I apologise in advance for this video, it’s going to be a ramble-y and wild one, but
hopefully that will help to add to the subject matter, which is quite simply,
why the Star Trek original timeline no longer exists. Nor did it ever. Except that it does.
The Mirror Universe is a strange anomaly of Star Trek, well, one of many. Its exact origin
is still not established in canon, but it seems to be pre-world wars. We’ve seen that different
choices in Star Trek end up spiralling out into entire new realities as in Star Trek:
Parallels and occasionally in alterations to the timeline, such as the Kelvin Universe timeline
films. However, alterations to the timeline can also produce overwrites to a current reality,
such as in TNG’s Yesterday’s Enterprise, Voyager’s Year of Hell or even its series finale.
This creates a confusing situation of messy timelines where Star Trek tends to go with
whatever version of parallel universes and time travel that suits the narrative for that episode.
This becomes apparent when you try to map out an entire cohesive timeline, with all these
alterations in mind, and that’s even before we take into account the temporal cold war.
Earth’s attack at the hands of the Xindi in Enterprise was described by the Temporal Agency
of the 31st century as something that should not have happened, and when it did, it endangered the
future. So, there are two ways to look at such an alteration. The first is that this attack existed
in the lore as part of everything post-2154, post Enterprise series, and just not mentioned.
Obviously, in reality, it’s not mentioned because it was not a plot point back when TOS, TNG and so
on were being scripted. We can still assume though that it is a part of these Star Trek’s history.
Suspension of disbelief just has to fill in the lack of mentions in those series’ canon.
Option two, is that in those shows, the alteration did not exist until the Xindi
were manipulated by future powers to attack. Now, everything post attack no longer exists,
because it has been overwritten by the Enterprise Temporal War timeline,
or was fractured off into its own timeline, but that latter one is not what we saw as, we also
saw Daniel’s future, the future of that Enterprise reality being overwritten by alterations. So no
parallel universe here, just a changed timeline. These sorts of vaguely defined time travel rules
frequently change every time there is a similar incident, no matter how small. When Sisko travels
back to 2024, he replaces Gabriel Bell in the riots to ensure that history unfolds as it should,
but now Sisko as Bell is a new addition to the timeline, so everything chronologically after Past
Tense Part 1, is now in a slightly varied reality. Trials and Tibble-ations is another example of DS9
overwriting a prior universe. Originally in Trouble with Tribbles, the individuals
taking part in the bar fight were these lot, now post DS9’s interference, Obrien and Bashir stand
alongside Chekov and Scotty in the disciplinary. The original timeline, as it were, is gone.
With Yesterday’s Enterprise, we have a major alteration to the timeline which has lasting
ramifications, the most notable of which is Tasha Yar being alive and sent back in time to 2344,
where she then ends up having Sela, so again we have the question of did Sela exist prior
to Yesterday’s Enterprise, or did just pop into existence at the resolution of that episode?
First Contact, the film, sees history being altered from 2063 onwards with the Borg taking
over humanity by assimilating it all. The Enterprise E fixes this, but considering we
briefly saw the reality where they failed, an assimilated Earth, I assume this means
that the Borg were interfering with established events and, no matter how preferable the outcome,
First Contact onwards now exists in an altered universe, one where Cochrane got drunk with Deanna
Troi, and his co-pilots were LaForge and Riker. In Time’s Arrow, we have an event that begins
with the discovery of Data’s head, before he is sent back to 1893, thus creating a paradox.
In this example, time has not been changed at all, because the events we witnessed happened
in the original timeline, and returning to 2368 sees the completion of the loop.
Little Green Men sees Quark and co crash on Earth in 1947, and becomes the basis for the Roswell
Incident, something that again, already existed in Star Trek’s continuity before the point of origin
of the time travel incident. These examples are in opposition to the notion that time can be altered,
suggesting that time only ever unfolds one way. TNG’s Parallels shows us that a person’s free
will effectively manipulates the creation of other universes, for every action not taken,
a new timeline where it was spins into existence, meaning that there are infinite realities,
but none of these are considered alterations to an existing timeline, merely multiverses,
all coexisting out of phase with one another. So what we are left with is, time travel that
creates branches in history, except when it doesn’t. Alternate timelines are made when there
are changes, except when it’s supposed to happen, and sometimes changes are so small that they’re
insignificant, except no, hang on, they really have overwritten the in-universe continuity.
I haven’t even got started on Discovery’s inclusion into this spaghetti of timelines,
but considering that their future was going to result in the AI Control destroying everything,
they changed time to avoid this outcome, resulting in another major, if preferable,
alteration. So just as with every alteration story we had previously, we are left with two options.
Either everything chronologically post-2257 Discovery in-universe is gone,
because it now exists in an altered timeline, or the Red Bursts incident had occurred in all these
subsequent shows, and was just never mentioned, like the Xindi attack. Again, Discovery made it
clear that they weren’t dealing with an alternate reality where Control destroys all life, but the
same timeline, which is now forever defunct. This is why I find most arguments of what Trek
did or didn’t “happen” is kind of pointless, because Star Trek’s decades of inconsistency
in establishing and holding to firm laws of time travel have long since messed up the timeline.
I’m not saying this to rag on Star Trek, it’s just that in the end, the only thing we have to go on
is the creator’s intent and what is said in the shows, despite how much a square shape is hammered
into a circular hole. The logic that Enterprise cannot exist in the same universe as TNG, or that
Discovery cannot exist before TOS is theoretically sound if you want to adopt the philosophy that
every alteration, no matter how minor has changed the trek timeline further from its “original”. But
this logic then has to be applied to every similar event in Trek’s history, making untangling what
even is the original timeline an impossible mess. My personal approach on this, it just to accept
it’s all make-believe, which I know sounds strange coming from a lore channel that loves
to get immersed in the nitty-gritty of things, but honestly, it’s the simplest solution to just shrug
it off and say “sure, it’s all one linearity”. It doesn’t all fit, because it does not have to
obey any real-world laws, and it’s in-universe ones are often changing to suit whatever writer,
studio or company wants at the time. I love Star Trek and its stories, Books,
shows, comics and games, there are a hundred tales to tell in the expanded Star Trek mythos,
and to my mind, all of them are true in some universe or another anyway. If you made it
this far, thanks for listening, I said it would get ramble-y, but this is a topic I never really
even considered until I started trying to make a consistent timeline for the Trek universe,
a subject I revisit every once in a while, to see if I can create a map.
I’ve been Ric, and until the next one, thanks for watching and feel free to take part in a
discussion below, I’ll be lurking in the comments to check them out. Thanks again, and goodbye!