Memory Alpha:Pages for deletion/Grandfather paradox (I)

This is a page to discuss the suggestion to delete "Grandfather paradox (I)".

• If you are suggesting a page for deletion, add your initial rationale to the section "Deletion rationale".
• If you want to discuss this suggestion, add comments to the section "Discussion".
• If a consensus has been reached, an administrator will explain the final decision in the section "Admin resolution".

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Deletion rationale

Don't think this was ever mentioned in Trek. -Angry Future Romulan 19:53, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• Merge with predestination paradox. Bashir did not use this term, and this article even states it is the same thing as predestination paradox. As such it should be merged with that article, but the "resolution' section should be jettisoned, as it is speculation/original research.--31dot 20:10, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'm working on the predestination paradox page right now. These two paradoxes are not the same, as the grandfather paradox is simply a headscratcher problem (what if you travel back in time and kill your own grandfather before your parents were born, then you would never exist to travel back in time in the first place...), but the predestination paradox is a time loop, in which one becomes (and indeed, always was) part of historical events. If anything they are opposite. -Angry Future Romulan 20:17, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

I was only going by the text of the article- if they are different, this might be a case like tidal locking where the term was not used but it was described. I thought Bashir called it a predestination paradox, though.--31dot 20:28, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

He did, but, while the grandfather paradox was implied though Janeway's speeches about how time travel gave her a headache, this article has no implication to Trek, as this paradox was never actually used as a plot point in any episode. -Angry Future Romulan 20:32, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

• Keep based on this is what happened in "The City on the Edge of Forever", albeit backwards, as the "grandfather" was saved instead of killed. The result was the same though, and I'm not sure if there's a different name for that. - Archduk3 21:07, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

I think maybe some people are confused as to what the grandfather paradox really is. Its called a paradox because it has no resolution. But in Star Trek, time travel events always have some sort of resolution (eighteen year-old Molly O'Brien vanishes, the Enterprise-E observes a Borg-assimilated Earth, the alternate reality is actually a branching quantum universe, etc.). The grandfather paradox is simply a statement meant to illustrate the hypothetical complexities (or impossibility) of changing history. -Angry Future Romulan 21:13, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not confused as to what it is, but Star Trek has bent over backwards to "solve" it, usually by changing the "rules", such as the Guardian of Forever having an area of effect where the timeline didn't change, or the Enterprise-E being caught in a temporal wake. Just because we have seen a "solution" doesn't mean it's stopped being a "paradox", at least as far as the reference goes. - Archduk3 23:56, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

• Delete, mostly. I think that a brief note about grandfather paradoxes could be added at predestination paradox (though, as A.F.R. says, they're not the same thing, they're related). But if the term was never used in Trek, and arguably none of the Trek time travel stories quite fits the definition, we don't need the article. –Josiah Rowe 01:00, September 4, 2010 (UTC)