MARCH 22, 2022 - In the sixth episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Naked Time,” the Enterprise, her engines shut down, began spiraling toward the surface of a collapsing planet. At the last moment, thanks to Spock’s memory of an untested theory and Scotty’s sudden ability to change the laws of physics, the ship is able to pull out of the spiral and avoid destruction. The miraculous escape slung ship and crew back in time by three days, giving birth to what has become known as “the slingshot effect” and giving Trek viewers their first glimpse of how time travel works.

But that wasn’t the last time they went traveling through history, and time travel has figured into nearly every iteration of the franchise, including the most recent episode of Star Trek: Picard. Let’s see how much you know about temporal mechanics as we take a look at a brief history of time travel in the Star Trek universe.

1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (affectionately referred to as The One With the Whales by many) is the most popular film in the franchise, appealing to fans and non-fans alike. Kirk and company have to travel from the 23rd century to what was then present-day San Francisco, hunting for a pair of whales in order to save the Earth from future destruction. When they arrive, however, they find that it’s impossible to do anything they need to do without currency, which is outdated in their time.

How do they overcome this problem?

Kirk and Spock locate a pawn shop near downtown San Francisco. (How they know to look for a pawn shop so quickly when there’s no money in the future is beyond me, but sometimes it’s best not to dwell on the details.) Kirk sells a pair of antique glasses for $100, which he splits among the crew. This is a nice bit of continuity for people who have been watching the Star Trek films up to this point. As Spock points out, McCoy gave Kirk the glasses on his birthday in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. By the end of his battle with the genetically enhanced supervillain, the glass had broken, which is why they weren’t worth nearly as much as they could have been at the pawn shop.

Think about this for a minute. If the glasses were already antiques worth some money in 1986, they had to have been ancient in 2285. Where did Bones even get such old glasses in such pristine condition? Did he rob a museum? It is implied that Kirk’s selling the spectacles in the 20th century will allow McCoy to gift them to him in the future, but that just opens a chicken-and-the-egg discussion. When did these “antique” glasses even get crafted? And how is it that they happened to be in Kirk’s exact prescription? So many questions…

When Star Trek: The Next Generation aired, there were a number of rules. One of those was “no references to The Original Series.” They failed on that front, making it about 45 minutes into the pilot, when Admiral McCoy made an appearance, and then, in episode 2, filming a sequel to “The Naked Time.” One rule that they did pretty much adhere to.

The producers of the series wanted to stay away from the science fiction trope of time travel. It was rare for the characters to go gallivanting around the time stream. In fact, only “Time’s Arrow” and Star Trek: First Contact explored the idea of traditional time travel. Even “Tapestry” and the series finale, “All Good Things,” which both find Q sending Picard into the past and future, really don’t fit the traditional time traveling scenario, since they are alternate versions of the past and future.

This meant that if the writers wanted to do time travel, they had to be clever about it, leading to episodes where time stops, or time loops, or history changes because a starship from the past is flung into our heroes’ present. And in one instance, a historian from the 26th century, Berlinghoff Rasmussen, shows up on the bridge with the intention of observing their current mission. But that’s not really why he’s there.

What are Rasmussen’s actual intentions?

Far from being a historian from the future, Rasmussen is a con man from New Jersey. In the 22nd century, he had, in fact, encountered historians from the distant future. It was their misfortune to meet him, for he stole their time pod and traveled to the 24th century, where he intended to steal future technology, returning to the past and “inventing” about one a year. Unfortunately for him, he got too greedy and the crew began to miss things. Rasmussen was arrested, the time pod jumped back to the 22nd century, and as far as we know, he never saw New Jersey again.

In 1947, an alien spacecraft crashed down in Roswell, New Mexico. Three alien bodies were recovered, leading to decades of conspiracy theories and government cover-ups. Many people referred to the aliens as “Grays”, based on their purported skin color. In 1994, the United States Air Force published a report identifying the debris found at the crash site as a nuclear test surveillance balloon. But the truth is far stranger. The debris was not a weather balloon, and the aliens were not Grays, or even little green men. Their skin had more of an orange hue. In 1995, one year after the Air Force report and nearly 50 years after the initial event, the truth was revealed. The aliens who found themselves prisoners on the Roswell Army Air Field were…Ferengi.

Not just any Ferengi, either. Quark, Rom, and Nog, Deep Space Nine’s resident Ferengi bartender and his brother and nephew, were on their way to 24th century Earth, where Nog was to begin his career as a Starfleet cadet, when they were displaced in time, crashing on the planet. Little did they know that Constable Odo, not trusting Quark’s motives, had stowed away on the Ferengi shuttle to catch him red-handed as he smuggled an illicit load of kemocite. Now, here’s the question:

What caused the shuttle to be flung back to the 20th century?

Kemocite, as I’m sure you know, is an unstable mineral which was under strict regulation by the Federation in the 24th century, hence Quark’s attempt to smuggle it to Orion. Unfortunately, the shuttle had been a gift from his cousin Gaila, a devious Ferengi who thought killing Quark by sabotaging the shuttle would be a good way to pay him back for a 10-year-old loan.

On their approach to Earth, when Rom tries to take the ship out of warp, he is unable to do so. In order to slow the ship, he floods the cargo hold with plasma. The reaction between the kemocite and plasma allows him to shut down the warp core and forces them back into normal space. The side effect, unfortunately, is that they are slung 425 years into the past.

In case you’re wondering, our Ferengi friends (and the shapeshifting Constable) return to the future by flying into an atomic blast, which also reacts with the kemocite, creating a reverse time warp. I’ve gotta say, that kemocite stuff is both volatile and versatile!

Time travel isn’t just for Earth. There are lots of other planets that have pasts, too. Take the planet the USS Voyager comes across in the fourth episode of the series, just after it had been destroyed by a detonation of polaric ions. While an away team is investigating the planet, Janeway and Paris find themselves swept back in time to the day before the devastating accident.

The episode now has a ticking clock and a moral dilemma. Should Janeway and Paris adhere to the Prime Directive and let an entire planet die? And how can they get back to their own time before the planet is decimated? Will this be the shortest Star Trek series yet???

How is the episode resolved?

What we have here is another chicken-and-the-egg situation. Janeway and Paris find themselves at the point of the explosion mere moments before it is scheduled to happen. Suddenly, the Voyager crew’s future attempt to open a time fracture and rescue their people begins to work. Janeway realizes that the time fracture is what caused the explosion in the first place and fires a phaser at it, closing it and resetting time. The episode ends with nobody the wiser about nearly destroying the planet and the USS Voyager goes along its merry way toward seven seasons of adventures.

Star Trek: Enterprise introduced the concept of a Temporal Cold War to the Trek universe. The idea was that various time-traveling factions were trying to manipulate history for their own benefit. This resulted, eventually, in Captain Archer being pulled back in time to World War II-era New York.

Stuck in 1944, Archer and his crew discover that the Nazis now controlled a large portion of the world, including the US. In command was Vosk, a Na’kuhl from the 29th century. Not exactly the way they taught it to you in grade school, is it?

What event triggered the change in history?

Ever hear of a dude name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? He led the Bolshevik Revolution, ushering in the age of Communism to Russia. The guy’s got a city (Leningrad) named after him, and everything. Only in this reality, a temporal assassin murdered him before he could make a name for himself. The result was a weaker monarchy, easily conquered by Adolf Hitler. Without the distraction of Russian resistance, he was able to focus his efforts more squarely on the west. Needless to say, our heroes managed to put history right (with a little help from the Suliban agent Silik) and restore the timeline with which we are familiar.

In Star Trek: Discovery’s “Magic To Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” that scoundrel Harry Mudd is back. Using a device which he brings onto the ship by smuggling himself on board inside a space whale, he loops time so that he can kill Captain Lorca over and over and over again as revenge for allowing Mudd to remain in a Klingon prison. The only person aware of the time looping is Commander Stamets.

What makes him so special?

In order to use the Discovery’s spore drive, Stamets had to inject himself with tardigrade DNA. Tardigrades are multidimensional creatures, existing outside normal space-time, and apparently the injection helped Stamets do the same. Using this advantage, he develops a shorthand way of explaining the situation to Burnham and the rest of the crew every time the time loop takes effect and eventually they are able to trick Mudd and end his insane plan. Instead of arresting him, though, they simply hand him over to his fiancée, Stella, which is punishment enough.