On Youtube, there are videos detailing how the technology and progress in the 23rd, 24th centuries came from time travellers giving technology to the people of earlier times, and it was hinted strongly Jonathan Archer's Enterprise never came about in TOS, and Cochrane was inspired by the shape of the Enterprise E.

If that's the case, how much of Star Trek is in fact a host of alternate timelines?

Star Trek Discovery is a great example featuring technologies and events nobody's heard about. Think about it. I own nothing, by the way, just everything in my portfolio.

Enjoy.

A Serious Change to the Timeline.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard was extremely glad when he and his ship and crew found themselves back in the present day in the 24th century.

It had been….a hard road and even that was putting the entire ordeal mildly. Ever since Starfleet had contacted him to inform him of the Borg incursion although he had known from the moment Hayes contacted him directly to inform him of the threat, he had known already that there was a Borg cube that had begun an invasion of the Federation, only to tell him the Enterprise E would not be allowed to take part in the fight in the Typhon sector off Earth, Picard had been furious.

The excuse being he would be an unstable element to a critical situation had only fanned the flames of his rage, and he had nursed his rage when he had seen for himself the effect to the timeline after that Borg sphere had opened a temporal transwarp conduit into Earth's past to change history by assimilating Earth and the human race following the Third World War before the First Contact with the Vulcans, but it was only now the confrontation with the Borg Queen and the way Lily Sloane had charged in after him after he'd given the order to Daniels he and his men should stand their ground and even fight hand to hand with the Borg, an action which would likely see them assimilated or dead, Picard now realised Admiral Hayes was right.

But Picard and his crew had stopped them, at great cost.

So many of his crew were dead. Many of whom had been assimilated by the Borg, and they were killed in the feedback caused by the death of the Queen, his ship was damaged and needed to be repaired urgently to fix whatever damage was left.

The moment they cleared the temporal transwarp conduit, Picard closed his eyes in relief when he saw the remains of Hayes's fleet and the space stations in orbit. However, as he looked closely at them, Picard frowned.

Was it just him or were there a few more stations than there should be?

Actually, as he looked out over the vista, Picard noticed with a sinking feeling in his stomach there were a few ships he didn't recognise. For the last few years ever since the threat of the Dominion had appeared through the Bajoran wormhole, the recent Klingon war when the Klingon High Council went insane after being pushed by a Founder disguised as a prominent, influential Klingon general to invade Cardassia by making Gowron believe the Cardassians had reorganised their government with Dominion aid, and the resurgence of the Borg as a threat had made Starfleet and the Federation take the threats of the galaxy seriously.

As an explorer, Picard disliked the necessity, but he was a veteran officer who'd experienced battle more than once and he knew the need even if he didn't like it.

Recently newer classes of ships had been rolled out of the shipyards, some of them were just saucer sections and warp nacelles from established designs without the long-term research and development programs bogging down the time spent researching whether one spaceframe worked or not. The order had come straight from HQ when they'd taken one long look at their losses from the Klingon war, and they augmented the fleet so when the newer classes were rolled out they joined a larger fleet. So where did these ships come from? Picard didn't recognise them.

"Number One, do you…do you see anything different about the fleet, and the nearby ships?" Picard asked Riker uncertainly, hesitating at the wording of the unusual question.

Riker took a good look at the ships, and Picard saw the realisation spread over his first officer's face. "I do, sir." Riker turned toward him, the same cold dread Picard currently felt settling in his stomach on his own face. "You…you don't think?"

"Mr Data, cross-reference all of the ships and space stations in the system; see if there are any ships out there that shouldn't be there, or don't match anything in our records," Picard ordered urgently.

Data was instantly at work, and Picard was pleased and relieved his android science officer was more than up to the task after being damaged during the battle with the Borg Queen. "Captain, the computer has not been able to match more than thirteen starships, either by design or by name. The space stations have been there for a while, approximately sixteen years."

"But we don't remember them," Worf rumbled, his voice worried.

Picard sighed. There was nothing else for it. "Mr Data, access the Starfleet computer database. Compare our history programmed into the Enterprise's database with theirs. I want to see if there are…differences."

Data nodded - the light from the ceiling reflecting off of the internal machinery of his head exposed - and instantly went to work. "Aye, sir."

Picard turned urgently to Riker. "When you were with Cochrane and those people in the 21st century, did you say or do anything? I know you had to tell him what was going on to make him begin the warp flight, but did you say or do anything else?"

Riker blew out a breath as he tried to think of anything that connected their time in the 21st century to the possibilities they had changed history. "Too many to think of," he admitted, knowing if Picard was not going to like this, Starfleet and Temporal Investigations were going to like it even less, "but I can't think of anything that would do this."

"Do you really think we've changed history?" Troi asked.

Picard was dearly hoping they hadn't. The consequences… they were not worth liking. He had heard that a couple of years ago, Commander Sisko now Captain Sisko (Jean-Luc was pleased his relationship with the other captain had gotten better, and the other man's experiences with the aliens in the wormhole, the prophets of Bajoran culture had helped him move on) had accidentally substituted himself when Gabriel Bell was accidentally murdered when they met him.

As a result, history had changed, so now every picture of Bell was now Benjamin Sisko.

While the Federation was still born and it existed, and everything Sisko and his crew had known and experienced in their lives had still happened, history had changed but Starfleet and Temporal Investigations did not know just how much and how badly the timeline had been affected. It was hoped that the change was minor, but Picard knew there was no guarantee of that.

But this…

"There are unfamiliar ships and space stations in the Sol system, I would say so Counsellor," Picard sighed as he tried to think about what he would say to Starfleet about this mess.

"Captain, we're receiving a number of distress calls from the rest of the fleet. They're using our call sign, so we're recognised," Worf said from the console he had taken over from Daniels.

"Well, at least we exist," Riker said gravely without a drop of humour in his tone. Picard shuddered at the thought of himself and his crew simply not existing in history.

"Captain," Data suddenly said from the ops console. "There are a number of differences within the Federations' historical database. While the timelines are similar, there are certain events which never happened within our own continuity of history."

Picard closed his eyes. He could already feel the headache and nausea coming on steadily as he heard the news. "Explain briefly, Data."

"It seems in the 21st century, Dr Cochrane came up with the design for what he termed 'the perfect spaceship', a vessel with a primary and secondary hull with warp nacelles on support struts. The Enterprise XCV mission was never launched. Instead, the United Earth Space-Probe Agency focused on an entirely different type of starship to explore the local area of space. With their launch more inhabitable planets and several races made first contact several years earlier," Data turned around in his chair, his emotion chip online and conveying his concern clearly for his friends to detect.

Picard licked his lips, knowing from his own but now completely obsolete memory of history the ship Data had just described would be joined by another ship, known as the Icarus, who would make peaceful contact with the people of Alpha Centauri. Just how much had changed?

There was nothing else for it; he would have to tell Starfleet Command and Temporal Investigations what had happened, and how the timeline had changed around them. He knew it would take a long time to work out what the changes to the timeline were, and it would take a while for the debriefing from Temporal Investigations to take place.

"Mr Data, open a channel to Starfleet Command. Inform them of our recent battle with the Borg in the past, but also transmit a copy of our historical database, and inform them we may have changed history accidentally," Picard ordered to get it over and done with.

He knew Temporal Investigations would see the last part of the command as an excuse, but it could not be helped. He knew the moment Command received the report from Data they would not like what was going to be told.

X

Dulmur and Lucsly were two Temporal Investigations agents Picard had encountered before. Usually, Temporal Investigations spoke only and directly with the captain of a ship which had undergone some kind of encounter with time travel, but considering the enormous change to history, more than a dozen officials had boarded Enterprise to interview Will, Deanna, Geordi, and all of the other Starfleet officers who'd travelled back to Earth's past at a critical moment of history.

And now they were ready with the verdict, and Picard knew as soon as they sat down in the observation lounge instead of inside his Ready Room, it was not going to be good. "We have already spoken to the crew members who were planet-side when you were in the past, Captain," Lucsly's face was formed into a scowl, and before Picard could even speak, the Temporal Investigations official was marking off the offences with his fingers, his scowl deepening with every word. "Shaking hands excessively with Cochrane. Showing him an image of the Enterprise through a telescope which made sure the design and development of United Earth's starship program were changed forever. Informing Cochrane of his statue. Showing him advanced technology and blueprints of warp engines before they were meant to be conceived."

Only Picard's self-control, hard-won thanks to years of Starfleet command experience, stopped him from wincing at the number of stupid things his people had done.

When he had heard what Geordi had inadvertently told the drunken scientist - it was a blow to learn Zefram Cochrane was a nonchalant cynical drunk who'd suffered from mental illnesses and didn't really care about Phoenix or his launch - Picard didn't know whether to laugh or weep.

Hero worship he could understand, but Geordi and the others had really needed to focus and get everything sorted out.

At first Picard was uncertain what had made Cochrane run away as he had, but as he looked at it from a different point of view, he worked out Cochrane was overwhelmed by everything happening around him, and when he had learnt from Will what Cochrane had planned to do with the faster-than-light rocket he'd built, well it had disillusioned Picard a little, but he could see where the other man was coming from.

Until the First Contact experience, Cochrane had little idea the Vulcans would be out there. Unfortunately, the Borg attack had made Cochrane change his mind before Will and the others changed it back.

But then they caused other problems. Picard had reprimanded Will and the others for their stupid mistakes, but he knew, in the long run, they'd answer for it anyway. In the meantime, they had also been studying up on the new timeline and its history.

It was…unthinkable, and yet remarkable at the same time.

Instead of sending small ships out into space first, Earth sent out what they called an NX-class ship, captained by a man called Jonathan Archer who was the son of a famed warp engine builder, Henry Archer. The good thing was the two men did exist in Picard's original continuity, but their lives were so different they may as well have been different.

Archer's one ship encountered Klingons, Bolians, Andorians, Tellarites, and dozens of other races who would make up the backbone of the Federation. But one of the biggest changes had come in the form of a monumental war between Earth and a race known as the Xindi, resulting in the deaths of seven million humans in an unprovoked attack, which was the prelude to the destruction of Earth. Archer and his crew stopped the war, but at great cost.

The loss of so many people had shaken Earth up badly, and a xenophobic movement known as Terra Prime had tried to devastate Earth during delicate negotiations with other local powers, but Enterprise stopped it. But during the Xindi war, Enterprise had gotten a lot of scientific and technical information taken from scans of Xindi warships, and technology had become more advanced along the way.

Ships were now faster due to the scans taken from the Xindi's subspace vortex technology which was considerably faster than ordinary warp drive. Weapons technology was also superior to what Picard and the others knew… there were just so many things for them to relearn.

"Mr Lucsly, I am more than aware of the damage we have done," Picard interrupted, "what I would like to know is what's going to happen?"

Dulmur sighed. "To be honest with you, captain. We're not sure ourselves," he ignored the look sent his way by his colleague but he noticed it, "our check through of the history files you sent shows there is a marked difference between the timelines and how history unfolded in both of them, however, there is little we can do except note it down and reprimand the officers responsible."

Picard nodded. He wasn't surprised, really. There was nothing they could do, and even if they tried to go about doing the logical thing, which was changing history back, they wouldn't be able to since it would cause more damage. And it didn't help that moment in history was incredibly delicate. The Borg had known that. That was why they'd attacked the Earth in the past to assimilate the future and make sure the Federation existed. If Temporal Investigations had the resources to send anyone back, which was rumoured, they might only make things worse.

"In the meantime," Dulmur wasn't finished yet. "You and your crew have a lot of studying to do of this timeline. And captain, please try to keep history the way it should be the next time you time travel."

Picard accepted that with the mental hope he never time travelled ever again. Anything to avoid this mess.