So, I just got my copy of the Lower Deck’s Handbook (it’s AMAZING) but one of the sections of the handbook goes into the legacy of the ships to carry the name Cerritos. (Think along the terms of the ships to carry the name Stargazer) and one in particular caught my eye…
A Leif Ericson class USS Cerritos was answering a distress call from Earth (in a manner not dissimilar to the Enterprise-E in First Contact), but before the Cerritos could reach Earth a Klingon Bird of Prey manned by Captain Kirk beat them to it.
But an unforeseen consequence of Kirk’s time hopping erased the Leif Ericson class from reality.
It was a short blurb, but I actually felt chills. I’m reminded of the scene where Spock expresses uncertainty on how to accurately bring them back to the present, and Bones tells Spock to just go with his gut or something along those terms.
With the implied context that a miscalculation on Spock’s part led to the erasure of the Leif Ericson class and presumably all hands, do you think Spock made the right call, given what he knew at the time?
What makes you think all hands of those ships were erased? In the Star Trek stories I remember where something significant was prevented from happening due to time travel the characters involved wound up somewhere else instead.
The most direct comparison I can think of is from Voyager
In “Year of Hell” Kurtwood Smith’s time ship erases itself from existence, and then we see Kurtwood Smith back at home busily working on the time ship that now will never be. Oh, and Chakotay and Paris appeared back on Voyager.