The lie of the “Kelvin Timeline”

[Yukaphile]

I could accept "red matter" splitting off another timeline, even by Trek's wacky non-scientific standards.

[Kendrakirai]

I don't mind the concept of a reboot (should be pretty obvious since I wrote my own), other than that it was poorly done. Ironically, what bothered me was the thing they were hoping would soothe fans - the attempt to connect it to the previous continuity.

Exactly! If it was just it’s own thing, that’d be fine! Hell, even have Nimoy as some *other* Vulcan that isn’t Spock. Really drive home that it’s an alternate reality, rather than ending up confusing and conflating time travel with inter-universal travel.

[Yukaphile]

I created a thread like this months ago. How they should have stuck to the hard reboot, lol.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Star Trek '09 is officially a quantum reality as described in Parallels. It is not time travel.

[Yukaphile]

So, infinity + one?

[Kendrakirai]

Star Trek '09 is officially a quantum reality as described in Parallels. It is not time travel.

If that was so, then there wouldn’t be time travel, as everything in Parallels was in the same time frame.

[Yukaphile]

Again, this can easily be handwaved with "red matter." Tbh, I would have legit preferred if they made it a "hard reboot" set in a parallel alternate dimension that is just slightly different, as it would explain so much about the verse that is stupid, like Khan's magic blood. McCoy's necromancy still fits right in, though. Blame Voyager for that. But seriously, you should go check out my old threads on this. They are in the sci-fi and fantasy section.

[CharlesPhipps]

They wanted Nimoy in this and also I think the Hobus explosion has led to all manner of awesome things in ST:O.

[Makeshift Python]

Star Trek '09 is officially a quantum reality as described in Parallels. It is not time travel.

If that was so, then there wouldn’t be time travel, as everything in Parallels was in the same time frame.

Time travel mechanics always vary depending on the story being told. There's no general rule for how time travel specifically works all across the franchise because the writers always change it in accordance to their story. And that's fine, because Star Trek started as an episodic series where each episode was self-contained. Sometimes we'll get stories like "Time's Arrow" you can't change the past because "it already happened", or you get "City on the Edge of Forever" where McCoy preventing Edith from dying changes the timeline. For ST09 the idea is that Nero's incursion branches off a new timeline separate from what we saw in TOS.

The filmmakers intentionally went that route so that they could move forward with the films doing their own timeline without having to "undo" the TOS timeline. Plain and simple. So there's no need to "explain" why the Picard series is still taking place, because ST09 never erased it from history.

[Yukaphile]

I mean, even if I agree, that's a POOR argument. "We should adhere to this style because that was what a TV show several decades ago did." It also ignores where the later series went, like DS9. And before you cite DISCO for its serialized continuity, I want to add that I think DISCO is an extreme example, and not always the best one. I think Trek, by nature, since it is a team writing up new sci-fi rather than just adapting sci-fi from a source material, needs an episodic format that still has strong episode-to-episode continuity, like DS9 did. If you have a weak first season, which is kind of inevitable if you're just winging this even with plans in mind, then you're going to be more grounded to that by means of heavy serialization. It's probably where the complaints that DISCO is "too different" come from, and why they still persist.