Time travel..Pro or Con ?

[dancj]

I hate time travel stories. They just suck.

Red Wing, Robocop vs Terminator, Teen Titans: The Future is Now, Back to the Future and Doctor Who say otherwise

[GigiFusc]

Time travel is possibly one of my favourite plot devices - when used well. You only have to look at Star Trek Next Gen where, in most cases (not all) it was used just brilliantly.

It seems to not be done that well in a lot of comics. I've just finished reading Morrisons Batman being sent back in time storyline and it fluctuated between brilliant, ok and a bit daft actually (as well as incredibly confusing at times).

I do wonder if the problem is that super heroes already exist as larger than life characters living in larger than life worlds, so adding time travel is almost a step too far. In something lie ST, I guess those guys are seemingly normal people who have extraordinary things happen to them.

Great post BTW.

[GigiFusc]

So are we supposed to judge time travel fiction with the yardstick of SUPERMAN THE MOVIE? That seems an unfair measure.

To me, STM isn't a time travel story. It has one deus ex machina scene where Superman does something confusing and somehow changes his reality. But it happens late in the movie, it's never referred to again and it's not the point of the movie. This is not a movie about time travel. Donner didn't even want to use the reversing the Earth device at that point in the story. You could plug any other deus ex machina device in there--let's say Jor-El big head tells Kal-El there's a crystal in the Fortress he can only use once to save someone he loves--that would have done the same trick.

A time travel movie uses time travel as its foundation. So that's something like BACK TO THE FUTURE. Time travel stories are some of my favourite stories, but they need internal consistency. I don't believe that time travel actually exists (not the way it's shown in fiction) but as a fictional device it has to have its own logic. This is why the deus ex machina in SUPERMAN THE MOVIE is relatively inoffensive, because it's only used once--so consistency of use never enters into the equation. But time travel stories use the device over and over--and they get themselves into trouble when they use it differently every time.

Agreed. The BTTF films are a great example of time travel done right. Dr Who is another. Interesting that not many individual comic book time travel stories are coming up. (I don't read Booster gold so can't comment on them).

[The Darknight Detective]

Agreed. The BTTF films are a great example of time travel done right.

Except for the Johnny B, Goode part. I don't think it's racist or anything like that, but it really strains credulity.

[GigiFusc]

Except for the Johnny B, Goode part. I don't think it's racist or anything like that, but it really strains credulity.

I can def see that, but I guess it depends on how it's taken. If it's taken from a POV of - Chuck needed a white guy to inspire his sound, then yeh, that's pretty bad. If you take it as a simple joke with no racial undertone whatsoever, then I think it's ok.

I'd like to think that Spielberg did it more as a joke inspired by his love of rock 'n roll music as opposed to a racially inspired plot point.

[DevilBat66]

Red Wing, Robocop vs Terminator, Teen Titans: The Future is Now, Back to the Future and Doctor Who say otherwise

Funny. I don't like any of those things. Imagine that?

[JackDaw]

Loads of good time travel stories. And...realistically...they are going to be a staple of super hero comics as long as super hero comics exist, it's part of the territory.

But...my own personal taste...I think in a shared story telling universe it's one of the areas where there ought to be a few binding rules.

Don't have an entire series demonstrating that its impossible to change past, etc...then a couple of years later tell stories where enormous changes occur left, right and centre.

[NeathBlue]

I've always enjoyed time travel storylines, though if it results in changing the reality that's been around for years, then it basically becomes an elseworlds storyline imo.

[The Darknight Detective]

I can def see that, but I guess it depends on how it's taken. If it's taken from a POV of - Chuck needed a white guy to inspire his sound, then yeh, that's pretty bad. If you take it as a simple joke with no racial undertone whatsoever, then I think it's ok.

I'd like to think that Spielberg did it more as a joke inspired by his love of rock 'n roll music as opposed to a racially inspired plot point.

I totally agree with you it was done out of love for the music and nothing else.

[Thor-Ul]

The best time travel stories I like deal with issues as right or wrong to undo and how you don't know how how the wrong of yesterday is the better of tomorrow.
I like an story of Midnighter when he was offered the chance to travel back in time and kill Hitler as a child. But Midnighter discovered it would be useless because he could kill Hitler but he couldn't change the way that people thought in the past and another person would take the place of Hitler.

[Dr Quinch]

I can def see that, but I guess it depends on how it's taken. If it's taken from a POV of - Chuck needed a white guy to inspire his sound, then yeh, that's pretty bad. If you take it as a simple joke with no racial undertone whatsoever, then I think it's ok.

I'd like to think that Spielberg did it more as a joke inspired by his love of rock 'n roll music as opposed to a racially inspired plot point.

The point is though that Chuck didn't need a white guy to inspire him - Marty didn't write that song he just heard heard Chuck Berry perform it on the radio at some point in the future. So Chuck was actually ripping off himself aaaand........I've gone cross-eyed.

[Thor-Ul]

The point is though that Chuck didn't need a white guy to inspire him - Marty didn't write that song he just heard heard Chuck Berry perform it on the radio at some point in the future. So Chuck was actually ripping off himself aaaand........I've gone cross-eyed.

The problem of the origin, a tipical trope insci-fi. I remember a book about a guy who wanted to know if Shakespeare really wrote all his dramas, but he get lost in time and to survive in the past he had to wrote the books from his archives, leaving the question about who really wrote the books in the first.
Mostly used for comedic purposes.

[Montressor]

Pro all the way, when done correctly. I was a huge fan of Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing time travel arc and LOVE LOVE LOVE the use of time travel on ST: TNG, DS9, and Voyager. One of my favorite time travel movies is 'Somewhere In Time' (Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour), and I lost it (in a great way) over the handling of how a timeline might change in the film 'Frequency'.

I

[dan12456]

Hate them. They almost always fail to have consistent logic and rules. The problem is further amplified by the shared universe concept.

[The Darknight Detective]

The point is though that Chuck didn't need a white guy to inspire him - Marty didn't write that song he just heard heard Chuck Berry perform it on the radio at some point in the future. So Chuck was actually ripping off himself aaaand........I've gone cross-eyed.

It's that and also the idea that Chuck would have been able to duplicate the song perfectly just by hearing it once through the telephone.