Spoilers Timeless: Season 1 on NBC
- Thread starter Aragorn
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Or they return to a present day only to have discovered that they had supposed to have had a different third companion who didn't come back with them, and Wyat was never been conscripted to the time team.
"Where's Donna?"
"Who's Donna... Wyat died."
"Who's Wyat?"
So new Wyatt is a replacement for Donna who they never met.
"Where's Donna?"
"Who's Donna... Wyat died."
"Who's Wyat?"
So new Wyatt is a replacement for Donna who they never met.
Which was the end of the first season of (UK) Primeval. 
There should be subtle changes every time they change the past, but there isn't, which means that the writers are dummies, or they think that their audience are dummies.
Look at Frequency, every week, we see the universe remold around the present day heroine 3, maybe 5 times, as her father in the past keeps rerouting the time stream, and that show is made for persons who are not even close to smart.
There should be subtle changes every time they change the past, but there isn't, which means that the writers are dummies, or they think that their audience are dummies.
Look at Frequency, every week, we see the universe remold around the present day heroine 3, maybe 5 times, as her father in the past keeps rerouting the time stream, and that show is made for persons who are not even close to smart.
Yes, I agree with all of your criticisms above. But, I quite enjoyed the episode anyway. The story was very nice and even a bit inspiring. They definitely whitewashed some of the history.
I'm really getting into this series. I was thinking that Anthony is Lucy's father but the description of the father being in politics doesn't sound like him. So, it's more likely Flynn. Totally agree, the folded piece of paper gimmick was cringe worthy.
The cinematography was beautiful for this episode! One very cool aspect of this series is seeing great representations of each time period.
Does anyone one know what know how the ratings are for Timeless? I'm hoping it'll be around for awhile. However, I'm afraid that it'll get canned. It just doesn't feel like the type of show that'll draw in mass audiences. Hopefully, I'm wrong about that!
Mr Awe
Completely agree with this point. There is the genetics side sure. Although, even a tiny change in DNA can produce a huge change. We are after all 99%+ identical genetically. Shoot, we're not even that different from chimps genetically. So, a small genetic change can be huge.
But, the huge butterfly effect in the non-genetics area is enormous. Small changes will get magnified over time. The further back, the great the magnification of the changes in the present day.
Mr Awe
As announced yesterday, its initial 13-episode order has been extended to 16. So I'd guess the ratings are pretty good.
Again: Not "will" get magnified -- can get magnified. The butterfly effect is a metaphor from chaos theory meant to illustrate that causality is not deterministically predictable, that there's no way to know exactly what consequences will result from a given set of initial conditions. You may think you can predict what will happen based on the information you have, but even a tiny fluctuation in something you don't know about can throw off your prediction and give a hugely different result. So to claim that the butterfly effect means that the same outcome is absolutely guaranteed in every case is getting it completely backwards. The whole point is that there is an intrinsic uncertainty in a complex system.
To put it another way: There is more than one butterfly. So whatever ripple effect one butterfly triggers could be cancelled out by the ripples of a different butterfly. Or it could be amplifed by them. There's no way to know which, because there are too many butterflies to keep track of, too many variables interacting and producing chaotic effects. All you can do is define a range of different allowable possibilities, an attractor around which the possible outcomes are likely to cluster, with some being more likely than others. You cannot narrow it down to a single guaranteed outcome.
Still think we're talking past each other. Yes, many BIG moments may happen regardless, or maybe that one person being different does lead to a drastically different outcome, both are certainly possible. The names, faces, and personalities of the people involved in those events should be massively changing every time they sneeze (more or less). people are in different places at different times, impacting other lives differently, having different (or more/less) children, next generation has more changes from original timeline resulting from different starting points, etc. At a macro level, maybe it's not a ton different, pot just got stirred a little differently. At the micro level, should be totally different. Different people alive or dead, different locations, new people that never existed or people that no longer exist, child conceived a moment later and the coin flip says male instead of female this time, etc.
Lot more stuff like the missing sister should be coming up. Almost shouldn't have a standing cast for the home base, or at least should rotate through a bunch of combinations. Why their plots, hidden agendas, and even conversations keep being valid week to week is tough to swallow, as they ARE making changes.
Hindenburg alone should have had more impact. that's 80 years of survivors that now lived instead of died. They're out interacting with people, getting married to people and having kids (some of which should have married other people, so they broke a bunch of family lines if nothing else). Also, since it was a terrorist act/bomb vice a design flaw (as far as they knew), maybe blimps last longer, or planes don't become as popular, so tons of people physically moved around, or at least timing changed. Plus, disaster seems like it was going to happen with that plan eventually, so should be at least one other blimp disaster and new casualties that wouldn't have happened before.
At the big level, time is a river and all that stuff Spock said. Germany was going back to war regardless of who led it, WWI saw to that. But maybe the new guy cuts off that anti-Semitic stuff and there's now an extra 6 million Jews running around the world in 1940s and on, maybe doesn't result in Israel, whole history of the middle east is different. Or maybe the new guy Hans is just as big a nutcase and it looks about the same. Or he's better and Germany conquers Russia. Or just sits tight after Austria/Czechoslavia/Poland and becomes a massive world power. Could definitely go plenty of ways.
At the personal level, should be may more changes. Heck, Wyatt is from Texas, and they messed with local Texas history. Granted not a TON changed this time, because pretty much everyone died anyway, and seems that the civilians got out anyway. All happened a few days earlier, though, so you have the survivors plus the Mexican army all with a couple extra days to go out and impact history. maybe they just hung out and it all evened out. Or Santa Anna attacks his next target early and changes the outcome there. Or just hires more soldiers with his new bag of gold, and that turns a tide somewhere. These minor changes could mean nothing, or Wyatt could have been replaced with someone else suddenly as a result. Or still basically exists but comments about the Alamo being different than he pictured when in school in Arkansas as a kid...
Lot more stuff like the missing sister should be coming up. Almost shouldn't have a standing cast for the home base, or at least should rotate through a bunch of combinations. Why their plots, hidden agendas, and even conversations keep being valid week to week is tough to swallow, as they ARE making changes.
Hindenburg alone should have had more impact. that's 80 years of survivors that now lived instead of died. They're out interacting with people, getting married to people and having kids (some of which should have married other people, so they broke a bunch of family lines if nothing else). Also, since it was a terrorist act/bomb vice a design flaw (as far as they knew), maybe blimps last longer, or planes don't become as popular, so tons of people physically moved around, or at least timing changed. Plus, disaster seems like it was going to happen with that plan eventually, so should be at least one other blimp disaster and new casualties that wouldn't have happened before.
At the big level, time is a river and all that stuff Spock said. Germany was going back to war regardless of who led it, WWI saw to that. But maybe the new guy cuts off that anti-Semitic stuff and there's now an extra 6 million Jews running around the world in 1940s and on, maybe doesn't result in Israel, whole history of the middle east is different. Or maybe the new guy Hans is just as big a nutcase and it looks about the same. Or he's better and Germany conquers Russia. Or just sits tight after Austria/Czechoslavia/Poland and becomes a massive world power. Could definitely go plenty of ways.
At the personal level, should be may more changes. Heck, Wyatt is from Texas, and they messed with local Texas history. Granted not a TON changed this time, because pretty much everyone died anyway, and seems that the civilians got out anyway. All happened a few days earlier, though, so you have the survivors plus the Mexican army all with a couple extra days to go out and impact history. maybe they just hung out and it all evened out. Or Santa Anna attacks his next target early and changes the outcome there. Or just hires more soldiers with his new bag of gold, and that turns a tide somewhere. These minor changes could mean nothing, or Wyatt could have been replaced with someone else suddenly as a result. Or still basically exists but comments about the Alamo being different than he pictured when in school in Arkansas as a kid...
It can be. It does not always have to be. You're only looking at one side of a two-sided issue. What I keep trying to explain is that a small fluctuation can be either amplified or cancelled out by other factors around it. No single factor is absolutely determinative. Its impact, or lack thereof, depends on how it interacts with the millions of other factors going on around it. Sometimes, yes, of course, in the right circumstances, that minor fluctuation will trigger an avalanche of changes. But in many other circumstances, it will just be outweighed by all the other causative influences and be damped out to nothing. A pebble can start an avalanche, but not every pebble will. It has to be a pebble that lands at the right place and time to trigger a chain reaction. And that's more about the larger circumstances around it than it is about the individual pebble.
Again, for big things, sure. Not expecting it to look like another Earth version from The Flash every week, just should be more different in the personnel department, as those would be constantly changing.
Trying your analogy: after a wave hits the beach, the beach looks pretty much the same. Another wave, same beach. If you identified each grain of sand and it's location first, though, it's a way different beach each time. Different sand in different locations, some new sand came in with the wave, some sand that was there was washed away, etc.
So while they can say they generally saved the timeline, or history, or whatever each week, I'd argue that most of the time, there's still a ton of micro-changes. As you said, whether those add up to big Macro changes or get damped down is certainly variable. The micro changes are definitely happening, though.
Trying your analogy: after a wave hits the beach, the beach looks pretty much the same. Another wave, same beach. If you identified each grain of sand and it's location first, though, it's a way different beach each time. Different sand in different locations, some new sand came in with the wave, some sand that was there was washed away, etc.
So while they can say they generally saved the timeline, or history, or whatever each week, I'd argue that most of the time, there's still a ton of micro-changes. As you said, whether those add up to big Macro changes or get damped down is certainly variable. The micro changes are definitely happening, though.
Not in every case like clockwork, though. That's what I'm saying -- that you can't apply a single generalization to every instance. You're insisting on stating it in terms of blanket absolutes, and it's more unpredictable than that. Some changes will have less impact than others. Some will be damped out entirely. And the greater the number of generations between the cause and the effect, the more likely the damping is. See the graphs in the links I gave the other day about the number of genetic ancestors you have relative to your genealogical ancestors. In the first few generations, the number of genetic ancestors curves upward sharply, as we would intuitively expect -- but once you get to 8-10 generations, the curve flattens and you never have more than 120 or so genetic ancestors (at least autosomally speaking) in any generation, even as your number of genealogical ancestors continues to increase exponentially. The problem is that the intuitive understanding is right up to a point, but it ignores another factor that comes into play over time, specifically that the number of distinct genetic chromosomal building blocks we inherit is finite and so eventually we start getting ancestors who contribute no genes at all to us.
And the same is true with your assumption here. You're right about the part of the process that you're describing, but that is only true up to a point. It's intuitively easy to understand how a cause can lead to progressively larger effects, but it's not as easy to grasp how it can be damped or cancelled out by a million other causal factors that are operating at the same time.
But I'm not talking about the sand directly touched by the waves. As I've said repeatedly, I'm talking about events much further down the chain of causation. If A changes B, then B might change C and C might change D and so on down to J or M or Q. But any one of those potential changes might get cancelled out somehow. Changing A might change B and C, but C might fail to change D, and so everything from D on down would be the same. Some things are easier to change than others. Some changes would just fizzle out anyway. Say, if a different person lives hundreds of years ago and has a different daughter who has a different son, those changes are significant at the time; but if the daughter's son lives in a town that gets wiped out by the plague when he's 10 years old, then his being a different person will have no effect on the family lineage beyond that point. Not every change propagates endlessly. Some of them have a finite effect.
I agree with the last part you're talking about, not everything carries through and will sometimes just die out or not matter. Still think the distinction is that you're arguing events (which I agree more with) and I'm arguing the actual physical people involved. Change people, and the change can't fizzle out (other than it being a dead end, like messing up people a week before Hiroshima or something). Change may not matter to how history unfolds, but X can't begat Y who can't begat Z and so on. Don't see how that problem goes away. may be localized to a population or geographic area at times, but don't think you can walk it back after it happens, it's out in the world.
Problem with shows like this, though, is that to make it interesting for the viewers, they tend to stick to the 'big' moments and locations. Which probably likens the increase of the changes mattering. Screw around in small town in Nebraska in the 70s, more likely for the change to peter out vice messing with the big name historical figures in the pivotal historical moments. And maybe it stops at the change being that kids memorize a different assassin's name for Lincoln. But more you mess with the big events, more likely for big change.
Problem with shows like this, though, is that to make it interesting for the viewers, they tend to stick to the 'big' moments and locations. Which probably likens the increase of the changes mattering. Screw around in small town in Nebraska in the 70s, more likely for the change to peter out vice messing with the big name historical figures in the pivotal historical moments. And maybe it stops at the change being that kids memorize a different assassin's name for Lincoln. But more you mess with the big events, more likely for big change.
I've given you links to articles demonstrating that, yes, it can fizzle out. You don't have just one line of ancestry, you have thousands if you go back far enough. Ten generations back, you have 1024 different direct ancestors, only 120-odd of which contribute any genes to your biology. Kill off or replace any of the other 900 ancestors and your genes will not be altered at all. And if something as basic as your genes can be unaltered, then surely it must be possible for other phenomena like personal activities and relationships to have their long-term impacts similarly damped out. Of all the thousands or millions of different causal threads shaping your past, only a finite number will have a pivotal effect on the events that lead to your existence, and those will swamp the influence of the rest.
It's chaos theory again. Strange attractors. There's a range of different possibilities, but they are "attracted" toward certain patterns, and so the further an outcome gets from one of those patterns, the less likely it becomes. Basically, all the millions of variables operating together conspire to push things in certain directions, and that would tend to cancel out changes that pushed in different directions. Think of it like marbles in a bowl, say. It's easier to get a marble to move closer to the center/bottom of the bowl, in the direction that it's attracted toward, then it is to get it to move away from that attraction.
How about this: You're talking about events and people as two different matters because events are big and people are small. But I'm talking about a different kind of big/small distinction. The interval between parent and grandchild is small, but the interval between ancestors and descendants 10 or 15 generations apart is large. The entire structure of the genealogical tree stretching back from you that far into the past is huge and complex, as complex as the large-scale historical events that you're talking about. That's why it's harder to change over that large a span of time.
I don't know why you keep getting hung up on the genetics part of that, as I keep repeatedly saying it has nothing to do with my point. Explicitly stated that I don't expect them to come back to a Planet of the Apes knockoff, i get that the population will be genetically just about identical, and more so the more time you give it to average out. Not sure who you think you're arguing with on that point.
I just don't believe that if I go back a couple hundred years and start making changes, that when I come back, there would always be the exact same Christopher to take a genetic sample from in the first place. Sometimes sure, sometimes maybe it's a Christine instead, decent amount of the time I'm just arguing with someone else entirely that shares no common ancestors with you.
Please don't respond with another comment about how genes are passed along. I not only agreed with you pages ago (and again in this post), I keep trying to explain that it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. If you don't exist, there's nothing to take a sample of or compare it to. I GET IT that if you substitute random woman X as a direct swap for a distant ancestor, and if they behave and perform the same as original ancestor, that odds are great that you're still right here and not really different. Since that's not possible (even when time travel is a given), you're also changing a whole sequence of events, minor as they are. Further you drift from that origin point, the harder it is for your parents to be in the exact same circumstances at the same moment to result in the conception of YOU. Maybe it's close enough, but the result of close enough is probably more akin to a sibling than YOU. Even with no other variable than conception date, the results are different every time. Otherwise I'd have two clones instead of vaguely similar-looking brothers. Same family tree, different result. Hard to believe the result will be more similar by adding more changes in.
Historical event-driven? A lot of the time, sure (which is what I keep saying). Events want to happen, or were set in motion a while back, or are just bigger than a single person anyway. But if I go back and screw with local history of where you're from on 10 different occasions 100 years in the past, even with small changes here and there, and then go take a class picture on your first day of high school, how many of those 100 group photos will be identical? I'd be willing to bet not that many. May be a decent sized group of people in the photos that are usually there, but bet that the number of kids changes regularly, that people disappear and new people pop in and out, or that most of the right people are there, but they only vaguely look like the person you know with that name.
Remember, the entire argument seemed to start after you didn't like that I said the people in the control room ought to be changing occasionally due to the time travel. And that it was unlikely personal conversations would survive being spread over multiple trips. Hell, in the first trip, she lost a sister and gained a fiance (and a healthy mother). After the next couple, she's been able to slowly have an argument with her mother and drop a 'hold that thought, gotta to change history' moment twice now and pick up right where she left off. Unless the idle conversations were also destined to happen no matter what, and at the same moments...?
I just don't believe that if I go back a couple hundred years and start making changes, that when I come back, there would always be the exact same Christopher to take a genetic sample from in the first place. Sometimes sure, sometimes maybe it's a Christine instead, decent amount of the time I'm just arguing with someone else entirely that shares no common ancestors with you.
Please don't respond with another comment about how genes are passed along. I not only agreed with you pages ago (and again in this post), I keep trying to explain that it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. If you don't exist, there's nothing to take a sample of or compare it to. I GET IT that if you substitute random woman X as a direct swap for a distant ancestor, and if they behave and perform the same as original ancestor, that odds are great that you're still right here and not really different. Since that's not possible (even when time travel is a given), you're also changing a whole sequence of events, minor as they are. Further you drift from that origin point, the harder it is for your parents to be in the exact same circumstances at the same moment to result in the conception of YOU. Maybe it's close enough, but the result of close enough is probably more akin to a sibling than YOU. Even with no other variable than conception date, the results are different every time. Otherwise I'd have two clones instead of vaguely similar-looking brothers. Same family tree, different result. Hard to believe the result will be more similar by adding more changes in.
Historical event-driven? A lot of the time, sure (which is what I keep saying). Events want to happen, or were set in motion a while back, or are just bigger than a single person anyway. But if I go back and screw with local history of where you're from on 10 different occasions 100 years in the past, even with small changes here and there, and then go take a class picture on your first day of high school, how many of those 100 group photos will be identical? I'd be willing to bet not that many. May be a decent sized group of people in the photos that are usually there, but bet that the number of kids changes regularly, that people disappear and new people pop in and out, or that most of the right people are there, but they only vaguely look like the person you know with that name.
Remember, the entire argument seemed to start after you didn't like that I said the people in the control room ought to be changing occasionally due to the time travel. And that it was unlikely personal conversations would survive being spread over multiple trips. Hell, in the first trip, she lost a sister and gained a fiance (and a healthy mother). After the next couple, she's been able to slowly have an argument with her mother and drop a 'hold that thought, gotta to change history' moment twice now and pick up right where she left off. Unless the idle conversations were also destined to happen no matter what, and at the same moments...?
Yes, it does, because it's an example of a larger principle that can apply to other things as well. As I said, it's easy to recognize the factors that would cause a change's effects to be amplified over the short term, but it's harder to recognize the factors that could cause those effects to be damped out over the longer term. The genetics issue is an illustration of how that dynamic can work, how a short-term amplification can run into a limiting factor in the long term that keeps it from being amplified perpetually. The more generations you go through, the more individual factors you have influencing an outcome, and the lower the probability that changing any single factor will have a pivotal effect. That is true regardless of whether you're talking about one person's genetic contribution or the actions they take. Because it's not a function of biology, it's a function of statistics and math.
Okay... I think you're actually agreeing with me without realizing it. "Sometimes" is exactly my point. I am not saying "always." I am specifically saying that there is no "always" here, that which way it turns out depends on the specific situation. Sometimes it happens the way you say, and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know how I can possibly make that clearer than I have been all along. If you think I'm saying "always," then you have not heard a single word I've said.
For all the talk of unforeseen Butterfly Effects, Did Marty avoiding getting into that car accident with the Rolls Royce somehow cause the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series in 2016 instead of 2015?
Wow, BTTF2 was only off by a year in predicting that? That's actually pretty good.
Exactly. If the Cubs had broken their long World Series drought any time after BTTF 2 was released in 1989 but randomly won again last year or this year, the movie reference would probably not have been made such a big deal. But they only now broke a very long record and so close to what the what the movie predicted is very cool! Writer Bob Gale admitted that the main reason he included that was because the very idea of the Cubs winning was perceived as unlikely as flying cars.
Well, to round it out, I guess:
-They beat Miami to win that title in 2015, Miami is a NL team so that's gonna be tough. Maybe should have predicted an AL opponent?
-They swept in 5 games, so MLB went to a best of 9 format sometime during or before 2015.
-Most importantly, it doesn't appear that it was the Cubs' first WS win in recent memory, as it wasn't treated as that big a deal. Marty was more surprised that the Miami team existed than by the Cubs winning, so not our timeline even in 1985 (obviously ignoring the flying cars and time machines). Also, the newspaper was treating it as not that big a deal. It's the big headline on pretty much every paper and website for the most part, and they all seem to mention the 108 year drought as front and center. Or curse broken, or some other narrative like that. This BTTF2 paper just states Cubs sweep in 5 up in the corner in an 'oh, by the way' context. In fact, it's second billing to "Slamball Playoffs Begin". It wasn't their first win recently.
-They beat Miami to win that title in 2015, Miami is a NL team so that's gonna be tough. Maybe should have predicted an AL opponent?
-They swept in 5 games, so MLB went to a best of 9 format sometime during or before 2015.
-Most importantly, it doesn't appear that it was the Cubs' first WS win in recent memory, as it wasn't treated as that big a deal. Marty was more surprised that the Miami team existed than by the Cubs winning, so not our timeline even in 1985 (obviously ignoring the flying cars and time machines). Also, the newspaper was treating it as not that big a deal. It's the big headline on pretty much every paper and website for the most part, and they all seem to mention the 108 year drought as front and center. Or curse broken, or some other narrative like that. This BTTF2 paper just states Cubs sweep in 5 up in the corner in an 'oh, by the way' context. In fact, it's second billing to "Slamball Playoffs Begin". It wasn't their first win recently.
