Look, I don't know much about time issues and things like that, but I'll try to explain my point of view.
Alternate versions are still the same person, who had a different experience. Think about yourself from the past, you're different now, aren't you? But are all your past versions no longer you? No.
There is no alternate Chakotay, it's the same person.
I know it's hard to think about time travel with our limited three-dimensional vision, but try to see it this way: all our choices open up possibilities for alternate realities. Imagine you're walking down a street and you don't know whether to go left or right. Okay, in our limited physical vision, only one thing happened, but in the quantum vision, there were at least two realities that were fragmented from that choice. Going right, you would experience certain situations, going left, you would experience other different situations, but you would still be you whether you made either choice. The truth is, we do this all the time with every choice we make.
And it is true that Chakotay, who spent 10 years isolated on a planet, had his life changed, but because of the experience he had, not because he was from an alternate reality.
If we take the Mirror Universe from the Star Trek universe, we could say that they are different versions of the original person, but in alternate realities, it is the same person, who lived different experiences.
annaxmalina
blakekathryn
izzy806
janainaart
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
