[encaser]

In a couple of weeks, in the Regeneration episode, the crew of the Enterprise come face to face with the Borg who, get this, crashed on Earth 100 years ago. And, before I get the oh no it's a spoiler, you find this out at the very start of the ep.
It's a good ep. until the end and minus a few million loop holes that they fell into. One would assume they phoned Stephen Hawking first for advice on timeline issues but got confused shortly thereafter. And more's the point failed to consider previous incarnations enough instead of deploying one of their considerable viewer draw story characters.
Some decent effects and humour in there though. It seems a trend of late for more and more stuff, dvds inclusive, to start well and even make mid-ground but then go nutsbah.

Clutching at straws now..... Q introduced Picard to the Borg (first meeting with Humans and The Borg). Now they want to change all this around?

[Garrett]

The was a hint a few weeks ago that they may have met up with an earlier incarnation of the borg. The one where the ship was regenerating at the end, but Sky played around with the picture for those who did not see it.

[Vection]

As a bit of a trek fan I must say that although I like Enterprise as a series the producers dont seem to be paying much heed to the story lines that have happend previously........ or would that be laterly!?!

Oh i dunno, you know what I mean.

[encaser]

I think the ep. you're on about Garrett is the one with the ship that required a life form to sustain it, yes? If that's the one, then I think they weren't actually referring to the Borg as such but a possible source from which they could've acquired/assimilated regenerative technology. And that being the last remaining vessel post Borg.
Of course the other problem they have is that the Borg on TNG looked rather less sophisticated - ala wet suit obvious - whereas in this Enterprise ep. they are up to date in style. There any many errors in the Enterprise ep. which is a shame. I can't say more without giving stuff away, but perhaps we can all have a rant in a fortnight

[dfield2000]

I think TNG really lifted off when the Borg were introduced, so they tried to repeat this by writing them into Voyager also.

Now it seems that instead of creating a new alien foe they have just played the borg card' again, without worrying about continuity or timeline issues.

Wy couldn' they have thought up something new instead of recycling old ideas. Shame

[kennydies]

There are several plot holes but can be explained as well.

The name "borg" was never mentioned in the episode.

Also regarding the time line, it can now be explained as the remains of the ship from first contact, which traveled back in time.

I hate paradoxes though.

[NicolasB]

In the film "First Contact" there's a section where the Borg try to take control of the ship's deflector dish. It's mentioned that the reason they are doing this is so they can use it as a transmitter to contact some other Borg from that time (who would still have been living in the Delta Quadrant and not yet acquired transwarp technology, one assumes). "Enterprise" takes place something like 80 years after the events in "First Contact", so one would certainly expect there to be Borg present somewhere in the galaxy at that time, and 80 years would probably be long enough for them to have got there from the Delta Quadrant at simple warp speeds if they knew they had some reason to get there.

Or, as you say, it could be the remains of the ship from "First Contact". Not having seen the "Enterprise" epsiode in question I wouldn't know.

Personally I think the borg are the best Star Trek enemy by miles. There have been some wrong turns, though: the whole business with Hugh and then all of the individual borg under the direction of Lore was a dreadful mistake. I actually don't like the idea of a borg queen, either - one of the things that's so scary about the borg is precisely the fact that they are so massive and faceless. It somehow diminishes individual drones too if, instead of seeing them as facets of a vast collective intelligence you see them as slaves to a single individual. I know it isn't quite as simple as that, but I still think providing an individual focus in the form of the queen was a mistake....

I guess the idea of placing a Queen in the film/series is because the americans can't understand what they can't see, so a single "baddie" has to be placed within the story.

Although a Bee Hive has a Queen, so it's pretty similar. The Queen Bee does not control the worker/warrior bees, she is just looked after by the workers.

[kennydies]

I think it would make more sense for them to be the ones from first contact for several reasons.

Can explain how picard was not the first ship to meet the borg

How the borg were more advanced with shielding etc so far in the past.

In the episode it was said that is was a borg sphere ship that had crashed.

The time line was the same as first contact as they had been in the ice for about 100 years.

Ross

[NicolasB]

The Queen Bee does not control the worker/warrior bees, she is just looked after by the workers.

Some "queen" insects - ants and termites, particularly - do quite directly influence the actions of the workers by means of pheromones. But clearly the Borg queen has complete control over her drones. I guess the idea is that she is a sort of focus for the collective intelligence, but personally I think that muddies the issue.

Can explain how picard was not the first ship to meet the borg

If you study TNG carefully you will see that the Borg are actually active along the borders of Federation space before Q flips the Enterprise 7,500 light years to meet them. It was the Borg who were responsible for wiping out several Federation and Romulan colonies along the borders of the Neutral Zone, thereby almost sparking a Federation/Romulan war because each side assumed the other was responsible.

In addition, the Borg encountered the Hansens' ship ("The Raven") and assimilated the 8-year-old Annika Hansen (and her family) some twenty years before Voyager encountered the grown-up version then referred to as "Seven Of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct Of Unimatrix Zero-One"; that would have been about ten years prior to their first encounter with Enterprise D.

God, I'm such a geek.

[Garrett]

Remind me NicolasB never to argue with you on the contents of Star Trek.

Or are you talking from experience and there is a lot more of you like Seven of Nine, you are NicolasB, Tertiary Adjunct Of Unimatrix Zero-One.

[encaser]

When you see Enterprise you'll see there are many blatant errors.
And the problem with the simple time paradox theory as explanation of the Borg on Earth; cannot be used as what was done was said to be undone, with the Enterprise going back to its proper timeline. Pus even if that was the arument, the sphere was blown to bits big style (love the sound of that on the dvd) in First Contact and any remaining Borg would've got burnt up on entry no question.
If it's really maddening now, I'd possibly advise not watching Enterprise or being very, very drunk at the time.

[NicolasB]

I would like to state for the record:

1) I have never attended a Star Trek convention.

2) I have never dressed up as a Star Trek alien, not felt any desire to do so.

3) There are more important things in my life than Star Trek. (Babylon 5, for example. )

[Geezer]

Originally posted by encaser
I'd possibly advise not watching Enterprise or being very, very drunk at the time.

Even so i find Enterprise to be great entertainment at the moment, didnt like the first series but am enjoying the second.

[Matinee]

Originally posted by NicolasB
2) I have never dressed up as a Star Trek alien, not felt any desire to do so.

Does that mean that you've dressed up as a Star Trek *human* (i.e. in uniform) ?

Never really fancied dressing up in a Star Trek uniform. Mind you, must admit I do fancy a couple of other uniforms, but I leave it to you to guess what they are (and I'm keeping schtumn..)

PK

[NicolasB]

I do actually own a TNG-style com-badge which makes an authentic noise when pressed, but it was a present. Honest.

[Rindless]

Enterprise is the most boring piece of ****e on tv.

The crew have no personalities what so ever. I've met more interesting characters down the dole office.
Where are the 7 of 9's or the Data's ?
Even Wesley Crusher was more colourful then this bunch of urinal cakes.

The whole crew should step in to the shower and come out pretending that this dire series never happened.

Agree with Rindless, I also think the Enterprise crew have no personalities.

Galaxy Quest chars. pull it off within the sake of 2 hours that a whole series of Enterprise can't even do.

Got bored within the first season. Mediocre stories, usual repeat episodes that have already been done with the original, TNG, DS9 & Voyager.

I can understand why people prefer Babylon 5. They don't chuck up a episode that messed up the whole Babylon 5 galaxy history time-base.

[NicolasB]

Mind you, when was the last time film or TV sci-fi did a time travel story that actually made sense? The first Terminator film and the second episode of Babylon 5 where Babylon 4 turned up came closer than many, but were still intrinsically flawed.

[Garrett]

Apart from getting the dates wrong I though the Time Machine was good and gave a nice explanation of time travel at the beginning.

[NicolasB]

Well, true. Stories that exclusively involve travelling into the future and not at all into the past are a bit easier to have make sense....

[CounterWhine]

Originally posted by NicolasB
3) There are more important things in my life than Star Trek. (Babylon 5, for example. )

"Babylon 5's a big pile of ****!"

Spaced - How I adore thee.

D.

IMO they should concentrate less on TNG/Voyager foes & more on traditional star trek foes, Klingon/Romulan/Tholian/Gorn.
Suliban & temporal cold war storyline showed promise, I still think they should involve Romulans more leading up to Earth/Romulan War Spock mentioned in an episode of the original Star Trek.
If they that desparate for storylines why not bring in an episode where a dominion ship comes through a temporal rift/ temporary wormhole FCOL?

[buns]

would all of you guys in here who understand time travel please forward me an explanation!

ad

[NicolasB]

Well, I understand time travel perfectly, but what was it precisely that you wanted an explanation of?

[Garrett]

The biggest wobbler in time travel is the paradox theory, not unless you subscribe to the multi time lines theory. But do you change history for yourself or for someone else’s time line?

[NicolasB]

As far as actual present-day Physics is concerned, there are only two possible interpretations of time travel.

(Note that the next two paragraphs are a bit technical, but it gets better).

As described by General Relativity, the universe may be regarded as a static 4-dimensional entity - three spatial dimensions and a time dimension. A point object moving in time therefore becomes a line when you imagine it in space-time. General Relativity describes gravity not as a force, but as space-time becoming curved. So a point object moving through deep space with no measurable gravitational influence will move in a straight line, but if it passes near a star then its course will be curved around the star. However, this is not because gravity is "pulling" it towards the star. In Relativity terms the object is not accelerating, has no force acting on it, and is not deviating from its space-time course, it's just that space-time itself is actually curved, and thus an object with no force acting on it follows a curved path.

Now: what happens if space-time is really sharply curved? The answer is that it may be possible for space-time to be so folded back on itself that one point in space-time actually coincides with another point. This is the "wormhole" phenomenon that is much beloved by spaceship-based sci-fi. You fly through one "end" of the wormhole and instantly emerge on the other side without travelling any of the points in between.

Wormholes are respectable Physics, and indeed appear and dissappear all the time - but only on the subatomic scale. The question of whether it is possible to make a wormhole large enough for something the size of a spaceship to pass through is much less clear-cut. Mathematically speaking such a thing could continue to exist - but how it could actually be created is another question. (You should also note that, by definition, there can't be anything "inside" a wormhole. The points at either end are actually the same point in space-time.)

If we could make a smallish wormhole then it's fairly easy to make it into a time machine. Leave one end of it on earth, then take the other end away at very high speeds. In the same way as the so-called "twins paradox" (which is not actually a paradox at all) when you eventually bring the other end back again you will have created a time differential between one side of the wormhole and the other. Step through it and you emerge not just at a different point in space, but a different point in time as well.

The important aspect of all this is that there is only one space-time universe. What that means is that whatever happened in the past happened, and cannot somehow be made to happen another way. Thus, if I somehow acquire a time machine and I go back in time intending to shoot my parents before I was conceived then I already know that I'm not going to succeed. Either they were shot, or they weren't. And it's a matter of direct observation that they weren't. Therefore nothing can change that.

If I go back in time then maybe I won't find them, or maybe my gun will jam - but either way there is no way to alter something that has already happened.

Interestingly, physicists have actually done calculations about the behaviour of a subatomic particle encountering a small wormhole of this sort. If we imagine that the particle collides with another particle in such a way as to get knocked into the wormhole, then emerges from the other end slightly earlier and becomes the particle that knocked its subjectively earlier self into the wormhole in the first place, then you can actually prove mathematically that the only permissible path for the particle emerging from the wormhole is one that preserves the original collision.

Virtually all sci-fi time travel stories fall down if this is how you view time travel.

There is an alternative theory - but it's a much more dubious one.

If you want to talk about "changing history" then time would have to be multidimensional. For example, things happened one way at a time that was 12 o'clock last Tuesday, but at a time that was also 12 o'clock last Tuesday but somehow also not the same 12 o'clock last Tuesday that we were talking about previously, something else happened.

One of the (somewhat doubtful) interpretations of Quantum Mechanics and the whole business with Schroedinger's Cat is that there are actually multiple space-time universes. Each time a quantum event could go two or more different ways, new universes are created for each possible outcome.

For example, if an electron beam is fired a two slots, you might have thought that each electron has to go either through one slot or the other - but what you actually see is a result which makes it look as if the electrons are going through both slots at once in a wave-like fashion and producing interference effects. According to the many-worlds interpretation, the electrons actually do go through one slot or the other, with both possible results happening simultaneously in different universes. Some more eccentric physicists go on to suggest that in fact electrons don't behave like waves at all, but that the different versions of the electrons in nearby universes interact with one another to produce the interference effect.

If you can swallow the idea that all possible outcomes of all possible situations actually have some sort of physical existence, you can then imagine a situation where a time machine crosses from one universe to another at the point where the two branch. For example:

I go back in time and shoot my parents before I'm conceived, then go forward again. We can now imagine two different universes (or "timelines" as Star Trek calls them). In one universe nothing involving shooting happens to my parents, I am eventually given birth to, and then one day step into a time machine and dissappear. In the other universe a mysterious stranger (me) appears in a time machine just after my parents have met and guns them down. The stranger steps back into the time machine and vanishes. NicolasB is never born, and no such individual ever comes into existence.

No contradictions there on either side.

Now, what happens to me when I return to my own time? The answer is that I come back to a reality that is different from the one I left, because I am no longer in the same universe that I set out from. By helping events to turn out as they did, I have moved into a different branch. In the new branch there is no such person as NicolasB and never has been. No one will recognise me or know who I am. Back in the universe where I originally stepped into my time machine, however, nothing has changed. In that timeline there was a NicolasB, who one day climbed into a time machine and dissappeared - but that was the last anyone saw of him. He never reappeared, because he's switched into a different universe.

One could perhaps stretch the idea still farther and imagine a machine which has the ability to move sideways in time as well as forwards and backwards - in other words hop from one timeline to another. Using a machine like that I could perhaps get back to the universe I originally came from - but when I got there, nothing would have changed: the shooting of my parents didn't happen in that timeline, but in another one that I no longer occupy.

No matter how much you play about with this idea, though, most sci-fi time travel stories still don't hold up. Star Trek is particularly bad. According to the Star Trek model, if you watch me getting into my time machine and travelling back and then I "alter" something, then from your perspective suddenly everything will change. It even suggests that somehow you can be protected from the effects of this change (by "chroniton emissions", perhaps) even though the rest of the universe isn't, so that you can actually remember how things were "before" they changed, and recognise the change.

None of this makes any sense at all even with with the "many worlds" interpretation. It might make sense for a person to go back in time to try to "change" things - but all they would be doing would be moving themselves into another timeline. It makes no sense for anyone else to try and stop them from doing whatever they're doing, because the timeline they left cannot be affected by their actions. (And, for that matter, the other timeline in which their actions were significant already exists even before they go back in time, and will continue to exist regardless of what anyone does).


Edit: revisited this post on 20/6/2005 and amended some typographical errors.

[Hawklord]

I've got a headache

[sraper]

Originally posted by NicolasB
One could perhaps stretch the idea still farther and imagine a machine which has the ability to move sideways in time as well as forwards and backwards - in other words hop from one timeline to another. Using a machine like that I could perhaps get back to the universe I originally came from - but when I got there, nothing would have changed: the shooting of my parents didn't happen in that timeline, but in another one that I no longer occupy.

"The Number of the Beast" by Robert Heinlen has just such a machine. A very "entertaining" story.