Saturday, July 28, 2012

Star Trek is its own grandfather

My children are Trekkies, because I raised 'em right.

My sister the Episcopalian priestess, would tell you that I ruined their childhoods, because they are Trekkies. Inured them to violence or some such crap, by allowing them to watch the original series.

(No, really. She said that. Of course, having met her children and seen what she has allowed them to watch since making that statement, I'm pretty relaxed on that subject.)

On the other hand, I suspect the brain damage of my children has a genetic component.

I like to watch random things on Netflix as I do dishes. I am currently getting crap from these same children (and from the fiancée of my absent son, since he isn't here to give me crap on his own), for rewatching Star Trek: Enterprise.

They have all the complaints of the small-minded. "It breaks continuity! The Federation cannot meet the Ferenghi and Borg in this series! They said in the other series' that the Federation had never met these species before!"

Sit down and listen, you little bitches.

The most recent movie rewrote the personal history of Captain Kirk, all the way back to his birth. And brought in the Romulans, who the Federation wasn't supposed to know about. And you liked that movie.

And thirteen years (in this timeline) before that (when my youngest child wasn't even nine), in Star Trek: First Contact, they rewrote history back to Zephram Cochrane and the development of the warp engine. In another movie that you liked. By bringing in the Borg.

In fact, all the way back to the original series, the Enterprise screwed up the history of Earth (with episodes like City on the Edge of Forever and Assignment Earth) to such an extent that there are no continuity problems that can't be explained away with one of the various theories of time travel that the Star Trek universe can't seem to keep straight.

Fuck the haters. Watch what you like.

4 comments:

Monkey_Lord said...

Where to start... Ok, so, they've established in the newest movie that it is, in fact, an alternate timeline. (No, really, Uhura says so) So take that one out of the running right off the bat.

Next, we have First Contact, where only one person left on earth, Lily, saw the Borg.

So, the problem with the borg in Enterprise, in order for a borg to operate it has to be connected to the Collective, meaning they're connected to the Queen. THis means that the borg know where Earth is. Which would beg the question, why don't they attack? It's shown that the borg have Transwarp technology, letting them go from the Delta Quadrant in a few hours. (Versus the 70 years it would take at warp 10)
Now, let's look over at Voyager, where the Borg Queen (They're like ants, kill the queen and it's not long until another one pops up) starts spouting exposition for no good reason. The first encounter the borg have with humans is the USS Raven, a small ship manned by Magnus, Erin and Annika (Later 7 of 9) Hansen. This was when the brog started constructing a Transwarp Gate in order to go to the Alpha Quadrant.

The only way Enterprise makes any sense is if it's a different reality, specifically the one where the borg a victorious at Wolf 359. The only time we've seen this one is in Next Generation when all the realities came together. It's the one with the Riker that fires on the other ships, because he would rather die than go back to his dimension, given that the borg have taken over.

Also, Scott Bakula's acting hurts me.

Grung_e_Gene said...

Scott Bakula "Quantum Leapt" into Enterprise in order to destroy Gene Roddenberry's universe.

Nameless Cynic said...

OK, first of all, Scott Bakula's acting is a quantum leap over William Shatner's.

I'm just sayin'...

Now. Let's ignore the fact that the destruction of multiple Borg ships as they try to destroy the past (in "First Contact") might leave some evidence (like, say, a crashed Borg ship - for example, ST:E, season 2, "Regeneration"). Further than that, we'll ignore the entire ST:E story arc which is conveniently labeled "Temporal Cold War," because that would be cheating, right? To point out an entire story line based around time travel...

Out of respect to you, I'll should probably also ignore the interaction between Uhura and Spock in the last movie, which you, somewhat idiotically, referred to. Since it supported my argument.
Uhura: "An alternate reality?"
Spock: "Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed."

Instead, let's go to the earlier series, shall we?

In ST:NG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," a rift in the space/time continuum allows the Enterprise C to be saved when it was supposed to be destroyed. This alters history, because Tasha Yar, who died a meaningless death in the first season of ST:NG, is still alive in the new timeline, and she goes back through the rift with the Enterprise C and gives birth to a half-Romulan daughter, Sela (long story), who spends several episodes trying to destroy the Enterprise, despite the fact that she shouldn't exist at all.

(This guy explains how everything has now been overwritten, if you care.)

The last episode of ST:NG ("All Good Things") is built around a paradox, but I won't bore you with it.

See, the problem is that we, as temporally-static humans, don't fully understand how time travel might work. (In fact, according to the laws of physics, as we understand them, it won't.) The nature of time travel might create branching versions of reality, or might just rewrite what's come before. We don't know.

(Here. Try this discussion, which puts it all in terms of different movies. See what you think.)

(Here, by the way, is a nice long discussion of the fact that Star Trek has multiple different views of time travel that don't agree with each other. But it's TL:DR, so I'll assume that you'll ignore it.)

The problem is, until you put a lot of thought into time travel, and then you get drunk/high and put a lot more thought into time travel, then you can't appreciate the multiverse as it truly exists. Or doesn't, depending on how you look at it.

Nameless Cynic said...

And by the way. Grung?

I considered making some kind of response, but that was a hell of a good line. I'm just going to leave that right there.

Bravo, sir.