Serious/Literal Time Travel Stories are Fundamentally Flawed

Look up the case of Rudolph Fentz - one of the most convincing time travel stories!

Sure, but without accepting that flaw, we wouldn't have the storytelling awesomeness of "Iron Man", you know?: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron...g)#Composition

"I have a time machine at home. It only goes forward at regular speed."
- Demetri Martin

Have you seen Predestination (2014)?

Exactly. My first thought. But DNA-wise it still doesn’t quite add up.

I would actually say that since no one, not even physicists, know what time-travel would actually be like, all time-travel movies are right and everyone needs to just relax and enjoy them.

The problems I am noting are logical and formal.

Physics is the empirical study of contingent in the attempt make inference to universal law. Logic provides standards to which even universal law must answer. Physicists don't know what it would be like, because no one can rationally speak of what happens when you allow for contradiction in your reasoning.

The formal problems are not problems of physics, but of narrative (e.g., stakes, exhaustion). Thus, I merely suggest a rule of thumb for writers: If you can do what you want to do without using time-travel, then don't. If you paint yourself into creative corner, be a more creative writer and solve your problem without recurring to the Deus Ex DeLorean.

If you're writing a light comedy, fine. If you have a fantasy story with all sorts of other unbelievable bull****, fine. If, however, you've simply put your protagonists into so much peril that this is the easy way out, not fine. If you're really trying to do hard science fiction, stick to the science (e.g,. relativistic flight that vaults our characters forwards in time).

Yeah, we're just not gonna agree on this. Saying it's ok to be totally speculative about 3 dimensions but not the 4th one just doesn't work for me.

But surely most time-travel films are conceived as such from the beginning? I can't think of many examples of time travel that seemed unnaturally inserted in order to fix a story problem. Superman '78 maybe. (To be clear: I'm not necessarily against the rewind-the-Earth plan, only pointing out that it's a case of time travel in a film that is not primarily about time travel.)

I agree that time travel is thorny and trying to figure out the logistics of it often gives me a headache, but I'm not encountering a lot of films that are using it as a last minute Hail Mary to fix a plot hole.

*braces myself for page-long list of examples*

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We don't disagree on too much. You say ALL time travels stories get a pass. I don't, but we would still agree that many such stories are fine. I simply suggest that if often is a sign of lazy writing and that the more serious/grounded the ambitions of the story, the less appropriate it is.



As for those three dimensions you mention, those just involve contravention of laws of known physics. That 4th one involves contravention of logic, however. And that's a different kettle of fish. We can break many the laws of known physics without breaking the law of non-contradiction.

I have a bias against time travel plots. I don't mind them if, as someone said, that is the entire point of the story (like Back to the Future), but I don't like them when they are used repeatedly within a regular series - and this could be for any medium: movies, TV series, novels, comic books.

I think time travel plots destroyed the continuity of so many comic book series - where teams would end up consisting of alternate, splinter-reality, future counterparts of characters who could never have been born. Too much of that stuff makes continuities too convoluted to follow.

The two classic comic book issues of the X-Men's Days of Future Past were great as a stand alone story - but revisiting it ad infinitum, building entire continuities around a future that was prevented from happening in the initial story, and constantly filling the team with counter-continuity time travelers from the future was overkill.

For anything that is a series, time travel should be used extremely sparingly. My opinion anyway.

Yes, after my previous post I thought about a few examples of sequels screwing with previous films which is a problem sometimes. I mean, I get it. We only got 3 movies into the XMen series when Brett Ratner decides to kill half the team, so drastic measures had to be taken I guess.

The thing that pulls me out of time travel stories to a degree, is that when the past has changed, the people who were changed do not seem to remember what happened to them and still retain the old memories from a different timeline.

One thing most time travel movies have in common is that they show that time travel is bad and it has bad consequences. I would like to see a time travel movie, where it has a tone like the Ocean's 11 remake, in which they use time trave to commit crimes, to their advantage, get away with it all, and it's a happy ending for the characters.

I like time travel in the various Star Trek TV series: (Original, Next Gen, DSN, Voyager, Enterprise) all of those ST series had time travel episodes, some better than others. I liked it when Captain Janeway was asked to explain how a time travel paradox could occur...Her reply, 'I try not to think about it, it gives me a headache'....Ha!

It's best not to overthink fiction.

An example of what I'm saying about using time travel sparingly goes for alternate universes as well: In Star Trek TOS and Enterprise they visited the "Mirror Universe" - which was fine, it made for some interesting episodes.

But then, on ST Discovery they jumped the shark by making the Mirror Universe a somewhat regular part of the series and even incorporating Mirror counterparts into the crew on a regular basis (just like in various X-Men comics where they went from some occasional time travel stories to making alternate-future time travelers who could never even have been born in the standard continuity into regular team members.)

Whenever a series begins to delve into alternate but concurrent splinter-continuities with multiple versions of characters (ala J.J. Abrams' Star Trek) on a consistent basis - this kind of stuff takes me out of the story.

I stop caring about characters or what happens to them because they are no longer unique when there are infinite multiple versions of them or infinite futures they'll live on in even if they are killed in (what had been) the core continuity.

I haven't seen ST Discovery, I'm kinda surprised they milked the mirror universe idea as DSN had already did that mirror universe, a lot. Of course DSN had a lot of different and fun characters, so those mirror episodes worked there for me.

Maybe I'll watch Discovery someday, are you liking it besides the mirror universe stuff?

Thanks for that info, Rules.

I'd wondered if any other series visited the Mirror Universe - I was fairly sure TNG did not, I don't remember Voyager going there, but I never followed DSN closely so wasn't sure.

I knew TOS had one episode and Enterprise had a two-parter in their last season.

I only watched the first season of Discovery (only because I found it On-Demand) and wasn't opposed to the first plot twist involving the Mirror Universe but...



Hoshi never looked hotter than when she appeared as her Mirror U. counterpart!

(Sorry to go on...)
But come to think of it... unlike TOS's "Mirror Mirror" there was no crossover of characters in the Enterprise episodes. The entire story took place in the Mirror Universe, so none of the regular characters had any awareness of the Mirror U.'s existence (which is not the case in Discovery as it is rife with standard characters crossing over and being aware of the Mirror U. and vice versa).

That a film is initially conceived as "X" from the start, does not mean that that film should necessarily get a pass. Most zombie films are conceived of as "zombie movies" from the start. And most of them suck.

In the case of an original conception that includes time-travel, I would ask if time-travel is essential to what the writer is trying to do (e.g., critique modernity, set-up star-crossed lovers). If not, I would challenge the writer to consider a device that does not involve logical contradictions. If the writer's conception essentially is a time-travel tale, I would ask the writer to consider telling a tale from a stronger premise.

Again, if the writer is telling a light and humorous tale or a fantasy chock full of so many conceits that the audience will hardly blink at the prospect of time travel, then go for it. Have fun. If, however, the artist is setting out to tell a "hard" and "serious" tale, then I would present these as challenges, even to the very conception of the tale itself.

It is very hard to prove when writer has painted him/herself into a narrative corner. Who is to say that a deus ex machina wasn't planned from the start? Who is to say that it was not a deus ex machina narrative in its original conception? We can only really say if it "works" for the narrative or not, and even this is quite contentious.

Even so, however, people who have set about writing stories have occasionally written themselves into a corner, and been tempted by cliche "solutions" to their problems (e.g,. "it was all a dream," "it was really a twin who died," "that crazy Vulcan physiology saves Spock again," the hero was super smart and knew he was going to get jammed in this tight spot - "it was all part of the plan," "saved from a chest gunshot by the book/flask in the jacket"). This sort of thing happens, even if it is very difficult to prove in any given case (because we are not with the writer when the tale is written, we are only with tale when the tale is told). And I would advise that when it does happen that the writer should steer away from the cliche.

I don't spend much time worrying about time travel in movies. I KNOW that's fiction. In general, however, there's so much pseudo-science in movies that seems more plausible than time travel that somebody thinking that time travel is real is a minor worry since that person also believes in the Easter Bunny and the Loch Ness Monster. That's why they call it a script and not a dissertation.