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Spoilers Favorite Time Travel Paradoxes

Huntn said:
I remember thinking how mean to kill Tasha Yar off until I realized she decided to leave. For anyone not familiar, this was a reprisal of that role. Of interest she had been originally cast as Deanna Troy, but got switched and was frustrated with the limited nature of her role as compared to other characters. All Goood Things stands as my favorite time paradox STNG episodes.
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My understanding of what happened with Denise Crosby was that she may have been fired from the show. At the time, she took the chance to pose nude for Playboy, and Roddenberry didn't take kindly to that.

Speaking of ST:TNG, one of the more obscure paradoxes was the episodes Time's Arrow, Pt.1 and Pt.2. The premise of that one was that the Enterprise was asked to come to a planet which caves were being excavated (can't remember the planet), and one of the excavators uncovers an artifact that turns out to be Data's head. Time travel ensues (thanks to some aliens), taking Data back to the Mid-late 1800s, where he meets up with one Samuel Clemens, and Guinan.

Long story short, Crew goes back in time, Clemens goes to the future, Crew finds Data, encounters the aliens, scuffle ensues, Data's head is separated from his body, Clemens returns to his time, time is restored, but Data's head is still back in time again..

Wiki has a better synopsis, but that's what I remember from memory..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

BL.
 
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bradl said:
My understanding of what happened with Denise Crosby was that she may have been fired from the show. At the time, she took the chance to pose nude for Playboy, and Roddenberry didn't take kindly to that.
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According to her wikipedia entry, she posed for Playboy in 1979, but wasn't cast for ST:TNG until 1987.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Crosby

Was there another posing for Playboy, or a suppression of the earlier posing? Or maybe your dekyon emission was improperly modulated.
 
Re: Interstellar: the guy died when he went into the black hole. Simple as that. He's just fantasizing about how he'd save the day and see his daughter, just like the bad guy said he would when he thought he's going to die on that ice world.

The ghost and all that stuff? Dunno what they really are, but as far as the main guy is concerned, they acted as inspiration for his fantasy.

...

Probably should attach an "IMO" here for insurance :D.
 
bradl said:
My understanding of what happened with Denise Crosby was that she may have been fired from the show. At the time, she took the chance to pose nude for Playboy, and Roddenberry didn't take kindly to that.

Speaking of ST:TNG, one of the more obscure paradoxes was the episodes Time's Arrow, Pt.1 and Pt.2. The premise of that one was that the Enterprise was asked to come to a planet which caves were being excavated (can't remember the planet), and one of the excavators uncovers an artifact that turns out to be Data's head. Time travel ensues (thanks to some aliens), taking Data back to the Mid-late 1800s, where he meets up with one Samuel Clemens, and Guinan.

Long story short, Crew goes back in time, Clemens goes to the future, Crew finds Data, encounters the aliens, scuffle ensues, Data's head is separated from his body, Clemens returns to his time, time is restored, but Data's head is still back in time again..

Wiki has a better synopsis, but that's what I remember from memory..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

BL.
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Good episode. I remember loving all the STNG time travel episodes while really disliking the original serie's attempts at it.
 
ucfgrad93 said:
For the most part I agree, however, the original series had The City on the Edge of Forever which was excellent. My favorite episode of the original series.
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I'll have to look that one up. :) Mostly I remember the original Star Trek going back in time episodes being filmed on drab back lot settings.

localoid said:
Crosby wasn’t fired from Star Trek -- she quit the show.
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Over the years there have been several examples where TV Stars see Movie Star in their future and instead of getting their feet wet, they jump in and burn their bridges with hit shows. Denise Crosby, David Caruso, Dan Stevens, and Shelley Long come to mind.
 
Interstellar Spoiler follows...







Watched Interstellar (link to MRs thread) today, not the first viewing. I like it! I can recognize a bootstrap paradox, it just does not make any sense to me. For Interstellar, if humanity makes it into the future to become 5 dimensional beings why would they have to make an effort to save their past selves? Duh! :)

Is there anything in quantum physics that would support this notion?
 
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Lost

Season 5 of Lost introduced time travel into the story arc. A lot of people "lost" faith in the show at this point, viewing time travel as "too out there" and "too confusing" in what was already an out there and confusing show. However, I really enjoyed the introduction of time travel and I think it made everything that happened all the more interesting.

Lost used the "fixed timeline" schema. In Season 2, the survivors discover an underground scientific research station that discharges an electromagnetic anomaly that builds up every 108 minutes. It is revealed at the end of Season 2 that the man who was there in the station for three years, Desmond, regularly discharging the anomaly, accidentally let it build up too much once--on September 22, 2004, the day the plane crashed. Desmond caused the plane to crash (the strong magnetic field fried the plane's instruments and drew it to the island), thus setting off the events of Season 1, which begins with the plane crash in the pilot.

This magnetic build-up is said to be due to an "incident" that occurred some time in the past, but the nature of the incident is never revealed in Season 2. In Season 5, however, the main characters (the survivors of the plane crash on the island) travel back in time to the 1970s to when when the station was being built. It turns out that the main characters caused the incident! In 1977, one of them obtained an old nuclear device left on the island in the 1950s and detonated it within the naturally-occurring electromagnetic anomaly that the station was being built on. This was the "incident" that caused the magnetic anomaly to bulid up regularly and need discharging. This is what led to the plane crashing in 2004, which led the survivors to the island, which led them to travel back in time, which led them to cause the incident, which led to the plane crashing, which...MY HEAD HURTS
 
ThisBougieLife said:
Lost

Season 5 of Lost introduced time travel into the story arc. A lot of people "lost" faith in the show at this point, viewing time travel as "too out there" and "too confusing" in what was already an out there and confusing show. However, I really enjoyed the introduction of time travel and I think it made everything that happened all the more interesting.

Lost used the "fixed timeline" schema. In Season 2, the survivors discover an underground scientific research station that discharges an electromagnetic anomaly that builds up every 108 minutes. It is revealed at the end of Season 2 that the man who was there in the station for three years, Desmond, regularly discharging the anomaly, accidentally let it build up too much once--on September 22, 2004, the day the plane crashed. Desmond caused the plane to crash (the strong magnetic field fried the plane's instruments and drew it to the island), thus setting off the events of Season 1, which begins with the plane crash in the pilot.

This magnetic build-up is said to be due to an "incident" that occurred some time in the past, but the nature of the incident is never revealed in Season 2. In Season 5, however, the main characters (the survivors of the plane crash on the island) travel back in time to the 1970s to when when the station was being built. It turns out that the main characters caused the incident! In 1977, one of them obtained an old nuclear device left on the island in the 1950s and detonated it within the naturally-occurring electromagnetic anomaly that the station was being built on. This was the "incident" that caused the magnetic anomaly to bulid up regularly and need discharging. This is what led to the plane crashing in 2004, which led the survivors to the island, which led them to travel back in time, which led them to cause the incident, which led to the plane crashing, which...MY HEAD HURTS
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I really liked Lost. For the Time Travel/Alternate Reality in this show, you just had to go with the flow and not think about it too much. :)
 
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ThisBougieLife said:
Lost

Season 5 of Lost introduced time travel into the story arc. A lot of people "lost" faith in the show at this point, viewing time travel as "too out there" and "too confusing" in what was already an out there and confusing show. However, I really enjoyed the introduction of time travel and I think it made everything that happened all the more interesting.

Lost used the "fixed timeline" schema. In Season 2, the survivors discover an underground scientific research station that discharges an electromagnetic anomaly that builds up every 108 minutes. It is revealed at the end of Season 2 that the man who was there in the station for three years, Desmond, regularly discharging the anomaly, accidentally let it build up too much once--on September 22, 2004, the day the plane crashed. Desmond caused the plane to crash (the strong magnetic field fried the plane's instruments and drew it to the island), thus setting off the events of Season 1, which begins with the plane crash in the pilot.

This magnetic build-up is said to be due to an "incident" that occurred some time in the past, but the nature of the incident is never revealed in Season 2. In Season 5, however, the main characters (the survivors of the plane crash on the island) travel back in time to the 1970s to when when the station was being built. It turns out that the main characters caused the incident! In 1977, one of them obtained an old nuclear device left on the island in the 1950s and detonated it within the naturally-occurring electromagnetic anomaly that the station was being built on. This was the "incident" that caused the magnetic anomaly to bulid up regularly and need discharging. This is what led to the plane crashing in 2004, which led the survivors to the island, which led them to travel back in time, which led them to cause the incident, which led to the plane crashing, which...MY HEAD HURTS
Click to expand...
A lot of people lost faith because the show's creators said they weren't going to to just have some sort of "magical" things and explanations behind it all and will have realistic (even if somewhat fantastical) reasonings and storylines. In reality they had no idea of where they were even going to go, and ended up bringing in quite a bit of that "magical" stuff to try to explain and reason things out, and realistically mostly did the opposite (in addition to just completely going against their own words).
 
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ucfgrad93 said:
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Yesterday's Enterprise. One of my all time favorite episodes of any tv series.
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Terrific episode, with a wonderfully, brooding, menacing, militaristic and an extremely tense atmosphere. The lighting was superb, dark and threatening, with stark contrasts. Great episode.

Fascinating to see Captain Picard and co - very credibly - portrayed as a crew serving in a long and deadly (and ultimately unsuccessful) war.


C DM said:
I'm a fan of pretty much all of the time travel (and non-time travel) ST episodes, and somehow Cause and Effect always comes up in my mind as one of the more interesting (although in some ways simpler) ones--not as much as time travel per se, but more of time repetition in a sense.
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Loved Cause and Effect; an excellent episode.

bradl said:
My understanding of what happened with Denise Crosby was that she may have been fired from the show. At the time, she took the chance to pose nude for Playboy, and Roddenberry didn't take kindly to that.

Speaking of ST:TNG, one of the more obscure paradoxes was the episodes Time's Arrow, Pt.1 and Pt.2. The premise of that one was that the Enterprise was asked to come to a planet which caves were being excavated (can't remember the planet), and one of the excavators uncovers an artifact that turns out to be Data's head. Time travel ensues (thanks to some aliens), taking Data back to the Mid-late 1800s, where he meets up with one Samuel Clemens, and Guinan.

Long story short, Crew goes back in time, Clemens goes to the future, Crew finds Data, encounters the aliens, scuffle ensues, Data's head is separated from his body, Clemens returns to his time, time is restored, but Data's head is still back in time again..

Wiki has a better synopsis, but that's what I remember from memory..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

BL.
Click to expand...

I thoroughly enjoyed Time's Arrow. Very well done, and very clever, and funny, in parts, too.

ucfgrad93 said:
For the most part I agree, however, the original series had The City on the Edge of Forever which was excellent. My favorite episode of the original series.
Click to expand...

That was a great episode in the original ST, deeply intelligent, tbought-provoking and memorable. Powerful and moving, too.

And, of the TOS alternative time line stories, I must say that I also really liked Mirror, Mirror.
 
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The following pulled from the AI thread because a I think thiswould be a better place to discuss it. :)

C DM said:
Yeah, Ex Machina is quite good. These days the more involved and interesting sci-fi seems to be about AI or various space/time possibilities. I guess it's always been like that to one degre or another, but seems like some of those are closer and closer to actual science or at least very probable science to come rather than the full fiction part.
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Not AI but the final episode of Star Trek Next Gen, All Good Things (which I tend to bring up often :p) a temporal anomaly/paradox which put an indelible mark on my awareness perception of time travel related paradoxes. Added this link to the first post:

Top Five Philosophical and Science Fiction Paradoxes
 
Huntn said:
Not AI but the final episode of Star Trek Next Gen, All Good Things (which I tend to bring up often :p) a temporal anomaly/paradox which put an indelible mark on my awareness perception of time travel related paradoxes. Added this link to the first post:

Top Five Philosophical and Science Fiction Paradoxes
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So you went back in time and altered the 1st post in the thread. (Grandfather paradox)

You then referenced that change from a future post. (Alternate history)

Congratulations on creating your first time loop! (... Doctor)

Can you turn a billet of wood into a conundrumstick on your Lathe of Heaven?
 
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Since the movie The Arrival (2016) was not discussed in this thread and it was recently mentioned in the Movie Tread, I've answered a post made there, here. :D


Queen6 said:
Arrival
arrival-poszter-13.jpg

Solid SciFi, not for those seeking action, equally thought provoking...

Q-6
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Spoiler-Discussion
The premise: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Much is made about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in both Arrival and modern academia. The well-worn hypothesis suggests that the language we speak is inimitably tied to the reality we experience. Midway through the film, Ian asks Louise if she dreams in foreign languages, and indeed, the more she understands the Heptapods’ communication, the more she experiences waking visions of her future. The dream world merges with a flat chronology that irrevocably changes her perception of time and memory. (From this Screenrant.com article which describes the films ending.)

The question is: Would learning a non-lineal language change our perception of time?

This is good actionless, thought provoking science fiction. :D My critique is there are some mechanisms presented that you just have to go with, and accept the changes in Amy Adam's character (Louise Banks). That premise is the perception of time as linear vs non-linear which the latter is how the aliens perceive time. I'd argue that we perceive time linearly because of how we experience reality, on a track, living in present. Do we have a choice in the matter? We exist in the present and have to remember the past, while the future at most is what we think it might be.

I'm not sure if this movie qualifies as a paradox, but it seems to put a lot of weight on future as already written. If that's not the case, with the ability to see the future, with choice, what would be seen would constantly be changing, we'd know the outcome of our actions, and possibly have the abilty to change course, to change the outcome and know what that new outcome would be. Pretty cool, I just don't see that happening in humans by virtue of learning a new language.

You have to take the films word for it, that if exposed to and learning language in this manner, suddenly you'd be able to simultaneously see the future and experience all the events in your live in real time. Honestly I had some trouble with this. The film tells you this is what happens and we don't know it at first, but finally realize we are seeing the changed Louise Banks throughout the entire movie.
 
I've always found it interesting that many time paradoxes seem to imply there's almost a meta-timeline that keeps track of departures and arrivals, attempting to ensure that each of the latter have a corresponding former.

"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by Orson Scott Card explains it better than I could, but here goes: If time is just a forward progression, why would it care (for lack of a better word) if a collection of matter (resembling me) kills my grandfather? Would time say, "Oh no! This is AngerDanger who just killed his own grandfather! Now he'll never be born and is therefore unable to travel back for the killing! I'd better collapse, diverge, or resolve in whatever manner most folk think is appropriate!"

Causality doesn't care that I'd never be born to go back in time because I already went back in time.
 
AngerDanger said:
I've always found it interesting that many time paradoxes seem to imply there's almost a meta-timeline that keeps track of departures and arrivals, attempting to ensure that each of the latter have a corresponding former.

"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by Orson Scott Card explains it better than I could, but here goes: If time is just a forward progression, why would it care (for lack of a better word) if a collection of matter (resembling me) kills my grandfather? Would time say, "Oh no! This is AngerDanger who just killed his own grandfather! Now he'll never be born and is therefore unable to travel back for the killing! I'd better collapse, diverge, or resolve in whatever manner most folk think is appropriate!"

Causality doesn't care that I'd never be born to go back in time because I already went back in time.
Click to expand...

I believe that the premise of skipping around in time that does not involve relativity is unlikely and those difference in time involve rates of forward progression only, at least based on what we can or think we observe. That said, if there is a single forward progression time line in a single reality (huge ifs), I would not describe time as caring, but altered matter is irrevocably altered. For practical purposes we write our present with a constantly changing future based on our present actions.

If reverse travel is introduced as a possibility, once changed, there is no going back to undo what has been done. By virtue of changing the past, if the result is unpleasant for the time traveler, the only option might be to try to alter events to steer the future in a new better direction.

So I'll propose if you went back in time and killed your Father, although destroying the mechanism for your existence, you would still exist, but you would have cut off your future existence as tied to who you remember as your family, no birth, no life, and you would be remembering events of your life that never happened- hard to grapple with.

If you managed to speed up to return to the future, it would be one without your future existence, and changed based on every point of the time line where you effected change by interacting. I wonder if the human brain would be equipped to handle this based on our need for a foundation of reality that slowly and smoothly flows forward?

Possibly even more interesting is if you went back in time and allowed your father to live, and stayed to observe your birth, would that still be you, your genetic duplicate or this time would it be a different sperm that fertilizes the egg? A good argument that backward progression through time would displace you permanently from your original existence. Forward progression by means of relativity is fundamentally different, where a new present and future is being written, nothing is being rewritten. :)
 
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My favorite time travel story is the Red Dwarf episode, Tikka to Ride. It combines humor, history, time travel and conspiracy theories.

As for Star Trek time travel stories, I wish they would come up with a story where they finally admit Guinan is from the 31st century Federation. Connect the dots man. She's a better marksman than Worf, a better councilor than Troi. She even gives the all powerful Q cause for concern.:eek: In Yesterday's Enterprise, she talked Picard into fixing the timeline by sending Enterprise-C back to be destroyed. In Redepemtion part II, She remembers what occurred in the alternate timeline from Yesterday's Enterprise. Oh yes, she was in 'Murica back in 1893.

Admit it, Trekkie gods. Guinan was/is/will be a time traveller sent to make sure Picard didn't/doesn't/won't alter the timeline like the other captain of the Enterprise.
 
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Mousse said:
My favorite time travel story is the Red Dwarf episode, Tikka to Ride. It combines humor, history, time travel and conspiracy theories.

As for Star Trek time travel stories, I wish they would come up with a story where they finally admit Guinan is from the 31st century Federation. Connect the dots man. She's a better marksman than Worf, a better councilor than Troi. She even gives the all powerful Q cause for concern.:eek: In Yesterday's Enterprise, she talked Picard into fixing the timeline by sending Enterprise-C back to be destroyed. In Redepemtion part II, She remembers what occurred in the alternate timeline from Yesterday's Enterprise. Oh yes, she was in 'Murica back in 1893.

Admit it, Trekkie gods. Guinan was/is/will be a time traveller sent to make sure Picard didn't/doesn't/won't alter the timeline like the other captain of the Enterprise.
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Nevertheless, Yesterday's Enterprise was a brilliant episode.

Oh, and Guinan also took Ensign Ro under her wing and mentored her - not that that had anything to do with any particular time travel story.
 
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