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r/startrek: The Next Generation
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Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 11-21 | LD 5x06 | "Of Gods and Angles" |
| 11-28 | LD 5x07 | "Fully Dilated" |
| 12-05 | LD 5x08 | "Upper Decks" |
| 12-12 | LD 5x09 | "Fissue Quest" |
| 12-19 | LD 5x10 | "The New Next Generation" |
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Strange New Worlds (2025)
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This timeline is Altered not Alternate They did the same thing for First Contact, and ENT add just enough time travel to excuse not making the show into a history documentary yet none the less its considered part of the same story as everything that was made before but came later in the timeline.
Has the writing staff of First Contact ever confirmed, on the record, that it was their intent to alter the timeline? Has the writing staff for Enterprise ever indicated that they intended to depict an "altered" timeline?
You're moving the goalposts asking for such explicits beyond what is reasonable. Why would they need to spell it out for you in an interview when they have the actors say "these events weren't supposed to happen" repeatedly on screen? Are all viewers expected to familiarize themselves with every entertainment news article around and about a film or TV show in order to understand it? These things should be intuitive, and if what is intuitive isn't the writer's intent then that's just a failure on the writer's part.
The purpose of the "time has been altered and we need to fix the timeline" conversation that occurs near the beginning of every time travel story is definitely not to inform the audience that every subsequent installment of Star Trek will occur in an altered timeline.
In fact, it's just the opposite. The entire reason the characters are so concerned with restoring the timeline is that they want to return to their lives in an unaltered timeline.
Except total unaltering is impossible you can put the big history book events back into place (ie zefram cochrane invented the human iteration of warp drive) but the butterflies are still set loose (ie zefram cochrane was told about the enterprise-E by time travelers and was shown it through a telescope in order to gain his trust and cooperation, a century later a hitherto unmentioned ship of the same name and rough silhouette would be launched supplanting Dauntless as the name associated with the NX-01 registry.) Our time travelers don't notice the differences when they return home because they are so far removed from the altered events that the fog of history essentially covers things up.
Interesting headcanon, but headcanon nevertheless. I'd wager heavily that neither the First Contact nor Enterprise production staff share this interpretation, much less intended it.
I'd take up that wager they used the same actor for zefram cochrane to do the traditional new series handoff, they cast him as involved in the NX-01's multi decade development program before he disappeared.
How does Cromwell reprising Cochrane in "Broken Bow" support the notion that Enterprise is in a different timeline from all previous Star Trek? I don't see how these things are connected at all.
That is a strawman argument, I didn't claim this is a different timeline, in fact I claimed just the opposite. Altered is not the same as Alternate. Key events that are remembered and influential are still intact, while superficial details like whether NX-01 was named Dauntless or Enterprise deviate with little consequence.
But again, the notion that NX-01 was called "Dauntless" before the Borg First Contact incursion is your headcanon. No one working on Enterprise ever attested to that, and Cromwell's casting as Cochrane is certainly not evidence of this alteration.
You started this conversation by saying "They did the same thing for First Contact" and I just want to know who "they" is and what the "same thing" that "they did" is. You've brought up this Dauntless/Enterprise theory twice now but that's certainly not evidence that any "they" did any "thing." As far as I can tell it is your headcanon for a relatively minor inconsistency that could have any number of other explanations, the most obvious one being that Arturis got a detail wrong.
I just find it incredibly hard to believe that anyone working on Enterprise was working on the assumption that they were creating a show in a timeline that was "altered" by the events of First Contact. That was never alluded to in the show's four year run and as far as I know no one working on that show ever said anything of the sort.
Again you're moving the goalposts demanding greater and greater explicits not because you'd be convinced but because you'd expect the explicit doesn't explicitly exists. This is a low stakes conversation about a fictional universe intuition reinforced by references is sufficient, and if in subsequent series writers forget these details or go another way well then that's just how the cookie crumbles.
Though I don't know why you don't find this very intuitive the episode Regeneration featured borg drones from the events of First Contact, sure you may be entitled to your wishful thinking but to claim its never alluded to or incredibly hard to believe that first contact one of the more successful startrek films was an influence on enterprise is itself incredibly hard to believe.
As for Dauntless I'd say the screen canon speaks for itself why would I need characters to constantly break "show don't tell" and hold my hand every step of the way?