So I was reading
The Borg aren't scary anymore (and agreeing with it) and it occurred to me that the whole bit in
Star Trek: First Contact about the
Borg going back in time to change the past just highlights how ridiculously easy
time travel is in the
Star Trek Universe. How many time travel episodes/plots have there been? It's happened in every Star Trek series at least once, and in two of the movies. For starters, in the original series, there was that time gate in
The City on the Edge of Forever, and then in
Tomorrow is Yesterday, a "black star" sends the crew back to interfere with the space program of the 60s.
But by far the most egregious example of the ease of time travel is in
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. All they do is "
slingshot around the
Sun" -- and sure there is some
treknobabble mumbo-jumbo about how risky it is and how tricky the calculations are, but -- keeping our eye on the ball here -- they do this in a
Klingon Bird of Prey. Well the
Klingons have lots of those, don't they?
Seems like once word gets out that time travel is possible at all (and in Star Trek that is bound to happen, since it sure seems to come about even by
accident an awful lot) everybody would be doing it for whatever strategic advantage it would be worth. All you need is a
starship and, well, a
star, and zip!! back you go, to a reasonably controllable point in the past. Seems like all of military maneuvering would be trying to get back in time farther than your opponents so you can mess 'em up before they do whatever it was they did!!
Note: It's been commented to me that this was also the basis of a season of the Star Trek: Enterprise series which featured a "Temporal Cold War." Confession is good for the soul, so here I tell you that as big a Trekkie as I am, I quit that series midway through the first season. But according to my research (which consists of reading the Wikipedia article on the thing and some blogs), it's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about in the last paragraph -- whoever can go into the past the farthest can make the rules by preventing the alternate future.
Note 2: The 2009 Star Trek movie? More time travel, though at least this time the Enterprise crew are on the receiving end of Romulans from the future....