Time Travel, Alternate Timelines

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

I am writing a novel that introduces the idea of a time war. Though this has been done before, I have original ideas. For this discusdion, how do you view alternate timelines? Do you like the idea of alternate timelines coexisting in a time travel created multiverse? Do you like the idea of a single, changing timeline? What's your take on the grandfather and predestination paradoxes? When dealing with multiple or one changing timeline, is any one timeline considered the prime or correct timeline?

 

[Ovation]

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is not possible.

(For dramatic purposes, the singular timeline that needs to be “saved” has a few advantages but I prefer the branching timeline structure as seen in the Kelvinverse films)

 

[Awesome Possum]

Bill & Ted rules, you can go back and forth but you can't change anything. Whatever happened happened and will always happen, you can just go back and see it.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

This makes prison Bill and Ted in the new movie terrifying.

 

[theenglish]

I usually accept any time travel story that stays consistent within its own universe(s). I didn't like Future Guy on Enterprise because it never seemed to have been thought out properly, but I will accept the ever changing realities and futures on Doctor Who because that is how DW establishes its universe.

 

[Myko]

"One changing timeline" makes absolutely no sense, so I despise when fiction does that. Either of the other two variants are fine, although predestination/unchanging is much more interesting.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Why does one, changing timeline make no sense?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Why does one, changing timeline make no sense?

If your past has vanished, do you fade out like Marty McFly, Your memories are altered like in Legends of Tomorrow, You remember both time lines like in the Butterfly effect, you merge with your doppelganger like in Charmed, or you stay exactly the same and try to pretend that everything is not different so they don't throw you in time jail like in Eureka?

 

[valkyrie013]

As Always, depends on what type of story you are telling. Because most time travel stories use the trope to tell a story, so say if your story involves changing history, and your protagonist is the only one that hasn't changed and wants to put history back right, then a changinging main line would work.
So its basically fit to your stories basic idea.
Marty should have been erased the second he interfered with Pops because he changed the when and where his mom and dad "Coupled" to make him, so that particular Egg and swimmer never met, so he was never born. So he should have disapeared like Bruce Willis in Looper once his present ended.
And in BttF 2, i doubt he met doc brown, so he should have dissappeared once Biff changed history, same with Doc.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Doc brown shrunk down riding a dolphin, inside Elaine, Shooting all the Not-Marty-Sperms with a laser zapper.

 

[Kirk Prime]

Ultimately, make your rules and stick by them. When you re-read your story, read it like a smart fan looking to nitpick. Find any hole you can think of, and then close it.

That's the beauty of being the author--you can decide how to fix your problems. It's very hard to do a time travel story without making mistakes. But usually most mistakes are not unfixable.

Here's the problem with multiverse time travel.

I go back in time, I change something. When I do, I become part of a new universe and the universe I left goes along.

If that's true, the stakes are not very high and the only person affected by a change in timeline is me.

In your story, can I get back to my original universe? Either way, there seems to be no purpose to time travel. In your time war, if my enemy travels back in time, I'm not even going to care because he's not affecting MY universe. He'll just disappear and screw up some other universe.

That's the problem with what Abrams tried to do in Star Trek--it ends the stakes.

The other problem is that Star Trek's time travel rules were completely different from what Abrams tried to do, which obviously causes debate as to what actually happened.

If you follow the Roddenberry rules of Star Trek, then the prime universe was erased. If you follow Abrams' rules, then none of the time travel stories before ST09 have any meaning at all.

Borg travel back in time to assimilate Earth? That's their problem. Sure, Picard and crew would love to save them for humanitarian reasons and because the Borg suck, but THEIR world is fine, based on Abrams' rules.

So you need stakes. Star Trek did a lot of things right pre Abrams with time travel.

I would say yes, one timeline, but come up with a way that time travelers are immune to time travel changes.

Maybe the universe doesn't allow a time traveler to prevent his own existence and while killing your grandfather would erase you from records.

 

[RPOW0614]

I like the multiple timelines idea.
If you purposely change history a new timeline should be created.

In the Heinlein books they would label the various timelines by the first person to land on the moon. We live in the "Armstrong" timeline.

 

[BillJ]

Regardless of the story you're telling, don't forget that the reader has to care about the characters/world or the mechanics of time travel won't matter.

I have original ideas.

No one has these. Humans have been telling/writing stories for at least nine thousand years.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'm personally not a fan of the 'Going back in time creates another universe' method of time travel. Mostly because they usually gloss over the moral implications of abandoning your current timeline to find your way into a better one and because of just how little it mentally tracks that you can create another entire universe that easily.

So I tend to favor either the 'You can change the past, pretend butterfly effect isn't a thing' kind of time travel, or the 'What happened, happened, you can go back but can't change anything' kind.

 

[JD]

I prefer either the branching timeline idea, or the single unchanged timeline. Neither are as dramatic as a single timeline that can be changed or erased, but from what little I know of real theories about this kind of stuff, those two seem the most believable.
With the single unchanging timeline, you can get some pretty big dramatic reveals as the hero or heroes realize that no matter what they do things will not change, or that it turns out their time travel is what caused all of the story's drama.
There are still ways to find drama in stories with a branching timeline, you can have the heroes trying to prevent a new timeline being created, or find a way back to their timeline. It also opens up the possibility of traveling to those alternate timelines, which could lead to all sorts of different versions of the world or characters.

 

[Kirk Prime]

Here's the thing--how can any THEORY be right or wrong if there is no real proof that time travel to the past is possible?

The grandfather paradox can never be tested until someone travels in time. You don't even have to kill your grandfather. You can merely do something that prevents you from traveling back in the first place.

 

[JD]

Of course, but there are still scientists out there are who are using what we can do and know now to come up with theories about how it could all work.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The Kelvinverse timeline thing was just a contrivance to keep from erasing the entire franchise history and pissing off fans. In general the single timeline rules apply.

If I ever write a time travel story I’m going to use the Lost rules where you can’t change anything. I’m going to explain it by saying “From the universe’s perspective everything happens at once, so any universe it which time travel ever changed the future is too unstable for any time to exist. Because this universe does exist, we know no time travelers ever changed the past”.

 

[Jayson1]

I think any idea can work depending on the story. Though one thing I do like in alternate timeline stories is the idea that fate might play a role in things happening much like they did in the original idea. Like maybe you go back in time and save JFK but Vietnam still happens and NIxon still get elected. Also years later when you think the world should look very different you still have Clinton get elected in the 90's or 9/11 happens.

I also like the idea of slight alterations. What if 9/11 happen on 9/12. What if the White House was in Philly instead of Washington. Maybe the internet is called the cyberweb. Things like that. One of things I loved about the show "Sliders."

Jason

 

[Kirk Prime]

The Kelvinverse timeline thing was just a contrivance to keep from erasing the entire franchise history and pissing off fans. In general the single timeline rules apply.

I think you're right. Abrams wanted everything but he purposefully talked from both sides of his mouth. If the Kelvin timeline is a different universe, then the Kirk and crew aren't "the real" versions, that we knew for so many years. But if they are the "real" versions, then Abrams essentially wiped them out and everything that we saw for the 43 years before ST09.

It's one or the other.

But based on the rules established in Star Trek, it would be the latter--yet based on what Abrams says, it's the former. It's a debate.

If I ever write a time travel story I’m going to use the Lost rules where you can’t change anything. I’m going to explain it by saying “From the universe’s perspective everything happens at once, so any universe it which time travel ever changed the future is too unstable for any time to exist. Because this universe does exist, we know no time travelers ever changed the past”.

What are the stakes? What happens if you buy that lottery ticket, or a time traveler kills someone's grandfather?

Even if it's not his own grandfather, what would happen there?

I think any idea can work depending on the story. Though one thing I do like in alternate timeline stories is the idea that fate might play a role in things happening much like they did in the original idea. Like maybe you go back in time and save JFK but Vietnam still happens and NIxon still get elected. Also years later when you think the world should look very different you still have Clinton get elected in the 90's or 9/11 happens.

I also like the idea of slight alterations. What if 9/11 happen on 9/12. What if the White House was in Philly instead of Washington. Maybe the internet is called the cyberweb. Things like that. One of things I loved about the show "Sliders."

Jason

Funny--I was reading your post and until I got to the end, I was thinking it sounded like Sliders. Of course universe traveling is different than time traveling.