Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
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Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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I don't hate it. It makes room to tell new "old" stories without just completely dismissing canon. The idea of a "fixed point in time" is a concept that I think originated with Doctor Who. The Strange New Worlds concept is similar, but instead of a fixed point its a fixed event or fixed outcome.
I do wonder though, how much of this "time pushing back" is actually that? Or is it actually just the "Federation Time Cops" from the far future making sure things happen even if someone successfully meddles with history. I actually kind of hate the concept of time travel being a thing in Star Trek. Leave it to shows like Doctor Who.
A fixed point in time is literally called a ‘time crystal’ in physics.
Now that’s theory that developed after Dr Who put it out into the global conversation, much as Albucierre’s Warp theory and Star Trek. It doesn’t make it any less a completely valid science fiction explanation.
In terms of time pushing back, entropy comes into it. Pushing an essential event further down the time stream should be harder, but pushing it to an earlier date would be orders of magnitude harder. Eliminating the event altogether and forking the time steam into a new course will be much more difficult than either.
It can be argued that First Contact is classic example of time pushing back. While the Enterprise was able to ensure the first warp flight happened in the very narrow window, there were slippages in the details around the event regardless of the preservation of the date. The Prime Universe timeline was overwritten, just not as obviously as in a change of a calendar date.