that the changes we saw with Kahn in the timeline we see in this episode of SNW was erased from happening, the only one who knew it did was La'ahn with having her memories.
Something else worth considering in Chernobyl specifically. It effectively ended virtually all research and development into Nuclear power across all nations, resulting in heavier reliance on fossil fuels and a regression in terms of energy dependency. Fear about Chernobyl caused immense damage to nuclear energy prospects globally and in conjunction with Three Mile Island ended on the spot countless nuclear projects in the United States. Also thank you for being (one of the strangely few) sane Star Trek fan who realizes the show has to adapt to modern paradigms. Also your editing isn't half bad.
Modern paradigms? Quit sniffing glue. The Trek being produced in Discovery and here with SNW will age faster than anything produced in the 90"s. The talent that is writing STD and SNW is so watered down that I get way more value in Sisko's struggle with racial inequality in one episode of DS9 than both of STD and SNW combined. The character development in these newer shows is.... Ah nevermind. It's like talking to a brick wall.
@@jasonvoorhees8545 Indeed- TOS holds up decently apart from production values, though it a little reflects the sort of mildly post-liberal democratic technocratic ideals of its era. We'll be back to those soon enough. TNG mostly holds up with the same caveat on production values for the early seasons, with few episodes that really reflect specifically 80s concerns. Though the complete inversion of how people interpret "Code of Honor" is funny. It went from a jumble of 80s postcolonial Afrocentrist tropes to being a racist parody. A rare such misstep. 90s Trek holds up just fine. Even Enterprise does. Modern Trek has Starfleet officers talking to one another like petulant Valley girls or whining about their feelings. People like that didn't get through any Academy.
All previous Trek was product of its eras, but none went so far as to have characters act and talk to one another exactly like the silliest of contemporary humans. Writers usually strove for some kind of paradigm that at least suggested the combination of human continuity and different cultural eras creating different patterns. TOS was at its worst when it tried to incorporate period tropes like hippies. Later series did not really have characters acting like 80s or 90s people in any explicit ways.
I’ve been saying this to my wife for ages. EVERY SHOW is its own continuity descended from earlier shows! Every show is an “alternate” universe with tiny changes to the “previous” universe. And like magic, every “canon” problem is solved!
Time travel: 1. Minor changes - the Mandela effect 2. Medium changes - adding or removal of events 3. Major changes - rewriting of entire sections of history 4. Drastic changes - forking of timelines (creation of a new reality)
Real history is not always so cut and dry either. Often it is consensus, but there will always be conflicting accounts (pov, politics, etc.) Many thanks for this insightful video!!
The whole temporal cold war thing sort of makes it so things remain canon even after they are changed, as in, the old canon was how it was before somebody messed with the past, in other words, i like the idea that every series is a different timeline, there is so much time travel within the shows, we are watching how the time travel constantly alters the entire universe past and future as we view different chunks of the universe
That's all a good excuse or reason or how ever ya wanna put it. Doesn't excuse or justify or even VALIDATE the writers who just don't care, who flagrantly believe their one story, one episode, one franchise, one series, is MORE important than the whole realm. Eventually it will be unreconsiable and ONLY each story it's own timeline-universe-reality. And no "World Building" can be relied upon, due to those writers who fail to do their job and know the content their writing about.
@@carolhenry7495 I agree, sort of. When the continuation of an old story doesn't hold up, it's painful for anyone who can appreciate the original; when it _does_ hold up & serves to extend & enhance the old story, it's marvellous... I see new Trek shows doing a _great_ job of revisiting old stories, but falling flat when they step _outside_ the existing canon; especially when the "new" things introduced are shoehorned in, it can feel like the elaborate setting the writer has been given, has been ignored in order to focus on _their_ story. Selfish, and lazy. When they make callbacks, I love it. When they break new ground, I'm usually entranced. When they overwrite for the sake of blatant patronizing, I feel insulted.
One of the concerning implications from "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is that the Noonien-Singh Institute might have been an operation by Federation temporal agents.
@@prophetzarquon The interesting part is, that in the TOS timeline Dayström only tested the first AI driven computer in 2267 on the Enterprise, while in Discovery they had to fight against an omnipresent AI already in 2259.
@@acmenipponairwhich is another example of slipshod writing when someone can make up what they want. TOS being the source material is the easiest history to keep up with.
That was amazing. I hope you will keep making those as long as you can. Thanks to you I keep watching Star Trek. I need to finish DS9 and Voyager and I will be up to date with the current shows. I joined to the community pretty recently thanks to J.J. Abrams movies so it looks like it took me over a decade to watch every Star Trek show's episode :D
Don't feel bad. I've never been a huge fan of Doctor Who, so my episode-by-episode viewing hasn't caught up with the new series (plural) of that yet, either. ;D
Great Stuff !! This audio essay is critic proof well done --- in my humble estimation TOS is the 1701 timeline and strange new worlds is 1701-A timeline --- just like the two ships similiar but one is older and the other more modern looking ( or TOS is PRIME and SNW is PRIME-A ( close but with some variance like huge glossy sets --- also good catch on what Enterprise made crystal clear from the First episode that the Chrono Wars already altered --- in fact the First Contact with the Klingons in Broken Bow was already an altered event that was never undone !
The "I have a bachelor's degree" line made me a subscriber, I think the more personality you inject makes for better videos and you should keep it up!!
Shows that should definitely be considered in the Prime time line are TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager. Enterprise, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds are in an alternate time line created in the events of the First Contact movie when the Enterprise E destroys the Borg in the past. As well, the first 6 movies from the TOS original crew should be Prime as well as the Generations movie. But whether or not if the Enterprise E returns to it's own timeline and the end of First Contact, or into an alternate time line is debatable.
With all the time travel in Star Trek there are dozens of times lines if not more. Every episode mIght takes place in a slughtly diffrent time line due to some off screen time travel somewhere in the galaxy.
Which would make a specific persons birth occur at a different time? That makes no sense on so many levels. It would have to mean that his entire genetic line has shifted half a century in time. Just admit that the writers are lazy
@@Jim-pq9pm Why does everyone speak English in the Stargate franchise? Why did R2 run away when it did leading Luke to meet Obi Won and preventing Luke from being killed when the Empire attacked the farm? How, out of the trillions on the galaxy did Luke run into an old friend in the rebellion? What about the causality violating effects of FTL travel? At a certain point one must just accept absurdities in fiction, otherwise there would be no story.
@@clwho4652 You're listing minor coincidences that could be chalked up to clunky writing. I'm talking about blatant logical inconsistencies. Fiction doesn't mean no logic. I'm not familiar with Stargate, if there's no explanation for everyone speaking English, like Galactic Basic in Star Wars, then I would say that's a logical inconsistency. Shifting a mans entire genetic line by over half a century because you want to nostalgia mine Kahn for the umpteenth time is just lazy and uninspired
@@Jim-pq9pm I agree about the Kahn thing. It is just pandering. They could have easily just have easily just retconed the date, said Spock made a mistake, or added a third party trying to make history happen a certain way. If you look at any media that has been around a long time like Star Trek, you will find plot holes, inconsistencies, contrived coincidences and crap that just doesn't make sense (given what they've been shown to be able to do with the transporters, death should not be a thing in Star Trek). Star Gate took place when the shows were airing (1997 - 2010), the Air Force figured out how to use an alien transportation device called a star gate to travel to other worlds. With a few exceptions, everyone speaks English. There are no universe translators, people just speak English. It is a really good series you should watch it.
There have been so much time travel in Trek even before the Temporal Cold War that things have probably already changed a bunch of times even before Enterprise. Look at "Yesterday's Enterprise" for example. Is the timeline the same at the end of the episode as before the episode? Has Tasha Yar always gone back to the past or did it just happen after that episode? Because if it's not a predestination paradox then the alternate timeline Tasha changed the main timeline. Sela knew that Tasha was sent by Picard so the Romulans found out that she was from the future. They would have made changes based on information she had. Maybe the Romulans made Shinzon because they learned that Picard would become an important captain from Tasha.
Also: We don't see Sela plotting stuff before Yesterday's Enterprise. So it's most likely, that the timeline got changed. It's by the way not really the fault of Tasha Yar - she thought that she would have died anyway, it was most unlikely that some of the Enterprise C crew would survive. By the way, interestingly Tasha Yar couldn't have told them about the Borg. Because most likely the Enterprise in the alternative timeline was never send to the Borg Cube by Q - and the fact, that Picard didn't even expected Q to have tampered with the timeline means that the Enterprise most likely never met Q in that universe.
In my headcanon, the various technologies that went into the NX Class (antimatter, warp 5, phase cannons, transporters, etc.) were implemented about 10 years earlier than they should have shown up. It's like when Scotty gave Dr. Nichols the formula for transparent aluminum. All of it was technically possible for the time, but it just hadn't been figured out yet. This was done so that Enterprise could get to the Sphere Builders in time to stop them from destroying Earth. I use Starfleet Museum's interpretation as my "unaltered timeline" with Archer captaining one of several Amarillo Class ships that were sent on exploratory missions
Rhapsody episode reminded me of the 90s troupe of musical episode... BUT Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is my favorite episode. Kirk was always a ladies man... I just wanted then to really explore that dynamic of Kirk and La'an...
Ever since the TNG episode "Parallels" this has been the obvious answer to any question about continuity between different Star Trek media. They are all in the same multiverse, but any specific episode, even within a series, can be technically in it's own timeline. A lot of people don't like that answer but it is the only correct one based upon what canon we do know.
I've always liked the idea that the temporal wars changed a whole lot of stuff, not only does it free up what a prequel series can do, but it puts more weight on the temporal war, because not everything could simply be reset, the timeline was damaged, links in nicely to the time travel ban in discovery.
Annorax was responsible for some of that. In trying to bring back the Krenim Imperium he created a spaghetti bowl of timelines that only got worse with every change he made. Eliminating his ship from the time stream didn't fix everything.
@@dixievfd55 I'd rather go with the idea that every episode in "Voyager" was a reset because the writers didn't want to show a messed-up Voyager because it was all subtle changes by Annorax's temporal weapons ship, but using it to explain everything that changed in Trek seems a bit of a stretch. The bigger question would be; did the Temporal Cold War start because of the Krenim's research into chroniton weaponry or because different factions (and races) wanted to preserve their own "good" timelines and lead to issues with other races?
It's likely that since Enterprise S4 showed a "post correction" timeline following "Storm Front" that everything afterwards leads off from that is within a different timeline to TOS, but Kelvin and Discovery are within their own distinct timelines
The continuity of the timeline of Star Trek should be seen as though what you see on screen happened and any inconsistency in what you see is because of time travel. It's the only way that a universe that has time travel could make sense if you viewed it from the outside. We know we don't witness every incident of time travel that happens in the entire universe in the show, because we meet other time travelers that have done shit we don't because we meet other time travelers that have done stuff we haven't witnessed. We don't really know what the consequences of DS9's trip to San Francisco was. We know some of the consequences and we know that the future they went back to had a federation, but there are a dozen more stories like that where we just can't say how it changed the past.
I've always liked the idea that Kahn is depicted by so vastly different actors because the eugenics program just pulled out different embryos each time 'wobble' and just named each one 'Kahn'.
@@Jim-pq9pm Listen Jim, I made this comment 7 months ago and I'd forgotten that I'd made it I don't know why my opinion made you feel so angry, but I'd ask that you look inwards and maybe discover why you felt it neccessary to get so aggressive about it, because I'm pretty sure that your angry comment not only made your day worse (because you had to think about it for slightly more time as you typed it out) but also mine. In fact, what I said is a perfectly normal opinion to have if you happen to think about media in a slightly different way than you do. In fact, we've never met each other, and we probably don't even live in the same country, and yet you have used the unlimited powers available to you over the internet to reach through the barriers dividing us and make my day worse Imagine your best friend had said this... Imagine you'd just met me at a party, you'd discovered that I like Star Trek too, and we'd got to talking about this topic. Would you have got so angry then? No. In fact, if you'd asked me to elaborate, I would've probably said something like "yes, I would definitely prefer it if the writers paid more attention to this stuff, but on the whole, I find endless speculation about how everything fits into the greater narrative to be boring and tiresome" so in that sense we don't even disagree But you didn't. You made me open up my notifications and read a couple sentences of someone being very rude to me about a comment I don't even remember making. So I thought I'd just type this out and maybe you'll read this and pay a bit more attention to the way you use your words in the future
Great video! I don't understand the deep upset people feel regarding "breaking" canon. As you say, it's all about the characters and stories being told. A mixture of interpretation means you get to pick and choose your favourites! 😁
I cannot speak for everyone, but for some of us (myself being one case) the fictional universe itself becomes as important as the characters and the stories. We find great interest in putting the puzzle pieces together, seeing how all the events tie into each other and build on things from previous iterations. In short for those of us who are really into the worldbuilding side of a fictional universe changing canon can be similar to if your favourite character just started acting completely differently at a certain point, or lacked consistency at all.
@@neodigremo Oh i completely understand that! I'm very invested in the lore of trek and of course I prefer when everything lines up perfectly but I also have the critical thinking capacity to see that with a universe this expansive, in a franchise that's been running for so long, it just isn't feasible to expect no mistakes, retcons or plotholes. As I say, I think the responsibility rest on the viewer and their imagination to fill in the blanks, rather than on the storyteller to shoehorn their story into strict canon rules.
@@bananahbabe2998 Plot holes will of course happen, as well as mistakes. I am very much not a fan of retcons as.... easiest way I can say is that investment in NEW stories in the setting can be harder for me if the canon established in the setting previously is deliberately ignored or changed. IT's the same reason I dropped out of comics. Massive cosmic retcons looming to render the story I am reading non-canon one day saps my investment. It's similar to struggling to get the emotion to care about a character relationship when we know they are going to break up soon. It is always on a scale of course. A characters birthday being changed is inconsequential usually but then again there is no NEED to get it wrong so it irritates me a little. Changes due to new special effects and what not.... well it is not significant to the story or canon of events so whatever. I may not like the new look (such as the new changeling morph effects from Picard) but that is a separate thing. Personally I think a storyteller who enters a franchise owes it to the audience to get things as accurate as possible. They will miss some things of course. Throwaway lines from ages past will be forgotten until a nitpicky nerd like me comes along to question it. But to me if we can ignore the canon of the past, or worse handwave it away with a retcon, then it is disrespectful to the franchise and the story itself.
I kinda like these fuzzy retcons. It helps the writers not be too constrained and they can keep things relevant for modern watchers. The whole timeline of events stays more or less the same and we still get the franchise defining moments. It also gives us the chance to stealthy "replace" some outdated concepts, including some barebone characterization we might have got previously.
Enterprise exists in a timeline that Star Trek exists as a television show (the Space Shuttle Enterprise which is named after the ST:TOS Enterprise appears). So Enterprise is closer to real life time than any other show..
It’s one of the problems with sci-fi that references a real future date. Eventually that date comes around in the real world. The events of the eugenics wars is fine until the writers felt it necessary to give a date certain for those events.
At that point, you would make a reboot, but they can't do that, because they have to nostalgia mine to make themselves relevant, because they have 1/10th the talent of writers from 50 years ago. The writing in shows like Twilight Zone, TOS, TNG, etc, is far superior than anything people today can put out
It's simple. TOS is set in the original 1985. Everything after, or at least everything since Enterprise is set in the 1985 created when Marty went back to 1955 and taught his dad confidence. The 2009 movie is the 1985 where Biff gave his younger self the sports almanac.
I like the idea that each series is set in an alternate timeline (some very slightly alternate). It solves a tremendous amount of issues with canon and practically eliminates the argument of "Hey! That's not canon!" Well, that's not a problem. Why? Because it doesn't have to adhere to cannon. A statement like that should only be applied within a specific series itself (unless, of course, there's an explanation for it within the series). Let's all move on.
@Knightfall182 Eh, "Trials and Tribble-ations" strikes me as one of those instances where they subtly changed the past by traveling back to it. Much like "Past Tense."
@@Knightfall182 Not EXACTLY the same - there are new sound effects on the Bridge and sections of the corridor are of a different design when compared to the original footage. So it could be a close parallel universe, but not necessarily the same one as TOS
Excellent discussion on the alternate timelines. I don’t know how you got through the sheer complexity of the different timelines as well as trying to explain and tie them all together in a way we could understand them in a consistent manner. I do believe that you may be right in the fact that each show may be set in its own alternate timeline due to the Temporal Cold War. That fact would at least reconcile all the different historical dates that seem to be at odds with each other on different shows.
Thank you! I worried so much that some people wouldn't be able to follow, and certainly that's been the case, but I'm glad plenty more people enjoyed the video! I blame the writers smh
I was relaxed about the 1992 date. After all, UFO flashes '1980' on the screen during the opening credits and I still enjoy rewatching in 2023. Nick Fury was originally a WW2 hero (Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos). Dates are flexible
At the same time some things are modified , I do see a great reverence for all that came before. Jonathan Frakes working on this 2nd season is something he had always had a small hand in earlier episodes of TNG . I think each cast member(who wanted to) got to direct an episode or two of TNG. This evolution of Frakes as a consultant or what ever the position is, is definitely a good steward to guard most of the crucial details. He can help guide other decisions in the Trek world but ultimately studios do have a say. Pelia or Ortegas are my least favorite character arcs so far. When the actress playing Pelia speaks, it is slightly grating to me rather than the comforting tones of Guinan or wisdom and temperament of Hemmer. She plays an old engineer alright. Ortegas is "important" as the pilot, the same way the torpedo tubes working is, but not much else there to work with . I know the real life actress there also had some hardships during filming . Seeing all the adventures before Pike hands off the Enterprise is where we are and the point of the series. Keeping most parts of canon respected and intact can be done while still seeing things we haven't before and having meaningful adventures. Then we just move on to another part of the timeline. Seeing actual emotional conflict disrespects Roddenberry's Trek vision but its closer to our current reality where people do still argue and fight over the small stuff. The bigger conflicts and solutions, we know what we want to move toward. Less restrictive , but also less theming during each episode. Leading to "New Trek" , its 80 % of the pieces of "Old Trek" with new spices. Not everyone appreciates the 20% sensations to the pallet.
I agree that both the Pelia and Ortegas characters do need to be fleshed out more, and I believe that will happen in either the 3rd or 4th season. My issue with Carol Kain's Pelia character is that the accent she uses is pretty much the same that she used as Simka Dahblitz-Gravas in Taxi, the character of the Ghost Of Christmas Present in Scrooged, and Granny in Addams Family Values. I'd even go as far as to say most of her characters have a very similar accent.
So, my two cents about emotional conflict violating Roddenberry's vision. 1) That was more so a 24th century "rule," as there was plenty of interpersonal banter in TOS that no one batted an eye at. Humans in the 23rd century are still enlightened compared to today, but they're rougher around the edges than their 24th century counterparts. 2) When the TNG writers started to do away with some of Roddenberry's "rules," the quality of writing on that show improved dramatically IMO lol
Roddenberry would have run ST to the ground if everything had to follow his "vision". People need to let it go and allow them to adapt it and reinterpret it to a modern audience and world. Yes, it'll be poor sometimes as we've seen, but at least it won't be a regurgitation of TOS.
I kind of like the idea of it being in a new timeline personally and I am kind of glad I'm not the only person that thought strange new worlds was in its own timeline
Dude… This is really, really well done. To think you walked through the Spaceflight Chronology! That was my canon during the 80’s. I can’t imagine the research to write this!
Don't forget, for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Star Trek was moved by the Dicrector/Writer wholesale from the 22nd to the 23rd century. Now explanation given. Too bad while they were at it they didn't change the Eugenics Wars to the 21st century. So it could all have been done in one fell swoop!
The writers could stop doing time travel episodes or send them back in time to a point where they can make small changes but not during an major fixed event
The TOS timeline made sense in the reality of the 1960s into the 70s when there was a space race. During Mercury, Apollo, Skylab, and the moon missions it was easy then to imagine we were going on to a moon base, etc. The idea that 50 years later we would only have a bigger, better Skylab was inconceivable.
Apollo was so far ahead of it's time that we had to catch up. We had no business going to the Moon when we did. I am not complaining, it kicked off the semiconductor revolution and Silicon Valley, but it was selectively pulling forward human advancement. Take a look at the videos where the guys rebuild old Apollo communication hardware and compare what was done vs what can be done with a few cell phones and access points and a big enough antenna.
It was even part of the original plan/timeline of NASA. But as Rick correctly said, because the Vietnam war was eating up more and more money, the space program was heavily cut back when Nixon came into office. Not because Nixon had something against space, but the congress, DEM dominated, didn't wanted to give him the funding anymore for the program.
@@Steven_Edwards Also the priorities of NASA changed. When the race was over, they focussed much more on low risk missions. Especially as they became much more a scientific operation, not anymore a military operation. The military didn't needed NASA anymore - the rockets were invented that could bring nukes to all places of the earth, so NASA focussed on pushing satellites into orbit and probes into space. And when you focus on that, you need RELIABLE rockets,as your contractors will not like it when their satellite or probe explodes during the start, also not so big rockets, as you need much less propellant to get into lower or middle orbit. Also the space shuttle, that was at the beginning of the 1970s meant as a vehicle that could bring us to the moon and mars was cut back to a low orbit lifter. Also: the pilots changed. The Pilots of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were soldiers! Or you can say: human cannon powder. Test pilots even, where only half of them could expect to survive their service time. The Space Program was for them therefore MORE SAVE than their normal job, as they would only have 2-3 hot missions into orbit or the moon and not 20-30 flights per year in airplanes that were more death traps than flying objects. (Even the finalized Starfighter was called a "widow maker", we better don't talk about the prototypes.) But in the 1970s the personnel changed to scientists that also got a training in how to fly a space shuttle. Civilians. People that haven't signed up for missions where they could die all the time. Where the insurances most likely wouldn't even allow that risk they had with Apollo, while the death of a military personnel is covered by the Army, Navy or Air Force, with payments for the families etc. Don't forget, they later said, that they were LUCKY, that they had only 3 deaths and they were on the ground during the space race. When they started Apollo 8, they had a 50:50 chance of all engines starting correctly and lifting the capsule into space and all the navigation they had to do etc. That's also the problem Musk and Co. have to face: Also they cannot risk too much anymore. Whoever Musk puts into the Starship, wants to live and not die because the rocket makes boom again. That's why Space X tests their rockets so much, until the number of explosions go down to 0. One exploding starship with people on board and Space X is done. We are not in the pioneer times anymore, where people want to risk their lives for a trip to Mars.
This video was quite fun to watch, with you pondering over the angst and anger of comments, to having a degree, up through analyzing the time line from a fictional book.. I enjoy your videos for your fairly in-depth research. Bravo.. Some years ago, I was one of those who would attend Star Trek Conventions. I don't even recall hearing of Comicon until my own reboot in life, where I am now. It was at these Star Trek Conventions that friends and I attended a breakout session with script writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore & script coordinator Lolita Fatjo. In this session they asked trivia questions on a broad subject matter, not always to do with Star Trek, but when it got down to writing to the subject of Star Trek, their message was clear. "We are writing (actually making quote finger motions) "Science Fiction". ". I recall them speaking of the "Star Trek Bible" which I can assume was what we all like to call Canon, but didn't stop a writer from dancing or deviating, as long as it was either fixed, or didn't break anything.. That memory is fuzzy at this point.. With recent full length motion pictures across the Spider Man franchise now bringing in either multiple universes or as in one movie, all of the actors who played the character through multi-verse crossings, opens up the idea that in "fiction" you can write some interesting stories. Thank you again for engaging your viewers with entertaining ideas and analysis.. I am always looking forward to seeing what happens next. Sister Ida @}--
This could drive us crazy. I just want them to stick with cannon as much as possible. Tired of all this diffirent timeline crap.Just want good Star Trek, good stories.
Ok as a 50 year veteran, of watching startrek, some of the actors have good story's, I can only remember 4 episodes where good in to seasons, and would rather see it scrapped, and you focus your monies on startrek legacy. Because as a loyal startrek fan, I have had enough of strange new worlds, for me its not going anywhere.
Thanks for taking the time, I just take Trek now as entertainment. I don't read to much into it, if the writing is good and the show is enjoyable, I am happy.
Ok. I just got around to finishing this video after being busy all day. What I think makes the most sense when trying to figure out an in universe explanation is that major events do continue to take place in slightly altered conditions, but result in future historical events still returning to some form of equilibrium. So like for example, any time we saw temporal incursions taking place that altered the timeline, like for example, when Sisko, Dax and Basheer get sent back to 2020’s California, resulting in the future being rewritten with the defiant crew being the only thing left behind in that altered future, when they returns back to their correct time, that timeline was still altered, but in west that was 99.9% correct, which continues to allow for minor changes and shifting timelines to be a valid way to make up for continuity errors and ret-cons. Like it’s already in there that time travel in trek works this way, that timelines change and are overwritten, and that temporal agencies, wars and whatnot are a known fact in Trek, so l to just keep it at “ret-cons are explained away by temporal shenanigans” also interesting that in a video like this you mention Future’s End… but not Year of Hell.
While the editing started to confuse me in the middle, overall this was an amazing episode that should be shared with as many Trek fans as possible. There's no point in my opinion on arguing about what's canon when time travel is baked into the show so flippantly. Thanks Tyler!
@@OrangeRiver I thought it was around the 15 minute mark, but I just went through it again and didn't get the same feeling. Might of just been tired since it was 1am. However, the jumping between post edit and pre-edit captures was a little disorienting at first. I think I like it overall, but it's so different from your normal style I just wasn't ready for it. Maybe just give people a heads up when your going to crank up the jump-cuts (unless this is the new style going forward). You covered A LOT of complicated continuity and lore and kept it loose and interesting the whole way through. Not an easy feat, just felt a bit overwhelming at moments with the sudden cuts. Take my criticism though with a grain of salt since it was pretty late when I watched this the first time.
18:10 and in 2001 it was believed that VentureStar was going to replace the shuttle. It went from a "this is a done deal" to "this will never fly" really fast.
I still hold to the idea that we are the prime timeline. At some future date we develop warp drive. We do meet with the Vulcans and we do evolve into a federation, but it happened on our current heading and timeline. However, various incursions into Earth's past came about once Earth joined the galactic playground. With various visits from TOS and STIV, DS9, Voyager, STFC and Enterprise and events not actually depicted in those media our timeline was ultimately altered. The visit Quark, Odo and the gang certainly showed humanity that there is life out there and it was not prepared launching advancement in genetics. Chekov left his Klingon communicator and disruptor led to technological advancements. Geordi La Forge literally showed Zefram Cochran the Enterprise E in a telescope which may have altered the outcome of ship design if you compare it to the older view of what early earth warp ships may have looked like. Doesn't the NX-01 look very similar to the what one might have considered the Enterprise-E's outline would be. TOS may have been the first iteration of the departure of our future as it shared our history up until the 1960's. As you got new series and certain deviations became apparent you could easily say that the timeline became more and more altered. Discovery and SNW only proves my hypothesis.
🖖😎👍I don't understand that during the Wrath of Khan why they couldn't of changed that Canon to the 2090's and had Khan in the movie say 2096 instead of 1996 which would of been a little more logical in trying to keep more with in our time line of today it would of truly made a lot more common sense, And kept Startrek in more of a realistic tone in stead of like being in an alternate time line and keeping it more with in our time line to an extent as like it truly is as of today's world and society and brought the Canon of Startrek to a more realistic type of setting indeed!,👌.
I agree with the broad strokes argument of timelines however when I look at new trek I feel they are not adhereing to that principle, at the end of the day their taking characters and events doing whatever they want with them , regardless if it makes sense. Not for the sake of telling a good story Or further exploration of existing characters but rather to make characters and events fit the bill of the messages they want to spread.
They say in detail in the episode that there is only one SNW and TOS timeline. That the timeline REPAIRS by itself when an incursion is fixed enough. Not that it divides. It goes back to the original one with minimal modifications in sections of the past. Any "alternate" timeline encompasses only the section of history that changed and then comes back to the main only original repaired timeline. And the graphics on the time travelers padds also detail this. On City of the Edge of Forever, the timeline changed, it didn't divide, and then it was fixed and restored with a minimal change on the past. That's the effect on the timeline when a history change is fixed. The only thing ever in Star Trek that doesn't match with this is the Kelvin movies, but as their change was never solved, we can deduce that it ended dividing due to it never being fixed, as in that the not being fixed in the future made it divide instead of changing the main timeline, in a non linear cause and effect.
I mean, this is essentially correct, yeah. By dividing Trek lore into multiple alternate timelines, though, I'm not saying they all have to concurrently exist with each other.
SNW is a return to form? I don't know about that. I just played through Star Trek Resurgence for my second time and I loved it. I couldn't even get through s01e01 of SNW. I turned it off after 20 minutes.
I don't know if the writers thought of it like this, but one thing I liked about the name "Future's End" is that, since certain dates that were talked about during TOS had since passed, the "future" that TOS envisioned would no longer be possible. At least, not during the same timeframe. Plus, the mention that the computer boom of the late 20th century "should have never happened" explains that things have changed. It can even explain how modern interfaces are more advanced than TOS--a future that we haven't reached yet.
My favorite fan theory about timeline alterations is that the Enterprise E crew in First Contact caused dramatic, fundamental shifts to the Star Trek timeline. By showing Cochran the Enterprise E through a telescope, he rethought starship geometry and design for future vessels - he introduced the saucer-plus-two-nacelles layout rather than more rocket-style ships - and maybe even named the warp 5 prototype “Enterprise” after the E. This design revolution led to all the fantastic starfleet designs in ST:E and Discovery, and caused “inconsistencies” in the SNW Enterprise design like the swept back pylons and NX style warp nacelles. Heck, this could even account for starfleet ships being so much bigger in Discovery and SNW than “they should be at that time” - emulating a monster like the E could be the cause, or adopting the saucer geometry that early may require larger equipment (which would have miniaturized over time if it was developed in other configurations)… Great video! Loving the humor, asides to the audience, and the bloopers being left in! Your presentation style is getting more and more unique, making you stand out from the crowd of Trek RUclipsrs out there. Can’t wait for your next one! 🖖😁
For me this idea that Star Trek needs to meet our real world events has always bothered me going back to that Voyager episode. Star Trek is NOT our universe and I wish productions would get over this. As the franchise goes on trying to match our real world it’s going to be an untenable practice. What happens when a new Trek series airs in the actual mid 21st century, which will inevitably occur? Is the franchise meant to constantly nullify whatever came before to keep up such a ridiculous trend? Trying to truly envision Trek as the future of our own world is a fruitless endeavor. Regarding Strange New Worlds and the entire Prime timeline post Enterprise Ive interpreted the temporal cold war as the nexus point for everything afterwards. I don’t have a problem with any of this as long as it’s addressed and stated onscreen. I hated the blatant SNW Khan retcon UNTIL they actually addressed the timeline change in dialogue. Like you I care about characterization and good storytelling first but I don’t like canon breaking for breaking sake or just pretending like a franchise’s canon doesn’t exist or matter. Like with retcons in general I think if you are going to break canon break it hard and don’t be shy about it! Break it, acknowledge that break and earn its inclusion. I actually think current Trek producers have been seeding alt timeline clues and using Wesley Crusher as the head of the Watchers/Supervisors (Gary Seven,etc) in Picard S2 to create the narrative idea that there’s been an ongoing crusade to keep the timeline intact. I actually think Paramount should use that plot thread with Wesley and the Supervisors as a connection point to use the timeline alterations as a way for a giant crossover of every Trek series and use every surviving actor in some way. Use it to create a giant crossover/reunion piece. The popularity of such a thing would be enormous in a similar way that Picard S3 was. But that is wishful thinking on my part.
The retcon of the Eugenics Wars happening in the 90s started as far back as Voyager when they traveled back in time and saw neither hide nor hair of a global war. I'm very glad they made this addendum to the temporal mechanics of Star Trek. The idea that the prime timeline remains the prime timeline but that certain events have been shifted around by time travel incursions is a very clean way to deal with the discrepancies of the Eugenics Wars and when they happened. It brings to mind two different pieces of media - one being Stephen King's "11 22 63", in which the universe fights back against attempts to change history by making random chance work against you when you are actively trying to change the past, e.g. you're driving to do whatever you're going to do and a tree falls in the road, then your car breaks down, etc. They say in that book "the past is obdurate," meaning stubborn. It also brings to mind the fluid continuities of comics like Marvel and DC. Marvel's Earth 616 is the main Earth and always has been. The 616 Peter Parker is the same 616 Peter Parker he's always been - but when he premiered in the 60s, events in his life happened in the 50s. Now, 60 years later, the character has only aged about a decade and his life events no longer happened in the 50s and 60s, even though it's still the main timeline. The guy at Ex Astris Scientia has long held that the 90s were clearly too early for the DY-100 and 500 style ships and that they must have actually existed later in the lead-up to WW3 in the 2050s. The fact that WW3 tore the civilized world apart is a good enough reason to excuse spotty records from that period.
I love the line you used, as I have used it myself, It is not necessary for Star Trek to be Canon to itself, but in the bigger and broader sense, it must try and by canon to reality. . as the very point of this show and Gene's vision. a positive vision of our future. not all time travel, respects a linear change. and the butterfly effect is not always the case. In Picard season 2, the bullet holes in the walls, were supposed to be there. time acts like water, where when the stream is small, the tiniest spec, can change the course, but when the stream is a raging river, you can throw boulders in the path and have no effect.
This may be your best work yet. And thank you, for elucidating the points I have been trying to nail to the doors of the Church of Canon far better than I have been able to muster.
Here’s how I make sense of this. The Romulans travels back to around the 80s or 90s, her interference delays the creation of Khan to what we see in the SNW episode, this causes a not yet permanent temporal shift, the Temporal Agent tries to stop her but was wounded, he jumped forward to the present of the episode and by La’ahn holding his device she survives the temporal shift as the timeline changes to the one with Kirk as Captain of the United Earth ship Enterprise. They activate the time device and jump back to the past of Kirk’s timeline, they go on their adventure, Kirk dies, and the Romulan is stopped and dies. Because of this the timeline change is erased once La’ahn jumps back to the present. Thus the timeline is restored with the Eugenics Wars occurring in the 90s still. There, issue fixed. Most Star Trek time travel episodes are often to temporary timelines that get erased, timelines cross over, minor enough events not to matter, or you just nod abd accept it as likely an oversight. We know multiple timelines exist. I think the Temporal Cold War wasn’t about “preserving history” as Daniels says to Archer, rather it’s about keeping more chaotic temporal factions from just doing whatever they want with time travel, cause you know even if they fix what they want to, it might not just stop with one thing, these factions might just keep trying to change too much. We see the effect of this in YOY Year Of Hell when Annorax miscalculated he screwed things up worse by erasing something important from history.
I was hoping that watching your video help me understand all the apparent different timelines. SNW’s really got me confused when Scotty shows up in the season 2 finale😳 Now after watching this video and am slightly less confused but more bewildered by the points you brought up! Good vid… I’ll be one of your new subscribers.👍
I've always felt that Enterprise-onward occupied a separate timeline from the 20th century Trek; but, your analysis is fair. There's a case to be made that 90s Trek exists in a separate timeline from TOS, as well. The sword is double-edged. For me, the timeline explanation is very freeing. As someone obsessed with continuity, shows like Enterprise (and ESPECIALLY Discovery) were like my arch-nemeses. The continuity conflicts actively felt like they were ruining everything, for a pedant like me; I couldn't see anything past 'all the stuff they're getting WRONG'. SNW's explanation makes it possible for me to enjoy the stories without getting hung up on the continuity- satisfying my pedant side so that it can get out of the way and just let me take in the narrative and characters. Which I am greatly appreciative of!
In Star Trek-TOS, it's definitely implied that Federation technology is mixed up with other member planets which share their scientific knowledge with us.
I was as a youth quite persnickety about things like respecting the "canon". Grew up with TOS in 80's syndication, it was a perennial in New York City on WPIX 11 ("No bloody WB, CW...) on weekends in the afternoon or evenings and for a very long time nightly paired with The Honeymooners as an alternative to Carson. Adored most of the original crew films and unlike a lot of fans of Kirk and Co. at the time I jumped into TNG whole hog from the start even during the shakey first two seasons and have been a loyal consumer of Trek til this day. It probably makes up an inordinate amount of space in my Nerd portfolio as it were, along side superheroes and of course Star Wars. And it's the super hero stuff that has often informed my comfortable nature with retcons, re-boots and alterations to continuity and alt-timelines and parallel universes, and I guess I have gotten even more comfortable as I have gotten older alongside these pop culture franchises, most of which, outside of Star Wars which only premiered the summer before my birth, were "old" with decades of previous history in the pop culture before I drew breath. I'm huge into Superman being around at the right age and time to experience the Reeve run which spurred me to the comics and diving into all that history along with eventually all the other DC and Marvel characters that you'd expect. From Batman and Green Lantern to X-Men Punisher, and honestly a lot of niche characters thrown in there. Now by then both Marvel, though to a lesser degree, and DC had decades of sprawling interconnected continuty to have to keep track of and keep readers up to date with, all while mass communication from creators and companies was in the stone age in comparison to today. Were there some fanzines and industry periodicals available? Some sure but this is the polar opposite of today where fans get slick BTS packages to promote every aspect of some project to social media PR and even direct communication with creators. There were some source literature but truthfully as stated it was the dark ages and for many characters and franchises you made do with what was presented in the material itself (Film/TV Show/Comic) and what was delineated there was what you based most of your "beliefs" in whatever property you were consuming. Also as stated most of these properties were already filled to the brim with history. Comics were well into the Bronze Age and that meant for say characters from the 1930's that there were three ages to catch up on and then have to keep clear, and that's not even going into the great resets like Crisis On Infinite Earths at DC. Now I get why retcons or rebooting offend fan sensibilities as well as "elastic" approaches to canon, especially on the simple practical level of "Well... What am I SUPPOSED to believe and understand about these complex fictional worlds NOW?" I get it. But from the previous franchises mentioned notice one big difference between say Star Wars and most mainstream super hero stuff as well as Trek? To me it's SW is totally disconnected from our real world. Its internal history is completely seperated from anything in our world. Superman, Batman, Spidey, the majority of capes and tights types operate as a sort of "mythology of the now", whenever NOW happens to be. As such it's conneted to the real world in some ways that is presented in the narrative. Peter Parker and Clark Kent live in what look and feel like a modern American city for whatever age those stories were first published in. In the 1960's Spidey might run into some hippie types or come across some protests mirroring the times. This would eventually be an issue when as time went on referring back to stories from a previous era caused isdues because if say, Frank Castle was a Vietnam Vet then given his history, well his prime punishing days would have been behind him long ago by the time we got to 2000 even. Ditto Tony Stark with his Vietnam conflict linked origin. Some characters had the need to apply an elastic canon solution like Captain America. How do you reckon with Cap's age? Super Soldier Serum hand waving along with simply applying the idea that he came out of ice at a later and later date, so vaguery as a solution in continuity. That couldn't work for everyone though and pretending that either Frank Castle or Stark were ever younger during the 60's to keep the majority of their canon origin in place just became untenable at a certain point so the origins of these nearly then 50 year old creation had to be changed and updated, with the alternative being age them out and passing the torch or just ending the current use of those characters so of course choice A. is what they went with and fans adjusted their understanding and beliefs accordingly if begrudgingly cause at that point we had all that previous continuity memorized and were attached to that particular lore. So... in regards to Trek? It too had a link to the real world. Yes TOS was actually quite vague abbout most of the in universe history, hell if memory serves even the "This is all happening in the 23rd Century" aspect wasn't finalized until Wrath Of Khan when that appears on screen at the start. Even with that baked in vagueness at the start eventually this future of humanity story had to lay down some markers about what had happened going forward in time from its actual late 1960's history that the audience was living in. And remember, this was all come up with long before anyone had an idea it would continue to exist as a pop culture staple until the year 2023. As such, and as lore was added as decades past and updates and retcons came the starkness of the real world's departure from Trek's vague but still accepted post 1960's history of how things played out, today an elastic approach or pruning canon to to clean things up is... Necessary in my view, and inevitable honestly. This is not even getting into that Trek along with many franchises had baked in canonical contradictory information from the start that we individual fans always patched with "head canon" or just throwing our hands up and going "Oh well... I guess this is what it is" or just plain "I guess they goofed up in the writer's room... Oh well". And that's my view. Changes to canon happen, they are usually inevitable in regards to these long lived mythologies of pop culture (And this is true of actual historical mythology with multiple version of everything from Hercules's story from start to finish to, frankly the varying versions of the Gospels used by different sects of Christianity for centuries before the Council Of Nicea decided all that was heretical fan fiction. Lol) and despite how it raises many a fan's hackles, probably also quite necessary to keep these properties a float for new generations to experience and add to. The God's honest truth is if a Trek series were done exactly like TOS from aesthetics to a bear hold on original (Whatever that means) continuity it might be interesting to a long time fan as me but ultimately would be hobbled in its ability to speak to younger people into sci fi today. If we could live with or hand wave away things like the backwards sexual politics of the sixties apparent in TOS (Pike and Kirk uncomfortable with female yeoman under their command say or Turn About Intruder telling us there are no women as Starship Captains as just two examples.) in light of how both real life and the franchise's own continuity going forward from there went, I honestly think we can live with whatever updates and new paintjob they have given Trek today. Finally... Live Long And Prosper Tyler. Love your content and your POV.
"A guy at the Apple Store taught me how to use DuckDuckGo"
😕🤨Wut?!?!😂😂😂😂 The video just started, hopefully it's a joke I'll get later 😂😂
The Star Trek universe works on the idea that everything that happened in the past has already happened. People saying things means nothing. Any records that have incorrect dates are because most records were corrupted or lost in WW3. The timeline in all of the shows is and has always been the same timeline with the exception of when they have gone to alternate realities. When they return to the present it is always the same present that they left.
That was a genuinely funny line.
@@RandomNPC001 Good thing they didn't tap into the Barbie universe then.
@@SnarkNSass that's a line from "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"
Let’s just ask Garak for the answer. Garak, what is canon now?
Garak: it’s all canon.
Even the inconsistencies?
Garak: especially the inconsistencies.
This is the new canonical answer!
It can't all be canon. It either fits or it doesn't.
I still think we could have colonized the solar system and beyond "without World War 3". I know this is weak.
That's the beauty of this explanation; even when it doesn't fit, it still fits. :)
I could just see his raised eyebrow and head tilt as he says it!
I like the idea that since time travel is so easy in the Star Trek universe, there are little alterations happening nearly constantly. So rather than several distinct timelines, it's just reality shifting and changing. Temporal investigations thinks they're staying on top of it, but they only notice when something big happens. Most changes just go completely unnoticed.
It's a neat explanation that fits with the abundance of time travel plots in Star Trek and can explain basically any subtle discontinuity between shows.
I've embraced the malleability of history and time in Star Trek.
I'm pretty sure Star Trek's timeline is butterfly-resistant too. You have to try, or seriously screw up, to make major changes.
This happens in STO in one mission. You stop an assassination attempt only for Captain Walker to show up after the fact saying something about a temporal shift. Your response is something along the lines of "Yeah. We took care of it."
Yeah..i realy like that point of view....it actualy fix and clear all controversyes
Also, in TOS, the Gorn were completely foreign to the Federation, before Kirk meets up with them… In the new series, the Gorn are everywhere!
"We're not going back!"
That’s a fundamental change I have serious problems with because of the showrunners literally saying that the Gorn are evil. The entire point of that original Gorn episode Arena was to illustrate that no species is evil, just misunderstood or operating from a different moral perspective. That’s THE essence of Star Trek and dumbing the Gorn down to xenomorph knock offs kind of taints the spirit in which they were meant to be depicted. Visually I have no problem with their redesign but conceptually it bothers me.
@@langleymneely 100% agree about the SNW Gorn ruining the very Star Trek theme of "Arena." I would like the new Gorn much better if they had been a new species of alien life, and not "the" Gorn.
At least it wasn't a rubber Gorn this time!
@@jp6869 I honestly prefer the rubber suit over the design and CGI of the new Gorn. I'm sure a practical Gorn (with CG enhancements) could be made today that would be superior to both the OG and the new Gorn.
This pretty much sums up how I feel on the whole timelines thing. I used to be far more concerned with timelines and continuity until I started delving into the lore in depth then realised there's holes all over the place anyway. So yeah, I 100% agree that the broad strokes lining up is the more important thing to maintain. I still enjoy trying to map it all out however, but ultimately I just have to accept (for example) that if its official that TOS takes place after SNW, then discrepancies or no, it do take place after SNW.
Well said!
You gave up on timelines because ST world today is so broken there is no point to explaining anything anymore. It is just one big mess. The plotholes of past were worth exploring and explaining because they were just holes. But today state is just one pille of junk not worth even watching.
@@prolamer7Okay then, stop wasting your time watching.
The rest of us will find our personal joy in the whole of Star Trek, wherever it may be.
Live long and prosper 🖖.
@@JuanitasGrandaughter I already stopped watching new serries. Do you want to take my free speach away, to silence me? Because you have no arguments?
The new stuff just is not Star Trek. It lacks everything old one had.
@@prolamer7 You are absolutely welcome to your free speech, your opinion and your defensive attitude. Have fun. I feel secure in acknowledging that some of the population is enjoying the ride rather than judging. Cheers!
I think the temporal cold war is just a way for writers to have an in universe justification for retconing the prime timeline. We've seen that it is possible to change the timeline without creating a splinter universe. There's an episode in TNG where they deal with something like this but I dont remember the name right now.
Parallels
ENT's cold war couldn't retcon the Prime timeline. The Prime timeline didn't exist until JJ created the idea of it in 2009. Keep in mind, JJ took something that at the time he was unable to use... Spock. Specifically Lenard Nimoy's Spock. All the marketing around his character referred to him as Prime Spock which is an important marketing distinction for legal reasons.
The idea of the Prime Timeline with no explanation, save for Nimoy's involvement did not state that Prime covered the shows of TOS to ENT... As JJ sneakily admitted through his script... "Oh... I... Implied..."
When Prime was created, it was in reference to a timeline and continuity that had never been committed to screen leaving the audience to pull from what they knew. And what they knew was Classic Trek that filled in the gaps JJ left with his light of hand that allowed him to do no work in telling the audience what Prime was.
“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.” - Doctor Who
Came to say this
Thanks for reminding me why I can't stand Doctor Who.
timetravel opens up so many creative weirdnesses
so lazy writing?
Long before {sic} The Doctor said that, Douglas Adams wrote that reality is a "whole sort of general mish-mash" which punier creatures use "perception filters" to observe; creatures without such perception filters, being depicted as timeless & terrifying endgame monsters.
years ago, i started realizing that it's all overlapping sets of timelines - there's enough time travel in the original series to justify that - i started to see the continuity errors as temporal incursions and realized that every single series has had time travel shenanigans!! so i've LONG waited for a vid like this - thanks Tyler!!!! srry about your bachelors degreee lol (i literally loled)
Thanks Seven! Lol
I've always believed that every series takes place in its own timeline.
"we didn't make a mistake......uhm.......multiple timelines!" is a real Endgame-level excuse.
Not just each show; due to conceptual differences between the writers of one episode to the next, there are enough flagrant flip-flops in attitude, established tech, & clerical data, to warrant the assumption that we were shown _at least_ two Kirks captaining on TOS, three or four Picard TNGs, etc.
The downside is that people who hate time travel stories may never feel that anything matters, in such a case (any realities being replaceable drops in a bucket); however, the upside is that any narrative inconsistencies a series exhibits, can be set aside with "canonically, multiple parallel timelines are happening, & sometimes our change of view is not revealed until later: therefore, maybe that flaw in this episode will be retconned into making sense, by a future episode of this or another Trek series".
Trek's parallel timelines bump & rub so much they reproduce season by season.
I prefer the theory that all of Star Trek, from ToS to DS9, is just a bunch of Starfleet propoganda intended to romanticize space exploration and downlplay the dangers of it. That, I think, extends to what we see of the "history" of earth in particular, and the vulcans' history also, to a lesser extent. This covering up of the real history keeps most humans from asking too many questions about their own past, some of which might be very uncomfortable for Starfleet and the government of earth to answer. The only series that is less made-up, because it'd be too hard to hide most of the events, is DS9, except that the dominion war is almost all just pure fiction, as far as tactics and overall strategy goes, as no warfighting force can make that many terrible decisions and still win the war.
With as much time travel shenanigans that happen each series, it's a wonder the timeline hasn't completely fractured. Every Trek series spends at least two episodes and a two-parter doing time travel.
Timeline Preservation Division:
"And we thought Janeway was trouble......"
If they would have not messed with it in the 1st place starting in 2009, everything might be still great, and we wouldn’t be talking about it right now.
@@ChrisS-no3ft "still be great"
🤦🏻♂️
You aren't getting "that feeling I had when I was younger" anymore because........ you are not young anymore.
The timeline is like a stream. Throw a boulder into it and it will block the flow and divert it in another direction. Throw a few pebbles in and it will cause some ripples, but the stream will keep flowing in the same direction.
*Mark Twain has entered the chat* Nyahah-hah!
One additional detail i found interesting in the SNW episode is the comment that history seems to be pushing back against timeline changes. It gave the sense that, rather than small changes in the past culminating in massive future changes in most instances, it takes truly monumental changes to substantially alter the future, and even then such changes may be more subtle than intended.
Edit: In hindsight, there is one episode that does depict the timeline changing substantially from a seemingly minor alteration, City on the Edge of Forever. This episode (and technically its TAS followup) involves seemingly minor changes that cause lasting alterations of greater significance. This raises the possibility: could the Guardian of Forever itself be what is holding the timeline together.
makes me remember the Voyager episode where an alien is altering the timeline to save his family from death. He has and does restore his Empire to a point in time where it is dominant force in the region and more, but his family is still dead due to the war. He sacrifices an entire empire, even more empires and races within the galaxy over and over again yet for some unfathomable reason he can never get what he's after.
Its not until he realises the timeship is the source of the paradox. In any continuity for him to posess it, the war where his family ends up dying must happen one way or the other, prompting him to use board and use the ship.
He surrenders, the ship explodes, resetting the timeline where Voyager doesnt even meet them. Instead we see the same commander again, this time without the chronoship, where he escorts Voyager out of the Empire's border without aggression.
My stance is, and has been for many years now, that the TOS timeline has been altered by the constant time travelling through the TNG era in particular, but the first biggest change came about in First Contact, which led to the timeline which we see in ENT (where the NX-01 was named after the 1701-E), and the timeline was further altered by the Temporal Cold War, which leads us into DISCO, etc (including the revised future on everything post-FC). Which is why suddenly in Nemesis the NX-01 did exist in Trek's history, although never seen or mentioned before (and let's be honest, if ENT always happened, there is no way in hell the NX-01's role in the founding of the Federation would have been ignored considering the importance of the Enterprise legacy).
So anything after First Contact (ignoring Kelvin) is a second Prime Timeline? Ie ENT, Disco and SNW?
@@dustojnikhummer Very much so. And the writers even confirmed it in SNW when they put in the line about how temporal agents (and thus, one can easily assume, the temporal cold war) have altered the order of events.
@@dustojnikhummer Very much so. And the writers even confirmed it in SNW when they put in the line about how temporal agents (and thus, one can easily assume, the temporal cold war) have altered the order of events.
@@replimatreviews honestly i like to think that after the xindi war and mining colony incident the temporal agents switched from fixing to timeline to putting bandaids on it to try and mitigate the damage done because of how irreversibly fucked it got
The timeline was broken in the very first ep of Enterprise. It was further polluted when the Mirror Universe Tholiams pulled the Connie class Defiant back in time. Everything since then that has changed can be explained by those two incidents
And I am fine with it. If it means that we see more touch screens and zippers in their uniforms, then its a plus in my books. And them having more media in the future.
Enterprise isn't even the breakup - the breakup is Movie 8, on which Enterprise is based on.
@@acmenipponair If you mean the borg guys found at the north pole...theres some indication thats a predestined temporal event. "Broken Bow" absolutely isnt. It in no way resmebles first contact with the Klingons as described by Picard
It' can't actually, but you're really good at fellating corporate entities.
This is a great video. Yesterday I was debating this online with someone about this. He couldn't acknowledge that Strange New Worlds confirmed that the timeline had been altered.
Thanks a bunch!
The idea that the timeline is altered is the best route they could've gone. This way TOS can remain its own thing and Discovery officially hasn't infected anything. The Discoverse is in its own universe, similar to the Kelvin timeline.
Separate timelines is just an excuse for the writers to do what they want. Yes, a lot of canon in TOS was written in the 1960's and events that happened in 1996 (Khan) must be overlooked, since we are clearly in 2023. But, canon is a big part of what made Star Trek great. It treated the world of Trek and its characters as if they were real. If there was time travel in TOS it didn't really change anything. Today's writers are not real fans of the Star Trek world and I honestly believe they are too lazy to do the proper research and don't care if they rewrite canon because it is so much easier for them to change things to suit their needs for getting a script into production.
@@dexterfurman9118the crux.
Not just the Voyager 6 probe (that program must have been VERY different to our one!) but also the launch of NOMAD and those amazing improvements to sub-light engines in 2018 - we all remember those, right? 😉
I remember saying that about "the third Chinese moon mission", when I was 12.
Nowadays in my own sci-f back story, World War 3 just ended right now. ！歳蛮！歳蛮！歳蛮
@@NextWorldVR Saying that the Star Trek universe has NOTHING to do with our actual universe is one of the silliest comments I've heard of, in many years regarding Star Trek. There are numerous people, images, references and callbacks to real world events, from TOS all the way up to SNW. The differences (as well as a the commonalities) are precisely the subject of conversation in the video.
Star Trek is fiction. Period.Fiction is dated after awhile. Alternate timelines in ST or any other franchise are fine with me. Its all good.
You remind of a fifth season episode of Doctor Who when the 11th Doctor discovers that his companion, Amy, has no memory of the Earth being stolen along with 25 other worlds. Turned it had something to do with current storyline.
@@sabrewolf4129 You aren't responding to anything I wrote. You're only continuing to make unsupported claims.
There's one point I think most people on either side of this often don't seem to fully understand: It's a fictional show, about people and places and things that aren't real. It can never be both fun and perfectly consistent, because there's a limit to what human story-tellers can account for in their minds when telling stories. Not only does that mean it's silly to get upset over every continuity error, it also means it's kind of silly to think such errors need to be explained away. If someone happens to find nitpicking fun then more power to them, but it can be a lot easier to enjoy a good story if the plot holes are simply acknowledged as plot holes and forgiven if they don't hurt the narrative and/or seem intentionally disrespectful.
Yea, people don't fully understand that its fiction, except for you. What an intelligent comment, we all definitely needed to hear that. Who cares about logical consistency when it comes to fiction, that doesn't matter even in the slightest. What really matters is fanboying for a dead franchise that being picked apart by vulturous corporate entities for a quick profit. We're so lucky to have someone as smart as you to inform the rest of us utter morons, who can't even figure out that fiction isn't real...🖕🖕
Great job Tyler, which happens to be my middle name, you not only put into words what I've been speculating for thirty years. But you did it GREAT and way more in depth than I could have done. So, I absolutely agree with you. I will probably watch this one again and again because there's so much to unwrap. I've always known that Star Trek occurs in an altered timeline from ours, but that every episode featuring travel in time to the past also changes things . Sometimes significantly. It kinda makes me mad when people complain about retcons and other inconsistencies. It's a multi timeline multiverse that we're watching for Khan's sake. I really like your development of these ideas and you're a funny guy, too. I dig it. And since you're a fellow ginger, nerd, and trekkie, I feel almost like you could be a brother from another mother. Thanks for this video as well as the other ones about timeline changes. Have a great day. You got a fan over here in Colorado. 😅
Book from the 1970's: "You're going to have interstellar communication by 2044"
Reality: " We made an iPhone slightly better than last year's one!" :p
God I hope we get to Mars next decade
@@OrangeRiver I'll be happy if we make it back to the moon by the end of the decade, at this rate.
Yep. I think they'll meet that deadline, but they're most definitely gonna take their time. As they should, but we should have already been back anyway
I always felt Star Trek was a glimpse of a more prosperous future. A story meant to inspire us down a similar path. I've never had a problem with the retcons. Only some of the writing, cough, cough, Picard, cough...
Choke on your cough. I am star trek
@@dickhardpicard I seem to have hit a nerve. How sad for you...
@@peterschlange1832 just for you ruclips.net/video/KL3WbzUAEok/видео.html&feature=share8
@@peterschlange1832limpicard, that's the problem. I've heard season 3 finely got the show off the ground though. They took control from baldy.
@@deker0954 the end of picard was decent.I suppose, didn't start that way though
Somewhere, in storage, i still have a beat up, tattered Star Fleet Technical manual from the 70’s. What a great book!
I had one too plus a pocket book called "The making of Star Trek" which was a pretty cool behind the scenes thing.
The Enterprise show wanted its cake and to eat it too. The Temporal Cold War changed the timeline (or created an alternate reality). However the infamous finale These Are the Voyages made it clear that the show was, somehow, part of the same timeline as TOS and TNG.
My theory is that every time there is time travel an alternate reality is created. Some realities look more like the reality the traveler left depending on the changes.
As for Discovery, that was different due to the Red Angel which we didn’t learn about until Season Two.
Don't forget about the Star Trek: First Contact Borg that were woken up from the ice in Star Trek: Enterprise. That too would mean the TNG timeline lines up to ENT's. Especially because the Enterprise-E could return to its future. And that kind of can't be a different timeline either, because we saw an assimilated Earth before Picard and co. did their thing in the past. (It's headache inducing.)
And then we've got the Enterprise novels, which present different dates than ENT's finale and makes the death of a character a scheme to go undercover because of the upcoming Earth-Romulan War. And that information is found by Sisko's kid after DS9! (I do know that the novels aren't seen as hard canon, but still.)
“Time line?! This is no time to argue about time! We don't have the time!” 🖖🏻🤣
It's all one timeline, Wesley is just weaving his Tapestry across the chronology.
The Borg created the whole Enterprise events. Zeffy saw the Enterprise E in orbit and used that as a future model for future warp ships.
Oh my. A CIRCULAR Theory
It’s always been an alternate reality/timeline. I feel like the decision to add real world events as we moved through the future history TOS mapped out was fueled by the writers to keep Trek feeling connected to our future. Look too hard at it & you’ll go cross eyed, but at arm’s length it’s pretty easy to roll with the changes.
Trek is aspirational & optimistic sci-fi. Gene wanted it to explore the human condition as well as inspire us to do better.
I agree, since in the Star Trek world there probably wasn't a show called Star Trek depicting the "real" future. Personally, I think a hand wave is the best way to keep the show fresh and fitting with the contemporary world. Our modern history already surpasses TOS and even TNG personal computers, the internet, and our usage of tablets, phones and our development of text to speech software, just as 1 example, have informed some of the changes in the modern show. Nobody in TNG swiped their padd with their finger the way they do in SNW.
One little detail that was missed in the video was that Data referenced the reunification of Ireland as happening in 2024. I know we're not quite there yet, but I really doubt that's something that's going to happen next year. That reference was actually removed from the UK airing of the episode ("The High Ground") to avoid offending folk.
Honestly, I think you just have to roll with it. My personal opinion is that it's not an alternate timeline, but an altered one. Every time travel episode of pretty much any franchise warns of stepping on butterflies, and I doubt it would be possible to time travel without doing it. If a new timeline is created when that happens, as in the MCU, then there would be no need for temporal accords or temporal investigations, since the new timeline would pop into existence without affecting the timeline the travellers came from. In that view of time travel, you could never get back to the timeline you left, because you'd return to the new timeline you created. The "prime" universe would always be safe, so no need to ban time travel. However, if that were true, then the history of the prime universe would record the destruction of the Enterprise D with all hands lost when it collided with the Bozeman. Kirk and his landing party would have blipped out of existence as soon as they entered the Guardian of Forever, never to be heard of again.
Now I'm getting a temporal headache.
My bottom line, I want modern Trek to be exciting, new, and able to tell whatever stories it wants to, without having to worry about what Unnamed Ensign #3 said in the 1960s, back when Star Trek wasn't a major franchise, but was a silly little space show that would soon be cancelled and moved on from. They weren't planning then for how this would lead to SNW or any of the rest of it.
At the very worst, if some people can't watch the show anymore because of the changes, the "original" timeline is still there, on bluray, on streaming services, and unlike Doctor Who we have every episode, and presumably always will. Personally, I want to push on and have bold new adventures and not be beholden to canon. Time travel can be a handy plot device.
SNW is prime timeline and always has been.
anytime there is time travel and multiple timeline shenanigans, all bets are off lol
@@aaronmonse3643 no.
@lucasbachmann Didn't know you were part of Strange New Worlds' creative staff!
The game Star Trek Online has the actor who played Daniels in Enterprise, also voices the character Daniels in the game. Archer is also mentioned by Daniels in the game.
Resetting the date for The Eugenics War seems necessary, in a way that retconning The Gorn does not. TOS and SNW can't operate in the same timeline/universe, since it's clear The Federation, and those crew members that also served under Pike, including Spock, Uhura, M'Benga, Chapel and Scotty all have extensive knowledge of The Gorn, yet they are unknown to Kirk in "Arena". Kirk's detailed log explains his first impressions of his Gorn opponent, which would seem silly considering Spock and Scotty's firsthand knowledge from five years prior. Even Kirk's brother has been captured by The Gorn, and it seems like a story he would tell James.
Now, Star Trek: SNW can fix all this with a temporal event that resets things to TOS canon, just like we saw several times on Voyager.
Two options: Option 1: Time alterations push pivotal canon events back. Option 2: Everything is canon "from a certain point of view." Each show has its own self-contained canon.
Option 2 feels like "Everything is canon for that specific series' timeline as long as it isn't directly contradicted by something in that series"
The Powers that Be could care less about "Timelines". What makes them money is all they really care about.
I look at it more that the prime timeline is a little more malleable than previously thought. We already know some time travel events result in entire new timelines, while others seemingly don't affect it. Even in SNW, the fact that Laan couldn't return to her timeline until it was restored, is evidence of this. It's almost as if the universe course corrects itself to protect future events in the timeline itself. So it's still the prime timeline, and it's following the example set during the Berman era.
Old Ben Kenobi would be proud!
Or multiverse, timeline just cross over at points, some timeline changes are temporary, some are permenant, for example the timeline we see in All Good Things, that's one timeline on how things WOULD have played out if the temporal anomaly wasn't dealt with, if the ENterprise -D wasn't half destroyed in Generations, but because of Q Picard manages to fix the issue but erases that timeline, but he still remembers his jumps, in that timeline the ENterprise-E still arrived fromt he future and helped Cochrane launch his ship. However there's still some quantum bullshit that occurs resulting in multiple timelines like Nero's ship the Narada going back in time creating the Kelvin Timeline. I see it as that the changes we saw with Kahn in the timeline we see in this episode of SNW was erased from happening, the only one who knew it did was La'ahn with having her memories.
Something else worth considering in Chernobyl specifically. It effectively ended virtually all research and development into Nuclear power across all nations, resulting in heavier reliance on fossil fuels and a regression in terms of energy dependency. Fear about Chernobyl caused immense damage to nuclear energy prospects globally and in conjunction with Three Mile Island ended on the spot countless nuclear projects in the United States.
Also thank you for being (one of the strangely few) sane Star Trek fan who realizes the show has to adapt to modern paradigms. Also your editing isn't half bad.
Thanks Alnarra! I didn't edit most of this video, but I like to think I do pretty well on the projects I do edit lol. I do have that degree...XD
@@OrangeRiver It certainly shows, a lot of little framing things in the shots and the cuts are well done :D Keep up the good work
Modern paradigms? Quit sniffing glue. The Trek being produced in Discovery and here with SNW will age faster than anything produced in the 90"s. The talent that is writing STD and SNW is so watered down that I get way more value in Sisko's struggle with racial inequality in one episode of DS9 than both of STD and SNW combined. The character development in these newer shows is.... Ah nevermind. It's like talking to a brick wall.
@@jasonvoorhees8545 Indeed- TOS holds up decently apart from production values, though it a little reflects the sort of mildly post-liberal democratic technocratic ideals of its era. We'll be back to those soon enough. TNG mostly holds up with the same caveat on production values for the early seasons, with few episodes that really reflect specifically 80s concerns. Though the complete inversion of how people interpret "Code of Honor" is funny. It went from a jumble of 80s postcolonial Afrocentrist tropes to being a racist parody. A rare such misstep. 90s Trek holds up just fine. Even Enterprise does.
Modern Trek has Starfleet officers talking to one another like petulant Valley girls or whining about their feelings. People like that didn't get through any Academy.
All previous Trek was product of its eras, but none went so far as to have characters act and talk to one another exactly like the silliest of contemporary humans. Writers usually strove for some kind of paradigm that at least suggested the combination of human continuity and different cultural eras creating different patterns. TOS was at its worst when it tried to incorporate period tropes like hippies. Later series did not really have characters acting like 80s or 90s people in any explicit ways.
I’ve been saying this to my wife for ages. EVERY SHOW is its own continuity descended from earlier shows!
Every show is an “alternate” universe with tiny changes to the “previous” universe. And like magic, every “canon” problem is solved!
Not every show.
There is one show - Star Trek. Every new series is just further steps down the timeline.
Time travel: 1. Minor changes - the Mandela effect
2. Medium changes - adding or removal of events
3. Major changes - rewriting of entire sections of history
4. Drastic changes - forking of timelines (creation of a new reality)
Real history is not always so cut and dry either. Often it is consensus, but there will always be conflicting accounts (pov, politics, etc.)
Many thanks for this insightful video!!
Thank you!
The whole temporal cold war thing sort of makes it so things remain canon even after they are changed, as in, the old canon was how it was before somebody messed with the past, in other words, i like the idea that every series is a different timeline, there is so much time travel within the shows, we are watching how the time travel constantly alters the entire universe past and future as we view different chunks of the universe
There's definitely several concurrent Picards, at this point.
Not only are there separate timelines, but they keep influencing each other, too.
That's all a good excuse or reason or how ever ya wanna put it.
Doesn't excuse or justify or even VALIDATE the writers who just don't care, who flagrantly believe their one story, one episode, one franchise, one series, is MORE important than the whole realm.
Eventually it will be unreconsiable and ONLY each story it's own timeline-universe-reality. And no "World Building" can be relied upon, due to those writers who fail to do their job and know the content their writing about.
@@carolhenry7495 I agree, sort of. When the continuation of an old story doesn't hold up, it's painful for anyone who can appreciate the original; when it _does_ hold up & serves to extend & enhance the old story, it's marvellous...
I see new Trek shows doing a _great_ job of revisiting old stories, but falling flat when they step _outside_ the existing canon; especially when the "new" things introduced are shoehorned in, it can feel like the elaborate setting the writer has been given, has been ignored in order to focus on _their_ story. Selfish, and lazy.
When they make callbacks, I love it. When they break new ground, I'm usually entranced. When they overwrite for the sake of blatant patronizing, I feel insulted.
One of the concerning implications from "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is that the Noonien-Singh Institute might have been an operation by Federation temporal agents.
Singh & Soong are just microns apart, too: The Daystrom Institute seems to be caught up in Section-31 / Control shenanigans, as well.
Lol... Oh man.. I didn't suspect that.
@@od1452 What's worse is that it's not likely the only example of this, nor is it likely limited to the fictional Trek history.
@@prophetzarquon The interesting part is, that in the TOS timeline Dayström only tested the first AI driven computer in 2267 on the Enterprise, while in Discovery they had to fight against an omnipresent AI already in 2259.
@@acmenipponairwhich is another example of slipshod writing when someone can make up what they want. TOS being the source material is the easiest history to keep up with.
That was amazing. I hope you will keep making those as long as you can. Thanks to you I keep watching Star Trek. I need to finish DS9 and Voyager and I will be up to date with the current shows. I joined to the community pretty recently thanks to J.J. Abrams movies so it looks like it took me over a decade to watch every Star Trek show's episode :D
Don't feel bad. I've never been a huge fan of Doctor Who, so my episode-by-episode viewing hasn't caught up with the new series (plural) of that yet, either. ;D
Time can't fix Vulcan Star destruction, so we have kelvin timeline
Great Stuff !! This audio essay is critic proof well done --- in my humble estimation TOS is the 1701 timeline and strange new worlds is 1701-A timeline --- just like the two ships similiar but one is older and the other more modern looking ( or TOS is PRIME and SNW is PRIME-A ( close but with some variance like huge glossy sets --- also good catch on what Enterprise made crystal clear from the First episode that the Chrono Wars already altered --- in fact the First Contact with the Klingons in Broken Bow was already an altered event that was never undone !
Loving these longer videos and the added humorous moments 😅 Thanks so much for your hard work 👍
Thank you so much!
The "I have a bachelor's degree" line made me a subscriber, I think the more personality you inject makes for better videos and you should keep it up!!
Thank you!!
@@OrangeRiver
He is SMART.
Shows that should definitely be considered in the Prime time line are TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager. Enterprise, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds are in an alternate time line created in the events of the First Contact movie when the Enterprise E destroys the Borg in the past. As well, the first 6 movies from the TOS original crew should be Prime as well as the Generations movie. But whether or not if the Enterprise E returns to it's own timeline and the end of First Contact, or into an alternate time line is debatable.
12:11 Tyler: "Where should we draw the line?"
Picard: "THE LINE MUST BE DRAWN HERE!"
OrangeRiver means quality. Thank you for your great videos!
Thank you so much!
With all the time travel in Star Trek there are dozens of times lines if not more. Every episode mIght takes place in a slughtly diffrent time line due to some off screen time travel somewhere in the galaxy.
Which would make a specific persons birth occur at a different time? That makes no sense on so many levels. It would have to mean that his entire genetic line has shifted half a century in time. Just admit that the writers are lazy
@@Jim-pq9pm Why does everyone speak English in the Stargate franchise? Why did R2 run away when it did leading Luke to meet Obi Won and preventing Luke from being killed when the Empire attacked the farm? How, out of the trillions on the galaxy did Luke run into an old friend in the rebellion? What about the causality violating effects of FTL travel?
At a certain point one must just accept absurdities in fiction, otherwise there would be no story.
@@clwho4652 You're listing minor coincidences that could be chalked up to clunky writing. I'm talking about blatant logical inconsistencies. Fiction doesn't mean no logic. I'm not familiar with Stargate, if there's no explanation for everyone speaking English, like Galactic Basic in Star Wars, then I would say that's a logical inconsistency. Shifting a mans entire genetic line by over half a century because you want to nostalgia mine Kahn for the umpteenth time is just lazy and uninspired
@@Jim-pq9pm I agree about the Kahn thing. It is just pandering. They could have easily just have easily just retconed the date, said Spock made a mistake, or added a third party trying to make history happen a certain way.
If you look at any media that has been around a long time like Star Trek, you will find plot holes, inconsistencies, contrived coincidences and crap that just doesn't make sense (given what they've been shown to be able to do with the transporters, death should not be a thing in Star Trek).
Star Gate took place when the shows were airing (1997 - 2010), the Air Force figured out how to use an alien transportation device called a star gate to travel to other worlds. With a few exceptions, everyone speaks English. There are no universe translators, people just speak English.
It is a really good series you should watch it.
There have been so much time travel in Trek even before the Temporal Cold War that things have probably already changed a bunch of times even before Enterprise.
Look at "Yesterday's Enterprise" for example. Is the timeline the same at the end of the episode as before the episode? Has Tasha Yar always gone back to the past or did it just happen after that episode? Because if it's not a predestination paradox then the alternate timeline Tasha changed the main timeline. Sela knew that Tasha was sent by Picard so the Romulans found out that she was from the future. They would have made changes based on information she had. Maybe the Romulans made Shinzon because they learned that Picard would become an important captain from Tasha.
Honestly, that's a really good point about Yesterday's Enterprise. I've thought about that before.
Also: We don't see Sela plotting stuff before Yesterday's Enterprise. So it's most likely, that the timeline got changed. It's by the way not really the fault of Tasha Yar - she thought that she would have died anyway, it was most unlikely that some of the Enterprise C crew would survive.
By the way, interestingly Tasha Yar couldn't have told them about the Borg. Because most likely the Enterprise in the alternative timeline was never send to the Borg Cube by Q - and the fact, that Picard didn't even expected Q to have tampered with the timeline means that the Enterprise most likely never met Q in that universe.
In my headcanon, the various technologies that went into the NX Class (antimatter, warp 5, phase cannons, transporters, etc.) were implemented about 10 years earlier than they should have shown up. It's like when Scotty gave Dr. Nichols the formula for transparent aluminum. All of it was technically possible for the time, but it just hadn't been figured out yet. This was done so that Enterprise could get to the Sphere Builders in time to stop them from destroying Earth. I use Starfleet Museum's interpretation as my "unaltered timeline" with Archer captaining one of several Amarillo Class ships that were sent on exploratory missions
Rhapsody episode reminded me of the 90s troupe of musical episode... BUT Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is my favorite episode. Kirk was always a ladies man... I just wanted then to really explore that dynamic of Kirk and La'an...
Ever since the TNG episode "Parallels" this has been the obvious answer to any question about continuity between different Star Trek media. They are all in the same multiverse, but any specific episode, even within a series, can be technically in it's own timeline.
A lot of people don't like that answer but it is the only correct one based upon what canon we do know.
I've always liked the idea that the temporal wars changed a whole lot of stuff, not only does it free up what a prequel series can do, but it puts more weight on the temporal war, because not everything could simply be reset, the timeline was damaged, links in nicely to the time travel ban in discovery.
Annorax was responsible for some of that. In trying to bring back the Krenim Imperium he created a spaghetti bowl of timelines that only got worse with every change he made. Eliminating his ship from the time stream didn't fix everything.
@@dixievfd55 I'd rather go with the idea that every episode in "Voyager" was a reset because the writers didn't want to show a messed-up Voyager because it was all subtle changes by Annorax's temporal weapons ship, but using it to explain everything that changed in Trek seems a bit of a stretch. The bigger question would be; did the Temporal Cold War start because of the Krenim's research into chroniton weaponry or because different factions (and races) wanted to preserve their own "good" timelines and lead to issues with other races?
It's likely that since Enterprise S4 showed a "post correction" timeline following "Storm Front" that everything afterwards leads off from that is within a different timeline to TOS, but Kelvin and Discovery are within their own distinct timelines
After the problems with the WD-1, WD-40 made space travel really smooth!
had a similar reaction to his "more robust WD-40" comment" 🤣
The continuity of the timeline of Star Trek should be seen as though what you see on screen happened and any inconsistency in what you see is because of time travel. It's the only way that a universe that has time travel could make sense if you viewed it from the outside.
We know we don't witness every incident of time travel that happens in the entire universe in the show, because we meet other time travelers that have done shit we don't because we meet other time travelers that have done stuff we haven't witnessed.
We don't really know what the consequences of DS9's trip to San Francisco was. We know some of the consequences and we know that the future they went back to had a federation, but there are a dozen more stories like that where we just can't say how it changed the past.
I've always liked the idea that Kahn is depicted by so vastly different actors because the eugenics program just pulled out different embryos each time 'wobble' and just named each one 'Kahn'.
I've always imagined that the writers do whatever the hell they want, and then it's us idiots who are stupid enough to try and fit it all together
I know, we're so stupid to expect logical consistency in a set of stories. How foolish of us...🖕
@@Jim-pq9pm Listen Jim, I made this comment 7 months ago and I'd forgotten that I'd made it
I don't know why my opinion made you feel so angry, but I'd ask that you look inwards and maybe discover why you felt it neccessary to get so aggressive about it, because I'm pretty sure that your angry comment not only made your day worse (because you had to think about it for slightly more time as you typed it out) but also mine.
In fact, what I said is a perfectly normal opinion to have if you happen to think about media in a slightly different way than you do. In fact, we've never met each other, and we probably don't even live in the same country, and yet you have used the unlimited powers available to you over the internet to reach through the barriers dividing us and make my day worse
Imagine your best friend had said this... Imagine you'd just met me at a party, you'd discovered that I like Star Trek too, and we'd got to talking about this topic. Would you have got so angry then? No.
In fact, if you'd asked me to elaborate, I would've probably said something like "yes, I would definitely prefer it if the writers paid more attention to this stuff, but on the whole, I find endless speculation about how everything fits into the greater narrative to be boring and tiresome" so in that sense we don't even disagree
But you didn't. You made me open up my notifications and read a couple sentences of someone being very rude to me about a comment I don't even remember making. So I thought I'd just type this out and maybe you'll read this and pay a bit more attention to the way you use your words in the future
Great video! I don't understand the deep upset people feel regarding "breaking" canon. As you say, it's all about the characters and stories being told. A mixture of interpretation means you get to pick and choose your favourites! 😁
I cannot speak for everyone, but for some of us (myself being one case) the fictional universe itself becomes as important as the characters and the stories. We find great interest in putting the puzzle pieces together, seeing how all the events tie into each other and build on things from previous iterations.
In short for those of us who are really into the worldbuilding side of a fictional universe changing canon can be similar to if your favourite character just started acting completely differently at a certain point, or lacked consistency at all.
@@neodigremo Oh i completely understand that! I'm very invested in the lore of trek and of course I prefer when everything lines up perfectly but I also have the critical thinking capacity to see that with a universe this expansive, in a franchise that's been running for so long, it just isn't feasible to expect no mistakes, retcons or plotholes. As I say, I think the responsibility rest on the viewer and their imagination to fill in the blanks, rather than on the storyteller to shoehorn their story into strict canon rules.
@@bananahbabe2998 Plot holes will of course happen, as well as mistakes. I am very much not a fan of retcons as.... easiest way I can say is that investment in NEW stories in the setting can be harder for me if the canon established in the setting previously is deliberately ignored or changed. IT's the same reason I dropped out of comics. Massive cosmic retcons looming to render the story I am reading non-canon one day saps my investment. It's similar to struggling to get the emotion to care about a character relationship when we know they are going to break up soon.
It is always on a scale of course. A characters birthday being changed is inconsequential usually but then again there is no NEED to get it wrong so it irritates me a little. Changes due to new special effects and what not.... well it is not significant to the story or canon of events so whatever. I may not like the new look (such as the new changeling morph effects from Picard) but that is a separate thing.
Personally I think a storyteller who enters a franchise owes it to the audience to get things as accurate as possible. They will miss some things of course. Throwaway lines from ages past will be forgotten until a nitpicky nerd like me comes along to question it. But to me if we can ignore the canon of the past, or worse handwave it away with a retcon, then it is disrespectful to the franchise and the story itself.
I kinda like these fuzzy retcons. It helps the writers not be too constrained and they can keep things relevant for modern watchers. The whole timeline of events stays more or less the same and we still get the franchise defining moments. It also gives us the chance to stealthy "replace" some outdated concepts, including some barebone characterization we might have got previously.
I don't really like them because it makes the universe more plastic and artificial, when it should always strive to be less so.
Enterprise exists in a timeline that Star Trek exists as a television show (the Space Shuttle Enterprise which is named after the ST:TOS Enterprise appears). So Enterprise is closer to real life time than any other show..
It’s one of the problems with sci-fi that references a real future date. Eventually that date comes around in the real world.
The events of the eugenics wars is fine until the writers felt it necessary to give a date certain for those events.
At that point, you would make a reboot, but they can't do that, because they have to nostalgia mine to make themselves relevant, because they have 1/10th the talent of writers from 50 years ago. The writing in shows like Twilight Zone, TOS, TNG, etc, is far superior than anything people today can put out
It's simple. TOS is set in the original 1985. Everything after, or at least everything since Enterprise is set in the 1985 created when Marty went back to 1955 and taught his dad confidence. The 2009 movie is the 1985 where Biff gave his younger self the sports almanac.
I like the idea that each series is set in an alternate timeline (some very slightly alternate). It solves a tremendous amount of issues with canon and practically eliminates the argument of "Hey! That's not canon!" Well, that's not a problem. Why? Because it doesn't have to adhere to cannon. A statement like that should only be applied within a specific series itself (unless, of course, there's an explanation for it within the series). Let's all move on.
Trials and Tribble-lations counters that.
@Knightfall182 Eh, "Trials and Tribble-ations" strikes me as one of those instances where they subtly changed the past by traveling back to it. Much like "Past Tense."
The point was that DS9 takes place in the same reality as TOS, because they literally travelled into a TOS episode@@OrangeRiver
@@Knightfall182 Not EXACTLY the same - there are new sound effects on the Bridge and sections of the corridor are of a different design when compared to the original footage.
So it could be a close parallel universe, but not necessarily the same one as TOS
@@MatthewCaunsfield Or more simply the bridge and corridors have multiple different sound effects.
Excellent discussion on the alternate timelines. I don’t know how you got through the sheer complexity of the different timelines as well as trying to explain and tie them all together in a way we could understand them in a consistent manner. I do believe that you may be right in the fact that each show may be set in its own alternate timeline due to the Temporal Cold War. That fact would at least reconcile all the different historical dates that seem to be at odds with each other on different shows.
Thank you! I worried so much that some people wouldn't be able to follow, and certainly that's been the case, but I'm glad plenty more people enjoyed the video! I blame the writers smh
In Voyage Home it's stated that Leningrad has lost all power so maybe the USSR just rose again for a quick dance battle with Starfleet
LMAO
I was relaxed about the 1992 date. After all, UFO flashes '1980' on the screen during the opening credits and I still enjoy rewatching in 2023.
Nick Fury was originally a WW2 hero (Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos).
Dates are flexible
At the same time some things are modified , I do see a great reverence for all that came before. Jonathan Frakes working on this 2nd season is something he had always had a small hand in earlier episodes of TNG . I think each cast member(who wanted to) got to direct an episode or two of TNG. This evolution of Frakes as a consultant or what ever the position is, is definitely a good steward to guard most of the crucial details. He can help guide other decisions in the Trek world but ultimately studios do have a say.
Pelia or Ortegas are my least favorite character arcs so far. When the actress playing Pelia speaks, it is slightly grating to me rather than the comforting tones of Guinan or wisdom and temperament of Hemmer. She plays an old engineer alright. Ortegas is "important" as the pilot, the same way the torpedo tubes working is, but not much else there to work with . I know the real life actress there also had some hardships during filming . Seeing all the adventures before Pike hands off the Enterprise is where we are and the point of the series. Keeping most parts of canon respected and intact can be done while still seeing things we haven't before and having meaningful adventures. Then we just move on to another part of the timeline.
Seeing actual emotional conflict disrespects Roddenberry's Trek vision but its closer to our current reality where people do still argue and fight over the small stuff. The bigger conflicts and solutions, we know what we want to move toward. Less restrictive , but also less theming during each episode. Leading to "New Trek" , its 80 % of the pieces of "Old Trek" with new spices. Not everyone appreciates the 20% sensations to the pallet.
I agree that both the Pelia and Ortegas characters do need to be fleshed out more, and I believe that will happen in either the 3rd or 4th season. My issue with Carol Kain's Pelia character is that the accent she uses is pretty much the same that she used as Simka Dahblitz-Gravas in Taxi, the character of the Ghost Of Christmas Present in Scrooged, and Granny in Addams Family Values. I'd even go as far as to say most of her characters have a very similar accent.
So, my two cents about emotional conflict violating Roddenberry's vision. 1) That was more so a 24th century "rule," as there was plenty of interpersonal banter in TOS that no one batted an eye at. Humans in the 23rd century are still enlightened compared to today, but they're rougher around the edges than their 24th century counterparts. 2) When the TNG writers started to do away with some of Roddenberry's "rules," the quality of writing on that show improved dramatically IMO lol
@@OrangeRiverthoughtful observations
Pelia was a downgrade from Hemmer, TBH. Loved Hemmer in the something-Kingdom and hoped to get more of him….
Roddenberry would have run ST to the ground if everything had to follow his "vision". People need to let it go and allow them to adapt it and reinterpret it to a modern audience and world. Yes, it'll be poor sometimes as we've seen, but at least it won't be a regurgitation of TOS.
I kind of like the idea of it being in a new timeline personally and I am kind of glad I'm not the only person that thought strange new worlds was in its own timeline
Dude… This is really, really well done. To think you walked through the Spaceflight Chronology! That was my canon during the 80’s. I can’t imagine the research to write this!
Thank you Mark!!
Don't forget, for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Star Trek was moved by the Dicrector/Writer wholesale from the 22nd to the 23rd century. Now explanation given. Too bad while they were at it they didn't change the Eugenics Wars to the 21st century. So it could all have been done in one fell swoop!
I like to believe there is an alternat timeline where new trek is good I would love to see a series where they break the 4 wall and rest everything.
The writers could stop doing time travel episodes or send them back in time to a point where they can make small changes but not during an major fixed event
Please stop apologizing for lazy writing.
Khan Noonien Singh was born in the 20st century.
The TOS timeline made sense in the reality of the 1960s into the 70s when there was a space race. During Mercury, Apollo, Skylab, and the moon missions it was easy then to imagine we were going on to a moon base, etc. The idea that 50 years later we would only have a bigger, better Skylab was inconceivable.
Apollo was so far ahead of it's time that we had to catch up. We had no business going to the Moon when we did. I am not complaining, it kicked off the semiconductor revolution and Silicon Valley, but it was selectively pulling forward human advancement.
Take a look at the videos where the guys rebuild old Apollo communication hardware and compare what was done vs what can be done with a few cell phones and access points and a big enough antenna.
It was even part of the original plan/timeline of NASA. But as Rick correctly said, because the Vietnam war was eating up more and more money, the space program was heavily cut back when Nixon came into office. Not because Nixon had something against space, but the congress, DEM dominated, didn't wanted to give him the funding anymore for the program.
@@Steven_Edwards Also the priorities of NASA changed. When the race was over, they focussed much more on low risk missions. Especially as they became much more a scientific operation, not anymore a military operation. The military didn't needed NASA anymore - the rockets were invented that could bring nukes to all places of the earth, so NASA focussed on pushing satellites into orbit and probes into space. And when you focus on that, you need RELIABLE rockets,as your contractors will not like it when their satellite or probe explodes during the start, also not so big rockets, as you need much less propellant to get into lower or middle orbit. Also the space shuttle, that was at the beginning of the 1970s meant as a vehicle that could bring us to the moon and mars was cut back to a low orbit lifter.
Also: the pilots changed. The Pilots of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were soldiers! Or you can say: human cannon powder. Test pilots even, where only half of them could expect to survive their service time. The Space Program was for them therefore MORE SAVE than their normal job, as they would only have 2-3 hot missions into orbit or the moon and not 20-30 flights per year in airplanes that were more death traps than flying objects. (Even the finalized Starfighter was called a "widow maker", we better don't talk about the prototypes.) But in the 1970s the personnel changed to scientists that also got a training in how to fly a space shuttle. Civilians. People that haven't signed up for missions where they could die all the time. Where the insurances most likely wouldn't even allow that risk they had with Apollo, while the death of a military personnel is covered by the Army, Navy or Air Force, with payments for the families etc. Don't forget, they later said, that they were LUCKY, that they had only 3 deaths and they were on the ground during the space race. When they started Apollo 8, they had a 50:50 chance of all engines starting correctly and lifting the capsule into space and all the navigation they had to do etc.
That's also the problem Musk and Co. have to face: Also they cannot risk too much anymore. Whoever Musk puts into the Starship, wants to live and not die because the rocket makes boom again. That's why Space X tests their rockets so much, until the number of explosions go down to 0. One exploding starship with people on board and Space X is done. We are not in the pioneer times anymore, where people want to risk their lives for a trip to Mars.
Congrats on 90 thousand views
This video was quite fun to watch, with you pondering over the angst and anger of comments, to having a degree, up through analyzing the time line from a fictional book.. I enjoy your videos for your fairly in-depth research. Bravo.. Some years ago, I was one of those who would attend Star Trek Conventions. I don't even recall hearing of Comicon until my own reboot in life, where I am now. It was at these Star Trek Conventions that friends and I attended a breakout session with script writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore & script coordinator Lolita Fatjo. In this session they asked trivia questions on a broad subject matter, not always to do with Star Trek, but when it got down to writing to the subject of Star Trek, their message was clear. "We are writing (actually making quote finger motions) "Science Fiction". ". I recall them speaking of the "Star Trek Bible" which I can assume was what we all like to call Canon, but didn't stop a writer from dancing or deviating, as long as it was either fixed, or didn't break anything.. That memory is fuzzy at this point.. With recent full length motion pictures across the Spider Man franchise now bringing in either multiple universes or as in one movie, all of the actors who played the character through multi-verse crossings, opens up the idea that in "fiction" you can write some interesting stories.
Thank you again for engaging your viewers with entertaining ideas and analysis.. I am always looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Sister Ida @}--
This could drive us crazy. I just want them to stick with cannon as much as possible. Tired of all this diffirent timeline crap.Just want good Star Trek, good stories.
This would help explain the drastic differences between Where No Man Has Gone Before and the rest of TOS actually lol
Here's an idea, let create a story that takes place in a galaxy far, far away and make a long time ago. No one can screw that up, can they?
Lmfao
Ok as a 50 year veteran, of watching startrek, some of the actors have good story's, I can only remember 4 episodes where good in to seasons, and would rather see it scrapped, and you focus your monies on startrek legacy. Because as a loyal startrek fan, I have had enough of strange new worlds, for me its not going anywhere.
Thanks for taking the time, I just take Trek now as entertainment. I don't read to much into it, if the writing is good and the show is enjoyable, I am happy.
Ok. I just got around to finishing this video after being busy all day. What I think makes the most sense when trying to figure out an in universe explanation is that major events do continue to take place in slightly altered conditions, but result in future historical events still returning to some form of equilibrium. So like for example, any time we saw temporal incursions taking place that altered the timeline, like for example, when Sisko, Dax and Basheer get sent back to 2020’s California, resulting in the future being rewritten with the defiant crew being the only thing left behind in that altered future, when they returns back to their correct time, that timeline was still altered, but in west that was 99.9% correct, which continues to allow for minor changes and shifting timelines to be a valid way to make up for continuity errors and ret-cons. Like it’s already in there that time travel in trek works this way, that timelines change and are overwritten, and that temporal agencies, wars and whatnot are a known fact in Trek, so l to just keep it at “ret-cons are explained away by temporal shenanigans” also interesting that in a video like this you mention Future’s End… but not Year of Hell.
Solid take!
While the editing started to confuse me in the middle, overall this was an amazing episode that should be shared with as many Trek fans as possible. There's no point in my opinion on arguing about what's canon when time travel is baked into the show so flippantly. Thanks Tyler!
Glad you enjoyed the video! Just out of curiosity, where did the confusion arise, and how did the editing contribute to it?
@@OrangeRiver I thought it was around the 15 minute mark, but I just went through it again and didn't get the same feeling. Might of just been tired since it was 1am. However, the jumping between post edit and pre-edit captures was a little disorienting at first. I think I like it overall, but it's so different from your normal style I just wasn't ready for it. Maybe just give people a heads up when your going to crank up the jump-cuts (unless this is the new style going forward).
You covered A LOT of complicated continuity and lore and kept it loose and interesting the whole way through. Not an easy feat, just felt a bit overwhelming at moments with the sudden cuts. Take my criticism though with a grain of salt since it was pretty late when I watched this the first time.
Sorry mate I still have no idea what you're talking about, but don't worry about it!
18:10 and in 2001 it was believed that VentureStar was going to replace the shuttle. It went from a "this is a done deal" to "this will never fly" really fast.
I still hold to the idea that we are the prime timeline. At some future date we develop warp drive. We do meet with the Vulcans and we do evolve into a federation, but it happened on our current heading and timeline. However, various incursions into Earth's past came about once Earth joined the galactic playground. With various visits from TOS and STIV, DS9, Voyager, STFC and Enterprise and events not actually depicted in those media our timeline was ultimately altered. The visit Quark, Odo and the gang certainly showed humanity that there is life out there and it was not prepared launching advancement in genetics. Chekov left his Klingon communicator and disruptor led to technological advancements. Geordi La Forge literally showed Zefram Cochran the Enterprise E in a telescope which may have altered the outcome of ship design if you compare it to the older view of what early earth warp ships may have looked like. Doesn't the NX-01 look very similar to the what one might have considered the Enterprise-E's outline would be. TOS may have been the first iteration of the departure of our future as it shared our history up until the 1960's. As you got new series and certain deviations became apparent you could easily say that the timeline became more and more altered. Discovery and SNW only proves my hypothesis.
🖖😎👍I don't understand that during the Wrath of Khan why they couldn't of changed that Canon to the 2090's and had Khan in the movie say 2096 instead of 1996 which would of been a little more logical in trying to keep more with in our time line of today it would of truly made a lot more common sense, And kept Startrek in more of a realistic tone in stead of like being in an alternate time line and keeping it more with in our time line to an extent as like it truly is as of today's world and society and brought the Canon of Startrek to a more realistic type of setting indeed!,👌.
I liked... now commented.... I've been subscribed for a while - with notifications.... and now I've shared with some other Trek maniacs. Well done!
I agree with the broad strokes argument of timelines however when I look at new trek I feel they are not adhereing to that principle, at the end of the day their taking characters and events doing whatever they want with them , regardless if it makes sense. Not for the sake of telling a good story Or further exploration of existing characters but rather to make characters and events fit the bill of the messages they want to spread.
They say in detail in the episode that there is only one SNW and TOS timeline. That the timeline REPAIRS by itself when an incursion is fixed enough. Not that it divides. It goes back to the original one with minimal modifications in sections of the past. Any "alternate" timeline encompasses only the section of history that changed and then comes back to the main only original repaired timeline. And the graphics on the time travelers padds also detail this.
On City of the Edge of Forever, the timeline changed, it didn't divide, and then it was fixed and restored with a minimal change on the past. That's the effect on the timeline when a history change is fixed. The only thing ever in Star Trek that doesn't match with this is the Kelvin movies, but as their change was never solved, we can deduce that it ended dividing due to it never being fixed, as in that the not being fixed in the future made it divide instead of changing the main timeline, in a non linear cause and effect.
I mean, this is essentially correct, yeah. By dividing Trek lore into multiple alternate timelines, though, I'm not saying they all have to concurrently exist with each other.
SNW is a return to form? I don't know about that. I just played through Star Trek Resurgence for my second time and I loved it. I couldn't even get through s01e01 of SNW. I turned it off after 20 minutes.
I don't know if the writers thought of it like this, but one thing I liked about the name "Future's End" is that, since certain dates that were talked about during TOS had since passed, the "future" that TOS envisioned would no longer be possible. At least, not during the same timeframe. Plus, the mention that the computer boom of the late 20th century "should have never happened" explains that things have changed. It can even explain how modern interfaces are more advanced than TOS--a future that we haven't reached yet.
It's like photography. Many people said that photography is so simple it should of been invented 100 years sooner than it was.
Writers tell stories, fans hope for future world building in fiction.
That sometimes does not intersect.
My favorite fan theory about timeline alterations is that the Enterprise E crew in First Contact caused dramatic, fundamental shifts to the Star Trek timeline.
By showing Cochran the Enterprise E through a telescope, he rethought starship geometry and design for future vessels - he introduced the saucer-plus-two-nacelles layout rather than more rocket-style ships - and maybe even named the warp 5 prototype “Enterprise” after the E.
This design revolution led to all the fantastic starfleet designs in ST:E and Discovery, and caused “inconsistencies” in the SNW Enterprise design like the swept back pylons and NX style warp nacelles.
Heck, this could even account for starfleet ships being so much bigger in Discovery and SNW than “they should be at that time” - emulating a monster like the E could be the cause, or adopting the saucer geometry that early may require larger equipment (which would have miniaturized over time if it was developed in other configurations)…
Great video! Loving the humor, asides to the audience, and the bloopers being left in! Your presentation style is getting more and more unique, making you stand out from the crowd of Trek RUclipsrs out there. Can’t wait for your next one! 🖖😁
I always assumed “All good things” shattered the timeline
For me this idea that Star Trek needs to meet our real world events has always bothered me going back to that Voyager episode. Star Trek is NOT our universe and I wish productions would get over this. As the franchise goes on trying to match our real world it’s going to be an untenable practice. What happens when a new Trek series airs in the actual mid 21st century, which will inevitably occur? Is the franchise meant to constantly nullify whatever came before to keep up such a ridiculous trend? Trying to truly envision Trek as the future of our own world is a fruitless endeavor.
Regarding Strange New Worlds and the entire Prime timeline post Enterprise Ive interpreted the temporal cold war as the nexus point for everything afterwards. I don’t have a problem with any of this as long as it’s addressed and stated onscreen. I hated the blatant SNW Khan retcon UNTIL they actually addressed the timeline change in dialogue. Like you I care about characterization and good storytelling first but I don’t like canon breaking for breaking sake or just pretending like a franchise’s canon doesn’t exist or matter. Like with retcons in general I think if you are going to break canon break it hard and don’t be shy about it! Break it, acknowledge that break and earn its inclusion.
I actually think current Trek producers have been seeding alt timeline clues and using Wesley Crusher as the head of the Watchers/Supervisors (Gary Seven,etc) in Picard S2 to create the narrative idea that there’s been an ongoing crusade to keep the timeline intact. I actually think Paramount should use that plot thread with Wesley and the Supervisors as a connection point to use the timeline alterations as a way for a giant crossover of every Trek series and use every surviving actor in some way. Use it to create a giant crossover/reunion piece. The popularity of such a thing would be enormous in a similar way that Picard S3 was. But that is wishful thinking on my part.
The retcon of the Eugenics Wars happening in the 90s started as far back as Voyager when they traveled back in time and saw neither hide nor hair of a global war. I'm very glad they made this addendum to the temporal mechanics of Star Trek. The idea that the prime timeline remains the prime timeline but that certain events have been shifted around by time travel incursions is a very clean way to deal with the discrepancies of the Eugenics Wars and when they happened. It brings to mind two different pieces of media - one being Stephen King's "11 22 63", in which the universe fights back against attempts to change history by making random chance work against you when you are actively trying to change the past, e.g. you're driving to do whatever you're going to do and a tree falls in the road, then your car breaks down, etc. They say in that book "the past is obdurate," meaning stubborn. It also brings to mind the fluid continuities of comics like Marvel and DC. Marvel's Earth 616 is the main Earth and always has been. The 616 Peter Parker is the same 616 Peter Parker he's always been - but when he premiered in the 60s, events in his life happened in the 50s. Now, 60 years later, the character has only aged about a decade and his life events no longer happened in the 50s and 60s, even though it's still the main timeline. The guy at Ex Astris Scientia has long held that the 90s were clearly too early for the DY-100 and 500 style ships and that they must have actually existed later in the lead-up to WW3 in the 2050s. The fact that WW3 tore the civilized world apart is a good enough reason to excuse spotty records from that period.
15:50 Came here for the timeline discussion, stayed for the extensional dread. Keep up the good work and don't read too many comments. :)
Haha thanks!
I love the line you used, as I have used it myself, It is not necessary for Star Trek to be Canon to itself, but in the bigger and broader sense, it must try and by canon to reality. . as the very point of this show and Gene's vision. a positive vision of our future. not all time travel, respects a linear change. and the butterfly effect is not always the case. In Picard season 2, the bullet holes in the walls, were supposed to be there. time acts like water, where when the stream is small, the tiniest spec, can change the course, but when the stream is a raging river, you can throw boulders in the path and have no effect.
This may be your best work yet. And thank you, for elucidating the points I have been trying to nail to the doors of the Church of Canon far better than I have been able to muster.
Aww, thank you!
Damn Romulians. Things haven't been right here since they founded the Roman Empire on Earth!
Wouldn't that make for one heck of a ST story?😊😊😊
Here’s how I make sense of this. The Romulans travels back to around the 80s or 90s, her interference delays the creation of Khan to what we see in the SNW episode, this causes a not yet permanent temporal shift, the Temporal Agent tries to stop her but was wounded, he jumped forward to the present of the episode and by La’ahn holding his device she survives the temporal shift as the timeline changes to the one with Kirk as Captain of the United Earth ship Enterprise. They activate the time device and jump back to the past of Kirk’s timeline, they go on their adventure, Kirk dies, and the Romulan is stopped and dies. Because of this the timeline change is erased once La’ahn jumps back to the present. Thus the timeline is restored with the Eugenics Wars occurring in the 90s still. There, issue fixed. Most Star Trek time travel episodes are often to temporary timelines that get erased, timelines cross over, minor enough events not to matter, or you just nod abd accept it as likely an oversight. We know multiple timelines exist. I think the Temporal Cold War wasn’t about “preserving history” as Daniels says to Archer, rather it’s about keeping more chaotic temporal factions from just doing whatever they want with time travel, cause you know even if they fix what they want to, it might not just stop with one thing, these factions might just keep trying to change too much. We see the effect of this in YOY Year Of Hell when Annorax miscalculated he screwed things up worse by erasing something important from history.
I was hoping that watching your video help me understand all the apparent different timelines. SNW’s really got me confused when Scotty shows up in the season 2 finale😳
Now after watching this video and am slightly less confused but more bewildered by the points you brought up! Good vid… I’ll be one of your new subscribers.👍
Haha good deal! Lol
I've always felt that Enterprise-onward occupied a separate timeline from the 20th century Trek; but, your analysis is fair. There's a case to be made that 90s Trek exists in a separate timeline from TOS, as well. The sword is double-edged.
For me, the timeline explanation is very freeing. As someone obsessed with continuity, shows like Enterprise (and ESPECIALLY Discovery) were like my arch-nemeses. The continuity conflicts actively felt like they were ruining everything, for a pedant like me; I couldn't see anything past 'all the stuff they're getting WRONG'. SNW's explanation makes it possible for me to enjoy the stories without getting hung up on the continuity- satisfying my pedant side so that it can get out of the way and just let me take in the narrative and characters. Which I am greatly appreciative of!
In Star Trek-TOS, it's definitely implied that Federation technology is mixed up with other member planets which share their scientific knowledge with us.
I was as a youth quite persnickety about things like respecting the "canon". Grew up with TOS in 80's syndication, it was a perennial in New York City on WPIX 11 ("No bloody WB, CW...) on weekends in the afternoon or evenings and for a very long time nightly paired with The Honeymooners as an alternative to Carson.
Adored most of the original crew films and unlike a lot of fans of Kirk and Co. at the time I jumped into TNG whole hog from the start even during the shakey first two seasons and have been a loyal consumer of Trek til this day. It probably makes up an inordinate amount of space in my Nerd portfolio as it were, along side superheroes and of course Star Wars.
And it's the super hero stuff that has often informed my comfortable nature with retcons, re-boots and alterations to continuity and alt-timelines and parallel universes, and I guess I have gotten even more comfortable as I have gotten older alongside these pop culture franchises, most of which, outside of Star Wars which only premiered the summer before my birth, were "old" with decades of previous history in the pop culture before I drew breath.
I'm huge into Superman being around at the right age and time to experience the Reeve run which spurred me to the comics and diving into all that history along with eventually all the other DC and Marvel characters that you'd expect. From Batman and Green Lantern to X-Men Punisher, and honestly a lot of niche characters thrown in there.
Now by then both Marvel, though to a lesser degree, and DC had decades of sprawling interconnected continuty to have to keep track of and keep readers up to date with, all while mass communication from creators and companies was in the stone age in comparison to today. Were there some fanzines and industry periodicals available? Some sure but this is the polar opposite of today where fans get slick BTS packages to promote every aspect of some project to social media PR and even direct communication with creators. There were some source literature but truthfully as stated it was the dark ages and for many characters and franchises you made do with what was presented in the material itself (Film/TV Show/Comic) and what was delineated there was what you based most of your "beliefs" in whatever property you were consuming.
Also as stated most of these properties were already filled to the brim with history. Comics were well into the Bronze Age and that meant for say characters from the 1930's that there were three ages to catch up on and then have to keep clear, and that's not even going into the great resets like Crisis On Infinite Earths at DC.
Now I get why retcons or rebooting offend fan sensibilities as well as "elastic" approaches to canon, especially on the simple practical level of "Well... What am I SUPPOSED to believe and understand about these complex fictional worlds NOW?" I get it.
But from the previous franchises mentioned notice one big difference between say Star Wars and most mainstream super hero stuff as well as Trek? To me it's SW is totally disconnected from our real world. Its internal history is completely seperated from anything in our world. Superman, Batman, Spidey, the majority of capes and tights types operate as a sort of "mythology of the now", whenever NOW happens to be. As such it's conneted to the real world in some ways that is presented in the narrative. Peter Parker and Clark Kent live in what look and feel like a modern American city for whatever age those stories were first published in. In the 1960's Spidey might run into some hippie types or come across some protests mirroring the times. This would eventually be an issue when as time went on referring back to stories from a previous era caused isdues because if say, Frank Castle was a Vietnam Vet then given his history, well his prime punishing days would have been behind him long ago by the time we got to 2000 even. Ditto Tony Stark with his Vietnam conflict linked origin.
Some characters had the need to apply an elastic canon solution like Captain America. How do you reckon with Cap's age? Super Soldier Serum hand waving along with simply applying the idea that he came out of ice at a later and later date, so vaguery as a solution in continuity. That couldn't work for everyone though and pretending that either Frank Castle or Stark were ever younger during the 60's to keep the majority of their canon origin in place just became untenable at a certain point so the origins of these nearly then 50 year old creation had to be changed and updated, with the alternative being age them out and passing the torch or just ending the current use of those characters so of course choice A. is what they went with and fans adjusted their understanding and beliefs accordingly if begrudgingly cause at that point we had all that previous continuity memorized and were attached to that particular lore.
So... in regards to Trek? It too had a link to the real world. Yes TOS was actually quite vague abbout most of the in universe history, hell if memory serves even the "This is all happening in the 23rd Century" aspect wasn't finalized until Wrath Of Khan when that appears on screen at the start. Even with that baked in vagueness at the start eventually this future of humanity story had to lay down some markers about what had happened going forward in time from its actual late 1960's history that the audience was living in. And remember, this was all come up with long before anyone had an idea it would continue to exist as a pop culture staple until the year 2023.
As such, and as lore was added as decades past and updates and retcons came the starkness of the real world's departure from Trek's vague but still accepted post 1960's history of how things played out, today an elastic approach or pruning canon to to clean things up is... Necessary in my view, and inevitable honestly. This is not even getting into that Trek along with many franchises had baked in canonical contradictory information from the start that we individual fans always patched with "head canon" or just throwing our hands up and going "Oh well... I guess this is what it is" or just plain "I guess they goofed up in the writer's room... Oh well".
And that's my view. Changes to canon happen, they are usually inevitable in regards to these long lived mythologies of pop culture (And this is true of actual historical mythology with multiple version of everything from Hercules's story from start to finish to, frankly the varying versions of the Gospels used by different sects of Christianity for centuries before the Council Of Nicea decided all that was heretical fan fiction. Lol) and despite how it raises many a fan's hackles, probably also quite necessary to keep these properties a float for new generations to experience and add to. The God's honest truth is if a Trek series were done exactly like TOS from aesthetics to a bear hold on original (Whatever that means) continuity it might be interesting to a long time fan as me but ultimately would be hobbled in its ability to speak to younger people into sci fi today.
If we could live with or hand wave away things like the backwards sexual politics of the sixties apparent in TOS (Pike and Kirk uncomfortable with female yeoman under their command say or Turn About Intruder telling us there are no women as Starship Captains as just two examples.) in light of how both real life and the franchise's own continuity going forward from there went, I honestly think we can live with whatever updates and new paintjob they have given Trek today.
Finally... Live Long And Prosper Tyler. Love your content and your POV.