Speaking of Time and Fate

 The second episode of Star Trek: Picard (STP) introduces a plot line that, itself, introduces challenging philosophical questions. Perhaps unintentionally.

In addition to the other drama-destroying absurdities that STP has introduced (such as an omnipotent character who can change everything and anything at any time for no reason and the possibility of purposeful, controllable time travel that permits any plot development to be changed, by any character, at any time), the new Picard season now has a story-line that is based entirely on the questionable premise that the original timeline as portrayed in the various Star Trek series (the "Original Timeline") is by definition preferable to all other possible timelines.

I don't know all the theories related to parallel timelines and their possible relationships. I do know that I get confused between the "parallel timelines" theories and the "parallel universes" theories that seem to be treated as interchangeable in much fiction.

And it appears to me that, while the parallel universes theories usually assume that the various universes co-exist within the same time structure (i.e. each universe moves through time in a manner consistent with how every other universe moves through time), parallel timelines theories assume either that the timelines develop in parallel to each other and co-exist (such that characters can move from one to the other) or that there is only one single timeline but that it can be changed, usually by characters moving into the past to adjust one decision, one outcome that occurred in the past so as to direct that single timeline on a different course.

Star Trek's much used "Mirror Mirror" storylines are based on the "parallel universes" theory that permits characters to move from one universe to the other. It is important to note that characters generally remain at the same point in the timeline no matter which universe they inhabit. Star Trek: Discovery includes a plot line that suggests that a character who moves both from universe to universe and from one time to another cannot survive this multiple shift: a single character can safely move from one universe to another from one time to another, but not both.

The hilarious sit-com Community gives us an interesting example of the theory of multiple timelines that co-exist in the same universe in action. My limited understanding of this theory suggests to me the image of a single originating point (when time began) from which grows a Timeline that fractures into an increasing number of timelines each time a single decision decision or action is taken. In one episode of Community, six different storylines sprout from a single roll of a die, with each storyline developing from a different result of the die roll. And characters native to each timeline can move into other timelines at the same point in time.

The most recent episode of STP announces the intention that this season will involve a story line that is based on the single timeline theory. It begins with Picard and his team discovering that the mighty Q has changed the timeline by changing a single event in the distant past. In this revised timeline, the human race has made it its mission to dominate the galaxy by suppressing every other race of beings.

If that plot sounds familiar, you're not wrong. It harkens back both to the original Mirror Mirror episode  from the Original Series (characters do not know immediately that they have been moved from their original universe/timeline and must, under great duress, figure things out before yet another catastrophic action is initiated) and to the manipulated timeline stories that are so prevalent in the Star Trek franchise, including in the much beloved TNG episode that alters the timeline by bringing the Enterprise C forward in time.

Confusingly, Q makes allusions to both the single timeline theory and the parallel universe theory as he sets the table for the upcoming storyline:

• "How Yesterday's Enterprise of you," he says to Picard early on, referring to the single timeline; and later
• he uses the phrase "through the mirror darkly," which appears to be a reference to the parallel universe theory.

Once Picard and team discover that they are in an alternate timeline in which the (Con)Federation is a human-supremacist organization, they immediately decide that their goal must be to return to the Original Timeline to undo the event that caused the creation of the new timeline. And that timeline was apparently started by what the Borg Queen calls "a temporal recision" in LA in the year 2024.

The philosophical questions I mentioned earlier stem from their decision as to what they must now do.

Their immediate supposition is that the Original Timeline is preferable. This supposition is not unique to STP -- in almost every narrative I've ever encountered that involves multiple timelines, the immediate assumption is that the Original Timeline (the timeline from which the characters come) deserves primacy.

In the case of STP, this assumption is perhaps reasonable. The Q timeline involves a fascist Human Confederation that has been successful in defeating and enslaving all other races in the galaxy. 

Surely, the Original Timeline is better.

But is it?

According to the many iterations of Star Trek, the history of the Original Timeline (between 2024 and Picard's present) is rife with violence, terror and suffering. War is ubiquitous, disease rampant and stories of the abuse of one race by another are too numerous to list.

That being said, I am willing to accept that the Original Timeline, despite its many horrors, is indeed preferable to the Q Timeline in this case. 

But is it always so?

Why do the creators of science fiction always seem to prioritize the timeline we know over any other timeline?

Has our Original Timeline (real or fictional) been so kind, considerate, fair, and equitable that it should be preferred over all others?

I am wracking my brain for a single story that has approached time travel from the position that changing the Original Timeline is actually a good thing.

And I can come up with only two:

1. Star Trek: Generations, in which Picard teams up with Kirk to go back in time (okay, to emerge from the Nexus at an earlier time) to stop an evil scientist from destroying an innocent planet; and
2. the finale of Star Trek:Voyager, where Janeway travels back in time to help her younger self get Voyager back home much earlier than the Original Timeline permitted.

For examples of the assumption that the Original Timeline has priority, let's focus only on Star Trek stories for a moment:

• In "City on the Edge of Forever", Kirk and Spock go back in time to stop McCoy from changing the Original Timeline to avoid letting Nazi Germany win World War 2;
• In "Tomorrow is Yesterday", Kirk and his team must work to correct the damage to the Original Timeline caused by the accidental incursion of the Enterprise into the 1960s;
• In "Yesterday's Enterprise", Picard sends the Enterprise C and her remaining crew back to their original spot in the Original Time to fight and die to restore the timeline leading up to Picard's era;
• In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard and crew battle to undo the intentional damage to the Original Timeline done by the Borg;
• In "Trial and Tribble-ations", Sisko and crew endeavour to stop a Klingon agent from changing the Original Timeline to kill Captain Kirk;
• and on and on.

Is there a single other example where going back in time and changing the Original Timeline has been seen as a laudable goal?

The fact is, we prioritize the timeline as we understand it, no matter what the circumstances. And, when we tell tales of the impact of changes to the Original Timeline, we almost without exception depict that change as making things worse and not better.

And yet our Original Timeline is pretty awful. And the awfulness goes back almost to the beginnings of human civilization and continues through the lamentable present and into the fictional future. 

Sure, from my vantage point in 2022, I would agree that it is better that Nazi Germany did not win the Second World War and that it is preferable that the human race be permitted to continue to develop with the invention of the warp drive, rather than being assimilated by some cyber-dominated race of beings. 

But, with all of the misery that the Original Timeline has wrought and will apparently wreak in the future, why do we automatically treat is as preferable to any other timeline?

Take the second episode of Season 2 of STP, for example. In order to restore the Original Timeline, Picard and his new crew make the significantly problematic decision to save the Borg Queen in the Q timeline and to re-introduce her into the Original Timeline in the 21st Century. They apparently need to do this because none of the others in their party (not Dr. Girardi, for example) can "isolate the divergence and mircoshift for any chronotonic radiation" in order to facilitate time travel.

Considering the strong possibility that the Borg Queen, once permitted some freedom, will succeed in escaping the bonds that control her and exert her will on the unsuspecting, technologically limited people of the 21st Century, this decision is questionable. By prioritizing the correction of the "recision" made by Q, Picard and his pals are actually putting the timeline at much greater risk. The result might be something even worse: complete Borg control of the galaxy with no hope of rebellion over a human-centred Confederation that is already facing a revolution by subjugated races.

I should also mention that this episode of Picard also undermines the one-timeline-at-a-time dimension of the Original Timeline theory by establishing that the Borg Queen can sense the different timelines. She, like Guinan in "Yesterday's Enterprise", can sense that something has changed in the timeline, that something's not right.

Which creates a whole different kettle of fish -- the idea that there is a single "right" timeline, wherein the universe unfolds as it should. That the assessment that it is the "right timeline" is not based on the events, social structures, historic movements of the individual timeline but is based, instead, on something intrinsic to the timeline as a structure itself.

This suggests that all of the miseries, injustices and horrors of the Original Timeline (the one in which we live and the one that the Star Trek franchise describes) are part of a human history, a human timeline that is "right" and should not be changed.

Okay, I've twisted myself into knots with this. What are your thoughts?