So, I just got my copy of the Lower Deck's Handbook (it's AMAZING) but one of the sections of the handbook goes into the legacy of the ships to carry the name Cerritos. (Think along the terms of the ships to carry the name Stargazer) and one in particular caught my eye...
A Leif Ericson class USS Cerritos was answering a distress call from Earth (in a manner not dissimilar to the Enterprise-E in First Contact), but before the Cerritos could reach Earth a Klingon Bird of Prey manned by Captain Kirk beat them to it.
But an unforeseen consequence of Kirk's time hopping erased the Leif Ericson class from reality.
It was a short blurb, but I actually felt chills. I'm reminded of the scene where Spock expresses uncertainty on how to accurately bring them back to the present, and Bones tells Spock to just go with his gut or something along those terms.
With the implied context that a miscalculation on Spock's part led to the erasure of the Leif Ericson class and presumably all hands, do you think Spock made the right call, given what he knew at the time?
I mean, that’s easy to say, because we’re not attached to the Leif Ericsson class or anyone onboard.
But would the same argument be made if instead it was Bajor, or Kronos that disappeared from existence?
Well that's the thing - something can't really "disappear from existence," unless we're talking about something that did exist and was destroyed.
But if it never existed at all...well, there's literally nothing lost.
The exception to this would be if Kirk and his crew remembered the Cerritos existing before the time travel shenanigans.