Tired Time Travel Tropes
If it weren't for time travel, we'd have no Trek at all.
Time travel is one of science fiction's most common tropes. Used well, it's a powerful way to examine our present by contrasting it to an imagined future or a real or altered past. Used poorly, it's, well, Star Trek.
It was about 25 years ago that Leonard Nimoy put Star Trek's use and abuse of time travel into context for me. Sci-FI Channel was broadcasting Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, interspersed with interviews with various members of the cast and crew.
To refresh your memory, Star Trek IV is the one with the whales:
The crew of the Enterprise, after their rip-roaring adventures battling Khan, the Deadly Fine Corinthian Leather guy and reviving Spock from the dead by bombing a planet, return to Earth to find it under siege by aliens looking for their humpback whale buddies. But there's a problem: the whales are gone! So, the crew "fixes" the problem by going back in time to get one.
Ridiculous? Well, what's more unbelievable:
There are whales left on the planet in 2286?
We have the ability in 2286 to travel back in time and grab one?
At one point during the broadcast, Nimoy spoke about how they came up with the idea for the film. (He directed it and helped develop the concept and script.) He mentioned that since a group of Star Trek fans had voted The City on the Edge of Forever their favorite episode, they wanted to do something with time travel.
I truly Nimoy said that because felt he needed to simplify his reasoning for brevity. Or at least that he was answering the question in a hurry because he just remembered he left the stove on. Because The City on the Edge of Forever is about time travel the way Sophie's Choice is about boarding houses.
City on the Edge of Forever is an episode of the original Star Trek series. Harlan Ellison, an excellent author and terrible human being, wrote the original story. In it, Kirk and Bones accidentally travel back in time to Earth in the 1930s. While there, Kirk learns that in order to preserve history he has to let a woman he's fallen in love die. A woman who was a humanitarian and had given her life to service.
So, you see, it's about time travel.
It didn't help that I saw this right around the time that I finally gave up on Star Trek: TrainwreckVoyager after an astounding assortment of time travel gimmicks in less than two seasons.
Regardless of whether or not Nimoy "got" City on the Edge of Forever, the various Star Trek TV series' used time travel a reset button for decades. They did this because the studio execs wanted a show that allowed a viewer to drop in at any point in a season. So, the characters and situations were trapped in amber. They weren't allowed to change.
I long suspected this was the case, but interviews in What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine confirmed it. DS9's showrunners had to fight tooth and nail for permission for a two-part episode, let alone for the leeway to show character development. The execs thought that continuity would never sell. I'd say they look stupid now, but they looked pretty stupid back then, too.
A Tempus Ex Machina allowed writers to explore character without actually committing to it. Picard's aristocratic facade finally cracked? Time travel reset! Data develops some humanity? Time travel reset! (This is before the films left me begging for him to please go back to being an android.) Seven of Nine inadvertently covers her cleavage? Time travel reset!
Time travel as a reset button is hardly unique to Trek. They merely flogged it to the point of cliche.
A reset is the point Back to the Future series. It's the plot of Quantum Leap. It's also the central idea of Timeless, one of the best time travel shows ever made.
It's also the goal of Endgame, one of the MCU's highest grossing films. But in that case, the big reset was part of a larger plan that created new situations and left characters in very different places from where they started. Rather than a way to avoid "confusing" viewers, it teed up the next set of stories.
Changing the past is something we've all wished we could do. We could tell a loved one to do something different. Take back something we've said or done. Stop ourselves from buying that motorcycle. (Or is that just me?)
Or, instead of going back to just get one whale to save your own butt, you could go back and do something more important. Traveling to the past to kill Hitler is a science fiction favorite. There's even a XKCD for that:
Used well, time travel makes a story possible. Used poorly, it is the story.
Or Star Trek.
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Eric Goebelbecker
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