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Time travel sucks

I was watching the new Star Trek movie. Why there must be the time travel in all the recent ST TV series and movies? It is nonsense because you either introduce an impossible loop (you come back, change the future so you could not come back) or you create an alternate reality each time you change something the past (so there isn't a single timeline but infinite ones and this vanify the point of changing the past). Plus, there is another obvious nonsense, the Romulan ship that is taken back several centuries before the destruction of Romulus (besides, there should be also the twin planet Remus) has got no reason to go destroying the Federation, with a good chance to get destroyed in the process, when it should instead go secretly to Romulus and tell them about the danger in the distant future, plus all the information of the future events. Then, they could even bring their technology. Their coming back with all that knowledge would give the Romulans a incredibly huge andvantage over their opponents. Then, one should ask if in the future of the Federation they travel in time with time ships (see the Voyager series and Enterprise) what do they do about these catastrophic events and about the timeline conservation. In short, time travel is an huge pile of nonsense.

You Can't Get What You WantOpera 10 Beta

Comments

Amnith 2. June 2009, 18:41

"Temporal mechanics... it gives me a headache!"

LorenzoCelsi 2. June 2009, 18:48

It is just an abused trick by those who write Star Trek plots. A cheap trick also for a cheap audience. Bad. Besides, the villains in Star Trek are always incredibly evil and incredibly stupid. Countless examples, from the Borg in the Picard's era that can't assimilate the Federation for ridiculous reasons like they fall asleep thought Picard's connection to the Collective (like nobody else thought of it before) to the Xindi in Archer's era that send a test probe to Earth (instead anywhere else) that make some irrilevant damage with the only result of alerting the humans and giving them information about the Xindi.

angel292005 2. June 2009, 22:33

:ko: :faint:

Shaunak 4. June 2009, 03:54

>> A cheap trick

Yup. Easy way out for writers. Hit a block? Confuse readers/audiences with silly time-space tricks.

starree 6. June 2009, 06:26

:lol:
it's a fantasy sci-fi world. I don't particularly like the way they did it but I did enjoy Star Trek kicking some ass for a change if you ask me.

I understand what you mean though. It's not what I'd do with it but I like the bit of life they breathed into it. :yes:

LorenzoCelsi 6. June 2009, 06:52

There are different "shades" of Science Fiction. But in general it must build its fantastic universe on top of some acceptable assumptions. I mean, you must accept some conventions like "it is possible to travel faster than light "warping" the time/space continuum" but then there must be a coherent logic. For example warp speed makes sense while the teleport, especially when stretched to some kind of magic, is much more problematic because it introduces paradoxes, like "creating/replicating" things instead of "moving" them and contradictions, like you can't do something in one episode and you can do it in the next episode. Time travel is the most difficult issue and in fact it is not much popular in Science Fiction. I guess it has got heavily used in Start Trek because of few ideas about plots.

Another thing that I do not like in the last movie is in a single move they go destroying two of the main planets in the Start Trek universe, Vulcan and Romulus, which is illogical for several reasons. I've told about the nonsense of the revenge from the future, then it is improbable that the Romulans in the future could be surprised by the explosion of the star in proximity of their home world and would put the ancient Spock in charge of everything.

starree 6. June 2009, 12:41

I agree on all of that. I didn't think destroying Vulcan and Romulus made much sense from even a plot standpoint. I think there are other ways they could have put some tension between the peoples without destroying entire planets. (just even from a plot perspective)

I've always wondered about the beaming/teleport theory and never really understood how that was plausible. I think in both situations I just let my imagination assume they have better technology in the future.

LorenzoCelsi 6. June 2009, 13:02

Originally there were a transmitting and receiving devices. The transmitting device should create a "model" of the object at subatomic level then convert it in a beam of some sort then the receiver takes the beam plus the information about the original structure and re-assemble the object.
Now there are some obvious nonsense, the most evident is once you created the "model" you don't need to disassemble it, you just transmit the information about its structure and then you can re-create the object. In the Star Trek universe there are "replicators" that work in that way.
Another nonsense is at some point in Star Trek they needed to be free to teleport people without the receiving station, so they imagined the transmitting station could "focus" the beam and re-assemble the object.
The most incredible part is when the trasmitting device must also analyze and convert the objects from a remote location to transmit it to itself. After a while they also needed to get even more freedom in teleporting and so they basically eliminated any limitation about the teleport.

starree 6. June 2009, 13:08

It is a bit but then I suppose they can always just claim that's the "fiction" part of 'science fiction' and get away with whatever they want :rolleyes:

I always thought surely the molecules couldn't always reshape themselves perfectly, there has to be accidents sometimes..

LorenzoCelsi 6. June 2009, 13:26

Like I said, the "fiction" part is to imagine a device or a physical law that do not exist. But once imagined, it must be coherent. Replicators do not exist and I guess it is extremely difficult to create an exact model of an object (considering also the undefined boundaries of it at atomic level) in order to re-create it converting bare energy in mass. But IF you accept that you can analyze at that detail level, handle and store all those data and you can apply unlimited energy into a device, then it works. Teleport instead do not work not because of practical issues but because of logical nonsense. For example, why to build starships if you can teleport people anywhere? Then, why even move people from a place to another if you can simply create replicas of them? Those replicas would be like clones, with indipendent lives starting from the "creation" point, so it would be ideal for colonizing distant planets.

On a side note, another nonsense of Star Trek is the asimmetrical technology. You don't see much automation on Starships, there are thousand people pressing buttons and handling screwdrivers, which it copied from today's navies, especially airplane carriers but it is ridiculous for space. Even today we are exploring planets with automated vehicles because they are much more efficient than transporting humans with all the needed shielding and life support. Even in case you need humans on vehicles to take critical decisions, you obviously try to reduce the number of transported people to the minimum, developing automation. There are some more nonsense like speaking central computers on board of starships and androids like Data, or the "lifeforms" in the hologram deck, which are just isolated events that do not develop in robots and such.

starree 6. June 2009, 17:11

"Then, why even move people from a place to another if you can simply create replicas of them?" <-- yep!

I'm not sure why they have to do jobs on the ships either but then what kind of story would it be I suppose. Maybe you are thinking about it too much, analyzing it too much that is , although those are excellent points. :angel:

LorenzoCelsi 6. June 2009, 18:22

Nope. It is not me analyzing too much, it is that the few Science Fiction shows available today are made for the largest audience possible then it is big explosions and special effects and a dumb basic plot because almost nobody gets it otherwise. And of course it is easier to make TV shows and movies that way.

starree 6. June 2009, 19:05

yes, this is true. Here they also cut out enough stuff to make them rated for 13 year olds to sell more tickets too, it's all a marketing scam. :rolleyes:

As a slight side-note, my husband did say they did have errors in the beginning of the t.v. series with the teleporters and people died on the show from teleporter mishaps (I never saw that but then I didn't watch them all)

LorenzoCelsi 6. June 2009, 19:22

Accidents involving teleports are in all the Star Trek series and in some movies. People disappear and get killed, replicated, exchanged with an evil twin from a parallel universe, ported to another time or dimension, etc.

About the "rating" of movies and TV shows, I have always thought there is something wrong about it. For some strange reason to show naked people is bad while showing violence and people being killed is good.

starree 6. June 2009, 19:59

Oh that's right, you reminded me of the evil twin parallel universe one (I vaguely remember that!) :lol: .

I never understood the violence is better than nudity thing either. How has a breast or naked butt ever given anyone bad ideas? (ok well made them violent ideas anyhow :faint: )

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