Skip to main content

star trek - Why was it acceptable to provide the alternative timeline with trans-warp beaming equations/formula?


Stated in the Star Trek (2009) movie, Montgomery Scott had postulated trans-warp beaming to allow an object or person to travel large distance by beaming from one location to the next.



What I didn't understand was, spoilers:



Original Spock provided new timeline Scotty with the equations/formula to trans-warp beaming a lot earlier than which the original timeline Scotty did not perfect until 2387.

This technology was used in the Star Trek (2009) movie and was used by Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness to travel all the way from Earth to Qo'noS.



Why was it ok for classic Spock to reveal this information and not other things? Seems like a pretty big violation of his time-code ethics.



Answer



It was not acceptable. As a matter of fact, it was in direct violation of the Temporal Prime Directive - Regulation 157, Section 3 (Paragraph 18): Starfleet officers shall take all necessary precautions to minimize any participation in historical events. (DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations")



  • Federation Temporal Policies normally forbid any time traveler from interacting with or changing through action, any period, past or future by a member of Star Fleet.

  • The goal of the Temporal Prime Directive is to maintain the future as it was known and to promote a future which ensured the continued existence of the Federation.




The Temporal Prime Directive was a fundamental Starfleet principle.


All Starfleet personnel are strictly forbidden from directly interfering with historical events and are required to maintain the timeline and prevent history from being altered. It also restricts people from telling too much about the future, so as not to cause paradoxes or alter the timeline. The Temporal Prime Directive is directly related to the Prime Directive.



So why did he do it?




  • From Prime Spock's perspective, the timeline had already suffered catastophic changes with the arrival of the Narada from the future-Prime timeline. Mere scans of the ship had carried a variety of future tech to this new timeline, at a far earlier period than they were previously developed.





  • Along with the harm the Narada caused, the ships it crippled or damaged in battle and with the destruction of Vulcan, Prime Spock thought he would be able to mitigate further damage to the timeline by bringing Kirk and Spock back together.




  • Prime Spock reasoned that like in his timeline, the interactions of Kirk, Spock and the legendary crew of the Enterprise would be enough to stop the Narada and prevent further temporal contamination or the destruction of Earth and the heart of the Federation.




From our perspective, this new timeline bears less resemblance to the Federation of the Prime Universe but the Federation still exists and since Prime Spock did not appear to be able to return home, he considered the use of the Trans-Warp beaming technology to be a viable price to pay to save the Federation at large. He probably believes the Federation will grow to resemble his Federation farther into the future.


It was not an ideal situation, nor choice, but if the Temporal Police still existed, they would probably be forced to allow the changes which took place because they were part of a major transformative event. Unfortunately we don't know if the Temporal Police will exist/do exist in the Star Trek 2009 universe's future.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more