A discussion of utmost importance...

I am watching old TNG episodes with my son and it has occurred to me that there is a serious fundamental difference between Star Trek and Star Wars...Star Wars has no time travel.

Look at all the different versions of Star Trek; there is time travel in all of them. They even have studies in temporal mechanics, and a Temporal Directive exists for Starfleet. Nowhere in the Star Wars universe (except for one minor character who was "caught' in hyperspace for 200 years...) is there any mention of temporal change. The mechanics of the hyperdrive for the most part, seem to be unexplained (although Wookiepedia mentions relativity shielding, which keeps a vessel traveling through hyperspace spatially in the current timeline.) Warp drive on Star Trek on the other hand, has better explanations given in the TV shows, (but there is more opportunity there), and can accidentally lead to temporal anomalies were people are sent backwards or forwards in time.

This makes more sense on a couple of levels; Star Trek has always been the more scientific of the two universes, with the Milky Way as the background, known laws of physics and current earth-bound theories were able to be accessed at the time of production; whereas Star Wars is more fantasy based and the science behind this universe is less important to the storyline than it is to Star Trek. Trek tries to have a standard with the Warp factor (for example) to measure the time it takes to travel between systems. (For example, in the Star Trek movie (2009), it takes 7 hours to fly the 16 light-year distance between Earth and Vulcan at the then maximum warp.), whereas Star Wars gives the feel that distance is covered almost instantly (given the 100 000 light-year width of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, and maps of said galaxy have Tatooine near the edge and Alderaan nearer to the Core, making this trip approximately 25 000 light-years, and Han Solo makes this trip in about "seven hours"). Maybe this is Star Wars time travel.

All of the time travel on Star Trek involves anomalies, yet everytime the Enterprise (or Voyager, for that matter, remember the Sarah Silverman episode?) end up in the past, they have no problems getting back to the exact moment in time and spatial displacement they were at when they left the time-stream. Obviously, they have the technology for this before the 29th century (where some of the future people came from "traveling" as tourists).

Without taking the time to watch everything, only a basic premise of this topic is possible at this time, but I will be returning to this topic as I continue to learn more.

Until next time....