All The Tropes

Fling a Light Into the Future: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Fling a Light Into the Future (view source)

Revision as of 08:25, 11 April 2017

69 bytes removed ,  7 years ago
update links
VisualWikitext
(update links)
Line 86:
** Though they weren't actually going extinct, some alien dissidents preserved a collection of their race's greatest artistic masterpieces when their government declared art to be an illegal waste of resources. This precious collection was later salvaged by the ''Excalibur's'' crew on ''[[Crusade]]''.
** In the prequel movie ''In the Beginning'' Mankind does this: when Earth is about to be hit by the [[Hopeless War|unstoppable Minbari]], hundreds of civilians are evaquated as Earthforce and any ship capable of fighting try and buy time fighting the Minbari, so that Mankind will still survive.
* The [[Tear Jerker|tearjerkingly brilliant]] "The Inner Light", an episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' commonly seen as one of the best, tells the story of an alien race doomed by instability in their sun who send out a space probe that finds Picard and [[Mind Rape|forces]] him to hallucinate living a lifetime among their final generations before the end, and thus ensures that their species will at least be remembered. It affected ''Picard'' and no other crew member. The life he lived involved getting married, having a family, and other things he's never made time for - taking it from a disturbing experience to something he sees as a gift.
** But brutally subverted in ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'''s "Course: Oblivion", in which {{spoiler|the Silver Blood duplicate of ''Voyager'' 's crew}} create a log capsule that will survive after them, and their attempt to launch it fails, destroying it. The ship disintegrates just beyond {{spoiler|the real ''Voyager''}}'s sensor range.
** There's also an episode with a mysterious monument that commemorates a slaughter by [[Mind Rape|forcing everyone in its proximity to become a participant in the massacre]]. {{spoiler|The crew decides its lesson is too valuable to forget but leave a warning beacon.}}
* The final message from a never-seen culture to "Beware The Destroyers" is the only reason ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' lasted more than a season.
Line 105:
 
== Tabletop Games ==
* Inverted in a profoundly dark and disturbing way by the [[Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods|Illithid]] [[Brain Food|race]] in ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' ([[Retcon|at least before]] [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|4th Edition]]). The Mind Flayers were - [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|or will be]] - the overlords of the multiverse at the literal end of time, when most if not all the stars have burnt out. But after facing defeat at the hands of a trans-planar rebellion (not that there's much to fight over at this point), the Illithids sacrificed unbelievable numbers of their Elder Brains to create a psionic maelstrom that sent the surviving members of their race into the distant past - that is, shortly before the ''D&D'' setting. This way they can get a head start on forging their empire while avoiding that pesky slave uprising altogether. It also explains their tremendous egos; after all, they ''know'' [[You Can't Fight Fate|their victory is inevitable]].
** One more disturbing note about the Illithids - it's possible for characters to take feats representing having [[Half-Human Hybrid|monstruous non-human ancestors]], like a bit of dragon blood in your family tree or something. If you apply them to the Illithids, it doesn't mean you have an inhuman ancestor, it means that the squid-faced, brain-eating monsters with the parasitic life cycle are your ''descendants''.
 
Line 130:
* The Soul Cube in ''[[Doom]] 3''.
* Backstory of the Shivans in ''[[City of Heroes]]''. An alien planet destroyed by Shiva sent a probe to Earth to warn it that it was the next target. Humanity found this, deciphered the language, found they had only a little while before Shiva would destroy them, and blew Shiva up. Unfortunately, the fragments landed on an island a bit close to home, and are trying to reform themselves. Hey, they're my favorite villain group, so I know a bit.
* In ''[[StarcraftStarCraft II]]'', {{spoiler|the final mission of Zeratul's mini-campaign takes place in a possible future where the remaining survivors of the Protoss fight a doomed last battle against the near-omnipotent Dark Voice and his army of Zerg and Hybrids. The bonus objective involves protecting the Archives long enough for the Preservers to seal away the history and knowledge of the Protoss, so that someday a future race might use it against the Hybrids.}}
* Dr. Light created ''[[Mega Man X]]'' in hopes that he would help create a world of peace. {{spoiler|In a way, he ''did'', but it took many hundreds of years, and ''Dr. Wily's'' last creation is [[Mega Man Zero|just as responsible]] as Light's.}}
* In the Flash game ''Cellcraft'', a race of advanced platypus-like people discover that an inescapable cataclysm will wipe out all life on their planet. With no means to escape their eventual destruction, they breed microbes (the premise of the game) tough enough to survive even the most hostile conditions that are still capable of supporting life and send them to another planet—that planet being Earth. This is apparently the origin of platypi on Earth and handily explains why they are so strange—they are ''aliens''.
Line 168:
* Several of [[wikipedia:Long Now Foundation#Projects|The Long Now Foundation's projects]] are about this. They include a clock to run for ten millenia and an effort to preserve languages that are likely to become extinct.
* Some high schools have buried time capsules, where they get a container, fill it with stuff from their year and bury it. Decades later, at a school reunion or something, they dig it up and see what everyone put in there to reminisce about their teen years.
* From the famous [[World War OneI]] poem ''In Flanders Fields'':
{{quote|Take up our quarrel with the foe: / To you from failing hands we throw / The torch; be yours to hold it high.}}
* A total of five space probes have been sent out, or are on their way out, of the solar system (Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, and New Horizons). On them contains information about both the location in space, as well as ''when'', they originate from. A number of scientists think that they may one day be picked up by some other intelligence and will tell them we were here, once.<ref>Although, others hypothesize that ''we'' may end up recovering them in the future as museum pieces to early space exploration</ref>
Line 179:
[[Category:Sealed Index in A Can]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Fling a Light Into the Future{{PAGENAME}}]]
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1509607"