Time Travel: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''Time travel is theoretically impossible, but I wouldn't want to give it up as a plot gimmick.''|'''[[Isaac Asimov]]'''}}

 

 

A time travel story can simply use time travel as a vehicle to get the hero to the [[Adventure Towns]], or the [[Phlebotinum]] involved can be a key plot driver. No matter what story type the hero is going to need a [[Time Machine]] or [[Time Master]] to get around. Time Travel stories seem to fall into several categories:

# [[Temporal Paradox]]: ''Now'' it gets complicated...

## Characters go to the past! In the past, they change history: If they do so by accident, it well may end the story with a [[Karmic Twist Ending]]; alternately, it will set the ''real'' plot in motion by requiring the characters to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]].

## Characters go to the future! Upon returning to the past, they ''are'' able to fight fate and prevent the events of the future (seeing which prompted them to try to prevent the events of the future in the first place) from occurring.

# [[Trapped in the Past]]: The characters are stuck in another time with no way of return and must choose between quietly living out their lives without changing history or [[Giving Radio to the Romans|working to change the world]] to their (and the natives') benefit. You'd be amazed how few people seem to pick the first option.

# [[Alternate Timeline]]: The characters time-travel has split their universe in twain. There's the universe they're in (that's they've "changed") and the universe they're not in. (the "old" universe that wasn't changed.)

 

 

 

Note that only the [[Stable Time Loop]] and [[Alternate Universe]] (when done properly, i.e. you can never get back to the first universe) resolutions are the only ones logically consistent with typical ideas of causality so stories wishing to be more "realistic" should favor these.

Even less sensibly time travel may run on [[San Dimas Time]] or display a [[Groundhog Day Loop]].

 

 

See also [[Temporal Mutability]] for the very tricky problem of how (or even if) you can change the future or the past.

 

 

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* In ''[[Universal War One]]'', scientists build a space station that accidentally opens a wormhole, allowing limited time travel. {{spoiler|Then Kalish solves the equations that allow anybody to travel through time and space without limitation.}}

 

=== Film ===

 

=== [[Literature]] ===

 

=== [[Live Action Television]] ===

* In ''[[Time Trax]]'', the method varied, but the rules were that you could only travel between two set time periods (The Present and The Future), and more than two trips in a lifetime are lethal.

* In the original ''[[Star Trek]]'', time travel required either a dangerous and complicated slingshot maneuver or a precision jump into the Donut of Forever or Mr. Atoz's Atavachron, but these days ''Trek'' characters can travel through time by spilling coffee on their tricorder. (Which is probably why Star Fleet now has a department of time travel cops staffed entirely by grim-jawed [[The Men in Black|Men in Black]], as seen in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|DS9]]''.)

** Time Travel is such an amusingly big thing in Star Trek that, in [[Star Trek Online]], [[State Sec|Section 31]] are revealed to have a star system set up ''specifically'' for pulling off the "slingshot around a star" stunt with precise calibration.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is ''all'' about time travel.

 

=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===

* In the card game ''[[Chrononauts]]'', the players are time travelers from various alternate futures, and are trying to change the timeline to match their own timeline's version of the "past" so that they can finally go home. Since all the alternate futures have conflicting versions of "history," and many of those conflicting versions require a specific outcome to World War II (Hitler was assassinated early and [[WW 2]] was Japan vs. America, Hitler lived and D-Day failed so that Germany won [[WW 2]], and a couple other variants), [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]] gets a real workout. There's an alternate victory condition in which players have to collect certain combinations of [[MacGuffin|Mac Guffins]] of questionable historical importance, but that's for material gain, not timeline shenanigans. A third victory condition is to get hired by the local [[Time Police]] after fixing enough of other people's paradoxes.

 

 

** Episode 1: Stop the scientists, who have given the time travel technology to [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|Nazi scientists]], to keep them from controlling key moments in history and changing the timeline... then when ''that'' doesn't work, going back in time ''again'' to make sure the [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|nuking of New York]] [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|never happened]]...

** Episode 2: Sideslip to an alternate Earth where Gordon Freeman failed to stop the Xen invasion and try to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|Set Right What Already Went Wrong]], only to find [[Those Wacky Nazis]] meddling in that dimension as well...

 

 

 

 

=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===

* The ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' stories/anime feature time travelers, most notably [[Woobie|Mikuru]]. It gets important in a major way in the novels, which also push Mikuru from being the [[Neutral Female]] somewhat. {{spoiler|They travel to [[Arc Words|3 years ago]], and [[Trust Password|Kyon is the goddamn John Smith!]] }} The 7th novel also circles around it, this time with a Mikuru from a week in the future, setting off events to inspire the future inventor of time-travel and set off events necessary to bring about her organization. Like by nailing a can to the ground to send a man to hospital so that he can meet his future wife, or by dropping a turtle into freezing water to teach the inventor of time-travel something.

* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' later turns out to have used this, having hidden it among a bushel of jaunts to alternate universes, or "countries". One "country" turned out to be the main characters' homeland in the past. {{spoiler|And our world, or one much like it, in the future}}.

* ''[[Pokémon 4Ever|Pokémon 4 Ever]]'' features a Celebi that inadvertently brings {{spoiler|the young Professor Oak}} with it to the present day when escaping from a hunter.

 

 

* ''[[PS238]]'', especially the later issues. Includes several confusing [[Stable Time Loop|stable time loops]]

* ''[[Justice Society of America|JSA]]'' has featured the modern Starman, a severe schizophrenic with powerful gravity controlling abilities. He claims, and it's probably true, that he is from a future Legion of Superheroes, future in terms of the Legion's comic too since he's an adult and the Legion in its comic is composed entirely of teenagers. Starman is also a dimensional traveler, who made his original appearance in [[Kingdom Come]] by helping Superman try and contain the villains and anti-heroes; apparently he can travel through time and the multiverse through a combination of his powers and a map that's written into his costume.

* Prior to [[Post-Crisis|1985]] [[Superman]] could time travel under his own power but would arrive in the past completely invisible and intangible, unable to interact with the past in any way, avoiding the problems with this trope. After 1985, he was no longer powerful enough to time travel at all.

** Not quite. He would be invisible and intangible only if he travelled to a period where he already existed, since he couldn't be in two places at the same, er, time. If he travelled to a time prior to his own birth, he was solid. However he still couldn't change the past.

 

=== [[Film]] ===

** In the 8th-century Japanese tale of [[wikipedia:Urashima Taro|Urashima Taro]]. Urashima Taro is a young fisherman who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his family long dead.

* The concept of travelling backward in time is relatively more recent. The idea was hinted at in Samuel Madden's ''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' (1733), and told more explicitly in Alexander Veltman's ''Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii'' (1836).

* Zits in ''[[Flight (novel)|Flight]]'' time travels continuously by going into different bodies.

* ''[[Time and Again]]'', and its sequel ''Time After Time'' by Jack Finney.

** Which had more to do with the detrimental effects of dragon-based time-slipping: first, simply making the jump required traveling through the sensory-deprivation hell that is "between" for extended periods far beyond the quick three-breaths referenced in early stories, and second being in two places at once had ever-increasing mental effects on the travelers in question...effects that were decidedly unhinging to the travelers and intensified drastically the closer they were spatially to an earlier incarnation. Lessa's jump some four hundred years into the past very nearly killed her from apoxia, and the one recorded time that an earlier version actually caught sight of a later time-traveling one (for a split second, and even that only as a shadow moving in darkness) left the earlier incarnation almost completely physically and mentally incapacitated for a good fifteen minutes.

* ''[[A Tale of Time City]]'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]]. Time City is "[[Place Beyond Time|outside]]" normal time, using recycled time (hence very important/emotional moments get burned in and are seen as time ghosts both before and after the event). Time is divided into unstable eras to be visited with great caution (ours obviously) and stable eras that they trade information with. However, they only sell information about the (relative) past, no stock market sneak previews.

** [[Oswald Bastable]] is also subject to this kind of involuntary shifting between alternate histories.

* [[Thursday Next]] features multiple versions of history within a single book, but only the reader and the (off-screen) timetravelers are aware of this fact.

* The ''[[Time Scout]]'' series is built around an Accident that caused [[Portal to the Past|time portals]] to open up between random times and places. The stories cluster around people who happen to go places for various reasons.

* [[Doomsday Book]], among other books by [[Connie Willis]], features time-travelling historians who visit the past via a "net".

 

=== [[Live Action Television]] ===

* The driving force behind the plot of ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers]]'' is that the god of time is slowly losing his marbles, and time is screwing up royally as a result.

* ''[[Shadow Hearts|Shadow Hearts: Covenant]]''. {{spoiler|[[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Kato]]'s entire plan hinges on going back in time 100 years to eliminate certain individuals. When the plan is ultimately foiled, everyone gets to pick a time to travel to to live happily ever after. Karin ends up going back in time, meeting Yuri's dad and [[Abandon Shipping|becoming his mum.]] So...yeah.}}

* ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]''

* ''[[Warriors Orochi|Warriors Orochi 3]]''. A monstrous eight-headed beast called the Hydra kills most of the heroes. The few remaining survivors are aided by Kaguya, the moon princess from ''Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'', who uses her ability to travel through time to rescue the heroes who died in the battle with the Hydra.

* The changing-the-past equivalent was used thrice in ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]: A Crack in Time'', the first time to save [[Cool Old Guy|Orvus]] from [[Big Bad|Dr. Nefarious]], the second to defend Zanifar from the Agorians, and the third to {{spoiler|prevent Azimuth from killing Ratchet.}} The main plot also centers around using the Great Clock to travel back to prevent larger incidents. In Nefarious' case, he wants to wrong all the rights in the universe. For Ratchet and Azimuth, it's going back to prevent the Lombaxes' banishment. {{spoiler|Either use would screw over the universe and all of reality, though.}}

* ''[[Radiant Historia]]'' not only deals with time travel, but parallel universes caused by making different choices at certain points in time.

 

 

* ''[[Earthsong]]'' features a particularly head-spinning variant that doesn't actually CHANGE TIME AT ALL.

* ''[[Dresden Codak]]'' has a major plot arch which revolves around time travelers from the future entering {{spoiler|and later invading}} the present.

* ''[[Bob and George]]''. Oh, lord, Bob and George. One of the recurring catchphrases shared by many characters is "I hate time travel". George even suffers a nervous breakdown when faced with having to use it.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' features time travel (as well as dimensional travel) in several arcs, including "Doc Gets Rad" ({{spoiler|[[Big Bad]] Sparklelord}} gets defeated by being trapped in a [[Stable Time Loop]]), "Army of One" (In a [[Flash Back]], a time-travelling {{spoiler|Chuck Goodrich}} tries briefly to stop Doc from being cloned by Ben Franklin II), and "Space Savers" (Yet another {{spoiler|Chuck Goodrich}} travels back in time [and into another universe] to stop a space dinosaur invasion). Since the comic works on [[Rule of Cool]], the precise rules for how all this fits together are never clearly established.

 

 

=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===

* Time travel is specifically taboo in the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' universe, and it's the job of Sailor Pluto to guard the gate of time and make sure no one uses it. That said, The sailor soldiers (Chibi-usa especially) make occasional trips between the 20th and 30th centuries.

* The Android Saga from ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' is kicked off by the arrival of Trunks, a [[Future Badass]] who owns both Frieza and King Cold when they come to Earth to seek revenge on Goku before revealing himself to be the son of Vegeta and Bulma. He's traveled back in time because the future he came from is a [[Bad Future]] where human civilization has been destroyed by the Androids and he wants to prevent that future from coming to pass by making sure that Goku doesn't die from the heart disease that he picked up on Planet Yadrat. He's only half successful because while Goku does survive the heart disease, he's out of action for the good part of the saga, leaving Trunks and the rest of the Z team to battle the Androids. Then an even more dangerous villain arrives from a ''third'' timeline...

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' gives us the Infinity Device, which is capable of creating wormholes, useable for time travel. Illiaster intends to use the device to further their own schemes in {{spoiler|guiding history on the correct path}}.

 

=== [[Literature]] ===

** In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'', Marvin the Paranoid Android is abandoned for most of the lifespan of the universe due to time travel. It is later stated that, due to his various time travel incidents, Marvin is several times older than the Universe itself.

* The novelization of the 1998 ''[[Merlin (TV miniseries)|Merlin]]'' series implies that Lancelot came from a place in the future, or in a possible future, and was brought from it to the time of Arthur, by Merlin, to act as the king's champion. When Merlin first arrives there, they seem to have heard of him, though they never bring up what the history of their land says about it all.

 

 

* In ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'', time travel is possible, but it's almost never a good idea. There's an entire section devoted to time travel and results thereof.

* In ''[[Girls in Space]]'', whenever the girls find the Earth, it is a different time period. They have no control over which time period has appeared.

* ''[[All Over the House]]'' occasionally sees Emily and Tesrin venturing through time for fun.

* ''[[The Life of Nob T. Mouse]]'' has Memory Lane, an area of space that allows people to see the past as if it is playing out before them. It's used on occasion to jog peoples' memories.

=== [[Web Original]] ===

* The ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'' features the Warlord, a [[Powered Armor]]-wearing villain from the future. He didn't like the way things were going in his time, so he came back to change them. Every story featuring him involves him trying to change some historical event to fit his own whims.

 

 

* ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had an [[Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum|intellegent Beezy]] make a [[Cool Chair]] time machine, which he then used mainly to rub his intellegence in Heloise's face.

* For a series that is so focused on the dangers of advanced technology, ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'' notably only had ''one'' time travel episode, "The Edge of Yesterday," near the end of its run.

* The entire final season of ''[[The Smurfs]]'' was about time travel, coupled with [[Failure Is the Only Option]] as the Smurfs end up in one time period (and/or geographical location) after another.

* The [[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]] episode Bloodlines is all about Bart Allen a.k.a. Impulse trying to prevent a [[Bad Future]] and the after effects are really confusing. In the future everything has become destroyed and covered in ash with only Impulse and the villian of the episode in sight. When Impulse changes the future the only thing that changes is that the villain was no longer a major threat in the past and doesn't have scars, but somehow despite changing that little the villian can still remember the old timeline.

 

 

Mentioned in the end, since this series uses (and spoofs) ''every single trope'' listed above:

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]