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Write Back to the Future: Difference between revisions
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* The novel ''[[Good Omens]]'' has a variation, where the author of the "deliver this message to this specific person at this address on this date" message is not a time traveler, but has the ability to see the future. And includes extra messages, addressed by name, for the three people who try to open the message before it reaches its intended recipient.
** To elaborate: Agnes Nutter predicted events of future generations, leaving a record for her descendants to consult, one prophecy at a time, in centuries to come. By the time the story is set, intervening generations have annotated many of these documents, including some ribald comments on the page that predicts Agnes's modern-day descendant will have sex with a particular other character.
* The novel ''Timeline'' had several of these. The first clue that time travel is happening is when the head scientist visits the time travel corporation, and suddenly his archaeologists find a thousand-year-old parchment with his handwriting on it, as well as his glasses. At the end of the book, the archeologists find the grave of one of their team who stayed in the past, with a message for them in the epitaph.
* Lazarus Long uses this trick in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', when he's sent back in time to the early 20th century. It's a complicated set of multiple letters inside letters (with different instructions and dates on which to be opened), since he's writing it to a time two thousand years into the future. The recipients of the letters then use the date they stop being sent to pinpoint when to rescue him.
* In DJ MacHale's ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'' series, the third book, ''The Never War'', has lead character Bobby Pendragon send his journals detailing what happens during his stay on "First Earth" (Earth, circa 1937) to his friends/acolytes/helpers Mark and Courtney by locking them in a safe deposit box in the town's bank.
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** Actually, it is revealed later that {{spoiler|the god of Trickery on Pug's world was forging Pug's hand-writing and using the magic box as a way of putting Pug where he needed to be, when he needed to be there. He did this partly because he knew Pug wouldn't fully trust any magical message from anyone but himself and partly because it was more fun that way.}}
* In [[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]], Ford and Arthur do this by accident when trapped on prehistoric Earth. Arthur drops his towel during an earthquake, it gets fossilized in a lava flow, then thrown out into space when the planet is blown up by the Vogons ''two million years later'' and picked up by the Heart of Gold, where Zaphod interprets it as a message and comes to rescue them. Of course, the Heart of Gold is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, so things like this are par for the course.
** According to the [[Retcon]] in The Tertiaty Phase, though, this all happened in the artificial universe in Zarniwoop's office, thereby explaining why the 'real'' Ford and Arthur are still on prehistoric Earth when the Phase begins. (The actual reason is that the Tertiary Phase was based on the third book, while most of the 2nd radio series never happened in the books, and the Retcon was attempting to incorporate the 2nd radio series into the continuity)
** This trope is mocked in ''Life, the Universe, and Everything'' when Arthur and Ford end up on Earth shortly before it's blown up. Arthur gets the idea to warn himself, but Ford points out that it wouldn't work by doing an impression of the hypothetical phone call "'Hello, me? It's me. Please don't hang up.' ''*shrug*'' He hung up. [[Genre Savvy|This is NOT my first temporal anomaly, you know.]]"
* Done without the time travel - sort of - in [[Joe Haldeman]]'s ''[[The Forever War]]'', in which Marygay leaves a note for William at the front of his army record, knowing that this will be kept safe to give to him if he survives the war, even though near-lightspeed travel has caused their personal timelines to diverge and therefore he's hundreds of years in her future.
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** In "Battlefield", the Doctor finds a note in his own handwriting with the body of [[King Arthur]], a message from his future self.
** "Blink" revolves almost entirely around such messages. First, Sally finds a message addressed to her written behind the wallpaper of a derelict house. When she returns with her friend Kathy, Sally answers the door to someone with a letter for her while Kathy goes upstairs. The letter is from Kathy saying she had a long and happy life, delivered by her grandson; meanwhile Kathy is sent back in time. Another character is asked to keep a message and take it to Sally by [[The Slow Path]], and DVD [[Easter Egg|Easter Eggs]] are inserted into seventeen unrelated DVDs {{spoiler|1=which are all DVDs that Sally owns}}. At the end, {{spoiler|she gives a list of these messages to The Doctor, closing the [[Stable Time Loop]]}}.
*** His conversation with Sally is even more impressive, since the two actually have a dialog using the DVD easter eggs. It turns out that Sally's companion is a conspiracy theorist who has been fascinated by the easter eggs for years. When he hears Sally's responses, he writes her side of the conversation down in shorthand so he can post it to his conspiracy newsgroup. The Doctor later gets a copy of her responses and uses this to record ''his'' side of the conversation. Thus the entire conversation is an [[Fridge Brilliance|ontological paradox]].
** River Song uses this tactic all the damn time to get the Doctor's attention, leaving messages in places that are sure to get his attention sooner or later. (It doesn't matter ''when'' exactly he finds them, because he can land the TARDIS precisely at the time she asks, even if that was millenia prior.)
** And in the [[Big Finish Doctor Who]] adventure "The Kingmaker", the Doctor and his companions, separated by two years when the TARDIS is stolen (by {{spoiler|[[William Shakespeare]]}}) exchange notes by leaving them in the care of the owner of the eponymous tavern. The letters left by Peri and Erimem travel forward to the Doctor in the usual way, while the Doctor leaves his own notes on the assumption that one of his future selves can someday collect them and deliver them to the past.
* Data's head was used for this, in the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' two-parter "Time's Arrow".
* In the episode of ''[[Torchwood]]'' where Jack and Tosh fall through a crack into the 40s, Tosh leaves notes for the others to find that contain the data they need to work out how to get them back. Requires extensive [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]], as the message is in two parts: one in an electrical box and one in a tin can in a basement. The chances of them going undisturbed for about sixty years, and Gwen managing to find them both in one day, in the right order, boggles the mind.
** Similarly, in the series 2 episode "To the Last Man", 1918 Torchwood leaves "time-locked" instructions for 2008 Torchwood to follow regarding the 1918 soldier who's been cryo-frozen in the vault for all this time (except 1 day a year).
** The ''Torchwood'' [http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood/sites/arg/pages/episodes.shtml?folder=tw_case_ep03&tab=3&page=4 website] advises agents ''not'' to try this:
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* ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' used a short-term version of this, as Dexter (after opening a space gate to an alien world and being eaten by an alien blob) sends Dee Dee back several hours with a message... but past-Dexter doesn't get it until it's too late (which is to say, just after writing the letter in the first place), due to Dee Dee's ditziness and his own irritability.
* [[Xanatos Gambit|David Xanatos]], from ''[[Gargoyles]]'', makes his fortune via this trope. After he's zapped back 1020 years in time by the Phoenix Gate, he leaves a package in the care of the Illuminati, to be delivered to his younger self 1000 years in the future (1975). The package contains three coins (worth thousands of dollars by the time the younger Xanatos receives them and uses them for his first investments, but near worthless for their era) and a lengthy letter to be delivered twenty years after ''that'' (1995, one week before the beginning of the episode) that details what he will have to do to ensure that he is sent to the past to send the coins and the letter in the first place. And he even makes a crack about being a "[[Self-Made Man]]". [[Magnificent Bastard|Magnificent]].
** His father didn't think very highly of it though. As a wedding present, he gives David a penny, saying it's not worth much now, but in a thousand years it might be worth more.
* Used in a multi-part [[Time Travel]] story arc in ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]''. A couple times, Sonic and Tails are stranded in an impossible situation. Sonic's solution: write a note to their contact in the future, bury/hide it right where they stand, and the solution will be beamed to them the exact second they finish.
* In the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "It's About Time!", Phineas and Ferb get trapped in the prehistoric past and send messages back to the present by scratching them into the mud next to a dinosaur footprint they know is going to become fossilized and end up in the local museum.
* An episode of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]: Fast Forward'' focussed on this. The Turtles received a letter, and later on get separated in groups of two across time and space. It's after Raphael and Michaelangelo from the future tell the same two from the past (in the present) to read the letter that they realize it had been sent by Donatello from 200something.
* An interesting variation occurs in one episode of the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|original Ninja Turtles]]. [[Sixth Ranger|Carter]] needs to contact time-travelling allies Landor and Merrik, but they're twenty years in the future. Carter sends a radio message into space, with the intent of bouncing it back to Earth via a star ten light years away. It works.
* Though not quite the same thing, an episode of the ''[[Superfriends]]'' has some of the super-heroes trapped in the prehistoric past. To get a signal to the heroes in the present, the trapped heroes bury their communicator in the ground at the precise location where the Hall of Justice will be built thousands of years from now. At that time, the heroes in the present begin to hear a signal coming from the ground. Somehow, this tells them that their friends are trapped in the past. Even as a kid watching this, none of it made any sense.
* At one point ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'' and [[Sidekick|Arthur]] are stranded in the prehistoric past. Arthur takes months, years carving a message into the hardest stone he can find in the hopes that the message would survive millions of years of erosion to be discovered in the future {{spoiler|[[The Ditz|The Tick]] breaks it.}} For those who're curious, some hard granite erodes at a rate of approximately one inch every million years; since they were cohabiting with Australopithecus, letters would probably have to be carved at least a foot deep and wide spaced to still be legible today, assuming they were left exposed to the elements.
* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode ''The Late Philip J. Fry'', Leela discovers that Fry's been sent into the future, unable to return. She goes into a cave and blasts a pattern of holes in the ceiling. The resulting stalagmite formations over millions of years spell out [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|a touching message for him.]]
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