If this was a Doctor Who episode, fans would be PISSED at how badly the causality is handled.
If this were Doctor Who they could do whatever they want because causality is never an issue in Doctor Who unless the writer makes it one as part of the plot. Doctor Who has very few solid rules, but Dirk Gently follows a "fixed timeline" and it does so without error.
The whole thing ends up being a horrid mess of causality paradoxes.
No, it doesn't. This is self consistent time travel. A time travelers actions are predetermined and set in stone before they ever make their trip. Exactly like 12 Monkeys, but the antithesis of Doctor Who or Back to the Future.
At least that would demonstrate that the writers of this show realize how badly they've screwed up their fictional world's space-time continuum.
Your incredulity is based in a flawed understanding of the model of time travel employed in this series. Suffice it to say, you're wrong and your railing against the writers only makes you look foolish.
The new home of Welcome to Planet Bob:
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LalocheziaAddict
8 years ago
In 12 Monkeys you could alter time. It was just difficult to do so.
In Dirk it seems there is one fixed timeline, period.
"In my defense the hotel room made the first move." - Johnny Depp
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Alondro
8 years ago
It also ignores the Initiation Paradox problem of this time loop, which most time-travel fiction now-a-days at least makes up some fitting BS to explain away.
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OccamsBarber
8 years ago
I've always felt that one shouldn't overanalyze science fiction theories especially where the characters (or viewer) can only speculate on the 'rules.' And I feel this goes doubly so for a show of this nature.
That said let's over analyze this aspect
I've always felt that the fixed timeline approach to be an invalid one for the reasons you stated. It seems impossible to me that if you have foreknowledge you can make different choices regardless of the chaos of circumstances. To have it otherwise invalidates freewill. And as you say how did it begin if it couldn't be different in the first place. Even granting effect before cause, which seems intrinsic to time travel, you still don't unravel that problem.
But I've always believed that you can have what appears to be a fixed timeline. If the 'new' timeline changes the traveler's memory as well then for all concerned this is the timeline that always existed.
And this leads to time loops. Let's say I find a tape that shows how I will react to an event occurring in a few minutes. I am determined to react differently. I do react differently. Now I have a viewed a tape that shows that shows me reacting the way I did that time. And I am determined to act differently and I did. And round and round time rewrites. This can go on as many times, a near infinite, until some confluence of events causes me to react exactly as I did on the tape. You have to throw in a loose weaved tapestry of chaos theory, uncertainty principle and freewill to assure no permanent closed time loops occur. I can bend that far
Two things I like about this theory is the removal of the Bootstrap problem and an explanation of why these situations are always so contrived. If one was determined to prove that they could change time then the situation that finally resolves the loop would seem rather ridiculous.
Okay that's my two cents.
Now someone will come along assert with utter certainty that time travel does not work that way. Those posts always make me chuckle.
OTish: of all the time traveler shows this year (is time travel the new 'it' genre? Zombies now being so played out.) Travelers has captured my imagination the most. While it appears somewhat inconsistent to a reductionist viewer we simply don't have enough information to make that call. That so much of our preconceptions shift with each episode is proof of that. But we do have enough of a framework to imagine a near infinite possible future story lines. I've never been more tempted to write fanfiction in my life. An urge I am sure I will resist.
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Alondro
8 years ago
It's a little something all self-fulfilling time loops have a MAJOR insurmountable problem with: The Initiation Paradox.
Given that all the events of the loop are utterly dependent upon causality initiated by the future events of the loop, which are themselves the results of events earlier in the loop... there is no possibly starting point for the loop to ever begin. It can exist only in irrational fiction, much like the "Impossible Staircase".
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