Traveling At the Speed of Plot: Difference between revisions

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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.

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

== Anime and Manga ==

*** No, if they can communicate between different star systems in different parts of the galaxy in real-time, then they can clearly establish simultaneity and show that time flows at the same rate everywhere.

* In ''[[Willow]]'', the villain's climactic ritual seems to take weeks. We see her chanting and pouring magical potions, while the heroes gather their forces, march overland to her castle, dig fairly deep trenches... she doesn't seem to sleep, eat, or do anything else for what must be rather a long period of time.

{{quote| '''Kuzco''': No! It can't be! How did you get here before us?!<br />

'''Yzma''': I...* looks confused* , how did we Kronk?<br />

** [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor This page] lists all instances where both travel time and distance have been mentioned in any Star Trek series. The top speed that occurs is in the first series (mentioned to be at warp 8.4), and that would have been enough to get the Voyager home in a month!

* This is a staple of [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]], with characters exiting one scene and entering another even if they have to go all the way across town -- or, indeed, across the ''continent''.

** 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 (TV)|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''.

* 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.

* Among many other less than plausible things in ''[[The Event]]'' was the protagonists' ability to drive across the USA in a few minutes (or fly from the USA to France). Basically, the time it took to travel between any two locations was generally "about one ad break".

* The RevolGarry from ''[[Kamen Rider Double]]'' seems to move exactly as fast as it needs to in order to instantly cover ''any'' distance between the Narumi Detective Agency and wherever Double happens to be.

** They make it in about twenty-five seconds. That's four miles a second (or Rex messed up the distance). And that's using a ''jetpack.'' Rex might be made of Iron, but Six...well, he still seems to be, even if he is supposedly a normal human.

*** Complicated by the earlier episode Payback, where Rex was using the jetpack to try to catch Van Kliess, who was flying away on his whale-blimp EVO. Rex pushes himself to keep up, while VK is only about a mile head of him at most and not moving much faster than the average car, so we know it's this trope.

{{reflist}}