😂 facts. In the Voyager finale, there should've been a scene where future janeway tells Past Harry he's an admiral...then have Past Harry second guess the plan, cause he doesn't want to erase his future promotion
Year of Hell was my favorite Voyager episode. It was a hugely condensed version of what the series should have been... and Kurtwood Smith... only elevated it further!!
Yeah but it sucked for him as the writers thought a Chokotay episode needs to lean heavily into his heritage, like the first couple seasons when he's talking about his ancestors' ways and stuff like that. I'm not against people's family's past but the way they beat that drum hard (B'elanna's Klingon issues) which just made it cringy. Imagine if Star Trek was on today, the writers would be pressured to put in today's social issues where they could.
what about in Enterprise when the NX-01 crew meets a version of the NX-01 that was 100 years older and became a family ship as the NX-01 got sent back in time to before Cochrane's warp flight, and helped the original NX-01fight against the Xindi in a nebula and was erased after the main NX-01 succeeded where the other on failed
And that brings up another problem. Should that second enterprise and all the offspring and crew actually existed? Wouldn't Enterprise not going back in the past make them not exist? Sort of like a backwards grandfather paradox.
Honorable Mention: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow -- With all that this episode implies about the behind the scenes temporal conflicts and the resultant changes, it could probably take up a whole video by itself.
@@thecunninlynguist I always felt like Year of Hell would have made an awesome 6-8 episode arc. I honestly don't know if most fans/Trekkies would watch an entire 22 episode season like that though. Especially if they still went with Tuvok's injury, all the destruction and dour-ness lol etc.
If they did the reset after 22 episode season I would have been annoyed. But it the reason why DS9 and Enterprise season 3 are so enjoyable to rewatch as episodes have consequences.
I used to agree, but hitting the Reset button after 2 episodes is bad enough. If I'd watched an entire season just to have it immediately invalidated I'd probably hate it. Much like how Picard did that 2x.
How about the movie "First Contact", when Data detects nine billion lifeforms, all Borg, means a new timeline was created. I wish we could have seen that on screen though.
Agreed I had an idea for a limited Trek series called Star Trek Resistance, set in this timeline with a reclaimed ex starfleet borg leading a resistance against the Borg invasion, i had an Idea that they work towards a cure for Assimilation and the 9 billion borg detected by data were actually all former Borg that are individuals but The Enterprise Sensors don't know this, the ultimate tragedy is this timeline along with the cure is erased.
Good point. Although, for some TAS is not canon. I agree. This one actually set forth yet another timeline, when Spock's pet, first discussed in the TOS Episode Journey to Babel, dies in the Vulcan desert, which he had not previously done. So, the 'prime' reality had still not been fully restored.
@@jimjohnston5719 Mostly, the lingering changes only impacted Spock's personal history... but poor Commander Thelin... his entire Starfleet career (at least the bit where he served as the Enterprise's First Officer) got nuked by Spock saving himself and euthanizing I'Chaya. 😞 Poor, poor Thelin!
@@jimjohnston5719I think for a long time it was not considered canon (Roddenberry waffled on it), but Yesteryear was such an excellent story of Spock's youth that it was always considered canon. (Plus, TAS was where we first heard that Kirk's middle name was "Tiberius," which they carried over into the movies.)
Yesterdays Enterprise could be a predestination paradox. It was always meant to happen including Tasha going back with the Enterprise D and the alternate timeline being created.
I eventually is. Trek's time travel is inconsistant. Sometimes we get temporal paradoxes like First Contact sometimes multiple timelines seem to exist together, sometimes timelines get fully erased like All Good Things. It just depends on what the writers need for the time travel plot.
Yesterday's Enterprise changed something more. I propose that the TNG timeline up until Yesterday's Enterprise has been rewritten subtly because of those events. In season 1's "heart of glory", the Klingon ship's communication displays both Klingon and federation logos implying a deep relationship between the two. In season two's "Samaritan snare", Wesley asks Picard if his accident was before "the Klingons joined the federation" to which Picard says yes. After "Yesterday's Enterprise", the Klingons are never more than allies. Tasha was aware of the importance and reason for their return to the past, she most likely got extra interrogation considering her out of place uniform and surprisingly advanced combadge. Not only was Sela born, but Jean-Luc Picard's potential importance in the future brought to light, giving reason for the (eventually abandoned) Shinzon plan to be attempted
Voyager had the most time travel episodes of all the trek series - Future End excellent as the Doctor got his freedom via the mobile emitter. Future's End seems to hint at a multiverse type timeline schisms. Relativity when Seven prevents/erases the destruction of Voyager. Great episode Sean.
At least in one possible (non-canon) timeline he still made captain. Would be nice to at least namedrop "Captain Kim" at some point to make it official, he earned it.
Some of my favorites are time travel episodes. City on the Edge of Forever, Year of Hell, The Visitor etc. but they're are some time travel episodes I'd skip on rewatch.
@@tomb7942 This does exist, commonly known as the "JJ-Verse". I remember watching that movie thinking, near the end, "ah, big black hole, now they doe something Trek to restore the timeline as it was meant to be" - and they didn´t. The 2009 Star Trek movie was, in this, one of the best movies I have ever seen - because it genuinely and completely surprised me with the ending. This is rare, as you usually can somewhat anticipate where things are going. But keeping this altered timeline wasn´t something I had expected.
All of this is true in what could be called the "Prime Universe." In multiverse theory, there could be other parallel universes where history panned out differently so these events that were erased in the Prime Universe, as we know it, might still exist in some other parallel universe. Does this matter? Not really, but it's fun to think about.
Funnily enough, we get to see that Star Trek time travel is more akin to Dr. Who and multiverse theory than anything rational in Season 2 of Prodigy, where we meet with Wesley Crusher (who, apparently, became part of the groupies that the Traveler was a part of) who has become something akin to, well, The Doctor. Basically, there's a class that *_ALL_* command staff have to take called temporal mechanics, and Class 101 basically outlines that getting all the small bits is inconsequential, but the big events are.
In "The City on the Edge of Forever", a downtrodden man during the Depression picks up McCoy's phaser and disintegrates himself with it. Nobody ever seems to consider that that's a change (potentially a major one) in the timeline that is never dealt with.
The man who perished was older, destitute and alone. It’s likely his disappearance didn’t affect history. It’s sad, but the writers probably intended to avoid any loose ends.
@@kimb9362 Thing is, we don't know that. The whole point of the "Butterfly" idea is that it doesn't HAVE to be an "important" change to have massive impacts. And in the end, we don't know that he didn't clean himself up, become President, and sue for peace with Nazi Germany. The show has an agenda and a specific idea about "big events" but we literally have no idea what happened to that "destitute" guy in the original timeline ...
@@kimb9362 We can never predict how the timeline is effected by small changes. For example, if Lucille Ball hadn't married Desi Arnaz, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The knock-on effects can be scary... That guy may have stopped somebody to ask for change. Them pausing to say no ends up causing them to miss their bus. While waiting for the next bus, they meet the love of their life. Their child becomes a scientist and creates a vaccine. That man being gone means that the first person catches their bus, doesn't mean their soul-mate. No vaccine. No blod-clots causing deaths in 1 in 50,000 recipients of the vaccine. 😂😂😂
There's one more timeline that was erased. This is from the Animated Star Trek episode Yesteryear, where Spock never grew up to become Kirk's First Officer and had to travel back in time to save his younger self.
Though not a timeline episode, I think the gist of "In The Pale Moonlight" works here, re: the moral implications of erasing timelines, where the actions of Sisko and Garek lead to the Romulans entering the war with the Dominion, though 'history' will read that the assassination of the Romulan ambassador (ala Franz Ferdinand and WW I) was what brought them into the conflict, but the Captain's Log entry holds the truth of the matter, and once we have had it all explained to us, and we know as well...Sisko deletes it, and no one (else) will ever know what really happened. The 'real' timeline v. history.
5:00 - #6 - BEST STAR TREK EPISODE CALLBACK EVER!!! I've been a fanboy of TNG since I saw it premier when I was only FIVE YEARS OLD, but THIS episode propelled me to view SNW as my #2 favorite Star Trek series (originally VOY was my #2, with DS9 being my #3). Such a good episode, with a STRONG story and AMAZING acting and directing. Absolutely the best episode of SNW, BAR NONE!
Overall, quite thorough. Of all the years of shows, seasons, and episodes of Star Trek that exist, it might correlate with the viewer's episode memory recall ability, to typographically present the season, number, and title of each episode in the lower third.
I lean toward the real life scientific hypothesis of the many worlds timelines. That is if a situation is possible, no matter how small, there is a timeline for it. There is a timeline of your life in which you become a billionaire, a timeline in which you become priest, a timeline in which you become a street car jacker. Millions, billions of possibilities of your life and the entire Universe-and universes-so timelines don't get erased, you just jump from one to another and back, but those other timelines still exist and are just as valid as this one.
Except Harry Kim's promotion. Which is a nexus point across all realities. Turns out if he gets promoted in any reality it leads to him going mad with power an developing a weapon that destroys all of reality
Cascading Realities is unlikely to happen for every choice every person would have, but likely only create an alternate reality for major choices that affect multiple lives, all the minor choices just create little ripples that cause people to have Deja Vu experiences, as the universe likely won't care if you wear a red tie or a blue one, but does if you drive your car while drunk or phone a taxi after a party instead.....
If you really want a headache, in the final scene of Yesterday's Enterprise, when he is sitting with Guinan, Geordi is still wearing the alternate timeline uniform.
still love the yesterdays enterprise timeline, its grim, their six months from being wiped out, trois not on the bridge, or even on the ship, their sending the pride of the fleet to act as a glorified tug boat for a relic because their so desprate for warships, and yet somehow, poor tasha yar meets an even WORSE fate than in the prime timeline, the klingons keep fighting, killing, winning and all the dipolmatic dinners and shakespear in the federation cant save them, its cool!
Watching the show "live" back in the day, Yesterday's Enterprise was the episode that reassured me they were actually going to do justice to "Star Trek". Up till then, it was VERY dicey with a few standouts like Measure of a Man, but also a LOT of Angel One, Code of Honor, Shades of Grey, Justice, The Child, Up the Long Ladder, The Royale, etc lol ... S3 started to really show promise, and when this episode ended, I finally was able to look at the show and say "Ya, that shit right there ... that's Star Trek"
Actually the D wasn't sent to "be a tugboat", they just happened to have come across the portal with the C in it like the Prime D was about to. But in the end they did the right thing sending the C back through to die in the battle as that prevented the timeline from permenantly changing. The funny thing is that all that occured in the Prime Timeline was the Enterprise-D randomly coming across a temporal portal, Worf drank prne juice given by Gaunen, got called to the bridge, they scanned the portal, and picked up momentarily what might have been a ship only for it to be nothing, then the portal closed and they left a probe as they carried on to somewhere else. Pretty uneventful. And Gaunen was aware of the temporal shift as her people have higher sensory ability.
@@TheZamaron well i mean it was like a Tuesday to the enterprise, space temoral shenanigans, followed by datas poetry recital then dinner, fairly mundane, now constantly driving into captain fraiser craine in some kind of intergalactic fender bender groundhog day loop that might be more like it
I didn't even notice that Pike had on a new version of the monster maroons until this list. Man, I love the new version as well as all of the other versions of that iconic uniform, lol.
What was only hinted at was Captain Braxton stopped Harry saving voyager the way he wanted from the slipstream disaster. But he let harry have that second bite at the cherry and return voyager to the drlta quadrant
Considering how many crew died in the Year of Hell, it made sense to reset. Sure the ship may have been repaired, and they may have found supplies to restock what was lost, but with that many crew being killed it would be hard to maintain the ship at regular function, even for a small ship like Voyager.
So mirror universes are a different video... They are fascinating, too. Can't wait to someday binge all the Trek I missed being flat broke for decades... :D
THis is timelines, that is an Alternate or parralel universe. SOme similar things but not tied to changes of Prime Timelines, unless someone visits the Mirror Universe.
I'd swap Year of Hell and that Picard S2 entries...that S2 was rough. Voyager had so many time travel episodes 🤣 ..I drnno if the Voyager ep Future's End could be on this list, but that was one of my fave time travel eps. Going back then killing Sterling did essentially erase anything he did/his timeline.
Picard S2 is probably one of the biggest casualties of the COVID restrictions of the time. All the stuff on the Stargazer and the alternate universe was great, but things slowed down in the past and having the crew stay split up for most of the time travel stuff didn't feel great. As soon as they time traveled, the best scenes were the one with the punk rocker on the bus and the Jurati/Borg QUeen scenes. Everything else was forgettably mediocre. Which is a damn shame when the season started off so strong.
@@Anduril74871 yeah, i really liked the Jurati/BQ stuff. Didn't like the flashbacks to his childhood. Liked the Q stuff. At least Season 3 made up for S2. S3 was epic. I still visit that final scene every few months.
I rewatched the episode Fury, from Voyager last night because I'm wondering if the phaser Janeway used in that was the one in her Ready Room on Prodigy. The time travel aspect of the episode, and season, as well as the scene, make me think it might be 🤷
I think you need to pour one for the book universe that got erased with the CODA trilogy. The same book universe that basically continued trek for the past 20 years
To be fair, since we have brought up the idea of alternate time lines, that means they all still exist. Just in alternate time lines.😊 I felt the ending of Voyager’s series was just too far about there. Yes it was an interesting plot, but it would have been nice to have found another way to bring everyone home, and save Tuvok’s mind. But that’s just me. As we see in Star Trek, if we don’t get what we want, just time travel and change it. Simple right? Not so. For EVERY action, there is a reaction. No matter how good the intentions are, something will go awry. I think Kirk sums it up quite neatly, when it comes to the Star Trek thought on disliked outcomes in a certain situation…”I don’t like to lose.” Is his way of saying, I will do whatever it takes to change things to my liking. Hence this is Star Trek’s view as well.
some of mine were there and others were not and I'm sure there were other people in the comments that thought of some as well so there may be room for a part two of this list.
Janeway was a monster in the finale, IMO. The future she destroyed wasn't even THAT bad. Tuvok and Seven have bad outcomes, but most everyone else from the crew is doing pretty well it seems, never mind the rest of the world. There are a couple of problems with her decision ... 1) She used her personal grief as a reason to destroy decades of existing history (again where were the temporal agents???) & 2) She seems to care a LOT more about the crew she lost in the "new future" than the crew she lost in the show we watched for seven seasons. She doesn't seem to care about saving Carrey, or Ahni Jetal or any of the other crew that died, since she could have gone back to prevent going to the Delta quadrant all together. While some MIGHT argue that Voyager left a big mark on the Delta quadrant in that time, the same would be true for the time following the events of Endgame, so that doesn't wash. It comes down to Janeway being very selfish and prioritizing Tuvok and Seven over the rest of the trillions of people in that future, not to mention the people who died during the seven years of the show ... I don't think her actions can be justified ... most egregious breach of temporal rules ever IMO lol
@@The_Str4nger I'm not sure saving billions by destroying decades of history is a great look either. Whatever else she did, she destroyed decades worth of history for the entire quadrant or galaxy even because she didn't personally like how things went.
@@The_Str4nger Well, the "history" also includes the lives of innocent people who just winked out of existence because of Janeway. Why aren't THOSE innocent people as important as the ones the Borg assimilated?
before I start, children of time, yesterday's enterprise, tapestry, I forget the name of the episode of the one were voyager stop the explosion that they actually initiate, certainly others but can't think of them.
Funny thing about *Children of Time* is that it is the last episode in DS9 (if you discard *What You Leave Behind* when Odo returns to the Link) that we are in the Gamma Quadrant space.
The way I like to think of it is that these timelines weren't created and destroyed, they already existed and will continue to exist. We the viewers, are merely just jumping around through various timelines.
Don't know the exact episode, but there was an episode of Voyager where Tom Paris and Harry Kim were left behind on DS9 after an altercation with Quark. Somehow the transporter was used to beam Harry Kim to an alternate timeline? Does that count or no?
The way timelines work in Star Trek. All alternate timelines we see exist simultaneously. Earth was assimilated by the Borg and the Enterprise D was destroyed in the Klingon War. They aren't deleted when time is "put right", they merely diverge and the heroes and us, the viewer inevitably end up in the happier timeline. We clearly see that the Mirror Universe exists as a parallel universe. As does the Kelvin timeline. Discovery Season 3 made the Kelvin timeline canon when we hear about a traveller from that universe. This tells us that whilst we normally follow the prime timeline, there are multiple other realities caused by various temporal incursions throughout the history of Trek.
I think there's two types of Alternate Realities possible with a third type being circumstance dependant. First, Open Realities such as The Mirror Universe and The Kelvin Timeline, those are created by a major change to one point in history, but are not altered back within a certain period of time and thus they then become stable Prime reality adjunct timelines. The second, closed Paradox Realities, where certain choices create a reality that becomes closed due to an event that will erase it, those realities will exist in a closed bubble so that certain events will occur to allow that change to be brought into effect, such as the Borg Earth in First Contact, or the Defiant colony or Admiral Janeway's plan. Events that create those alternate realities will happen and the events to erase/close them will also, so once they happen, that's it, the reality becomes closed to all except those effected by it in the first place, who will often remember the events that took place. The third and final one is a Cascading reality, where an alternate reality is created, but events take place to change it back, but certain elements remain behind that then starts a ripple effect that slowly alters the original Prime reality, this is the case for Yesterday's Enterprise, a piece of that alternate reality stays behind and the universe starts to shift to keep itself stable around that anomaly. This kind of Alternate Reality Timeline effect could also explain Khan's shifting origin and timeline and why history recalls the events around him as "The Eugenic Wars" which is plural and not "The Eugenic War", singular, history can't definitively tie down the war he caused or took part in, so it floats around a certain period of the timeline, slowly becoming later, likely up to the point World War Three takes place and First Contact then happens shortly afterwards, those are stable events, to a degree.....
You forgot the Section 31 initiated timeline where Worf, the greatest poker player ever, lost every game after The Emissary, with the help of Sec 31 associates Data and Geordi.
Since, on a couple of occasions, Voyager has established that Starfleet has created the Timefleet (i.e. USS Relativity), shouldn't they have interfered with a lot of these cases? Other than Q, with his magical abilities, the rest seem man made incidences.
I know you do TV and Film Trek here, but an honourable mention has to be the Coda series of Beta-canon novels. Those damned Devidians ended up erasing 30 years worth of books!
While I do love the story of The City On The Edge of Forever, I think the notion that Edith Keeler could have delayed American entry into World War II is ridiculous. There was absolutely no way it would be delayed one day past December 7, 1941. Of course, the Nazis had also mostly abandoned the pursuit of a nuclear weapon too. It's still a great story, though 😆.
Pike was destined for the "beep chair". Spock was destined to work on reunification of Vulcan and Romulus (TNG Reunification 1 & 2) and then eventually get thrown into the Kelvin timeline after he attempted to do sciency stuff on the Romulus star when that goes supernova.
I'll ask here, since I have yet to get an answer else-where. If we take Star Trek (2009) as cannon and there's a new timeline, do the crew of the Enterprise from STIV and the whales return to the new timeline or old one?
I disagree with erased timelines. They just changing timelines. TNG episode Parallels which showed they exist parallel of other timelines. It's decision made by story tellers.
There’s a difference between a timeline being changed/erased like Yesterday’s Enterprise or Endgame, and a separate quantum reality like we see in Parallels or ST09.
The episode with Worf ("Parallels") wasn't an alternate timeline, rather an alternate (or :parallel") universe, as depicted by the countless Enterprises appearing from different quantum realities. While an Enterprise was destroyed, none of the parallel universes were affected in any way other than Worf hoping against hope that his next leap would be the leap home.
You can't really "erase" a timeline, they just don't get shown on screen anymore. What happened, happened. Anyway, if you want a really crazy multiverse show, go check out Dark Matter. 10/10.
Since Harry and Chakotay created the timeline that allowed Admiral Janeway to go back and bring _Voyager_ home, are _they_ ultimately responsible for the Borgacide in that episode?
What about the future from Discovery where Control wins and kills all life in the Galaxy, or the one from Enterprise where Daniels takes Archer into the future and it's all destroyed. Or the one in ds9 where starfleet doesn't exist cos of the Bell riots
Star Trek's writers always played fast and loose with the science of continuity. There are two theories in quantum physics, one that only one timeline can exist at a time and you cannot alter it without erasing the current timeline, and another, popularly known as the Many Worlds theory, that anything that can happen, does happen in an alternate reality. Every time a sentient mind is presented with a choice, a universe splits off, one where they made one choice, one where they made the other. However, these two theories are mutually exclusionary; they simply cannot both be true, the theories themselves preclude this. Yet Trek has some stories where the first theory is true and some stories where the Many Worlds theory is true. But if they Many Worlds theory is true, than no timelines could be erased, simply shifted into a new alternate timeline reality. So it's kind of confusing.
All timelines where Harry got a promotion have been erased
😂 facts. In the Voyager finale, there should've been a scene where future janeway tells Past Harry he's an admiral...then have Past Harry second guess the plan, cause he doesn't want to erase his future promotion
Lol never thought about this but you're right
Temporal Investigations demands Harry remain a perpetual Ensign, lest the universe fall apart.
Upon Harry's retirement they promoted him to Ensign Junior Grade. Lol
I had the same thought, pork Harry Kim
Year of Hell was my favorite Voyager episode. It was a hugely condensed version of what the series should have been... and Kurtwood Smith... only elevated it further!!
What about the timeline from Voyager's episode "Shattered" with future Naomi Wildman and Echeb in the future astrometrics lab?
That doesn’t mean it’s an alt timeline. It really could be voyager back in the delta quadrant with Naomi and Echeb in command positions
one of the better chokotay eps. poor guy prob only has like 2 good solo eps
@@phantomdestroyer192 IIRC, it was an alt timeline, and they still hadn't returned home
RIP Icheb, you were done dirty by the Picard writers.
Yeah but it sucked for him as the writers thought a Chokotay episode needs to lean heavily into his heritage, like the first couple seasons when he's talking about his ancestors' ways and stuff like that. I'm not against people's family's past but the way they beat that drum hard (B'elanna's Klingon issues) which just made it cringy.
Imagine if Star Trek was on today, the writers would be pressured to put in today's social issues where they could.
what about in Enterprise when the NX-01 crew meets a version of the NX-01 that was 100 years older and became a family ship as the NX-01 got sent back in time to before Cochrane's warp flight, and helped the original NX-01fight against the Xindi in a nebula and was erased after the main NX-01 succeeded where the other on failed
That’s interesting one as well! This vid needs a part 2
And that brings up another problem. Should that second enterprise and all the offspring and crew actually existed? Wouldn't Enterprise not going back in the past make them not exist? Sort of like a backwards grandfather paradox.
@@Chace957 List needs to become a "Top 20"
Harry's "Yellowstone-class runabout" was an erased time line. So was Jake's "tether" timeline with his father.
Ya I thought of that one as well, but weirdly, to me, it's the "Libby" timeline, not the Redstone Runabout timeline lol
Honorable Mention: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow -- With all that this episode implies about the behind the scenes temporal conflicts and the resultant changes, it could probably take up a whole video by itself.
Not making Year of Hell a season long was a crime
lettin insaneway survive was a crime
agreed. Should've been at least a 3 parter as a concession.
@@thecunninlynguist I always felt like Year of Hell would have made an awesome 6-8 episode arc. I honestly don't know if most fans/Trekkies would watch an entire 22 episode season like that though. Especially if they still went with Tuvok's injury, all the destruction and dour-ness lol etc.
If they did the reset after 22 episode season I would have been annoyed. But it the reason why DS9 and Enterprise season 3 are so enjoyable to rewatch as episodes have consequences.
I used to agree, but hitting the Reset button after 2 episodes is bad enough. If I'd watched an entire season just to have it immediately invalidated I'd probably hate it. Much like how Picard did that 2x.
How about the movie "First Contact", when Data detects nine billion lifeforms, all Borg, means a new timeline was created. I wish we could have seen that on screen though.
Agreed I had an idea for a limited Trek series called Star Trek Resistance, set in this timeline with a reclaimed ex starfleet borg leading a resistance against the Borg invasion, i had an Idea that they work towards a cure for Assimilation and the 9 billion borg detected by data were actually all former Borg that are individuals but The Enterprise Sensors don't know this, the ultimate tragedy is this timeline along with the cure is erased.
Enjoyed this episode but surprised “Yesteryear” from the animated series was not brought up. 🖖🏼
Good point. Although, for some TAS is not canon. I agree. This one actually set forth yet another timeline, when Spock's pet, first discussed in the TOS Episode Journey to Babel, dies in the Vulcan desert, which he had not previously done. So, the 'prime' reality had still not been fully restored.
@@jimjohnston5719 Mostly, the lingering changes only impacted Spock's personal history... but poor Commander Thelin... his entire Starfleet career (at least the bit where he served as the Enterprise's First Officer) got nuked by Spock saving himself and euthanizing I'Chaya. 😞 Poor, poor Thelin!
@@jimjohnston5719I think for a long time it was not considered canon (Roddenberry waffled on it), but Yesteryear was such an excellent story of Spock's youth that it was always considered canon. (Plus, TAS was where we first heard that Kirk's middle name was "Tiberius," which they carried over into the movies.)
Yesterdays Enterprise could be a predestination paradox. It was always meant to happen including Tasha going back with the Enterprise D and the alternate timeline being created.
I eventually is. Trek's time travel is inconsistant. Sometimes we get temporal paradoxes like First Contact sometimes multiple timelines seem to exist together, sometimes timelines get fully erased like All Good Things. It just depends on what the writers need for the time travel plot.
Yesterday's Enterprise changed something more.
I propose that the TNG timeline up until Yesterday's Enterprise has been rewritten subtly because of those events.
In season 1's "heart of glory", the Klingon ship's communication displays both Klingon and federation logos implying a deep relationship between the two. In season two's "Samaritan snare", Wesley asks Picard if his accident was before "the Klingons joined the federation" to which Picard says yes.
After "Yesterday's Enterprise", the Klingons are never more than allies.
Tasha was aware of the importance and reason for their return to the past, she most likely got extra interrogation considering her out of place uniform and surprisingly advanced combadge.
Not only was Sela born, but Jean-Luc Picard's potential importance in the future brought to light, giving reason for the (eventually abandoned) Shinzon plan to be attempted
"May or may not be dead, depending on the day of the week" still makes me chuckle, even now this is a video and not just as a written article!
Schrodinger's Video?
If strange New Worlds does an ep with a historical president like TOS JK Simmons as Eisenhower or Nick Offerman as Roosevelt would be awesome IMO.
Voyager had the most time travel episodes of all the trek series - Future End excellent as the Doctor got his freedom via the mobile emitter. Future's End seems to hint at a multiverse type timeline schisms. Relativity when Seven prevents/erases the destruction of Voyager. Great episode Sean.
I think The Visitor would have been a good entry in this list as well. It was one of the better DS9 eps and included an erased timeline.
Harry: I'm a captain now!
Janeway: Well, we can't have that... To the time-mobile!
At least in one possible (non-canon) timeline he still made captain. Would be nice to at least namedrop "Captain Kim" at some point to make it official, he earned it.
This is why I hate time travel episodes in Star Trek. There are no stakes. There are no consequences. None of it mattered.
Some of my favorites are time travel episodes. City on the Edge of Forever, Year of Hell, The Visitor etc. but they're are some time travel episodes I'd skip on rewatch.
When the Enterprise crew went back in time to meet Linkin Park, in the end, it didn't even matter.
YES. If they really want a reboot, they could start out and have a new timeline take over.
Partly agree, it's like a strong spice in small quantities it's delicious but overused and it ruins the dish
@@tomb7942 This does exist, commonly known as the "JJ-Verse". I remember watching that movie thinking, near the end, "ah, big black hole, now they doe something Trek to restore the timeline as it was meant to be" - and they didn´t.
The 2009 Star Trek movie was, in this, one of the best movies I have ever seen - because it genuinely and completely surprised me with the ending. This is rare, as you usually can somewhat anticipate where things are going. But keeping this altered timeline wasn´t something I had expected.
All of this is true in what could be called the "Prime Universe." In multiverse theory, there could be other parallel universes where history panned out differently so these events that were erased in the Prime Universe, as we know it, might still exist in some other parallel universe. Does this matter? Not really, but it's fun to think about.
ok active shooter
Funnily enough, we get to see that Star Trek time travel is more akin to Dr. Who and multiverse theory than anything rational in Season 2 of Prodigy, where we meet with Wesley Crusher (who, apparently, became part of the groupies that the Traveler was a part of) who has become something akin to, well, The Doctor.
Basically, there's a class that *_ALL_* command staff have to take called temporal mechanics, and Class 101 basically outlines that getting all the small bits is inconsequential, but the big events are.
Sean! Thanks for another awesome Star Trek historicomp!
I was waiting for the Time traveling about the TRIBBLE connection between Sisko's DS9 & (Prime) Kirk's Enterprise.
Man how crazy would season 3 of Picard been if the Borg Queen ended up being revealed as the future Janeway? I can't imagine the fan melt down.
The Admiral left behind? that's a great idea - you should be writing the shows!
I kinda live for fan meltdowns so this would be awesome.
In "The City on the Edge of Forever", a downtrodden man during the Depression picks up McCoy's phaser and disintegrates himself with it. Nobody ever seems to consider that that's a change (potentially a major one) in the timeline that is never dealt with.
The man who perished was older, destitute and alone. It’s likely his disappearance didn’t affect history. It’s sad, but the writers probably intended to avoid any loose ends.
@@kimb9362 Thing is, we don't know that. The whole point of the "Butterfly" idea is that it doesn't HAVE to be an "important" change to have massive impacts. And in the end, we don't know that he didn't clean himself up, become President, and sue for peace with Nazi Germany.
The show has an agenda and a specific idea about "big events" but we literally have no idea what happened to that "destitute" guy in the original timeline ...
@@kimb9362 We can never predict how the timeline is effected by small changes. For example, if Lucille Ball hadn't married Desi Arnaz, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The knock-on effects can be scary...
That guy may have stopped somebody to ask for change. Them pausing to say no ends up causing them to miss their bus.
While waiting for the next bus, they meet the love of their life. Their child becomes a scientist and creates a vaccine.
That man being gone means that the first person catches their bus, doesn't mean their soul-mate. No vaccine. No blod-clots causing deaths in 1 in 50,000 recipients of the vaccine. 😂😂😂
There's one more timeline that was erased. This is from the Animated Star Trek episode Yesteryear, where Spock never grew up to become Kirk's First Officer and had to travel back in time to save his younger self.
Nicely done Sean. Enjoyed it very much.
Though not a timeline episode, I think the gist of "In The Pale Moonlight" works here, re: the moral implications of erasing timelines, where the actions of Sisko and Garek lead to the Romulans entering the war with the Dominion, though 'history' will read that the assassination of the Romulan ambassador (ala Franz Ferdinand and WW I) was what brought them into the conflict, but the Captain's Log entry holds the truth of the matter, and once we have had it all explained to us, and we know as well...Sisko deletes it, and no one (else) will ever know what really happened. The 'real' timeline v. history.
it's going to be Janeway, the only way is Janeway!
There can be only one!
Year of Hell should've been number 1 IMHO. It's one of the best runs in all of Trek.
Great list though Sean! ♥️
5:00 - #6 - BEST STAR TREK EPISODE CALLBACK EVER!!! I've been a fanboy of TNG since I saw it premier when I was only FIVE YEARS OLD, but THIS episode propelled me to view SNW as my #2 favorite Star Trek series (originally VOY was my #2, with DS9 being my #3). Such a good episode, with a STRONG story and AMAZING acting and directing. Absolutely the best episode of SNW, BAR NONE!
00:46 LOVE the Dr Who intro Seán! Nice touch!!
I can see this deals primarily with time antics of live action but the latest Prodigy efforts definitely piqued my interest
Overall, quite thorough. Of all the years of shows, seasons, and episodes of Star Trek that exist, it might correlate with the viewer's episode memory recall ability, to typographically present the season, number, and title of each episode in the lower third.
I love love LOVE Voyager and Janeway.
I lean toward the real life scientific hypothesis of the many worlds timelines. That is if a situation is possible, no matter how small, there is a timeline for it. There is a timeline of your life in which you become a billionaire, a timeline in which you become priest, a timeline in which you become a street car jacker. Millions, billions of possibilities of your life and the entire Universe-and universes-so timelines don't get erased, you just jump from one to another and back, but those other timelines still exist and are just as valid as this one.
Except Harry Kim's promotion. Which is a nexus point across all realities. Turns out if he gets promoted in any reality it leads to him going mad with power an developing a weapon that destroys all of reality
So it's everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Cascading Realities is unlikely to happen for every choice every person would have, but likely only create an alternate reality for major choices that affect multiple lives, all the minor choices just create little ripples that cause people to have Deja Vu experiences, as the universe likely won't care if you wear a red tie or a blue one, but does if you drive your car while drunk or phone a taxi after a party instead.....
If you really want a headache, in the final scene of Yesterday's Enterprise, when he is sitting with Guinan, Geordi is still wearing the alternate timeline uniform.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Live long and make more vids!
i want a small spin-off dedicated about the creation of the borg
still love the yesterdays enterprise timeline, its grim, their six months from being wiped out, trois not on the bridge, or even on the ship, their sending the pride of the fleet to act as a glorified tug boat for a relic because their so desprate for warships, and yet somehow, poor tasha yar meets an even WORSE fate than in the prime timeline, the klingons keep fighting, killing, winning and all the dipolmatic dinners and shakespear in the federation cant save them, its cool!
Watching the show "live" back in the day, Yesterday's Enterprise was the episode that reassured me they were actually going to do justice to "Star Trek". Up till then, it was VERY dicey with a few standouts like Measure of a Man, but also a LOT of Angel One, Code of Honor, Shades of Grey, Justice, The Child, Up the Long Ladder, The Royale, etc lol ... S3 started to really show promise, and when this episode ended, I finally was able to look at the show and say "Ya, that shit right there ... that's Star Trek"
Actually the D wasn't sent to "be a tugboat", they just happened to have come across the portal with the C in it like the Prime D was about to. But in the end they did the right thing sending the C back through to die in the battle as that prevented the timeline from permenantly changing. The funny thing is that all that occured in the Prime Timeline was the Enterprise-D randomly coming across a temporal portal, Worf drank prne juice given by Gaunen, got called to the bridge, they scanned the portal, and picked up momentarily what might have been a ship only for it to be nothing, then the portal closed and they left a probe as they carried on to somewhere else. Pretty uneventful. And Gaunen was aware of the temporal shift as her people have higher sensory ability.
@@TheZamaron well i mean it was like a Tuesday to the enterprise, space temoral shenanigans, followed by datas poetry recital then dinner, fairly mundane, now constantly driving into captain fraiser craine in some kind of intergalactic fender bender groundhog day loop that might be more like it
I didn't even notice that Pike had on a new version of the monster maroons until this list. Man, I love the new version as well as all of the other versions of that iconic uniform, lol.
I would love to know more about the Confederation timeline, it seems more intriguing than the Mirror universe
What was only hinted at was Captain Braxton stopped Harry saving voyager the way he wanted from the slipstream disaster. But he let harry have that second bite at the cherry and return voyager to the drlta quadrant
Considering how many crew died in the Year of Hell, it made sense to reset. Sure the ship may have been repaired, and they may have found supplies to restock what was lost, but with that many crew being killed it would be hard to maintain the ship at regular function, even for a small ship like Voyager.
So mirror universes are a different video... They are fascinating, too. Can't wait to someday binge all the Trek I missed being flat broke for decades... :D
THis is timelines, that is an Alternate or parralel universe. SOme similar things but not tied to changes of Prime Timelines, unless someone visits the Mirror Universe.
Doctor Sean presenting timey-wimey hijinx. Allons-y!
Well you finally did it😅 A top 10 list that I totally agree with🎉🎉
I'd swap Year of Hell and that Picard S2 entries...that S2 was rough. Voyager had so many time travel episodes 🤣 ..I drnno if the Voyager ep Future's End could be on this list, but that was one of my fave time travel eps. Going back then killing Sterling did essentially erase anything he did/his timeline.
Picard S2 is probably one of the biggest casualties of the COVID restrictions of the time. All the stuff on the Stargazer and the alternate universe was great, but things slowed down in the past and having the crew stay split up for most of the time travel stuff didn't feel great. As soon as they time traveled, the best scenes were the one with the punk rocker on the bus and the Jurati/Borg QUeen scenes. Everything else was forgettably mediocre. Which is a damn shame when the season started off so strong.
@@Anduril74871 yeah, i really liked the Jurati/BQ stuff. Didn't like the flashbacks to his childhood. Liked the Q stuff. At least Season 3 made up for S2. S3 was epic. I still visit that final scene every few months.
Star Trek aside but not other universes, how come Sean’s face is in a Dr who like vortex title sequence at the end! 😱
Sounds like yet another timeline that never was.
Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, I'd suppose. Just don't let the Angels get the blue box...
I rewatched the episode Fury, from Voyager last night because I'm wondering if the phaser Janeway used in that was the one in her Ready Room on Prodigy. The time travel aspect of the episode, and season, as well as the scene, make me think it might be 🤷
Timeless is my favorite Voyager episode 😁
Fun will now commence....
I think you need to pour one for the book universe that got erased with the CODA trilogy.
The same book universe that basically continued trek for the past 20 years
though none of that's canon anyway
@@universeinhabitant yeah, would've loved a honorable mention though
Shea Whigham, Kyle Chandler or Michael Shannon would be a rad Bones McCoy for Strange New Worlds IMO.
I live in hope the defiant colony survived somehow, would mean we have two Dax's
Floating head Seán is wild
Love the classic Who face intro…
To be fair, since we have brought up the idea of alternate time lines, that means they all still exist. Just in alternate time lines.😊
I felt the ending of Voyager’s series was just too far about there. Yes it was an interesting plot, but it would have been nice to have found another way to bring everyone home, and save Tuvok’s mind. But that’s just me. As we see in Star Trek, if we don’t get what we want, just time travel and change it. Simple right? Not so. For EVERY action, there is a reaction. No matter how good the intentions are, something will go awry.
I think Kirk sums it up quite neatly, when it comes to the Star Trek thought on disliked outcomes in a certain situation…”I don’t like to lose.” Is his way of saying, I will do whatever it takes to change things to my liking. Hence this is Star Trek’s view as well.
Alternative timelines are tight! 🎢
They make story writing super easy, barely an inconvenience!
some of mine were there and others were not and I'm sure there were other people in the comments that thought of some as well so there may be room for a part two of this list.
Was E2 from Enterprise considered alternate timeline?
I like the Enterprise Ceti Alpha V timeline - imagine trying to build a home with the destruction of your planet behind you!
Janeway was a monster in the finale, IMO. The future she destroyed wasn't even THAT bad. Tuvok and Seven have bad outcomes, but most everyone else from the crew is doing pretty well it seems, never mind the rest of the world. There are a couple of problems with her decision ... 1) She used her personal grief as a reason to destroy decades of existing history (again where were the temporal agents???) & 2) She seems to care a LOT more about the crew she lost in the "new future" than the crew she lost in the show we watched for seven seasons. She doesn't seem to care about saving Carrey, or Ahni Jetal or any of the other crew that died, since she could have gone back to prevent going to the Delta quadrant all together. While some MIGHT argue that Voyager left a big mark on the Delta quadrant in that time, the same would be true for the time following the events of Endgame, so that doesn't wash. It comes down to Janeway being very selfish and prioritizing Tuvok and Seven over the rest of the trillions of people in that future, not to mention the people who died during the seven years of the show ...
I don't think her actions can be justified ... most egregious breach of temporal rules ever IMO lol
She nearly destroyed the Borg. She saved billions of lives with that action.
@@The_Str4nger I'm not sure saving billions by destroying decades of history is a great look either. Whatever else she did, she destroyed decades worth of history for the entire quadrant or galaxy even because she didn't personally like how things went.
@@MotherShipMedia what is more worth history or the lives of innocent people?
@@The_Str4nger Well, the "history" also includes the lives of innocent people who just winked out of existence because of Janeway. Why aren't THOSE innocent people as important as the ones the Borg assimilated?
before I start, children of time, yesterday's enterprise, tapestry, I forget the name of the episode of the one were voyager stop the explosion that they actually initiate, certainly others but can't think of them.
Year of Hell was a good episode and Yesterday's Enterprise was one of the best in the series
Funny thing about *Children of Time* is that it is the last episode in DS9 (if you discard *What You Leave Behind* when Odo returns to the Link) that we are in the Gamma Quadrant space.
Really? I never noticed that..
The way I like to think of it is that these timelines weren't created and destroyed, they already existed and will continue to exist. We the viewers, are merely just jumping around through various timelines.
Don't know the exact episode, but there was an episode of Voyager where Tom Paris and Harry Kim were left behind on DS9 after an altercation with Quark. Somehow the transporter was used to beam Harry Kim to an alternate timeline? Does that count or no?
The way timelines work in Star Trek. All alternate timelines we see exist simultaneously. Earth was assimilated by the Borg and the Enterprise D was destroyed in the Klingon War. They aren't deleted when time is "put right", they merely diverge and the heroes and us, the viewer inevitably end up in the happier timeline. We clearly see that the Mirror Universe exists as a parallel universe. As does the Kelvin timeline. Discovery Season 3 made the Kelvin timeline canon when we hear about a traveller from that universe. This tells us that whilst we normally follow the prime timeline, there are multiple other realities caused by various temporal incursions throughout the history of Trek.
I think there's two types of Alternate Realities possible with a third type being circumstance dependant.
First, Open Realities such as The Mirror Universe and The Kelvin Timeline, those are created by a major change to one point in history, but are not altered back within a certain period of time and thus they then become stable Prime reality adjunct timelines.
The second, closed Paradox Realities, where certain choices create a reality that becomes closed due to an event that will erase it, those realities will exist in a closed bubble so that certain events will occur to allow that change to be brought into effect, such as the Borg Earth in First Contact, or the Defiant colony or Admiral Janeway's plan.
Events that create those alternate realities will happen and the events to erase/close them will also, so once they happen, that's it, the reality becomes closed to all except those effected by it in the first place, who will often remember the events that took place.
The third and final one is a Cascading reality, where an alternate reality is created, but events take place to change it back, but certain elements remain behind that then starts a ripple effect that slowly alters the original Prime reality, this is the case for Yesterday's Enterprise, a piece of that alternate reality stays behind and the universe starts to shift to keep itself stable around that anomaly.
This kind of Alternate Reality Timeline effect could also explain Khan's shifting origin and timeline and why history recalls the events around him as "The Eugenic Wars" which is plural and not "The Eugenic War", singular, history can't definitively tie down the war he caused or took part in, so it floats around a certain period of the timeline, slowly becoming later, likely up to the point World War Three takes place and First Contact then happens shortly afterwards, those are stable events, to a degree.....
Where the hell is All good thing? (Also that brief mini-timeline change where the Borg assimilated Earth in the past)
Q eliminated that reference.
We need a word for the act of killing everything on a branching timeline. Aevocide? Omnicide?
You forgot the Section 31 initiated timeline where Worf, the greatest poker player ever, lost every game after The Emissary, with the help of Sec 31 associates Data and Geordi.
Janeway is Chaos...Janeway is awesome!
Since, on a couple of occasions, Voyager has established that Starfleet has created the Timefleet (i.e. USS Relativity), shouldn't they have interfered with a lot of these cases? Other than Q, with his magical abilities, the rest seem man made incidences.
Thanks. 🖖🏻
Captain Castile is Goose!
IYKYK
What I love is the Multi-verse can work here! 😉
Kes was really enjoyable in the other timelines
I know you do TV and Film Trek here, but an honourable mention has to be the Coda series of Beta-canon novels. Those damned Devidians ended up erasing 30 years worth of books!
While I do love the story of The City On The Edge of Forever, I think the notion that Edith Keeler could have delayed American entry into World War II is ridiculous. There was absolutely no way it would be delayed one day past December 7, 1941. Of course, the Nazis had also mostly abandoned the pursuit of a nuclear weapon too. It's still a great story, though 😆.
Wait I thought Spock was destined for the beep chair, not that he was dead.
Pike was destined for the "beep chair". Spock was destined to work on reunification of Vulcan and Romulus (TNG Reunification 1 & 2) and then eventually get thrown into the Kelvin timeline after he attempted to do sciency stuff on the Romulus star when that goes supernova.
@@darranrowe174 in the correct history yes. I meant in the episode I thought spock was alive and was going into a beep chair instead of pike.
I'll ask here, since I have yet to get an answer else-where. If we take Star Trek (2009) as cannon and there's a new timeline, do the crew of the Enterprise from STIV and the whales return to the new timeline or old one?
All good things or this case all those timelines must come to an end
How Can we know which example you would have use for this list on the others timelines…?
#2 It's sad that you chose to use those horrible "upgraded" special effects rather than the original ones.
I disagree with erased timelines. They just changing timelines. TNG episode Parallels which showed they exist parallel of other timelines. It's decision made by story tellers.
There’s a difference between a timeline being changed/erased like Yesterday’s Enterprise or Endgame, and a separate quantum reality like we see in Parallels or ST09.
I'm pretty sure Wesley and the Travelers have some evidence or records that this timelines existed.
The Tribbles and Tribulations was left out. I am sure episodes of Discovery were left out as well and the one with Worf.
The episode with Worf ("Parallels") wasn't an alternate timeline, rather an alternate (or :parallel") universe, as depicted by the countless Enterprises appearing from different quantum realities. While an Enterprise was destroyed, none of the parallel universes were affected in any way other than Worf hoping against hope that his next leap would be the leap home.
What about the trouble with tribbles?
5:56 Spock wasn't killed. He was still alive, but crippled like Pike would be. Which is actually a worser fate that being dead
Yesterday's Enterprise showed how the future changed when a specific event never happened.
You can't really "erase" a timeline, they just don't get shown on screen anymore. What happened, happened. Anyway, if you want a really crazy multiverse show, go check out Dark Matter. 10/10.
I was like "What the hell are you talking about?" at first because I saw the 2015 series by the same name. =P
@@AlyssaNguyen I meant Dark Matter (2024) with Jennifer Connely and Joel Edgerton, it's the best depiction of the multiverse I've ever seen.
Since Harry and Chakotay created the timeline that allowed Admiral Janeway to go back and bring _Voyager_ home, are _they_ ultimately responsible for the Borgacide in that episode?
Eddith--Joan colleens
What about the future from Discovery where Control wins and kills all life in the Galaxy, or the one from Enterprise where Daniels takes Archer into the future and it's all destroyed. Or the one in ds9 where starfleet doesn't exist cos of the Bell riots
Man, the Voyager we could have had..
Did you confuse Yesterday's Enterprise TNG with Yesteryear TAS?
And in no timeline does Harry ever get his field promotion....
🎉❤ I find watching the 'views' and the 'likes' go up as I watch this video, satisfying. 🤔 Interesting 😎
Time's up....
Star Trek's writers always played fast and loose with the science of continuity. There are two theories in quantum physics, one that only one timeline can exist at a time and you cannot alter it without erasing the current timeline, and another, popularly known as the Many Worlds theory, that anything that can happen, does happen in an alternate reality. Every time a sentient mind is presented with a choice, a universe splits off, one where they made one choice, one where they made the other. However, these two theories are mutually exclusionary; they simply cannot both be true, the theories themselves preclude this. Yet Trek has some stories where the first theory is true and some stories where the Many Worlds theory is true. But if they Many Worlds theory is true, than no timelines could be erased, simply shifted into a new alternate timeline reality. So it's kind of confusing.
Picard is not StarTrek. Why is it mentioned here??
There's also the timeline where Harry stays on Earth and meets a drunk Tom Paris.