*Note: This is the second of a three part series, explaining my theory of how many of Star Trek’s continuity mistakes might be explained by time travel. If you haven’t already, please read Part I before continuing. And please keep in mind that this is an exercise in fun speculation; I don’t really believe any Star Trek writers had these ideas in mind while creating the series.

In Part I, I gave an overview of the second and third timelines, and went into detail about what the second timeline looks like and the changes between it and the first. In this section, I’ll explore the third timeline, especially in relation to continuity problems in Star Trek: Enterprise.

From the beginning of “Broken Bow” (Enterprise’s pilot) it’s obvious that dramatic changes have happened to this timeline. Originally, it was assumed that the show would simply tell the story of Starfleet’s early missions before the creation of the Federation. However, the Temporal Cold War alters how Starfleet operates and when certain things happen. This isn’t just part of my theory– we’re told this on screen in the series. Many references are made to things that weren’t supposed to happen yet by Enterprise’s time (beginning in the year 2151). The Suliban weren’t supposed to be any kind of intergalactic force, but they’re given advancements by a being from the future. Starfleet’s first contact with the Klingons happens in the first episode, a hundred years before it happened in the original canon (“Errand of Mercy” in TOS) only because both species are effected by the Suliban. And dialog between Archer, Admiral Forrest, and Ambassador Soval in the pilot seem to suggest that the NX-01 Enterprise wouldn’t have even been launched so early if not for the Suliban.

So at least Rick Berman and Brannon Brega don’t have these things happen without explaining themselves. However, without an alternate timeline, there’s no way to reconcile these Enterprise episodes with episodes of other series that, chronologically, come after them.

As mentioned in Part I, “Regeneration” (in which Earth scientists find Borg drones frozen in ice) seems to be a direct result of the events from First Contact and a catalyst for most of the other changes in the second timeline. However, we submit that even this episode probably happened differently in the third timeline. In the second timeline, the NX-01 may not have even launched yet (since there were no Suliban around) and so the Borg drones may have been dealt with by someone else, maybe even the Vulcans or Andorians. Archer may not have been involved whatsoever, and there may not have been a Denobulan around to get assimilated, which would explain why a cure was never worked on and used in later encounters with the Borg.

But the largest continuity issue my theory helps solve is the importance of the NX-01. Archer and his crew stop the Xindi from destroying Earth, they put an end to the Temporal Cold War, and Archer is one of the key forces in putting together the Federation charter. It seems strange that neither Archer nor his ship are ever referred to by a character in chronologically later episodes. In fact, Kirk and his crew come up in various conversations and his importance seems to pale in comparison with some of Archer’s accomplishments. The Constitution class Enterprise seems to be considered the first ship with that name, until Star Trek: Enterprise. perhaps there wasn’t an NX-01 in the first and second timelines, or at least it may not have been important enough to ever be referenced. Perhaps it was even destroyed on its first mission.

If this were the case, whether or not Archer even existed would be somewhat irrelevant, because he certainly wouldn’t have been as influential as he is according to Enterprise. Even the design of the NX-01, often criticized by fans for looking too close to a 24th century Akira-class vessel, may be a result of timeline changes due to the Temporal Cold War.

The Temporal Cold War could have a number of repercussions that are impossible to even quantify. It could explain why some of Enterprise’s most crucial races are never seen in later canon during the other two timelines. In the case of the Denobulans and the Xindi, it could be that these races didn’t even exist until they were created by drastic changes in the timeline, or perhaps, like in the case of the Suliban, they simply weren’t known of and weren’t interested in being known of.

And then, of course, there’s all those pesky inconsistencies with the Vulcans. It’s really hard for me to believe that a species that has a taboo against mind melding completely embraces it a hundred years later and also lies to other peoples, saying that it’s been part of their customs for thousands of years. The Vulcans in the original series don’t seem to place women in high positions on starships (regardless of T’Pau being the leader of the entire PLANET), yet T’Pol is a high ranking officer on the NX-01. The Vulcan government in Enterprise is one of the most corrupt we’ve seen in Star Trek, seeming to just use logic as a smoke screen for oppressing melders and committing other underhanded practices. So could the Vulcan race race itself have been manipulated or changed by factions of the Temporal Cold War?

I speculate that if any time travel did occur in the twenty-second century of the other two timelines, they would have been isolated incidents and few people would have known about them. In the third timeline, the crew of the NX-01 and all of Starfleet remember the Temporal Cold War, somehow, even though Archer managed to to end it at its original source. Yet Kirk and his crew, when they experience time travel for the first time, react as though it’s never happened to anyone before. I believe that later in the third timeline, Kirk’s crew would consider Archer’s missions to be legendary, would be quite familiar with time travel, and Kirk would have a hard time living up to the reputation of Jonathan Archer.

In the final season when Manny Coto took over as show runner, he did his best to make the series work with the rest of Trek canon, forgetting this whole time travel thing and trying to get back to the heart of Star Trek. He explained the evolution of the Klingon forehead, set the Vulcans up to embrace mind-melding and he introduced T’Pau, the future leader of Vulcan. He even explained the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars and introduced Section 31. But if the Temporal Cold War changed so much, how can my theory explain these obvious attempts at fixing continuity issues? Well, since the war ends by the fourth season, I think the universe then attempts to balance itself out. Call it fate or some sort of universal constant, but maybe certain things are supposed to play out in the Trek timeline regardless of what smaller things change, and since neither the Borg nor the Temporal Cold War factions succeed in completely altering history to their liking, the universe does its best to happen the way it was meant to.

Okay, that was a stretch. I’m doing the best I can, here.

Even if this were the case, there are obvious differences, because the process of the universe balancing itself out would take a lot of time. The Denobulans, the Suliban, and the Xindi would now have to fit into a universe where they either weren’t important or didn’t exist before. The Vulcans would have to evolve more into the race as they are depicted in the original series, but that process would take longer than a hundred years. And the knowledge of Captain ARcher, the NX-01, the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi Conflict, as I mentioned before, would live on and be legendary. All of this would have a great impact on what the universe would look like later.

Next week, in my final blog in this series, I’ll explain my ideas on how the 24th century might look in the third timeline. Again, feel free to point out any holes in my theory or offer ideas of your own. I really appreciate the feedback I’ve already been given.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Con’t to Part 3.

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