Hey, you know how the Prophets of Bajor exist outside of time and didn’t understand how linear time works until Benjamin Sisko from Earth taught them? (Let’s ignore for now if Sisko taught them at some point, they should always have known for now.) And you know how they also give visions of the future to their worshippers on Bajor? Well, what if Benjamin Sisko’s physical appearance provided the beauty standards that made Bajorans evolve to look like humans?

Yes, I’m at it again, complaining about how too many aliens in Star Trek look like humans. But this time I’m providing a reason it works. Sure, canonical Star Trek has already provided an excuse (which I do not like) for why so many aliens look like human, and they’ve doubled down on that excuse in recent years. But I find my theory here more interesting in this case.

There already exists a fan theory, one that I had nothing to do with and am only using here as fodder for my own theory, that Cardassians and Bajorans are a single species that has diverged in evolution after some of them made their way to Cardassia from Bajor. I’m not gonna bother looking it up again for this post, but that idea is based on evidence such as Bajorans and Cardassians being able to very easily produce offspring together (many Trek hybrids, notably Vulcan/Human ones, are mentioned to require technological intervention to make a viable offspring, but Bajoran/Cardassian ones have been shown to happen as mistakes). Also, there’s the matter of a natural space-warp thingy that just happens to bring primitive spaceships from Bajor to Cardassia where those ancient Bajoran astronauts (who were active thousands of years before human ones) could have crashed and lived out their days starting a new species in the process. There may be more evidence, I don’t remember, but the gist of it is that the ones who wound up on Cardassia evolved into Cardassians.

What PDR is suggesting is: what if the ones who ended up on Cardassia are actually closer to “original” Bajorans than “modern” Bajorans are? Those on Cardassia are outside of the direct influence of the Prophets, but those back on Bajor are getting the visions from the beings who know the future. And some of those visions are surely of the Emissary, the great religious figure from the future who is none other than Benjamin Sisko. And if even a handful of Bajoran artists get such visions, they’re gonna make art that depicts a figure like Sisko and the people are gonna revere that figure. If that figure looks human, humanoid necks and foreheads and skin tones are gonna be appealing to the people. Natural selection would happen and those traits would be selected more often, passing along genes that hew closer to human traits. In the thousands of years of separation, Cardassians surely evolved to their new world as well (maybe that’s when their love of heat came into it), but I definitely think that Bajorans used to look closer to Cardassians back in the day.

The only flaw with this theory (the ONLY flaw, I will not be accepting any other flaws because as I so confidently say there are no others) is that the visions from the Prophets that we usually see don’t typically involve figures from the distant future, but instead people already known to the person having the vision. But hey, it only takes a couple of visions to a couple of artists over the millennia to start the thing rolling. Once one artist is doing it, others could emulate that one, and before you know it smooth foreheads are just the most popular thing and the divergence has begun.

It’s a typical family sitcom, except that the father is an inventor who keeps accidentally altering the timestream.

Don Reed-Owens

Though Don is a super-intelligent genius, he works as a mechanic and he is happy to do it. He saves the superscience for his own free time. He tinkers with a time machine in the garage, but he has no idea that he has actually got it working dozens, or even hundreds of times, because he always winds up altering the time machine such that he doesn’t remember and has to do it again.

Tammy Reed-Owens

The family matriarch is, in stereotypical sitcom fashion, the glue that holds the family together. She’s the one who deals with all the problems that crop up while her absent-minded husband makes a fool of himself.

Janice Willow

Tammy’s sister is an acid-tongued minx who likes to show up for a few minutes a week and deliver some one-liners.

Jake Reed-Owens

The oldest of the Reed-Owens children, Jake is in high school and is dealing with all the typical problems of adolescence.

Emily Reed-Owens

Thinking of herself as the ignored middle child, Emily is actually the one who gets the most attention, since she’s always complaining about something.

Oscar Reed-Owens

Oscar is the only family member cognizant of the ways that the timestream is constantly being altered. For some reason, he is the only one who notices that Jake and Emily have to keep learning the same lessons every week like they’re caught in a time loop. When his aunt Janice stopped appearing, Oscar was the only one who even remembered that she existed. And he’s the only one that noticed that he seemed to grow from an infant to a four year old over the course of a summer. As a kid, he takes this stuff in stride as best he can, but his best isn’t very good. He’s stressed out and it is only ever getting worse. More than anything, he wishes he could figure out why some weird thing always happens for 22 minutes every Thursday at 7:30.

Obviously this whole thing is a setup to mock the typical things that go uncommented on in regular sitcoms. I don’t know if it’d catch on, but if it were a real show I’d hope it lasts long enough to see Oscar progress into a complete and total wreck.

Almost certainly a real television show called Family Time has existed. I refuse to google it to find out because it is the ideal name for this show. I threw on the word “It’s” just to hedge my bets. The Reed-Owens surname is because it sounds like “Redoing” and it is quite a reach.

In several universes there has arisen a superhero known as the Beam. As they met one another

The Beam of Earth Purple

Fukui Yuito was an ordinary young man until he was caught in the blast caused by an exploding time machine that had crashed into his home. The temporal energies caused Yuito to gain superhuman powers: flying and moving at speeds so fast he could barely be seen. As occasionally happens, he decided to become a superhero called the Beam. Like the other Beams, he eventually learned that there were other universes and had adventures in them. But when he came home, things had changed. Due to some time travel event that occurred while he was away, his world was rewritten. People he knew weren’t who he knew, and more importantly, there was another Yuito as well, one still living the life he had before the accident. The Beam’s home was gone, so he left it to the new Yuito and began to wander the multiverse helping those in need and, hopefully, finding a new place for himself.

The Earth that was home to Yuito is the one ravaged by the Time Travel Chaos of the time travel characters I gave you back in August.

The Beam of Earth Brown

On the island of Islopia, the Wizard King enforces his rule by enchanting his police force with superhuman powers. One of those officers, Klair Getting, was given powers of supernatural speed. In spite of her massive frame, she is the fastest person in her world. She takes her job very seriously, so when the Beams from other strange versions of the Earth arrived in hers, she had no interest in helping them with their adventures until it mattered in some way that effected her jurisdiction. But when it does, she is glad to help out.

Earth Brown is the name for the fantasy world that is also home to the nation of Podd. I like to think that Superpowered Cop from a Fantasy Earth would be sufficiently different from standard superhero fare that it would be an interesting source of conflict.

This is it for the Beams. I’m not going to make more of them here. This world-building exercise that is Super Sunday has resulted in more universes than even I expected, and I wanted a few more Beams to continue filling out their role as the hero archetype in multiple universes. But I also think it would be ridiculous is every one of those universes had a Beam. For now, the only way I’d bother making more of them is if I’m actually making a story in which they appear. There’s a few colors left, but screw those colors for now.

There has to be some good guys in the timestream right? Someone who isn’t using time travel for their own wants at the risk of reality itself?

Inspector Lacuna

Inspector Lacuna is the head of a precinct of Time-travel Cops who police history to make prevent temporal infractions from tearing the universe apart. This is, of course, a pretty noble goal. Unfortunately for her, the team she has assembled isn’t particularly well suited for the task.

Detective Muhandae

Detective Muhandae has seen it all. He’s a world weary gumshoe who has been solving time travel-related crimes since before he was born (because of time travel, you see). He was a good man, once. Young and strong. But as he gets older, he’s getting tired. It’s become a lot easier to accept a bribe than book a perp, easier to turn a blind eye than follow a lead. He’s not really a bad guy, but he sure doesn’t care as much as he should.

Agent 12:00

Agent 12:00 is a genetically enhanced supersoldier from the future. There’s no worry about her getting too tired to do the job. She will pursue a temporal fugitive like a machine. Unfortunately, she is also as ruthless and uncaring as a machine. She doesn’t care about the good her job does so much as catching the bad guys and she’s perfectly happy to run over civilians that get in her way.

Tobias Tock

Constable Tobias Tock really is a genuinely nice guy. He’s brave and noble and kind. Sadly, he’s also dumber than a truck. Even having worked on the job for decades, he still gets confused about how time travel works. On more than one occasion he has had to stop and ask a criminal to explain the crime to him, which usually gives the chance for the bad guys to just lie and get away. Still, his heart is in the right place. Maybe that counts for something.

Time Venturer

So, if the Time-Travel Cops aren’t good enough, maybe someone from outside the organization can do a better job. How about a superhero? The Time Venturer dedicated his life to holding the timeline together and stopping time-villains from messing things up. But he died. In a time explosion. And his paraphernalia was scattered throughout history and ironically wound up providing a lot of those villains with the very means they needed to travel through time in the first place.

It’s like this: the timeline is screwed. You’ll probably want to be getting out of there.

Last week was the first taste of some of the time travellers messing up the timeline for everyone else. Well, here’s some more of them:

Dr. Von Eiskammer

When this scientist saw his country being taken over by fascists, he decided he wanted no part of it. He invented a cryogenics chamber that would allow him to escape to the future. The only problem with that is that freezing oneself only gets them to travel to the future. If the scientist wants to get back in time to get home and maybe overthrow his enemies, he’s going to have to find another way. For example, he could steal someone else’s time machine. Well, with no better ideas, he’ll go with that one.

Timmy Mallory

In the 80s, this precocious young boy was rummaging through his attic and found a case belonging to his grandfather. Inside there was a digital watch with a button that, when activated, allowed him to travel to entirely different time periods. Being a child, he had no compunctions about using his new powers to just play around and do whatever he wants. Like stealing candy or whatever kids do.

(It has been mentioned that this kid looks like little PDR. I was going more specifically for a reference to the kid from Time Bandits, but hey, whatever. Little PDR was a pretty iconic 80s kid.)

Braininajar Jones

In the future, sometimes people will be brains in jars. This particular brain in a jar has access to a mental projection machine that allows her to send her consciousness through time itself into the bodies of people in the past or future. This allows her to alter the timestream in her favor, gathering a veritable empire of riches. Pretty good for a brain in a jar.

Ghuk

This cavewoman who stumbled across the remains of a broken time machine has decided to explore the future, though where her time machine takes her is mostly not a destination of her choosing. Though she likes the easy lifestyle that technology brings, she is generally not a fan of the clutter and confusion of the future. And with her temper, when she gets unhappy, other people find out very quickly and painfully.

The Khonsu Kid

Time travel has seriously messed with the timestream. As a result there are time periods that shouldn’t even exist, called Anachroclasm eras. For example, this gunslinger is from an ancient Egypt that is full of cowboys and robots. Naturally, to survive in that sort of environment, he’s had to resort to some underhanded acts like robbery. Thankfully, crime pays: During one heist he discovered a fancy hat (not pictured) that allows the wearer to traverse the timestream. Very handy for avoiding the Pharaoh’s lawmen.

Jikan Jingai

From another Anachroclasm Era, this one an Ice Age where criminal shoguns and their samurai mobs thrive while prohibition offers them opportunities, the Jikan Jingai uses time travel to get products from other eras and bring them home for sale on all sorts of black markets. If something is banned or can’t be produced in this freezing world, it just makes sense to go to another period to steal what you want, right?

Time Hobo

The Time Hobo doesn’t have his own time machine or access to any time warps or anything like that. But somehow, he finds his way around the timesteam. From the days of the dinosaur to the distant future, this eternal anachronism has a tendency to just turn up at the strangest times looking for whatever work he can get. Admittedly, he has a tendency to blow his earnings on get rich quick schemes (or wine), but he never stays down for long.

Okay, so that was a bunch more people who are messing with the timeline in their own interests. Isn’t there anyone out there who wants to ensure that history isn’t accidentally destroyed? Next week, we’ll meet the good guys (such as they are).