Beckett's rules of Time Travel

[RossBeckett]

Dr. Beckett put in place a set of rules that the time traveller shall obey most likely for the same reason the Federation instituted the "Prime Directive". To quote Jonathan Archer(also played by Scott Bakula ), "We didn't come out here to play God." Back on the subject of QL, Dr. Sam Beckett probably put those rules in place because he was afraid of the time traveller(which ended up being him) taking advantage of his position. Having that much power might corrupt one. What do you think?

~Steve B.

 

[MichelleD]

You raise an interesting point; I think the potential for corruption would be there. The idea in QL was to make things better for other people. It would be tempting for Sam and Al to go back in time and make things better for themselves and that wasn't the purpose of the Project. If I'm remembering correctly, they originally were just supposed to observe, not physically be a part of what was going on. But as we know, things went wrong.

The idea was similar in Enterprise; they were just supposed to make contact with people, not try to change them.

 

[Lightning McQueenie]

This is explored in an episode of the Virtual Seasons where Al is killed by a faulty handlink and a replacement observer uses Sam's position to change his own life...