Which Time Travel Stories Changed Star Trek Canon?

With the third wave of Star Trek series on television, some fans are concerned about how these new episodes change the canon from what previous series established. Some Trekkers can simply suspend disbelief, chalking inconsistencies up to what happens when a storytelling universe continues for six decades. However, since Star Trek has more than its fair share of time-travel, the Prime Timeline has been changed before in subtle ways.

Time-travel was responsible for the alterations to Star Trek history that resulted in the Kelvin Timeline, too. In Star Trek: Discovery, the Guardian of Forever suggested the notorious Mirror Universe was also an alternate timeline that branched off from the Prime Universe. Typically, when time travel changes something in Star Trek, it’s the timeline itself that changes, often without its inhabitants even knowing about it. While this sci-fi side effect can happen on and off-screen, there are ten episodes that have changed the Star Trek canon right in front of audiences’ eyes.

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Acclaimed science fiction author and curmudgeon Harlan Ellison wrote “City on the Edge of Forever,” but what aired was a rewrite by Steven W. Carabtasos, Gene Roddenberry, and Gene L. Coon. The episode introduced the Guardian of Forever, a gateway to time and space. Dr. McCoy, suffering from an overdose of cordrazine leaps into the past and erases Starfleet and the USS Enterprise. Captain Kirk and Commander Spock must travel into the past to fix history.

This episode is important because it was the first time Star Trek established the past could be rewritten. In saving Edith Keeler, McCoy changed the future by altering the past. Even though things returned to the way they were, Kirk and Spock further altered history. Their future wasn’t exactly the same as before, establishing the rules of time travel in the Star Trek universe.

9 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Changed the Past Again

While Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise traveled through time more than once, the voyage that had the most impact was “the one with the whales.” A probe from an unknown alien culture arrived on Earth looking for humpback whales, which are extinct in Kirk’s present. Traveling on the HMS Bounty (a stolen Klingon Bird of Prey), Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura traveled back to 1986 to rescue two humpback whales. They returned home with the breeding pair and the probe went back where it came from.

A lot happens in the past that could’ve affected the future. Chekov is captured by US military officials on the nuclear-powered battleship the USS Enterprise. When he escapes, he leaves behind his Starfleet identification, a communicator and a hand-phaser, the latter two of Klingon origin. Earlier in the film, Scotty gives a 20th Century manufacturer the formula for “transparent aluminum” years before it should be invented. This technology could have been studied and caused further advancements that never should’ve happened.

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History will never forget the name “Enterprise,” in large part because the USS Enterprise–D met the USS Enterprise-C, which was supposed to be destroyed defending Klingons from a Romulan attack. However, it traveled through a temporal rift and created an alternate timeline before the audience’s eyes. Instead of peace, the Federation and Klingons were at war. The ship returned through the rift and history was set right, but like in “City on the Edge of Forever,” it wasn’t the same history.

Lieutenant Tasha Yar died a “meaningless death” but was restored to life in the alternate timeline created by the Enterprise-C’s arrival. She ended up traveling back with the ship and was one of the crewmembers who survived the fateful battle. She was taken prisoner by the Romulans and, ultimately, gave birth to a half-Romulan daughter named Sela, who was crucial to Spock’s mission to begin the peace process between Romulus and Vulcan.

7 The Bell Uprising in ‘Past Tense’ Made Captain Sisko a Part of History

On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an accident sends Captain Sisko, Dr. Bashir and Jadzia Dax back in time to 2024 to the site of an important citizen movement called the Bell Riots, led by Gabriel Bell. The revolutionary leader was killed trying to protect Sisko and Bashir in a “Sanctuary District,” essentially an open-air prison for the poor. This was before the nuclear World War III that decimated the Earth and led to Zefram Cochrane’s first warp-capable vessel.

After Bell’s death, Sisko had to step in as Bell to ensure the timeline wasn’t changed, erasing the future they knew. Originally described as the most violent and destructive civil uprising in American history, Sisko seemed to be a better Gabriel Bell than the original. While not explicitly stated, more people seemed to have survived than before. Similarly, at least two of the Sanctuary District guards began to sympathize with the people and the US began to address its social failures leading to the utopian future of the Federation.

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While traveling through the Delta Quadrant, the USS Voyager encounters a 29th Century timeship piloted by Captain Braxton who wants to destroy the vessel. He’s drawn there because of a bootstrap paradox. His timeship is stolen in the past, piloted to the future and explodes, threatening to destroy reality. He mistakenly believes it’s Voyager’s fault, even though they prevent the disaster. However, while in the past, a man named Henry Starling takes possession of the crashed timeship, using it to start a computer company.

Just like what could’ve happened with the transparent aluminum, Chekov’s communicator and phaser, the 29th Century technology in the past is used to change the future. Starling creates a company that Janeway and Chakotay realize created the computer age of the late 20th Century. Since, as Janeway says, it shouldn’t have happened, this could explain why Strange New Worlds has advanced technology compared to Star Trek: The Original Series. While the USS Voyager saved the future, the changes made to the Star Trek canon during their time in the past aren’t undone.

Mere weeks in real-time since Voyager’s adventure in the 1990s, the crew of the USS Enterprise were sent back to 2063 to stop the Borg from assimilating Earth in the past. When Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy met Zefram Cochrane in The Original Series Season 2’s “Metamorphosis,” he is genuinely excited by Kirk’ description of Starfleet and the Federation. This suggests the first time around, he didn’t meet Data, Geordi and the rest of The Next Generation crew who told him similar stories.

This likely means when he first launched the Phoenix, he didn’t have Commanders Riker and LaForge riding along with him. He also didn’t see the USS Enterprise-E out there in space. While Star Trek: Enterprise still had Cochrane disappear, First Contact changed the canon. He seemingly remained on Earth rather than settling on “Alpha Centauri” as he did in The Original Series.

4 Enterprise’s ‘Storm Front, Part II’ Ended the Temporal Cold War

By ending Season 3 on a cliffhanger, Enterprise’s producers forced Paramount into greenlighting Season 4, instead of canceling it. The two-part season opener put the NX-01 Enterprise back in an alternate timeline in World War II, in which Nazis and aliens invaded the United States. At the end of the episode, Captain Archer is sent to an ethereal plane with a Starfleet time agent named Daniels, present throughout the series. It was a visual effects representation of the timeline righting itself, preventing the Temporal Cold War arcing through the series from going “hot.”

However, the timeline that continued on from that moment was markedly different from the NX-01 mission Captains Kirk or Picard would’ve learned about. Earth was attacked, and Starfleet went to war with the Xindi. There were conflicts with the Sulaban, an alien race Starfleet wasn’t supposed to meet so soon. Every incursion seen on Enterprise in the Temporal Cold War (and those that happened off-screen) changed the prime timeline. “Storm Front, Part II” saved it.

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Throughout Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, a mysterious time traveler known as the Red Angel sent the ship, commanded by Captain Christopher Pike, on chase around the galaxy. In the final moments of the season, Michael Burnham realized she was the Red Angel all along. What’s unclear is if she changed the timeline or if the USS Discovery always existed, and this is why no Star Trek characters ever mentioned it before. The ship, its crew and its fate were classified and unable to be discussed.

The most important detail for the Prime Timeline is that Captain Pike learned of his fate which fans saw in Star Trek: The Original Series “The Menagerie.” He spent much of the first season of Strange New Worlds trying to outsmart his destiny, but ultimately accepted his fate when a future version of himself showed him that Captain Kirk needed to be the one in command of the USS Enterprise when it first encounters the Romulans. The first Red Angel was Burnham’s mother, so it’s possible there was an interation of the timeline in which Burnham wasn’t Spock’s sister, First Officer of the Discovery and everything else.

2 In Saying ‘Farewell’ to Q, Picard Changed the Past to Preserve the Future

The Admiral, Seven of Nine, Raffi, Dr. Jurati and Cristobal Rios spent most of Star Trek: Picard Season 2 in the early 21st Century. It’s all part of one of Q’s games, his last time trolling Picard before he dies. While Q does this to help Jean-Luc, there are consequences to the timeline. Beyond the odd bit of alternate timeline 25th Century technology left behind, Rios also stays behind in the past because he’s fallen for Teresa Ramirez. Together they work in a group called “Mariposas,” Spanish for “butterflies.” It’s safe to assume that Rios’s time in the past had more than a few butterfly effect moments.

The true aim of their visit into the past was to ensure Picard’s ancestor took part in a mission to Europa, which discovered a sentient microbe that apparently helped Earth solve climate change. Yet, it also created the Jurati Borg, who are standing guard at an ominous wormhole in Federation space.

1 ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ Finally Answered Star Trek’s Khan Question

The biggest history problem in Star Trek stemmed from its most famous villain, Khan Noonien Singh. In Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock says Khan’s rise to power happened in the 1990s, but in the Voyager episode, Khan and his augments are nowhere to be found. They aren’t mentioned in “Past Tense” either, though there are ambiguous mentions to “trouble” in Europe. When the last salvo in the Temporal War changes the timeline so that Starfleet is just the United Earth, La’an Noonien Singh and James Kirk have to travel back in time to stop it.

This episode revealed that Khan’s rise to power didn’t happen until a decade or more after the late 2020s. A Romulan time agent revealed she arrived in the 1990s to kill Khan, but all the temporal shenanigans erased him from existence. Yet, like in Across the Spider-Verse, Khan’s rise to power is a canon event that time will ensure happens no matter what. La’an saves her evil ancestor, and that impact on the Prime Timeline’s future remains to be seen.

Time travel is a big deal in the Star Trek universe, responsible for some amazing, classic stories. However, as this list makes clear, those stories make an impact on the future and sometimes the franchise’s past. Just because Strange New Worlds looks very different from The Original Series, it’s all still the Prime Timeline.

Every Star Trek series is streaming on Paramount+, save for Star Trek: Prodigy now streaming on Netflix. The first ten Star Trek films are currently on Max.

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The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series’ voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there’s a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

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