Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

(Continuing our Summer of Star Trek series)

By John J. Joex

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)

So now that we have had almost two months to let the new Star Trek movie settle in our psyches, I’d say it’s time to take a little bit closer look at what they did with time travel and see just how consistent it was with the temporal logic the franchise has previously established.  First, as a quick recap of my original review, I really enjoyed the movie.  However, the more I thought about what they did to change the established Star Trek timeline, the more its contrivances annoyed me.

Now those who have followed this site for a while will know that I’m not particularly fond of time travel stories, especially the way such recent shows as Heroes and Lost have used the device.  What I hate most about time travel in Science Fiction is that it so often provides writers with a cheap way out of a predicament they have written themselves into and decided they do not like.  Did they kill off a character they really want to bring back?  Just go back in time and change the past.  Did they decide they don’t like the direction that a story is going?  Just go back and create an alternate timeline.  Or worst yet, have a character from the future go back into the past and do something that causes future events even though those events never would have happened unless they traveled back in the past creating an irritating chicken-and-the-egg endless loop paradox (i.e., Richard mysteriously shows up to provide aid to Locke after he was shot, but he only showed up because time traveling Locke told him to do so because he knew he would do so because of what already happened).

Too often, writers rely on one or all of these tricks, along with others I haven’t even mentioned, in order to leapfrog over having to devote themselves to just telling a good story.  And rarely is time travel used as a strong element to tell a good Science Fiction story that makes you think, instead of just making your head hurt if you think too much about it (the recent movie Primer is one of those rare exceptions).

This doesn’t mean that I hate time travel stories in general, I just generally get annoyed because I find them too contrived and they either do not follow the very rules that they ostensibly establish or they just follow no rules at all.

The original Star Trek series actually usually did a good job of adhering to these rules in its time travel stories.  The writers incorporated it as a Science Fiction element as opposed to a story contrivance, and usually did not diverge too much from the rules they established.

From TOS, both the episodes “City on the Edge of Forever” and “Tomorrow is Yesterday” show that traveling back in time can change history, but that it was possible to reverse the changes made and set history straight.  “Assignment: Earth” may have seemed to diverge from this a bit, but the Enterprise crew intervened because they believed they were stopping Gary Seven from changing the future.  In “All Our Yesterdays”, the people of Sarpeidon didn’t seem to care if going in the past changed the future, but then their planet was doomed anyway.  Even when you get to the later series episodes that dealt with alternate timelines, like the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, they still had the option to correct the timestream, though the TNG episode “Parallels” did throw us a bit of a curve with the suggestion of multiple parallel universes.

So that leads us to J.J. Abrams movie and what it did with changing the timeline.  In this one, Romulan Captain Nero unintentionally changes history when he attacks the USS Kelvin, not realizing that his ship has traveled 150 years into the past.  Nero’s actions create an all new timeline that ultimately includes the complete destruction of the planet Vulcan.

Now as a story element to reboot the franchise, I understand why they did what they did.  But the established rules in the Star Trek universe dealing with time travel say that even though the past can be changed and create a new timeline, those changes are correctable.  The movie, however, seems to imply that the new timeline is fixed and cannot be reversed.  So are you telling me that Spock would not try to find a way to go back in time and stop Nero from destroying Vulcan?  And if Kirk knew that correcting the timeline would mean that his father would live, are you telling me he wouldn’t give it a try?  In previous stories dealing with alterations of the past, the primary characters have always considered it their duty to set things straight.  What happened here?

I know, I know, the answer is obvious.  The creative team needed a device that allowed them to move the franchise in a new direction while also respecting the existing canon.  And on that level, I actually like what they have done.  But I wish that they had presented some plausible explanation of why Kirk, Spock, and the others would not try to correct the timeline so that at least the writers could say they attempted to stay within the rules that the franchise had previously established (and perhaps they still will in a future movie).  Otherwise the change in the timeline is nothing more than a contrivance that allows the writers to do what they want and somewhat weakens the use of time travel for the franchise going forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the left turn that the franchise has taken and I think it opens up endless story possibilities.  Still, I have to admit to being annoyed that they did this at the expense of the canon that preceded this movie.  Ultimately I am just quibbling over an annoyance, but I do hope that time travel in the Star Trek universe going forward will not become a watered down device that gives writers a cheap out at the expense of good story telling.

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