Your personal movie wish...

[DarthTom]

I always thought it would be cool to have a film or even TV mini-series where a US Aircraft carrier was transported back in time during the Roman Empire and the people on board were forced to chose sides in some of their conflicts - or inadvertently get involved. Also, how ancient folks would react to modern technology e.g. an iPad

I like it... but what to do about the language barrier?

Treat it the same way Trek does - everyone amazingly speaks English.

I always thought it would be cool to have a film or even TV mini-series where a US Aircraft carrier was transported back in time during the Roman Empire and the people on board were forced to chose sides in some of their conflicts - or inadvertently get involved. Also, how ancient folks would react to modern technology e.g. an iPad

Where's the challenge for the carrier, though? If the crew chose to get involved with whatever side?

I mean, the romans had one of the most powerful navies in the ancient world but the whole armada could be swamped by one Nimitz carrier running flat out nearby. And one Marine Sniper on a hill could decimate an entire legion all by himself. And carriers cruise with a company of marines.

Really, all you'd be doing is setting up the next episode of Ancient Aliens.

[Giorgio]Did the Romans really invent handheld chalkboards, or were they emulating the computer tablets of some advanced species?[/Giorgio]

The crew would be faced with a series of moral dilemmas on how to or to not alter the existing timeline. They wouldn't necessarily engage the Romans in battle but be forced to deal with 1st century morality and the atrocities that accompanied war at that time - raping woman and children etc.

There also could be several spinoff stories where Roman Senators and wealthy Romans try to curry favor with the powerful people from the future and attempt to form alliances and dramatically change history e.g the occupation of the Holy Lands for one.

There is also a potential storyline for certain crew members on the carrier wanting to dramatically alter history e.g. prevent the Visigoth invasion as one potential or if the carrier came earlier - someone tries to assassinate Caesar and one of the carrier personnel tries to become the new leader of Rome.

I just think it would be cool to see how ancient people in a fictional altered timeline would deal with advanced technology we have today and how it would affect society generally.

Regarding Ancient Aliens - since future humans aren't aliens - not the same thing. The storyline as I'd envision it would NOT be the effect of the visitation on the future but rather how it effects society at that time being visited by humans of the future.

 

[Admiral2]

^^until they run out of avgas and ammo.

Given that the Romans didn't have an air force and you could probably take out an entire phalanx with a burst from a vulcan cannon, I don't see these logistical issues cropping up for a long time. They'll run out of food first.

And the ancient world has plenty of places to hunt and fish.

I always thought it would be cool to have a film or even TV mini-series where a US Aircraft carrier was transported back in time during the Roman Empire and the people on board were forced to chose sides in some of their conflicts - or inadvertently get involved. Also, how ancient folks would react to modern technology e.g. an iPad

Where's the challenge for the carrier, though? If the crew chose to get involved with whatever side?

I mean, the romans had one of the most powerful navies in the ancient world but the whole armada could be swamped by one Nimitz carrier running flat out nearby. And one Marine Sniper on a hill could decimate an entire legion all by himself. And carriers cruise with a company of marines.

Really, all you'd be doing is setting up the next episode of Ancient Aliens.

[Giorgio]Did the Romans really invent handheld chalkboards, or were they emulating the computer tablets of some advanced species?[/Giorgio]

The crew would be faced with a series of moral dilemmas on how to or to not alter the existing timeline. They wouldn't necessarily engage the Romans in battle but be forced to deal with 1st century morality and the atrocities that accompanied war at that time - raping woman and children etc.

There also could be several spinoff stories where Roman Senators and wealthy Romans try to curry favor with the powerful people from the future and attempt to form alliances and dramatically change history e.g the occupation of the Holy Lands for one.

There is also a potential storyline for certain crew members on the carrier wanting to dramatically alter history e.g. prevent the Visigoth invasion as one potential or if the carrier came earlier - someone tries to assassinate Caesar and one of the carrier personnel tries to become the new leader of Rome.

I just think it would be cool to see how ancient people in a fictional altered timeline would deal with advanced technology we have today and how it would affect society generally.

So, "Bread and Circuses" with time travel, or "Final Countdown" on steroids. Fine. But once the crew has solved that moral dilemma, either way, what challenge is there to stop them from enforcing that decision on the Romans?

The real moral dilemma is a general one: "Prime Directive or not?" I don't see American sailors picking "Prime Directive"...

Regarding Ancient Aliens - since future humans aren't aliens - not the same thing. The storyline as I'd envision it would NOT be the effect of the visitation on the future but rather how it effects society at that time being visited by humans of the future.

A scenario that only happens if the Romans know these are future humans and not gods or demons in human guise, which depends entirely on what the carrier crew chooses to tell them. If they say the wrong thing, there'll be Giorgio and his hair nerdgasming over depictions of F-18's on Roman friezes.

 

[DarthTom]

So, "Bread and Circuses" with time travel, or "Final Countdown" on steroids. Fine. But once the crew has solved that moral dilemma, either way, what challenge is there to stop them from enforcing that decision on the Romans?

Dissension among the ranks on the carrier. Perhaps the 1st Officer and the Captain disagreeing and the 1st Officer taking modern equipment and and sharing it with the Roman soldiers.

The real moral dilemma is a general one: "Prime Directive or not?" I don't see American sailors picking "Prime Directive"...

Exactly - but some of them may not want to mass murder the Roman Army whereas some may want to alter history. There are many possibilities.

Anyways, this is my time travel wish scenario - TV show/film/mini-series.

BTW, you seem knowledgeable about military protocols. How much jet fuel, Diesel etc. does an aircraft carrier typically have in storage - items that wouldn't be available in the first century? Would they have enough for say a year? Obviously to power the ship wouldn't present a problem because the entire fleet is powered by nuclear power.

 

[Davros]

The Hawkmoon Trilogy or the Elric Saga

 

[Skywalker]

So, "Bread and Circuses" with time travel, or "Final Countdown" on steroids. Fine. But once the crew has solved that moral dilemma, either way, what challenge is there to stop them from enforcing that decision on the Romans?

Dissension among the ranks on the carrier. Perhaps the 1st Officer and the Captain disagreeing and the 1st Officer taking modern equipment and and sharing it with the Roman soldiers.

The real moral dilemma is a general one: "Prime Directive or not?" I don't see American sailors picking "Prime Directive"...

Exactly - but some of them may not want to mass murder the Roman Army whereas some may want to alter history. There are many possibilities.

Anyways, this is my time travel wish scenario - TV show/film/mini-series.

This reminds me of S. M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy. The island of Nantucket gets sent back in time 3,000 years, along with a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that was docked there. While most of the Nantucketers decided to focus on banding together to survive and explore their new world, the first officer of the cutter decided to take advantage of the situation and carve out an empire for himself.

 

[Gaith]

Given that the Romans didn't have an air force and you could probably take out an entire phalanx with a burst from a vulcan cannon, I don't see these logistical issues cropping up for a long time. They'll run out of food first.

And the ancient world has plenty of places to hunt and fish.

Food is definitely the number-one problem, as I doubt existing rations would last more than a month or two or three at the most, and then you've got five thousand mouths to feed. Fishing is not a good option, because those floating cities aren't exactly designed to accommodate fishing nets, and the ship itself would displace most fish, so you'd have to use the dinghies - and those would run out of fuel eventually, especially if they were being used all the time.

Same goes for hunting - I doubt a carrier has more than a few bikes or ATVs. Maybe even none, I dunno. No, the only way to feed a carrier crew in Roman times would be to take over the empire and tax it in grain. Now we run into ammo supply issues: I again doubt that a carrier carries all that much small-arms munition. Enough to take Rome, maybe, but not necessarily to keep it for more than a generation.

Then the carrier's nuclear engine will start degrading in a decade or two without proper modern maintenance, and will no doubt become positively hazardous in under fifty years, so, for the good of humanity, it should eventually be sailed into the middle of the Atlantic and abandoned/scuttled if possible.

So, the CO has a fairly simple choice: sail to one of the Americas, and build a civilization more or less from scratch, albeit with a crap-ton of learning and know-how, in co-existence with the natives, or effect a hostile takeover of an existing society, creating a nobility of temporal foreigners and their new families in the process.

 

[DarthTom]

Food is definitely the number-one problem, as I doubt existing rations would last more than a month or two or three at the most, and then you've got five thousand mouths to feed. Fishing is not a good option, because those floating cities aren't exactly designed to accommodate fishing nets, and the ship itself would displace most fish, so you'd have to use the dinghies - and those would run out of fuel eventually, especially if they were being used all the time.

Same goes for hunting - I doubt a carrier has more than a few bikes or ATVs. Maybe even none, I dunno. No, the only way to feed a carrier crew in Roman times would be to take over the empire and tax it in grain. Now we run into ammo supply issues: I again doubt that a carrier carries all that much small-arms munition. Enough to take Rome, maybe, but not necessarily to keep it for more than a generation.

Then the carrier's nuclear engine will start degrading in a decade or two without proper modern maintenance, and will no doubt become positively hazardous in under fifty years, so, for the good of humanity, it should eventually be sailed into the middle of the Atlantic and abandoned/scuttled if possible.

So, the CO has a fairly simple choice: sail to one of the Americas, and build a civilization more or less from scratch, albeit with a crap-ton of learning and know-how, in co-existence with the natives, or effect a hostile takeover of an existing society, creating a nobility of temporal foreigners and their new families in the process.

Thanks for gaming that out. So essentially such a storyline would be similar to the issues faced in the TNT show, "The Last Ship," with the added element of time travel and the moral dilemmas of potentially profoundly altering the timeline [as they knew it] as well as creating alliances - or not - with the primitive [technologically speaking] people of the time.

It's an interesting scenario to me at least.

Edited to add: while an aircraft carrier may or may not have ATV's or other land vehciles, they do have a contingent of helicopters which could be used to transport people to shore for hunting etc. They could also steal fishing ships of that era and potentially fish. IIRC the Romans had several big ships. Roman Navy

 

[Gaith]

My pleasure; it's interesting to me also.

Helicopters go through fuel damn fast. Not sure about compatibility issues, but in most cases you're far better off saving it for surface vehicles.

Another huge consideration is the gender gap: for every female sailor, you've got four or five males - males who'll want wives at some point, and I doubt many ancient societies could easily cede some four or five thousand of their women. And if they did, you'd no doubt have a very resentful native male population to contend with, and then the language barrier is of course going to cause massive headaches, to say nothing of the cultural ones. Of course, trying to enforce gentlemanly behavior on the male sailors' part could easily result in a mutiny/total leadership breakdown. Hell, the leadership would probably have its hands full just protecting the female sailors from the male ones, especially as time goes by and the men get restless. Sad, but true. Humans are animals.

With that in mind, the best bet may be to deliberately and in orderly fashion splinter off the crew into various colonies, with leadership and basic protocols for keeping in touch. If one colony faces attack/harassment, those nearby come to their aid, etc. And maybe there'd be a "core" group of sailors paired off with sailors, the primary keepers of future knowledge and culture, as it were.

 

[Admiral2]

Obviously, I brought this on myself...

Given that the Romans didn't have an air force and you could probably take out an entire phalanx with a burst from a vulcan cannon, I don't see these logistical issues cropping up for a long time. They'll run out of food first.

And the ancient world has plenty of places to hunt and fish.

Food is definitely the number-one problem, as I doubt existing rations would last more than a month or two or three at the most, and then you've got five thousand mouths to feed. Fishing is not a good option, because those floating cities aren't exactly designed to accommodate fishing nets, and the ship itself would displace most fish, so you'd have to use the dinghies - and those would run out of fuel eventually, especially if they were being used all the time.

So sink half the Roman Navy and commandeer the other half. That gives you an assload of oar-driven triremes to fish from.

And this also gives you a perfect opportunity to forgo those silly laws against whaling and dolphin killing.

Same goes for hunting - I doubt a carrier has more than a few bikes or ATVs. Maybe even none, I dunno.

Rome had chariots. If nothing else, surely some of the engineers on board can figure out how to rig them into huntin' wagons.

No, the only way to feed a carrier crew in Roman times would be to take over the empire and tax it in grain. Now we run into ammo supply issues: I again doubt that a carrier carries all that much small-arms munition. Enough to take Rome, maybe, but not necessarily to keep it for more than a generation.

True, but there are plenty of 500-pound bombs, which you can use to wipe out the legions in the city and in foreign lands, leaving nobody left to take the city back from you and your piddling amount of man-portable weaponry.

Then the carrier's nuclear engine will start degrading in a decade or two without proper modern maintenance, and will no doubt become positively hazardous in under fifty years, so, for the good of humanity, it should eventually be sailed into the middle of the Atlantic and abandoned/scuttled if possible.

Agreed.

So, the CO has a fairly simple choice: sail to one of the Americas, and build a civilization more or less from scratch, albeit with a crap-ton of learning and know-how, in co-existence with the natives, or effect a hostile takeover of an existing society, creating a nobility of temporal foreigners and their new families in the process.

I pick option B.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

My dream projects:
I want a badass Lady Blackhawk film....

I also want a serious, strongly written Meteor Man film w/Kristen Kreuk as the wife/voice of reason and a cameo by Robert Townsend....

...I want a remake of "That Man Bolt."

...I want an amazing film adaptation of "Macross" (not "Robotech") or "Super Dimensional Cavalry."

I also want a trilogy that brings "Shaft" up-to-date. Definitely better written than that Sam Jackson film, and stronger than the Richard Roundtree films. If not Shaft, then an adaptation of Virgil Tibbs or Alexander Scott, etc.

I also want a documentary that delves into who Michael Jackson really was and tries to answer the question of why he tried to change himself (changing his skin, hair, chin, etc)....and if he really did have a disease...and why he was usually in the company of little white boys, and so forth. (Not so much a shaming doc, but something fair that actually tries to answer some questions rather than dancing around those questions).

 

[F. King Daniel]

A big budget Doctor Who reboot.

If Matt Smith's incarnation was The Doctor's second childhood, I want to see the first. A twentysomething wannabe Time Lord who steals a Tardis and goes on an amazing adventure.

 

[Sindatur]

A big budget Doctor Who reboot.

If Matt Smith's incarnation was The Doctor's second childhood, I want to see the first. A twentysomething wannabe Time Lord who steals a Tardis and goes on an amazing adventure.

According to Doctor Who Continuity, that would be a big change, since the Doctor had already aged and looked like William Hartnell during his tenure on the show, when he stole the TARDIS.

 

[Redfern]

I was going to post the same, but then King Daniel did use the term "reboot" which to me implies tossing out previous continuity (what little there is associated with DW) and reimagine everything from a different angle.

Given how we've seen the universe get recreated a few time already, a future showrunner may just take that leap and have the Doctor cock up his own history, possibly resulting in a "Young Doctor Who Chronicles" or even "Dalek Babies"! *Shudder*

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[RJDiogenes]

Why not a spinoff relating the adventures of a different Time Lord? Doctor What, Doctor Where, Doctor When, or Doctor How? Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard? Doctor Love? But seriously folks, why not another Time Lord? That's one way to get a female Doctor.

 

[Klaus]

"The Next-to-Last of the Time Lords"!

 

[marillion]

So, "Bread and Circuses" with time travel, or "Final Countdown" on steroids. Fine. But once the crew has solved that moral dilemma, either way, what challenge is there to stop them from enforcing that decision on the Romans?

Dissension among the ranks on the carrier. Perhaps the 1st Officer and the Captain disagreeing and the 1st Officer taking modern equipment and and sharing it with the Roman soldiers.

The real moral dilemma is a general one: "Prime Directive or not?" I don't see American sailors picking "Prime Directive"...

Exactly - but some of them may not want to mass murder the Roman Army whereas some may want to alter history. There are many possibilities.

Anyways, this is my time travel wish scenario - TV show/film/mini-series.

This reminds me of S. M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy. The island of Nantucket gets sent back in time 3,000 years, along with a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that was docked there. While most of the Nantucketers decided to focus on banding together to survive and explore their new world, the first officer of the cutter decided to take advantage of the situation and carve out an empire for himself.

The concept is also explored in the Axis of Time trilogy by John Birmingham. It's REALLY like Final Countdown on steroids but instead of one carrier, and entire armada of international vessels gets caught up in an experiment gone wrong and is transported back into the thick of WWII... Only in this case, they're stuck and forced to assimilate to society. Since it's an international armada, the issue of some of the ships and crews taking opposite sides in the war and thus, introducing modern technology to both the Axis AND the Allies..

Not only do they need to cope with the war at hand, there's every day life in society that must be dealt with. An integrated ship (in both color and gender) suddenly pops up in the mid-40s? Modern day people having to deal with the fact that back then everyone smoked and you could smoke almost anywhere? Some pretty good observations.

And then there's the well done matter of a young Major Harry Wales being introduced to his eventual grandmother and the rest of the royal family.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

is that Lifeson in your avatar? ^

 

[Skywalker]

Dissension among the ranks on the carrier. Perhaps the 1st Officer and the Captain disagreeing and the 1st Officer taking modern equipment and and sharing it with the Roman soldiers.

Exactly - but some of them may not want to mass murder the Roman Army whereas some may want to alter history. There are many possibilities.

Anyways, this is my time travel wish scenario - TV show/film/mini-series.

This reminds me of S. M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy. The island of Nantucket gets sent back in time 3,000 years, along with a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that was docked there. While most of the Nantucketers decided to focus on banding together to survive and explore their new world, the first officer of the cutter decided to take advantage of the situation and carve out an empire for himself.

The concept is also explored in the Axis of Time trilogy by John Birmingham. It's REALLY like Final Countdown on steroids but instead of one carrier, and entire armada of international vessels gets caught up in an experiment gone wrong and is transported back into the thick of WWII... Only in this case, they're stuck and forced to assimilate to society. Since it's an international armada, the issue of some of the ships and crews taking opposite sides in the war and thus, introducing modern technology to both the Axis AND the Allies..

Not only do they need to cope with the war at hand, there's every day life in society that must be dealt with. An integrated ship (in both color and gender) suddenly pops up in the mid-40s? Modern day people having to deal with the fact that back then everyone smoked and you could smoke almost anywhere? Some pretty good observations.

And then there's the well done matter of a young Major Harry Wales being introduced to his eventual grandmother and the rest of the royal family.

Huh, that sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

A unified movie featuring the Marvel Characters. X-Men (Fox) vs Avengers (Disney), or Fantastic Four (Fox) vs Hulk (Disney) or Spider-Man (Sony) and the X-Men (Fox). Any team up movie would be cool.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ A team up between The Shadow and Doc Savage would be cool. Allegedly there was something in the works a few years ago, but nothing happened.

"The Next-to-Last of the Time Lords"!

Time Lords: The Next Regeneration.