this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
118 points (97.6% liked)
Star Trek
10608 readers
96 users here now
r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
New to Star Trek and wondering where to start?
Rules
1 Be constructive
All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.
2 Be welcoming
It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.
3 Be truthful
All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.
4 Be nice
If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.
5 Spoilers
Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episodes, as well as previews for upcoming episodes. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.
6 Keep on-topic
All submissions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/quarks.
7 Meta
Questions and concerns about moderator actions should be brought forward via DM.
Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 11-21 | LD 5x06 | "Of Gods and Angles" |
| 11-28 | LD 5x07 | "Fully Dilated" |
| 12-05 | LD 5x08 | "Upper Decks" |
| 12-12 | LD 5x09 | "Fissue Quest" |
| 12-19 | LD 5x10 | "The New Next Generation" |
In Production
Strange New Worlds (2025)
Section 31 (2025-01-24)
Starfleet Academy (TBA)
In Development
Untitled comedy series
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What if La'an leaving the gun in the room was a predestination paradox? Leaving it there means Khan rises to power, fathers more children than he would have otherwise, thus resulting in La'an being born in the first place.
Most time travel in Trek seems to result in retroactive bootstrap paradoxes. History is only theoretical until it is directly observed, with many possible histories converging onto the present, and the observation of a time traveler collapses the waveform for them into a version of history where they were integral to events.
Before La'an went back, things played out how they played out. After she inserted herself into the timeline, events changed, but the outcomes of relatively minor changes like the gun were already anchored in the future, and so they didn't significantly alter the final outcome. The path may have changed, but the destination remained the same.
The Romulan agent in this episode directly references a sort of self-healing aspect to the timeline, like minor (Butterfly Effect) changes don't do the job due to .... something. As such, the presence or absence of that gun is probably indifferent to Khan's outcome.
Though one wonders if her speech to him might have reinforced the malignant narcissism that presumably underlies Khan's later cruelties.
It occurs to me that the "healing effect" might in fact be the Travelers, or some other unseen group of time travelers from some point in the future who have a vested interest maintaining events that lead to a specific point in history. It doesn't need to be some impersonal force of nature making these course corrections.
True. For that matter, it could have just been that Starfleet time-cop group thwarting her over and over, without her realizing it.
Still, seems more like a lampshade thrown over the "temporal mechanics" here so the writers didn't have to deal with minutiae.
If you think about time travel seriously, you start to see how truly complicated it would make things. If the multiverse exists and time travel also exists, then inevitably there would be meddlers from the future messing things up. And following that would be those who believe such meddling is dangerous, because it creates more timelines branching off that would accelerate the meddling, until there are more polluted timelines than "natural" ones, creating a future filled with bizarrely chaotic outcomes all branching from the recursive meddling. And so there would have to be some kind of ongoing arms race of preservationists versus people who want to stack the future with timelines friendly to their own cause.