Commentary: ‘Star Trek’ And ‘Loki’ Both Utilize A Sacred Timeline
by Frank Martin
Time travel is always a tricky story concept; there are so many rules and factors to take into consideration. Any slight variation in the timeline can have catastrophic consequences. Because of this, some stories have a police force of sorts that patrols the timestream. There are various versions of the concept in so many different stories, but through these mechanisms, a peculiar idea emerges. This is the thought that time is supposed to be a certain way. Things have to play out naturally without any sort of interference from time travelers. It’s a concept that Star Trek takes advantage of, but it’s also something that Loki leans on heavily.
In the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” La’an (Christina Chong) is contacted by a mysterious individual who is, in fact, an agent of the Department of Temporal Investigations, a division of Starfleet that doesn’t exist yet. She is unknowingly tasked with carrying on his mission to prevent an assassination in the past. She succeeds, and a member of the Department thanks her for completing the mission and restoring the “proper flow of time.”
That term is extremely similar to a phrase repeated constantly on Loki: “the sacred timeline.” In the Disney+ series, the sacred timeline isn’t necessarily naturally occurring. Instead, it’s something orchestrated by the Time Variance Authority to prevent a Multiversal war. But the idea more or less remains the same: time is supposed to have a predetermined path that everyone must follow. Deviating from that path means that something has gone wrong. For Loki, this means TVA agents have to eliminate those variant paths. In Strange New Worlds, La’an worked alongside an alternate version of James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), who came from a timeline that was never supposed to exist. This means the version of Kirk featured in the episode would be considered a variant by Loki’s standards. So it was interesting that two completely different shows — both of which use time travel in two completely different ways — can still have overlapping concepts.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now streaming on Paramount Plus. Loki is now streaming on Disney+.
