07-18-2022, 08:28 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-18-2022, 09:38 AM by FaceInTheCrowd.)
Time travel stories don't typically change the memories of the time travelers as they alter the past. Their reactions to those changes are how we know whether the stories have happy endings or not. But there is undoubtedly a lot more creative freedom when making a time travel story about characters who don't have to come back next week in a series whose episodes aren't necessarily going to be aired in production order.
In each of the "Back to the Future" sequels, Marty McFly appears to remember everything that happened in the previous films because Doc Brown never has to re-explain anything to him. It's everybody who didn't time travel whose memories of the past are changed. What is never addressed is whether Marty ever gains any memories of the new present he has created, or if he just has to fake it while doing what he can to collect info about his new life.
Almost anything is possible where the Trek's Guardian is concerned, because the people who created it are no longer around to say what the limits of its capabilities are. It does tell Kirk that it can't change its own functions, though, and it doesn't offer to "fix" time, it just tells Kirk and Spock that if they go back and do everything right, they can fix it.
it's possible that the Guardian's creators were tricksters who liked to go back in time and muck around with history because the Guardian would protect them from their own screwups and provide them with the means to correct them. Or, the Guardian's warnings and assists could have been a failsafe that kicked in whenever travelers did something they weren't supposed to.
Discovery tells us that at some point in the 1000 years after TOS, the Guardian will become a mcguffin in a time war and will relocate itself to prevent the combatants from acquiring and using it as a weapon. So that is an indication that its creators intended its function to be benign and it will take action to prevent itself from being used for purposes it perceives as destructive.
In each of the "Back to the Future" sequels, Marty McFly appears to remember everything that happened in the previous films because Doc Brown never has to re-explain anything to him. It's everybody who didn't time travel whose memories of the past are changed. What is never addressed is whether Marty ever gains any memories of the new present he has created, or if he just has to fake it while doing what he can to collect info about his new life.
Almost anything is possible where the Trek's Guardian is concerned, because the people who created it are no longer around to say what the limits of its capabilities are. It does tell Kirk that it can't change its own functions, though, and it doesn't offer to "fix" time, it just tells Kirk and Spock that if they go back and do everything right, they can fix it.
it's possible that the Guardian's creators were tricksters who liked to go back in time and muck around with history because the Guardian would protect them from their own screwups and provide them with the means to correct them. Or, the Guardian's warnings and assists could have been a failsafe that kicked in whenever travelers did something they weren't supposed to.
Discovery tells us that at some point in the 1000 years after TOS, the Guardian will become a mcguffin in a time war and will relocate itself to prevent the combatants from acquiring and using it as a weapon. So that is an indication that its creators intended its function to be benign and it will take action to prevent itself from being used for purposes it perceives as destructive.