Time Travel question...

I want some different ideas on what you guys think might happen for time travel.

Say you had a situation where you knew something really bad like a massive attak or event that changed the world and you wanted to undo that event, make it like it was prevented. You got someone to travel back in time and see if they can change those events, while you stay back in the present.

Does everything around you change? Do you end up with two sets of memories?

I mean there is that other line of thought that says the person arrived in a parallel world that just happens to be the same as ours or very similar so any changes they make do not affect the present where you are but that world.

That's how Michael Crichton dealt with time travel in the book Timeline, the film btw is horrible and ruins the book a lot. Read the book. In his version of things you can time travel just the world you arrive in isn't the world you left but a parallel world and any world you return to that has changed is also that. If I read the book correctly those rules mean that you can't actually return to the exact original world you left.

Would love some ideas, thoughts?

 

-"Catastrophe X" happens

-You purposely go back in time to prevent "Catastrophe X" from happening

-You succeed and "Catastrophe X" doesn't happen

-Without "Catastrophe X" ever happening you then never have a reason to go back in time to prevent it and thus...

-"Catastrophe X" happens

-You purposely go back in time to prevent "Catastrophe X" from happening

-You succeed and "Catastrophe X" doesn't happen

-Without "Catastrophe X" ever happening you then never have a reason to go back in time to prevent it and thus...

This goes on forever until the universe explodes or something.

As far as scifi move/TV time traveling, my favorites are:

-The first Terminator movie (just the first one) where all time travel has already been done in the timeline and nothing can be changed. Effect can precede cause so a man who hasn't been born yet can father a child decades before he, himself is born.

-Doctor Who where all the time travel rules are constantly in flux and are pretty much dependent on the script of that week's episode.

 

My favorite is the Outer Limits episode "Tribunal".

There is a lot of time travel in this episode, but it's all part of a greater whole. Nothing is ever changed, and everything unfolds like it's destined to. A closed loop, as it were.

 

Yes but what I meant is my subject never traveled in time they had someone else do that for them, does their world change, or do they have two sets of memories from any past change? Oh and yeah sorry I edited my post to add the bit I forgot, I was copy pasting from notepad and left a bit out.

 

Every writer has their own ideas and concepts, about how time travel would supposedly work. James Cameron seemed to favor an approach revolving around what I would call "flexible destiny", referenced by John's line in Terminator 2: "The future's not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

Meanwhile, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale tried something else, with the Back to the Future trilogy. Those stories established right away, that changing various events in time had serious consequences for the present. Doc even points out to Marty, that by pushing his father away from Sam Baines' car, he kept George from meeting Lorraine...which would mean none of their children would ever be born. That concept is pushed even further in the second adventure, when Biff Tannen steals the Almanac from 2015, using it to create the dystopian "Hell Valley" of 1985-A. Finally, the third installment has Doc saving Clara Clayton's life, when she was originally fated to die by falling into a ravine. Not much of a "ripple effect" happens from this though, other than the future site of the ravine being named after "Clint Eastwood" instead of Clara.

 

Unless you have some way to protect yourself from the changes, then I would assumed you'd change along with everything else.
As for the general idea of time travel from a more realistic perspective, I tend to go with the idea that you can't actually change anything, because if the thing happened, then obviously you can't ever succeed, because if you stop it, then will never happen, and you wouldn't know that you have to go back in time to stop it. Or it would just create an alternate timeline where it never happened, but then you'd still be in the timeline where it happened, so it wouldn't change anything for you.
But from a storytelling perspective, I'd go for the Back to the Future model where time can be changed, and you'd notice the difference immediately.
Even more than the BTTF movies, I've always gotten a kick out of how Frequence handled this kind of time alteration. Especially in this scene.
SPOILER WARNING this scene is from the end of the movie, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to know what happens, don't watch.

 

Been watching a lot of Legends of Tomorrow recently.

After you change the past, it effects whenever you are in the future first with physical stuff around you, until your memories change, and you never know that anything was ever any different.

Total bullshit.

 

I think I probably prefer the alternate timeline idea.

If I stay in the present and someone goes to the past to 'change' an event all they do is create a different future for those people and the 'present' stays the same. I think the changes happening around you are possibly more interesting in fiction though.

 

Frequency is a pretty good film; it helped establish Jim Caviezel as a credible actor, even though he'd been in the business since 1991. His previous credits included My Own Private Idaho, Wyatt Earp, G.I. Jane, and The Thin Red Line.

 

That's a great movie, they even made a short lived TV series off it

 

I think the actual time traveler would be the only one with a memory of the original timeline, but that's assuming that person instantly becomes a temporal anomaly. Upon returning to the present, a new altered timeline, that person may find another version of themselves already living there who never did go back in time, IMO.

 

Another example of time travel fiction which I enjoyed as a kid, was the short-lived TV show Time Trax. The main character is Darien Lambert, a police officer from the year 2193 who accepts a mission to capture criminals sent 200 years into the past. His arch-enemy is Dr. Mordecai Sahmbi, who created the futuristic time machine to begin with. The catch is that because the traveling process only works twice, Darien can't go home until he's apprehended all his targets. Sadly, the show only lasted two seasons, but the ratings for it were actually pretty good - the network just cancelled it because they wanted to go in a different direction viewer-wise. Both seasons were eventually released on DVD though, as part of the Warner Archive Collection.

 

Oh that was a good show. Loved that one.

 

It occurs to me that the common situation (which everyone has experienced) where one's memory of a past event and other people's memories of the same event are different; sometimes significantly, is because the timeline has been changed at some point and there are actually multiple versions of the past event.
Not sure that's anything to do with answering the question though...

 

The BTTF method is pretty much the butterfly effect in action, ie: step on a butterfly and however small it is, it will have ripple-effects with big consequences. Another of my favourite Time Travel methods was in The Time Traveler's Wife. He couldn't control his travel due to a degenerative disorder.

 

or because they lyin

 

If I had the power, I’d go back in time and download the consciousness of the dying—and put them in a VR to live the remainder of their lives.

Then after a virtual death, a resurrection where they confront who killed them.

Then a do-over on a new planet.

No timeline changes

 

They clearly set out in the pilot that Darrien is sliding to a parallel timeline that just happens to be 200 years behind his home, which means that its venturing to a parallel world, and not time-travelling at all.

HOWEVER... Every time he steals money from an ATM in the future with Selma, his friends in a disconnected parallel future deposit money taken plus interest adjusted for inflation in the modern day banks Darien stole from. I think he sent a message to the future in a news paper personal add too... So it is time travel?

Mildly inconsistent.

 

Then how is he able to leave messages in the newspaper classified ads, for his colleagues in the future to read?

 

It is a rare, rare time travel story that doesn't somehow trip all over itself.

12 Monkeys (the movie) is the only one I can think of offhand that is internally consistent with itself.