Time traveling

[JesterFace]

Many documentaries tell us time traveling is basically impossible. Exception is if you go near a strong gravity center, when time for you slows down and when you leave the heavy gravity source, time would've gone faster elsewhere and you end up in the ”future”, but I wouldn't call that time traveling... and there's no way back to the point you left.

So, if time travel is impossible, at least to current knowledge, how do you react to time travel episodes in Star Trek, or other series or movies? Personally... I like to skip them, they make no sense at all to me. Of course it's possible to watch all those things just for their entertainment value, but it just bothers me somehow...

 

[Silvercrest]

The same way I react to FTL travel, teleportation, and all the other impossible things they depict. It's "soft" science fiction presented for entertainment. Light on the science, heavy on the fiction.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I love them. Star Trek is fantasy - warp drive, English speaking humanoid aliens with bumpy foreheads, transporters. None of it will ever happen, it's all make-believe, so why have a problem with time travel? The concept of "what might have been" is an enticing one.

 

[Tosk]

This thread has to be a joke, yeah?

 

[JesterFace]

This thread has to be a joke, yeah?

Trust me, it's not a joke, I take my Star Trek seriously

 

[stardream]

I just go with it, the same as I do with Doctor Who. Some might say that all of Matt Smith's tenure didn't really happen because....well I won't get into it here because it could take days but taken at face value its entertaining.

Now if I try to think about time travel episodes too much it can give me a headache because they rarely close all the loops or solve all the paradoxes. A tricorder or a memory is always left behind...

 

[Melakon]

I tend to like time travel stories in science fiction, particularly those which deal with confronting time loops or a paradox, and not just in Star Trek. I'm not as enthusiastic about stories of time travel into the past, which are often an excuse to dip into the costume warehouse and backlot sets. Though I think one of the better stories is "Back There" from The Twilight Zone.

We're time traveling into the future right now. It will be the future when anyone reads this, though for them it's their present and was written in the past.

 

[Tosk]

This thread has to be a joke, yeah?

Trust me, it's not a joke, I take my Star Trek seriously

Maybe you should also skip all the episodes that feature sound in space?

 

[JesterFace]

This thread has to be a joke, yeah?

Trust me, it's not a joke, I take my Star Trek seriously

Maybe you should also skip all the episodes that feature sound in space?

Or... press mute button during those scenes, which I haven't done...

 

[Captain April]

I have no problems with the time travel, FTL, or any of it. I've always looked at it as our science/technology is not advanced enough to comprehend those things, but one day we will. It makes me hopeful.

 

[Greg Cox]

Star Trek features humans and aliens interbreeding, god-like aliens with magic powers, telepathy, mind-melds, transporter beams, universal translators, artificial gravity, and green Orion slave girls . . . but we're drawing a line at time travel?

Seriously, time-travel has been an SF staple since the days of H.G. Wells. If the episodes are fun and clever, who cares if they could actually happen.

Last time I checked, Vulcans and Klingons weren't real either.

 

[Melakon]

time travel is impossible

OP must be a member of the Vulcan Science Academy.

 

[at Quark's]

Star Trek features humans and aliens interbreeding, god-like aliens with magic powers, telepathy, mind-melds, transporter beams, universal translators, artificial gravity, and green Orion slave girls . . . but we're drawing a line at time travel?

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tleSnj4OD0g[/yt]

(it's just a pity that that's from a time travel story, too )

Seriously though, like most other posters, I see no reason why time travel should be treated any differently than sound in space, transporters, subspace, warp speed (and inconsistent travel times!), parallel universes, amazingly humanoid aliens, universal translators that are capable of translating a never-before-heard language from the first words spoken, etc. etc. etc. etc.

 

[Greg Cox]

Seriously, skipping the time-travel episodes means skipping many enjoyable, sometimes excellent episodes and movies: "City on the Edge of Forever," "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Assignment: Earth," "All Our Yesterdays," The Voyage Home, "Yesterday's Enterprise," "Tapestry," "All Good Things," First Contact, "Little Green Men," "Trials and Tribble-ations," "Future's End," "Relativity," etc.

Seems like a lot of good stuff to miss out on just because you think time travel is somehow more "impossible" than pointy-eared aliens with telepathic powers.

 

[hux]

The idea of disliking time travel episodes because they somehow lack credibility is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. But I have come across that sentiment on here before. It's a little on the severe, humourless side if you ask me though.

I love the time travel episodes (and time travel in general). And picking holes with the plot later on is also part of the fun.

 

[JWPlatt]

time travel is impossible

OP must be a member of the Vulcan Science Academy.

The Vulcan Science Academy has determined that time travel is... unfair.

It might be a good question to ask the OP why they think time travel is the more critical determination, or less believable, than each of the other elements of science fiction listed by various posts here.

 

[Kilana2]

I once attended a Star Trek lecture at a University with Time Travel as main topic. The auditorium was crowded. And the lecturer - Dr. Zitt, who also appears at German Fed Cons - also included the Back to the Future movies. I have to admitt, the theoretical part was a bit complex, but the fun parts were the film clips.....

 

[woodstock]

I like them for the most part, but not so much when they insert characters into significant historical events, i.e. Sisko as Gabriel Bell; Quark, Rom and Nog as the Area 51 aliens, etc, as if history can't take care of itself. The obvious exception being the classic Deep Space Nine-Star Trek: The Original Series-Trouble With Tribbles crossover episode which clarified why the Tribbles kept falling on Kirk's head.

 

[at Quark's]

It might be a good question to ask the OP why they think time travel is the more critical determination, or less believable, than each of the other elements of science fiction listed by various posts here.

Though I'm not the OP, I could think of a reason. While a lot of stuff we see on ST is terribly unlikely, it's still not determined to be patently impossible. Telepathy, for example, might exist somewhere in the universe, even though there is no scientific evidence for any of it right now. Same for all those humanoid aliens -- it's all extremely unlikely, but not impossible. I'm not sure if the transporter is fundamentally impossible , or that the amount of information processing required is just prohibitive (provided you get those famous heisenberg compensators up and running). And so on, and so on. (I won't mention warp travel here because it may be tied to time travel).

Other stuff, like sound in space, may perhaps be in error, but it can just simply be ignored, without any consequences.

Time travel, on the other hand, seems to allow for direct paradoxes, (such as the grandfather paradox) that have to be resolved. And even though explanations exist that resolve these paradoxes (stuff like: "when you travel back in time, change something and go back to your present, you don't actually return to your own universe, blah blah blah", such explanations seem not extremely convincing (though, again, they just might be true) ).

So I'd argue that time travel could result in just having to go that tiny extra length of suspension of disbelief on top of the distance you already had to travel.

I personally don't care, though. It's just science fiction, which I watch for entertainment.

The obvious exception being the classic Deep Space Nine-Star Trek: The Original Series-Trouble With Tribbles crossover episode which clarified why the Tribbles kept falling on Kirk's head.

That was a brilliant episode, even though it was mainly comedic relief. Brilliant even in such small details.

 

[Isolinear]

Just accept that most Science Fiction is actually Fantasy in disguise. Problem solved.

 

[JesterFace]

It might be a good question to ask the OP why they think time travel is the more critical determination, or less believable, than each of the other elements of science fiction listed by various posts here.

It may come down to the fact that we know, basically, how certain things work.

Transporter: E=MC2.

Faster than light travel, she ships never actually reach the speed of light, but arrive at the destination as fast or faster than light by so called dune effect. That's where the warp engines come into play, the warp bubble around the ship shrinks the space in front of the ship and enlarges it behind it.

Even if these things are not possible, at least there's a theory behind them.

For time travel, there is no "explanation", it just happens... And time traveling must be pretty precise, one second in the wrong direction and who knows what might happen.