Time travel has always been a recurring theme in Star Trek. In fact, I believe it to be the only way to reconcile a lot of its continuity mistakes, especially those made in Voyager and Enterprise. I’d like to present a theory that my fiance and I devised about a year ago, which may help to explain a lot of these problems. First, let me say that I don’t believe this theory is in any way what the producers of Star Trek ever intended, but it is interesting how much accidental proof there is in Trek canon to support it. Secondly, this whole thing is quite complicated and we had way too much time on our hands when we came up with it. It’s very thorough, so I’ll be presenting it as a three-part series of blogs. Finally, as a result, you’re bound to get confused or bored if you aren’t very familiar with Trek, so I won’t be offended if you choose not to read on. But, if you dare to continue, here only for the pure fun of speculation, is the first part of the monstrous Three Timeline Theory.

There are a lot of instances of time travel in Star Trek in which time wasn’t altered enough to make much of a difference on the overall timeline. For instance, Kirk meeting Sisko in “Trials and Tribble-ations” didn’t have major repercussions on the future. However, there is one instance that I believe caused irreparable damage to the future, and that is the events of Star Trek: First Contact, in which Picard and crew return to twenty-first century Earth to stop the Borg from preventing first contact with the Vulcans. As soon as their mission is complete and Picard’s crew returns to the twenty-fourth century, they are probably unaware of any changes to the timeline. But there are continuity errors in a few Trek episodes that support the idea that some things had changed as a result of these events, but they were minor enough that no one would have noticed them without doing extensive research, as we’ve done, to find those changes. In fact, I believe First Contact created a second, only slightly-altered timeline.

According to our theory, the original series would have unfolded more or less exactly as it did in the first timeline– what you see in those 79 episodes probably wouldn’t change between the first and second timelines. The real changes caused by First Contact occur off screen and primarily have to do with Annika Hansen (Seven of Nine). A glaring continuity mistake in Voyager is in an episode called “Dark Frontier,” which claims that the Hansens left in 2255 toward the Delta Quadrant to study the Borg.

However, a much earlier episode of The Next Generation, “Q Who,” seems to imply that humans knew nothing of the Borg before Q introduced them to Captain Picard. Q is held entirely responsible in other episodes for putting Earth on the Borg’s radar. The problem is, these events happen in 2265, ten years after the Hansens left to study the Borg. But if the Federation didn’t know about the Borg until Q, how did the Hansens know about them?

I theorize that the Hansens indeed didn’t study the Borg in the first timeline, because no one had ever heard of them. But the events of First Contact altered time so that there were records, however burried and classified as they might be, of the Borg’s existence, because of the evidence Enterprise E left in the past. This existence of this evidence is made canon by the Enterprise episode “Regeneration,” in which those drones left behind in First Contact are excavated by Starfleet scientists, a hundred years later. Those drones come to life, kill the scientists, steal a cargo ship, and are eventually stopped by Captain Archer and the NX-01. Even though they’re never called by name in the episode, record of these cybernetic beings and what they can do must be recorded in Archer’s log– they assimilate some of the crew and even manage to almost assimilate Archer’s doctor, Phlox.

One little hole in the theory, however, is why Q didn’t seem to be aware of this when he introduced Picard to the Borg 200 years later. He has to do this in both timelines in order for history to look mostly the same. Perhaps most of humanity didn’t know about the Borg, due to the incident being buried or classified, so Q still thought it would be an effective lesson for Picard. That’s not a good explanation, but it’s the best I can come up with.

I believe that any episode or film post-First Contact occur only in this new, second timeline, and couldn’t have happened in the first. Deep Space Nine and Voyager both get started and each of their first few seasons are part of the first timeline, but if Enterprise E hadn’t gone back in time to stop the Borg, Earth would have been assimilated, Thus, the Borg would have created their own second timeline, in which the Federation never existed.

Are you following this so far? Catch your breath, just a little left to go.

Now, let’s fast-foward to Voyager’s “Scorpion,” in which Captain Janeway rescues Seven of Nine from the collective. Keep in mind, this only happens in the new, altered timeline. Even if the Borg had never gone back in time in First Contact, this never could have happened in the first timeline. If the Federation didn’t know about the Borg in 2255, the Hansens wouldn’t have studied them and Annika Hansen couldn’t possibly have been assimilated and there wouldn’t have been a Seven of Nine. I would go as far as to say that if the first timeline weren’t altered (by the Borg or by Picard) Voyager would probably have never made it back to the Alpha Quadrant because they wouldn’t have had the invaluable assistance of a human, ex-Borg drone who had been raised almost entirely by the Borg.

This explains some inconsistencies regarding the Borg, but how does this explain all the continuity errors made by Enterprise, you might ask. The events of First Contact can’t possibly account for new species we had somehow never heard of before (Denobulans, Xindi, Suliban) or the Temporal Cold War, which is apparently a huge part of early Starfleet history which, conveniently, no one in other series ever thinks to mention. And indeed, you would be right. This is where that pesky third timeline comes in.

According to our theory, some unknown event far in the future (past the 24th century, in this second timeline) sparks the Temporal Cold War, as seen in Enterprise, which begins to affect the Trek universe in the 22nd century and spirals it into a third timeline. I’m not sure who would have instigated this event or exactly when it happens, but it be someone from the 29th century, in which the Federation now has a Timefleet, according to Voyager. Or it could happen in the 31st century, the time Crewman Daniels in Enterprise comes from, who spends three seasons trying to stop the Temporal Cold War. Then again, it could be any faction from any time that participated in the Temporal Cold War.

Regardless, I theorize that the majority of continuity problems we see in Enterprise are caused by the Temporal Cold War and this Third Timeline. Thus, we believe that Enterprise is best viewed not as a prequel, but rather a sequel that takes place in the past.

I am aware that there are a lot of time travel episodes in Star Trek, and each one changes the timeline, even if it’s very slightly. You could say there are dozens, if not hundreds of different timelines, and so it’s moot to number them as I have here. However, I’ve numbered them this way because I think these “second” and “third” timelines are the most significantly altered, and the only ones responsible for many of the canon mistakes made in the series.

Of course, Star Trek is just a TV show. Those who are really responsible, naturally, are writers, who make mistakes like everybody else. Sometimes they’re careful with continuity, and sometimes they’re not. But I think it’s fascinating that there are ways to look at the series in which even the most glaring mistakes can be explained within the confines of what we’re given on screen.

Next week, in part II, I’ll delve deeper into the third timeline and look at it in relation to some very specific continuity mistakes in Enterprise. I hope you’ve enjoyed this complex and ultimately silly exercise so far, and please share any interesting holes in the theory you might find or share a theory of your own.

Con’t to Part 2

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Tags: Archer, Borg, Enterprise, First Contact, Janeway, Picard, StarTrek, Television, Voyager

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Capt Logan, Movies, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.