Star Trek has play with unbalanced time - travel shenanigans more than any other franchise – yes , even Doctor Who . So it ’s no surprise there are at least half a dozen ways time travel works in Trek .
1 ) Time - locomotion can deepen history – but only if you mess with someone “ authoritative . ” The very first Trek metre - travelling story is “ Tomorrow Is Yesterday ” : the Enterprise incidentally kidnaps Air Force captain John Christopher , and he gains knowledge of the future tense that could change the present . ( Kirk and Spock almost just transfer Captain Christopher entirely , but they discover that his Word head a mission to Saturn . Christopher , himself , is totally worthless and would n’t be neglect . )
And in “ City On The Edge Of Forever , ” a drug - crazed McCoy incidentally changes history so the Nazis win World War II , and as a resolution in the present , the Enterprise no longer exists . ( This also seems to be the theory of time travel the novel film espouses , without catch too spoilery . ) And of course , in the movie First Contact , the Borg temporarily succeed in blend in back and changing history , so that the twenty-fourth century Earth turn into a Borg hive — until the Enterprise goes back in time and stops them . Also in Deep Space Nine ’s “ Past Tense , ” Sisko travels back to 2024 San Francisco , where he circumstantially causes the expiry of civil - rightfulness leader Gabriel Bell . Sisko wind up taking Bell ’s position , and Bell ’s ikon in all the history Bible changes into Sisko ’s . Similarly , Sisko goes back in time to preclude a Klingon undercover agent from assassinate Kirk in “ Trials and Tribble - ations . ”
Also , people in alternate future are able to go back and foreclose their futures from ever “ happening ” in the DS9 episode “ The Visitor ” and the Voyager episodes “ Timeless ” and “ End Game . ”
2 ) If you travel back in meter , your mind will revert to its past land . Also in “ Tomorrow Is Yesterday , ” the Enterprise drops off Christopher at the exact moment they originally kidnap him , and somehow this leave him with no remembering of the intervene events . ( Even though daytime have passed for him , he somehow recede all memory of them . ) And in the installment “ All Our Yesterdays , ” Spock travels back in time thousands of geezerhood to a barbaric ice age on another planet . And even though it ’s still the same Benjamin Spock , he dead commence revert to brutality and acting like a crazay onetime - school day Vulcan , with the het up desire and unbridled madness .
3 ) you’re able to travel back in time , but you ’ll just become part of established event . In the sequence “ Assignment Earth , ” the Enterprise once again journey back to 1968 Earth , and this sentence Kirk and Spock endeavor to block off the cryptic Gary Seven from launching , and detonating , a projectile to lay off the Cold - War weapon system race . Kirk and Spock near stop Gary Seven , but in the end , it turn out the projectile blows up on the nose 104 miles above Earth – just where it “ always ” did . So Kirk and Spock ’s time - traveling hindrance was “ always ” part of consequence . Also , in the TNG epsiode “ Captain ’s Holiday , ” Picard demolish the first-rate - magical gimmick , the Uthat , that aliens from the future have stolen and brought back in time . And then the aliens say that Picard ’s determination to destroy the Uthat was already in their “ historical records . ” Also , I ’m pretend the Voyager episode “ Future ’s last ” belongs to this principle as well , because Henry Starling “ invents ” a whole lot of engineering science that we always had in the 1990s , thanks to his exposure to twenty-ninth century technical school .
4 ) Sometimes you have to journey in clock time just to make thing happen the agency they ’re “ supposed ” to . In the Next Generation sequence “ Time ’s Arrow , ” the Enterprise crew finds Data ’s severed head in the ground , dating back to the 19th century . As a outcome of this , Data sound back in clock time . Later , Guinan tells Picard that he needs to be part of the away squad that plump back to 19th century San Francisco , because she remembers encounter Picard back then . afterwards , Data is behead , and his head winds up in the land . Picardremarksthat history is “ fulfilling itelf . ” But at the same time , FutureGuinan wo n’t state Riker how to save Picard , for fear of switch history . So which is it ?
5 ) Past , present and future are one . This seems to be the message of “ All respectable Things , ” the Next Generation finale . Picard ’s intellect starts to “ steal ” from his present - day self to his “ Encounter At Farpoint ” ego , and himself 25 years in the time to come . In all three era , Picard journey to the same point in space , where he orders a tachyon scan … which inadvertently create a metre / space anomaly that grows big the further back in time you go , so that 1000000000000 of yr in the past times , it destroys the whole Alpha Quadrant . It seems as though Picard is seeing all three fourth dimension periods as the same , with a coordinated causality , so that if he changes something in one era , it bear upon both other era mechanically . Ditto in “ Tapestry , ” where Picard is able-bodied to make change to his vernal mistakes from Starfleet Academy , and they instantly castrate his animation in the present tense . ( This variation is belike pretty similar to # 1 . )
6 ) If you muff up a clock time - locomotion twist , all of the changes that a time - traveler has already made to chronicle will be undo . This is the operating principle in Voyager ’s “ Year Of Hell Part 2 , ” where Janeway bobble up the Krenim time machine and dead everything is returned to the means it was before the Krenim start tamper with time - travel . Also , Enterprise had a long - go plot line about the Temporal Cold War , in which four different groups from the future tense , let in a succeeding Federation , compete to exchange history . Eventually , the secular shenanigans get half-baked and crazier , with people going back and killing Lenin , and one alien mastermind a timeline where the Nazis win World War II ( it ’s always the Nazis winning World War II . ) And at last , Captain Archer and his crew face Vosk , the biggest meter - violator , in the alternate Nazi - dominated yesteryear , and come after in destroying his temporal conduit . As presently as the gimmick is ruin , everything returns to normal .
Note : I realize there are at least a twelve or so other Star Trek instalment that involve time travel , which I have n’t referenced in this clause . You ’ll have to take my Holy Scripture for it that I considered all of them , and settle they tally in with one of the theories of prison term locomotion I mention here .
All screencaps are fromTrekCore .
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