(07-17-2022, 07:19 PM)FaceInTheCrowd Wrote: The idea that humans in the future had dispensed with things like political and ethnic conflict was a two-edged sword. It enabled the show to look at present day issues by having them be alien characteristics. OTOH, it meant they had to be. Would we really want to watch an episode where people on a traveling ship never encounter others who aren't in some way problematic? Well, a few years after Trek the Love Boat ran for 10 seasons, so maybe.
It's not just problematic, a good majority of the time it's down right deadly. Before Kirk and the gang CAN explore strange new worlds. And that's just the first season. In answer to your question, though, even the executives didn't want a cerebral and tame world, and that's why 'The Cage' was scrapped, making the way for Where No Man Has Gone Before. It's rather a silly opening premise, especially when Kirk says, "to seek out new life". He should have added, "and hope we can get away with our asses intact".
(07-17-2022, 07:19 PM)FaceInTheCrowd Wrote: A more or less universal characteristic of time travel stories is that the time travelers never seem to change along with their altered present. Otherwise, how would they know that they're supposed to "fix" history?
Frequency handled time from a different angle and actually did it surprisingly well. Son John was able to contact his father in the past via radio waves from his handy Hamm radio, which are brought on by the Northern Lights. I have to admit, I really like this premise. It would have been an awesome Star Trek episode as we know from Jupiter and Saturn that the lights are not something that is confined to Earth.
John is able to save Frank, his fire fighter dad, from dying in a fire, but other issues arise as the result, one being the death of his mother. Whenever John changed time, he remembered the before memories and the after memories. I presumed, however, that the new memory somehow took over, and the old memory dissipated from the brain and thus, the happy ending. In theory though, I don't think the premise of Frequency could really happen as the action that furthered the plot occurred before both memories, so the new memory would be the one John remembers, not the old memory.
Back to the Future also contained the premise where Marty remembers both the old and the new memories, but in reality, this would never happen either. Once his dad fought for his mother's welfare in addition to her affection, it all changed. No longer would there be any old memories and the problem then becomes a new one, which is how to get Marty back to the future.
So in answer to the question, I would say there is no way to know if the future has been fixed because everyone is only equipped to carry only one memory of the event, not two.
With regard to the Guardian, the only thing I can say is that the Guardian protected the landing party. It told them they had no vessel and no past. It told them McCoy went into what was. That's all it says, other than to answer their question about going through it by telling them, that if they are successful, it will be as though none of them went To me, it just goes back that the Guardian has a way of bending time to its desires, hence the waves the Enterprise encountered. The Guardian also has the ability to pull anyone who goes in out of there at will.
So, in response to your question about "The Sound of Thunder", could this be a very advanced game where the solution is to "fix" time? What if it didn't matter where a body went and what they did because if they failed, the Guardian would pull them out and fix time itself?
Of course that negates everything Kirk and Spock did, but then, maybe that's the point of the episode.
Did the Enterprise really disappear or did the Guardian simply make the away team believe that it did, and so, they were alone. Did Kirk and Spock, and the gang remember what happened while they were in 1930s Earth? I always assumed they did, but the Guardian itself says that, if they are successful, it will be as though none of them went. Wouldn't that mean no memory of the event? Not one of them comments on the event other than for Spock to say they were successful, Uhura's in contact with the Enterprise and no longer frightened, Scott says they were only gone for a minute and Kirk's order is to get the hell out of there.
The best way to frustrate a cyberbully is to ignore him.