Time Travel movies and shows that are PC*
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Monday, October 22, 2007 05:45
VIEWED: 17773
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* Paradoxically Correct, that is....
Which ones don't eff with Paradoxes, or if you wish, which ones effs with them the most heinously?
Non-bogus Chrisisall
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I think that would have to be 12 Monkeys.
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Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, obviously. Mainly because it tried to avoid the issue; most of it was just a snatch'n'grab of historical figures, who were (implicitly) returned to their proper places (probably memory-wiped by Rufus --the experienced and highly-trained temporal operative) when the presentation was over.
The Back to the Future trilogy is another --the basic primer on what a time-paradox is and what it can mean.
Not a "movie," per se, but the "Avalon" 3-parter in Gargoyles is so convoluted that you need a flowchart to keep it straight, but it all works, logically.
Edited to add: the first two episodes of Andromeda weren't exactly "time-travel" in the Hollywood sense, but were built on sound temporal physics: the Andromeda slingshots around a black hole at the speed of light. Aboard the ship, Dylan experiences about 3 seconds. When the ship finishes the manoeuvre, he realizes that 300 years have passed, and everyone he knows is long dead.
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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
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"Demon With A Glass Hand" ep of Outer Limits- now THAT was cool!!
Chrisisall
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The more interesting questions are what are the common mistakes that Hollywood makes in dealing with the issue of time travel? The first mistake is the assumption that time travel is a form of movement. Actually movement is a spatial phenomenon. Time changes at a rate related to our spatial movement relative to the velocity of light. The time at which we observe an event to occur is dependent upon the speed at which the signals that carry that information reach us. If we travel close to the speed of light we “move” through time faster than someone not moving, but we travel through time, even if we do not move. So there is a distinction between moving and traveling through time.
Secondly, and most obviously, is the problem with causality, which Hollywood seems to understand is a problem, but not always in what way. There is what is called the grandfather paradox. Can you go back in time and kill your grandfather? But in doing so, you could not have been born to go back in time to kill your grandfather, so your grandfather is still alive and so are you. But this problem is even larger than that. Can you go back in time and see yourself? On one hand, that is precisely what one would expect, but since you’re you how are seeing yourself as someone else when you’re not someone else, but you? On the surface it may make sense, but you can’t resolve the paradox. So if you go back in time, you can’t be there, which means you can’t have gone back in time. In other words, time travel backward through time is NOT possible unless you are not unique. An electron can travel back in time, because an electron is not unique. It can’t be distinguished from any other electron, nor can it be even exactly specified in space. So we don’t know where an electron is, nor do we know whether it is different from any other electron. As long as you are you, you cannot go back in time.
So only time travel forward in time is possible.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Gotta chime in on this one.
One of the latest Dr. Who episodes he said the following.
"People think of time as a straight line. Time is a big ball of wibbly wobbly stuff"
couldn't help but love it.
It was one of the best eps of Dr. Who or any show on time travel. It was called "Blink."
Hands down one of the best episodes of television I'd seen ever.
One of the worst...the future flash in the season finale of LOST.
peace spoken
"We had ties that could not be broken, except by the passing of time. Like a rock. A broken time rock. And you're very special to me, my broken time rock people." - Nathan Fillion
a little shameless self promotion
www.myspace.com/therightguyiii
www.myspace.com/jesusfishmovie
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HEROES is actually pretty good with dealing with time travel and paradoxes. And it actually simplifies string theory (which was the original title for "Five Years Gone") very well and uses it as a dramatic device.
And I actually like the flash forward on the season finale of LOST. Personally, I was thinking what would it be like for the characters on LOST to actually get off the island and what life would be like for them after a traumatic event like that. That's the shit I'm more interested in than metaphysical navel-gazing. So when I saw that they did get off, but that some wanted to go back, it actually made me do something I've never done before with LOST. It actually got me excited for it.
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"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."
Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack
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Quote:The mistake here is the "We" go thru time, as if we're swimming down a river or driving down a road. We exist in all moments, like a googleplex of slices of time that you pick from, and yet we are unique in any one of them, so when Marty saw himself in 1955, it was the self of THOSE moments- the soul exists thru all of them...across time itself.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Can you go back in time and see yourself? On one hand, that is precisely what one would expect, but since you’re you how are seeing yourself as someone else when you’re not someone else, but you?
Deep Chrisisall
Chrisisall
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Quote:Yeah, well, there is speculation that an infinite number of timelines exist, each containing the outcomes of all possible consequences. So Marty might have gone back in time in another universe and the Marty that Marty saw was the Marty of a different universe so that both Marties were unique with regard their respective universes. The problem here is that if Marty went back in time in a universe that was not his own, but some other Marty's, as he would have had to, then the events in that universe that he changed as result of his being in that universe would not have affected the events in his own timeline, which would have remained unchanged. You see the problem here that Hollywood doesn’t get, is that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t attempt to resolve the grandfather paradox by evoking the multiple universe concept and then argue that you’ll have any influence on your own universe, if you’re not even in it.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
The mistake here is the "We" go thru time, as if we're swimming down a river or driving down a road. We exist in all moments, like a googleplex of slices of time that you pick from, and yet we are unique in any one of them, so when Marty saw himself in 1955, it was the self of THOSE moments- the soul exists thru all of them...across time itself.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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In The Butterfly Effect, the main protagonist finds that changing small things in the past leads on to all sorts of unexpected knock-on changes in the present.
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