Time Traveling in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Many sci-fi and fantasy movies incorporate time traveling.

Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure are two common examples. Terminator trilogy is also a big one.

The effects of time travel are dealt with differently in every movie/show that has it.

What is your favorite film/show that uses time travel and why?

I will answer after I formulate a response.

 

The knowledge that you are currently formulating john, has me very excited.

I'm gonna say my favourite time travelling is in Star Trek. I love the way they take the mickey out of themselves occasionally. Ignoring paradoxes and having Captains issue throwaway remarks on how it's best not to think about it too much. Two standout time travel episodes for me include 'Trials & Tribbleations' from DS9 and 'Relativity' and 'Year of Hell' both from Voyager. Oh, and 'Times Arrow' from TNG is awesome too.

 

Most people who know me also know that I love time travel -- so much so to add it to Star Wars through fan fic. But my favourite film/show that has time travel in it would be Doctor Who. While I've really seen the new series (I've seen parts of the old ones) and so I'm a relatively new Doctor Who fan, I love it a lot. It's pretty brilliant -- I think it's hilarious how the TARDIS is Police Box. The time travel is occasionally extremely confusing (in one episode Rose saves her father from dying and therefore changes time, but before that she and the Doctor saw themselves at the same place at the same time, sort of like in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and it causes creatures to start attacking people and all sorts of weird stuff -- it was slightly confusing at first, but I think I understand more of it now), but it allows the characters to go so many places (even though in the new series they hang around Earth so much).

 

Time traveling in Back to future is cool.

 

I loved Trials and Tribbliations. I think what I loved most about it, looking back on it is that while the crew was focused on their mission, they departed from most Trek time travel episodes in that they had reactions that, let's be honest, if we went back in time and had an opportunity to interact with heros we respected from history books and shows, that we would have; which was basically "OMG, I'm in this time and these people I grew up admiring and respecting are actually in the flesh."

I think it added a sense of realisem for me to an ep that could've gone extremely off - center, if they had not balanced the seriousness of DS9 and added that sense of awe and wonderment to enable the Deep Space Nine world to blend in seemlessly to the lighthearted (for the most part) Original Series.

Okay maybe that wasn't general Time travel introspection but that's my .2 cents for now.

 

My favourite piece of fiction dealing with time traveling is definently in Back to the Future. Why? Simply because of how fun the make it, it's nothing but adventourus and exciting. And the fact that they set up a number of rules and stick to them. They tell you that "This is the way Time Travel works" and as the trilogy progresses, it (more or less) follows the rules pretty consistently.



Second favourite time traveling movie/show? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

Back to the Future takes the top spot, without question. That speedometer, going up to 88...

Oh, and the STS9 episode "Past Tense" was cool. Much better than "Trials and Tribble-ations".

 

To this day, if someone were to randomly come up to me and ask what makes time travel possible, my answer would be the Flux Capacitor.

 

Generally I hate time travel films, it is confusing & things can get repetetive all too easily. Sometimes it is done well & is an origial take on it, especially if the time travel is used as a twist at the end of the story like in Planet Of The Apes (pretty much the only Tim Burton film I enjoyed). Then there is the most famous & classic time travel film, Back To The Future, who does'nt love it?

 

Doctor Who is by far and away the most famous time-traveller. If you need to remember, have a look at [removed] I'm suprised he doesn't get that much of a mention here.

 

dood wth is up with the linkjs plugging this site in every thread?

 

I remember discussing stuff like Back to the Future and Terminator 2 back in the day with pals.
I remember my big thing with Terminator 2 was the ending.
Just that whole paradox thing.
At the end of the movie, by taking the chip, the arm and destroying them - then destroying himself - the Terminator has changed the future he came from.
With that future changed, the past that this future influenced has also now changed, so everything that ever happened in a Terminator movie now didn't happen.
So why, for example, was Sarah Connor still standing there in an iron foundry at the end? - she now had no reason to be there, because the events that led her there didn't happen.

And if the events that led her to be there never happened, then the chip and the arm weren't really destroyed after all.
But the only reason the "chip and arm" that created the future existed at all was because they came from the future they created in the first place.
And the only reason Reese came back from the future was because John Connor sent him.
But John Connor would not exist without Reese knocking his mother up, and he could only do so by being sent back in time by John...

And by this point my head used to hurt.

 

The concept of time-travel is flawed, which is why the possibilities are endless when trying to rationalize fictional events dealing with time travel. I've argued the Terminator timeline to death in my day. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people have actually been institutionalized over trying to find a rational explanation for John Connor's existence.

 

All the good ones have been previously mentioned, so I'll just mention an oddball:

Zipang is about a modern cruiser ending up in the WWII (Battle of Midway) by an anomaly. At first the crew decide to avoid contact as much as possible yet after certain events (which includes getting attacked by Japanese airplanes, an American sub and picking up a survivor) they end up interfering trying to rescue as many soldiers possible and accepting the fact that the future they know will never be the same again. In the latest episode they were planning to interfere with the Guadalcanal battle.
Of course this show is in Japanese and in Japanese perspective, which is quite interesting.

I also like to mention the Time machine, the classic one, because I like it and it hasn't been mentioned yet

Overall my single favourite use of time travel is in Trials & Tribbleations, I never get tired of that episode. Year of Hell is also quite good

 

Agreed. I think there's a lot of dross in Voyager, but there are some absolute gems. Year of Hell is on such gem. I actually think it would've made a good last episode for the show. You know, make it so that when everything is reset at the end they end up back at Earth. That would've been cool. There's that lovely moment near the end where everyone is leaving Voyager but Janeway won't. The ship is falling apart at the seams. I always think that would've been good as a conclusion, Voyager just about getting over the line on one piece. Hey ho.

 

Hey, respect to this little gem too:

[image=http://img342.imageshack.us/img342/6950/tf15pm.jpg]
[image=http://img433.imageshack.us/img433/8379/tf25we.jpg]
[image=http://img433.imageshack.us/img433/7/tf39yt.jpg]
[image=http://img433.imageshack.us/img433/7779/tf45xl.jpg]

 

I have to disagree, just on the basis that I really hate 'it was all fake' or in this case 'it never happened' endings. Unless its done well, hence I think the Year of Hell reset works a lot better at the beginning of the Year and not the beginning of the show. Going back into time without Seven of Nine would have also worked

 

Oh, I just remembered Dr. Who...Can't believe I forgot about it. That is also a really good time-travel show.

 

At the end of Back to the Future 1, why wouldn't George and Loraine recognize Marty as the same Marty from their past?

 

good question. it hurts to think about this stuff

 

Did you see this?

 

I thought they made time travelling to easy in Star Trek. It seemed like every other episode involved going back in time. Take First Contact, just because the Borg failed once to conquer Earth, what was to stop them trying over and over again until they won or any other race for that matter whose plans failed the first time around.

 

The way I always looked at it...they don't remember what their friend "Marty" from 1955 looks like. They know that he was the one who got them together thus making him a big part of their lives...however at the same token, they never heard from him again and thus after 25-30 years they slowly began to forget what he looked like (it's not like they had a photo of him either OR that he was in the school yearbook...plust the fact that after 30 yrs. the mind can slip a tad). I mean it's likely that in the revised history they named Marty after their friend Marty who hooked them up in 1955...they just can't recall anything else about him.

That's my two cents.

 

The time-traveling hijinks of Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home made the movie one of my favorites (right up there with Khan).

Chekov asking the cop where he can find the "nuclear wessels", "colorful metaphors" (a phrase I still like to reference)...comedy gold.

I don't buy the method for achieving the time travel, but does it really matter?

 

Let's do the Time Plot again!

- lazy