Re: Star Trek Causality Paradox

Matthew Redmond ( (no email) )
Sat, 30 May 1998 11:22:22 +1200

Hi Bill !

> Has anyone here seen the Star Trak Voyager 2part episode about the
> temporal spaceship whose soul machine was to blast its enemies with
> enormous amounts of temporal energy to erase the enemy from time
> completely? I don't see how that would work, considering the fact that
> once you erase the enemy from time, they would have no reason to erase
> them, if they don't exist, so what have the pilots of the time spaceship
> done with their "time"?
> BillP

We had part 2 on tv just this tuesday...what are we, two years behind? DS9
is about three years behind (Warf joined the station a month ago). We'll
catch up in a year and a bit. But i digress....

I think the reason why writers use paradoxes is that they have an idea for
a really good plot. In the case of the voyager 2 parter, it involves a
really cheap set (Outside the studio » 1996), but the writers can't for the
life of them work out how the time travel aspects (time lines, etc)
actually works.

Another example of the blatant use of the Paradox variable: "Star
Trek:Generations" ...now THAT was messed up big time! I ask you, what
happened to previous captain Picard (sp?) when the future Picard and Kirk
came out of the Nexus...did they kill him, or did he just disappear when
the others arrived (possible paradox scenario), or did he get left on the
planet to fend for himself as the others went back home, eh?

I don't think the audiences of today are going to accept the paradox
sticking plaster for much longer. I know a lot of people who are getting
really $*^#@# off !!

In some instances paradoxes can be rather funny...a bit like how Kenny dies
horrible, distasteful, yet disturbingly funny deaths at the end of every
episode of South Park (well nearly all of them) and then manages to be
"alive" in the next one.

That's the funny thing about paradoxes...they're just so paradoxical.

As to time: I believe there is one main time line. This line is like a
river, each of us is drifting down-stream. The trail left behind stays
relatively fixed, with few patches that can be changed if forced, but the
current is so strong that any changes made would not create much change to
the present moment. The wave that everyone is riding together has
pre-determined courses, there are many of these "forks" in this course that
are reached every second of every day.

The actions that we make determine whether the line goes left or right.
This is why if you look far enough in the future it seems as if the future
is waging like the tail of a dog.

The point we are at in the time line is one of the most influential parts.
This is the driving seat that we sit in, we just have to stop being
"drifters" and grab hold of the wheel.

That's what I believe anyway.

MR.

"I say what I like, and I like what I bloody well say!"
-Harry Enfield