Many times Star Trek has taken us to the future only to reset the status quo at the end of the story arc. Tapestry (but in reverse?), that time Voyager crashed in the ice, and all that.
How likely is it that Discovery went to a mutable future, just one of many, especially with the Temporal Cold War, Carl, Q, Trelane, Janeway, the HMS Bounty, and any number of other temporally active agents out there in time? How locked in is the 32nd Century?
It’s probably just as “locked” as any other time period, which is to say not at all. Recent SNW episodes have hammered home the idea that the present, past, and future are all somewhat malleable.
Voyager Before and After pretty specifically tells us that whenever someone jumps in time, the fact that they have done so, and the actions that they take, affect the timeline. Any time time travel is involved, we are seeing only one possible timeline, not necessarily the timeline.
Of course, it’s easier to use that reasoning in an episode like Before and After, because the time travel involved is backwards, but I think it’s reasonable to assume it’s true the other way, too. After all, the Kelvinverse isn’t identical to the Prime timeline even before the Narada arrived.
But removing Discovery from the timeline seems to be consistent with the prime timeline post-Discovery season 2 (in TOS etc) - e.g. Spock not talking about his human adopted sister, no further use of spore drives, and so on. It’s certainly explicitly the timeline of SNW (which makes multiple references to the events of Discovery s2) and therefore the timeline of Lower Decks.
That suggests the prime timeline as we know it is an altered timeline caused by Discovery’s jump to the future.
We now know when, where, and how the burn happens. Therefore, it can be prevented.
True, but that can be said of a lot of atrocities in Star Trek history. Some of which are necessary for the preservation of the Federation as we know it.
The Enterprise C incident, for example. The loss of the ship with all hands (presumably) helped prevent an escalation of the conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation.
We also know that the Burn didn’t create issues wholesale. All it really did was exacerbate the existing dilithium shortage by dropping the number of ships, but the underlying problems were likely going to happen either way. The Chain had the advantage of the Courier network, while the Federation was still using warp-drive ships trundling along at low speeds.
The only notable thing that did happen is the loss of functioning ships, straining Federation resources further, and that N’var believed that their experimental stargate network caused the Burn, so they stopped developing it, but the former would have likely happened anyway, especially if the Federation was to get into conflict with the Chain.
We know, but no Star Trek character which live before the burn know about it. The Discovery should go back in time for that, and it’ll always be too dangerous.
