Why wasn't Kirk charged with violating the temporal prime directive...
when he went back and brought humpback whales (and a human) 300 years into the future?
shareMight have had something to do with saving the world 🤔
share
MovieChat Forums > Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Discussion > Why wasn't Kirk charged with violating t...
because.... KIRK!!!
shareI think the temporal prime directive was to forbid changing something in the past that would alter the entire timeline from that point in the past forward.
Kirk brought the whales into the present to save the planet but didn't change the timeline from the time he went to grab them until he reappeared during the probe's "attack". Since what he did would affect future events that never happened, it seems he didn't violate the TPD.
That's a good explanation. He didn't alter the timeline in that he didn't prevent whales from going extinct. They still did go extinct, but then with a new pair in the present, they can start again.
shareMaybe taking that pair of whales from the past is what caused them to go extinct...
But perhaps that was always necessary as if they aren't removed from the past and they don't become extinct, the great giant whale cigar doesn't come a knocking in the first place.
It's the same as Kirk's glasses. They need to go back in time and sell them, so McCoy will be able to buy them in the future...
Maybe taking that pair of whales from the past is what caused them to go extinct...
Stop thinking fourth dimensionally!!!!
share
The bootstrap paradox.
sharePretty sure removing a whole ass person who was supposed to have a life in 1986 is going to butterfly effect the hell out of the timeline. Every interaction she was supposed to have, every time she was in traffic, whether she was gonna have kids, all these things would cause huge ripples.
shareRemoving a human being from 1986 *may* have an effect, but it's certainly not guaranteed. Even if the removed person was to have had children, there's no guarantee the would have any significant effect on the timeline. In any case, Jillian told Kirk she had no family (of course) so it wouldn't matter if she left. Of course, she was young enough to perhaps been swept off her feet by a geeky yet very studly cetacean researcher and had kids of her own, but we have to assume she never would have.
But presumably the two whales wouldn't have been missed as they were likely to be killed by the Japanese whaling ships.
There's no may about it. Removing any person is going to effect the hell out of a timeline, especially over the course of 200 years. Even if that person had no meaningful achievements or contributions, just existing effects everything around you.
For example: Removing her from 86 means the next day, she wasn't driving to work. Which in turn effects every driver that would have been behind her. Some people arrive sooner, some later, some get in car accidents or now avoid them, etc. This subtly effects everything those people would have done. Maybe the sex they had in the original timeline is altered and now they don't have that baby or a boy is now a girl. Maybe they don't meet the person they were supposed to marry at all or meet someone different. Those people in turn effect other people and it just radiates out from there.
That's just one random example (in which there would be a limitless number of examples) from one single day. Those shifts would increase exponentially going from when they removed her. Anybody born say a year after she was removed runs the very real risk of having the circumstances of their conception altered.
So yeah, unless she was a hermit who never interacted with the world in any way, her removal has a massive effect.
LOL, excellent points..
Nope. She is just a person who disappeared in 1986. Lots of people disappear all of a sudden. And have then of course no future impact.
shareYou couldn't possibly know that! For all anyone knows, a child that disappeared back in the 80's would have gone on to cure cancer had they lived their life. Or grew up to be a domestic terrorist that blew up a federal building. Or taken a seat on a plane, forcing someone else to fly the next day and it happened to have been on 9/11. Or just been a taco bell worker that was slow, led to someone important being late and now someone dies.
Point is, every persons actions(or lack of actions if you remove them), no matter how small would impact the timeline.
If there had been an impact on timeline, this impact led straight all the way to Star Trek as we know it. So what?
I really hate to think about timelines. It's great that they don't exist.
or it affected absolutely nothing whatsoever, and life just continued.
we're discussing THEORHETICAL alterations of time caused by time travel, which doesn't really exist, and never will exist. it's all just cool fiction, so anyone can make up its POSSIBLE effect however they want.
just because it sounds cool doesn't mean it is real.
Except this part is less theoretical and more no shit! Not arguing the possibility of time travel, but in the Trek world if you change the past, it changes the future(unlike Avengers where you just get a new separate timeline). Therefore If history recorded that she lived her life and died in her own time before Kirk goes back to 86, removing her from the timeline would butterfly effect everything going forward.
It's like in the Ray Bradbury book where he times travels to dinosaur times, accidentally steps on a bug, and when he returns the English language is fucked up and a fascist government rules the world.
apparently, it all worked out just fine, and all of Trekverse was not altered, or only changed in tiny, insignificant ways. it worked out. :)
Bradbury's SOUND OF THINDER is probably where the FICTIONAL "this changes everything" narative started. In reality, or reality within time travel movies, it doesn't HAVE TO be like that.
..and when he returns the English language is fucked up and a fascist government rules the world.
OK, who went back in time and stepped on a bug!!!!?
share
Because there was no such thing.
sharePossible Expalanation:
The original crew's time had not yet heard of the Temporal Prime Directive, therefore if those who enforced it were to show up, they would be violating the Temporal Prime Directive by revealing it.
It's a mega huge deal what they did. Doctor Who level shit. It's a pretty big chunk of lore that's never really been tapped into. But there's an alternate timeline where basically, the Federation doesn't exist. What's going on there? They should be digging into that.
shareKirk continually violates shit, and always gets away with it.
share