Alternate timeline

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Alternate timelines are different versions of a single universe. Timeline changes come to being after temporal manipulation. Time travel to the past can cause an alternate chain of events to unfold, in cases where the time travel event is not part of a predestination paradox. (DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations") Time travel to the future of a timeline can create an alternate future where the time traveler had never returned back to the past from the future. (ENT: "Shockwave", "Shockwave, Part II") Erasing the whole existence of things also created a change in the history and future of a timeline. (VOY: "Year of Hell"; ENT: "Twilight")

By the 28th century, changing the timeline had become illegal after the Temporal Accord was established. (ENT: "Cold Front") By the 29th century, Starfleet had taken it on as a mission to use time travel as a means of upholding the integrity of the timeline by fixing changes that came into being. It was also Starfleet policy to integrate different versions of people into one, when several coexisting ones appear due to paradoxes and time travel. (VOY: "Relativity")

For a list of all the various time travel events in Star Trek, see time travel episodes

Alternate realities

Different versions of a timeline also sometimes coexist as parallel universes. Most active temporal anomalies allow interaction between two different alternate timelines for a moment, making them parallel realities in relation to one another.

• Harry Kim considered an alternate reality as one possible cause for his sense of déjà vu and familiarity to a region of space in the Delta Quadrant, until the Taresian retrovirus was discovered to be the actual cause. (VOY: "Favorite Son")

• Time travel to the past through the red matter created black hole by the Romulan mining vessel Narada resulting in the creation of an alternate reality. (Star Trek)

• A brief experience with a parallel reality was theorized to be one possibile cause for Tuvok's breakdown in 2373 over memories of events Tuvok had not experienced. The cause was later on discovered to be a memory virus unknowingly transmitted to him from Lieutenant Commander Dmitri Valtane, in 2293. (VOY: "Flashback")

• Temporal causality loops create independent parallel fragments of time, inside which time of the universe repeats itself. From outside the loop, it appears as if the things inside had simply vanished from the space-time continuum. For people inside to loop the memories from previous loops begin to assert themselves as a sense of déjá vu, and eventually clearer memories. (TNG: "Cause and Effect")

• In 2370, Q allowed Picard to shift his consciousness between three parallel timelines, one in the past, one in the present and one in the future from Picard's point of view, in order for him to create an anti-time eruption. The eruption was linking these universes together. When it was sealed into subspace, the coexisting timelines also collapsed. (TNG: "All Good Things...")

• In 2371, radiation poisoning and the temporal energy emissions of an artificial quantum singularity of a Romulan Warbird allowed Miles O'Brien to jump between the prime and an alternative timeline in which Deep Space 9 was destroyed. At least during some of the jumps the two timelines coexisted. (DS9: "Visionary")

• The quantum singularity lifeforms were native to a parallel space time-continuum. They utilized temporal apertures to travel between continuums and delivered their embryos to mature in nests inside the gravity wells of quantum singularities in our universe. The adult beings of the species were capable of taking humanoid form and were unaffected by temporal fractures. (TNG: "Timescape")

• The race of the alien, who took the shape of Cosimo, existed in temporal inversion folds of the space-time matrix. The folds were parallel time streams visible as temporal anomalies intersecting the prime reality. Inside the folds, reality remained unaffected by changes in the timeline. It was possible to utilize a fold in a similar way to a quantum fissure and to exchange one's consciousness with an alternate possible timeline version of oneself. (VOY: "Non Sequitur")

• It was also possible to create pockets, where a previous timeline continued, while the timeline of the rest of the universe was changed. Such technology as a subspace bubble, a subspace isolation field, temporal shielding and the wake of a temporal vortex kept any enveloped object in a pocket with its own timeline. The Guardian of Forever was also capable of maintaining the time vortex planet in its original timeline. (TNG: "Timescape", DS9: "Past Tense, Part I"; VOY: "Year of Hell"; Star Trek: First Contact; TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever")

The writers of Star Trek, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, were asked about the implications of the new alternate reality that was introduced in the film in an interview. They explained the new reality runs parallel to the prime reality as a new quantum reality, as the concept was explained by Data in the episode "Parallels".[1]

It was stated in ENT: "Azati Prime" that the Sphere Builders have technology that allows them to examine alternate timelines. The time vortex was called a focal point of all timelines in TAS: "Yesteryear". These statements suggest that all alternative timelines co-exist.

The term "alternate reality" was used by the mirror universe T'Pol in ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" as a synonym for parallel universe.

Appendices

Appearances

Alternate timelines are depicted in the following episodes or films:

• TOS:
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
  • "The City on the Edge of Forever"
  • "All Our Yesterdays"
• TAS:
  • "Yesteryear"
• TNG:
  • "Time Squared"
  • "Yesterday's Enterprise"
  • "Tapestry"
  • "Parallels"
  • "All Good Things..."
• DS9:
  • "Past Tense, Part I"
  • "Past Tense, Part II"
  • "Visionary"
  • "The Visitor"
  • "Trials and Tribble-ations"
  • "Children of Time"
  • "Time's Orphan"
• VOY:
  • "Time and Again"
  • "Non Sequitur"
  • "Future's End"
  • "Future's End, Part II"
  • "Before and After"
  • "Year of Hell"
  • "Year of Hell, Part II"
  • "Timeless"
  • "Relativity"
  • "Fury"
  • "Shattered"
  • "Endgame"
• ENT:
  • "Shockwave"
  • "Shockwave, Part II"
  • "Twilight"
  • "E²"
  • "Storm Front"
  • "Storm Front, Part II"
• Star Trek films
  • Star Trek Generations
  • Star Trek: First Contact
  • Star Trek

Related topics

• Temporal anomaly
• Temporal mechanics
• Time
• Alternate reality
• Parallel universe

Apocrypha

• According to the Star Trek: Myriad Universes story Places of Exile by Christopher L. Bennett in the 2008 novel of the series, Infinity's Prism, the concept of quantum realities is synonymous with all types of alternate timelines.

• In the game Star Trek: Armada, the USS Premonition came from a future where the Borg control most of the Alpha Quadrant. The Premonition went back in time to 2376 to stop the Borg from overrunning the quadrant, after they attacked Earth, led by Locutus of Borg, an assimilated clone of Captain Picard. Even with the Premonition there, it was still not enough to defeat the Borg, who intercepted Ambassador Spock's ship before he arrived at the peace conference to ally the Federation with the Klingons and Romulans. The Premonition sent back the Enterprise-E to make sure Spock reached the conference, which succeeded and reinforcements were dispatched to Earth where the Borg were driven away. When the Borg sent a sphere back in time to 2364, it destroyed the Enterprise-D, killing Captain Picard and erasing the victories. The Premonition wasn't affected by these changes in the timeline, as it came from a different time frame, and so traveled back to 2364 in pursuit of the sphere. The Premonition destroyed the sphere and returned to the future, putting history back on track in favor of the Federation.

External link

• Alternity - a Yahoo! group for the discussion of Star Trek alternate history