*Note: This is the final blog of a three part series, explaining my theory of how time travel may be responsible for many of Star Trek’s continuity mistakes. If you haven’t already, please read the first two parts before continuing. Part 1 or Part 2 Also keep in mind that I don’t really think any writers had these ideas in mind when the series was produced– this is only an exercise in fun speculation.

Now you’ve read my somewhat philosophical hypothesis that the Star Trek universe in the third timeline tries to balance itself out in order to look more or less the same as previous timelines, despite new changes due to time travel tampering. The question then is, just how drastically would the future look, post-Enterprise? In other words, how would this affect the episodes of TNG, DS9 or Voyager you’ve no doubt watched recently if you’re still reading this blog series? I speculate, as I mentioned last week, that things would work out fairly similarly but there would be differences spotted by the keen eye of a fan advanced in his or her knowledge of Star Trek.

Here are the few clues I believe Trek canon gives us for what the Temporal Cold War and the third timeline ultimately change about later continuity.

In Enterprise’s final episode “These Are the Voyages,” Riker uses a historical holodeck program of Archer’s crew on the NX-01 to help him make the very difficult decision to tell Starfleet his secret about Admiral Pressman and the phasing cloak technology, as seen in “The Pegasus” from TNG’s final season. The footage of Riker and Troi on the Enterprise D in this episode are presented as scenes that actually occur in TNG canon but that we weren’t privy to when given “The Pegasus.” If Enterprise hadn’t created an alternate timeline, this footage would certainly help to establish that people in the 24th century did indeed know of Archer and that he came up in conversation as frequently as Zefram Cochrane. However, this being the only time we see anyone mention Archer out of hundreds of episodes in that century, I highly doubt this is the case. Instead, I submit that “These Are the Voyages” actually takes place in the third timeline, as altered by the events in Enterprise. The idea is that “The Pegasus” happens exactly the way it does in the previous timeline, except Riker comes to his decision with the help of holograms on the NX-01.

By the same token, I think it’s likely that Star Trek: Nemesis is also part of the third timeline, for a number of reasons. First of all, when we see scenes of Romulans in a three-part arc in Enterprise’s fourth season, there are some Remans standing in the background. This is certainly a great way for the writers to keep with the continuity of previously-produced Star Trek. However, Remans are only ever seen in those episodes and in Nemesis. This isn’t necessarily a continuity problem, but I find it interesting that Remans would only be shown on-screen one time sequentially after Enterprise, and two hundred years later. It’s mentioned in Nemesis that Remans were used as shock troops during the Dominion War, yet we never saw one in DS9. It’s possible Remans were extinct, didn’t exist, or were for whatever reason not known about in previous timelines, but that the Temporal Cold War changed something to make them more prominent in the third timeline.

Secondly, a Soong-type android, B-4, is found by the crew of the Enterprise in Nemesis. It’s odd that no one, not even Data or Picard, mentions Lore. They don’t even consider the possibility that B-4 could somehow be Lore, even though he was supposedly destroyed in “Descent.” If you think that would be a stretch, stranger things have happened in Star Trek. Heck, he could have been a Mirror Universe version of Data, for all Picard knew. Again, not a continuity problem really, but it raised my eyebrow. Maybe the events with Arik Soong in Enterpirse’s final season happened differently in previous timelines, so the way Noonien Soong built his androids, and even the order in which he built them, is altered in the third timeline.

This should be obvious to all who know their TNG, but Picard was NOT bald at the academy. We see a flashback of him with hair in “Tapestry.” There is a picture of him in Nemesis, played by Tom Hardy (Shinzon) at about the same age, and he’s bald. Was this a part of his rebellion during his academy days, but only in the third timeline? Did the (nervous cough) Temporal Cold War alter history such that Picard decided to shave his head??

Finally, DS9 must have ended somewhat differently in the third timeline. It seems clear in Nemesis that Worf is once again the Enterprise’s security chief. It’s like he never left! But this is inconsistent with “What You Leave Behind,” DS9’s final episode, where Worf takes the position of Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Somehow I don’t think his honor would have been satisfied to give this post up so quickly. Perhaps, for whatever reason, he wasn’t offered that position in the third timeline. I suppose it’s possible he wasn’t even on DS9 in that timeline, but there’s really no other evidence to support that idea and I think that would have been a more significant change than the fate of the universe would have allowed.

To conclude this series, I’d like to address future versions of Starfleet that have attempted to preserve the timeline through time travel. Both the 29th century’s Timefleet (as seen in Voyager) and Enterprise’s 31st century equivalent have existed to keep Janeway, factions of the Temporal Cold War, and others from altering the timeline. So are those organizations completely incompetent? How could a second or third timeline even happen if they weren’t just horrible at their jobs?

The 29th century time-ship, Relativity.

The most plausible explanation is that both organizations come into being differently in the second timeline than in the third. Remember that since the first timeline starts over in 2373 during First Contact, they wouldn’t have even come to be in the first timeline. Thus, both the 29th and 31st century versions of Starfleet are trying to preserve their own respective timelines. They may be able to monitor the timeline for small changes, but if the whole timeline is altered to the point where they’re altered along with it, they wouldn’t even realize anything needed to be changed.

This would explain why Crewman Daniels is trying to preserve things in Enterprise (like Archer being part of the Federation Charter and the war between the Federation and the Sphere Builders in the 26th century) that don’t seem to mesh with later canon. I think Crewman Daniels is trying to preserve not the second timeline as we knew it before Enterprise, but some variation of the third. When Archer and Daniels prevent a Temporal Cold War faction from helping the Nazis to win WWII, they stop yet another timeline from taking over. So the one they do preserve is probably very close to the one Daniels was familiar with.

And I may be way off base here with accepted time travel theories, but the fact that the 31st century Starfleet is trying preserve a different timeline than the 29th version may explain why they never run into each other on missions (unless they do and we just don’t know about it). I can’t help but think, however, that this would lead both factions to create more problems than they solve. In fact, Daniels often seems to make mistakes and it’s possible that he and his people are more than a little responsible for the Temporal Cold War itself.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and as always, I encourage new arguments and new ideas. This is a project I’ve spent a long time on and I’m happy to finally share it with fellow Trek fans. Pass it on to any other die-hard Trekkies and Trekkers you might know!

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

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