Logline
La’An travels back in time to twenty-first-century Earth to prevent an attack which will alter humanity’s future history—and bring her face to face with her own contentious legacy.
Written by David Reed
Directed by Amanda Row
Note: This is a second attempt, as technical difficulties were preventing people from seeing the original discussion post. Apologies to the people who were able to comment in the original.
The Narada incursion had the benefit of three things - a black hole, a very intense ion storm, and the magical red matter. We can minimally accept that as a unique confluence of events that led to a branched rather than overwritten timeline, at least.
To support the resilient river of time model, when I was studying history in grad school I came up with this axiom: history isn’t inevitable, but it has momentum.
To put another way, any given historical event is the natural outcome of historical events before it, and therefore when changing history you’re not just trying to change the one thing, but dealing with the weight of everything before pushing the timeline in that direction. That’s why it’s so hard to change history, that - in Sera’s terms - it seems like Time itself is fighting you. Call it historical momentum, call it historical inertia, what you will. And so the more “momentous” the event, the harder it is to just change it - things will “want” to go back to the way it was.
I was considering your usage of ‘palimpsest’. It’s not a bad way of looking at what remains, net, after the incursions have taken place.
But the river, strong, advancing with force in its riverbed is a great analogy too. Its momentum is enormous, its course hemmed-in by some fixed geology. Only something near-catastrophic will cause it to divide or jump its course.
By the way, I have been thinking about the temporal accords and the prohibition against time travel in the 32nd century. This will mean that the far post-Burn era will be the only one where these kinds of perturbations shouldn’t be permitted. It would be interesting to hear more from Kovich on this.