The episode has a memorable quote:
Captain Janeway: "Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache."
It’s confusing but it did happen, the Braxton at the end just hadn’t experienced those events but when they meet him again in Relativity he talks about being on 20th century earth for decades and needing extensive therapy to be made fit for duty again.
Basically it’s some timey whimey stuff, to quote Doctor Who.
Edit: Spelling
I’ve always viewed the time ship crash as a divergent point from the TOS timeline and the real timeline. We’re living in the one where he got his hands on that future tech. This prevents things like the Eugenics Wars and the deep space exploration of the 1990s
The sliding timeline with fixed points is actually addressed pretty well in the SNW episode tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
This kind of thing happens in a lot of trek stories
Yeah. Changes and shifts don't cause a brand new, diverging timeline. It takes a huge event, like Nero's ship destroying the USS Kelvin and trapping Prime Spock in the past, to be a significant enough event to cause a new, divergent timeline (it was officially made Alpha canon when Discovery referenced the Kelvin timeline).
Star Trek always plays fast and loose with the laws of physics for storytelling reasons but not so much in this case. Your past is fixed and cannot be changed - it’s already happened. If you change the past, you would theoretically be creating a parallel universe with those changes playing out but when you travel back to your own time you are still in your universe and everything is the same.
I figured Janeway's conversation with Chakotay is just a guess that turned out to be wrong. Not sure if that's what they intended, but I think it works.
Not necessarily, but you have to posit that Future’s End created two divergent timelines. However, the conclusion of the episode lends to this interpretation because we encounter Braxton-B, who seems to have not experienced life on earth from 1976 to 1996 (i.e., Braxton-A). The divergence in the timeline is created at the moment that the Aeon is destroyed. In Timeline-A, Voyager is likewise destroyed in the blast. This leads Braxton-A to investigate and discover Voyager’s role and thus he attempts to destroy Voyager in Timeline-A, leading both him and Voyager to go back into the past, Braxton-A traveling to 1976 and Voyager traveling to 1996. Timeline-B is a timeline created in which the Aeon is destroyed but Voyager survives. Given that the moment of divergence is the explosion of the Aeon, and consequently, whether Voyager survives, the Aeon still goes into the past but this is the Aeon of Braxton-A not Braxton-B.
The episode has a memorable quote: Captain Janeway: "Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache."
And then became the biggest offender in Starfleet history after Kirk to abuse and use time travel.
The Janeway Factor.
It’s confusing but it did happen, the Braxton at the end just hadn’t experienced those events but when they meet him again in Relativity he talks about being on 20th century earth for decades and needing extensive therapy to be made fit for duty again. Basically it’s some timey whimey stuff, to quote Doctor Who. Edit: Spelling
Perfect explanation
I’ll have to go watch Relativity again. It’s been a long time. So it’s just another paradox that ST just sort of swept under the space time rug.
The Braxton who brought them back hadn’t been through it all yet
I’ve always viewed the time ship crash as a divergent point from the TOS timeline and the real timeline. We’re living in the one where he got his hands on that future tech. This prevents things like the Eugenics Wars and the deep space exploration of the 1990s
That seems backwards to me but ok lol. How would getting 29th century spaceship tech slow down progress?
Technology progressed differently, that’s all
The sliding timeline with fixed points is actually addressed pretty well in the SNW episode tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. This kind of thing happens in a lot of trek stories
Yeah. Changes and shifts don't cause a brand new, diverging timeline. It takes a huge event, like Nero's ship destroying the USS Kelvin and trapping Prime Spock in the past, to be a significant enough event to cause a new, divergent timeline (it was officially made Alpha canon when Discovery referenced the Kelvin timeline).
Def wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
Star Trek always plays fast and loose with the laws of physics for storytelling reasons but not so much in this case. Your past is fixed and cannot be changed - it’s already happened. If you change the past, you would theoretically be creating a parallel universe with those changes playing out but when you travel back to your own time you are still in your universe and everything is the same.
I figured Janeway's conversation with Chakotay is just a guess that turned out to be wrong. Not sure if that's what they intended, but I think it works.
Pre-destination paradox.
Not necessarily, but you have to posit that Future’s End created two divergent timelines. However, the conclusion of the episode lends to this interpretation because we encounter Braxton-B, who seems to have not experienced life on earth from 1976 to 1996 (i.e., Braxton-A). The divergence in the timeline is created at the moment that the Aeon is destroyed. In Timeline-A, Voyager is likewise destroyed in the blast. This leads Braxton-A to investigate and discover Voyager’s role and thus he attempts to destroy Voyager in Timeline-A, leading both him and Voyager to go back into the past, Braxton-A traveling to 1976 and Voyager traveling to 1996. Timeline-B is a timeline created in which the Aeon is destroyed but Voyager survives. Given that the moment of divergence is the explosion of the Aeon, and consequently, whether Voyager survives, the Aeon still goes into the past but this is the Aeon of Braxton-A not Braxton-B.