San Dimas Time: Difference between revisions

As a result, events in two different time periods are shown to happen concurrently, so that people two years in the past only have X minutes to stop the villain from committing some terrible act in the present, even though they should technically have X minutes ''plus two years'' to sort it all out. Or perhaps the heroes have [[Delayed Ripple Effect|only Y minutes]] to get to their time machine and prevent the villain from doing something thirty years ago, which obviously makes no sense either. (Whatever "our" next year may bring, there is little risk of its world suddenly having experienced a [[Godwin's Law of Time Travel|Nazi victory in 1945]].)

 

 

Note that this is different from the [[Portal to The Past]], where a time portal links two eras and allows time on both sides to run at an equal rate, giving the impression that events are running concurrently. This is essentially a portal that sends you X amount of time forward/backwards in time. The main difference is that the [[Portal to The Past]] means that the time flow rate on both sides are the same due to both sides being essentially at rest relative to one another (i.e. because of relativity).

[[San Dimas Time]] is often portrayed using [[Meanwhile in The Future]]. (That page, however, specifically focuses on scenes in which the two time periods do ''not'' affect one another.)

 

 

Note: Please don't duplicate entries between this trope, [[Meanwhile in The Future]], and [[Portal to The Past]].

 

* In ''[[Sailor Moon Zodiac]]'' "episodes" 10 and 11, a botched attempt to have the modern Inner senshi quintet observe their past selves leads not only to this but also to a switch between past and present selves that marks the point where the "series" takes a [[Hotter and Sexier]] turn.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

 

** Thus, if the Doctor experiences event A followed by event B, the Master must also experience event A followed by event B, though the number of years in between might differ considerably for the two. The same applies to the Doctor meeting earlier regenerations.

** In the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]], the BBC Books novel ''Emotional Chemistry'' maintains a continuous narrative crossing between three time periods, with four separate means of time travel, and only one point at which one of the characters is "out of sync" with the others.

*** River Song is a strange type of ''[[Inverted Trope|Inversion]]'', in that she apparently routinely experiences events in the opposite order to The Doctor. (Sometimes they experience events in the same order; otherwise their tradition of comparing diaries would be pointless.) She is aware that the first time she meets The Doctor will be the last time he meets her, which (although it is a [[Foregone Conclusion]] for the audience) isn't really necessitated by anything she knows.

*** This same subversion had been done in the previous series, though on a smaller scale. Within their personal timeline, the Doctor and Martha are falling prey to Mr. Saxon's manipulations ''before'' they {{spoiler|travel to the end of the universe, release the Master and accidentally give him the means to go back in time and establish himself as Mr. Saxon on 21st century Earth.}}

*** Mel and the Sixth Doctor "first" met each other in a different order, too.

** Interestingly, the few occasions when time-travelers do appear to be out of sync with each other there is generally non-Gallifreyan technology involved (Like Captain Jack's [[Time Agent]] wrist band).

** In the revived series, this trope is required to make the Doctor being the [[Last of His Kind]] meaningful. Otherwise, he could run into pre-Timewar Time Lords and Daleks.

** In one [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] book, the villainess, a Time Lady, monologues (to the readers; she's alone in the room) that she ought to be going up against the (then-current) [[Chessmaster|Seventh Doctor]]. She then decides that he'd be too much for her, looks at all thirteen regenerations, and decides to pick on the Fifth instead, even though that's breaking the rules about meeting out of order. [[Beware the Nice Ones|He's still too much for her.]]

** The Doctor always has this situation when on an inter-temporal phone call for obvious reasons.

** Don't try to make sense of the events of "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang" without assuming that in the Doctor Who universe, time goes in two directions at once; while the TARDIS can go back and forth in linear time, there's clearly some sort of clock running in a different way, just so {{spoiler|The TARDIS exploding causing every star in the universe to simultaneously supernova at every point in time}} makes sense.

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:San Dimas Time]]