"I create myself."

Rose: I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words, I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here.

The Parting of the Ways, Doctor Who

In the first season of the 2005 Doctor Who relaunch, writer and showrunner Russell T. Davies started the idea of introducing Easter Eggs for the show's finale that would appear throughout the season.  For that first season, it was the phrase "Bad Wolf", that appeared as a project development title*, in conversational references, on posters, as a TV channel, a corporate name, and several times as graffiti. 

In the final episode, Rose Tyler, the new Doctor's first companion, gazes into the Time Vortex and becomes temporarily omnipotent.  She names herself the Bad Wolf and then broadcasts those words into her own past as a signal to herself in the future.**

Yesterday I saw bad wolf painted on a brick wall in Gastown, and a small part of me asked, "Rose...were you here?"

- Sid

* Albeit in Welsh.

** Wibbley wobbley, timey wimey...

UK 2022: Time to save the world.

Wednesday afternoon, and Karli and I are approaching the entrance to the UNified Intelligence Taskforce  (UNIT) headquarters on Davies Mews in London for the Doctor Who: Time Fracture event: it's show time.  I'm a bit apprehensive - no pun intended, but it's been a long time coming, and expectations are high.

Two and a quarter hours later (plus some time for the gift shop) and we're done - we've saved the universe, and we have the gratitude of the Doctors, all of them.

Overall, Time Fracture is good, but sadly, it's not great - which is a shame, because the framework for greatness is certainly there. 

It's surprisingly like being in an episode of the series: time travel, aliens, inexplicable technologies, historical figures, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, saving the world, and, of course, Daleks - what would a Doctor Who event even be without a Dalek or two?

The immersive aspect of the event gives every attendee a unique experience, and it's VERY immersive - how often do you attend a theatrical event where you're so much a part of the performance that you have lines and talk to the performers?  The Time Fracture performers themselves deliver uniformly impressive performances that give the show its energy and focus. However, there are some serious problems with the show's pacing, and it could stand some upgrades to its practical effects.

Here's how events unfold:  

In 1942, an unknown device detonates in the center of London, creating a rift in time - the time fracture of the title.  The experience starts with the attendees entering a large black ops laboratory that UNIT has set up to monitor the fracture, where we are informed by UNIT scientists that recent spikes in energy readings indicate that a catastrophic event is approaching.  The Doctor has given our names to UNIT, and Chief Scientist Kate Lethbridge Stewart makes a video appearance, inviting us to volunteer to help solve the mystery behind the fracture and save all of time and space from disaster.  However, as the UNIT science team is preparing to send two of us through the fracture, Daleks attack the lab. The Doctor is able to intervene and temporarily protect us, but all the volunteers are forced to flee through the time fracture instead of just two.

On the other side of the fracture, we find ourselves in a nexus of disjointed locations in time and space, where we are split into small groups under the leadership of guides, each of whom has a particular goal to accomplish with our help.  Our group finds itself paired with Zoria, an intense young woman with a piercingly direct stare, dressed all in red and armed with a futuristic blast pistol, who asks us to become her Agents as we seek out the components of the Time Disruptor that caused* the fracture.

Her mission takes us to a variety of historical periods in different side rooms, travelling through liminal spaces that act as conduits to the different periods: corridors, foyers, galleries, and so on.

Our first stop was Broll's Salvage and Import Export Emporium, where I was tasked with asking Brolls, the pig-headed (literally) dealer in obscure and hard to find items, what he would do if the item we needed was illegal. I took my cue, asked my question, and that set the tone for the middle sections of the experience, as we run from Broll's future to Da Vinci's Italy, and from Elizabethan England to a 1920s Torchwood outpost that had somehow been merged with one of its future incarnations.

I had an extended argument with Captain Stephen Davies in the Torchwood section - Zoria told us to enter his headquarters and to immediately find out who was in charge and to demand the Key, which was actually part of the Disruptor. (At one point Davies dryly observed that I was from "across the pond", which I thought a good improv moment.)   I don't know if people were relieved or frustrated that I took the lead on our conversation with Davies, but it was fun - and we were on the clock, someone had to do it.

As we collect the pieces of the Disruptor, it becomes evident that some of the group leaders, including Zoria, are Time Lords (for all we know, the same Time Lord, it's not impossible). 

Apparently there are 14 separate plot streams during this section of the experience, and under different circumstances I'd very likely attend the show again, perhaps more than once, just to fill in some of the plot gaps.  For example, only through online research did I discover that Brian, the Ood who is one of the group leaders, has been hired to kill Zoria - it's a tie-in with the Time Lord Victorious series, where Brian accompanies the 10th Doctor through most of his battle against the Kotturuh in the Dark Times.  There's apparently also an extended subplot involving Davros, founder of the Daleks; Queen Elizabeth marries one of the volunteers; and River Song, played by Alex Kingston, makes an appearance at Torchwood via video. 

I enjoyed this section quite a bit - for me, it was the most interesting part of the event, and I wish there had been more of it.  The actors do a brilliant job, both in their performances and their timing.  I can only imagine the challenges of juggling three or four different conversations and storylines as volunteers run in and out of rooms, and I was quite impressed that Zoria got us back to Brolls exactly in time for the auction of the last remaining piece of the Time Disruptor, just before marauding Cybermen chased us out of the nexus.

And then they lost all the momentum and excitement that they'd built up by dumping us into a room where we sat for 35 minutes and listened to a blue lounge singer.  

I don't know what was happening behind the scenes during that 35 minutes.  Were they resetting the staging?  Reloading the smoke machines in the Gallifrey High Council room?  Changing costumes? Disinfecting the seats?

Whatever the reason or reasoning was, it was a mistake. Thirty-five minutes is far too long an interval:  if you've only got 135 minutes in total, there's no desire to spend almost a quarter of your time cooling your heels in a space bar.

Admittedly, there were some bits of extraneous business in an attempt to liven things up - Zoria exchanges shots across the room with someone, and one of the group leaders convinces the captain of the ship to detour to Gallifrey, the home of the Time Lords, but really, it was 35 minutes of sitting and wondering what we were supposed to be doing.

We could see some of the volunteers exiting through the rear of the room, and finally the last of us were ushered out through a gauntlet of Weeping Angels to the chambers of the High Council of Gallifrey, already locked in debate as we enter the room.

With our support, the Council votes to resurrect Rassilon, the founder of the Time Lords. (Interestingly, research reveals that Rassilon resurrects as either male or female, depending on what day it is.) Reborn, Rassilon decides to detonate the Time Disruptor, ensuring Gallifrey's ascendance over all of time and space.

The Doctor shields the council chambers in an attempt to protect the rest of the universe from the temporal detonation, but the volunteers are able to use the residual artron energy that they've accumulated during the experience to defuse the Disruptor and save the universe.  The volunteers return to UNIT to celebrate, and the experience comes to an end. 

So, what would I have done to improve Time Fracture?

I would have told it as more of a unified story, gradually pulling all the threads together to bring everyone together on Gallifrey and giving the plotline more structure and closure so that everyone knows what's happening.

I would have skipped the lounge entirely, and brought each of the groups into the Council Chambers as a logical extension of the storyline - Zoria takes her Agents there after finding all the components of the Disruptor, the other Time Lords find out and pursue her, one of the other groups obtains the Crescent of Rassilon that Queen Elizabeth I is wearing as a crown and delivers it to to the High Council for the resurrection, Brian the Ood and his group pursue Zoria to Gallifrey for a climactic showdown - I'm even willing to have one group get there via the starship, albeit a lot faster than in the current arrangement. 

I would have had Zoria be part of the Council - it's well and good that she runs away shouting that the Council will be sorry after they reject her, but it would have made so much more sense to involve her in the finale, rather than a bunch of Time Lords that we haven't seen. In fact, all the Time Lord group leaders should be part of the council, it would have tied things together more logically.

I can also think of half a dozen different ways to enhance things on the practical effects level.  Many years ago, there was a 3D ride at the CN Tower in Toronto.  At one point during the preparation for boarding the ship, a blast of air innoculated travellers for the trip - a simple idea but very effective, and that sort of effect would have greatly improved things at Time Fracture.

In the UNIT lab, we were told to brace ourselves several times, but nothing happened.  Okay - if you can't afford a motion platform for the room (or don't want one for safety reasons), at least get some IMAX-level woofers with the kind of bass that make things vibrate.

Let's make the various time portals more, well, portally.  Flashing lights are all very well and good, but let's put some fans in there, or jets of compressed air, rumbling bass sounds, something to make me feel like I'm going through a rift in time and space, rather than down a flight of stairs. Similarly, the portals between areas in the second part of the experience are heavy plastic slats and plastic tubes, something less prosaic would have enhanced the experience.**

A couple of small Van De Graff generators concealed close to the Time Disruptor would have made saving the universe more dramatic - good grief, a good disco ball would have made it more dramatic, or even some focused high powered lighting effects.  As it was, it was hard to tell whether anything was actually happening or not during the climactic event of the experience, which is unfortunate.  In fact, if I had to sum up that aspect of the show, it completely lacked any "wow" moments - wouldn't it have been better to have something happen that makes the audience gasp at the end?

I walked away with two t-shirts to commemorate Time Fracture - I do like a t-shirt - and some mild regret at the unrealized potential in the show.  That being said, ultimately, I'm glad that I went. It was a unique experience, in spite of its shortcomings - and hey, we saved the universe!

- Sid

* Or will cause - wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

** It's surprising that the doorways are so basic, considering how incredible the rest of the set is in terms of detail and quality.  I suppose they wanted the doorways to be more durable than decorative, but they might have gone a bit too far in dumbing them down.

The Tomorrow War: Never Have I Ever.

(Minor spoilers for The Tomorrow War follow.)

Over the course of the last two days I watched The Tomorrow War, starring Chris Pratt and a cast of thousands. I've often said that the two things I look for in a movie are aliens and explosions, and whatever other flaws this film may have, there's no denying that it delivers on those two criteria.

The plot is simplicity itself:  thirty years in the future, humanity is losing a war with alien invaders that are somewhere between the aliens from Alien and the monsters from A Quiet Place.*  In their desperation, they travel back in time to recruit soldiers from 2022, including ex-soldier, biologist and high school teacher Dan Forester, as played by Mr. Pratt.  

The recruits are essentially cannon fodder, warm bodies to throw into a losing war, shown how to pull the trigger and then dropped (literally) into apparently futile combat.  However, there's a chance that a biological agent designed to kill the aliens can turn the tide and save the world, and Forester finds himself part of the future team attempting to create an appropriate compound.  But the clock is ticking, in more ways than one...

The Tomorrow War paints with such a large brush that it's almost a roller, and I'm very curious as to how this movie would have performed at the box office in an alternate timeline where there was no pandemic.  (It was originally intended to debut in movie theatres last Christmas, but following the continued theatrical lockdown it was sold to Amazon™ for streaming on Prime instead.)  

It certainly rings the summer blockbuster bell in terms of shootouts and clever dialogue, but overall it feels a bit derivative, overly simplistic, and conveniently scripted**, and I'm sorry to say that I never completely accepted Chris Pratt as the right person to anchor this particular plotline.

But, all other considerations aside, I have to give The Tomorrow War full credit for two things.

First, the cast commits entirely.  Not since 1998's Armageddon have I seen a group of actors treat a dubious if not somewhat ridiculous premise with such utter and complete seriousness - not a wink, not a nod, not a smirk, everyone delivers their performances with a degree of gravitas suitable for Citizen Kane or Schindler's List.  (Well, okay, Chris Pratt maybe makes one joke too many, but you can make a case for it in context.)

Second, as a long time science fiction fan, never have I seen a group of people - or a script - so indifferent to the possible consequences of time travel.

All the soldiers from the future are under the age of 30 so as to avoid co-existence with their past selves, and the recruits from the past are being chosen for one grim qualification:  they've died sometime in the 30 years before the war begins.  Which is all well and good, but given that the recruits serve a week and then return to 2022***, WHY WOULD YOU TELL THEM THAT THEY'RE GOING TO BE DEAD?  AND HOW THEY DIE?

And if they die in combat instead - as some 70% do, apparently - wouldn't that have some kind of serious repercussions for the future timeline?  

Or why did they not jump back to six months before the aliens first appeared and bomb that first appearance into ash if they're willing to risk changes to the past for their effect on the future?

Nope, nothing, not a word about the space-time continuum, the Butterfly Effect, the Grandfather Paradox, or even wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, no one seems to give it a moment's thought. 

Perhaps watching a few carefully chosen episodes of Doctor Who would have been useful research for the writers - or maybe just Looper, it's hard to think of a better example of how to use the past to change the future, and vice versa.

- Sid

* One reviewer commented that "these things would give Cthulhu nightmares".  Good to see Cthulhu getting some representation.

**  You know, convenient - like when they need to get to Russia in a hurry and the Department of Defense won't help, and it's already been established that Dan's estranged father has access to a C130 transport plane.

*** As explained:  "At the end of your tour of duty, if the jump band attached to your arm determines that you are still clinically alive, you will automatically be jumped back and your tour of duty will be over." 

Clinically alive - or, as my old office mate Bill used to say, able to fog a mirror.  One feels that the sets the bar a bit on the low side in terms of the degree of damage that someone could suffer and still be "clinically" acceptable.

Imagine.

Jack Malik: John, Paul, George and Ringo, The Beatles. Yesterday, it’s one of the greatest songs ever written.

Carol: Well, it’s not Coldplay, it’s not Fix You.

 - Yesterday

Note:  the following posting contains a minor spoiler for the movie Yesterday - okay, perhaps a major spoiler, it's a matter of opinion.  A spoiler, anyway.

My interest in science fiction and fantasy is well established, but most people are unaware that I'm a complete fool for romance as well (just ask my wife).

As such, I'm pleasantly surprised by how many romantic-comedy fantasy films there are. On the face of it, it seems like an odd sub-genre. I can't think of a lot of war movie or western rom-coms, but there's a substantial list of fantasy-themed takes on boy-meets-girl:  Kate and Leopold, Splash, Groundhog Day, Isn't It Romantic?, About Time, Shallow Hal, and so on - I'm not sure that Princess Bride is romantic enough to qualify, but you get the idea.

Yesterday, the latest addition to the list, is perhaps more comedy than romance, although romance is certainly part of the story. The film's concept is quite simple - Jack Malik, a failing English musician on his way home from what he has decided is his last performance, is knocked off his bike by a bus during a 12-second global blackout.

After he painfully regains consciousness in the hospital, he slowly comes to the realization that, in this new post-blackout reality, the Beatles never existed.* Jack is now the only person in the world who remembers the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo.

 

He  decides to capitalize on his unique knowledge, and uses his memory of the Beatles' catalogue** to springboard himself into a position of international fame and fortune, while struggling with the morality of whether or not he should claim credit for the music which is making him famous.  At the same time, he's slowly losing touch with his long-time friend, supporter and part-time manager Ellie, who finally admits to her love for him when she feels that she's lost him to his newfound role as " the world’s greatest singer-songwriter".

Jack is brilliantly played by British actor Himesh Patel, who also does all of his own singing in Yesterday.  The movie cleverly relies upon solo performances backed only by guitar for most of the songs, which helps to level the playing field in terms of where they originate in the history of the band:  there's a big jump from Help! to Magical Mystery Tour.  It also recognizes the uncertain knowledge that most of us have regarding song lyrics - it's easy to put yourself in Jack's shoes as he struggles to recreate the words to Eleanor Rigby.

In selecting the Beatles over the Rolling Stones or the Who, the writers acknowledge the incredible cultural impact of their music.  I've always thought that five hundred years from now, the Beatles will be one of the lasting legacies of the the 20th century, much as Shakespeare is the only playwright that anyone recognizes from the Elizabethan era.

The what-if alternate timeline concept is a common one, whether caused by a time traveller's errant foot killing a butterfly or a quantum shift into another version of reality, common enough that both The Simpsons and Family Guy have done episodes based on the idea.   Science fiction often attempts to describe the future based on the present - alternate reality stories describe the present based on a different past.

Not surprisingly, there are a couple of other versions of the no-Beatles reality available, both of which revolve around time travel rather than alternate realities: a French graphic novel, also called Yesterday, and 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men, a Peter Davison Doctor Who audio play in which the Beatles have been replaced by Mark, James and Korky - The Common Men.***

The real question is whether or not the Beatles would succeed in 2019 or more accurately, whether their music would.  Yesterday takes it almost as a given that the answer is yes. Jack is quickly hailed as a musical genius, and his first album is anticipated to be the greatest record of all time.

 

However, there are larger implications to a world without the Beatles (although, honestly, I feel that a world without cigarettes would be a much more intriguing one - think of all the people who didn't die from related cancers, it would have to add up). Changing history is like dropping a stone into a pool - the splash is obvious, but the ripples will travel a lot further.  Yesterday concentrates on splash, but it spends a little time looking at the ripples as well, most notably Jack's meeting with a 78-year-old John Lennon.

It's a meeting made possible by the fact that, in a world where Lennon never publicly announced that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus, Mark David Chapman would never even know his name, let alone wait for him outside a New York apartment building with a .38 calibre revolver.  The Lennon scene has proven to be somewhat controversial, but for me, it made perfect sense as one of the most powerful consequences of the Beatles never coming together, and I found it to be an unexpectedly touching element in the framework of the story.

I quite enjoyed Yesterday - it's not perfect, but it's an entertaining little fantasy concept movie that doesn't attempt to change the world - no pun intended.   Would the music of the Beatles succeed in a different era?  Impossible to say, but I'd hope that it would.

Ultimately, I'd like to think that, as per John Lennon's animated alter ego in Yellow Submarine, nothing is Beatle proof.

- Sid

* Along with cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and Oasis - which, as Jack comments, does make sense, although it leads to a bit of a hole in the plot regarding a key performance from his school days.  Oh well, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey...

** Not surprisingly, close to half the film's budget was dedicated to the rights for the Beatle's music.

***  I've only explored a few of the Doctor Who radio plays/audio books, but I'm tempted to look this one up - as I've explained to Karli, the key to Doctor Who is that it's ALWAYS aliens, and as such I'm curious to see if Korky turns out to be from Arcateen V.

"Gentlemen, we're history."

"I believe our adventure through time has taken a most serious turn."

Ted, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

There is nothing worse than an incomplete trilogy.  Imagine if The Matrix had been a stand-alone film, Tobey Maguire hadn't made Spider-man 3, they'd skipped the third Terminator installment, or The Hobbit had only been long enough to make two films rather than three.

Hmmm...

Okay, maybe not the best examples, but still, it's important to have closure, and as such it was both a pleasure and a relief to learn that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are finally re-uniting to complete the Bill and Ted Trilogy, as per the world's least pretentious YouTube™ movie announcement a couple of weeks ago.  Production on Bill and Ted Face The Music is slated to begin production this summer, with a tentative release date of summer of 2020.

The events of the second film don't really leave any room for a follow-up, but as we all know, time isn't a strict progression of cause to effect, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.  As such, Bill and Ted's future is not set, and there is no fate but what they make for themselves*.   In other words, anything can happen, which is a pretty bodacious position to be in when writing a movie.  If reunited creators and writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon can match the unexpected depth and quality - dare I say excellence - of the first two movies, the results could be just as much fun.

However, "fun" may not be a given, and the story could easily take a most serious turn, as per the opening quote. There's a bittersweet aspect to the whole idea of revisiting the Wyld Stallyns:  in the real world, it's been 28 years since William S. Preston Esq. and Theodore Logan had their Bogus Journey, and in spite of the running Internet gag about Keanu Reeves not aging, both he and Winter are obviously not teenagers any more. Given that the plot precis says that they still haven't written the song that will unite the world in peaceful harmony, how depressed and frustrated must Bill and Ted be at this point in their lives?  Not to mention the fact that at the end of Bogus Journey, they both have children -  given their own parental experiences, have they remained true to themselves, or have they unknowingly become their own fathers?  (Hopefully not to the extent that Bill is now married to Missy - although, when you think about it, that's actually not a bad plot hook.**)

Similarly, there's been a lot of water over the dam since Winters and Reeves made their debut as Bill and Ted - will they be able to summon up the same light-hearted exuberance that they effortlessly brought to their characters in the first two films?   Alex Winters has spent more time behind the camera than in front of it since Bogus Journey, and Keanu Reeves hasn't exactly been noted for his fun-loving movie roles recently - it's a big jump from John Wick to Theodore Logan.

Really, though, it should be simple - all they need to do is remember to be excellent to each another and party on.  If they've forgotten that, well, that would be a pretty good place to start the script right there.

- Sid

* Terminator reference, but oddly enough I don't have a posting to link to.

** It's even more of a twist if Ted is married to Missy.  But really, they should still be with Joanna and Elizabeth, the princess babes.

Or it could say "timey wimey".

Thanks to my good friend Colin for the perfect birthday greeting* for a science fiction fan...

- Sid

* For any non-Doctor Who fans reading this, trust me, this is brilliantly funny.

"Don't even blink."

The Doctor: They have taken the blue box, haven't they? The angels have the phonebox.

Laurence Nightingale: "The angels have the phonebox", that's my favourite, I've got that on a T-shirt.

 Doctor Who:  Blink

Well, it's probably a good thing that I spent nine months planning a trip to Europe to ensure a  memorable fiftieth birthday, because frankly - and sadly - I've been underwhelmed by the contributions made by others in terms of marking the milestone. The people in question probably know who they are, and I'm just trying to decide if they're going to be removed from the guest list, so to speak.

However, I do feel that I should acknowledge the contribution of my friend and Friday night drinking companion Chris, who quite carefully chose one of the great gnomic statements from Doctor Who, and who also chose a brilliant t-shirt quoting it out of the vast lexicon available online.

And then bought me a couple of pints and a good meal at a pub when he gave it to me.

The multiple award-winning Season Three Doctor Who episode Blink is widely considered to be one of the best episodes of the series - which is a bit odd, considering that the Doctor only appears a few times.  That aside, it contains some of the best time-travel related moments of the series, including a fabulous conversation between the Doctor and Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan.

This conversation is a bit odd, given that one of the participants is being videotaped in 1969 reading a teleprompter version of the conversation he's having via DVD with someone in 2007. (This is the infamous wibbly-wobbly timey-whimey conversation.)

Looking back, I have to be fair regarding the blanket condemnation in the first paragraph. One or two people haven't logged in yet due to geography and scheduling, but it will require some serious work to outdo Chris' contribution.  Thanks, Chris - as I said on Friday, it means a lot to me.

- Sid

Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose?

A student at MIT is hosting a Time Traveler Party this week with the hope that people from the future will show up...too bad people from the future already know the party sucked!

- Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live

More on time travel - in the past couple of years there have been a couple of unsuccessful time travel experiments, one in Australia and one at MIT in the States, both of which were done in the simplest and cheapest way possible: advertise that you would like time travellers to show up at a specific place at a specific time. (As experiments go, this is pretty cost effective, since all you need is a little advertising and an empty piece of ground.)

Sadly, in neither case did the experiment result in a flash of light and the appearance of a modified Delorean, a blue police box, or a Victorian steampunk time chair. However, organizers were oddly unconcerned by this, since it was their contention that time travellers could easily be attending incognito. Sigh...guys, if the purpose of the experiment was to prove that time travel existed, what kind of cruel and unusual punishment would it be for a time traveller to show up and hide in the crowd? And even then, it would be surprising to have a small group of people attend. My god, if time travel were possible and even the smallest fraction of a nearly infinite future population of time travellers hears about one of the parties...actually, come to think of it they're lucky that some comedian didn't make an appearance disguised as a giant mutant ant or something similar.

However, all of this silliness addresses the one of the basic questions of time travel: if it were going to become possible, why aren't we knee-deep in visitors from the future? Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine ran a story in 1979 entitled The Merchant of Stratford by Frank Ramirez, wherein the first time traveller goes back to visit Shakespeare, only to discover that time travellers have been visiting Shakespeare for his entire life:

"I've been getting visitors from the future as far back as I can remember. My mother, being a good Christian woman, had the hardest time giving me suck, because the documentary team from the thirty-third century wanted to film it all. I barely survived childhood."

The punchline is that the first time traveller begins to receive a similar treatment from other time travellers because he's the FIRST time traveller, and as such an historical figure.

Presumably, if time travel were possible, then history would be full of visits from time travellers. (In Robert Silverberg's The Time Hoppers, a future police department is charged with ensuring that time travellers leave on schedule in order to conform with historical records.) Does this take us to the conclusion that time travel is not going to happen? Ah, this takes us to the Doctor Who quote that starts the last entry - only from the linear viewpoint is that the case. If time is in fact "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff", then it's equally possible that once time travel is invented, then historical documents will obligingly change themselves in order to conform to the new state of affairs, and that will be the way that things have always been...and this post will never have existed.

- Sid

"Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

The Doctor, Blink

Time travel stories, I love a good time travel story. Obviously this would make me a strong candidate to be a Doctor Who fan, although I freely admit to having been in and out over the years. Recently I've been downloading episodes of the current season that have been posted by English fans, and in spite of a couple of shaky concepts they're doing some quite nice stories. (Hopefully this blatant confession won't result in a lightning raid by BBC copyright commandos. Given that I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is damn near the other side of the planet from England, I should be safe unless they have some kind of agreement with the CBC black ops teams. But I digress...)

The most recent Doctor Who episode is entitled Blink, and deals with the sort of time travel opportunities that are parodied in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey - decide to use your time machine to go into the past to set up things so that you win a fight in the present, then go back to set things up after you win the fight. In this case the Doctor gets sent back in time without the TARDIS, but sends messages to someone in our time to get it back - and then gets the information he needs to set things up after everything is resolved, but before it takes place in his personal timeline.

This directly addresses the real question of time travel: can you change the course of events? The two basic philosophies here are that you can't change things in the past because you didn't - commonly known as the Grandfather Paradox - or that it's an open field, in which future events exist in an indeterminate state. (For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Grandfather Paradox is as follows: build a time machine, go back to the past, kill your grandfather at the age of ten. As a result, your father is never born, you're never born, and you don't build a time machine. So you DON'T go into the past, you DON'T kill your grandfather, your father IS born, you're born, you build a time machine... It's easier to assume that the gun must have jammed when you tried to shoot the little bugger, or, in the big picture viewpoint, if you went back in time to kill Hitler before he starts the Nazi party, you'd fail, because history records that he did start it.)

Both of these philosophies have given rise to some interesting stories, although the approaches required are wildly different. The landmark story for the open field approach is Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder. All you need to do is to step on a butterfly while trying to shoot a dinosaur that's going to die anyway, and the result is a slightly but significantly changed future. (This begs a bigger question, which is why anyone with a time machine would waste their, ah, time running tours into the past so that people can shoot T. Rex. If things were at the point where it was that popularized, I would think that flattened butterflies would be the least of your worries.)

The cast-in-stone position is less obviously interesting, simply because it's less exciting. Going back in time with an anthill and coming back to find out that the ants have evolved into the dominant species and destroyed humanity is a bit more of a climactic ending than coming back and finding out that they haven't. The predestination stories tend to read a bit like inverted detective stories, with the characters running around like mad making sure that all the clues are in place to ensure that the crime happens. There's often a loose thread that miraculously weaves back in at the end, just to ensure that all's well historically. A good example of this would be Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is rather like the time travel version of The Importance of Being Earnest.

- Sid