- 10 hours ago
Perhaps we do have the time to argue about time after all.
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00:00There's no time to argue about time.
00:03We don't have the time.
00:05And, well, here we are.
00:08I'm Sean Ferrick for TrekCulture and here are 10 terrible ways to time travel.
00:14Number 10.
00:15Romulans and radiation exposure.
00:18If you're interested in using the O'Brien must suffer time travel method, you're going
00:21to need two things.
00:22A dose of Delta-series radioisotopes from an exploding plasma conduit and a quantum
00:27singularity in orbit of your location.
00:29Then eat your future self and then some.
00:31Must remember, avoid panels on the habitat ring and basilar arterial scan, basilar arterial
00:36scan.
00:38The mode of time travel in Visionary might be distinctly unadvisable, but it does work as
00:42a clever enough central conceit for a fun episode.
00:46It allows O'Brien to hop into the future with just enough, but not too much, regularity to
00:51keep the mystery going, and ultimately, decades old spoiler alert, to save the station from
00:56destruction at the hands of those scheme-loving Romulans in their warbird.
01:00The real problem is the damn deadly radioisotopes.
01:04The original O'Brien of the present succumbs to radiation poisoning and is replaced with
01:08his future self, thus joining the duplicate globe alongside Harry Kim.
01:12The freelance writer Ethan H. Cook, who came up with the idea of Visionary, had a thing
01:17it seems for terrible time travel methods, as he also has story writing co-credit on
01:21the episode Children of Time.
01:23We all remember how that dreadfully disastrous the temporal tambourings were for Gaia.
01:29Number 9.
01:30The Atavachron.
01:31You certainly won't find this at your local library, assuming you still have one.
01:35A fairly neat solution to an explosive problem for the pre-warp inhabitants of Ser Pydon.
01:40That is, if they chose to go willingly.
01:42The Atavachron is still a lousy way to time travel.
01:45Known on Ser Pydon in All Our Yesterdays, Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy meet one lone librarian,
01:51Mr. Atos, as in I don't give a, when it comes to explaining what those data disks are really
01:58all about.
01:59Thinking they're just having a browse without borrowing, the trio soon finds themselves on
02:04the other side of the Atavachron time portal at different points in Ser Pydon's past.
02:08Naturally, Kirk is almost immediately getting himself locked up and also has to put up with
02:12some pretty dodgy accents.
02:14He's a witch!
02:16Witch!
02:17Witch!
02:18WIIIIICH!
02:19Nope.
02:20Still can't place it, my lord.
02:21Spock and McCoy have it worse off, however, in Ser Pydon's Ice Age.
02:24Aside from trapping unsuspecting Starfleet officers, the regular operation of the Atavachron meant
02:28making changes to the user's cell structure and brain patterns that prevented them from returning
02:33from the past.
02:35Thoroughly unprepared for the trip, Kirk, Spock and McCoy would die within hours if they didn't
02:39make it back to the future where Ser Pydon's sun was about to blow up.
02:44Plus, 5000 years ago Spock went all weird again.
02:47Great episode, not so great type of time travel.
02:51Number 8.
02:52Chemocyte Cargo.
02:53Okay, so when it comes to methods of time travel this one did produce some particularly
02:57fun results, but practically speaking it was still a monumentally terrible way of doing
03:02it.
03:03As side effects of Quark's scheming go, things could also have been worse.
03:08It's three Ferengi, Chemocyte, Contraband, Tall Ships and Tall Tales, a stowaway, and
03:13a little bit of sabotage on a trip to Earth.
03:16Oh, and our tom be warned.
03:19The zoo mocks on this one.
03:21Rom's a genius now.
03:22Fair enough.
03:23Well, he's always been smart, just a little underconfident.
03:26They'd definitely all be dead without him.
03:28Quark has ever so generously offered up his new ship, brought for him by his nothing but
03:35trustworthy cousin Gala.
03:36So they're taking Nog to Starfleet Academy in style, and leaving Morn in charge of the
03:41bar.
03:42Good luck getting him to shut up and sell some drinks.
03:45This terrible time travel comes in when the warp drive won't shut down and the ship is
03:49about to fly apart.
03:50No problem though, all they need to do is vent plasma from the warp core into the chemocyte
03:54to cause a cascade reaction, then modulate that reaction to create an inversion wave
03:59in the warp field, which should push the ship back into normal space.
04:03Suffice it to say, the Ferengi trio, and a very persistent dog, find themselves in a
04:07post-war pickle in Roswell instead.
04:12Number 7.
04:13Temporal Transporter.
04:15Judging by this, and another entry on this list, it doesn't seem like they've quite
04:19ironed out all of the kinks in time travel by the 29th century.
04:23Perhaps if they'd spent a little less time naming temporal paradoxes and a little more
04:27time working on the transporters, they wouldn't have all those former, current, future captains
04:31to arrest.
04:32Pot quiz!
04:33What causes the chroniton flux of .003?
04:35Answer, it's the last traces of the crew of the timeship Relativity, an all-is-not
04:40Wells class vessel beaming you from a seemingly wherever and whenever they like.
04:44The Relativity was helmed by Captain Braxton, the one who gets the four crimes you're going
04:50to commit treatment.
04:51His future self had been dipping into Voyager's timeline, trying to destroy it.
04:55Never mind the headaches, but probably those too.
04:58This molecule mixing method of time travel will give you a debilitating sensory aphasia
05:04before it causes full-blown temporal psychosis.
05:07Lieutenant Duquesne warned Seven of Nine as much.
05:09If, whilst you're back in the past, you encounter any interference that affects the transporter
05:13lock, you might also find yourself dead on the other side of the temporal threshold, only
05:19to be recruited again for the third time.
05:22Which is most definitely not a charm, eh?
05:26Number 6.
05:27The Nexus
05:29We've already spoken about the truly trippy faux nirvana that is the Nexus in 10 most mind-bending
05:34spatial anomalies, but it deserves a second mention here as an especially dire, and notably
05:40niche, means for time travel.
05:42Sure, once you're in you can create any moment of your past, present or future, but that's
05:47all just smoke and mirrors.
05:48As pure time travel, in terms of methods, the Nexus can also drop you off at any point
05:53in history in the real world, but none of that is worth the effort of getting into it
05:58in the first place.
05:59The energy ribbon that provides access to this phony heaven only passes through our galaxy
06:03every 39.1 years, so you'll have to wait.
06:07Even then, you'd still have to track the bloomin' thing down.
06:10Flying a ship directly into the Nexus is a very risky proposition, so if you're anything
06:14like a certain Sauron, you'll have to make it come to you by destroying a star or two
06:19and not being overly concerned by killing countless millions on any inhabited worlds.
06:24A mere inconvenience for you on the way to your joy blanket.
06:28The Nexus is then best seen as a metaphor for addiction.
06:32The feeling of pure atemporal euphoria it procures will trap you inside unless, as for
06:38Picard in any case, you have the external help and the will to leave it all behind.
06:43Something which is far, far easier said than done.
06:47Number 5.
06:49Q.
06:50Q.
06:51Just Q.
06:52They are a method unto themselves.
06:53If it's not John Delancey's version happy snapping his and your way across time, then
06:58it's his, on and off screen, sun causing temporal chaos at the click of a finger.
07:02What you don't have, Aunt Cathy, is unlimited control of space, matter and time.
07:06Q, the humanity on trial incarnation, was equally as fond of a quasi-historical recreation as he
07:12was of pure time travel.
07:14Another Q, Quinn, once tried to traverse the timeline in an attempt to escape his jailers,
07:19the Q continuum itself, throwing Janeway and crew back to the baryonic birth of the
07:24universe.
07:25Most examples of John Delancey's Q in the role of temporal trickster seem to have come
07:30with a lesson that all those involved could have done without learning the hard way.
07:34In Tapestry, Q and Picard only got to the heart of the matter after a stay in a new timeline
07:39and a trip back to the monster maroons.
07:42In all good things, Q and the Continuum had the galaxy on tenderhooks with logic defying
07:46temporal and non-only.
07:47By the time it came to Star Trek Picard's second season, the eponymous playmate had had
07:51enough of Q's bullshit, only to get a slap across the face.
07:57Technically Q did save a lot of lives, including Elnor's and, in a very roundabout way, billions
08:03across the galaxy, but the time travel was all still very convoluted.
08:07Q's actions also led to the next terrible method on this list.
08:11Number 4, Slingshot with Borg Queen.
08:15The slingshot or light speed breakaway factor effect for temporal displacement is almost
08:20frighteningly common in Star Trek.
08:22No doubt the best known example of the procedure was to get the bounty back to the 80s where
08:26where the whales at in Star Trek 4, the one with the whales.
08:30But Slingshot was, in fact, first used in the original series episode Tomorrow is Yesterday
08:35to get the Enterprise home and in Assignment Earth for that historical research that we
08:40just don't really talk about.
08:42It is also featured quite copiously in Beta Canon.
08:46It's not so much the technique itself that's bad, although accelerating a starship around
08:50the gravity well of a star at countless times the speed of light is certainly no warp
08:53in the park and seriously can't be good for your health.
08:58It's more the fact that if Spock isn't on hand to help with the calculations, the next
09:01best option becomes a Borg Queen.
09:06Oh go on then, let's chance it.
09:07You only live once, unless you're snapped back into existence by Q.
09:10Surely there are more intelligences who can isolate the divergence and micro-shift for
09:15any chronotonic radiation, as Dr Jurati put it in Penance.
09:19Seven of Nine was right there in the room and she's pretty darn smart in any universe.
09:25Even if Jurati did eventually manage to change things, taking any version of the Borg Queen
09:30with you on a trip anywhere, or when, it's just a truly terrible idea.
09:36Number three, artificially generated temporal rift.
09:40Captain Braxton's at it again, or rather he's at it for the first time in the strict
09:44and most forward flowing chronologies.
09:46Yet another time travel method from the 29th century that can, especially in the wrong and
09:50untrained hands, caused the most calamitous of catastrophes.
09:55The destruction of Earth's solar system, for one.
09:58The use of a phrase, far out, for two.
10:01Captain Braxton's time travel technique in Future's End was Temporal Rift, artificially
10:06generated by his single occupant timeship Eon, another on the nose vessel name from the 29th
10:12century time police.
10:13Far from preventing the catastrophe, Braxton was the cause of it.
10:16Well, actually it was Henry Starling, sly entrepreneur and winner of Worst Use of Photoshop, several
10:21years running, who would, did, will fly the uncalibrated Eon into the future, before Captain
10:27Janeway's photon torpedo badassery.
10:30But that means nothing without Braxton's intervention in the first place.
10:34Oh, a B that leads to C that leads to A, as Braxton himself admits in late 20th century
10:39Santa Monica.
10:40Yeah, yeah, we get it.
10:42Mostly.
10:43Good noting that alternate future Admiral Janeway used a relatively similar technology, nabbed
10:51from a particularly pissed off Klingon to get to the past for shindigs with a younger self.
10:56The chrono deflector burnt out en route, so the whole thing was a one way trip.
11:01Number two.
11:02Picard Squared.
11:04Never meet your heroes, they say.
11:06In this case, we get two Captain Picards, quite literally for the price of one, when the
11:09Enterprise-D finds a Federation shuttlecraft where it shouldn't be.
11:13For Prime, let's call him, Picard's psychological trauma alone of having to shoot his doppelganger
11:19from the future, this is a truly awful method of time travel.
11:22Although at least that Picard wasn't at the other end of the phaser.
11:26Moreover, the mere six hour hop into the past afforded by the energy vortex in Time Squared,
11:31including the loss of the future Enterprise-D with all hands, bar this ill-fated Picard.
11:37Having witnessed the destruction of his ship, future Picard then had to wake up in a nightmarish
11:41world where the clocks don't match, only to be interrogated and berated by his former
11:45self in his semi-conscious state.
11:48We have apparently intersected with… something.
11:52There's a being of some sort inside this… something, that now wants both Picards.
11:59As with a lot of terrible methods of time travel, the only way forwards is backwards to the beginning,
12:05on the same course to Endecore.
12:07Number 1, Daniels.
12:10On the NX-01 there was a two-man time travel show, except when T'Pol was roped in for
12:15a let's confuse trip, trip to Detroit, in which one of the protagonists was a relatively
12:19unwilling participant, or rather rarely had any choice in the proceedings.
12:24Temporal agent from the 31st century, for whom time had, and will have, a very different
12:29meaning, the dubious Daniels would often decide to dispatch Captain Archer, in particular,
12:35back and forth in time whenever he pleased.
12:37Plucked from the present without being asked, Archer was just trying to go about his day
12:40or get some sleep in the traditionally linear fashion.
12:44Going to bed in your skivvies in deep space, then waking up on earth ten months ago shirtless
12:48in pyjama bottoms has really got to mess with your mind.
12:51On balance, Daniels was more of a help than a hindrance to the Enterprise and crew, nevertheless,
12:57in addition to the disappearing Archer phenomenon, his time portal method for time travel was
13:02distinctly dangerous and unreliable.
13:04On one occasion it left both him and Archer stranded on a post-apocalyptic 31st century
13:09Earth.
13:10Then, things got even worse during a stormy layover in an alternate World War II.
13:15Let's just say that version of Daniels won't be going back to serving scrambled eggs.
13:20Was that enough to scramble your brain?
13:22Certainly was enough to scramble mine.
13:24Thank you very much Jack Kiley for writing this, and don't forget to check out his article
13:27over on whatculture.com.
13:29Thank you so much everyone for following along, you're awesome, you are wonderful, and whether
13:33you are just now starting this article because of the absolute joy of time travel, I hope that
13:38you enjoy it.
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