Forum:If Captain Christopher had to stay why didn't Gillian Taylor?

In TOS episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", the Enterprise must slingshot around the Sun in order to return to the 23rd Century, the result of which sends back both Captain Christopher & the base security guard back to their original positions as if they never left in the first place. However the same procedure is later used to send the crew of the Enterprise back to 1986 & foward again to their correct time in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home". But in this case their passenger, Dr. Gillian Taylor, goes with the crew to the 23rd Century. Why wasn't she kept in 1986 when the crew left?


 * Good question. If Kirk had been a tad less infatuated at the time, he might have considered leaving her behind. :-) However, one consideration would be that she had knowledge of the future and could potentially contaminate the timeline that way (though, admittedly, people would easily brush off her unverifiable claims as crazy, as opposed to the potentially greater temporal contamination of removing her from the timeline completely). Nonetheless, her removal from the timeline didn't seem to affect anything to any great extent. One possibility is that the whole thing is a temporal causality loop: that she was supposed to mysteriously disappear at exactly that moment in time, and that that is part of the way the future we see in Star Trek was supposed to come about. At any rate, we must assume that either it's a causality loop, or she just wouldn't have had much effect on the timeline had she stayed behind (say, maybe she would have been so crushed by the loss of her whales that she'd have committed suicide, which historically speaking would be roughly the same as her disappearing). Long story short, we really don't know--and you're right, Kirk should have been a bit more conscientious about removing someone from a few hundred years in his past (long enough back to add up to some pretty big changes--if you consider descendants, etc.) Probably if he wasn't in such a hurry to get the whales and get back to the 23rd century, Spock would have presented objections. It's only logical. :-) -Mdettweiler 04:20, December 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * . - Archduk3:  talk  04:30, December 19, 2009 (UTC)
 * Or it was outright stated, in both instances, first that Christopher had to go back because his disappearance would have affected the future, whereas Taylor justified that they needed her in the future for her expertise. If it wasn't addressed, regardless if an attempt was made or not leave Taylor behind, then it would have been a plot hole. --Alan 13:54, December 19, 2009 (UTC)