Here's Why Time Travel Bugs Me
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Fan Rant
Before I begin doling out the rant soup with a side order of opinionated snark, I should make one thing clear: I'm not talking about films in which time travel is a central concept. The Time Machine, Back to the Future, Time After Time, Bill & Ted, Casablanca, Somewhere in Time, etc., are all exempt from the following (rather silly) rule:Time travel sucks. And here's why:
Take the new Star Trek, for example. Or better yet, pretty much any episode of Heroes. At one point we start out on linear playing fields, an A to B to C storytelling device that, you must admit, usually works pretty darn well. But once a character stumbles onto the ability to leap through time ... I get bored. All bets are off. I'm probably going to watch something else. Why?
1. It's a screenwriting cheat: As much as I enjoyed the new Star Trek (and I seriously did), the time-twist subplot seemed ... out of place. As if it was concocted just so we could have a "logical" way for Leonard Nimoy to play an important role. Which leads to...
2. A whole lot of screen-time must now be devoted to the time-travel subplot. So the plot makes sense, so the audience is up to speed, so nerds like me don't blog about temporal inconsistencies and anachronistic euphemisms -- we must now have numerous explanations on why / how / where / when the time-travel stuff occurs. And even with a movie as fun as Star Trek, that's just a lot of blah blah blah, isn't it?
3. Time travel: The death of tension. Whenever I watch Heroes and see one of our favorite freaks get killed (I think Ali Larter has been killed more times than Jason Voorhees), I roll my eyes and wait a few weeks. Oh look! The flameball guy is back because Peter and Hiro went back in time and stopped time at the same time and brought him back on a giant pterodactyl! Boy, time travel gives the writers a lot of options, but it also lessens the drama (a whole lot) when you know that a demise is virtually always followed by a non-shock of a resurrection. Kinda takes the excitement out of those life-and-death battles.
Yeah, time travel bugs me a lot. Not nearly as much as "oh, it was all a dream!?!?" or "here's a bunch of flashbacks for no good reason," but just enough to rant about. Obviously. (Pic courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com, which explains right here how time travel might work.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-17-2009 @ 5:44PM
JBob said...
Casablanca used time travel? Are we talking about the same Casablanca?
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5-18-2009 @ 12:05AM
gbird48@aol.com said...
I caught the Casablanca reference also. Maybe he can go back in time and erase it.
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5-17-2009 @ 6:53PM
Jonathan said...
Ok, this rant wasn't nearly as satisfying as I wanted it to be. But at least you finally said it: Time travel is such a cop-out. I rarely EVER like time travel. I did happen to like the new Star Trek's use of time travel only because it was accidental and there was no implication that the process could be replicated again. But even TV shows and Movies that I love use time travel so loosely that its blatantly obvious they had no idea how to write themselves out of it. Take for example the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkiban. Time travel is used so that Harry Potter can save himself from death. Uh, what? Despite the obvious logical problems (not to mention the argument that LOST has now provided with its unsettling idea that you can't change the past no matter what, or can you?) the fact that a device exists that can use time travel makes it the most powerful device in the world. I don't care what your power is, if you have the power to travel through time, you are the most powerful person in the world. And yet we have to sit through the failed logic of movies like Terminator (which I do love but let's be real) in which bad guys go back to the past to try to kill someone when they are a teenager or a grown women, instead of going back to a time when they are in labor? Or a baby? I mean come on...
All that aside, it is exciting when people get time travel right. Though this is rare and even when it's done with shows like Heroes (Five Years Later episode) its usually screwed up real soon.
Top Offenders (off the top of my head): Harry Potter 3, Terminator (all of them, let's be real), Heroes, Lost, Star Trek Voyager (perhaps others, that one is fresh in my mind), Dragonball Z, so many countless others...
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5-17-2009 @ 7:40PM
Zacqary Adam Green said...
I have to agree especially on the Harry Potter problem; not only does it fall into the cop-out when it's used, but the time travel is never, ever used again in the next four books. All of the beloved characters who met a grisly demise could have been saved by the Time-Turner, which is never mentioned again after the third book. It's not like it was destroyed, and it's not like it was a particularly unique device – it was given to a 13-year-old girl to help her take extra classes, for god's sake.
It's quite true, however, that time travel rarely works unless it's what the movie's entirely about. I think Star Trek is one of these rare exceptions, though. The explanation wasn't given a ton of screen time, and I felt it was startlingly brief for such a "mainstream" film. The characters spoke of time travel creating alternate realities as if it were the most obvious, matter-of-fact thing in the world. No characters said anything like, "Wait, what's an alternate timeline, what are you talking about, my head hurts!" It was more of an, "Oh, of course that's what happens, now that you mention it" from everyone. And the way it was presented, in that it's very simple and there are no universe-ending paradoxes, the audience can easily say the same. Time travel in Star Trek was not a head-spinning, mind-blowing concept, and that's why it worked.
5-17-2009 @ 6:59PM
Kevin Shaum said...
As I recall, there was a subplot about Capt Luis Renault being from an alternate future where the Nazis won, but it wound up on the cutting-room floor.
Thing is, I see the time travel element as central to "Star Trek", just as it is with the movies you named. The point is not only to work in Nimoy, but to lay the groundwork for future stories featuring this cast, without *too* much worry about continuity with all that went before, and with more uncertainty about a successful outcome.
My main gripe about the movie: Sulu was boring. Sulu shouldn't be boring. Everything else, I was cool with.
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5-17-2009 @ 8:09PM
Wayne said...
Exactly. Time travel was important for "Star Trek" to establish that going forward the J.J. Abrams version doesn't have to follow the established canon.
5-17-2009 @ 7:02PM
Linkdead said...
The problem is your not thinking 4th dimensionally!
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5-17-2009 @ 8:24PM
Travis Tidmore said...
Always love a good BTTF reference (Thanks Chuck for the several times it did the same this past season!)
5-17-2009 @ 7:30PM
Dyslexicon said...
And therein lies the problem. In Star Trek, it was well-written, and while it did eat some screen-time, at least it was entertaining.
Heroes hasn't been entertaining, or really even watchable since Season 1. But that's a problem of lazy/crappy writing. They've ignored everything they already developed (character, rules about powers, etc...) why should their time-travel be any good?
But yes, most of the time time-travel is a black-hole, and most writers aren't talented/smart enough to use it properly.
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5-17-2009 @ 8:27PM
Travis Tidmore said...
Time travel works perfectly in Star Trek. The entire purpose of this film was to start over without pissing off the legion of fans. All of the past films and series are still "in cannon" whilst giving these new films room to play without worrying about all the history of these past ventures.
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5-17-2009 @ 8:33PM
Mike said...
You say time travel kills the tension, but in the case of Star Trek it does nothing but create tension. Without Nero traveling back in time and forever altering the course of history by killing Kirk's dad and later destroying Vulcan, he has permanently changed the world of Star Trek. If JJ is going to truly reboot the franchise, everything that has happened ever in Star Trek needs to be erased. If the future isn't a blank slate, then we know all of the adventures the crew is going to embark on and we also know that the main characters are safe and cannot die.
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5-17-2009 @ 9:16PM
Greg said...
Hey Zack and Jonathan,
I don't mean to be nitpicky, but you are actually wrong about the time turners never being mentioned again in the Harry Potter Books. Not only are they mentioned, but the very thing that solves the "time travel can solve everything" problem is addressed. I can see why you don't remember it though. It was mentioned in passing. Here's the scene it was mentioned in:
It is in the fifth book near the end. The scene takes place in the Department of Mysteries. It is right after Lucious Malfoy and the other death eaters corner Harry and his friends. A chase ensues and during this chase, a shelf is knocked over. This shelf is where all of the time turners are stored. When it is knocked over, all of the time turners break, making them unusable. In fact, when they are knocked over, they keep falling over because... you know... they're time turners, get it? Haha... (that was sarcasm)
Anyway, I heard that J.K. Rowling wrote this into the book for the very reason you are complaining about. If she hadn't, people could go back in time and save people that have died. That is also the only reason I know about it. Because she actually said that she had solved that problem. I do think she should have made it a lot clearer though.
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5-17-2009 @ 10:33PM
Jawmuncher said...
I hate people who think to much about the time traveling in a plot.
to the point where they want to find some kind of loop hole on there first viewing.
I say watch the film to enjoy the first time than start looking for holes in the time travel theories
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5-17-2009 @ 11:52PM
Michael Hayes said...
Solution: Watch 'Primer'
Problem solved... I think.
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5-18-2009 @ 5:33AM
Glenn Broadway said...
Here, here.
5-18-2009 @ 2:11AM
LMN0Potts said...
Doesn't bother me, it's complex enough for one to elaborate and justify their story. What get's me is friggin' ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY not being explained in nearly every space movie except 2001.
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5-18-2009 @ 9:00AM
Kevin said...
I don't have anything against the use itself, but I hate how its the lazy guys way of fixing problems. Star Trek, despite what some others have said on here, certainly falls into that category. It was just a way for them to go back and be able to change whatever they wanted without having to explain it to the audience. It didn't have to be time travel though. Its just that a black hole sending nero back in time was the easiest, dumbest way to do it. It requires no thought whatsoever. "How do we fix these problems? Oh, lets just send them back in time and start from scratch". As to the point being made by Mike...theres still ZERO tension with regards to the future of the characters. There was no way they were going to kill off ANY of the main characters, whether we knew that they would live to be 60 or not. We knew that batman wasn't going to die in TDK too, but that doesn't mean there was no drama or tension. I have never read a star trek book, but I have to imagine that there are hundreds out there that talk about where Kirk came from. Why couldn't they have just used one of those stories? Basically, I don't think we needed the time travel scenario to make a good star trek origin story, but the technique is used just to save the screen writers time and heavy thinking, which is the way time travel is so frequently used. When thats the case its a disappointing and ridiculous tool.
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5-18-2009 @ 9:26AM
Eric H said...
Probably because they wanted to give someone a story they had never seen before.
5-19-2009 @ 12:22PM
Kevin said...
A) I don't think that they have to worry about to many people having read the star trek books, and B) you missed my point entirely.
5-18-2009 @ 9:49AM
Taylor Johnston said...
I think LOST's theory on time travel makes the most logical sense for the reasons mentioned here.
The idea is that you can't change the past because the universe has a way of course correcting which essentially eliminates alternate timelines and grandfather paradoxes. The characters can move backward and forward on the timeline but whatever the characters try to do to change the past they will ultimately fail.
Of course, the creators of LOST, JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof, were also director/executive producer of Star Trek which takes a different approach.
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