The lie of the “Kelvin Timeline”

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like Doctor Who explained it best with the Timey Wimey Ball.

I.e "It works like this in this episode because time travel is complex in-universe. Out of universe, it's how we want the story to go."

[Yukaphile]

And Trek is nowhere NEAR Doctor Who's level, even with the latest reboot. No, not even close.

[Admiral X]

I feel like this explains it best:

[TGLS]

The Prime Universe is the original universe (whose name comes from how Nimoy was credited in Star Trek 2009). Even ignoring that, given that Picard is almost certainly going to become incoherent without any reference to The Next Generation (and maybe the other two series), as well as the references to later Trek in Discovery, all of the old series are included in your Prime anyway.

Therefore, the only meaningful difference between your Prime and Canon is lacking the newer series, which is only necessary if the goal is Canon is Star Trek, without the new stuff I dislike, and that way lies madness.

[Yukaphile]

Thanks, Admiral X. Love it!

[Nevix]

My best guess is "Alternate universe that's almost exactly the same as the original universe, but diverges because Red Matter and lazy writing."

[Yukaphile]

Red Matter is what causes lazy writing.

[cdrood]

So I’ve been going through all of the reviews lately, and I’ve reached the Star Trek (2009) one, which states it was a parallel universe that doesn’t wipe away the existence of the other shows, leaving only Enterprise as canon....

Except that’s exactly what it does. Star Trek’s own internal rules of time travel state that travelers are protected from the changes they make, as are those who are in some way temporally shielded. Otherwise, changes made are *immediate*, no Back to the Future slow fade-outs, and there is only one actual timeline. All others are quantum possibilities. There is no multiverse theory of time travel in Trek, by its own internal rules on the subject, as seen many times over every series I’ve seen (so everything buy Discovery). Hell, the only other universe anybody has ever been able to controllably move between is the Mirror Universe, and that is clearly not a timeline, but a fundamental alteration of existence.

The only exception to this has been Q, and THAT may not have *actually* been a real alteration of events - it’s impossible to know exactly what he was doing, despite what he said was happening.

Thus, what 2009 does is erase everything set after Kirk’s birth from canon, my Trek’s *own rules of time travel*.

One can only presume that the time police finally managed to get things fixed after Into Darkness, setting things back to normal for Picard to happen in. No clue how this affects Discovery, and after the first episode, which is the only one I’ve fully watched, I can’t find myself caring *what* happens to it. Though getting rid of those Klingons who look more like they’re lizards than mammals can only be a benefit.

....I may have been a bit ranty, but this has bothered me since the movie came out ten years ago. Follow your own dang rules, Star Trek, you’d had forty years to develop them.

My theory is that Nero and Spock actually crossed into another universe, similar to what Worf was doing constantly in that one episode. Up until the point of the Kelvin's destruction, it's history was virtually identical to the original timeline, so they just assumed they'd only traveled in time. It's possible there were differences, but none that affected the overall flow of history. They then proceeded to change the history of THAT universe, believing it was the original.

[Admiral X]

I view Nero and old Spock as already coming from an AU compared to canon, so...

[Simplicius]

Star Trek (2009) destroying Romulus before whizzing through the black hole was the equivalent of taking a giant dump in someone's back garden and inviting them to your barbeque five minutes later.

I'm definitely in the camp of people who think that "Star Trek: Online" has actually done a lot of interesting stuff with the crappy hand that Nemesis and '09 dealt the Romulans but I would still rather have it all declared non-canon.

It's got all your favourite action movie schlock cliches; not understanding the speed of light (the Hobus supernova), writing off entire races as schizophrenic morons (Romulans expecting the leader of a criminal organisation to save them at the literal last second, with no back-up plan whatsoever), pretending black holes are magic portals to imagination land (although at the end of the film they're back to being real black holes again, so who knows?) and absurd planet crackers (especially absurd in that it depicts a 24th Century civilian ship as a planet cracker and a match for the full military might of the 23rd Century Federation).

That's all "prime", by the way. Red matter (McGuffin Sauce, served hot and fresh), Nero and the Narada, the Hobus supernova, magic black holes, incompetent screw-up Spock ... that's all from the "prime timeline".