Time Travel in Movies and Television Series

[BAYLOR]

And what do you think of the how the concepts are handled ? Which do you thinker the best ecpalmes of Time Travel ?

 

[Al Jackson]

The Terminator movies just ignore the paradoxes.
You know have not seen all recent time travel movies so don't know about them, but I do remember in Back to the Future , part 2, there was some talk about 'splitting universes'.
Clever use of multi-universes takes care of a lot time travel paradox, but I don't even know if that used in contemporary SF prose??

There is one recent case of where time paradox is imbedded in the story for entertainment! That is Robert Heinlein's All You Zombies which was made into a film called Predestination. This time paradox story is one of the most funny and delightful trolls a SF writer ever devised!

 

[Anthoney]

The Terminator TV show did a better job with time travel than the movies. Two other recent TV shows have had more interesting time travel than the normal. Travelers on Netflix where future minds are sent back to over right people who would have died. Those people begin to make adjustments to the timeline. As each new group of minds are sent back they are coming from a different future than the previous batch.

Frequency (which has already been canceled) also did a decent job of showing the ever changing timeline.

A bonus pick is the movie Primer. It's a low budget indy film that made a splash and has it'd own brand of time travel.

 

[Rodders]

Time travel's been done well on film. (I have Primer at home, but have yet to watch it. I think it would be too clever for me.)

Twelve Monkey's is probably the most well known.

Predestination was an excellent film. Recommended by a friend, I'd never heard of it. A very well done movie.

Safety Not Guaranteed. Whilst not a time travel movie as such, time travel formed the core of the story. (Essentially a local news paper reporter answers a local add for a companion to travel with him in his time machine. Initially, she answers more to ridicule him but after a while things change. Quite a sweet movie and a good ending. Well worth checking out.

Time Crimes. A Spanish foreign language movie by Nacho Vigalondo. Very well done. More of a butterfly effect kind of film. I really enjoyed this.

Project Almanac. A teenager find a machine in his missing dad's closed off basement. He and his friends work out how to make the machine work and the rest is history.

My favourite time travel story is Babylon 5's War Without End parts one and two. An exceptionally well told double episode that answered many ploy thread and opened some future ones to be answered later. Incredible story telling.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

My favorite time travel in a movie is still the gimmick in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, where they need something (keys, I think it was?) and Bill makes a mental note to go back later and put it under the bush, then goes and looks under the bush and finds it there. Because he would go back later and put it there earlier. That blew my mind then, and it blows my mind now, because there's no logical reason, given a time machine, why that wouldn't work.

Of course, Doctor Who has plenty of good examples as well.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

I have a massive problem with the concept of time travel both in fiction and in actuality.

It's the practical aspects that people forget, but lets pretend it is possible.

Here I am sat at my PC and wooosh back I go lets say 5 seconds.

Unfortunately in that time the Earth has rotated (1000mph) moved around the sun (67000mph) and the sun has nipped round the galactic centre at an estimated 200 Km/sec. We can ignore the galactic expansion/position change due to the expanding ever changing Universe stuff, lets not over complicate things. So when I arrive back in the past I'll probably live for about 5 seconds while I enjoy breathing the vacuum of space. In my last moments I can take in the view of the tiny blue dot, the Earth, speeding on it's way, whilst laughing it's polar cap off at my plight.

The alternative is that I've somehow managed to reverse "everything" in time. By everything I mean the whole Universe. That's quite some energy requirement from a 13 Amp plug.

Or I've managed to combine my time travel with the corrections required to arrive at my past self's position safely. However, if that's the case I'll be arriving there now and there's going to be an awful lot of bone crunching and blood splatter.

Lest we forget, this is true for me and for everything else, even a little old electron/photon/neutrino and the rest. Send them back in time and you won't be able to observe them, cos they'll not be there.

No use saying you sent them back and now their back and look, it's in a different position, because that position is way out of the observers field of view.

In this sense, Doc Who gets it right with the old TARDIS idea. And a Black hole for a power source at least tips it's hat to the energy required. However, one black hole a Universe shift does not make. All those other black holes are surely going to object to being bossed around by a little blue box.

So Time travel - ruins any plot for me.

 

[Rodders]

My best friend feels the same way. He won't entertain any movie with even a hint of time travel.

 

[Boneman]

Frequency. Not time travel, per se, but a brilliant take on it. The wonderful scene where Jim Cavazeil is talking to his father (Dennis Quaid) 20 years in the past, tells him to hide his wallet, then goes and gets it from under a floorboard. The look on Quaid's face as he tells him he's got it.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Frequency. Not time travel, per se, but a brilliant take on it. The wonderful scene where Jim Cavazeil is talking to his father (Dennis Quaid) 20 years in the past, tells him to hide his wallet, then goes and gets it from under a floorboard. The look on Quaid's face as he tells him he's got it.

Yes, it was at least different. I watched a few.

Sadly for me, the rest of the plot was rubbish and eventually I found a headless coach-man and horses careering through the storylines. (made quite a mess in the lounge)

 

[Boneman]

I meant the film, not the tv series...

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Hi Boneman

OK, didn't know there was a film.

I'll try and track it down in the usual outlets.

I liked the concept

(I don't know if the film explains the technology but I never got to it in the series if it's there)

I hate to say it, but the best time travel of recent years was the Time Turner in Potter's biography.

Magic is always good for the impossible. I've even considered it as a FTL transport method in my book, but as the rest is purely SF it's difficult to justify without a complete re-write.

The issue with the Time Turner is of course that if such magic exists why isn't it used in those tricky moments when people have just been killed.

Magic is the headless coachman riding through the whole of the Potter franchise.

I.E. If it's possible why would anything be impossible.

(OK, so I'm a miserable old g....)

 

[Graymalkin]

I have a massive problem with the concept of time travel both in fiction and in actuality.

It's the practical aspects that people forget, but lets pretend it is possible.

Here I am sat at my PC and wooosh back I go lets say 5 seconds.

Unfortunately in that time the Earth has rotated (1000mph) moved around the sun (67000mph) and the sun has nipped round the galactic centre at an estimated 200 Km/sec. We can ignore the galactic expansion/position change due to the expanding ever changing Universe stuff, lets not over complicate things. So when I arrive back in the past I'll probably live for about 5 seconds while I enjoy breathing the vacuum of space. In my last moments I can take in the view of the tiny blue dot, the Earth, speeding on it's way, whilst laughing it's polar cap off at my plight.

The alternative is that I've somehow managed to reverse "everything" in time. By everything I mean the whole Universe. That's quite some energy requirement from a 13 Amp plug.

Or I've managed to combine my time travel with the corrections required to arrive at my past self's position safely. However, if that's the case I'll be arriving there now and there's going to be an awful lot of bone crunching and blood splatter.

Lest we forget, this is true for me and for everything else, even a little old electron/photon/neutrino and the rest. Send them back in time and you won't be able to observe them, cos they'll not be there.

No use saying you sent them back and now their back and look, it's in a different position, because that position is way out of the observers field of view.

In this sense, Doc Who gets it right with the old TARDIS idea. And a Black hole for a power source at least tips it's hat to the energy required. However, one black hole a Universe shift does not make. All those other black holes are surely going to object to being bossed around by a little blue box.

So Time travel - ruins any plot for me.

Totally with you on that. I wouldn't claim to have the knowledge of a mite on a flea on the cat of Stephen Hawkins' neighbour's plumber, but it feels like scientists are struggling every bit as much as the writers to make sense of TT without twisting the definition of 'time' into something unrecognisable and resorting to interdimensional bla bla squared.

Doesn't mean I can't still remember the first time I saw the beach scene at the end of 1968 Planet OF The Apes and continue to relive a little bit of that amazing feeling after umm ... ever so many years. I can't *cough* remember exactly how *cough* many. Good day to you!

 

[Ursa major]

However, one black hole a Universe shift does not make.

The TARDIS travels in all four dimensions, so there is no need for a Universe Shift, only the need for the TARDIS to calculate where it needs to be and to go there.

 

[Anthoney]

I meant the film, not the tv series...

I meant the TV series not the film but I suppose the film qualifies.

I love the concept of time travel in fiction (I've seen every show mentioned so far). Time travel is Schrodinger's cat. We can say it works or it doesn't but we haven't even learned how to open the box much less figure out if the cat's alive or dead.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Totally with you on that. I wouldn't claim to have the knowledge of a mite on a flea on the cat of Stephen Hawkins' neighbour's plumber, but it feels like scientists are struggling every bit as much as the writers to make sense of TT without twisting the definition of 'time' into something unrecognisable and resorting to interdimensional bla bla squared.

Doesn't mean I can't still remember the first time I saw the beach scene at the end of 1968 Planet OF The Apes and continue to relive a little bit of that amazing feeling after umm ... ever so many years. I can't *cough* remember exactly how *cough* many. Good day to you!

ER...

Now far be it from me to contradict an esteemed expert claiming knowledge just below Hawkins', plumber's,cat's, flea's, mite (an impressive CV indeed) but...

I thought that was based on the near FTL time effect. Which despite my personal misgiving is still a widely (by others) accepted theory.

As for the passage of time since that obviously momentous experience in your life, I understand, from people alive at the time, it was way way back. Fifty of those time periods it takes this planet to circumnavigate the local sun. Sadly I have to believe them as my memory of those days has long gone, being as I am, lost in time myself...




Sorry nurse, what was that -

It's time for my tea you say.

 

[Graymalkin]

I thought that was based on the near FTL time effect. (by others) accepted theory.

Oh, we're there. My mistake. I thought this was opto-chiral Membrane B665g3.
Now if you could just look into this ...
*zzzt*

 

[nixie]

Wasn't Stephen King's Langoliers made into a film?
For anyone not familiar with it, one the tales from Four Past Midnight, most be about 30 years since I read sure I seen it on film 20 odd year ago.
An aeroplane gets caught in an electrical storm, makes an emergency landing but the airport is empty. They discover they have gone back in time, there is no life .The past no longer exists it is been swallowed by nothingness, a race to refuel the plane and escape back to the present before they are swallowed too.

 

[Anthoney]

Wasn't Stephen King's Langoliers made into a film?

Yes. A made for TV movie. It was ok.

 

[BAYLOR]

Wasn't Stephen King's Langoliers made into a film?
For anyone not familiar with it, one the tales from Four Past Midnight, most be about 30 years since I read sure I seen it on film 20 odd year ago.
An aeroplane gets caught in an electrical storm, makes an emergency landing but the airport is empty. They discover they have gone back in time, there is no life .The past no longer exists it is been swallowed by nothingness, a race to refuel the plane and escape back to the present before they are swallowed too.

Some years ago it was two part miniseries . I think Mark Lindsey Chapman was in it.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Time Travelers 1964 three sciences and electrician gets sent to the year 2071 via time window . This one here sets up what become a repeating time loop.