Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 14, 2009 8:55:24 GMT -6
The Enterprise encounters a black hole, and as a result is thrown backwards in time to the year 1969, where it is mistaken for a UFO by the United States Air Force.
Certain events in this episode are similar to the Mantell case. [Captain Thomas Mantell was a US Air Force pilot who was killed January 7, 1948 when his P-51 crashed near Godman Air Base in Kentucky, as a result of chasing a UFO. And some people actually did speculate that UFOs were not so much alien spacecraft as observers from the future.] The episode did a good job of depicting a person from the 20th century brought face to face with officers from the 23rd century. As a time travel paradox story, however, it was an awful muddle.
|
|
|
Post by andrewlee on Dec 14, 2009 9:27:40 GMT -6
This was the episode that a landing party had to go down and retrieve film footage of the enterprise in the upper atmosphere by the pilot they had beamed over. As I recall the tractor beam crushed the plane and they had no choice. This was the basis of time travel used in the 4th Star Trek movie "The Voyage Home." I liked this episode! The interactions of the 20th and 23rd century personnel were interesting!!
|
|
Luke
Commander
[ss:Cool Blue]
Posts: 1,087
|
Post by Luke on Dec 16, 2009 11:29:58 GMT -6
*This was the basis of time travel used in the 4th Star Trek movie "The Voyage Home."* The only problem is I don't see how a gravity slingshot could send anyone forward or backward in time!
|
|
|
Post by andrewlee on Dec 16, 2009 13:07:03 GMT -6
*This was the basis of time travel used in the 4th Star Trek movie "The Voyage Home."*The only problem is I don't see how a gravity slingshot could send anyone forward or backward in time! To be honest with everyone, in real life, I don't either! It's just part of the story is why I brought it up. If some one could move near the speed of light time for them would slow down due to time dilation compared to those who are not moving near the speed of light. This would send some one into the future, but not the past.
|
|
Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 17, 2009 8:37:22 GMT -6
This was the episode that a landing party had to go down and retrieve film footage of the enterprise in the upper atmosphere by the pilot they had beamed over. Yes, this is also the episode in which an irate Air Force colonel threatens to lock Kirk up for 300 years. And Kirk replies, "That ought to be just about right."
|
|
Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 17, 2009 8:39:49 GMT -6
I don't think relativistic time dilation has anything to do with it. Warp drive overcomes that problem by warping space itself, so the ship doesn't actually travel through space at superluminal speeds.
If you took the basic Celestial Mechanics course at the Academy (and I know a helmsman would have!), you know about the gravity slingshot effect. You use the attraction of a planetary body to accelerate your ship towards it, and if you calculate your angle just right, you can use the momentum to shoot you out the other end of the gravity well, faster than you came in. Picard used it in "Booby Trap" to escape the aceton assimilators.
I haven't talked to an astrophysicist in a while, but I presume that a really intense gravitational field might protrude across the subspace barrier. I speculate that what happened is the Enterprise's warp bubble struck the black hole's subspace bubble and this is what accounts for the time distortion. Normal cruising speed for the Enterprise is around warp three to five. For the return, they had use the gravity well of Sol (much, much less intense than a black hole but still pretty intense). In consequence, they had to increase the ship's own subspace field to warp eight to compensate.
|
|
edify
Lt. Jr. Grade
Posts: 150
|
Post by edify on Jan 1, 2010 21:52:03 GMT -6
As much as I like the episode (I'm a sucker for time travel stories), what I don't buy is the end of the show, where they beamed Captain Christopher and the policeman into their own bodies to basically erase their memories of the entire event.
|
|
JADIS
Lieutenant
[ss:Cloak]
Posts: 372
|
Post by JADIS on Jan 2, 2010 3:09:23 GMT -6
As much as I like the episode (I'm a sucker for time travel stories), what I don't buy is the end of the show, where they beamed Captain Christopher and the policeman into their own bodies to basically erase their memories of the entire event. I haven't seen this episode in awhile but if memory serves me, didn't they beam them back into their bodies before the actual events happened and that is why they had no memories?
|
|
Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Jan 2, 2010 9:29:24 GMT -6
Yes, Jadis, that was the rationale behind it. But as Edify said, it seems a little bit wobbly.
|
|
edify
Lt. Jr. Grade
Posts: 150
|
Post by edify on Jan 2, 2010 15:24:30 GMT -6
Yeah. One of my concerns would be...first of all, wouldn't they have killed Christopher and the policeman by beaming them into their own bodies, the same way they would have killed anyone else by beaming someone into them? Also, if they were beamed back into their own bodies before the incident occurred, then they should have been beamed back up into the Enterprise as per the flow of time. So it seems like if that had succeeded, it would have created an infinite time loop.
|
|
Arkroyal
Lt. Commander
I'm a historian, not an engineer![ss:Federation]
Posts: 440
|
Post by Arkroyal on Jan 3, 2010 9:09:56 GMT -6
Thus creating a temporal paradox? Joy.
Stupid evergoing circles.
|
|
Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Jan 4, 2010 8:31:38 GMT -6
This is a problem we often encounter in TOS. Roddenberry was dramatizing the logs of the Enterprise for a twentieth century audience, and he didn't include a lecture on temporal equilibrium physics (as if they would have understood it). I take it that when they were merged, each of them had two sets of memories -- one memory of meeting the Enterprise, and one memory of NOT meeting it. Only one was actually supported by the evidence of their senses, so the second seemed like a daydream and was soon forgotten.
The only problem is that when they went back in time to return Christopher and the sergeant, they should have met a counterpart Enterprise too. Where was it? And it's no good saying they split off into a separate timeline, because in that case there would have been no purpose to sending Christopher there.
Here's my explanation. As Edify says, you can't beam a solid object inside another solid object. Therefore, what Scotty must have done was de-materialized the counterpart Christopher, stored him in the pattern buffer, merged the two of them there, then beamed them back into the aircraft. So, while he was doing that, he also dematerialized the entire aircraft and beamed it several miles to one side, out of visual sight of the counterpart Enterprise.
|
|
Luke
Commander
[ss:Cool Blue]
Posts: 1,087
|
Post by Luke on Jan 20, 2010 12:01:25 GMT -6
If you took the basic Celestial Mechanics course at the Academy (and I know a helmsman would have!), you know about the gravity slingshot effect...I presume that a really intense gravitational field might protrude across the subspace barrier. I speculate that what happened is the Enterprise's warp bubble struck the black hole's subspace bubble and this is what accounts for the time distortion. You know that makes a certain amount of sense.
|
|
Luke
Commander
[ss:Cool Blue]
Posts: 1,087
|
Post by Luke on Oct 13, 2010 11:42:53 GMT -6
I was watching this again last night, kieping in mind your "merging" hypothesis, and it makes more sense now. The only problem now is that when they beamed the sergeant back, he went straight to the computer room door and opened it! This was the same door that Kirk had had to unlock before they could get in! What's this?
|
|
Atoz 77
Vice Admiral
[M:0]
[ss:Insurrection]
Posts: 4,065
|
Post by Atoz 77 on Oct 15, 2010 7:24:22 GMT -6
My spin on this is that merging those people and sending them back didn't erase history. The Enterprise still arrived in 1969, the aircraft still took pictures, and they still had to break into the computer room. The only difference is that those two people (Christopher and the staff sergeant) didn't remember any of it happening, because they had both been merged with counterparts who had been taken from an earler part of the timeline. See what I mean?
|
|