MovieChat Forums > Timeless (2016) Discussion > Why the rush to go back? They have a TIM...

Why the rush to go back? They have a TIME MACHINE!!

posted 8 years ago by marctale-149-764904
28 replies | jump to latest

Why did they hurry up with going back to 1937?
They could have taken all the time they wanted (even if it takes years!!) to prepare for the trip appropriately and then go back in time and do everything not messing up.

Or did I miss something?

[–] Just_Alex 8 years ago

Maybe to avoid a scenario where the terrorists kill the scientists / nuke the U.S. / destroy humanity while they are lifting weights and drawing sketches to "prepare"?

Sent from my computer, using my keyboard.

[–] sdtony42 8 years ago

Honestly, they should never even had to worry about it either way.

If its one universe where any changes in the past alter the future, then the insta-second the villain left in the stolen time machine, his changes should have effected the present. They never would have even had a chance to stop him.

If it's a multiverse type situation, then any changes he makes in the past basically create an alternate reality timeline and would never effect the original universe.

[–] marctale-149-764904 8 years ago

Exactly. I explained that basically in my other thread.

[–] josephmramirez 8 years ago

If its one universe where any changes in the past alter the future, then the insta-second the villain left in the stolen time machine, his changes should have effected the present. They never would have even had a chance to stop him.

The "Time Patrol" series of SF stories by Poul Anderson addresses this problem by having the temporal police stationed at various dates throughout history. When some rogue operator changes the time line, those changes affect only those "downstream" from the change, i.e., living at later times in history. The changes do not affect the world "upstream," i.e., at earlier dates in history. This is true even for people living upstream who actually originated downstream and then time traveled, such as the Time Patrol members (this corollary is a little paradoxical, of course).

So, the Time Patrol's upstream cops receive a temporal alert about a change to the time line, and can go fix it. The downstream cops get swept up in the change and may wink out of existence entirely, depending on the magnitude of the change to the time line. They have to hope that their upstream colleagues will restore the old time line and bring them back to life.