Your in charge of the Federation or the Empire

[Cesario]

For the specific time-travel applications I noted, I don't need anything more than the warp slingshot maneuver, which has reliably transported ships and crews forward and backward in time, deliberately and without fuss, since the days of Captain Kirk.

If I really need to grab another time machine off the shelf, we have a ton to choose from. The Borg time tunnel from First Contact was duplicated at the end of the film to return the Enterprise crew to the present. Chronoton particles interacting with ablative armor is known to be capable of routing the Transporter through time, as occurred in the Deep Space Nine episode Past Tense with Gabriel Bell. Kemocite can be used in known time-travel applications, notably the Roswell episode Little Green Men, from Deep Space Nine. All three cases follow the same pattern as the Warp Slingshot maneuver in its first appearance. The initial time travel event is caused by something outside our heroes control, but our heroes figure out how to use it deliberately to resolve the episode's plot and get everyone to the time period they're supposed to be. I prefer the Warp Slingshot because it's been used in multiple episodes and thus can't be classified as a one-episode-wonder, but we've got other time travel options out there.

I wouldn't want to even ask for the use of the Orb of Time, for the same reason I wouldn't want to try my luck with the Guardian of Forever. These are devices owned and operated by higher powers, and my policy, as noted above, was to avoid contact with godlike aliens for the duration of the war effort.

Yes, in-universe time travel isn't used to solve a lot of problems. It is used to solve problems, however. Most notably, it's been used to retrieve lost maguffins which are needed desperately in the present. Humpback Whales, for example.

The only truly new application I'm putting it to is getting next Thursday's intelligence briefing. While they don't use the technology for that purpose, they've also never faced a galaxy spanning Empire, with a war machine fueled by the industrial capacity of over a million worlds, bent on their enslavement or annihilation. When faced with outside-context problems, it's standing Star Trek policy to stretch your range a bit. Besides, they aren't deciding to do this. I, as supreme military commander, am deciding to do this.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Surely if you jump into the future and swipe next thursday's intel briefing, and act on it in the present, the data of that briefing will be altered by your temporal shenanigns.

For instance, suppose your future-briefing tells you that ISd Murder will be above Tarsus III on Monday. You go to reinforce the defences at Tarsus III, the Murder sees this and strikes at Vega IV instead. Hence, your briefing does you no good.

[Cesario]

Of course. Just like any intelligence source, this one will be limited in what it can tell us. But there are plenty of things that the Empire can't change between now and next Thursday.

For example, apparently the superlaser on that Death Star 2 was really fully operational when we ran the attack on Wednesday. Might be best not to send the rebel fleet into that trap. The codes the Rebel's Bothan spies managed to retrieve by Thursday are old when they got them, but they're perfectly up to date when we receive our time-travel briefing.

And it isn't as though the intel about the Murder did us no good. It saved Tarsus III, after all. Vega IV was a harder target or a lower value one in the opinion of the Imperial military, otherwise they would've planned to attack Vega IV originally.

[Ryag Han]

i think you guys misunderstood a little bit in scenario 1. your in CONTROL! its a coup for god sake. if you wish to get rid of Section 31, just keep your power for as long as it is needed to do so. i don't think there will be much protest over disbanding something that doesn't officially exists. then after you're done, get back on track.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'll concede that point, and the number of time-travel mechanisms.

Still, I always find the idea of time-travel as a solution to a war with the Empire to be wankish. In fairness though, your idea for using it to gather intel from the near-future is far more reasonable than most.

Just please don't advocate going back and killing the Emperor etc in the past.

[Ryag Han]

Palpatine's redesigned palace had a total height of three kilometers, and over two square kilometers in area

hmm, just for comparasion, any building on this planet with that kind of area?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I also remember a quote from "X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble" where the Imperial Palace's Great Hallway (or somesuch giant room) was big enough for Rogue Squadron to dogfight and entire wing of TIEs, and it could have held an ISD inside.

[Ryag Han]

I'll concede that point, and the number of time-travel mechanisms.

Still, I always find the idea of time-travel as a solution to a war with the Empire to be wankish. In fairness though, your idea for using it to gather intel from the near-future is far more reasonable than most.

Just please don't advocate going back and killing the Emperor etc in the past.

going back to kill Palpy would turn out bad, one way or another. either Republic loses the Clone Wars, which would leave Dooku, Grevious and Gunray in charge of the galaxy, or nothing will happen due to the grandfather paradox, or you step on a fly and change the future of the universe.

[Cesario]

It seems to me that at any point in the Emperor's known history, he's an impossibly dangerous Sith Lord, and no easier to kill than he is in the present. He's done a number on any historical records of his more vulnerable years, and as a result, is actually pretty protected from being assassinated as a baby even if I were so inclined.

If I were to attempt anything to rewrite the Empire's history, it would be to send a doctor to get Padme some prenatal care, thus eliminating Vader's motivation to become Palpetine's apprentice and allowing Mace Windu to finish off old prune face at the critical juncture.

Really as soon as Vader learned we had time machines in the Milky Way, I would expect him to do the same thing himself. No one with as many regrets as Darth Vader would not use a time machine to fix things if given the chance. Besides, who wouldn't want to see Darth Vader force choke young Anakin Skywalker into submission for being a whinny idiot as he's about to make the biggest mistake of his life?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well, if you wanted to take out Palpatine AND you have a time-travel method AND you know where he'll be AND you can get there at the right time AND you have no objection to collateral damage, I would think plating and detonating an antimatter bomb (say, a one-gigaton charge) under the Senate building during the emergency session in TPM would do.

[Cesario]

If I can plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant just before the Clone Wars, why would I need to go back in time? I can just as easily plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant in the present and blow up Palpetine then. After that, I can watch the Empire collapse under its own weight in the present.

It seems to me there's no good way of knowing when he started prepping his clone bodies, so blowing up the Senate building might just let him accelerate his plans to take over using the blown up Senate as justification.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Possible, I don't know when he started that cloning shite either. Of course, if you nuke the Senate, you've already penetrated the SW galaxy to a high degree. Why ot simply drop a Genesis device on Byss as well as taking out the Senate.

[Cesario]

I think my best bet for offing the Evil Wizard in charge of this mess is probably the Psionic Resonator. The device's function was to turn a person's evil and aggression against them. The only known defense was inner peace. If that isn't a weapon custom made for taking out Sith Lords, I don't know what is.

Nuking his cloning facilities won't stop him from coming back in one form or another. It'll just slow him down and force him to take suboptimal bodies. You need a way to kill the force-ghost that keeps animating them.

If the psionic resonator doesn't work, we go back to the well and look at all the other ghostbusting technology Starfleet has used from time to time.

[dworkin]

OK, DXIII and any other males can wear miniskirts as well if they want. I'm sure it'll be fabulous.

[StarSword]

Palpatine's redesigned palace had a total height of three kilometers, and over two square kilometers in area

hmm, just for comparasion, any building on this planet with that kind of area?

Wikipedia's list of the largest buildings in the world.

The answer is, not remotely. The tallest building on Earth is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and that's only 828 meters tall. And none of our buildings even come close to matching the Imperial Palace's land area.

If I can plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant just before the Clone Wars, why would I need to go back in time? I can just as easily plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant in the present and blow up Palpetine then. After that, I can watch the Empire collapse under its own weight in the present.

Biggest problem with the scenario: Palpatine is Force-sensitive. His precognitive powers ("danger sense" and the like) are liable to alert him to the presence of a huge freaking blob of antimatter inside the building.

[Stofsk]

Just like his precog warned him Vader was about to turn on him at the end of Jedi, right?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Just like his precog warned him Vader was about to turn on him at the end of Jedi, right?

As clearly demonstrated in my fanfic, being thrown into a bottomless pit was all a part of his master plan.

[Stark]

He probably had his notifications turned off. Those beeps get pretty annoying when you're busy gloating!

[The Romulan Republic]

To be perfectly honest, I'm still not entirely convinced Section 31 exists.

Sloan is the only confirmed agent, and I find the Romulans' theory of him as a lone lunatic convincing, since that's how he's acted in every known appearance. He probably got the name from Riker's bad holonovel.

Besides, if we are to believe Enterprise actually happened, then it isn't the Federation charter they're referring to. It's the old Earth Starfleet charter. Their legal authority expired when that government expired.

And even if I go with the idea of them being legally in the right, I'm less concerned about the legal technicalities of shutting down the genocidal black agency answerable to no one inside my organization, and more concerned with the practical matters of doing so. I'm willing to spend whatever time is necessary in a cushy Federation prison for the price of stopping this dangerous organization.

Fortunately my increased focus on the mental health of the admiralty should be a lot of help in depriving Section 31 of support, since non-crazy admirals will recognize what a horrifically bad idea letting people like Sloan act out their own agenda is. And if Section 31 doesn't exist, non-crazy admirals will be less inclined to fall for the deceptions of lone madmen claiming to be part of an organization you didn't know existed.

I really doubt Sloan's the only one. Someone built a bio-weapon to exterminate the Founders. Someone handled the cover-up. These are not things a lone nut would likely have the resources to do.

[Cesario]

If I can plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant just before the Clone Wars, why would I need to go back in time? I can just as easily plant an antimatter bomb on Coruscant in the present and blow up Palpetine then. After that, I can watch the Empire collapse under its own weight in the present.

Biggest problem with the scenario: Palpatine is Force-sensitive. His precognitive powers ("danger sense" and the like) are liable to alert him to the presence of a huge freaking blob of antimatter inside the building.

You'll note my use of time machines intended specifically to address and neutralize the advantage his precog gives him. He gets a vision and follows it to safety. My future reports indicate exactly what action he took to avert my assassination attempt, so I send my assassin over to his escape route instead of where he was originally going to go. I'm willing to pit my Seven Days style briefings against his "always in motion" visions of things yet to come.

I really doubt Sloan's the only one. Someone built a bio-weapon to exterminate the Founders. Someone handled the cover-up. These are not things a lone nut would likely have the resources to do.

There doesn't have to be a coverup if it was a lone nut doing it. As to the ability to build the bio-weapon, do we really know that it was beyond Sloan's personal abilities? We do know that he personally knew enough about the weapon to have the cure tucked away in his own brain. That seems an ideal point to handle strategic division of information, especially in a setting with telepaths and Romulan mind-probes.

I also like the lone nut theory better narratively. If a lone madman can single handedly commit genocide against a race who's entire culture was set up around protecting its members from attack, how can anyone be safe? If it takes a conspiracy with the resources of a major galactic power to pull something like that off, that's comforting in its own way.

A lot of the thematics surrounding the Dominion war, particularly the stuff tying into Bashir's stories, were of the power of individuals to influence the course of major events in unexpected and sometimes terrifying ways. Jack and his merry band, for example, impersonated a Starfleet admiral and bluffed their way to Deep Space Nine with a replicated uniform and a single sentence, and the entire lesson of the psychohistory episode with them was about how a single individual can influence the course of history.

We also have the numerous examples of the Changelings fucking with humanity in order to get us paranoid and swatting at shadows and conspiracies that aren't really there. Sloan faking a conspiracy or really believing he's part of one in his psychosis fits perfectly with the themes of misdirection and reading too much into things.

I also prefer the Tal Shiar to be actually competent instead of jobbing to the new, mysterious Section 31 that even they don't know exists. They're the professional spymasters, not Bashir.

[Stofsk]

One of the things I wish they'd done instead of Section 31 was portray Sloan as a member of Starfleet Intelligence who simply gets fed up and goes rogue. They played him too much as a villain with megalomania as the motivation, rather than as someone who started off with the best of intentions and then one day simply found himself in hell. A mirror to Sisko's 'In the Pale Moonlight' if you will.

RE: the bioweapon etc. Well here's the thing, Sloan could have used his influence and resources as a high-ranking intelligence operative to set up some kind of rogue unit anyway. We only have his word that Section 31 is the real deal. Why are we assuming he's telling the truth? He could easily have bullshitted Bashir into believing him when it's really him and a handful of other guys who don't even know what it is that they're doing anyway (because Sloan keeps everyone compartmentalised).

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned doing anything about Space OSHA or whatever their equivalent is.. I mean.. no handrails, bottomless pits in starships, exploding consoles, jeffries tubes... someone's been corrupting the organization clearly!

Also waht parameters are being put on time travel exactly as how it works and what it can/can't do? "abusing the hell out of it" is all well and good, but unless you have some sort of consistent framework it just becomes a potentially massive no limits fallacy, which will lead to endless bickering about it. Much like with borg adaptation, replicators, subspace etc.

[Cesario]

The Galaxy Class was noted repeatedly throughout TNG as having some serious design flaws. It's telling that for all the abuse Voyager's warp core suffered in its run, it survived half a dozen ejections and was still working by the end of the series.

The handrail thing, I'm still chalking up to Riker having terrible taste in holoprograms, but even if not, that's still ancient history. I'm not going to get all up-in-arms about the lack of proper safety restraints on the Wright Brothers' prototype.

I've got nothing for the exploding keyboards, though.



As to the time travel being problematic and leading to no-limits fallacies, no more so than Jedi precog.

I'm simply positing that time travel works the same way it's worked onscreen 90% of the times it's appeared in Star Trek. You go back in time, and you can change something, events will proceed from there, with you not being effected by the changes due to you being in the past at the time. If you go forward in time from there, you will see the results of any changes you made, and will be the only one aware that anything has happened to the past.

We know that the warp slingshot maneuver can get you at least as far back as the Cold War, and I'm not really interested in going back further than that point anyway in my defense plans.

I'm not planning on grabbing future weapons plans, or rewriting the history of Palpetine's empire. I'm interested in using some of the lower-key applications of the tech.

Early warning systems against attacks so I know where to position my defenses. Knowing exactly where enemy ships will exit hyperspace so I can use a subspace transporter to drop an antimatter bomb right next to their reactor cores before they have a chance to open fire.

Getting the intelligence reports from my spies before I have to send them out (so I can send them on different missions instead and act on their reports from the unrealized timeline). That way we'll know the Death Star 2 is a trap weeks before Ackbar has a chance to state the obvious.

As to whether all this does is creates parallel timelines that retain existence after the time-travel event, there's no evidence whatsoever that time travel works that way in Trek, plenty of evidence that it doesn't, and even if it secretly does off-screen, that doesn't effect my intentions about how to use the technology as supreme commander of the Federation's defense.

[Connor MacLeod]

I've had this debate with D13 before.. time travel in Trek seems basically to work however the Writers want it to that particular week. Sometimes it does the "multiple univreseS" things, sometimes it affects things in its own timeline. That's part of the problem of figuring out Time travel enough for it to be useful in a debate - you have to know to a certain extent what it can or can't do, otherwise the other side is just going to accuse you of making shit up. I mean look at the "reset button example" - perfectly valid, but then why are they stopped from going back any farther? Why not back to when say, the GE was formed, or when Palpy was born, and smother him in the radle? Why not back to when the Republic is smaller and blow up Coruscant.. you can argue that but then it invites all those "why didnt they..." arguments against whatever war/villain they're fighting (Borg, Dominion, etc.) Or for that matter why don't bad guys use time travel more? Or other powerS? I mean there's literally shit-tons of ways you can travle in time in trek, use it as weapons, etc. If they have all these capabilites (or counter them) why aren't they used more?

If you want a Star Wars example, look at the Death Star and the construction rates, power generation, etc. and how that is extrapolated from. I know some (EG D13) object to the manner in which that is done - how is time travel any different? Or any other lost tech for that case?

[Connor MacLeod]

And yes precog is a no limits fallacy too, but of the two I'd say time travel is actually the worse, because even if you know something perfectly that doesn't guarantee you can do something about it or follow things perfectly. (Like lightsaber blocking - Precog could still be perfect, and yet the technique is not 100% effective because the person/arm doing the blocking is imperfect - poor reflexes, fatigue, etc.)

Edit: Time travel can be used for intel purposes too of course, but that depends alot on your knowledge and precision to going back in time - you have to know the times and places and shit where you want to go back, amongst other things. But if you can also gob ack in time to do those, its silly to argue they would do it "just for intel" because if they're there the opportunity and capability exists to sabotage or fuck things over (what if they go back a few decades and start fucking around with the Empire's trade or commerce randomly, for example?)