Sci-Fi Guy 50th Ultra Celebratory Time Warp Extravaganza Post
Charge Your Time Machines As Your Newsletter Hits The Big 50!
I’m fifty! Fifty years old! - Sally O’Malley, Saturday Night Live
No, I’m not fifty, but according to Molly Shannon, one of my favorite Saturday Night Live Comedians, - well, her character, Sally, actually - it’s time for a 50th celebration. It’s my 50th post on Substack. This magnificent, magical milestone calls for a little acknowledgement.
I wasn’t sure what to discuss for our 50th get together. What fascinating sci-fi theme could I cover to celebrate a proper post party? Faster than light travel? Alien visitation? Artificial Intelligence? Holography? Genetic engineering? Bioneural Implants? How the Keurig finally killed the tea kettle?
Time Travel? Always a popular party favor, so, yep, sure, why not.
Next Generation’s Counselor Deanna Troi Nails It
Deanna Troi: Timeline? This is no time to talk about time! We don't have the time!... What was I saying!? - Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) may have been plastered drunk off her royal, therapeutic ass, but she was definitely on to something important. She worried about time. Time, timeline and time travel. Do we really have the time? I don’t ask it only as a cute rhetorical device, I sincerely ask you: Even though sci-fi deals in so much time travel to facilitate plot, do we as sci-fi fans have the time to keep on accepting it?
Sure, it’s a great, tricky plot device. Yes, it gets characters - the writers truthfully - out of a jam lickety split. But doesn’t it bother anyone at all how easily undone it all can be? If we’re keeping score, time travel allows you to do anything and everything - with nary a care nor consequence in the primary chronological world.
There are scores of examples, but one of my favorite is the excellent ST:Voyager episode, Year of Hell. It’s not only a great Trek time travel exploration, but it’s a Chakotay centric tale, and he wasn’t exactly used to his full, it can legitimately be argued.
Aliens in the story prowl around their space on a desperate time quest; to use an enormous vehicle - a time ship - to constantly change, rearrange and suit the timeline to their particular needs. More accurately, it’s to alter the timeline to their miserable leader’s needs - he wants desperately to restore his old life, most of all restore his beloved wife back to full and vibrant life.
Yes, it’s dramatic, action packed and fun. Chakotay and the aliens - though engaged in a kind of truce, since the Voyager Commander has little choice but to participate for now - discuss and argue the merits of time and time travel and what not. But overall during the proceedings, we’re reminded of something inescapable when it comes to time travel: if it could be realized, each and every action or timeline change can always be redone or changed again. On and on and on and on…..
Time Travel Magic
Fact is, if you can keep going back and altering a past to influence and shape a future, or a particular future, how is this at all powerfully dramatic or permanent? It’s like a house of cards which a foul wind keeps blowing down each time you rebuild it.
In Star Trek: Enterprise, we learn the Vulcans do not believe in time travel, or more accurately, they refuse to accept the logic of the concept. They feel it’s illogical and only, as our accepted science tells us now, the only real time travel is continuing on into the flow of our future. Moving forward through time is natural. It’s perfectly real. We are all time travellers - since we keep on operating and moving each and every second into our particular future.
Paul M. Sutter, in Phys.Org, wrote an excellent piece on it. Here’s an excerpt:
Believe it or not, time travel is possible.
In fact, you're doing it right now. Every single second of every single day, you are advancing into your own future. You are literally moving through time, the same way you would move through space. It may seem pedantic, but it's a very important point. Movement through time is still movement, and you are reaching your own future (whether you like it or not).
What’s almost as attractive to use as a plot device is visiting parallel worlds through interdimensional travel. Perhaps even more of a sci-fantasy than science based concept, still, travelling to other realities, mixing it up with the events and populace, and then going back to your own dimension, keep things linear and more believable.
Interdimensional Play
In mainstream pop culture, Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror episode from the original series started this speculative ball rolling, and other Treks have run with it from time to time. Of course, it’s not as colorful as say killing off Spock in Wrath of Khan, to bring him back ala Katra (spirit) infused Genesis Device revived body. The consequences of changing things or meddling in other dimensions, the multiverse, can’t be whisked away with time travel tech. If you travel to another world, and essentially shit there, the hot, messy stink ain’t gonna be cleaned up by a time travel warp or slingshot around a star.
This is the main plot thrust of the TV show, Sliders, starring Jerry O’Connell. These characters visit similar, mirror planet Earths, but none are exactly the same as the one they were born and raised. They encounter bad guys who can keep up with them, even follow them to another mirror world. The stakes become higher and more desperate since the clean and neat undo of time travel isn’t handy to fix things.
Back To The Future movies rely on the meddling magic of travelling through time. Without Doc Brown’s (Christopher Lloyd) cool DeLorean time machine on wheels, we’d not see Michael J. Fox struggle to ward off the romantic advances of his mom and ensure he and his family aren’t erased from a timeline near and to dear to him. This, of course, makes the emotional stakes high. It allows us to care about the outcome. It’s the best kind of time travel romp - because it’s not about dialing back some sweeping battle finale nor balancing the consequences of unknown mass of people in jeopardy. It’s boiled down to one family, and finally to one person - Marty McFly.
I love the classic H.G. Wells directed by George Pal version of The Time Machine as much as any other sci-fi fan. I do think time travel is a worthy, even noble sci-fi element, however, its overuse - and its clean it up and wipe it away nature - gives creators so much leeway, it’s like Harry Potter’s wand. Wave your time travel device at something to make a problem and then wave it again to solve it. Neat and sweet, but much more like magic, where the power crazed engineers and scientists act more like wand waving wizards than science dealing scientists.