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Really, the only difference in the two timelines was Tasha Yar vs Worf in terms of the command structure of NCC-1701-D. Why would there not have been additional timeline changes in terms of command structure / staff on NCC-1701D after the timeline divergence in "Yesterday's Enterprise"?

Surely, if Picard had even still been given command of the Enterprise (Encounter at Farpoint) in this timeline he would have chosen a completely different crew in this timeline than the other timeline for "war time purposes". I can see Data or Tasha being good choices, but why Geordi, Wesley, or Beverly if Picard was thinking about "war focused objectives" in this timeline? He cared personally for Beverly and Wesley...

Finally, why would Guinan have not known something was "wrong" when she boarded the ship (initially) where the timeline would have surely been different (and she was boarding a ship "made for war" rather than "for peace")?

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    Out-of-universe: TV writers are really bad at time-travel- and other temporal-phenomenon-related logic and the concept of causality. So if WW2 had been won by the Axis, every one of us would still be alive and living exactly where we are, associating with the same exact people, just perhaps speaking German. In other words, major timeline divergences only affect big things, like where national borders are, who wins what war, whether everyone is evil or good, etc. But otherwise everyone's live pretty much go on in the exact same manner with only superficial differences.
    – Lèse majesté
    Jul 28, 2013 at 1:40
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    @Lèsemajesté In some cases, that's exactly what happened with Medieval wars, except the people didn't even speak a different language afterwards. Borders changed hands a lot back then, and some peasants didn't even know.
    – methuseus
    May 13, 2014 at 18:25
  • This is so true. Think about it. A guy bangs his wife on Saturday instead of on Friday and his kids would be whole different people.
    – Emsley Wyatt
    Aug 28, 2021 at 23:33

2 Answers 2

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We've been shown in a few episodes that the best people in Starfleet want to serve on Enterprise. Given the legendary status of the ship and its captains it seems likely that Enterprise would still be a highly sought-after assignment. So the same brilliant people would likely end up there. The war had been going on long enough for it to have been a fact of life for all the senior staff when they were in Starfleet Academy, so there would be no skills mismatch.

As for Guinan, her abilities have never been enumerated or explained so any answer would be mere handwaving. In "Yesterday's Enterprise" her feelings of uneasiness and displacement started when the rift opened, so her intuition was likely due to sensing some kind of information from the other side of the rift.

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  • Good answer Kyle - pretty much what I would have said myself.
    – Omegacron
    Oct 3, 2014 at 19:02
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Nothing canonical, however to speculate:

The crew is the best Starfleet has to offer and it would make sense for them to be on the flagship in peace or in war.

As to Guinan sensing something wrong it's probable that she could only sense whatever she sensed as the two quantum wavefronts came close enough to act and react with each other (the events of the episode when it became possible for the crew to revert the timeline to the way it was supposed to be).

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