I don’t think it’s time travel per se. I think instead it is how the time travel device is used. Too often the time travel device is used as a way to let writers create radical changes to characters and universes while giving them a big fat reset button at the end of the episode. In other words, it is used as resolution. And it is a cheap resolution.
Star Trek: Voyager was the most egregious offender, with the episode “Year of Hell” a prime example. In this one, nearly all the crew dies, Tuvok is blinded, Voyager herself is half-destroyed… but Janeway rams the Krenim timeship, and everything is magically restored, like it never happened.
I could name a half-dozen more. You want me to? I can…
When done properly, it can be a marvellous storytelling device. To revisit Star Trek, “City On The Edge Of Forever” is an excellent example. Why? Because the time travel device sets up the conflict – in order to save his timelime, Kirk must allow the woman he loves to die. It’s a powerful, dramatic story (let’s set aside the good captain’s reputation as an interstellar gigolo for the time being). There’s no bad guy to overcome, no big heroic action to take. There are no huge world-shaking changes to the characters that need to be erased. In fact, Kirk has to live with his decision- he must allow one woman to die in order to restore an entire universe. Could you make that decision?
Babylon 5 had one- count ‘em, one – example of time travel; but it was absolutely an essential element to the history of that universe, and isn’t a reset button. In fact, it is resolution and setup all in one.
And, lest we forget the good Doctor and his TARDIS….
I love the time travel stories. The stories that end with essentially a big reset where basically nothing happens are the annoying ones. Same with the Mirror universe stories. When Enterprise did the double “In a Mirror, Darkly” I enjoyed the story, the sexy uniforms may have had something to do with that, but when the story arc stopped where it did I was pissed off. I was expecting a third episode to tie it all back into “our” universes Enterprise but it didn’t and I felt cheated.
When it comes to Time Travel, I find that it’s a lot of Love/Hate. People love the conundrum, but seem to hate fully thinking it through. Take the Doctor Who episode “Blink”. It’s a big “timey-wimey” pile of steaming ambiguity. The drama is full-on and powerful, but the element of Time Travel which sets up the premise is, A.) described BADLY, and B.) can be poked through like it was a wet paper-towel. If the dramatic portion of the show had been even a smidge weaker, we wouldn’t be looking at a Hugo nominee. I’m not certain we should be as is, but it was a good story.
Of course, my friends will tell me to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story”, but sometimes the facts pull you out of the experience. If a non-scientific, non-geeky person can ask “wait, how does that work?”, how can a geek let it pass? That’s why a high number of time-travel stories miss their mark. After all, we are geeks. While some of us are more deeply engeeked than others, when we see something that just isn’t right, it will chew at us. We tend to think things through, especially logical puzzles. Time-travel is one of those puzzles. We love the ride, but we hate lack of thought put into the mechanics. It’s kind of like Microsoft.
On the whole, I enjoy a well-told time-travel tale, as long as I don’t try to think too much about it.
I think it is the abuse of time travel scifi fans hate. The idea of the reset button that Tim mentioned. “Oh, that whole story you just saw, never happened.” It’s as unsatisfying as making a whole story/season/show a dream.
My early scifi life was heavy on Doctor Who, so to me time travel is as normal as inertial dampeners or faster than light travel. And even in Doctor Who when it was used to reset the end of the world, it wasn’t a complete reset. There was still character development that occurred and lasted past the reset point.
I think to make time travel a feature in a story (unless done very carefully and mindfully) is a mistake. When it’s out in front like that, of course people are going to examine it and pick it apart. Might as well make the inertial dampeners a major plot point.
Time travel is often used as a “panic button”. When things get to the point where the writers cannot make the plot work, or want to do something with no future consequences, they can always write in a throw-away bit about time travel.
Some series do it well. Doctor Who has time travel as a central plot element and tries to keep some amount of reason, consistency, and causality. Take the 10th Doctor episode “Father’s Day”. They cross their own time line and there is a cause-effect relationship to deal with.
ST:TNG had several episodes that used (and abused) time travel, but there was never any consequences. DS9 even had the crew go back in time and Cisco had to impersonate a major historical figure. At the end of the episode the “time corps” come to debrief him and he just smiles and says that if there were any problems, he would know… and they accepted that without sanction or repercussion.
Ah… it could always be worse. Remember “Dallas”? At least we don’t have entire seasons being retconed as a dream.
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I don’t think it’s time travel per se. I think instead it is how the time travel device is used. Too often the time travel device is used as a way to let writers create radical changes to characters and universes while giving them a big fat reset button at the end of the episode. In other words, it is used as resolution. And it is a cheap resolution.
Star Trek: Voyager was the most egregious offender, with the episode “Year of Hell” a prime example. In this one, nearly all the crew dies, Tuvok is blinded, Voyager herself is half-destroyed… but Janeway rams the Krenim timeship, and everything is magically restored, like it never happened.
I could name a half-dozen more. You want me to? I can…
When done properly, it can be a marvellous storytelling device. To revisit Star Trek, “City On The Edge Of Forever” is an excellent example. Why? Because the time travel device sets up the conflict – in order to save his timelime, Kirk must allow the woman he loves to die. It’s a powerful, dramatic story (let’s set aside the good captain’s reputation as an interstellar gigolo for the time being). There’s no bad guy to overcome, no big heroic action to take. There are no huge world-shaking changes to the characters that need to be erased. In fact, Kirk has to live with his decision- he must allow one woman to die in order to restore an entire universe. Could you make that decision?
Babylon 5 had one- count ‘em, one – example of time travel; but it was absolutely an essential element to the history of that universe, and isn’t a reset button. In fact, it is resolution and setup all in one.
And, lest we forget the good Doctor and his TARDIS….
I love the time travel stories. The stories that end with essentially a big reset where basically nothing happens are the annoying ones. Same with the Mirror universe stories. When Enterprise did the double “In a Mirror, Darkly” I enjoyed the story, the sexy uniforms may have had something to do with that, but when the story arc stopped where it did I was pissed off. I was expecting a third episode to tie it all back into “our” universes Enterprise but it didn’t and I felt cheated.
When it comes to Time Travel, I find that it’s a lot of Love/Hate. People love the conundrum, but seem to hate fully thinking it through. Take the Doctor Who episode “Blink”. It’s a big “timey-wimey” pile of steaming ambiguity. The drama is full-on and powerful, but the element of Time Travel which sets up the premise is, A.) described BADLY, and B.) can be poked through like it was a wet paper-towel. If the dramatic portion of the show had been even a smidge weaker, we wouldn’t be looking at a Hugo nominee. I’m not certain we should be as is, but it was a good story.
Of course, my friends will tell me to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story”, but sometimes the facts pull you out of the experience. If a non-scientific, non-geeky person can ask “wait, how does that work?”, how can a geek let it pass? That’s why a high number of time-travel stories miss their mark. After all, we are geeks. While some of us are more deeply engeeked than others, when we see something that just isn’t right, it will chew at us. We tend to think things through, especially logical puzzles. Time-travel is one of those puzzles. We love the ride, but we hate lack of thought put into the mechanics. It’s kind of like Microsoft.
On the whole, I enjoy a well-told time-travel tale, as long as I don’t try to think too much about it.
If you haven’t heard this, it explains it all – to the tune of Rocky Horror’s Time War: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/time_plot.htm
I think it is the abuse of time travel scifi fans hate. The idea of the reset button that Tim mentioned. “Oh, that whole story you just saw, never happened.” It’s as unsatisfying as making a whole story/season/show a dream.
My early scifi life was heavy on Doctor Who, so to me time travel is as normal as inertial dampeners or faster than light travel. And even in Doctor Who when it was used to reset the end of the world, it wasn’t a complete reset. There was still character development that occurred and lasted past the reset point.
I think to make time travel a feature in a story (unless done very carefully and mindfully) is a mistake. When it’s out in front like that, of course people are going to examine it and pick it apart. Might as well make the inertial dampeners a major plot point.
Time travel is often used as a “panic button”. When things get to the point where the writers cannot make the plot work, or want to do something with no future consequences, they can always write in a throw-away bit about time travel.
Some series do it well. Doctor Who has time travel as a central plot element and tries to keep some amount of reason, consistency, and causality. Take the 10th Doctor episode “Father’s Day”. They cross their own time line and there is a cause-effect relationship to deal with.
ST:TNG had several episodes that used (and abused) time travel, but there was never any consequences. DS9 even had the crew go back in time and Cisco had to impersonate a major historical figure. At the end of the episode the “time corps” come to debrief him and he just smiles and says that if there were any problems, he would know… and they accepted that without sanction or repercussion.
Ah… it could always be worse. Remember “Dallas”? At least we don’t have entire seasons being retconed as a dream.