this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
23 points (96.0% liked)

Daystrom Institute

3471 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

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.

3. Be diplomatic.

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.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
23
The Leif Ericson Class Incident (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So, I just got my copy of the Lower Deck's Handbook (it's AMAZING) but one of the sections of the handbook goes into the legacy of the ships to carry the name Cerritos. (Think along the terms of the ships to carry the name Stargazer) and one in particular caught my eye...

A Leif Ericson class USS Cerritos was answering a distress call from Earth (in a manner not dissimilar to the Enterprise-E in First Contact), but before the Cerritos could reach Earth a Klingon Bird of Prey manned by Captain Kirk beat them to it.

But an unforeseen consequence of Kirk's time hopping erased the Leif Ericson class from reality.

It was a short blurb, but I actually felt chills. I'm reminded of the scene where Spock expresses uncertainty on how to accurately bring them back to the present, and Bones tells Spock to just go with his gut or something along those terms.

With the implied context that a miscalculation on Spock's part led to the erasure of the Leif Ericson class and presumably all hands, do you think Spock made the right call, given what he knew at the time?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, that’s easy to say, because we’re not attached to the Leif Ericsson class or anyone onboard.

But would the same argument be made if instead it was Bajor, or Kronos that disappeared from existence?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well that's the thing - something can't really "disappear from existence," unless we're talking about something that did exist and was destroyed.

But if it never existed at all...well, there's literally nothing lost.

The exception to this would be if Kirk and his crew remembered the Cerritos existing before the time travel shenanigans.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But if it never existed at all…well, there’s literally nothing lost.

But from an objective, non-linear perspective, the USS Leif Ericson did exist, before it was erased. A temporal agent with a timeline map would be able to follow the ship across its own personal timeline, until the point where it abruptly ends because the timeline it is currently in caused it to be erased.

It's similar to the Federation and billions of Borg lives existing and not existing in First Contact, or any of the myriad times the Federation was erased by time travel, and then restored.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Even accepting this to be true, Spock sure wouldn't have any way of knowing, or any reason to care.