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r/DaystromInstitute•
GrumpySpaceGamer

How would Starfleet handle displaced alternate reality/timeline versions of staff?

In the Voyager episode "Deadlock", one version of Ensign Harry Kim dies, but is immediately and seamlessly replaced on Voyager's crew by his duplicate - one of only two survivors from a duplicate Voyager that was destroyed.

Given the point of divergence between Harry Kim and his duplicate was only in the recent past, and that Voyager is stranded in the delta quadrant and can't defer to Starfleet HQ, it's understandable that his duplicate would simply take over as the Harry Kim on board without too much fuss or concern (aside from the nagging existential questions about him being a duplicate of himself that are never again addressed).

However, what if the point of divergence was more significant?

We see this again with Harry Kim in "Non Sequitur" when Harry wakes up in an alternate timeline where he was never a member of Voyager's crew, and is back on Earth - but with all his memories from Voyager. Eventually he's able to successfully "fix" the timeline, and everything for him goes back to "normal" - i.e. he's back on Voyager in the "prime" timeline.

Then we have "Endgame", where Vice Admiral Janeway travels to the past, meets her past self and pulls rank on herself.

All of this is to say: Imagine a scenario where Harry Kim (A) is on Earth working at Starfleet Headquarters. Then, a time traveling / alternate timeline Harry Kim (B) is teleported through a rift in space-time. But, that Harry Kim (B) is from a different timeline; one with a point of divergence in the distant past. His Starfleet is similar enough yet different in meaningful ways. Say, for example, in the (B) timeline, the Prime Directive doesn't exist, or perhaps teleporters work differently in (A), etc. Whatever it was that brought him here, though, is gone. Everyone decides the new Harry Kim (B) is here to stay, and now there's two of them living on Earth.

My question is: Given the similar-but-different Starfleet Harry Kim (B) knows, would Starfleet still recognize his rank as Ensign?

That is to say: Would he have to go back to the academy and start again from scratch? Would he to do some kind of competency assessment? Would he be able to get an assignment on a new starship right away?

(I know this is going to sound like I'm making a joke about Harry Kim never getting a promotion, but I'm honestly curious how you think Starfleet would handle such a scenario.)

Posted Oct 14, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

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majicwalrus•

I think William Boimler and Thomas Riker are excellent examples. Given that they are essentially duplicated versions of the “original” and each of them go on to live their own lives. Both examples were seen retaining their rank.

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DiogenesOfDope•

But those are copies and not alternative timelines

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majicwalrus•

Surely, but that’s all an “alternate timeline” version would be to some degree would just be a copy of yourself from a time which is not the present.

I think we might be tripping up on “alternate” though. I don’t see the Star Trek universe as being a multiverse of options like Rick and Morty or Marvel.

There are known quantifiable alternate timelines and in the case of the Kelvin and Mirror alternative realities we can’t safely say these realities are similar enough to our own for them to be indistinguishable. Which is to say Mirror-Person and Alt-Person is a different kind of duplicate than Me, but a few hours younger.

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draygo•

I don’t see the Star Trek universe as being a multiverse of options like Rick and Morty or Marvel.

Doesn't TNG contradict this though? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

This is almost exactly what the MCU multiverse is based on.

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majicwalrus•

Yes. And shockingly this is one of my favorite episodes of TNG. Riker very clearly says something to the effect of quantum anomaly. It seems more than reasonable for this to happen and for Data to not be able to reintegrate all of the disparate Enterprises into their own reality.

However, this episode is unique in that generally Star Trek does not show changes in time as impacting the multiverse nor does Star Trek generally show the common knowledge or ability to move between these "universes" freely.

I guess what I mean really is that as sci-fi universe-theories go, Star Trek tends to stay very close to what we currently perceive as reality. It is canonically true that some people experience time differently, we have evidence of multiple universes, but if anyone finds themselves in their own past they understand that changes will effect their own future. There's never the idea that one could travel back in time create the Kelvin universe and then leave the Kelvin universe and go back to the prime universe. Typically once someone creates a timeline it becomes *the* timeline that everyone else exists in.

Which maybe is just to say that the walls between universes in Trek seem much thicker than in the Marvel Universe.

Note: Daniels says they can "view" and monitor multiple disparate timelines. It's my suspicion that this technology works like the Krenim technology and merely records a static moment in time and then uses advanced technology to make comparisons to analyze the timeline. This is important because the goal becomes to preserve the timeline and not let other folks change it - this is only a reasonable course of action when you know that you have to occupy the same timeline.

Otherwise you'd just let everyone to go back in time and start their own timeline.

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InnocentTailorCrewman•

Indeed! The idea of alternate universes was also pulled on in Discovery Season 3: one of the time soldiers being displaced from the Kelvin Timeline.

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GrumpySpaceGamerOP•

I think we might be tripping up on “alternate” though. I don’t see the Star Trek universe as being a multiverse of options like Rick and Morty or Marvel.

I see your point, but I think the existence of the "Kelvin" timeline troubles that idea a bit.

Basically: What if the Kirk of the Kelvin timeline showed up in the Prime timeline. Would he still be a captain? Would he be given command of a starship right away? Or, would he lose rank and have to go back to the academy?

On the one hand, he certainly seems to have command experience. On the other, this guy literally just showed up through a space-time anomaly, who knows what parts of his story are true or not.

Ultimately, though, I think the answer is probably some kind of competency/assessment test, as others have suggested.

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Khanahar•

Ultimately, though, I think the answer is probably some kind of competency/assessment test, as others have suggested.

Yeah I think this kind of thing would absolutely be common enough that you'd have to have an established protocol. Medical, psychological, and cultural analysis to determine compatability, and retraining to cover any differences in institutional structure that were bridgable.

Maybe they are given a "provisional" rank, perhaps for an extended time while retraining and examination continues.

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majicwalrus•

I think part of this would also depend on “when.” If Nexus Kirk returned and did not die one assumes competency tests would be necessary.

Likewise for Kelvin U Kirk. But I think the big difference is that Kelvin Kirk couldn’t pass the competency test because the world he comes from is too different from the one we are in. Also there’s a chance based on Kovich comments in Discovery that the shift to a new universe would kill him anyway.

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feor1300Lieutenant Commander•

Lots of people cite the deadlock example but it's not really a good one, since the entire ship was duplicated and there was no real way to say which was the original (or if that even had any meaning, it could be closer to good/evil Kirk from The Enemy Within, where they have equal claim to being the original).

It's entirely possible that Harry & Naomi are the only actual members of the Voyager crew to get home, and the rest of the crew and the ship itself are quantum duplicates.

Assuming actual situations where this comes up, however, timeline displaced is going to be mostly up to when the divergence was. Like O'Brien, by the end of DS9 is technically from 2-3 hours in the future of a timeline where the station was destroyed in a Romulan attack. His journey back cause the timeline split that ultimately saved the station from destruction, so he's from an alternate timeline, but he's close enough to the original that even had the other O'Brien managed to make the trip with him he would still have all the qualifications and training without question. So most likely He'd get himself a new assignment somewhere as Eddie O'Brien and carry on with his new life.

Reality displaced is a bit more complex. Like, for example, they ultimately figured out what was happening to Worf in Parallels but weren't able to get him home, only stop him from jumping any further. I imagine that would involve some time off duty for re-evaluation, to confirm you are still qualified for your position (along with some awkward conversation with loved ones), and then a suitable assignment would be found for you if you wanted to carry on with your starfleet career.

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the_seraphim•

Oof, Eddie O'Brien had a wife and daughter .. has a wife and daughter...

Chiefs a family man, I think he'd off himself rather than be exiled from them.

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EnerPrimeChief Petty Officer•

I mean, there'd certainly be some weirdness in figuring out the new relationships, but I can't imagine Miles and Keiko forcibly booting a duplicate Miles from their lives forever. He'd probably settle into being 'uncle Eddie' or something like that.

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the_seraphim•

Probably join the Maquis and take it out on the cardassian

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NeedsToShutUpChief Petty Officer•

Imagine if we had First Officer Worf now in our timeline. Would we recognize his rank?

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feor1300Lieutenant Commander•

Like I said, would probably need a period of downtime to run through some recertification tests to assure the reality he came from had the same practical requirements for that rank as ours, but assuming he passed those I don't see why we wouldn't.

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JahoanCrewman•

For another example: Thomas Riker.

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[deleted]•

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yoshemitzuMODChief Medical Officer•

Could you please expand on that? This is a subreddit for in-depth discussion.

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JahoanCrewman•

We have seen at least two other incidents with officers being duplicated without any reconciliation (like what happened with the Transporter Split Kirk or the Seven and Janeway recruited by the Relativity): Thomas Riker, and William Boimler. In the former, the Riker who had been stranded retained his rank of Leiutenant, and in the latter, one of the Boimlers was transferred back to the Cerritos due to what was likely a starfleet provision preventing two versions of the same person from serving on the same vessel.

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NeedsToShutUpChief Petty Officer•

That and his Captain has personal issues regarding his transporter Twin.

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rdhightChief Petty Officer•

Rank and qualifications are two different things.

Starfleet gives you a rank. But that, by itself, does not entitle you to serve in any specific position on board ship. To receive a posting as a transporter chief, you have to be holding a current transporter qualification.

Alternate universe crewmen would keep their rank, but they'd need to go through some level of testing to make sure their qualifications were also in order.

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IWriteThisForYouChief Petty Officer•

It seems like that by the twenty-fourth century, rank is at least somewhat determined by position as well. The CO of a ship will almost always be a captain, the XO will almost always be a commander or a lieutenant commander, the CMO will almost always be a commander or a lieutenant commander, and the chief of security will typically be a lieutenant or a lieutenant commander.

Because of that, I'd posit that holding a specific rank is almost entirely dependent on being qualified to perform certain tasks. You can't progress in your career, and by extension the chain of command, if you're not qualified to hold the next position up.

Thomas Riker got to continue being a lieutenant because he had the qualifications to do that, but didn't have the qualifications and/or the experience to do whatever job would require his promotion to lieutenant commander. Will Riker, by benefit of not having been stranded on a planet for eight years, had been able to rise to become the XO of the flagship.

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binarycow•

It seems like that by the twenty-fourth century, rank is at least somewhat determined by position as well.

You got that backwards. Position depends on your rank. Outside of emergency/temporary situations, you can't be a captain of a galaxy class starship unless you also hold the rank of captain. You can't be the chief engineer unless you hold the rank of lieutenant commander, etc.

Because of that, I'd posit that holding a specific rank is almost entirely dependent on being qualified to perform certain tasks. You can't progress in your career, and by extension the chain of command, if you're not qualified to hold the next position up.

This is more accurate. A command track officer won't be promoted to the rank of lieutenant or lieutenant commander without also completing the bridge officers course

Put plainly...

For lower ranks (ensign to lieutenant commander):

  • your training and experience will determine your rank increases
  • rank + training/experience will determine your available positions
  • so you'd get the rank increase then move to a higher position

For mid-level ranks (commander and captain)

  • if you meet the requirements, and a position is open, you'd be offered the job
  • you would get a rank increase if needed
  • so you get the higher rank because of the job

For admirals, its quite possible that it works the same way as the current US military general officer/admiral ranks. For the US military, 3 and 4 star ranks are temporary. If an admiral finishes their posting in a three star billet, and moves to a two star billet, the admiral would revert to a 2 star rank. In practice, however, if the admiral is not selected for an equal rank position, they would be asked to retire.

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craziceltChief Petty Officer•

Thomas Riker got to continue being a lieutenant because he had the qualifications to do that, but didn't have the qualifications and/or the experience to do whatever job would require his promotion to lieutenant commander.

If I remember right that mission earnt Will Riker his Lt Commander rank hence bitterness with Tom. 1 got 2 promotions and several offers of Captancy, the other got years and years of Isolation.

the CMO will almost always be a commander or a lieutenant commander

Bashir was a Lieutenant and was CMO I'd argue that CMO is less dependent on rank. You must be a skilled doctor first your rank is second to that.

Because of that, I'd posit that holding a specific rank is almost entirely dependent on being qualified to perform certain tasks.

I'd disagree Cheif O'brien was an NCO and was Cheif of operations and was Senior staff. He was probably the best practical engineer in starfleet at that time and he was 3 ranks below Ensign in the traditional Hierarchy.

It seems COs have some leeway in picking their senior staff and I would argue that rank doesn't equal skill but position does.

Ie a Lt Commander ops may be useless at transporters but Cheif ya boi O'brien can strip down every component on DS9 and reassemble it with eyes closed and that's why he's Cheif of Operations.

Same goes for Harry Kim an ensign still head of operations on voyager Nog on the books a Lt junior replaced O'brien and doing the same job as Lt Commander Data.

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sykoticwit•

With Thomas Riker they just assigned him to a new ship and retained his rank and seniority.

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FuturessobrightChief Petty Officer•

W. Thomas Riker is a very different situation: he was in this Starfleet and earned his rank here. There is no reason to treat him any differently than any other officer who was MIA and later rescued: cut him a check for his back pay, give him some trauma counselling and put him back to work.

The situation where someone turns up from another timeline, or the future, with a rank that wasn't granted by Starfleet in this version of history is totally different. I don't see why they would have any authority or standing until someone actually accepted them into Starfleet and granted them rank-- probably after writing a report on the exceptional cercumstances and getting their "expirience in another service" accepted as a reasonable equivilance.

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SkyeQuake2020Chief Petty Officer•

In a way, Harry Kim isn’t a typical case of alternate realty/timeline. Technically, he and Naomi are from the same universe and timeline. If anything they’re clones.

Even with all that, I think everything gets based on the circumstances behind how they came to be, and if there’s any time difference. For example, a Starfleet Captain who got brought 100 years into the future shouldn’t technically be a Captain in the new Starfleet.

Obviously we see that’s not entirely true, as Discovery’s command crew get to remain at their current positions on the ship. Although, that might just be an exception considering they’re the ones who know the ship. What makes even less sense is how Admiral Vance hasn’t assigned someone from his timeline officers, Lieutenant Willa would’ve been a good choice, to help smooth them over to bring Discovery up to speed.

As far as Harry is concerned he was just as much as Harry Kim as the other one was. If somehow both Voyager’s had survived and made it back to Starfleet I’d think they’d be able to keep their rank/positions.

Now for something like the Silver Blood Voyager, I’m more hesitant on them. As far as we know, until they activated their enhanced warp drive, everything seemed to indicate sensors showed them as Human. Even the Silver Blood Seven was able to produce nanoprobes, so it even seems like some Borg technology was transferred when she was created. So this one is kind of hard to judge what would happen, I think.

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dasbushCrewman•

For example, a Starfleet Captain who got brought 100 years into the future shouldn’t technically be a Captain in the new Starfleet.

Counterpoint, the Bozeman and Captain Bateson are at the battle with the Borg cube in First Contact. You can hear him report in the comms chatter when the Enterprise arrives starts to listen in to the fight.

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EnerPrimeChief Petty Officer•

To be fair that is a number of years down the line, more than long enough for Bateson and his crew to go through retraining and recertification and for the Bozeman to be refit to modern standards (if it is the same Bozeman).

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CptKeyes123•

Considering "Non Sequitur", it seems like they have procedures for it. First they just have to run through all the rational explanations before they can get to the crazier ones though and verify that this person is from another timeline and not just mad.

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techno156Crewman•

Most likely, Starfleet would try to return them to their native timezone, if they so wish it, or otherwise try and fit them in with their last known rank.

If they chose to stay, it's likely that they would be expected to undergo the standard testing and re-education procedures similar to those that had been mind-wiped or time-displaced, so that they are brought back up to speed, and would be checked to ensure that they still pass the prerequisite qualifications for their rank.

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rahxeph89•

To answer your question, I'm going to have to direct you to a novel series called the Department of Temporal Investigations. Basically, they're an organization of the Federation, separate from Starfleet (they aren't overly fond of Starfleet), and answer to the office of the President. Their job is to handle and contain temporal anomalies, up to and including ships and crews. The book series basically covers them handling a TOS era crew in the TNG era, and having to reign in some "cowboy diplomacy."

Tldr: Starfleet doesn't handle displaced timeline staff, that's another organization.

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CaffinatedNebulaChief Petty Officer•

Season 3 Discovery gives us the best view of this with Discovery's arrival into the future, Kovich's interview with Georgiou. If we use some beta canon from STO to fill in the gaps it's mostly likely the Starfleet has a Temporal and interdimensional acclimation course for people to go through. It would probably start out by trying to find how divergent from the Prime universe the other person comes from. Basically identifying them prime counterparts (if they exist) and seeing how much of their personal information matches. As long as they didn't have any indication that their Starfleet was vastly different (ie: Terran Empire) and they were otherwise cleared for duty I think they would be allowed to continue within Starfleet at their current rank. The knowledge that parallel universes exists implies that the same basic training and qualifications for Starfleet must also exist.

To use the Voyager "Endgame" example, let's say Adm. Janeway returns with Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant. After reassurances that there would be no predestination paradox catastrophe Adm. Janeway would be probably be allowed to continue her Starfleet career. HOWEVER because of that she is still bound Starfleet rules and regulations and she would be court martialed for a flagrant violation of the Temporal Prime Directive. If she was allowed to continue her career she'd be busted down to Rear Adm. and put in charge of counter Borg research.

The Alternative would be like what they did with Emperor Georgiou and shuffle her off to Section 31 where her unique experience could be useful. The fact her Prime self was deceased was a bonus that she could assume her identity easier.

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EAinCA•

Harry Kim wasn't from a divergent timeline. Voyager was effectively duplicated on a quantum level.

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ShadowDragon8685Lieutenant•

How would Starfleet handle displaced alternate reality/timeline versions of staff?

It's not canon, but apparently Temporal Agent Daniels shows up and just unceremoniously dumps them all in the year 2410, during which so much absolutely absurd and ridiculous bullshit happened - and the uniform regulations took such an absolute airlocking that you can show up for work in beachwear or the uniform of a hostile foreign power and don't get any shit for it - that temporally- or reality- or both-temporally-and-reality-displaced personnel barely warrant the batting of an eyelash. Nobody questions it when an NX-class starship and something from the post-Disco-Burn-future together gang up with a D'Deridex Bird of Prey, a Galaxy-class and Dominion dreadnought to do a mission from the Klingon High Council. And that's kind of a tame and unremarkable task force.

Okay, on to the non-Star-Trek-Online answer.

No, wait, I see you've just brought up Harry Kim's spaced doppleganger.

Funnily enough, he comes back! Remember Ensign Lyndsay Ballard, AKA Jhet'leya? In STO, after she basically sacrifices herself to a brainwashing cult to prevent Janeway from having to pull out all the stops and perpetrate a bloodbath to keep her, she later achieves some status and rank among the Kobali, goes after Voyager's trail, finds out about this, and collects the Harry Kimsicle, and Kobalifies him.

And in my imagined resolution of that scenario, my Starfleet Captain (Fleet Admiral, whatever), puts her foot down, insists - quite roughly - that if he says he's Harry Kim, Ensign, Starfleet, then by god he is that and he's coming home to his kin even if she has to use her phaser banks to rescue him. And then offers that same deal to Lyndsay Ballard, Ensign, Starfleet as well.

Anyway, now onto the serious answer.

There's almost certainly a formal playbook for this. The first and most important thing to determine is when the displaced person came from. If they're from the past or the present, then there's no harm there, but if they're from the future, then you need to hook a hard right around a star or stick them on ice until their appropriate time, so as not to violate the Temporal Prime Directive.

Secondly is making sure they're not from the Evil Asshole Mirror Universe, because, seriously, nobody from that place can be trusted, they all have Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. If they are from that Mirror Universe, then they'll get asylum as a civilian and that's it. Your other services are not required.

Assuming however that they're from one of those myriad non-backstabbing-mirror universes as seen through the Quantum Keyhole in [TNG: Parallels](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Parallels_(episode\)), then after a thorough psych evaluation, which may include Betazoid or Vulcan telepathy to ensure they're not from another parallel universe's Evil Asshole Mirror Universe, or whatever, and that sending them home is undesirable or unpossible, and that they want to continue to serve in Starfleet...

Well, there's going to be some on-boarding, and this situation may be common enough that it's a normal class. It would be treated, I suspect, like the modern day military treats someone who was a prior serviceman in another service; there will be on-boarding classes, there will be evaluations, but they won't be treating you like a raw boot. You're a professional spacer who was in previous service held to the highest of standards, and achieved rank in such.

It would be a lot of classroom work, but it would be also partly individual; a lot of interviews with historical and philosophical specialists, people who can figure out where your history and theirs diverged, where the philosophies differ, and making sure you've been brought up to speed. Imagine a Starfleet officer from the Starfleet Battles/Starfleet Command 'verse finding themselves in Hikaru Sulu's 2310s. Largely very similar, but from a much more militant Starfleet than the Starfleet of the 2310s which is in the process of becoming drunken peacemongers. They'd want to be sure that you understand - not just can repeat, but understand, that here, Klingons are not shoot-on-sight, for example, even if you do find them inside Federation space.

Once they get past the interviews and classwork, I would expect that most people could expect to take a rank reduction by one step, just to give them some time to absorb the new zeitgeist while discharging less-strenuous obligations than they previously did.

Persons from the past would face largely a similar thing, but it would be more challenging; just imagine what Scotty had to go through to get up to speed with the 2360s. I mean, he was literally Montgomery Scott, so nobody would ever question his technical chops or genius - hell, he literally wrote regulations which were still in effect - but he needs a lot of technical retraining to advance his skills to the modern era. That was literally a plot point of [TNG: Relics](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Relics_(episode\)) after all.

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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yoshemitzuMODChief Medical Officer•

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wibbly-waterChief Petty Officer•

If its some kind of diversion where both were originally one and got split I think thats a cloning situation and (if Starfleet is thinking similar) it would be pertinent to say both were the same individual but became two separate individuals. Like the Rikers or identicle twins. Arguably in many cases there is no "original" and both are equally "original" as the other. Identicle twins share DNA but differ in experiences and (perhaps) epigenetics - so are different people. As such any ranks gained before divergence carry forwards carry forward - though I'd imagine an investigation would have to be done and not just believe them on face value.

On the other hand if its an alternate timeline (be that mirror or the type Worf goes through) then there can be all manner of differences in training, procedure etc. I think a competancy test and retraining would be in order - but it also makes sense to give field ranks and acting positions go them. They could probably even act as the role until a test can be administered or retraining be scheduled.

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lexxstrum•

The one that didn't make sense for me was Emperor Georgiou: a borderline sociopath from the Mirror Universe shows up, and you hand her the life and career of her Prime universe counterpart?

Imagine the Riker variant from "Parallels" ("we won't go back, the Borg are everywhere. The Federation is gone!") Got stuck in the Prime universe: would he just slide back into Starfleet? The man has obvious PTSD (his ship tried to stop Worf from fixing the rift that dumped them into Prime in the first place), and who knows what else they might have done to survive. He's going to need tons of therapy to be able to serve again.

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