wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...
Thoughts on time travel in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and HEROES. Compare & Contrast!
Okay. Both shows have time travel as a major concept/plot device within the series; HEROES by having Hiro and Peter able to mess with time, Terminator SCC by having time travel devices hidden and used at various times/places in the background.
We all know the butterfly effect, yes? Even if Mama Petrelli had to explain it to FuturePeter last night? After he'd time traveled? Yeah. Gah.
Anyway. Here's the theory on how this whole time travel, change-the-past, thing works:
1) You are at point 20. You go back to point 0.
2) At point 1, you change something. Something big, something small, la, no matter.
3) From point 1, you should therefore have a new timeline. Point 20 could, in theory, no longer exist.
Except if there *are* alternate universes. Which current physics says hey, sure, there might be. We can't get there without anti-matter explosions, but we could go to a universe where the past is just a little different, making the present just a little different.
The problem on both series is Paradox, of course. At point, oh, let's say point 5 on this timeline. Time has now changed enough that point 20 no longer exists.
You, the you that went back in time, should evaporate like mist off a windshield. Theoretically.
Logic says: but then how did you change the past?
The trick being, of course, that FutureYou's timeline existed in an alternate universe up until that point 5. Then it got wiped out. Then Future-*you* got wiped out. Time goes on. Possibly, people who saw you from points 0-to-5 forget you were even there, as time rearranges in a new order around your lack-of-future. PresentYou, who, if they had no idea you were there, were not traumatized by time-travel grammar and the whole multiple-universe-pointlessness of it all, goes on to have their new future, yay.
You existed, but Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle warps everything around so that only Ascended Beings know that there was anything to notice. Possibly.
Therefore, FuturePeter Petrelli is kind of attempting to commit suicide; supposedly he'll know his future timeline is fixed and he-- as himself-- doesn't exist when he goes *poof*.
Except that according to him, that should have already happened last night, since the past is now different. Hunh!
What might be the case is that the past for him-- future for the rest of HEROES-- isn't different *enough* to completely obliterate him. Maybe he has new memories now. Maybe he doesn't even *notice* he's changed things that are minor. Maybe he never will, because he's an angsty emo time traveler who will think he can fix the problems in his present by messing with the past until he evaporates.
No wonder Mama Petrelli is pissed at his attitude.
This whole concept worked first season in HEROES because (a) future Hiro ended up dead in the future he created/came from, so we don't have contradictory evidence that he would or would not have gone *poof*, and (b) PresentHiro came back from said future, helped change the past-- and we don't know if that future evaporated or not, but we have to assume it did. Same deal with Season 2, and the plague; the plague was stopped, so hopefully all those people melted back into a different AU afterwards.
(Which leaves poor Caitlin stuck in Montreal without a ticket, passport, or clue what the hell happened. Really, Peter. Call your ex and apologize when you get out of that Jesse guy's body. Future Peter? *whap*)
ETA from comments I made to Tina: Unless, of course, Alternate Universe Theory holds true; then the only thing Peter did was create a *new* future. He didn't change his. If this is true, no matter what happens, when he tries to go back to 2013 or whatever year he's from, he'll end up in the same place, with the same problems, because that's his home-universe-time-and-place. No way to know until the rest of the season unfolds.
So either it doesn't work because the Laws of Physics decide that if he exists here in the past, his future is *going* to exist to create him there, so he can be here... or he's changing the future but not noticing his memories of it are changing, and has to get over the idea that this is a viable plan to save his future.[/end ETA]
In contrast to this, we have Terminator: SCC. Which instead of working a paradox, seems to be saying: Whatever you do, if you've messed with time once, the future you create will create the past you were trying to avoid.
Um.
To put it another way: time travel only changes the future if you can change things *enough*. But in the case of *this* timeline, what they are trying to change is the creation of intelligent, deadly machines.
Artifacts of those deadly machines have already been found by people in the present.
These people *want* to create deadly machines, cyborgs, AI's, what have you. They will keep trying, as long as there are remains/artifacts/Terminators to inspire them.
Sarah & Co. are concentrating on destroying all traces of those remains/artifacts/Terminators, and Derek, at least, has gone so far as to kill a few people responsible for their creation.
And yet. Thus far, no *poof*.
This can mean:
(a) this job is too big for three-four individuals to pull off,
(b) they need to destroy Cameron the Cyborg sooner rather than later, because she's a constant danger in their quest to eliminate clues as to how to build that future for those same inventors,
(c) humanity's drive to create machines that can (eventually) learn to kill humanity means the timeline keeps jumping to the next creator/inventor of Skynet, just at different points in time.
(d) If they ever pull that off, by now the timeline is so polluted with the actions, lives, and deaths caused by the Terminators' pursuit of Sarah and John that you could reasonably expect a Take My Dice and Go Home reaction from the universe. BOOM!
Which means, basically, that their only hope lies in surviving Doomsday, fighting back against Skynet, and finding the time travel device that will let them preserve their current past from the future terminators' attempts to hijack the causation stream. It's noble that Sarah & John attempt to short-circuit Doomsday; nothing's set in stone yet. But it is a massive, massive undertaking, given the components that go into its creation. Knowledge of the future doesn't guarantee you can change the present. Especially when the butterfly effect keeps changing it every step of the way.
Sarah may live longer now, and not develop the predicted cancer, because they leaped 9 years into their future. She may get treatment faster. She may avoid whatever triggered it in her body.
John may not develop into the leader he was meant to be, or gain as much respect, because he's almost a decade younger at a time a leader is needed.
It's a crapshoot; no way to know. They, at least, know that. Are aware of how futile the effort may be.
Future Peter Petrelli, on the other hand, seems oblivious. FREAKING oblivious. He's apparently totally unaware that he can't change the underlying conditions that brought about the war in his future: he can't take away everyone's powers (Mohinder might, if he stops going Kafka on us), he can't take away prejudice and fear of stronger, more evolved people; he can't necessarily protect an entire planet from the plans of some really evil super-powered guys. He changed the triggering event that *he* knew about-- Nathan's announcement-- but then set in motion so many other factors, that he's currently as lost as anyone naturally from 2008.
I love HEROES. But Terminator wins by a mile in the time travel division.
Okay. Both shows have time travel as a major concept/plot device within the series; HEROES by having Hiro and Peter able to mess with time, Terminator SCC by having time travel devices hidden and used at various times/places in the background.
We all know the butterfly effect, yes? Even if Mama Petrelli had to explain it to FuturePeter last night? After he'd time traveled? Yeah. Gah.
Anyway. Here's the theory on how this whole time travel, change-the-past, thing works:
1) You are at point 20. You go back to point 0.
2) At point 1, you change something. Something big, something small, la, no matter.
3) From point 1, you should therefore have a new timeline. Point 20 could, in theory, no longer exist.
Except if there *are* alternate universes. Which current physics says hey, sure, there might be. We can't get there without anti-matter explosions, but we could go to a universe where the past is just a little different, making the present just a little different.
The problem on both series is Paradox, of course. At point, oh, let's say point 5 on this timeline. Time has now changed enough that point 20 no longer exists.
You, the you that went back in time, should evaporate like mist off a windshield. Theoretically.
Logic says: but then how did you change the past?
The trick being, of course, that FutureYou's timeline existed in an alternate universe up until that point 5. Then it got wiped out. Then Future-*you* got wiped out. Time goes on. Possibly, people who saw you from points 0-to-5 forget you were even there, as time rearranges in a new order around your lack-of-future. PresentYou, who, if they had no idea you were there, were not traumatized by time-travel grammar and the whole multiple-universe-pointlessness of it all, goes on to have their new future, yay.
You existed, but Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle warps everything around so that only Ascended Beings know that there was anything to notice. Possibly.
Therefore, FuturePeter Petrelli is kind of attempting to commit suicide; supposedly he'll know his future timeline is fixed and he-- as himself-- doesn't exist when he goes *poof*.
Except that according to him, that should have already happened last night, since the past is now different. Hunh!
What might be the case is that the past for him-- future for the rest of HEROES-- isn't different *enough* to completely obliterate him. Maybe he has new memories now. Maybe he doesn't even *notice* he's changed things that are minor. Maybe he never will, because he's an angsty emo time traveler who will think he can fix the problems in his present by messing with the past until he evaporates.
No wonder Mama Petrelli is pissed at his attitude.
This whole concept worked first season in HEROES because (a) future Hiro ended up dead in the future he created/came from, so we don't have contradictory evidence that he would or would not have gone *poof*, and (b) PresentHiro came back from said future, helped change the past-- and we don't know if that future evaporated or not, but we have to assume it did. Same deal with Season 2, and the plague; the plague was stopped, so hopefully all those people melted back into a different AU afterwards.
(Which leaves poor Caitlin stuck in Montreal without a ticket, passport, or clue what the hell happened. Really, Peter. Call your ex and apologize when you get out of that Jesse guy's body. Future Peter? *whap*)
ETA from comments I made to Tina: Unless, of course, Alternate Universe Theory holds true; then the only thing Peter did was create a *new* future. He didn't change his. If this is true, no matter what happens, when he tries to go back to 2013 or whatever year he's from, he'll end up in the same place, with the same problems, because that's his home-universe-time-and-place. No way to know until the rest of the season unfolds.
So either it doesn't work because the Laws of Physics decide that if he exists here in the past, his future is *going* to exist to create him there, so he can be here... or he's changing the future but not noticing his memories of it are changing, and has to get over the idea that this is a viable plan to save his future.[/end ETA]
In contrast to this, we have Terminator: SCC. Which instead of working a paradox, seems to be saying: Whatever you do, if you've messed with time once, the future you create will create the past you were trying to avoid.
Um.
To put it another way: time travel only changes the future if you can change things *enough*. But in the case of *this* timeline, what they are trying to change is the creation of intelligent, deadly machines.
Artifacts of those deadly machines have already been found by people in the present.
These people *want* to create deadly machines, cyborgs, AI's, what have you. They will keep trying, as long as there are remains/artifacts/Terminators to inspire them.
Sarah & Co. are concentrating on destroying all traces of those remains/artifacts/Terminators, and Derek, at least, has gone so far as to kill a few people responsible for their creation.
And yet. Thus far, no *poof*.
This can mean:
(a) this job is too big for three-four individuals to pull off,
(b) they need to destroy Cameron the Cyborg sooner rather than later, because she's a constant danger in their quest to eliminate clues as to how to build that future for those same inventors,
(c) humanity's drive to create machines that can (eventually) learn to kill humanity means the timeline keeps jumping to the next creator/inventor of Skynet, just at different points in time.
(d) If they ever pull that off, by now the timeline is so polluted with the actions, lives, and deaths caused by the Terminators' pursuit of Sarah and John that you could reasonably expect a Take My Dice and Go Home reaction from the universe. BOOM!
Which means, basically, that their only hope lies in surviving Doomsday, fighting back against Skynet, and finding the time travel device that will let them preserve their current past from the future terminators' attempts to hijack the causation stream. It's noble that Sarah & John attempt to short-circuit Doomsday; nothing's set in stone yet. But it is a massive, massive undertaking, given the components that go into its creation. Knowledge of the future doesn't guarantee you can change the present. Especially when the butterfly effect keeps changing it every step of the way.
Sarah may live longer now, and not develop the predicted cancer, because they leaped 9 years into their future. She may get treatment faster. She may avoid whatever triggered it in her body.
John may not develop into the leader he was meant to be, or gain as much respect, because he's almost a decade younger at a time a leader is needed.
It's a crapshoot; no way to know. They, at least, know that. Are aware of how futile the effort may be.
Future Peter Petrelli, on the other hand, seems oblivious. FREAKING oblivious. He's apparently totally unaware that he can't change the underlying conditions that brought about the war in his future: he can't take away everyone's powers (Mohinder might, if he stops going Kafka on us), he can't take away prejudice and fear of stronger, more evolved people; he can't necessarily protect an entire planet from the plans of some really evil super-powered guys. He changed the triggering event that *he* knew about-- Nathan's announcement-- but then set in motion so many other factors, that he's currently as lost as anyone naturally from 2008.
I love HEROES. But Terminator wins by a mile in the time travel division.