The Janeway Timeloop

[Mark]

Admiral Janeway travels back in time after getting HER Voyager back home in 20 something years. She travels back in time to the DQ to get the crew home in a shorter period of time, which she succeeds in doing, yet must give her life to accomplish this.

Will then Captain Janeway be required to follow the same course? Things are already different, since Voyager made it home sooner than it should, like Tuvok not going senile. But if she doesn't make the trip back in time, her past self will make the same decision that Admiral Janeway did, and Captain Janeway WOULD have made if Admiral Janeway didn't go back in time.

Grrrr.....I hate temporal mechanics.

What do you all think will happen????

[katefan]

I would have to say no, she would not. Janeway the older came from an alternate timeline so Janeway the not-so-older will not have to sacrifice herself...unfortunately...

[Teaos]

She wont have to go back in time, Admiral Janeway changed the past so the other Voager wouldnt go through what she had to.

But that assumes she came from one reality to another, but that also means there are other realities, so she gave her life to save one out of many realities.

[Graham Kennedy]

The odd thing about parallel timelines is that it makes changing the past possible, but it also makes it pointless.

The old grandfather paradox has you killing your grandfather and creating a timeloop. Parallel timelines avoids that by saying that the "you" that killed the grandfather came from the original timeline, and in killing him you make a new one, right? But the old timeline is still there. Those alternate versions of you still exist. So in a sense you didn't really change anything, you just transported yourself into a different timeline.

In this case there was the original "Tuvok gets sick" timeline and the "Voyager gets home early and Tuvok lives" timeline. Admiral janeway put herself from one to the other, but both timelines were still there. She didn't really help Tuvok as such, his timeline still exists - she just isn't in it any more. All she really accomplished was to get herself into the "nicer" timeline. Which is a feasible motive I guess, but then she gave up her life to ensure that timeline played out, which defeats the entire object.

So Admiral Janeway's whole plan was largely pointless and a failure to boot.

[Nickswitz]

So what about the other timeline
the one where harry kim died
you know the one we actually wanted to get home

[Granitehewer]

time theories blow my mind, its like trying to describe red without saying 'red',urrrgh, brain not wired to comprehend this stuff....

[Nickswitz]

Granite no ones is
it just aint natural
which is why we all are nerds and discuss it on here

[Granitehewer]

i just smile and nod, then run away
i gossiped during physics lessons and really have born the fruits of that now lol

[Teaos]

Well maybe making life better for that one reality was enough for her...

[Granitehewer]

the major bugbear i have with alternate dimensions and timelines is that we dont always know how 'alternate' those realms are, so using the knowledge that x conquered y in one universe to argue that it may happen in ''our'' universe(ie the one in which we are familiar) doesn't automatically hold water.

[Sionnach Glic]

The odd thing about parallel timelines is that it makes changing the past possible, but it also makes it pointless.

[snippage]

Very true, but that presumes that Admiral Janeway knew that it would have thrown her into a parallel timeline. She could have thought she was really going back in her timeline. So she saved a ship, but not her ship.

[Mikey]

So? Would she have any perception that the Voyager she saved wasn't the same one in the same timeline? I can't imagine there would be any qualitative difference from her point of view. In other words, it's one or the other, not the "real" one or the "fake" one.

[Mark]

So, if I'm following the general thoughts of the room, by going back in time, she didn't REALLY go back into her timeline and change anything, she went back and created an entirely NEW timeline. So, in the other episode were Captain LaForge went to stop Harry and Chakotay, why bother? From that universe's perspective, they would have just vanashed and created a new timeline as well.

To quote O'Brain
"I hate temporal mechanics"

[Teaos]

She didnt go back and make a new time line so much as changed one of the many different time lines out there all ready.

[Mikey]

The idea is that anytime you go back and make a situation divergent from the "original" course of events, you create a new timeline branching off of the original in the process.