#i don't have time to read temporal mechanics 101

[jone-slugger]

Voyager and Prodigy summarized in an image:

[returnofahsoka]

the solum civil war will still happen

or why i think this is a predestination time loop instead of an alternate timeline

short answer: because gwyn's still here

long answer under the cut because we might be here for a while

reason 1 – the classic grandfather paradox, or "cLeArLy YOu NeVEr ReAd TeMPorAl MeChaNiCs 101"

so, the protostar never going back to tars lamora caused gwyn to never be born and the timeline to unravel. pretty straightforward, huh? but the civil war not happening and the diviner never going back in time to destroy the federation somehow... wouldn't result in the exact same thing? that's weird. i can't be the only one who thinks that's weird.

we are told that changing the little things does not matter as long as the big things stay the same (this is a very common principle in time travel scifi, like doctor who's fixed vs non-fixed points in time). such "big thing" or fixed point is the protostar ending up on tars lamora in the past regardless of how it was sent back or by whom. yet, on a peaceful solum with no civil war and a good relationship to the federation, ilthuran has no reason to become the diviner, to go back to the past and have a daughter there. gwyn still wouldn't exist. the paradox would still be in effect.

because it is not, we must assume that gwyn is still born in this reality, and the only reason she could be born is because the diviner went back. the bigger picture, in the end, is still intact, the flow of time is back in its correct course.

and i think wesley knows this. he knows the war will still happen, maybe some time later or maybe it will go down differently (again, little things) but it will happen and the end result will be the same. he doesn't say, becuase his goal was never to save solum, his goal was to save The Universe(tm), and for that, the fall of solum needs to happen. and wesley was willing to let voyager and the crew suffer great casualties because of asencia's attack, because it also needed to happen. so he doesn't say, becuase they don't need to know this yet, because they cannot know. because if gwyn knew, she would stay on solum and try to fix it and they would not be together.

reason 2 – ouroboros, or who dropped their commbadge on the protostar's bridge?

it was dal. it was always dal. the first time around when he and rok find the protostar, the badge is already there, placed perfectly in position on the bridge. (ever wondered in season 1 why there was a commbadge randomly on the floor?) because that the kids were always the ones sending the protostar back to tars lamora. to save themselves.

again, if this was an alternate timeline, if the civil war had been truly prevented, then why does the ship need to go there? who would find it if the kids weren't there in the first place? for that, they need to be brought there by the diviner. and they need to be together. not only in the future that wesley was referring to. in the past as well. because time is a funny thing.

also, talking about wesley, he very clearly says that the timeline the show takes place on is the prime timeline. the protostar going back to tars lamora/the diviner following didn't create a new timeline diverging from an alternate previous one. only the absence of these events did, resulting in the paradox that they're trying to fix, and by fixing it we return to the prime timeline.

so instead of alternate timelines looking kinda like this (forgive me for the very heavily stylized ms paint diagram)

it's a loop and it looks more like this

reason 3 – hints in s1, or why this was always meant to happen this way and why is the diviner called the diviner, really?

the funniest thing is, we were told all this from the beginning. kind of.

bear with me for a second and imagine that ilthuran, ever curious astronomer and actually decent father, becomes the ilthuran who trusts and supports the federation. they saved them after all! his daughter is one of them! and maybe he supports them too loudly, urging an alliance too quickly to prevent what he knows happened on another timeline. and maybe the voices who supported asencia are becoming equally loud too. maybe the war still breaks out, despite his - and gwyn's - best intentions. and the federation doesn't come (they have a lot to deal with, okay?)

ilthuran would have all the more reasons to become jaded and bitter and resent them for refusing to help. but he would know this isn't the end yet. he becomes the diviner because he knows the future. because gwyn told him. not the whens and hows, not the details because that part's complicated, but the big things.

in preludes, as asencia is trying to nudge the diviner's memory back to working (one of our two main accounts in s1 of what happened on solum, the other being what the diviner tells gwyn in moral star, which admittedly, is pretty questionable. asencia however, at this point, has no reason to lie to the diviner so i am tempted to believe she's telling the truth) she describes the protostar's arrival as the return of "the hope of solum" and the diviner, suddenly remembering, says this: "they called it an accident. we knew it was fate." and what if he really did know? in the brief flashback following this exchange, we see chakotay sending out a distress signal immediately after the protostar passed through the wormhole, while already being invaded by drednok units. as if the vau n'akat were prepared for their arrival.

and when the order is formed, not one of the other 99 vau n'akat ships can the find the protostar. (like, you would think they have some way of tracking the ship or the living construct itself, but they can't. evidently, asencia has to infiltrate the federation and use them to find the protostar.) but the diviner spends 20 years in one place, mining, because he knows it's worth it, instead of searching the wider galaxy, and turns out he was right the whole time, because the ship is actually there.

and we learn that he defied the order by making a progeny. but why does that rule exist in the first place? a dying species hell-bent on surviving at all costs, and they're not allowed to have children? or it's just him who's not allowed to, just gwyn who cannot be born? the girl who made first contact? right in the first episode, the diviner tells her "whatever future our people hold will be up to you." he knows who his daughter will become and he wants to save her from the federation. he didn't raise her so she could finish his mission when he's no longer able to – he didn't raise her to hate the federation from childhood, he raised her to not even know of the federation, and to never learn because he will destroy them before she can be corrupted by them. "history can be rewritten," he says in moral star and i believe he's not just talking about solum. he's talking about gwyn too.

[joju-but-trek]

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 1: Into the Breach, Part 1

Somehow, Robert Beltran has returned.

I didn't know that Netflix released Prodigy until about an hour ago, but I'm glad they did. For people who missed the entire saga, two years ago Paramount released season 1 of an excellent Star Trek series called Prodigy. The pitch was that it was a group of (mostly) kids from the far side of the galaxy escaping slavery to come to the Federation, and it was excellent. The characters were compelling, the stories were fun, and it was pitched as an entry to the franchise for kids. Also, the animation looks vaguely like the Clone Wars style. I was in. And then on top of that it's also a follow-up to Voyager, my favorite Star Trek show that I really need to finish writing my reviews for season 1 of.

Anyway, Paramount killed it and wiped it from streaming. After months of fan and crew campaigning, Netflix picked it up and agreed to release the already finished second season. It came out yesterday as a single 20-episode drop, and I've decided to watch it and keep up my reviews of it. I think I want to space out my reviews a bit so I can focus on the individual episodes, so that's how this will start. I would like to do an episode a day, but I don't trust myself to keep to that, so there will probably be some gaps.

So, episode 1. Is it a good premiere? Short answer, mostly. 8/10.

I haven't seen season 1 since I first watched the show, so I'm a bit out of the loop. This episode did a good job of reminding me who the characters were and why I liked them, but it did throw a few curveballs for character arcs that I'm not sure I love. I'm happy with how they handled Zero, Rok, and Jankum, but I think Dal needs a bit more expansion. He's the protagonist so he'll definitely get it, but for a first episode it's a weird place to leave him. Basically, the season starts with the kids in training (I *think* they're all kids, Zero's either a million years old or ten and I can't tell), and they're all adapting more or less OK to formal Starfleet life. Except Dal. Dal doesn't want to actually do any studying and just wants to be a spaceship captain who goes on adventures and shoots things. It's a pretty simple arc, but it's also a kids' show.

I do like the dynamic of all the other main characters wanting to be part of Starfleet and it putting strain on their friendgroup while Dal just wants to do what he wants to do, and the running gag that he refuses to read Temporal Mechanics 101 is a fun joke and a plot element. I'm torn because I kind of want more from the show than that, but also there's only so much you can do in 22 minutes and still expect kids to follow and I recognize that.

In terms of Voyager follow-up, Janeway has a secret mission! That's fun! I like the way her new bridge officers look in the animation style, especially the Andorian I can't name. That species just looks good in this definitely-not-Clone Wars render. Also, I like Andorians. Sue me.

The Doctor is also back! The Doctor is one of my favorite Star Trek characters ever, and I'll explain why if/when I do a thing about Voyager. I'm glad he's back. It feels like they struggled a bit with using Robert Picardo as a voice actor - it just feels a little stilted - but I've also only seen the first episode. I'm not sure why he's on the mission in-universe, but I'll give it time.

The Voyager-A is ostensibly studying a wormhole but secretly rescuing Chakotay, which is a good way to keep the threads from season 1 going and also giving the crew some conflict with Admiral Janeway. In season 1, they got pretty attached to Hologram Janeway, and not having the same relationship with the human version is going to be a fun dynamic to play out. I know they made this a while ago, but I am very curious how much they knew about Robert Beltran (Chakotay's actor) and his feelings about COVID vaccines at the time (he doesn't like them).

Two timeline things that are interesting to nerds - Voyager-A and the mention of the Romulan evacuation. I was halfway through an extended paragraph about the timeline of Voyager-A being here and what that means for the Lore before I realized what I'd done, so I'll make that a separate post. The Romulan evacuation comment is just interesting because that's a plot point from the Abrams Star Trek reboot that puts the events of this show way closer to Voyager than I thought they were, so it has not been that long for Janeway, Chakotay, and the Doctor. I wonder if this will come up, or if I'm overthinking it. If I had to guess, it's probably the latter.