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Have you ever considered that the Prime Directive is not only not ethical, but also illogical, and perhaps morally indefensible?

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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It bugs me a bit too, but I guess there’s nothing really wrong with it being “the exception that proves the rule” - something extraordinary happened in that case, unlikely to repeat.

    And the pre-existing time travel rules weren’t exactly clear-cut, either - my original response glossed over bootstrap paradoxes like “Time’s Arrow”, where the characters travel back in time because they found Data’s head in San Francisco, which was only there due to said time travel.

    But then, from the perspective of people in the future, I suppose all time travel events look like bootstrap paradoxes…


  • the Prime timeline holds together no matter what happens to it.

    This isn’t quite true. Most of the time, Star Trek asserts that time travel to the past can and does alter the “prime” timeline - this is directly observed in “Past Tense” and “First Contact” (the movie, of course), when crew members who are protected from the alterations see reality warp before their very eyes. In those cases, the time travelers are forced to do what they can to “repair” history and get events to play out reasonably similar to how they orginally had. I assume things are still different, but they’re considered “close enough”.

    The Kelvin event doesn’t just make a new branch going forward. The ripple hits both directions.

    This is a little contentious, but I agree with this interpretation, even though the actual films are pretty vague on exactly how the alternate reality came to be. It’s certainly a contradiction of basically every other depiction of time travel. But hey, it was a unique circumstance.

    TNG’s “Parallels” deserves a mention as well, since it states that their are infinite parallel realities (and we see a bunch of them).

    In general, here’s what I think is true:

    1. An infinite number of quantum realities exist. These have nothing to do with time travel, and simply…are.

    2. Time travel to the past can, and usually does, alter the future. Separate quantum realities are not created. These are the situations that the 26th century Federation time cops are concerned with.

    3. The Kelvin Timeline seems to be an exception to (2), though I suppose there’s a possibility that Spock and Nero simply tunnelled over to a different quantum reality, in addition to travelling through time. This is 100% pure fanon, though.











  • Rosalind Lear appears to be hiding some kind of alternative motivation for investigating into Khan and Ceti Alpha

    I didn’t find this surprising in the sense that she’s seemed…biased, to say the least. But the scene with Tuvok was nice, even though in the moment I was wondering if it was Lear or Delmonda that was meant to be the liar. Context suggests it’s her, though.

    The song the young augments were listening to was Your Touch released in 2021.

    Interesting. I wonder if it’s a favourite of Kirsten Beyer or something - I’m a little surprised that they went to the effort of clearing a pop song of any kind.

    Khan’s odd mercy towards him

    I see it as a means to an end - looking like he’s living up to his end of the bargain with Delmonda. A dangerous game to be playing, though.

    the inevitable loss of McGiven’s to the Ceti Eel.

    I know this is consistent with the film, but part of me wishes she had met her demise more directly as a result of some choice that Khan made, if only to reinforce just how foolish she had been to join his little cult in the first place.