The Conflict and Promises of Revisiting the Past and Seeing into the Future
I want to return to a previous post, “On Time Travel, the Subconscious Signature, and Market Capitalism” and the ethics of interpreting oneself with the present moment, detached from the past and preserved for the future. In that post, I stated, “[w]hat considerations of time travel offer us is an honest reflection of what it means to connect with others outside our time. If we can imagine that, it only proves that bias and transfixed market capitalism are not natural” (2023). Visitations from the past can be destructive and it is that element of confrontation that can sow doubt within ourselves that will certainly lead to a destructive future. We must see past the fragments of (re)memory and capture the present moment as if each moment were a test of our collective ethics and moral standing. There are times when that may not seem to our advantage, but it will lead future steps when our courtesy to ourselves in being true and honest will manifest a future or promise and hope.
Science fiction offers examples of when time demonstrates the dominant potentiality of the present as opposed to alternative ontological curving into the sails of doubt and destruction. In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “Carpenter Street” (2003), the past is contained within a capitalist system. As Archer and T’Pol find themselves in Detroit in 2004, they must steal money from an ATM and steal a vehicle just to complete a mission that will ultimately save Earth. During their investigation to locate the Xindi they discover a man who works for a blood bank is abducting people for the Xindi for money. This is literal blood money. The meaning is not symbolic. It is not esoteric or drowning in cross-references so as to be abstractly resolved. It is clear, their past, our present, is the capitalist endeavor to do us harm. Archer and T’Pol capture Loomis and interrogate him to learn more about the Xindi threat.
LOOMIS: I told you, I work at the blood bank. He wanted someone from every blood type. Eight blood types, eight people. He figured I had access to that kind of information.
[…]
ARCHER: What’s he paying you?
LOOMIS: Five thousand apiece, double for the last three.
T’POL: Is that what human life is worth in the twenty-first century?
T’Pol represents the enlightened future as it was the Vulcans who made first contact and radically changed life on Earth, pushing Earth towards a future paradise. Archer represents the future human self; determined, capable, and having the freedom and knowledge to be gifted with the opportunity to venture out to the stars. He represents trust as he is the central figure that will save Earth from the Xindi weapon. This coordination with trust and enlightenment against the backdrop of twenty-first century Earth shows its hand and the depth of resolve we require in the present to make the right decisions for ourselves, here and now, if we are to obtain a future of prosperity.
Babylon 5 also demonstrates that we are not who we seem to believe we were meant to be in alternative futures. In “Babylon Squared” (1994), the Babylon 4 station that vanished without a trace before Babylon 5 was built reappears. However, the crew left of Babylon 4 are experiencing warped time episodes themselves. Cmdr. Sinclair sees a restructuring of time after boarding the station. He sees a battle on the station where Garibaldi sacrifices himself so that he can escape against his will.
Garibaldi (as envisioned by Sinclair in a vision of an alternate future timeline): “There’s no time. Get going. Jeff, I finally understand. This is the moment I was born for.”
Sinclair (returning to he present): “What was that?”
Major Krantz: “It’s different for everyone. A flash. Forward, backward. All of us, the entire station, we’ve become unstuck in time.”
Later in the series, in the episode, “War Without End, Part II” (1996), when Sinclair returns to enlist the help of Delenn and Sheridan to steal Babylon 4 and take it back in time, he makes sure that Garibaldi does not know about the mission so that the future Sinclair had seen for him does not come to pass. We see Sinclair as currently knowledgeable about the time rifts and his ultimate connection to them, what he must do, and who he must become. In “Babylon Squared” none of this was clear.
Captain Burnham and Cmdr. Rayner visit a possible future where the Breen have destroyed the Federation in the Star Trek: Discovery episode, “Face the Strange” (2024), when a Krenim Time Bug cycles the ship through various time frames, but through a technological coincidence, they are aware and unaffected. Not being in our own time, with our collective selves, is destructive. Similarly, we see the intra-conflict between Burnham and a younger Burnham when the Captain revisits the one past tense in which she was still new the Discovery. This past Burnham believes the Captain Burnham is an intruder and could not possibly be her from the future. There is the hint that is it not time travel that is being rejected as a real possibility, but doubt in herself that she could ever become a captain. The past Burnham holds a phaser to Cmdr. Rayner and Stamets, who is able to be present outside of time due to the integrated tardigrade DNA. Rayner is against the clock trying to convince a women from the past who sees herself as a failure, not capable or deserving of being a leader, all while that future leader is on the bridge attempting to complete the mission and coordinating with them. The past here represents doubt and future represents destruction. However, both can be atoned for with a clear occupation of the present. It is that presence that allows Captain Burnham to get the past crew of Discovery to cooperate with her so that they can complete their mission.
When we revisit Admiral Adama’s past in the Battlestar Galactica episode, “Daybreak, Part I” (2009), we see him as a troubled man. He primary contention is whether or not to have his dignity strained by agreeing to take a lie detector test in order to get a higher paying office job, which would have taken him off a Battlestar. We see him drunk to the point of sickness as he lies in the street looking up towards to the stars desperate to come to the decision to either have his honor tested and measured, or remain in the fleet. Adama does sit down for the test, but in the process discovers he cannot allow his word to be tested or doubted. This is one example where past actions to honor himself and not complete the lie detector tests assures a helpful resolution to seeing that the remnant of humanity survives and makes it to Earth. Here, revisiting the past demonstrates the conflict we extracted ourselves from can lead to a better future, or present, depending on one’s perspective. In this case when Adama will not allow his word to be regarded have the potential of being a lie, as determined by these businessmen, we see the core standard of how be represents himself leading the fleet to a new home and humanity safe from the Cylon threat. We witness the past, revisiting these decisions of who or what to honor and how that is character building for the what will come later. Adama demonstrates a personal ethic that is unshakable and unable to be bought. Capitalism loses out to personal dignity as demonstrated by a man who will lead his people home.
Captain Janeway must navigate the promise from the past that seeks to disrupt the future when Voyager comes under fire from a Klingon ship that was retired decades ago in the Star Trek Voyager episode, “Prophecy” (2001). When a ship of Klingons meets with Voyager and its captain, Kohlar, determines that B’Elanna Torres’s unborn child is the savior of their sect, the kuvah’magh, that settles for Kohlar and the rest of the Klingons that the Federation and the Klingon empire are no longer at war. However, there is religious strife between those that doubt Kohlar’s interpretation of the prophecies and those that are ready to believe. These Klingons have been traveling for four generations, seeking the kuvah’mgh, who they believe will show them the way to their new homeworld. What Captain Janeway and the crew learn is that they are all carriers of an illness. Despite all odds, the Doctor discovers that hybrid stem cells from the B’Ellana’s child will cure all the Klingons, hence, becoming their savior and they settle on a new world. Here the transit of time, from the point at which these holy scrolls were written to the time their foreparents set out for the long journey, a time before the Federation and Klingon empire made peace, determined a climatic conflict for their journey that ultimately led to them being saved. The time taken to seek being united with their savior resulted in that very promise. This a positive example of where time meets the present and how the a call from the future can determine the present. The past visits the future and in the process, prophecy is made true.
Time is not a passive construct. It is an actionable element of our very being. We see ourselves in a different light when we revisit the past. Often we can become absorbed in the mistakes we made. However, if we remain vigilant in the present, we ward off the potential for acting out in ways that do not demonstrate our true character. This is easier said than done. The present can be overwhelming at times. We can fail to meet the demands of the test we find ourselves in. What it takes is a preparedness. We have to come to terms and accept the mistakes we make. That acceptance will make us stronger. That acceptance will make us less likely to fail future tests and are not unlike practice runs for the coming test that will result in a great consequence. If we find acceptance in looking back, and readiness in the moment, the future is far more likely to be that of a measured spirit of warmth; free from the binding elements of humanity’s worst impulses, and no longer laboring for a peaceful respite. We will enter the present with its connected-ness to the future elements of our own well-being.