Time Travel in Star Trek: Prodigy (PRO)

"Temporal what?" (Rok-Tahk, PRO: "Time Amok")

 

PRO: Time Amok

The temporal anomalies in "Time Amok" come about by a tachyon storm that affects gravity on the USS Protostar, which in turn destabilizes the protostar drive. A temporal ripple travels through the ship, isolating the single crew members in their own time frames and leaving Janeway as the only connection. Moreover, a core breach of the protostar drive is about to happen. Jankom Pog's passage through time is so fast that the ship explodes immediately after he states that there are still ten minutes left. Rok-Tahk, on the other hand, is on a so much slowed down level that she has many days, possibly months to fix the engine core. Depending on which reference we define "fast" and "slow", we may want to switch it because, if they could see each other, Pog would stand still from Rok-Tahk's point of view, while she would move around at incredible, maybe imperceptible speeds for him. However, I will stick to the nomenclature from the episode in the following.

Although it is a show for kids, the temporal effects in "Time Amok" are tricky and don't allow swift conclusions. The story is reminiscent of VOY: "Shattered". The two have in common that each of the characters only exists in exactly one time frame. In the Voyager episode, Chakotay could travel from one frame to another. In the Prodigy episode, it is Janeway whose program is adjusted to operate in every frame. It looks like her consciousness exists in only one frame after another at a time. But since she is a piece of software, this may be a matter of interpretation.

The effect of the temporal phenomenon in "Time Amok" is explained as different speeds at which time passes. This too sounds familiar because much the same happened in TOS: "Wink of an Eye" and in TNG: "Timescape". Moreover, Rok-Tahk has plenty of time to fix the ship thanks to her being on the slowest level, in a similar fashion as Spock did in the TOS episode.

The question whether there is a real time travel in "Time Amok" and whether someone or something actually went to the past is not immediately obvious. In "Shattered", it was very clear that Chakotay traveled back and forth through time, although it remained uncertain if he could have changed the past because his main concern was to put the ship back together. There was no time travel at all in "Wink of an Eye", but time simply passed at different speeds. Finally, in "Timescape", time's arrow was reversed only occasionally, for a few seconds, which was plot-driven to avert the warp core breach. In "Time Amok", the existence of the Janeway hologram on every level somehow allows a transfer of information between all these instances of Janeway. The "fast" Janeway, who is with Jankom Pog, stays with him all the time until the ship explodes. The Janeway of a different, "slower" time level, where the disaster has not yet occurred, knows what happened or what would happen because it is the same program. So this is some sort of a time travel indeed because information is sent to the past.

The question may arise whether the Protostar splits up, or whether it would rather remain the very same physical environment and only the characters experience the different passages of time. In the VOY episode it was a major issue how the ship could possibly exist as a fraction of itself, with other sections and other crew members being at a different time in a wholly different region of space. This dilemma shattered its credibility. In TOS and TNG, on the other hand, it was always clear that everything and everyone existed only once. The latter is also the case in "Time Amok". Janeway explicitly states that everyone is still on the same ship, although the illustration she shows to Rok-Tahk looks a bit like copies of the Protostar separated in time. If there is only one ship, the communication between the Janeways would be plausible, after all they would all be one and the same holographic system that tunes the speed of its user interface. Still, it would have to include a transmission of information to the past, either inside the ship's computer itself or through the internal sensors.

There is solid evidence of a "nominal" time level in the episode. When Pog says he has ten minutes left and the engine blows up immediately after his words, it is clear that his passage of time is accelerated relative to a reference, in which the engine core itself and probably the whole ship resides. Rok-Tahk, in contrast, is on a time level that is considerably slower than the ship. So for all intents and purposes, the ship is on the nominal level, and it's ten minutes until the core explodes. Additionally, the damped sine wave that Zero draws up shows how fast time passes for everyone on the ship. It almost looks like time possesses a wave function. Although it doesn't hold up to further scrutiny, this is quite an ambitious concept for a TV show for kids. Anyway, Pog is far above the centerline of that curve near the first maximum, Rok-Tahk is below it in the first minimum. I take it the centerline denotes the nominal ship level. This doesn't really work out mathematically (at least not with a linear y-scale), but it nicely illustrates that there is just one ship, and that only the characters are off. The issue why only characters are affected by the phenomenon, and not technology, remains unanswered though.

Let us look next at what happens with time when Rok-Tahk fixes the engine core. First of all, the warp matrix does more than simply avert the core breach; by stabilizing the protostar drive it also removes the root cause for the split and makes the time levels converge again. Let us assume that everything that happens in terms of time travel is that Gwyn sends the information about the pending warp core breach and the schematics back in time to Rok-Tahk. The little girl now has lots of time left to build and install the warp matrix until the ship explodes in her own frame, which is simultaneous with all other frames and a bit less than ten minutes away in nominal time. But here is a problem: The ship has evidently already exploded in Gwyn's time frame, as we can see in her message to Rok-Tahk. Gwyn's frame is below the y-axis that is meant to denote the frame of the ship, and hence slower than nominal too. Consequently, the ship has been destroyed in nominal time as well. The question is to which state the Protostar would be restored if not to the nominal one. We see (probably from Rok-Tahk's viewpoint, because only on her level the ship still exists) how the Protostar changes to another state as timelines are combined again, but we can't tell what time it is now. My best guess is that the ship would appear like the version that exists or existed in nominal time, at the very instant in her time when Rok-Tahk undoes the effect. Yet, this doesn't really work out on all accounts. We see how the mess that Rok-Tahk created is cleaned up in an instant but she is still in engineering with the warp matrix. So some things are reverted to how they should be and some are not.

As for the characters, if the activation triggers an immediate convergence of the single time levels, it should bring back the "fast" Jankom Pog from a time when he was trying to fix the warp core, and everyone else from a respective later time in their own perception. It initially looks just like that, as Dal is in his quarters again (he was a bit "faster" than nominal and may not yet have reached the time he would be apprised of the situation by Janeway, considering how very "slow" Rok-Tahk was).

So, how is it possible that Jankom Pog, Zero, Gwyn and Dal remember their own deaths? For one thing, this would be biologically impossible, unless they are all somehow revived by the time anomaly. Only if we neglect this issue, we may find a possible alternate explanation in the explosion, that may constitute a special instant, and could be the actual point of convergence. So from Jankom Pog's viewpoint he may just die in the explosion when Rok-Tahk's repair some time in the ship's past takes effect and transfers him to a new common timeline that starts just now in his perception. In other words, there could be a time reset indeed, one that effectively takes place when the ship explodes or would explode. Overall, however, going by the visual evidence it seems more plausible that the memories of their deaths are just some kind of echoes, a bit like in TNG: "Cause and Effect".

As in all stories with characters on accelerated or on slowed down time levels, there are the usual issues with red shift and blue shift of radiation (such as from light sources or from computer interfaces) and with temperature, which are already discussed in the articles on "Wink of an Eye" and "Timescape". Jankom Pog, for instance, wouldn't see a red alert when the engine is going to blow up, but an X-ray alert because everything around him happens so awfully fast. The tool that Janeway tosses to demonstrate how slow everything is would have to be infrared for Rok-Tahk, and everything else on the ship as well. "Time Amok" seems to raise the additional question why no one among the crew can see anyone else. But perhaps Rok-Tahk, for instance, is just too blue-shifted to be seen?

Overall, this episode is quite a treat as temporal phenomena are concerned.

More on a side note, according to producer Aaron J. Waltke, the stardate at the beginning of the episode (607125.6) is off due to the proximity to the time anomaly (and to foreshadow things to come).

Classification: multiple time frames with different passages of time

PRO: A Moral Star II

In PRO: "A Moral Star II", the Diviner reveals to Gwyndala that he is a time traveler from the future. Some 50 years after the first contact of his homeworld Solum with the Federation, which has not yet taken place as of 2384, the planet is in ruins after a civil war, or so he says. The Diviner travels back in time to avert the first contact, and also to take revenge for something that has not yet happened but for which he blames Starfleet.

It is uncertain at this point how much the Diviner has already changed history. He is responsible for kidnapping the "Unwanted" and making them work in the mines on Tars Lamora, to find the USS Protostar that was buried beneath the surface. Also, Gwyn wouldn't exist without him.

We know from "Kobayashi" that Gwyn was born some 17 years ago in our timeline, which would be around 2367. So the Diviner, who came from at least 50 years into the future, must have traveled back in time at least 17 more years. The same likely applies to the USS Protostar that he has been searching for all along. In any case, for obvious reasons the ship can't have gone on the mission under Captain Chakotay prior to Voyager's return from the Delta Quadrant in 2378. It is still unknown at this time of the series how it happened, but it seems that after the Diviner initially hijacked the Protostar, someone or something must have triggered the ship's time travel, upon which it crashed and he lost track of it.

Classification: past incursion of so far uncertain extent

PRO: Preludes

This episode clarifies the sequence of events and establishes that the Protostar initially traveled to the future and was not intercepted by the Diviner in the present. Anyway, the whole story goes like this, in the logical order of events:

• Some time in the future (a date is neither established in "A Moral Star II" nor in "Preludes"), a Starfleet ship appears at Solum and establishes first contact with the Vau N'Akat.
• According to the female Vau N'Akat aka the Vindicator, this triggered a civil war on the planet that led to the destruction of their civilization. She blames the Federation for the disaster and complains that they didn't take sides, leaving the warring factions on Solum on their own.
• Decades later, another Starfleet ship appears. It is the USS Protostar under Captain Chakotay. The ship has passed a wormhole that made it travel to the future.
• The Vau N'Akat seize the Protostar as first shown in a flashback in "First Con-tact". They install the weapon, the "living construct" that would destroy the relay station in "Asylum" and that the crew would discover in "Let Sleeping Borg Lie". Their intention is to send the ship back in time through the still open wormhole, to destroy the Federation before first contact with their world can take place.
• Chakotay, however, manages to launch the ship without a crew. It vanishes through the wormhole and ends up at some place and time in the past that the Vau N'Akat can't determine.
• The Vau N'Akat form an organization they call the "Order". They launch a hundred ships, each with just one crew member and one Drednok, in the hope of finding the Protostar somewhere and some time in the past. Few of them survive the passage as the wormhole collapses. Among them are the Diviner and the Vindicator.
• The Diviner arrives further in the past (at least 17 years prior to 2384) than the Vindicator (3 years). At some point he manages to track the Protostar but doesn't find the ship, which is buried deep beneath the surface of Tars Lamora, as seen in "Lost and Found". Against his orders, the aging Diviner creates Gwyndala in order to carry on with his plan to eventually recover the ship. The Vindicator, on the other hand, somehow infiltrated Starfleet.

About Chakotay's timeline, we know from "Asylum" that he went on his mission some time before that episode and that he is already missing by now (2384).We can't tell exactly how many years the Protostar traveled to the future. The Diviner speaks of 50 years in "A Moral Star II", but that may just as well refer to the time until he himself entered the wormhole on the search for the ship.

The sequence of events with two directions of time travels is a bit more complex than previously assumed, but overall makes sense. It seems that as long as the various Vau N'Akat that go back in time only change the history of the region of space they arrive in and leave Solum alone, we need not worry about the grandfather paradox. It may still be a remote and/or isolationist planet in 2384. On the other hand, now that the Diviner and the Vindicator are about to be uncovered, it likely has consequences for the mission that may or may not establish first contact decades into the future. Also, if it is not possible to destroy the Federation, maybe it would be a good idea to warn Solum (or Starfleet), considering that any outcome would be better than a destroyed civilization?

The question if and how the time-traveling Vau N'Akat accounted for the grandfather paradox in case they succeeded may be a minor issues because "temporal shielding" is quite a common concept in Trek's time travel stories.

Classification: time travel to the future and past incursion

PRO: Supernova II

After the explosion of the USS Protostar, an officer replays a message to Admiral Janeway that was sent by Chakotay 52 years in the future and that arrived through a wormhole created by that very explosion. He shows two graphic representations of wormholes, the one that originally made the USS Protostar under Chakotay travel to the future and the one caused by the ship's explosion. They are a match.

The exact congruence of the two spatial phenomena has to be considered artistic license. Still, it is a totally incredible coincidence that the two wormholes could be similar, considering the huge number of variables involved. It may make some more sense only if variables were dominant that could be the same, for instance if the first wormhole had been created by the Protostar as well (rather than having an external origin).

Interestingly, Chakotay's timeline is explicitly called an "alternate future" in the episode. Considering that the actions of the Diviner and the Vindicator have definitely changed the past, including the destruction of many Starfleet ships, Chakotay may arrive on a totally different Solum, under the assumption that first contact between the Federation and the planet will not happen or will be completely different.

Classification: possible past incursion

Into the Breach I/II

The whole second season of Prodigy is a time travel arc, which is interleaved with the sequence of events we already know from the first season. The starting point in "Into the Breach I" is as follows:

• Some time in the future, after first contact with Starfleet, Solum is ravaged by a civil war.
• Some time prior to 2384, the Protostar falls into a wormhole and ends up 52 years in the future, on the devastated planet Solum.
• The Vau N'Akat install a deadly weapon aboard the Protostar to destroy the Federation, but Chakotay manages to launch the ship through the wormhole, after passing which it ends up on Tars Lamora, at least 17 years in the past.
• The Vau N'Akat send ships through the wormhole to find the Protostar.
• Dal and his friends stumble across the ship in the underground of Tars Lamora and take it to escape from the planet.
• The ship gets destroyed in 2384.
• Chakotay is trapped on future Solum.
• The current year can be assumed to be 2385.

In "Into the Breach I", Dal addresses the concern that if Gwyn goes to Solum and prevents the civil war from happening, her dad would never travel back in time and she would cease to exist. He is right for all we know because he essentially describes the grandfather paradox. Gwyn replies "The past is the past, right? So that hasn't changed, or else we wouldn't be talking. I hope to make a new future that hasn't happened yet." She makes it sound like it is self-evident or easy to grasp (as a part of Temporal Mechanics 101), which it isn't. The way she explains it, what will happen that enables or disables her own existence is still some 50 years away, a bit like in my course-of-time theory. That way, the future with the civil war on Solum may be isolated from the current timeline, and changing it would have no impact on people living here and now. Either that, or people who actively interfere with causality are no longer a part of that causality. Overall, it is and will remain inconclusive.

In any case, Gwyn as well as Asencia, whose explicit goal is to change the future of Solum, must be absolutely certain that returning to their planet ahead of their time would not cause disastrous changes that would endanger their very existence.

Janeway is ready to launch a small ship stored aboard Voyager-A, the Infinity, which is equipped with temporal shielding. That way, the crew would be protected against paradoxes that could otherwise affect them. We know the concept of protection against changes of the timeline, which inadvertently happened as soon as in TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever" and on many later occasions. The temporal shielding appears to be a technical solution to achieve the same. Yet, it will never be used in the season as far as we can tell.

Time on both ends of the wormhole is synchronous. The Infinity must wait for Chakotay to launch the Protostar, in order not to interfere with history. This will be in 41 hours. If the Protostar isn't launched for some reason, it would mean it could never end up on Tars Lamora, and almost everything from the first season would never happen.

It is evident already now that going to Chakotay's future Solum would cause trouble, whereas changing the future of Solum by doing it gradually wouldn't.

Classification: time travel to the (alternate?) future

Who Saves the Saviors

Dal, Jankom, Zero and Maj'el accidentally launch the Infinity, traverse the wormhole and end up on future Solum. They are aware they have to wait until Chakotay has launched the Protostar before they can try to rescue him. But then they are arrested and locked up behind the same containment field as Chakotay and his first officer Adreek-Hu.

It turns out that the two Starfleet officers don't have an escape plan, and that only with the help of the new prisoners they can take down the forcefield. This is said to be a causal time loop. Maj'el cites the Bell Riots (DS9: "Past Tense I/II") and Cochrane's warp test ("Star Trek: First Contact") as examples. Well, the case of Sisko taking over the identity of Gabriel Bell is not necessarily a time loop. It is well possible that he repaired the damaged timeline to be close enough to the original, and that prior to his interference history books used to show the picture of the actual Gabriel Bell. Regarding Cochrane's flight, the same may be true. The warp pioneer may have succeeded without the Borg attack and without the help of Starfleet officers from the future. A definite time loop can be found in TNG: "Time's Arrow I/II" because time travel is the only way for Data's head to be excavated after almost 500 years.

So Dal and his friends were probably always meant to help Chakotay escape. He couldn't have made it without them. But then something very strange happens and a paradox occurs nonetheless in that almost closed causality loop (which is a first time in the history of Star Trek). Dal drops a gun that Chakotay grabs, and instead of having to stay behind as he prepares the Protostar for launch, he can escape together with Adreek-Hu. So Dal's help regarding the escape from the prison was supposed to happen, but his help regarding the weapon wasn't.

Causality loops are customarily phenomena that preclude the existence of free will. The question is if the interference on future Solum is part of a causality loop at all. Dal and his friends only assumed they were meant to help Chakotay escape. Maybe there would have been a different opportunity for the captain in case they had not arrived? But that is not the writer's intention. They were meant to help Chakotay, they were just not meant to give him a gun to defend himself. But seriously, how could Dal have known what exactly he was supposed to do to close the loop?

The failure to close the time loop is attributed to Dal being inexperienced, which I think is very unfair. A much better in-universe explanation for this one-off phenomenon is that there is still an element of randomness in time loops. In other words, random variables may decide whether such a loop is closed or whether it becomes a "normal" temporal phenomenon that may cause a paradox, which may or may not be influenceable by free will. It may be a matter of experience or intelligence to recognize these variables, but this was never an issue in any Star Trek episode before. Sometimes plain dumb decisions or accidents completed the loop. I wouldn't blame Dal for something that is unpredictable.

The paradox that occurs corroborates that Chakotay's future on Solum is part of the current timeline and not of an alternate one, causally speaking. Yet, it is an alternate future, decoupled from the actual future that Solum will experience.

It is odd that, unlike it is customarily the case, the effects of the paradox are not immediate but gradual. The cadets on future Solum are not affected (and they don't need the temporal shielding of the Infinity for that). The paradox can be detected on Voyager-A in the form of spiking tachyons and chronitons, but so far everything in the universe remains as it was.

Only Gwyn experiences the paradox. She begins to dissolve, a bit like Marty in "Back to the Future". But why Gwyn of all people? After the Protostar has left Solum with the captain and the first officer, the Vau N'Akat wouldn't necessarily react very differently than in the original timeline. Well, at this point of the series we can imagine there may be reasons for Ilthuran not to procreate in the past or not to go on the mission to find the Protostar in the first place.

Classification: "contained" temporal paradox with limited and gradual effects

Temporal Mechanics 101

On the topic why the effect of the paradox is not immediate, Janeway says that perhaps the temporal shielding of the Infinity preserves reality. I don't think this is a particularly good theory. The shielding is designed to protect the travelers on the ship, but they were not on the Infinity when it happened. Janeway can't know that they actually weren't. Still, her idea implies that the shields designed for the small ship would keep a paradox from spreading that would otherwise retroactively affect the whole universe through time.

Gwyn not just dissolves but she somehow gets spread across time, materializing on future Solum, 52 years later, among possible other places. But why? There is the already mentioned caveat that her existence should not really hinge on the question whether Chakotay is aboard the Protostar or not. But if we suppose it makes the decisive difference, there is one state in which Gwyn exists on present Solum and one in which her atoms are elsewhere. There is no reason for her to travel through time. She is said to be in a superposition, with Worf's leaps from one quantum universe to another being mentioned as an example or analogy. But Worf never was in superposition and never appeared at different times.

In order to help Gwyn, Jankom converts the Infinity to a time machine, adding various parts to the ship. The goal is to travel back to the present to find Gwyn and try to stabilize her. But is that really such a great idea? Wouldn't it be a much more logical course of action in a time travel scenario to go back to the point of divergence to repair the damage, instead of traveling still elsewhere and care about the actual problem later? Well, the season would be over too soon if our friends could fix the mistake they made on future Solum.

More on a side note, there is no apparent reason why the Infinity would have to be moved and then lowered into the hole prior to traveling in time, with a huge logistical effort (that gets overplayed by Dal viewing the Temporal Mechanics 101 video while it is happening). Well, if the ship stayed where it was, it might materialize in a region of Solum that was densely populated 52 years ago, but there are no ruins suggesting that. The hole could have been heavily guarded in the past, but that ought to have been mentioned. So what is the reason? And how could the ship be moved in the first place? We know the hole is in walking distance, but even then it would be extremely hard without a working propulsion system.

Classification: time travel back from the future

The Devourer of All Things I/II

The secret helper, who repaired the Infinity and gave the cadets hints about what to do next, turns out to be Wesley Crusher. He says that the universe attempts to exist in two states at once, which is consistent with Gwyn fading out of existence without her stabilizer. It doesn't explain why everyone else is unaffected, the only real danger being "cosmic scavengers", rather than physical processes.

Wesley has a plan. Dal and his friends have to find the one timeline where everyone is safe. The loop that was broken on future Solum in "Who Saves the Savior" has to be closed in a different way, by sending the Protostar, the present version of the ship, back to Tars Lamora to be found there. He is vocal about all six of them having to stay together. But he then notices that Maj'el has to remain a part of the team as well. He doesn't provide any more detailed information of how to proceed though.

As I already wrote in my analysis of PIC season 2, the Travelers were not meant to be the same as the Supervisors so far, and they roamed space rather than time. Prodigy goes with the retroactive history of Picard in this regard. Also, it continues the trend to sketch up "Grand Unified Theories" for phenomena that used to be separate, and would better have remained separate. Wes mentions "the Mirror Universe, the Narada incursion, Fluidic Space, the Mycelial Plane" in the same breath. Equating the first two is consistent with what Kovich said in DIS: "Terra Firma I", although the Mirror Universe wasn't created by a temporal event for all we know. The two latter are just spatial phenomena and not in any way related to time travel. And the silly Mycelial Plane should better remain confined to Discovery anyway.

Speaking of silly concepts, "The Devourer of All Things I/II" introduces the Loom - creatures that emerge from the "holes in the universe" and literally eat dying timelines. This doesn't make sense on so many levels. The Loom consists of biological lifeforms (with the ultimate proof being provided in "Touch of Grey"). What kind of biology could exist in interdimensional space between different timelines and would still act like your average predator? How could a creature feed on "dying timelines"? This is not just a biological impossibility. It also is extremely implausible considering that timeline changes usually take place immediately, without anything being gradually eaten up, the situation in the second season of Prodigy being the absolute exception. The more we think about the Loom, the less sense it makes, which is why I won't comment on its nature any further.

Even if we accept the concept of the Loom, there is still one major problem with it in the story. The Loom erase one member of Tysees's away team in a way that he has never existed and Janeway has no recollection of him (a bit like with Annorax's temporal incursions in VOY: "Year of Hell"). They then also consume the Infinity. However, if the ship is deleted retroactively, how did the six friends get to the planet in the first place? And even if they are unaffected because of their armbands or because the ship had temporal shielding (that somehow didn't prevent it from being devoured), for Janeway it should never have existed. What would have been the consequence, had the Loom devoured her whole crew, which is what almost happened? Would Starfleet think she had piloted Voyager all alone, all the time?

Classification: unstable timeline getting "devoured"

Cracked Mirror

The USS Protostar with Captain Chakotay and the seven cadets has escaped from the planet Ysida. As the ship arrives at the rendezvous coordinates, Voyager-A turns out to be scattered across different timelines. Every deck of the ship is a different reality. Gwyn muses that the protowarp ride further weakened the fabric of the universe and they all ended up in a different reality because of their quantum signatures.

The situation is like in TNG: "Parallels". Also, the solution to the dilemma is much the same as in the classic TNG episode. The deflector dish is used to create a broad-spectrum warp field with an inverse tachyon pulse (the latter being taken from "All Good Things").

Once again, the Mirror Universe appears like one of many quantum universes, instead of being a separate entity with different rules as in classic Trek.

Classification: multiple quantum levels, no actual time travel

Ascension II

In the course of her attack on Voyager-A, Asencia uses the incursor, a weapon that creates a temporal field inside which time passes extremely fast. Tysees gets caught in this field for a moment and ages rapidly, a condition that the Doctor can fortunately revert. Zero volunteers to disable or redirect the weapon, arguing that Medusans are not affected by the course of time and his new body is about to fail anyway.

Asencia uses the same technology to build ships extremely fast in temporally accelerated domes on Solum. She acquired the knowledge from her prisoner, Wesley Crusher.

Classification: temporal acceleration

Brink

It was Wesley's plan all along to be captured and to reveal the secrets of his temporal technology to Asencia. He reckoned that he would be rescued by a team, consisting of all the seven cadets. But the away team splits up to free Ilthuran as well, which Wesley didn't take into account. They are all apprehended by Asencia.

Wesley's plan doesn't make much sense. He either knows very well what could or what should happen (also because he says they are supposed to find one specific timeline), in which case he ought to provide precise instructions for the seven friends, and not something indefinite like "you have to stay together". Or he only has a coarse idea of that perfect timeline in light of the countless random variables, in which case he shouldn't be surprised at all that the away team would not stay together. Actually, rescuing Ilthuran was their original plan. They didn't know about Wesley being imprisoned as well. They could just as well have decided not to deviate from that plan. But Wes apparently expected they would deem him more important than Gwyn's dad...

Classification: temporal paradox (or simply an unpredictable event)

Ouroboros I/II

Ever since the paradox happened in "Who Saves the Saviors" and broke the time loop, the plan has been to retrieve the Protostar and send it back to Tars Lamora to be found there in the past. Wesley helped the cadets find Chakotay and the ship in "Last Flight of the Protostar I", but it often seemed he complicated, rather than facilitated things. He apparently knew of a few conditions that would have to be fulfilled for some reason, one among which was to let Asencia almost win a couple of times, most notably in "Ascension II". When the Protostar eventually returns to Tars Lamora (or actually, arrives there in the first place), it is clear that all details have to be correct. The ship has to be in the exact state it was in when Dal and his friends found it in "Lost and Found".

Although it first looks like history will be repaired by sending back the Protostar, Chakotay likely never sent back the ship from the far future and the time loop was always meant to be closed by using the present version of the Protostar. In other words, in some way the paradox on future Solum that broke the time loop was meant to happen because the loop needs to be closed at another point in time. It also means that there is no point in blaming Dal for doing something wrong any longer. It seems that even Wesley wasn't aware of the whole truth. As he, Rok, Zero and Maj'el are searching for a possible path to be used for the Protostar, he is surprised when the superposition of the wormholes leads the way to Tars Lamora, just as if it was always meant to be that way.

My most nagging question throughout this season has been what would happen to Solum. It is absolutely safe to say now that the future we know from season 1, in which the first contact with the Federation would take place in some 50 years, followed by a disastrous civil war, will never happen. This was more or less clear since the beginning of the season when Asencia as well as Gwyn came to the so far isolated Solum with the very intention to change the future of their planet. The causal chain leads from the "old" future over the past and the present to the "new" future. It is still possible to visit the old future and cause a paradox there, which happened in "Who Saves the Saviors". The question why one of the many temporal events of the time travel arc apparently split the future into an "old" and a "new" version, much like it happened in "Star Trek (2009)", remains unanswered.

Regarding Gwyn's recovery, the whole repair of the timeline (or closure of the time loop) in "Ouroboros I/II" boils down to sending the Protostar through the wormhole, so it would be found about one year earlier. That changes nothing about what happened on "old" future Solum. It may have had some unspecified impact on Ilthuran, who may have been able to identify whether there was a ship buried underneath the planet or not and may then have decided to procreate or not. Overall, it is still a bit less plausible than before why Gwyn, and only Gwyn, would not exist any longer because of the paradox.

Classification: closure of overarching time loop

 

Back to Time Travel index