The Loom: Eaters of Time. Star Trek Bestiary

The Loom were introduced in Star Trek Prodigy as scavengers that feed on corrupted or unstable timelines and can manipulate the flow of time themselves. This puts them as natural rivals of temporal organisations and your standard Starfleet ship is not equipped to handle a Loom invasion.

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This Video is for critical purposes with commentary.

Outro Animation made by @icarogabriel17

[Faction.Paradox]

They are basically the Reapers from Doctor Who "Father's Day", which is fine because Wesley was pretty much The Doctor in Prodigy S2

[Tezunegari]

This could explain why the Federation (and apparently every power in the galaxy) in the 32nd century has banned time travel despite its sheer usefulness.
The amount of temporal paradoxes the Temporal War must have created could have "invited" the Loom in massive numbers so that the clean up was a nightmare.

[Reddotzebra]

Everyone keeps bringing up the cool temporal scavengers that these things remind them of, but remember that these are basically the ball-mouth guys from the Langoliers.

[GSBarlev]

I just can't believe the _Prodigy_ writers had The Loom kill off Jiggs like that. He was such a key member of the _Prodigy_ cast (and it's always great to see portrayals of Kzinti in canon).

Him being "erased" from the timeline leaves so many questions—how did Murf join the crew if he wasn't regurgitaed by Jiggs? How did they discover Holo-Janeway trapped them in the holodeck without Jiggs' ability to see into the UV spectrum? Why did Maj'el come to the surface if she didn't sense Jiggs' telepathic resonance?

[christianrissotto.gordohom]

Before this:
You dont play with time: time plays with you.
Now:
You play with time and the loom comes to play with you.

[XiaOmegaX]

This species is a crossover with the Reapers from Doctor Who (Father's Day), and an offshoot of the Langoliers (Steven King)

[Captain.AmericaV]

They sound like a cross between the wheeping angels from Dr Who and the Langoleers.

[Soguwe]

Must be hard being a traveller and watching a universe forget it should be bigger
Like that one Beverly episode of TNG when she was trapped in that pocket universe

[Hrafnskald]

Great video. It's interesting, the thematic echoes of the TNG episode where Beverly was in a collapsing universe, with people being erased one by one, only to be rescued by her son and future Traveler Wesley.

[patrickmccurry]

Very similar to a creature from Doctor Who. When the Doctor's companion altered a fixed point in time thus creating a paradox, these scavenger beasts broke into reality.

The Loom are one of the very few creatures where it does not bother me that they are immune to phaser fire due to their special abilities regarding time and space.

[kingsilvergrass]

impressive as always ric, I'm actually amazed how there's paradoxes in AU's, normally this process would stay in one dimension than others. but then again we see that space/time can be tricky at....times, both figuratively and literally.

[Yasuda]

This is why being erased is worse than being dead. When you die, at least your friends and family will remember you and mourn you. When you are erased, no one one will remember you unless something shields the people that know you and care about, which is usually temporal shielding, sometimes something supernatural like magic, depending on the story.

And there is what happens when some people do remember the person that was erased, it could cause them grief and mental problems. For example, in Star Trek Online, the Krenim Scientist named Noye, who helped the player in stopping the Iconians from conquering the galaxy, goes insane when he finds out that he had a wife who was a Tutarian and an unborn child in the previous timeline but were erased due to a failed attempt to change the timeline in the Alliance favor against the Iconians by restoring Romulus. It was a disaster as the restored Romulus was assimilated by the Borg, and when trying to change the timeline back, they inadvertently caused the Tutarians to become the Sphere-Builders. This was because originally, the Tutarians were able to protect themselves from the Borg by using technology from the Solanae Dyson Sphere, but because they changed the timeline and tried to change it back, the Tutarians were unable to do this and ended up becoming the Sphere-Builders. Which explains the events of season three of Star Trek Enterprise and possibly a lit bit of Season 1 and 2.

Noye found out about this by reviewing the recording that was temporal shielded on the Annorax timeship after the Iconian war ended. He ended up being involved in the Temporal Cold War and is supposedly the Mysterious benefactor of the Suliban from Star Trek Enterprise. I say supposedly because they recently changed Noye's voice to match the voice of the Mysterious benefactor in the game. That and he was helping Archer in saving Earth from Xindi who were being tricked by the Sphere-Builders to destroy Earth by telling him what he needed to know. And yet in the game, he is trying to work with them to destroy the Federation and their allies.

It is possible he was only helping Archer out at the time because the destruction of Earth would cause some problems for him in changing the timeline in his favor like trying to bringing back his wife and child. That and the Borg would be a problem since the Federation and their allies are what is keeping the Borg from assimilating the galaxy, so he doesn't want them destroyed too early.

There is one way that could allow him to see his wife and child again. He could have tried destroying the Annorax timeship like what happened in Star Trek Voyager when Janeway rammed Voyager into Annorax's timeship (Annorax the Krenim Scientist who first made the ship before the timeline was changed) when it's temporal shielding was down and it's destruction undid all the changes it caused and preventing the Year of Hell timeline that Voyager had to go through. And this allowed Annorax to be reunited with his wife again as this was why he kept on changing the timeline by removing things from time to bring back the colony that he and his wife lived on in Krenim Space but failed until the timeship was destroyed. Of course, he is no longer aware of what happened and the end of the episode showed that he was working on the designs for his ship in this new timeline but chose to put it away to spend time with his wife.

Noye did try to blow up his Annorax timeship at the end of one of the Battle of Procyon V but that was to mess up time and space in the Alpha Quadrant and possibly the whole Galaxy when he realized that he was about to lose. So that probably would have been worse and wouldn't bring his family back and even if they somehow came back, it wouldn't last long and his wife would see him as a monster. And maybe cause the Loom to appear.

[Aragorn]

They look like Sentinels from 'The Matrix' 😎

[Corvus__]

Yes I do remember Luis. I remember how he'd always reprogram the mess hall replicators to produce food and drink that tastes like paper!

[patrikhjorth]

Reminds me of the Hounds of Tindalos, introduced to the Cthulhu Mythos by Frank Belknap Long.

[mrlint]

So i had a stray thought, if in year of hell, when Voyager blew up the Krenim timeship, did the loom just consume the whole splinter, and the timelime resumed back from before Anorax lost his wife?

[IreneiosOP]

The Loom remind me of Langoliers by Stephen King.

[EnderMalcolm]

And then there's the type of person who would be like "Oh hey, the end of my existence both physically and temporally! You look like you need a hug!" *Short circuits the Loom somehow and reverses its existence in the first place*

[Arvyn]

Imagine if the looms were made by one of the possibility destroyed agencies during the Temporal War either as final weapon or possibly to "fix" what every damage that was caused by the war but there original purpose was lost with said agencie that was destroyed and erased