Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Sept 10, 2007 8:33:02 GMT -6
There seems to be a sudden influx of Time Travellers in this forum lately, so I thought why not start a thread about the various Star Trek episodes in which Time Travel played a part.
I like time travel stories, as long as they're clever, and as long as they are used sparingly. In the original series, I can only think of four:
Tomorrow is Yesterday The City on the Edge of Forever Assignment: Earth All Our Yesterdays
The common thread (except All Our Yesterday's) is their desperate efforts to avoid changing history or introducing a paradox, because any change, no matter how small, would alter the timeline in unpredicable and possibly catastrophic ways.
What I don't like is the idea of the Federation actually having time ships, and the writers trying to imagine what technology and culture will be like in the 29th century. I think it just introduces too many problems.
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Post by gravity on Sept 10, 2007 10:46:18 GMT -6
This is a good point. Time travel in a tv show allows them to have a wide variety of episode types, (wild west to the distant future,) however it's like turning on all the cheat codes in the game. It's just not fun anymore when having to get X done before Y doesn't mean anything.
"We have to get this reactor online in less than 1 hour!" "Okay, hop in the time machine and let's go back to yesterday."
It would be an endless paradox of bad episodes. You will get mad when they don't use the obvious time travel solution, however the show will be boring because they can use the obvious time travel solution!
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Baggy52
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Post by Baggy52 on Sept 10, 2007 17:46:29 GMT -6
Yeah, thats your interpritation, in the future the whole ship exists outside of space-time, so using the time transporter would be pointless, because everything exists out of space-time.
-AND-
time travel can't always be a plausible solution. If the enemy uses a chroniton dampening feild, what then, nothing happens. If they make a show it should be about how they must go bac to episodes erlier and it all goes wrong, not like we remember from the corrcet time-line and the people of the ship must find the "bad guy" and stop him from doing what he did in the episode. Take the episode where 7 of 9 was recruited many times, that episode used the unstable time-line/paradox effect to grandeaur effect.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Sept 12, 2007 8:37:03 GMT -6
Isaac Asimov's novel The End of Eternity, written way back in 1955, takes the idea of time travel to its ultimate conclusion. And it also has the grandaddy of all paradoxes, where the man who invented time travel turns out to have learned the theory from a time traveller from the future, which wouldn't be possible unless he had invented the time machine in the first place!
Asimov imagines a vast organization which constantly monitors the time stream. The trouble is that every year the organization itself has to become ever more complicated as it makes constant adjustments to make sure that nothing changes their own present. Eventually people from even further in the future step in to bring down the whole thing.
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Baggy52
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Post by Baggy52 on Sept 12, 2007 18:47:42 GMT -6
Yeah, thats why they have the TPD, and I really dont care, they can fix my screw ups later, and besides I have the ultimate item, THE UNDO BUTTON!!! *angillac chior sings*
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Sept 14, 2007 7:42:02 GMT -6
I like Dr. Who because the TARDIS is just a plot device. It's literally a vehicle to get him from one adventure to the next. Once something happens in his current timeline, he can't go back and fix it, because the TARDIS doesn't work that way. There are no do-overs.
I also like it when he meets real historical figures, like Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, or Madame Pompadour.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Sept 14, 2007 7:55:05 GMT -6
This past Monday night I saw an Enterprise episode called "Future Tense", where they found a derelict timeship that had apparently been gutted by some kind of explosion in the engines. It wasn't really a very good episode, except for the appearance of the Tholians. I liked the way they kicked the Suliban's scrawny green butts!
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Sept 24, 2007 7:42:29 GMT -6
The only Next Generation stories I can think of in which time travel played a part are "Matter of Record", "Captain's Holiday" (both of which involved meeting travelers from the future), "Cause and Effect" (in which the Enterprise was caught in a time loop), "Timescape" (in which Enterprise was frozen in time), "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the two-part episode "Time's Arrow" (the only one in which they actually travelled into the past). Can you think of any others?
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j
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Post by j on Sept 26, 2007 3:55:00 GMT -6
A Matter of Time is one dealing with a time traveler, but the TNG crew didn't time travel themselves.
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Baggy52
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Post by Baggy52 on Sept 30, 2007 12:45:19 GMT -6
Umm, wait so we went from not liking time traveling, to listing all the episodes that have time travel in them? Personally I like VOY when they went back to the ninties...
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Oct 1, 2007 8:28:10 GMT -6
No, I said I LIKE time travel stories, as long as they were used sparingly, and listing all the episodes proves my point, I think. There was only one Next Generation story ("Time's Arrow") in which they travelled backward in time. Then there was the movie "First Contact", but most people seem to agree that it was not one of the best.
I think Enterprise began using it too much. I think I remember that Voyager episode you mention. Wasn't there some dweeb who had built a corporation based on a stolen timeship or something of that nature?
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Baggy52
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Post by Baggy52 on Oct 1, 2007 13:46:44 GMT -6
OH I SEE NOW, Srry
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rhondajo
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Post by rhondajo on Oct 15, 2007 22:00:17 GMT -6
I have always adored time travel. Thanks for starting this thread
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Baggy52
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Post by Baggy52 on Oct 16, 2007 13:53:34 GMT -6
Hey you like time travel? Well you found the right android, and I'm looking for a crew! Check it out in the misc RPG section, U.S.S. Deja Vu is the name of the ship, but first it has to be repaired.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Oct 17, 2007 8:22:38 GMT -6
I have always adored time travel. Thanks for starting this thread If you like, comment on it. Let's have your opinion. Which one was your favorite time travel story, and why?
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