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In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the crew of the Enterprise travel back in time and witness the Borg working to prevent Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight. They then decide to directly intervene with events to allow history to take the course they learned about in school, where Zefram Cochrane's warp flight is a success and the Vulcans initiate first contact with the humans.

My question is whether these events (the Borg attack on Bozeman Montana and the Enterprise crew's efforts to "restore" history) were always a part of history, or if the actual facts of history were changed by the actions taken by the Borg and the Enterprise crew, even if the outcome was the same.

Quite possibly relevant: in the ENT episode "Regeneration," which features the Borg as the featured enemy of the episode, Captain Archer recalls a story that Zefram Cochrane once told of people from the future coming to help him out (an obvious reference to the events of Star Trek: First Contact), but that Cochrane later retracted these statements.

NeutronStar
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  • are you asking about temporal mechanics, loops, and paradoxes or a 'real-world' history of Star Trek plot and writing question? – NKCampbell Mar 04 '16 at 18:44
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    They were always a part of history after they became always part of history. Before that, they weren't. – Valorum Mar 04 '16 at 18:49
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    Further complicated by the timing of NX-01 Enterprise's launch being influenced by The Temporal Cold War. Sequence, here, is borderline meaningless. – Politank-Z Mar 04 '16 at 18:50
  • Tempted to edit the above to say "NX-01 Enterprise is meaningless" – NKCampbell Mar 04 '16 at 19:09
  • Canonically speaking: Prior to the movie those events had yet to be established. So as far as we know, that is how history played out and all the Enterprise crew did was "restore" history. – Angelo DeMichaels Mar 04 '16 at 20:46
  • My take on time travel and alternative timelines in the collective Star Trek canon is that there is no overriding theory enforced on the writers. Instead, whatever works best to advance the story sets the frame, but only for that story. And that makes sense. After all, it's a TV show (and a number of movies), not a rigorous exploration of philosophical or scientific theories. And would we really want it to be anything else? – rosesunhill Mar 06 '16 at 17:58
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    @rosesunhill - Are you seriously suggesting that Star Trek isn't actually a documentary series? – Valorum Mar 06 '16 at 18:17
  • I would say not. My personal theory, and it is only that so I'm not making it an answer, is that the actions of the Enterprise-E crew did alter the timeline in some minor ways, one of which might be that the NX-01 was named Enterprise rather than, I don't know, Dauntless maybe. As for "Enterprise" the series, I've always thought it most useful to think of the series as a "black box", as in, here was the timeline before and here it was after, rather than trying to track changes from each specific episode. – Emsley Wyatt Oct 06 '21 at 22:29

2 Answers2

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According to Seven of Nine (in Voy: Relativity), the whole event was a causal loop. Given that the Borg have a pretty reasonable grasp of temporal mechanics, I think we can take her at her word:

DUCANE: [what is] The Pogo Paradox[?]

SEVEN: A causality loop in which interference to prevent an event actually triggers the same event.

DUCANE: Excellent. Can you give me an example?

SEVEN: The Borg once travelled back in time to stop Zefram Cochrane from breaking the warp barrier. They succeeded, but that in turn led the Starship Enterprise to intervene. They assisted Cochrane with the flight the Borg was trying to prevent. Causal loop complete.

DUCANE: So, in a way, the Federation owes its existence to the Borg.

SEVEN: You're welcome. The Seven of Nine paradox.

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Valorum
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  • Star Trek may not use "causal loop" in the same way that philosophers do though--usually it's presupposed that if you have a causal loop something like the Novikov self-consistency principle applies, but that can't be true in this case because we did briefly see an altered history where the Borg had taken over the planet by the 24th century. So it may be that if you go back in time to prevent some event E, and do change history but in a way that still ends up causing E to happen, Seven would call that a "causal loop". – Hypnosifl Mar 04 '16 at 20:13
  • @Hypnosifl - What the Enterprise was viewing was an alternate timeline, not an event in the prime universe. When they went back in time, they returned to the original timeline. – Valorum Mar 04 '16 at 20:16
  • Maybe, but Seven's statement doesn't prove that, since as I said it's perfectly possible that in a universe where the time travel can alter the timeline (unlike the usual assumption of philosophers and physicists who talk about causal loops), she would use "causal loop" to refer to situations where the timeline is altered somewhat by time travelers trying to prevent some event, but in a way that still ends up causing the event to occur anyway. That would be consistent with Seven's definition "interference to prevent an event actually triggers the same event". – Hypnosifl Mar 04 '16 at 20:26
  • @Hypnosifl - As I said in my commentary, the Borg clearly have a far better handle on this than the Federation. I trust her statement implicitly. – Valorum Mar 04 '16 at 20:30
  • I trust it too, I just think the in-universe meaning of "causal loop" could be a little different than the real-world way the term is used by philosophers and physicists. There is nothing in her description of what she means by "causal loop", or in the term itself, that's obviously inconsistent with the idea that you can have a causal loop even if history is changed slightly, as long as the event the time travelers were trying to alter still ends up happening in the new timeline. – Hypnosifl Mar 04 '16 at 20:39
  • Bootstrap paradox! –  Mar 04 '16 at 21:09
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    @Axelrod - Yes, but with the added twist that your attempt to stop the bootstrap from occurring actually results in the bootstrap occurring. I bet that sort of thing really annoys time travelers. – Valorum Mar 04 '16 at 21:11
  • @Richard - I think I may disagree with the alternate timeline considering the script:

    "PICARD: They must have done it in the past. ...They went back and assimilated Earth. ...Changed history.

    CRUSHER: Then if they changed history why are we still here?

    DATA: The temporal wake must somehow have protected us from the changes in the time-line."

    This distinction may just be a question of semantics

     – NKCampbell Mar 05 '16 at 00:42
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My answer would be no, based on what the Enterprise crew saw before they followed the Borg back in time. History had changed, and Earth was completely assimilated by the Borg. Therefore, going back in time alters history. Picard and company went back to nudge the timeline close enough to their original timeline that any minor differences remaining wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

One can assume in the original timeline, Cochrane made his flight without assistance. Then the Borg came along and prevented this, causing a new timeline where Earth is easily assimilated. Then the Enterprise goes back and creates a third timeline.

John Sensebe
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  • There only appear to be two timelines, one in which the Borg assimilate the Earth (in the absence of the Enterprise) and one in which they don't (where the Enterprise is present in the past). I don't really see the need for a third timeline. – Valorum Mar 05 '16 at 00:50
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    The need for a third timeline is that first you had Cochrane, then you have Cochrane and Borg, then you have Cochrane and Borg and Enterprise. If the Enterprise was always there, then there is no way Earth could have been assimilated, as seen by the crew. – John Sensebe Mar 05 '16 at 00:53
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    Ah, but that's the point of a temporal loop. Cause can follow effect. – Valorum Mar 05 '16 at 08:27
  • @JohnSensebe : +1, I agree that certain aspects can only be explained by the existence of an additional timeline, e.g. Seven's parents knowing about the Borg before the events of "Q Who" and the Federation having no knowledge of the Borg despite the events of "Regeneration" in Enterprise. These events cannot be explained by a loop alone. See my answer here. – Praxis Mar 05 '16 at 11:16
  • @Richard, but the cause existed already. Cochrane made his flight without assistance. Otherwise the timeline in which the Borg assimilate Earth is impossible. Picard decides to go back in time because of this new timeline. He's not generating the past; he's correcting it. If the Enterprise were always part of the past, the Borg timeline could not have happened, because Data and Picard would have always killed the Borg Queen. – John Sensebe Mar 06 '16 at 15:33
  • @JohnSensebe - Seven of Nine suggests that there was no initial successful attempt. The Borg always intervened in the past, causing the Enterprise to involve themselves in the launch. – Valorum Mar 06 '16 at 15:54
  • @Richard - One problem with positing both a fixed timeline #1 with a temporal loop and an alternate timeline #2 is that it implies that when the Borg went back in time, they were split in two, with one arriving in the past of the timeline #1 and one arriving in the past of the timeline #2, but when the Enterprise followed them back in time, it did not split in two, arriving in the past of timeline #1 but not in the past of the timeline #2 for some unknown reason. Though I guess an alternative possibility is that the Enterprise also appeared in timeline #2's past, but failed to stop the Borg. – Hypnosifl Mar 06 '16 at 18:59
  • @Richard, but if the Borg were always in the past, then the Enterprise was, too, and you can't have the Borg timeline. In a causality loop, no other timeline is possible. Also, Seven of Nine was a drone. The Borg may have a terrific grasp of temporal mechanics, but that doesn't mean each nameless drone does. It's like Back to the Future. Marty goes back and creates a timeline where he was never born. He has to correct the timeline before it fully asserts itself, so he gets his parents together, but the resulting timeline is not the same one he left. – John Sensebe Mar 07 '16 at 15:34