Meta for "1969": The Ramifications of Changing History

[stargazercmc]

The episode "1969" is a pivotal one in SG-1 canon in relation to the establishment of time travel, alternate universes and the ethics behind the team dabbling with the power of the gate to bring it all about.

Comments

[majorsamfan]

Perhaps Catherine is keeping her own secrets about why she chose Daniel Jackson to help them crack the mystery of the gate.

Interesting point!

So what happened to "our" team that we started with at the beginning of the episode?

*Gets a headache*

[stargazercmc]

bwhahahahahaha! I'm only laughing because holdouttrout told me that she got a headache reading this, too.

Gotta love time travel. How does Kathryn Janeway put it?

"The past is the future, the future is the past, it all gives me a headache."

[majorsamfan]

:D

[seldearslj]

I love time travel stories.

The way I see it, there are two types of "time travel" - what I call 'open loop' and 'closed loop'.

Open loops:

This is your classic time-travel story where you can kill your grandfather and change history - and usually do, resulting in a need to change the timeline back. (Or, in some cases, changing the timeline for the better.)

I call it an open loop because the loop in which you started is not necessarily the one in which you finish: you've changed history - your own history even if no-one else's. You leapt from one version of history to a 'parallel stream' as Daniel did in There But For The Grace Of God and as Sam and Kawalsky will in Point Of View.

Examples of the open loop are: Back To The Future, the recent Denzel Washington movie Deja Vu, and the SG1 episodes 2010 and Moebius.

Closed loopsThis is a more tricky story - and often a more depressing one. The base concept is that the time traveller cannot change what has already happened. History is immutable and anything the time traveller does

[holdouttrout]

I think this is a really good illustration of the two accepted modes of time travel in media. There's the idea that you can change your past, and the idea that you can't, and sometimes it really annoys me when media try to do the first one while thinking they're doing the second or vice versa.

I don't think that necessarily applied here, but I'm sure TBTP didn't think about a lot of the issues Stargazer raised about this episode.

For a closed loop, it needed to be a little tighter, I think.

[seldearslj]

For a closed loop, it needed to be a little tighter, I think.

Oh, yes. I think it says a lot that this is the only Stargate episode that features anything resembling a 'closed loop'.

In every other time-travel episode, the whole point is to change the past. Of course, they inevitably end up creating a whole new 'present' in the process - with, technically, a brand new set of people - but that's considered incidental in the schema of the show.

I've always wanted to write a 'closed loop' story in the Stargate Universe. Just for the sake of trying to make people's brains blow. :)

[green_grrl]

Of course, they inevitably end up creating a whole new 'present' in the process - with, technically, a brand new set of people - but that's considered incidental in the schema of the show.

Yes, that's the way I see 1969--the team stays the same, though where they get back to may have altered somewhat. Unlike 2010, in which our original team dies. (Ack!) The rest of the show follows the second team until Moebius, where our new team dies again. (Gah! ANGST!)

[lokei]

This is precisely why I try to avoid any actual time traveling in my stories. Migraine central. *grin* On the other hand, when it's well done (like Jack Finney's book Time and Again) it's so compelling I can't stay away. *double grin*

I love the idea of the alternate universes--a good set of what-ifs you've imagined! The Catherine one is a particularly good point, and makes me want to go write. And I'm sure you know there's a fantastic piece by redbyrd, I think, called 1969 Prime, that deals well with the Hammond issues--how did he decide to write the note to begin with? What happened the first time around that got wiped out by the decision to write the note in the future?

[sg_fignewton]

Add me to the list of those very intrigued by the Daniel suggestion!

...And c'mon, it would've been great if that's why Daniel cut his hair - so Catherine wouldn't recognize him. :)

[sidlj]

Carter: Because of the grandfather paradox. (at his blank look) If you went back fifty years and murdered your own grandfather, your own father would have never been born.

This is a rather bizarre statement to make to a man in his forties. *g*