Guardian of Forever

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.

The Guardian of Forever in 2267

"Are you machine, or being?"

"I am both... and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending."

- Kirk questioning the Guardian (TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever")

The Guardian of Forever is a construct of an unknown, ancient alien race, that apparently functions as a time portal, or gateway to other times and dimensions, located on an ancient planet where the focus of all timelines throughout at least the Milky Way Galaxy converge. It is apparently sentient, responding to external stimulus such as questions and actions, and can even somehow control the flow of time. It generates immense ripples in time that manifest themselves as spatial disturbances in the region around the planet where it is located.

The Guardian is located among the ruins of a large, forgotten city that stretched beyond the horizon in all directions around it. Based on initial observations, the ruins appeared to be at least one million years old.

It should be noted that the Guardian claims to be on the order of at least five billion years old.

Capable of speaking to those around it, the Guardian explained that it is "its own beginning and its own ending," and that, "since before your sun (Sol) burned hot in space, [it had] awaited a question." Apparently an inert formation of quasi-metallic substance, the Guardian creates portals to other times.

The Guardian was discovered by the crew of the USS Enterprise in 2267. The Guardian's power was demonstrated when ship's doctor Leonard McCoy, suffering from the hallucinations induced by a cordrazine overdose, passed through the portal and into the past, where he inadvertently altered history. Captain James T. Kirk and his first officer, Spock, followed McCoy through the Guardian, and were ultimately successful in restoring (or preserving) the timeline. (TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever")

The Guardian in 2269

In 2269, a team of historians, accompanied by Captain Kirk and Spock, used the Guardian to investigate Federation history. Their investigation included firsthand accounts of the formation of the Orion civilization and the monitoring of Vulcan history of the 2230s and 2240s. While Kirk and Spock were visiting Orion, their support team was monitoring Vulcan's past, which, in doing so, inadvertently removed Spock from the proper timeline. Spock, however, was protected from the change while he was in Orion's past, and the change to the timeline went unnoticed until he and Kirk returned through the Guardian. Once the cause was determined, Spock was able to use the Guardian to return to his own childhood on Vulcan, and prevent his death during the kahs-wan ritual. (TAS: "Yesteryear")

1 Images seen through the Guardian of Forever
2 Appendices

[edit] Images seen through the Guardian of Forever

Egyptian pyramid	A sailing ship firing	The American Revolution	Abraham Lincoln wins the 1860 American presidential election
1930 newspaper (recorded on Spock's tricorder)	1936 newspaper from an alternate timeline (recorded on Spock's tricorder)	Franklin Roosevelt promoting war bonds	An unnamed Vulcan starship

[edit] Appendices

[edit] Background

The voice of the Guardian was performed by Bart LaRue in "The City on the Edge of Forever" and by James Doohan in "Yesteryear".

In the original teleplay for "The City on the Edge of Forever," the Guardians of the Time Vortex were nine feet tall, humanoid statue-like beings.

An original draft of the episode that eventually became TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise" featured a Vulcan science team researching history through the Guardian of Forever. In that story, the team accidentally caused the death of Surak, the father of modern Vulcan philosophy.

The original Guardian was designed by Desilu Supervising Art Director Rolland M. Brooks, because Matt Jefferies was sick with the Flu that week. (Star Trek: The Animated Series DVDs, text commentary for "Yesteryear")

[edit] Apocrypha

In the novel Engines of Destiny, the Guardian appears in an alternate timeline where the Borg have conquered Earth and an alternate Guinan, having learned of the change, has gone to the Guardian's planet to ask for help, and the Guardian reveals how to restore the timeline to normal.

In the Q Continuum series, the Guardian is used by a younger Q when attempting to find something new, allowing him to make contact with the being known as 0 (although the Guardian briefly tries to deny 0 access to this universe), who subsequently contacts (*), Gorgan and The One via the Guardian. It is hinted here that the Guardian was built by the race that would eventually evolve into the Q – when looking at the Guardian, the young Q comments "At least our ancestors made things", reflecting his dejection at the stagnant nature of the Q Continuum – but the veracity of this is uncertain, and given the nature of the Guardian, Q's comments might have been influenced by images he perceived within it.

In the alternate future seen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book trilogy Millennium the Guardian of Forever was key to Admiral Kathryn Janeway's Project Forever. Janeway, along with a combined Federation/Borg armada hoped to use the Guardian to go back in time and wipe out Bajor (the Federation was at war with the Bajoran Ascendancy in this timeline and were facing the end of the universe). However, at the very moment that Janeway and a team arrived at the Guardian, the Grigari set off a singularity bomb, creating a black hole that destroyed the entire Federation/Borg fleet, the Grigari fleet, Janeway, and the Guardian. The timeline was later reset by Benjamin Sisko and the crew of Deep Space 9.

In the alternate future presented in Imzadi, Admiral Riker used the Guardian to travel back in time to save Deanna Troi's life from an attempt to kill her and prevent her participation in a conference. In the timeline where she died, the species involved went on to secretly rebuild and become a major military power, but with her survival, Troi's empathic powers revealed that they were lying to gain time, and the conference was abandoned until the species was in desperate need of assistance. Although the future Data also attempts to travel back in time to maintain continuity (Riker is convinced to travel back after new evidence suggests that Troi was killed by a time-traveler, but Data feels that Riker is clutching at straws), it is revealed at the conclusion of the novel that history had already been changed, and Riker's actions actually set it back on the right path.

In Spock Vs. Q, Spock mentions having used the Guardian to travel back to the 20th century. Q describes it as "that lop-sided donut thing" before Spock corrects him, and asks him if he knows it. Q responds "been there, done that, got the T-shirt."

In the novel Provenance of Shadows, the Enterprise returns to the Guardian for a third time, just before the end of its original 5-year mission. They respond to a distress call from the science station erected in orbit of the Guardian's planet. Three Klingon ships attack the station and the Enterprise. They are successful in boarding the Enterprise's bridge and manage to take over the ship, forcing the crew to abandon ship, but Captain Kirk manages to escape, obtain several phasers, and transport down to the planet. There, he steps through the Guardian and ends up back on the Enterprise's bridge moments before the Klingons boarded. As the crew evacuates the bridge, Kirk sets the phasers on overload, and sacrifices himself to kill the Klingons, but his now-alternate timeline counterpart survives. As a last resort, the Klingons crash their ship into the Guardian, apparently destroying it.