CHRONO ASTRA

This section is classified under the Temporal Prime Directive. All unauthorized persons who have gained access to this documentation are cautioned that reading further is in violation of Federation law.

It is now over one hundred years since the USS Enterprise made the first accidental trip a few minutes into the past. The Federation remains the only known Alpha Quadrant power to possess temporal technology. As such, we bear a heavy burden of responsibility. Initially, the experts were convinced that the past must be fixed and immutable - the so called 'law of conservation of reality'. As a result Star Fleet began sending historical research missions to several parts of Federation history, but within less than a year it was clear that the past was not in fact fixed, but highly sensitive to change. When another accident hurled the Enterprise into 1966, the crew's unintentional interference with the past threatened to significantly jeopardize future history. Although Star Fleet began to reappraise its policies on time travel, historical research missions continued for some time until it became obvious that the dangers were simply too high.

By 2268 Star Fleet instituted the Temporal Prime Directive. This policy, like it's standard Prime Directive predecessor, was a massively complex set of rules which basically boiled down to one sentence: no Federation vessel or crew would willingly jeopardize past history under any circumstances. As a consequence of the TPD, all Federation time travel was halted and the very existence of this technology was classified at the highest possible level. The Federation determined that it would be best if the existence of temporal technology was quietly forgotten.

The Federation has since found itself dealing with a bewilderingly wide variety of cases involving time travel via long forgotten alien devices, natural and artificial anomalies, accidents and deliberate sabotage. The Federation response to this situation was the formation of the Temporal Investigation Agency in 2273. Officially, Temporal Investigations would be responsible for investigating all known instances of time travel, assessing the impact upon the timeline and, if necessary, assigning blame to those involved.

Less well known are the TIA's other roles. These have expanded over the years to include the use of highly classified temporal scanning devices to monitor the creation and state of alternate timelines, engaging in covert activity in order to ensure the lid of secrecy remains tightly closed over all temporal technology, and even acting to restore the timeline after it had been altered by accident or design.

Temporal Investigations continues in operation to this day, and contact with time travellers from the future indicates that it will continue in some form for many centuries to come.

Temporal Incursion Files: Sector 001: Alternate Timelines Database