Traveling At the Speed of Plot: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"According to the computer, it should take us exactly one episode to reach our destination."''~~|'''Mokuba''', ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]''}}~~

{{quote|''"According to the computer, it should take us exactly one episode to reach our destination."''

|'''Mokuba''', ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series]]''}}

The heroes need to get from point A to point B; occasionally, these things have a specific distance, and other times the distances involved are left fuzzy. Sometimes '''Traveling At the Speed of Plot''' is a function of intentionally vague traveling speeds, sometimes of distance.

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See also [[Conversation Cut]], and [[Transformation At the Speed of Plot]].

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== Anime and Manga ==

* Happens in ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]''. No matter how many distractions the characters encounter, they'll always manage to collect all their Badges/Ribbons just in time for the annual competition at the end of the saga.

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** The show has an interesting variation of the trope in that the time to travel between any two points seems to decrease each time. The first time they travel somewhere, it takes an episode or more; afterward, it takes less and less time until the trip is reduced to taking place offscreen. This can be explained by the simple fact that they don't know the route the first time, and will have some kind of beaten trail or markers to follow on subsequent journeys so they won't need to keep stopping to get their bearings.

* An example from ''[[The A-Team]]'': The [[Monster of the Week|villains]] capture the A-Team and ship them off to be executed while they leave for a cemetery to kill a judge. The A-Team is driven to a car junkyard, where they escape, knock out their captors, and manage to repair, jury-rig, and ''clean and polish'' a hearse with a fold-out coffin with an armed gunman inside it. They then leave for the graveyard at what appears to be a reasonable speed and arrive ''one second'' '''before''' ''the villains''.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica ~~Reimagined]]~~'' takes this trope nearly literally. The miniseries, the webisodes "The Face of the Enemy", and the finale suggest that colonial FTL drives may have an ''unlimited'' range, but the calculations required to use them become nonlinear when jumping farther than the "red line" and the difficulty in performing them increases exponentially. It can be done, either at great risk or with divine intervention. Which means that the effective top speed of the colonial fleet is dependent on how badly they want to get where they're going. The factor isn't velocity, it's accuracy. Cylon FTL drives are better because they are more accurate.

* [[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|The 2004 reimagined ''Battlestar Galactica'']] takes this trope nearly literally. The miniseries, the webisodes "The Face of the Enemy", and the finale suggest that colonial FTL drives may have an ''unlimited'' range, but the calculations required to use them become nonlinear when jumping farther than the "red line" and the difficulty in performing them increases exponentially. It can be done, either at great risk or with divine intervention. Which means that the effective top speed of the colonial fleet is dependent on how badly they want to get where they're going. The factor isn't velocity, it's accuracy. Cylon FTL drives are better because they are more accurate.

** The trope was played agonizingly straight in the original ''Galactica'', where the fleet explicitly ~~travelled~~ at a ''maximum'' of "lightspeed"—and usually slower since not all ships could manage that pace—and yet they passed through at least three different galaxies in the course of the series. Although that's as much [[Did Not Do the Research]] as Speed of Plot.

** The trope was played agonizingly straight in [[Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series)|the original ''Galactica'']], where the fleet explicitly traveled at a ''maximum'' of "lightspeed"—and usually slower since not all ships could manage that pace—and yet they passed through at least three different galaxies in the course of the series. Although that's as much [[Did Not Do the Research]] as Speed of Plot.

* In ''[[Smallville]]'' the name-giving town and the city of Metropolis seem sometimes directly adjacent and sometimes it's a three-hour ride with the car.

* Another insane example comes from Season 3 of ''[[Lois and Clark]]''. In episode 2, Superman is seen flying from Metropolis to places around the world like Japan and Switzerland to get stuff for Lois, arriving back with the goods in less time than it takes to tell—less than 5 seconds per return trip at the most; a few episodes later, he has ''15'' seconds to get to Eastern Europe to intercept a nuclear missile, but somehow he can't get there in time. Instead, he ''tunnels directly through the Earth'' because it's quicker...? Made for a good scene when he saves the day, but forget about it making sense.