Paradoxes and Other Show Issues: It All Gives me a Headache

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, henripootel said:

...Hey, wanna hear my soon-to-be-unpopular hypothesis about why Rufus has no problem killing folks in the past?  I think it's because, from his 2016 perspective, they're already dead.  Like as not, they actually are, and it's easy to take the long view that a few years one way or the other isn't any big deal.  I think Rufus is horrified to discover this, especially because I don't think he's quite capable of killing someone in 2016, or at least he'd feel like a murderer if he did.  The people in the past though, they died long ago, some centuries back.  How's this for a downer idea.

I thought of that too, but didn't fully realize the downer aspect until reading your post.

[legaleagle53]

6 hours ago, henripootel said:

Sorry to be such a downer.  Hey, wanna hear my soon-to-be-unpopular hypothesis about why Rufus has no problem killing folks in the past?  I think it's because, from his 2016 perspective, they're already dead.  Like as not, they actually are, and it's easy to take the long view that a few years one way or the other isn't any big deal.  I think Rufus is horrified to discover this, especially because I don't think he's quite capable of killing someone in 2016, or at least he'd feel like a murderer if he did.  The people in the past though, they died long ago, some centuries back.  How's this for a downer idea.

Nineteen sixty-nine isn't "long ago, some centuries back."  It's only 47 years ago.  Most of the people who were alive in 1969 are still alive in 2016, albeit somewhat on the aged side.  No, the reason Rufus had no problem with killing Flynn's goon in 1969 (which was, if I'm not mistaken, his actual first kill ever) is that it was either kill or be killed.  Considering that he himself was almost killed on several occasions (most recently, from his perspective, in 1754 when he was stranded along with the others as an actual death sentence), it's only natural that he would begin to develop the kind of survival instinct that Wyatt specifically had trained into him.  That's why, after he killed the goon, he was able to look Anthony in the eye and say, "Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."

[KaveDweller]

18 hours ago, paulvdb said:

That would contradict the show's own rules. Remember Lucy's fiance? Based on your theory there should be another Lucy who is engaged to him but there isn't. Based on the show's own established rules Wyatt's wife would remember being married to him all this time, but there would not be another Wyatt who was marrried to her all this time. He would have disappeared the same way that the other Lucy disappeared who was engaged to the fiance.

But in that case, engaged Lucy got in the time machine and went back to the Hindenburg.  So there wouldn't be a second Lucy in 2016, Lucy A just replaces her, and Lucy B ends up in universe C (then next time Lucy A replaces a Lucy C, while Lucy C ends up in another universe, and then my head kind of explodes). But if Flynn never stole the time machine, the team never would have gone back in time. So Wyatt A can't replace Wyatt B.

Or you could look at it that Lucy A didn't replace Lucy B, she became Lucy B, but has amensia.

[henripootel]

4 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Nineteen sixty-nine isn't "long ago, some centuries back."  It's only 47 years ago.  Most of the people who were alive in 1969 are still alive in 2016, albeit somewhat on the aged side.  No, the reason Rufus had no problem with killing Flynn's goon in 1969 (which was, if I'm not mistaken, his actual first kill ever) is that it was either kill or be killed.

Yes, I'm familiar with math, I was trying to make the comment relevant to all the trips they've taken, some of which date back centuries.

And I don't think it was just a matter of Rufus feeling justified in taking action.  Clearly his own life was on the line, and he defended himself.  Heck, the future of America (not to mention Armstrong and Aldrin) was on the line, and Rufus did what he had to.  Yep, first kill ever as far as we know, and that should have been a devastating experience.  But it wasn't, and yet Rufus was disturbed to find out that he felt nothing, and he's now concerned that the experiences have changed him into someone he doesn't recognize anymore.  All this is right there in the script.  I (and shapeshifter apparently) were simply considering the possibility that time travel itself presents unique psychological challenges.  

As thrilling as it'd be to meet your heroes and actually be there back in time, I think it'd be easy to feel a certain ... unreality about the whole thing.  I mean the danger to yourself is obviously real, but so is the knowledge that plenty of these folks are soon to be fucking dead no matter what you do (like most everyone at the Alamo).  This would, I think, serve as a reminder that in a sense, they're all dead, or many are if they were already middle-aged in the 60s (not all - Buzz just got medivaced from the South Pole for god's sake, what the hell is he even doing there?).  

So you're in the past, nobody knows you, the social situation is sufficiently unfamiliar to feel constantly hostile (if you're black or a woman), and at the end of the day there'll be no legal consequences for you as you'll get back in your time ship and go home to a place where you can get all the twinkies you want.  All this would, I think, serve to make it easy to make being in the past seem kind of unreal in a way.  And even if the goon you shot in '69 is from your own era, it might weigh less on your mind.  I still wonder how Rufus would feel killing someone in his own time (in self defense or not), on his own turf, not protected from the consequences, and not in possession of the certain knowledge that what he's doing is of stupendous historic importance.  

So I think that being a time traveller changes what you'll do when it matters, and what you'll do - that's pretty much who you are.  So Rufus isn't who he thought he was, and no small part of this is from being a time traveller.  

[Ripley68]

I can't think TOO much about time paradoxes, and try not to because hey, science FICTION!   I tend to look at Timeless' time travel rules like Days of Future Past - only the person(s) going back to the past remember all the history between the past travel date and the date they left in the present, everyone else only knows history from the time the past was messed with.  On Timeless it would make more sense if the time travelers start to forget the original past just so their brains don't explode.

I can see Wyatts wife being saved - but they're divorced.  Weren't they fighting?

[legaleagle53]

12 hours ago, Ripley68 said:

I can see Wyatts wife being saved - but they're divorced.  Weren't they fighting?

Yes, which is why he feels responsible for her death.  She walked out on him after an argument during which he had been an especially douchetastic asshole to her, but she never returned.  A couple of weeks later, her body was found -- she had been brutally murdered.  Wyatt blames himself because he feels that if he hadn't driven her out by being such an asshole to her, she'd still be alive.

[GoMocs]

HELP ME! 

Okay, in the recent episode of with the French Indian War and they were stranded, Rufus talked of the "protocol" and he buried the message in a container.

How did the people in the lab know where to dig to find it? The "protocol" would be for Rufus to bury a message, but without GPS how could Rufus find the exact spot to bury it if it was predetermined so the present day people would know where to look?

[Bort]

12 minutes ago, GoMocs said:

HELP ME! 

Okay, in the recent episode of with the French Indian War and they were stranded, Rufus talked of the "protocol" and he buried the message in a container.

How did the people in the lab know where to dig to find it? The "protocol" would be for Rufus to bury a message, but without GPS how could Rufus find the exact spot to bury it if it was predetermined so the present day people would know where to look?

The lab people knew where the time machine had landed in the past. They had that information. The protocol was for the message to be buried however-many-feet it was from the front of the time machine. 

[KaveDweller]

On 12/6/2016 at 11:01 AM, Ripley68 said:

I can't think TOO much about time paradoxes, and try not to because hey, science FICTION!   I tend to look at Timeless' time travel rules like Days of Future Past - only the person(s) going back to the past remember all the history between the past travel date and the date they left in the present, everyone else only knows history from the time the past was messed with.  On Timeless it would make more sense if the time travelers start to forget the original past just so their brains don't explode.

I can see Wyatts wife being saved - but they're divorced.  Weren't they fighting?

They weren't divorced. They had a fight the night she disappeared/died, but they were still married and generally happy.

[dargosmydaddy]

32 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

They weren't divorced. They had a fight the night she disappeared/died, but they were still married and generally happy.

I think Ripley was trying to say that they were fighting in the original timeline, but that they might end up divorced in a future altered timeline. (Like, he comes back, discovers she's alive, but they're divorced.)

[Ripley68]

Thanks Dargos, yes, that is what I meant.

[KaveDweller]

On December 7, 2016 at 7:28 PM, dargosmydaddy said:

I think Ripley was trying to say that they were fighting in the original timeline, but that they might end up divorced in a future altered timeline. (Like, he comes back, discovers she's alive, but they're divorced.)

That makes much more sense.

[shapeshifter]

On December 7, 2016 at 6:28 PM, dargosmydaddy said:

I think Ripley was trying to say that they were fighting in the original timeline, but that they might end up divorced in a future altered timeline. (Like, he comes back, discovers she's alive, but they're divorced.)

I prefer her to be married to someone else and not having any memory of Wyatt, because it leaves less room for a triangle (I loathe relationship triangles both on TV and IRL).

[henripootel]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

prefer her to be married to someone else and not having any memory of Wyatt, because it leaves less room for a triangle (I loathe relationship triangles both on TV and IRL).

Me too, plus it'd be fairly poignant and a very real concern for time travelers.  Your own wife doesn't remember you but is happy, albeit with someone else.  That'd hurt. 

[wilnil]

The problem with TV/movie time travel (and, to be fair, in a lot of novels, too) is primarily that the "rules" that get put into place are those that take the plot in the direction the writers want to go. So in Timeless, we get the "you can't go back to a time (or maybe a time AND place, if Anthony's case is supposed to be consistent and not just the writers screwing up) where you already exist" rule, even though there's no logical justification for it, because it helps the plotline to keep the team from getting do-overs.

But although we've kicked around scenarios that would allow two versions of the same person to exist in the present (for example, the team returning to the present after making a change that results in one or more of them never having been recruited onto the time-travel team in the first place), I wonder if the writers have contemplated such a situation at all and whether they'd try to write around it with a new "rule" -- and what that rule could be.

Here's what got me thinking about it: If Flynn ever succeeds in getting rid of Rittenhouse to save his family, he's created/entered a timeline in which younger Garcia Flynn never had any reason to steal a time machine (assuming one even exists in the new timeline). So the options for how that shakes out are:

1. Now he can't return to the present at all, because that would put him in a time and (potentially) place where he already exists (the corollary of the show's established time-travel rule).
2. He can return to the present, but his other self is there too, so he has to either live with the fact that the wife and kids are the other Quinn's family and just admire them from a distance; kill and replace the other Flynn to get his family "back"; or hope the new Flynns are into threesomes.
3. When he returns, he automatically replaces or "merges with" the Flynn of the new timeline, either with original Flynn's memories, new Flynn's, or a mix of both (henceforth known as the "Flash bullshit hand-waving" scenario).
4. He returns, but the new timeline is so different that he never existed in it. (If his original wife still exists, he at least can try to woo her and create a new family, assuming she didn't marry someone else.)
5. It's moot because the plotline will never allow him to succeed.

The same will apply to Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt if they're back in the past with Flynn if/when he succeeds, too, since in a timeline without a Flynn threat, they'd never have been sent back in time in the first place.

This is probably just cynicism talking, but my bet right now is that the writers will, if they get the opportunity, end the show with scenario 3 -- the bullshit one -- because it allows for a "satisfying" ending, with Flynn and the team being the only ones who know that there ever was a Rittenhouse and that the plucky heroes saved the world from it. 

[Terrafamilia]

The wikipedia in my universe says Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down in Bienville Parrish, Louisiana rather than Arkansas. Hmm, maybe that's why Lucy didn't recall anything important about the place and time. Her info is out of date. The prior excursions into the pre-1934 past had enough of a ripple effect to throw that out of whack. Now the producers have a ready made explanation for any historical errors they make - the butterfly did it.

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

So I just thought of something while writing out some thoughts in the new episode thread.....

I don't think the show will ever really go this specific route in storytelling, but what would happen if history was changed so that its new course prevented one of the three being born [IE, their parents never met, one of the (biological) parents died before meeting the other/conception, etc]?  Would the affected person immediately cease to exist?  Would they go back to the present to find that nobody knows or recognizes them, aside from the other two (& Flynn's time-traveling group)?

Just curious on how the rules of time travel in general would define that type of situation and how it would be handled on this specific show [or any other T-T show].

[phalange]

58 minutes ago, iRarelyWatchTV36 said:

I don't think the show will ever really go this specific route in storytelling, but what would happen if history was changed so that its new course prevented one of the three being born [IE, their parents never met, one of the (biological) parents died before meeting the other/conception, etc]?  Would the affected person immediately cease to exist?  Would they go back to the present to find that nobody knows or recognizes them, aside from the other two (& Flynn's time-traveling group)?

Probably the latter. Even if they do something in the past to screw things up to the point where they're never conceived in the first place, they'd still be in the past so the effects wouldn't be immediate and therefore wouldn't make them instantly disappear. Being in the time machine keeps people/things from disappearing even if they no longer exist in the present. It's why Lucy still has the necklace with the picture of her sister and why Agent Christopher gave Lucy the USB with the memories of her family and told her to keep it on board.  

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

I can honestly say that I hope this show gets another couple of seasons just for the fact that there are so many plot lines to unravel and see where they ultimately lead.  Even if the depictions are unsatisfactory or hard to understand, at least it would be done.  Nothing like a show you find interesting and/or entertaining getting cut short and lots of things left twisting in the wind.

[Notwisconsin]

I figure the two go back to "Pottersville" (see It's a Wonderful Life), and with alt-Flynn try to catch the evil Lucy.

[ChromaKelly]

I am really bothered by Flynn's cavalier attitude towards brandishing modern weapons in the past. That could have serious consequences.
Also, all the redshirts and extras that have died - those deaths should be having some ripple effects. Now they had Gen. Cornwallis die, and if that doesn't have some major consequences, then I'll be really annoyed. Would whichever general that replaces him still surrender? What about the other things he does?

[pumpkin]

they definitely should've caused more butterfly effect type situations by now- they threw in the lucy's sister stuff and that was cool to see some effects because of their actions, but the fact is we can't possibly know what changes should've happened in history and to their present because of all those people who survived when they should've died or died when they were meant to go on and have kids and influence others and lord knows what else. in either of the possible time travel theories we're working with (quantum fork or overwrite), this stuff should have a greater and more widespread effect then changes to a few lines of the wiki page that the ground team pull up to show the travel team about the specific event they were just a part of upon their return. but ive let all that stuff slide bc the show is fun and its TV and it would be asking this show to be a lot smarter and better thought out then it is to have them account for all that stuff (though it did piss me off when they let flynn mess with his own family history, thats seriously pushing it there-one person who survived on the hindenberg by accident caused lucy's mom never meet her step dad thus her not having a sister, her mom not being sick and her having a fiancé but despite the millions of changes to flynns moms life that having a kid vs having a dead kid entails she still meets flynns dad and has flynn? come on!) 

I'm excited to see where they go with it from here because a) i like the team even if some characters are a bit cliche, and b) I'm curious to see how the writers get themselves out of the time travel plot problems they create! if flynn succeeds in destroying rittenhouse, he erases not only the need for him to steal a time machine in the first place, but also the financial resources for there to have ever been a time machine since rittenhouse bankrolled the thing in the first place! how ya gonna deal, writers?? just gonna let the rittenhouse organization live? it'll be fun to see :)

Edited December 15, 2016 by pumpkin

[legaleagle53]

3 hours ago, pumpkin said:

I'm excited to see where they go with it from here because a) I like the team even if some characters are a bit cliche, and b) I'm curious to see how the writers get themselves out of the time travel plot problems they create! If Flynn succeeds in destroying Rittenhouse, he erases not only the need for him to steal a time machine in the first place, but also the financial resources for there to have ever been a time machine since Rittenhouse bankrolled the thing in the first place! How ya gonna deal, writers?? Just gonna let the Rittenhouse organization live? It'll be fun to see :)

Exactly.  That's a variation of the Grandfather Paradox.  If Flynn goes back in time and destroys Rittenhouse, then there's no need for him to go back in time at all (because there's no Rittenhouse to destroy), so he doesn't go back in time and Rittenhouse is founded anyway, so he then has to go back in time and destroy it, meaning there's then no reason to go back in time, so Rittenhouse is founded, so he must go back in time to destroy it, etc.  Lather, rinse, and repeat for all eternity.

[Terrafamilia]

The time travelers are shown to be pretty much insulated from any changes they have caused while traveling. Instead of a Grandfather paradox you would more likely end up with the crew being temporally orphaned. They return to the "present" and find that there was no time travel program in the first place. There may or may not be another Lucy, Wyatt, and/or Rufus going about their respective businesses.

[Camera One]

If they know that this series will only have a limited run (let's say one season or two), maybe they could spend the latter half of the final season trying to re-create the conditions that would allow them to exist (eg. convincing Mason to build a time machine since Rittenhouse is not around).

[LoneHaranguer]

If the team were to come back to a universe where there was no time travel program, they'd still have the time machine they arrived in. When they travel it's always with the machine, rather than by themselves, as with Quantum Leap or Time Tunnel where the machinery stays at the base. The team would still be marooned until they could find a way to recharge it, something Flynn arranged to not have to do with his.

[shapeshifter]

Or, if this show is renewed enough times to need something fresh, they could travel to a time with more advanced machines, and "borrow" one for reverse engineering.

[markx]

The characters seem to think they live in an overwriting timeline at least - in a quantum-forking time line, there'd never be any point in sending time travellers after Flynn ("Oh he's travelled to the past? Who cares, we'll never seem him again"). Even in they live in one of the branches where Flynn arrives, there's still never any point from their perspective to send other time travellers.

Incidentally, an excellent book for exploring the possibilities of quantum-forking time travel is The Man Who Folded Himself - even though paradoxes can't happen in this form of time travel, the book shows how things can get very complex and confusing.

Regarding what happened in an overwriting timeline to the Lucy B with a fiance? Arguably it's the same thing that happens to Lucy's sister from the original timeline - they're overwritten. (It's a bit different though - Lucy's sister never existed in the new timeline, whilst Lucy B existed until she time travelled.) But how can the team know that they are the original travellers - that they won't themselves be replaced with alternate versions of themselves?

It would be fun to see one of the following responses to Agent Christopher's USB stick:

• "Sure. Oh by the way, here's the USB stick that your alternate self already gave me."
• It turns out she never had the wife in the original timeline.
• A future change means she now has a different wife that she's happily married with. Does Lucy still tell?
• The time travel machine gets weighed down with all the USB sticks and hard disks of all the employees. Not just once - but every time they return, the new alternate versions want to save their version of reality.

 

On 10/12/2016 at 8:37 PM, Terrafamilia said:

The wikipedia in my universe says Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down in Bienville Parrish, Louisiana rather than Arkansas. Hmm, maybe that's why Lucy didn't recall anything important about the place and time. Her info is out of date. The prior excursions into the pre-1934 past had enough of a ripple effect to throw that out of whack. Now the producers have a ready made explanation for any historical errors they make - the butterfly did it.

Yes - an unfortunate downside to this is that the more things change, the less useful Lucy becomes as the historian. They'd be better off just reading off Wikipedia.

Edited January 17, 2017 by mdwh

[wilnil]

10 hours ago, mdwh said:

The characters seem to think they live in an overwriting timeline at least - in a quantum-forking time line, there'd never be any point in sending time travellers after Flynn ("Oh he's travelled to the past? Who cares, we'll never seem him again"). Even in they live in one of the branches where Flynn arrives, there's still never any point from their perspective to send other time travellers.

This is an excellent point -- they're definitely in a timeline where Flynn has already time-traveled, because they've detected his time and place of arrival, but if they believe it's a forking model, then sending back their own team would just create a new branch separate from the line of the Mason Industries crew that sent them. So Mason & co., whether correctly or not, must believe it's an overwriting model.

Here's another bit of speculation on how time travel works here that might explain why the changes to the present day are always so minor even with, e.g., the death of Cornwallis. It isn't really logical, but then again, neither is the "can't travel to a time when you already exist" rule: Maybe the appearance of a time traveler in the past, while allowing change in/branching of a timeline, limits the changes to those that would still allow for the traveler to be born and the time machine to be built -- so that the traveler's own existence in the past remains consistent with the new/changed timeline's history. 

If this is the case, then Flynn's on a fool's errand -- the new timeline will always be one where something has driven him into an insane (literally, it appears) quest to steal a time machine and change the past.

[Cranberry]

Compiling the mentions of time travel rules here!

Regarding going back to a place/time in which you already exist:

Pilot:

"Okay, just one thing that I don't get. Apparently, this time machine works. So why don't we just go back five minutes before Flynn stormed in and then shoot him in the face?"

"You can't go back to any time where you already exist, where you might meet a double of yourself. It is bad for the fabric of reality."

"Define 'bad.'"

"We tried it once. The pilot came back, but not all of him."

1x06:

"You know the rules as well as I do. Can't go back to any time I already exist."

1x11:

"Now, we both know you can't go back to any time you already exist, so it's not like you can stop the murder or even... even stop Wes. No. You'd have to go back in time... further."

------------

And regarding whether we're dealing with parallel universes or different timelines or whatever:

Pilot:

"Ever heard of a closed timelike curve?"*

"I... excuse me, a closed timelike what?"

"Right. Say, this, is the fabric of space-time. Now, if you get a powerful enough gravitational field, you could actually bend it back on itself, creating a kind of loop that would allow you to cross over to an earlier point."

"An... an earlier point in time, you mean?"

"What he means is, Mr. Mason invented a time machine."

1x02:

"Lucy, we have a dossier on you, and it doesn't say anything about a sister."

"Look, this is her right here."

"You wore this on the trip back to 1937? That is incredible. You took it from a timeline where your sister existed, carried it here, to where she doesn't."

1x09:

"Look, Rufus, before I worked for the NCTC, I won't say how long ago, I was just a cop. And I still am. What do I know about closed-timeline-curves and butterfly effect crap?"*

-------

On why they need to follow Flynn immediately instead of just going back to slightly before whatever time he traveled to:

1x02:

"I'm sorry, Lucy, but Flynn is hours ahead of us. We don't have time for this."

"Why not? We have a time machine, don't we?"

"Flynn could be decimating history right now. Our reality could change like that any second. You need to go."

-------

(Transcripts are all here if anyone wants to search for exact wording from the show!)

*Here's an article on closed timelike curves.

*"Butterfly effect crap" suggests an overwriting timeline ("History is highly vulnerable.  Any Time Travel 'erases' the original and replaces it with a freshly generated new version").

[orza]

It's not as easy as just avoid any place you recall visiting in the past at a specific time. There is always the risk on any of their trips that they alter their own past in ways that result in them visiting places they never visited in their original time line. They can't go back to any time period in their lifetime because they can never be  sure that a younger version of themselves is not already at the time and location they go back to.

Suppose Rufus never visited the Grand Canyon in his life. On one of their trips to the past, decades before Rufus is born, they change something that has the downstream result that Rufus's family takes a vacation trip to the Grand Canyon when he is a child. If a mission requires the gang to go back to the Grand Canyon and arrive the same day young Rufus and his family are there, then Rufus could run into his younger self and bad things will happen.

We saw that new memories of Lucy's altered past did not flood into her mind the moment she returned to the present. She had to go home and actually see her healthy mother to realize that her past had been altered and she no longer had a sister. To go back to the above example, Rufus wouldn't necessarily know that he visited the Grand Canyon in his altered timeline without some external cue, such as seeing a souvenir snow globe on display in his mother's living room that wasn't there before.

Edited January 30, 2017 by orza

[ketose]

Why you can't go back to a time you've already been in (I assume that means either naturally or through time travel) is an interesting question. The only thing I could think of would be something that makes you who you are is so unique that the universe can't accept duplicates in space-time. Now, the only matter that doesn't change are the protons in the atoms in all matter. But if they were unique, no one could travel in time ever because the ingredients would always be there. So, either your unique sentient frequency (science fiction) or your immutable soul (metaphysical) is the roadblock.

[green]

On 1/28/2017 at 10:25 PM, Randomosity said:

Agree to disagree. We don't know if Rufus was made to say it that way intentionally or not. I don't think it's as clear cut as you seem to think it is, especially given Anthony being present for the moon landing.

 

8 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

For some reason I thought it took place in Washington DC. I don't remember if that's from something they said/showed, or I just totally made it up.

What made it ambiguous was Rufus saying you can't go back to a time where you might meet a double of yourself. Because they all exist in the year 2000, but if they know they weren't in Canada that year (for example), going back to Canada in the year 2000 wouldn't risk them meeting a double of themselves. It's weird/confusing to reference meeting a double of yourself if meeting a double isn't part of the problem.

But in more recent episodes, they have been leaving off that part of the explanation, which suggests to me that the writers weren't sure what they wanted the rule to be early on, and then settled it later and started clarifying how they stated the rule.

Yep I totally agree they can be back during their lifetime, just not in a place they could meet themselves physically.  And it's been proven just not once (moon landing cited above) but twice on the show because Anthony is Flynn's pilot and just cause the actor isn't available or written into every episode he is technically there.  So yes he was seen on screen in the moon landing one (1969).  But while off screen he was technically there for the Watergate episode.  That's even more into his timeline being 1972 (break-in) through 1973-74 ... story breaks and investigations, hearing and Nixon resigning.

Maybe the writers wished they could now change the show as to prevent the characters to returning to a time that they lived in and/or had visited but it is a done deal and in the show's bible at this point.  No backsies ... even in time travel shows.

So you can travel back to your own timeline period.  That is a show fact now proved by Anthony and the dialogue cited above.  Period.  And you can even meet yourself in that timeline (aka physics-wise it is doable) but meeting yourself is totally disastrous to you surviving.  But even then the pilot didn't just disappear poof.  He was missing half his body when brought back so who knows what would happen -- or not happen -- to the next guy who meets himself.  It seems more like Russian roulette more than poof you are gone magically if you meet yourself.

I agree with posters above a great episode would be them running around in the same time period they visited before trying to avoid their double.  That would be totally awesome and funny at the same time.  Maybe even the bad guy red shirts that episode keep running into themselves and horrible things happen to them right and left.

[KaveDweller]

17 hours ago, green said:

So you can travel back to your own timeline period.  That is a show fact now proved by Anthony and the dialogue cited above.  Period.  And you can even meet yourself in that timeline (aka physics-wise it is doable) but meeting yourself is totally disastrous to you surviving.  But even then the pilot didn't just disappear poof.  He was missing half his body when brought back so who knows what would happen -- or not happen -- to the next guy who meets himself.  It seems more like Russian roulette more than poof you are gone magically if you meet yourself.

That's true, saying they "can't" do it isn't accurate because they did it. We don't know if the pilot with the problem had attempted to just go back to his own timeline or attempted to meet himself to see what happened, but we know something bad happened. But he still did it and the universe didn't implode or anything. So, why wouldn't Flynn just go back to save his wife and kid, then accept that he had to stay back in time because coming home might kill him. Or risk it, because his wife and kid's life is worth it/more important. He already said he doesn't intend to be with them after he saves them because bad for them (I think).

I can see why the story about the other pilot would stop most sane people from attempting such an act, but Flynn has proven to not be sane.

[legaleagle53]

21 hours ago, green said:

 

Yep I totally agree they can be back during their lifetime, just not in a place they could meet themselves physically.  And it's been proven just not once (moon landing cited above) but twice on the show because Anthony is Flynn's pilot and just cause the actor isn't available or written into every episode he is technically there.  So yes he was seen on screen in the moon landing one (1969).  But while off screen he was technically there for the Watergate episode.  That's even more into his timeline being 1972 (break-in) through 1973-74 ... story breaks and investigations, hearing and Nixon resigning.

Maybe the writers wished they could now change the show as to prevent the characters to returning to a time that they lived in and/or had visited but it is a done deal and in the show's bible at this point.  No backsies ... even in time travel shows.

So you can travel back to your own timeline period.  That is a show fact now proved by Anthony and the dialogue cited above.  Period.  And you can even meet yourself in that timeline (aka physics-wise it is doable) but meeting yourself is totally disastrous to you surviving.  But even then the pilot didn't just disappear poof.  He was missing half his body when brought back so who knows what would happen -- or not happen -- to the next guy who meets himself.  It seems more like Russian roulette more than poof you are gone magically if you meet yourself.

I agree with posters above a great episode would be them running around in the same time period they visited before trying to avoid their double.  That would be totally awesome and funny at the same time.  Maybe even the bad guy red shirts that episode keep running into themselves and horrible things happen to them right and left.

Anthony's backstory hasn't been revealed yet.  How do you know he's not from far enough in the future that he can easily travel back to 1962, 1969, or 1972 without violating the "no going back to an era where you already exist" rule?  Period.

[methodwriter85]

Rufus said that it was "pushing" it for him to be in March 1983 because he was born in December 1983.

I don't think the show is ever going to reveal how Anthony was able to be in 1969 when he's very, very clearly a man over the age of 50.

Edited January 31, 2017 by methodwriter85

[Terrafamilia]

I know it's beating a dead Schrödinger's horse by now but if Lucy had taken that one last foray into the past to recover her sister and had been successful she would end up returning to a present were she would have had no reason for that last trip. In that timeline an extra time machine with an extra time team pops into existence. If that timeline's team had gone on one last trip into the past for some other reason (to save Jessica) at the same time, that team, if successful, would return as a second extra machine and team.

If they get a second season I kinda hope they really go all out timey wimey and take the paradox fallout seriously.

[Sandman]

On 2016-11-14 at 10:14 PM, Syme said:

Why does a time machine need all those giant spinning gears, anyhow?

They put the wibbly-wobbly in the timey-wimey ... stuff? The Rule of Cool?

[ketose]

A "real" time machine would probably involve a spacecraft and the event horizon of a black hole. Any of this other stuff is just a variation of H.G. Wells' chair and a spinning wheel.

[catsitter]

The season (or series?) finale has just been shown in the UK, and I'm puzzling over Lucy's journal.  Up until the final episode, my best guess was that it was written by some Rittenhouse person who had samples of Lucy's handwriting and knew her well enough to fake it (maybe the history professor who taught both Lucy and that woman who had memorised the list of Rittenhouse members?  Or one of Lucy's relatives?)  But now that Flynn has said that he was given it by an older Lucy (who had "aged well"), how did that happen exactly?  I can't see how there can be a fixed time loop whereby "our Lucy" writes the journal and then travels back in time to give it to Flynn (for one thing, she has no need to write it now, since he gave her the written version in this episode, so if she did go back in time to give it to him, closing the loop, it would be one of those "bootstraps" paradoxes where it was never written at all.)

I don't think Flynn jumped forward in time to get the journal from an older Lucy (and it would have had to be to a time after his own death, or the time jump would have killed him) because the people at Mason Industries could track his jumps and they never said he went to the future. So it seems that in the original timeline (before the show started), Flynn stole the time machine, Lucy and the team chased after him, Lucy wrote the journal and ended up working with Flynn, but wasn't satisfied with the outcome, and she waited until there was a pilot young enough not to exist in 2016, then jumped back to give Flynn the journal so things would work out differently somehow.  And it must have been important enough to her that she would die for it, because the time jump would kill her as she already existed in 2016.

[legaleagle53]

8 hours ago, catsitter said:

The season (or series?) finale has just been shown in the UK, and I'm puzzling over Lucy's journal.  Up until the final episode, my best guess was that it was written by some Rittenhouse person who had samples of Lucy's handwriting and knew her well enough to fake it (maybe the history professor who taught both Lucy and that woman who had memorised the list of Rittenhouse members?  Or one of Lucy's relatives?)  But now that Flynn has said that he was given it by an older Lucy (who had "aged well"), how did that happen exactly?  I can't see how there can be a fixed time loop whereby "our Lucy" writes the journal and then travels back in time to give it to Flynn (for one thing, she has no need to write it now, since he gave her the written version in this episode, so if she did go back in time to give it to him, closing the loop, it would be one of those "bootstraps" paradoxes where it was never written at all.)

I don't think Flynn jumped forward in time to get the journal from an older Lucy (and it would have had to be to a time after his own death, or the time jump would have killed him) because the people at Mason Industries could track his jumps and they never said he went to the future. So it seems that in the original timeline (before the show started), Flynn stole the time machine, Lucy and the team chased after him, Lucy wrote the journal and ended up working with Flynn, but wasn't satisfied with the outcome, and she waited until there was a pilot young enough not to exist in 2016, then jumped back to give Flynn the journal so things would work out differently somehow.  And it must have been important enough to her that she would die for it, because the time jump would kill her as she already existed in 2016.

The showrunners have hinted that at some point in the future, someone will have solved the "no going back to a time when you already exist" conundrum, thus enabling a future Lucy to travel back to 2016 to give Flynn the journal.  We'll have to see whether that's addressed in Season 2 (if there IS a Season 2).

[catsitter]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.  After I posted, I realised that my theory didn't work because it would mean they should have bumped into the previous versions of themselves on their time jumps, and would all have died!  So I'm back to thinking the journal is a fake and that either Flynn was lying about meeting old Lucy, or she was in on the fakery (or someone brought Lucy's doppelganger great-grandmother forward in time to impersonate her.) 

[KaveDweller]

21 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

The showrunners have hinted that at some point in the future, someone will have solved the "no going back to a time when you already exist" conundrum, 

How convenient. 

Edited April 1, 2017 by KaveDweller

[ParadoxLost]

So I bailed on this series early because the lack of care about not changing the future by changing the past was making me nuts.  I just watched the last five of the season because I've run out of stuff to watch.

I have a question.  Given that they killed Capone, killed Elliott Ness, "killed" Lindbergh and sent him off to have a secret identity and nothing in the present seemed to have changed that noticeably for anyone, I have a theory.

The past never actually changed to the degree it appears in the premiere.  Its a bullshit scenario cooked up by Rittenhouse to motivate Lucy to continue time travel for some reason.

Her Mom is shady.  Maybe she faked her death and then came back to "prove" that time had undergone a massive change.  The sister is locked up somewhere.  They boyfriend/fiancée Lucy doesn't know is an operative.

Maybe Rittenhouse's problem is that changing history is hard and they need Flynn and Lucy/Rufus/Wyatt blundering their way through the past until a change actually has a ripple effect that changes something in a way they want.

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, ParadoxLost said:

So I bailed on this series early because the lack of care about not changing the future by changing the past was making me nuts.  I just watched the last five of the season because I've run out of stuff to watch.

I have a question.  Given that they killed Capone, killed Elliott Ness, "killed" Lindbergh and sent him off to have a secret identity and nothing in the present seemed to have changed that noticeably for anyone, I have a theory.

The past never actually changed to the degree it appears in the premiere.  Its a bullshit scenario cooked up by Rittenhouse to motivate Lucy to continue time travel for some reason.

Her Mom is shady.  Maybe she faked her death and then came back to "prove" that time had undergone a massive change.  The sister is locked up somewhere.  They boyfriend/fiancée Lucy doesn't know is an operative.

Maybe Rittenhouse's problem is that changing history is hard and they need Flynn and Lucy/Rufus/Wyatt blundering their way through the past until a change actually has a ripple effect that changes something in a way they want.

Nope.  Other episodes also chronicled things that had changed, such as a "new" James Bond novel and movie that were based on Ian Fleming's interaction with the Time Trio which had never existed before as far as they were concerned, and a high school that had been named after "Juliet Shakesman," the otherwise unknown actress (Lucy) who saved Grant's life the night Lincoln was killed.  

And Carol had only been dying from lung cancer -- she was not dead when Lucy went back in time for the first time -- because she had been an inveterate smoker thanks to the man who originally married her before Lucy went back to the Hindenberg (and whom Lucy also grew up knowing and remembering as her father); I doubt very much that Carol would have been a good enough actress to have pulled that act off for years. And there is no explanation of why there is no evidence that Lucy's sister still exists if she was never erased from existence; it wouldn't be that hard for Lucy to track down hospital records or even a birth certificate.  

Nope. Gaslighting Lucy as an explanation simply doesn't cut it the way Occam's Razor does.  The problem is that the writers were simply not as consistent as they should have been when it came to showing changes to the timeline after each trip into the past.

However, the showrunners have promised that in the upcoming season, we WILL start to see changes to the timeline that will involve the Time Trio in more personal ways. They most definitely understood that the lack of consistency regarding that issue was one of the things that drove viewers crazy, and I for one can't wait to see what they have in store.

[wilnil]

4 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

Maybe Rittenhouse's problem is that changing history is hard and they need Flynn and Lucy/Rufus/Wyatt blundering their way through the past until a change actually has a ripple effect that changes something in a way they want.

I've started to think along these lines too in the months since the season finale. My best guess now is that it's actually an Elastic time-travel model: the one in which it's possible for a time traveler to make changes in the past, but history has a "preferred" course (as a river "prefers" to stay in its course), so major changes tend to be avoided by, for example, dead Cornwallis' military protégé succeeding him and doing almost exactly what his mentor would've done. Net result is only the kinds of minor changes the series has shown us: same battles, same outcomes, different name in the history books.

So why did Lucy's present life change so much? Sorry, Luce, you and your family must just not be historically significant, even with the Rittenhouse connection. (Speaking of which: Did it occur to anyone else that the Hindenburg snafu, in preventing Lucy's mom's cancer, did Rittenhouse a big favor? Could the bad guys possibly have engineered it that way somehow?)

[bros402]

8 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

So I bailed on this series early because the lack of care about not changing the future by changing the past was making me nuts.  I just watched the last five of the season because I've run out of stuff to watch.

I have a question.  Given that they killed Capone, killed Elliott Ness, "killed" Lindbergh and sent him off to have a secret identity and nothing in the present seemed to have changed that noticeably for anyone, I have a theory.

The past never actually changed to the degree it appears in the premiere.  Its a bullshit scenario cooked up by Rittenhouse to motivate Lucy to continue time travel for some reason.

Her Mom is shady.  Maybe she faked her death and then came back to "prove" that time had undergone a massive change.  The sister is locked up somewhere.  They boyfriend/fiancée Lucy doesn't know is an operative.

Maybe Rittenhouse's problem is that changing history is hard and they need Flynn and Lucy/Rufus/Wyatt blundering their way through the past until a change actually has a ripple effect that changes something in a way they want.

At the end of the Lindbergh episode, Lucy, or someone, was reading something, and read that he reappeared two weeks later in the French countryside.

[Cranberry]

On 11/26/2016 at 12:49 AM, Cranberry said:

Oh, you know Wyatt has to get his wife back at some point (a lesser show would do this just after he and Lucy hook up. Let's hope this isn't a lesser show).

Did I travel back in time to post that? You'll never know...

Fixed the link to the SF Chronophysics site in my first post on this thread, as it was broken! I'm glad the site's still alive, just with a different URL. It's the best time-travel reference I've found.

[misstwpherecool]

So Flynn stole the time travel machine early in the series. But how did he find out there was one and the organization called Rittenhouse-has this been elaborated on? I forget did they show Flynn's wife yet? How did Rittenhouse get a machine, the machine to plant all the sleeper agents. Did the prototype or final product fall into the wrong hands before Flynn stole it. Theoretically Rittenshouse could've stolen it, did their stuff and returned less than a minute after-I think.

[wilnil]

4 hours ago, misstwpherecool said:

So Flynn stole the time travel machine early in the series. But how did he find out there was one and the organization called Rittenhouse-has this been elaborated on? I forget did they show Flynn's wife yet? How did Rittenhouse get a machine, the machine to plant all the sleeper agents. Did the prototype or final product fall into the wrong hands before Flynn stole it. Theoretically Rittenshouse could've stolen it, did their stuff and returned less than a minute after-I think.

It's been a while since I watched the season 1 episodes, but IIRC, he discovered Rittenhouse's existence while he was an intelligence asset/operative for U.S. intelligence. He poked around and learned more about them, they noticed and sent a hit team to kill him and his family (I guess the idea was to make it look like a botched home invasion), but while he couldn't prevent them from killing his wife and kid, he was able to get away, so they framed him for the deaths. (We've only seen the killings in a snippet, so while we did see the wife and kid briefly, they weren't really full characters as such.) Knowing that Rittenhouse was helping fund Mason's time machine project, he raided the lab in the first episode and stole the final version shortly after its completion, using Anthony (who was working on the project for Mason Industries at the time), and later Emma, to pilot it. Rittenhouse stole the time machine at the end of season 1, using Emma (who had just been revealed as a Rittenhouse plant) as pilot.

Flynn has also gotten information on Rittenhouse and time travel from a journal he says was given to him early in his crusade by a future version of Lucy.