time travel plot devices

the eight types of time travel

Time travel is a stable in science fiction. Countless books, comics, movies, and TV shows have used it as their main plot device. Even more have incorporated it into a key moment of the story. Over the years, eight major types of time travel logic emerged. Recently, YouTubers Eric Voss and Héctor Navarro examined all eight types, and looked at which one gets it most correct in term of the real world science behind science fiction.

Type 1 Anything goes

Definition: Characters travel back and forth within their historical timeline.

This approach frees you to have fun and not get lost in the minutiae of how time travel works. Usually, there’s a magical Maguffin that to quote the great Dr. Ememett Brown, “makes time travel possible”. Writers have used a car, a phone booth, and a hot tub, among other options. This approach leads to inconsistent limits on the logic of the time travel, but this doesn’t mean the story is poorly plotted, won’t be enjoyable or won’t be an enormous hit. This approach is more science fantasy than science fiction with no basis in real-world science.

Examples: Back to the Future , Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , Hot Tube Time Machine , Frequency , Austin Powers , Men In Black 3 , Deadpool 2 , The Simpsons , Galaxy Quest , Star Trek TOS , Doctor Who , 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

Type 2 Branch Reality

Definition: Changes to the past don’t rewrite history. They split the timeline into an alternate branch timeline. This action does not change or erase the original timeline.

As authors got more familiar with the science behind time travel in theoretical physics, this type, based upon the many worlds theory in quantum mechanics, emerged. When the character travels back into the past and changes events, they create a new reality. Their original reality is unchanged. Branches themselves can branch leading to a multiverse of possibilities.

Examples: The Disney Plus series, Loki , used this extensively. See also: Back to the Future Part II , Avenger’s Endgame , the DC Comics multiverse, the Marvel Comics multiverse, Rick and Morty , Star Trek (2009), A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

Type 3 Time Dilation

Definition: Characters traveling off-world experience time moving more slowly than elsewhere in the universe, allowing them to move forward in time (but not backward).

This type is the based upon our scientific understanding of how time slows down as you approach the speed of the light. This is a forward-only type of time travel. There’s no going backwards.

Examples: Planet of the Apes , Ender’s Game , Flight of the Navigator , Interstellar , Buck Rodgers .

Type 4 This Always Happened

Definition: All of time is fixed on a predestined loop in which the very act of time travel itself sets the events of the story into motion.

This one can confuse and delves closer to the realm of theology than science. It feels gimmicky, and has become something of a trope making it hard to pull this off in a satisfying way for your audience. This type also invites the audience to question if your protagonist ever had free will or agency in the story.

Examples: Terminator , Terminator 2 , Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Game of Thrones -Season 6, Twelve Monkeys , Interstellar , Kate and Leopold , The Butterfly Effect , Predestination , Ricky and Morty -Season 5, Looper .

Type 5 Seeing the Future

Definition: After seeing a vision of their fate, characters choose to change their destiny or embrace their lot.

We’re stretching to call this time travel, but it provides your story with built-in conflict and stakes. Will the hero choose to walk the path knowing how it will end, or will they choose a different path?

Examples: Oedipus Rex , A Christmas Carol , Minority Report , Arrival , Next (Nicolas Cage), Rick and Morty -Season Four. Star Trek:Discovery -Season 2, Avenger’s EndGame with Dr. Strange and the Mind Stone.

Type 6 Time Loop / Groundhog Day

Definition: Characters relive the same day over and over, resetting back to a respawn point once they die or become incapacitated.

This type gained popularity after the movie, Groundhog Day , became a tremendous hit. Most of the other examples take the Groundhog Day idea and put a slight twist on it. Like Type 4 “This Always Happened”, the popularity of this type can make it harder to pull off in a fresh and innovative way.

Examples: Obviously, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Edge of Tomorrow , Doctor Strange in the ending battle with Dormammu, Russian Dolls (Netflix), Palm Springs , Star Trek TNG .

Type 7 Unstuck Mind

Definition: Characters consciousness transport through time within his body to his life at different ages.

Nostalgia for the past and dreaming of the future are core parts of the human experience. This type runs more metaphorically than scientific.

Examples: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, X-Men: Days of Future Past , Desmond in the series Lost .

Type 8 Unstuck Body

Definition: A character’s body or object becomes physically detached from the flow of time within the surrounding universe, becoming inverted or younger. Only certain objects or bodies are unstuck from time. Also called Inverted Entropy.

This one will blow your mind if you think about it for too long. Like Type 2 “Branch Reality”, this one comes from the realm of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. Scientists and mathematicians have all the formulas worked out to make this de-aging a reality, but currently lack the technology to control all the variables in the ways needed. It would like scientists working out than an object could break the speed of the sound in 1890. It would look inconceivable, given the technology of the day, but I wouldn’t put limits on human ingenuity.

Examples: Dr. Strange (the Hong Kong battle). Tenet , briefly in Endgame with Scott Lang and Bruce, Primer .

If you’re writing a time travel story, you’ll need to decide which one of these types you want to deploy. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. In many ways, its similar to designing your magic system, especially if you go with a Type 1 time travel story. The most important thing remains to have relatable characters and to tell a great story while being internally consistent with the rules and logic of your story world.

Ted Atchley  is a freelance writer and professional computer programmer. Whether it’s words or code, he’s always writing. Ted’s love for speculative fiction started early on with Lewis’  Chronicles of Narnia,  and the Star Wars movies. This led to reading Marvel comics and eventually losing himself in Asimov’s Apprentice Adept and the world of Krynn ( Dragonlance Chronicles ). 

After blogging on his own for several years, Blizzard Watch ( blizzardwatch.com ) hired Ted to be a regular columnist in 2016. When the site dropped many of its columns two years later, they retained Ted as a staff writer. 

He lives in beautiful Charleston, SC with his wife and children. When not writing, you’ll find him spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Carolina Panthers. He’s currently revising his work-in-progress portal fantasy novel before preparing to query. 

Ted has a quarterly newsletter which  you can join here . You’ll get the latest on his writing and publishing as well as links about writing, Star Wars, and/or Marvel.

You Might Also Like

Love and Marriage and Storyworlds

advances in rocket propulsion to inspire your science fiction

Fantasy Flash Fiction 101- Laura Zimmerman

No comments, leave a reply cancel reply.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

A Writer’s Guide to Crafting the Perfect Resume

How i spent the mesozoic era.

Follow Us Elsewhere

Latest tweets, recent posts.

Boosting Creativity: How Clean, fresh Air Can enhance Your Writing Space

Writers Chat Recap FOr July Part 1

• Screenwriting \e607
• Directing \e606
• Cinematography & Cameras \e605
• Editing & Post-Production \e602
• Documentary \e603
• Movies & TV \e60a
• Producing \e608
• Distribution & Marketing \e604
• Festivals & Events \e611
• Fundraising & Crowdfunding \e60f
• Sound & Music \e601
• Games & Transmedia \e60e
• Grants, Contests, & Awards \e60d
• Film School \e610
• Marketplace & Deals \e60b
• Off Topic \e609
• This Site \e600

Time Traveling in Movies: A Very Complicated Plot Device Explained

If you've ever wanted to make a film about time travel, you might want to brush up on how different filmmakers have made sense of it in their work..

Time travel movies are—awesome—we know this—but what makes them so interesting has less to do with the awesomeness of time travel as a narrative concept and more to do with the awesomeness of time travel as a plot device . (Did I mention that time travel is awesome and also has loads of awesomeness?)

There are so many films about time travel, from the silly ( Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure ) to the dramatic ( Looper ), and each one deals with the concept in different ways and for different purposes. In this video, Henry Reich of MinutePhysics , my second favorite science channel on YouTube, analyzes time travel in film and literature to determine how it functions in the hands of different writers and filmmakers. On its own, it's an incredibly fascinating video, but if you look at it through the lens of storytelling, you can learn how adding a wrinkle in time can not only open up new narrative passageways for your time traveling characters but for your audience as well.

Time travel is a complex concept, and I failed almost every science class I ever took, so I won't bore you with my so-bad-it's-sad explanations of it. But it's remarkable to see how different screenwriters and filmmakers have used time travel as a plot device. It immediately complicates the progression of the story by requiring the audience to be engaged enough to recall and track each jump through time and space, as well as understand and accept the unique physical rules set in place by the filmmaker. Are we dealing with wormholes, time dilation, or just a bunch of hocus-pocus? Does the time-traveling character affect the past? Does he have free will? 

Perhaps one of the most brilliantly complicated examples of time travel in film is 2004 indie sci-fi film  Primer.  Written and directed by Shane Carruth, the film has a complex, experimental plot structure that, as you can see from Reich's illustration above, is challenging for even the savviest movie-goer to follow. In an interview , Carruth, who studied mathematics in college, explained what inspired the principles of time travel in his film:

Richard Feynman has some interesting ideas about time. When you look at Feynman diagrams [which map the interaction of elementary particles], there's really no difference between watching an interaction happen forward and backward in time.

And just in case you want your head to explode, here's a video that illustrates  Primer's  timeline.

What is your favorite time travel movie? Are movies like  Memento  and  Inception  time travel movies? Kind of? Let us know down in the comments below.

Source: MinutePhysics

• Plot Device Definition and Examples ›

Risk It All For Creativity With Composer Nikhil Koparkar

Life is full of learning and detours..

Whether I'm ordering an instrument from Thailand that I didn’t know how to play, or just seeing what sounds I could come up with—whether I'm having 30 string players mimic the sounds of the wind and ocean, or having woodwind player Ashley Jarmack play ancient Mayan death whistles—working on the score for Dead Whisper taught me a valuable lesson. That lesson? The joy of creating and taking risks in the scoring process is the result of all the education and detours that came before it.

Every setback or challenge in my scoring career has provided me with the life experience to approach the art of scoring from a different perspective than otherwise possible, and the risk of failure proved to be a necessary stepping stone on the search for unique creative ideas.

When first starting my scoring journey in 2017, I connected with maestro santoor player Kunal Gunjal, which whet my appetite for exploring ancient traditional instruments and what they might sound like in different contexts (in this case, with western cinematic orchestral instruments). The result of that experience culminated in an album, Nature Of All Things , a talk At Google, and landing an Indian-Asian inspired fantasy feature, The Candle & The Curse .

My love for this style of music and experimentation grew, but as a composer in the beginning stages of my career, it was a struggle to find filmmakers willing to give me a chance. So, to find solace away from the screen, I turned to my other love of literature. This seemingly unrelated detour ended up being a career changer for me.

As I read The Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson I was compelled to write a theme that was essentially a love letter to the books. I used my savings to commission the Budapest Scoring Orchestra to play it, and sent the video to the production team at Amazon Studios, in hopes that it might get their attention.

Lucky for me, the fans embraced and shared it widely, as did Tor.com (the publisher website for the series). The music eventually came to the attention of composer Lorne Balfe, who promptly hired me to write music and project lead on the series, as well as write music on his other TV shows. Another lesson came from the experience: No matter the outcome, putting oneself out there authentically can lead to unique and fulfilling opportunities, as well as the experience to be ready when those opportunities arise.

I learned how to better write for orchestra, pitch myself as a composer, collaborate with a large team, and approach storytelling discussions with filmmakers from a deeper and more nuanced vantage point.

Those two years were like a bootcamp for me: hundreds of cues and several shows later (including Netflix’s Life On Our Planet, HBO’s His Dark Materials , and Hulu’s Victoria’s Secret: Angels & Demons ), I feel so grateful to have learned to work with a music team operating at such a high level, as well as learn how to receive and act on valuable feedback from Lorne, the showrunners and the networks.

I was also working on my own projects during that two year span, and using instruments from various cultures proved yet more valuable when recording the theme I wrote for Riot Games’ League Of Legends: Lunar Revel 2023 . The idea of writing a theme that represents such a cultural and spiritual aspect of Asian culture was a daunting prospect, but thankfully my experience combining Asian instruments with a western cinematic palette gave me a solid starting point.

The team at Riot (then led by Kole Hicks) really helped by giving valuable feedback and resources so we could record the score the right way, and do justice to our shared vision.

Cut to later that year when Conor Soucy contacted me to score Dead Whisper (our 4th project together), a couple of things happened that allowed the score to come to fruition: Conor and I had a friendship and trust that allowed him to give me agency to take creative risks with the score and try out ideas in search of something unique.

During our spotting session for the film, we would watch scenes, and I would immediately try out ideas on his piano in real time, allowing for deeper and more spontaneous collaboration.

Secondly, we won the SESAC New Music USA Reel Change Grant, which gave us the resources to hire the right players, experiment with bespoke sounds and invest in taking risks to push our creative limits. We got to work with Joy Music House , who helped produce the live recording sessions and make sure everything ran smoothly.

All the lessons from Nature Of All Things , recording exotic instruments for The Wheel Of Time , and reading all those books allowed Conor and I to talk story from a different vantage point, and try out ideas with the singular goal to make the best non-obvious choices in service of that story.

The resulting mammoth 57-minute score was a logistical challenge, but also an opportunity that resulted in recording master percussionist Bobak Lotfipour (Netflix’s Hellraiser , A24’s Green Knight ), vocalist Abby Lyons ( The Wheel Of Tim e), and a killer mix from Brian R. Taylor ( The Walking Dead: Dead City ). The end result is a juxtaposition between an organic, live instrument heavy score, and mangled / processed sounds, matching the throwback horror roots of the film, as well as its more modern influences.

The cliche, “it takes a village” feels especially apt here, as the amount of incredible support and trust I have received both from the filmmakers and composers I’ve worked with, and the people on my team for those projects brought these projects to fruition.

It’s a dream to be presented with a scoring opportunity where there is the trust and resources to put our best creative foot forward, and I’m so grateful for the career detours that allowed for it to happen as joyously as it did.

Blackmagic Camera App Set to Finally Come to Android

What are the best historical movies of all time, film and tv production is down 40 percent, the 'longlegs' ending explained, what are the best war movies of all time, what are ti west's best shots of his career, take a look at canon’s eye-controlled autofocus, how indie horror flick 'bag of lies' was shot in 13 days, more improvements coming to davinci resolve 19 with public beta 5, this dp's secrets to a making stunning short film.

Kimberly Van Ginkel

Author and avid reader. I love sharing interesting research and promoting other authors.

9 Rules for Writing Time Travel

I’m a sucker for time travel stories. I’ll read any book or short story, watch any movie or TV show, if it has a time travel element. I can’t get enough.

As a connoisseur of the art form – and as a novelist myself – I’ve developed these story-building tips for writing time travel

1. Give us the Shock & Awe

Writers are always told to start each story in media res , so it’s tempting to skip over the typical set-up scenes. With a time travel story, however, it’s best to introduce us to the characters before learn that time manipulation is possible. Why? Because if we watch them travel for the first time, we get to experience it with them.

Sure, we’ve seen hundred variations of this already, where the character who knows time travel doesn’t exist gradually comes to accept that it is real. It may be hard to find a fresh take. On the other hand, mastering the 4th dimension is a mind-blowing concept, so it ought to take a while to process.

The original draft of Groundhog’s Day opened with Phil Connors already trapped in his loop of repeating days. Had they filmed that version, we’d have been robbed of all the great build-up scenes where the tiny details of Phil’s day start to build, hinting at him that something is very, very wrong.

We’d have skipped past the catalyst of the story and the audience would be struggling to keep up.

Picture Marty McFly walking through 1955’s Hill Valley for the first time in Back to the Future . He has already been told that Doc invented time travel. The writers might have had him immediately accept that fact and jump straight toward some decisive action to change his predicament. Instead, they allowed him a little time for confusion, a period of denial, which also gave us time to look around with him and spot the changes in the town. With every new person or building he sees, we feel his sense of awe growing, taking in the enormity of where he is and what has happened to him. These few moments immerse us in the world with him.

It’s worth mentioning that in Palm Springs , Nyles has been repeating this day for years, but this works because we, the audience, get to watch the other main character, Sarah, enter the time loop for the first time.

This is the magic of a time travel story. Think of it as your “Dorothy opens the door to Oz” moment. Don’t rush it. This is often the most captivating scene of any time travel story.

2. Pick Your Method

Every time travel story has to have something that functions as the device, portal, or catalyst to time travel.

In H.G. Well’s The Time Machine , it was a literal machine that the hero climbed into, and that set the standard for decades of time travel stories. Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories employ hover-motorcycles that can jump through time. Doc Brown used a Delorean. Time Travelling with a Hamster (a very funny middle-grade book) uses a metal washtub wired to an old Mac computer.

Just like the wardrobe leading to Narnia, portals are a specific location that allows you to pass between times. In Stephen King’s 11.22.63 the portal is simply a staircase that they refer to as “the rabbit hole.” Star Trek TNG often utilizes worm holes for its time jumps.

Sometimes there is nothing mechanical involved, nothing that would give our characters any control of their destination. Any number of stories involve a character getting a concussion or struck on the head and waking up in another time. In The Time-Traveller’s Wife , Henry has a chromosome disorder that randomly catapults him through time; before each occurrence, he can feel the sensation of an impending jump.

3. Anything goes, as long as you explain it.

The important thing is to show the audience what your method looks like so that we know what to watch for during the story. Even if the character doesn’t know what caused it, if we witnessed him falling asleep and waking up in a different time, we have a framework for the story. We don’t know how the person will get home, but we realize something similar will have to happen to return them to their own time.

No matter what means you use to allow your characters to time travel, the important thing is to show the audience how it happened – at least, as much as your characters know – then give us the rules that govern it .

Doc Brown explains how to set the target date, load the plutonium, and get the car going 88 mph to trigger the time jump. When we see Marty doing exactly those steps a few minutes later, we know before he does that he’s about to travel to 1955. It also sets up the rules for bringing him back home.

In The Edge of Tomorrow , we learn that it’s the blood of the “Alphas” that allows the hero to loop through time. Therefore, if he gets a blood transfusion he will lose the ability. Until then, every time he dies the day resets. All of this is explained to him in the first act of the story, and is repeated again so the audience knows the rules and the way to end it.

It’s OK to keep the explanation brief, and even to leave out critical information, if that’s what your plot requires. But when you skip the explanation altogether, you’ll leave your audience wondering. You don’t want them to be distracted throughout the story, looking for clues that you haven’t dropped, as they try to understand how the hero is going to get back home.

4. Create Your Own Rules

Can the characters change the past? If so, can they make changes to their own future? How does the cause/effect work? There are a million permutations to this, and the most wondrous thing about his genre is that since time travel doesn’t really exist, your logic can never be wrong . How freeing is that?

The only thing your audience will expect is that you stay consistent with whatever version of time travel you set up initially.

Some of the most common time travel tropes are:

• “I know what I’m doing.” – the time-traveller knows both the original time line and the new version because he is immune to the effects of the change – see Jodi Taylor’s Chonicles of St. Mary’s series.
• “I used to know what was going on.” – as soon as the hero interacts with the time line, he is changing the past, including his own memories – see Looper , Quantum Leap (Sam and Al’s memories of events differ after a major change, as Sam is remembering only the original time line. For example: Watergate.)
• “There is no cause and effect.” – anything the traveller does are events that always existed. The past changes him as he changes the past, so there are no alternate time lines. – See The Time-Traveller’s Wife .
• “Nothing is able to change.” – the time-traveller is forbidden from making changes (not just a rule, but a law of physics) so they are viewing the past only. Alternately, they can make only minor changes that have no lasting effects. – See To Say Nothing of the Dog .
• “I’m only looking” – our heroes cannot move through time, but they can send technology that allows them to see the future or past – See Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus .
• “Time corrects itself.” – attempts at major changes are thwarted as the universe finds its own ways of staying on track. – See Night Watch (Sam’s mentor is killed when he visits the past and he is forced to take the man’s place, thereby making himself a major influence in his own young life.)
• “Everything changes.” – any large-scale disruptions in the time stream will completely disrupt everything “downstream” from that event. See Anderson’s Time Patrol series (These time cops base their operations a million years B.C. so that if anything upsets the time stream, their patrol can still exist to fix it.)

Know which type of story you are writing and stay true to the cause/effect rules you have created.

If your character goes back in time, confident that the past cannot be changed, then kills his own grandfather and blinks himself out of existence, both you and the audience are now in quite a pickle. This character who no longer exists was never there to kill the grandpa. Oops. You’ve introduced a paradox that is going to hurt everyone’s brain unless you have an amazing trick up your sleeve to get us out of it.

Paradoxes suck for everyone. Give your readers an expected structure and then stick to it so that we’re not left arguing with the screen that, “that makes no sense!”

5. Or Give Yourself an “Out” to Break the Rules

Because it’s difficult to write time travel without flirting with paradoxes, some writers give themselves a work-around — a way of breaking their own rules in a way that feels as though it’s still consistent.

You can cheat.

Avengers: Endgame is a brilliant movie. It’s so good, in fact, that it gets a pass on blatantly breaking its own rules about time travel constraints. The Hulk gives a short lecture explaining why they can’t change the past, they then go on to twist time in ways that make no sense against the structure of time travel in this movie (remember the scene where AntMan is turned into a baby, then an old man, then himself again in what appears to be seconds for him?). But all these discrepancies get glossed over by explaining that the Quantum Realm is mysterious. Ah, Quantum Realm, the magical spackle for filling in plot holes.

You can play dumb.

Ever notice how the main character in these stories is rarely ever the brilliant scientist who developed time travel? Not only is it easier to relate to an everyman character, it saves us all from having to understand the science. You can have your extremely smart person introduce it and explain the rules, then let your hero accept it on faith without thoroughly understanding it.

I love this method because it gives you, the author, the freedom to include as much or as little science as you want to. Gloss over as much as you want to and have the scientist say, “Just push this button” and you can forge ahead with your plot. It’s enough for the audience to know that someone in this world understands it all.

You can yell “Hey, look over there!”

One of my favorite “nevermind my rules” moments is from Grand Tour: A Disaster in Time . Our hero, Ben, has jumped through time to break himself out of prison. The viewer immediately has to wonder how the universe will reconcile this, as Ben has now changed his past and there are suddenly two of him living in town. The writer must have felt trapped in a corner as well, because he threw in this beautiful bit of dialogue:

Original Ben: “How can we both be in the same place at the same time?”

Time-Travelling Ben: “(Forget) the physics, Ben! By the time you figure out whether it’s possible or not, we’re gonna be dead. Twice!”

Easy as that! The paradox doesn’t really matter because we’re now diving back into the action.

Which brings me to:

6. Keep the Clock Ticking

When you have time at your command, why panic, right? Why rush anything?

Because stories need tension. And a great way to add tension is to give your hero a ticking clock. As the wise Rufus once said (in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure ), “No matter what you do, no matter where you go … the clock in San Dimas is always running.” They had only 24 hours to get to their history exam, despite being able to hop through time.

A less silly example is King’s 11.22.63 , where his time portal leads him to the year 1958. In order to prevent the JFK assassination, Jake must spend 5 years in the past. Because of that time commitment, the idea of doing it more than once becomes nearly impossible. Thus, in the countdown to November 22nd, his time is as short as everyone else’s. The time portal can’t help him anymore. And the tension is every bit as high as if he had never discovered time travel.

7. Flip the Script to Make it Difficult

We are rooting for people, not gods of time. It’s cool that they have this wonderful ability, but your story is more gripping if something happens to make them unable to use it. We want them to be able to suffer setbacks, something they can’t easily undo.

Perhaps there is something inherent in your rules of time travel that will constrain the hero. In the Time Patrol stories, one unbreakable rule is that a traveller can never visit the same time twice. So if they make a mistake, they can’t return to that same time to undo it. In About Time , Tim can travel at will to any day within his own lifetime. Just as he’s getting used to this ability, he discovers that changing anything that happened before his children were born will cause them not to exist.

Sudden reversals are even better. In Time Bandits , our heroes have a map of every time portal in world history … so, of course, they lose the map!

8. Choose a Global Background, Then Make it Personal

Give in to the temptation to choose huge moments in world history. Why not? That’s the lure of time travel — the great question of “Where would you visit if you could go anywhere at any time?”

The birth of Christ? The signing of the Declaration of Independence? Woodstock? Pompeii? The assassination of Lincoln? The birth of Rock & Roll?

The history books are open to you. Pick something awesome.

But here’s the thing – as cool as all of those are, the best time travel books are the ones that focus on people . The bigger your background event, the more important it is to show it through the eyes of the people living there.

Connie Willis set The Doomsday Book in the middle of the Black Plague. Instead of showing the cities, she sent her hero to live with a small family out in the safety (uh-oh) of the country. She also created a 2-book series, Blackout and All Clear , set during the blitzkreig of London. Her plucky historians mix with civilians and military personnel, forging relationships that make us care about the fate of those individuals.

King’s 11.22.63 is ostensibly about the JFK assassination, but the characters our hero meets along the way are so wonderful that, to be honest, I wanted the hero to give up on trying to save Kennedy and settle into his fake life in the ’60s.

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series stretches from the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland through the American Revolution. We see wonderful scenery, experience famous events, and encounter great figures from history. But no one reads those books just for the historical details. The heart of that story is the romance of Claire and Jamie.

Remember that time-travel is a means of telling your story, not the entire story itself. Make your characters matter .

9. Be Unique

Time travel has been the source of some of the most creative sci-fi works ever made. Keep twisting it to create your own rules and your own wonderful stories.

Remember that it does not have to be linear time travel. Though most of the stories I’ve mentioned involve a person being displaced from his own time, there are other permutations to explore.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe involved a bubble existing outside of space-time so that elite diners could watch the death of the universe while enjoying cocktails.

Groundhog’s Day introduced such a charming notion of 24-hour time loops that it created a whole sub-genre, including the comedic horror film Happy Death Day .

And The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything allows its main character to stretch time, living an entire hour in the space between seconds. This gives him the superpower of incredible speed, as viewed by other people. Since we’re living in the time gaps with him, it makes for an intriguing notion of time travel.

One last thought … if you are looking for inspiration for a new type of time travel story, I recommend the book Einstein’s Dreams , a quick read with beautiful vignettes that illustrate different time theories.

Share this:

11 thoughts on “ 9 rules for writing time travel ”.

Hi. Releif. Im trying to be Mr. Spock as it pertains to my time travel rules. Doubably difficult for me as the ‘ Brain’ of the bunch needs to spew out some plausabile sounding techno babble. I need to be acurate too as Im postulating relativity theory. I think though I have a device to get arround that. And what doesnt fit, fits a quantum paradigm Im saving ( if I ever get to the writing part) for book three. Im going to definitly not abuse the priveledge of the readers crudility.

When you’re done, make sure to post a link here so we can all read it.

Thanks for a great article. Just starting to write my first time travel novel.

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you, this was a great article! I’m planning to write a time travel story for NaNoWriMo.

Best of luck! NaNo is a wonderful challenge.

Wow, love the article Kimberly. Really glad that in addition to covering the different models of time travel and making sure the character story is more important than the time travel aspect — you gave great tips on how to get yourself out of a paradox. I tend to paint myself into a corner even when not writing about time travel. But those are some handy examples of how and why to break the rules, very freeing!! I wish I could go back in time and tell all this to my younger self. But then, I wouldn’t need to!!

Amazing article! It has helped me so much. Thank you!

This was a very helpful article. Thanks so much for posting it. I am trying to write a handful of time-travel short stories, keeping them under 5,000 words. I’m finding it difficult to develop the characters properly while operating in such a limited length.

I’m so glad you liked it. Let me know how you do with your stories. I have always had a harder time with short stories than with novels, myself.

Thanks so much! I will try to keep you updated. I learned a few lessons when I wrote my first and only (so far) book, “Nineteen for Lincoln”, which is a time travel novel set in Civil War Missouri, and then Tudor England. I did not market the book at all, even though it’s available on Amazon, B & N, etc. in print and Kindle. Sort of a shameless plug there, but I’m not looking to make money–I just love time travel. 🙂

I changed my name from “Anonymous” to DJoseph, by the way.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Follow the author.

Kimberly Van Ginkel is an internationally-published author living in the Midwest.

Her debut novel, “ In the Sleep of Death ,” has been described as “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” meets “The Ten Thousand Doors of January.”

Blog at WordPress.com.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

The best free cultural &

educational media on the web

• Online Courses
• Certificates
• Degrees & Mini-Degrees
• Audio Books

A Concise Breakdown of How Time Travel Works in Popular Movies, Books & TV Shows

in Film , Literature , Sci Fi | January 24th, 2020 4 Comments

As least since H.G. Wells’ 1895 nov­el  The Time Machine , time trav­el has been a promis­ing sto­ry­telling con­cept. Alas, it has sel­dom deliv­ered on that promise: whether their char­ac­ters jump for­ward into the future, back­ward into the past, or both, the past 125 years of time-trav­el sto­ries have too often suf­fered from inel­e­gance, incon­sis­ten­cy, and implau­si­bil­i­ty. Well, of course they’re implau­si­ble, every­one but Ronald Mal­lett might say — they’re sto­ries about time trav­el. But fic­tion only has to work on its own terms, not real­i­ty’s. The trou­ble is that the fic­tion of time trav­el can all too eas­i­ly stum­ble over the poten­tial­ly infi­nite con­vo­lu­tions and para­dox­es inher­ent in the sub­ject mat­ter.

In the Min­utePhysics video above , Hen­ry Reich sorts out how time-trav­el sto­ries work (and fail to work) using noth­ing but mark­ers and paper. For the time-trav­el enthu­si­ast, the core inter­est of such fic­tions isn’t so much the spec­ta­cle of char­ac­ters hurtling into the future or past but “the dif­fer­ent ways time trav­el can influ­ence causal­i­ty, and thus the plot, with­in the uni­verse of each sto­ry.” As an exam­ple of “100 per­cent real­is­tic trav­el” Reich points to Orson Scott Card’s  Ender’s Game , in which space trav­el­ers at light speed expe­ri­ence only days or months while years pass back on Earth. The same thing hap­pens in Plan­et of the Apes , whose astro­nauts return from space think­ing they’ve land­ed on the wrong plan­et when they’ve actu­al­ly land­ed in the dis­tant future.

But when we think of time trav­el per se, we more often think of sto­ries about how active­ly trav­el­ing to the past, say, can change its future — and thus the sto­ry’s “present.” Reich pos­es two major ques­tions to ask about such sto­ries. The first is “whether or not the time trav­el­er is there when his­to­ry hap­pens the first time around. Was “the time-trav­el­ing ver­sion of you always there to begin with?” Or “does the very act of time trav­el­ing to the past change what hap­pened and force the uni­verse onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry of his­to­ry from the one you expe­ri­enced pri­or to trav­el­ing?” The sec­ond ques­tion is “who has free will when some­body is time trav­el­ing” — that is, “whose actions are allowed to move his­to­ry onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry, and whose aren’t?”

We can all look into our own pasts for exam­ples of how our favorite time-trav­el sto­ries have dealt with those ques­tions. Reich cites such well-known time-trav­el­ers’ tales as A Christ­mas Car­ol , Ground­hog Day , and Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture , as well, of course, as  Back to the Future , the most pop­u­lar drama­ti­za­tion of the the­o­ret­i­cal chang­ing of his­tor­i­cal time­lines caused by trav­el into the past. Rian John­son’s Loop­er treats that phe­nom­e­non more com­plex­ly, allow­ing for more free will and tak­ing into account more of the effects a char­ac­ter in one time peri­od would have on that same char­ac­ter in anoth­er. Con­sult­ing on that film was Shane Car­ruth, whose Primer — my own per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion — had already tak­en time trav­el “to the extreme, with time trav­el with­in time trav­el with­in time trav­el.”

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban , Reich’s per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion, exhibits a clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy uncom­mon in the genre. J.K. Rowl­ing accom­plish­es this by fol­low­ing the rule that “while you’re expe­ri­enc­ing your ini­tial pre-time trav­el pas­sage through a par­tic­u­lar point in his­to­ry, your time-trav­el­ing clone is also already there, doing every­thing you’ll even­tu­al­ly do when you time-trav­el your­self.” This sin­gle-time-line ver­sion of time trav­el, in which “you can’t change the past because the past already hap­pened,” gets around prob­lems that have long bedev­iled oth­er time-trav­el fic­tions. But it also demon­strates the impor­tance of self-con­sis­ten­cy in fic­tion of all kinds: “In order to care about the char­ac­ters in a sto­ry,” Reich says, “we have to believe that actions have con­se­quences.” Sto­ries, in oth­er words, must obey their own rules — even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, sto­ries involv­ing time-trav­el­ing child wiz­ards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

What Hap­pened When Stephen Hawk­ing Threw a Cock­tail Par­ty for Time Trav­el­ers (2009)

Pret­ty Much Pop #22 Untan­gles Time-Trav­el Sce­nar­ios in the Ter­mi­na­tor Fran­chise and Oth­er Media

Based in Seoul,  Col­in Mar­shall  writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book  The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les  and the video series  The City in Cin­e­ma . Fol­low him on Twit­ter at  @colinmarshall  or on  Face­book .

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (4) |

Related posts:

Comments (4), 4 comments so far.

The idea of an episode where the time trav­el­er is present and doing his (in this case) thing, as he lives through the episode the first time around, reminds me of one of the great clas­sic sci-fi short sto­ries, but, sor­ry, I can’t remem­ber the author or title. I’ll say there’s a din­er, and a note, involved, but, no spoil­ers! And also check out “The Man in the Emp­ty Suit”.

I real­ly enjoyed this video very much — thanks. Pri­zon­er of Azk­a­ban is my favorite of the HP series in large part because the time-trav­el sequence is so per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed. One thing that occurred to me while watch­ing this though: when you say that the char­ac­ters can “instant­ly jump back in time and can inter­act with your­self, but it does­n’t gen­er­ate new time­lines” — my think­ing is that we don’t know this to be true; only that that the time­line DOESN’T change because. I’m work­ing from mem­o­ry so bear with me, but if I recall Dum­b­le­dore stress­es to Hermione that they must be very care­ful not to be seen while time trav­el­ling — it is because they adhere to this rule that the time­line does not change. One would pre­sume that the rea­son Dum­b­le­dore is so insis­tent on this rule is pre­cise­ly because if they were to inter­act with peo­ple the way Mar­ty does in Back To The Future, the time­line would in fact change. So the con­struct of time trav­el in Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban and Back To The Future are/may be the same — the dif­fer­ence is that Hermione and Har­ry do not inter­act direct­ly with peo­ple in the past, but Mar­ty does.

Oth­ers: “A Sound of Thun­der”, a 1952 short sto­ry by Ray Brad­bury Dr Who Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy

I know the focus here is film time trav­el, but if you haven’t read Jack Finney’s Time and Again and the sequel, From Time to Time, pos­es some inter­est­ing ideas using Ein­stein’s the­o­ries of par­al­lel time line and time trav­el. I think either or both would make very inter­est­ing films…

Add a comment

Leave a reply.

Name (required)

Email (required)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Click here to cancel reply.

• 1,700 Free Online Courses
• 200 Online Certificate Programs
• 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
• 1,150 Free Movies
• 1,000 Free Audio Books
• 150+ Best Podcasts
• 800 Free eBooks
• 200 Free Textbooks
• 300 Free Language Lessons
• 150 Free Business Courses
• Free K-12 Education
• Get Our Daily Email

Free Courses

• Art & Art History
• Classics/Ancient World
• Computer Science
• Data Science
• Engineering
• Environment
• Political Science
• Writing & Journalism
• All 1500 Free Courses
• 1000+ MOOCs & Certificate Courses

Receive our Daily Email

Free updates, get our daily email.

Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Free Movies

• 1150 Free Movies Online
• Free Film Noir
• Silent Films
• Documentaries
• Martial Arts/Kung Fu
• Free Hitchcock Films
• Free Charlie Chaplin
• Free John Wayne Movies
• Free Tarkovsky Films
• Free Dziga Vertov
• Free Oscar Winners
• Free Language Lessons
• All Languages

Free eBooks

• 700 Free eBooks
• Free Philosophy eBooks
• The Harvard Classics
• Philip K. Dick Stories
• Neil Gaiman Stories
• David Foster Wallace Stories & Essays
• Hemingway Stories
• Great Gatsby & Other Fitzgerald Novels
• HP Lovecraft
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Free Alice Munro Stories
• Jennifer Egan Stories
• George Saunders Stories
• Hunter S. Thompson Essays
• Joan Didion Essays
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez Stories
• David Sedaris Stories
• Stephen King
• Golden Age Comics
• Free Books by UC Press
• Life Changing Books

Free Audio Books

• 700 Free Audio Books
• Free Audio Books: Fiction
• Free Audio Books: Poetry
• Free Audio Books: Non-Fiction

Free Textbooks

• Free Physics Textbooks
• Free Computer Science Textbooks
• Free Math Textbooks

K-12 Resources

• Free Video Lessons
• Web Resources by Subject
• Quality YouTube Channels
• Teacher Resources
• All Free Kids Resources

Free Art & Images

• All Art Images & Books
• The Rijksmuseum
• Smithsonian
• The Guggenheim
• The National Gallery
• The Whitney
• LA County Museum
• Stanford University
• British Library
• Google Art Project
• French Revolution
• Getty Images
• Guggenheim Art Books
• Met Art Books
• Getty Art Books
• New York Public Library Maps
• Museum of New Zealand
• Smarthistory
• Coloring Books
• All Bach Organ Works
• All of Bach
• 80,000 Classical Music Scores
• Free Classical Music
• Live Classical Music
• 9,000 Grateful Dead Concerts
• Alan Lomax Blues & Folk Archive

Writing Tips

• William Zinsser
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Toni Morrison
• Margaret Atwood
• David Ogilvy
• Billy Wilder
• All posts by date

Personal Finance

• Open Personal Finance
• Amazon Kindle
• Architecture
• Artificial Intelligence
• Comics/Cartoons
• Current Affairs
• English Language
• Entrepreneurship
• Food & Drink
• Graduation Speech
• How to Learn for Free
• Internet Archive
• Language Lessons
• Most Popular
• Neuroscience
• Photography
• Pretty Much Pop
• Productivity
• UC Berkeley
• Uncategorized
• Video - Arts & Culture
• Video - Politics/Society
• Video - Science
• Video Games

Great Lectures

• Michel Foucault
• Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
• Richard Feynman
• Joseph Campbell
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Leonard Bernstein
• Richard Dawkins
• Buckminster Fuller
• Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
• Jacques Lacan
• Roland Barthes
• Nobel Lectures by Writers
• Bertrand Russell
• Oxford Philosophy Lectures

Sign up for Newsletter

Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

Great Recordings

• T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
• Sylvia Plath - Ariel
• Joyce Reads Ulysses
• Joyce - Finnegans Wake
• Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
• Albert Einstein
• Charles Bukowski
• Bill Murray
• Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
• William Faulkner
• Flannery O'Connor
• Tolkien - The Hobbit
• Allen Ginsberg - Howl
• Dylan Thomas
• Anne Sexton
• John Cheever
• David Foster Wallace

Book Lists By

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Allen Ginsberg
• Patti Smith
• Henry Miller
• Christopher Hitchens
• Joseph Brodsky
• Donald Barthelme
• David Bowie
• Samuel Beckett
• Art Garfunkel
• Marilyn Monroe
• Picks by Female Creatives
• Zadie Smith & Gary Shteyngart
• Lynda Barry

Favorite Movies

• Kurosawa's 100
• David Lynch
• Werner Herzog
• Woody Allen
• Wes Anderson
• Luis Buñuel
• Roger Ebert
• Susan Sontag
• Scorsese Foreign Films
• Philosophy Films
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006

©2006-2024 Open Culture, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Advertise with Us
• Copyright Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

Past, Present, Paradox: Writing About Time Travel

Crafting a believable time travel story requires careful consideration of the logic at play. let's crack the temporal code on traveling through time in fiction.

Table of Contents

Time travel in fiction can open your story to infinite possibilities. Ever wondered what it would be like if somebody taught the Romans how to make a nuclear bomb? Do you need to retcon an event in your story? Time travel!

It may seem simple for your time-traveling characters to hop in Tony’s Terrific Temporal Transport and whiz through time, but there are many hurdles to overcome when writing about time travel.

Chief among these is dealing with time travel paradoxes, so let’s look at those, discuss how you can write convincing time travel stories, and explore how some popular stories handle it.

The Problem With Time Travel

Consider an ordinary day in your life. It follows a sequence of events where one thing leads to another. This is called causality , the concept that everything that happens results from events that happened before it. The problem with time travel in fiction, especially travel to the past, is that it often breaks the rules of causality.

This can lead to time travel paradoxes and unforeseen results , including:

• Continuity paradoxes: The act of time travel renders itself impossible.
• Closed causal loop paradoxes: Traveling to the past creates a condition where an idea, object, or person has no identifiable origin and exists in a closed loop in time that repeats infinitely.
• The butterfly effect: Even the smallest action can have massive consequences.

With all that in mind, let’s embark on a journey through time and explore these further!

Grandfather Paradox

This thought experiment posits the idea of somebody traveling back in time and killing their grandfather before their parents were born. Because the grandfather never has children, the time traveler—his grandchild—cannot exist.

However, if the time traveler never existed, they couldn’t kill their grandfather, so he would go on to have children and grandchildren. One of those grandchildren is the time traveler, though, who might go back in time and kill their grandfather. If that seems confusing, it’s okay—it’s supposed to be.

The bottom line is that if somebody travels to the past and changes something that prevents them from ever traveling to the past, they have broken the timeline's continuity.

Polchinski’s Paradox

American theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski removed human intervention from the time travel equation.

Imagine a billiard ball travels into a wormhole, tunnels through time in a closed loop, and emerges from the same wormhole just in time to knock its past self away.

Doing so prevents it from ever entering the wormhole and traveling through time, to begin with. However, if it does not travel back in time, it cannot emerge to knock itself out of the way, giving it a clear path to travel back in time.

Bootstrap Paradox

The Bootstrap Paradox is the first closed causal loop paradox we will explore. This presents a situation where an object, idea, or person traveling to the past creates the conditions for their existence, leading to it having no identifiable origin in the timeline.

Imagine sending the schematics for your time machine to your past self, from which you create a time machine. Where did the knowledge of how to create the time machine begin?

Predestination Paradox

The most nihilistic of paradoxes explores the idea that nothing we do matters, no matter what. Events are predetermined to still occur regardless of when and where you travel in time.

Suppose you time travel to the past to talk Alexander the Great out of invading Persia, but he hadn’t even considered this until you mentioned it. By traveling to the past to prevent Alexander’s conquest, you caused it.

Butterfly Effec t

Less of a paradox and more an exploration of unintended consequences, the butterfly effect explores the idea that any action can have sweeping repercussions, no matter how small.

In the 1960s, meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered that adding tiny changes to computer-based meteorological models resulted in unpredictable changes far from the origin point. In traveling back in time, we don’t know what effect even minor changes might have on the timeline.

How to Write Convincing Time Travel Stories

Time travel can be pretty complex at the best of times, but that doesn't mean writing about it has to be a challenge. Here are a few practical tips to craft narratives that crack the temporal code.

Ask Yourself, "Why Time Travel?"

If your story has time travel, to begin with, it likely plays a pretty significant role in the narrative. Define the purpose that time travel has in your story by asking yourself questions like:

• How and why is time travel possible in your setting?
• What does it mean for your story and your characters?
• What are your characters meant to use time travel for?
• Is the actual practice of time travel different from its intent?

If you can't be clear about time travel's purpose in your story, how can you convincingly write about it? To get crafty with time, you first need to master its relevant mechanics.

Keep a Record of Everything

You're asking your reader to potentially make several mental leaps when time travel is involved in a story, so it's imperative to have all of your details sorted. Do the work of planning out dates and events ahead of time by creating a time map for yourself—like a mindmap, but for a timeline.

You'll be able to keep a birds-eye view of the narrative at all times, be more strategic about moving the order of events around, and ensure that you never miss a detail. You may even want to have multiple versions—a strictly linear timeline and a more loosely structured time map where you draw connections between events and in the order they appear in the narrative.

In Campfire, you can do both with the Timeline Module —create as many Timelines as you want by using the Page feature in the element. You can also connect your Timeline(s) to a custom calendar from the Calendar Module for extra fun with time wonkiness in your world.

If a new idea pops up while writing, don't stress! You'll have your handy time map already laid out so you can easily see if a new scene or chapter makes sense, as well as where it will best fit into the narrative.

Never Forget Causality

I mentioned this concept earlier in the article, but it should be reiterated: The most important rule of time travel is that every action results in a consequence. Remember cause and effect : an action is taken (your character time travels to the past), and causes an effect, the consequence (the timeline is forever changed).

"Consequence" doesn't have to be a negative thing, either, even though the word has that connotation. The resulting consequence of a given action could be a positive effect, too.

Regardless, seek to maintain causality so you don't confuse your readers (or yourself, for that matter). Establishing clear rules for how time travel works in your setting and sticking to them will help you keep your time logic consistent and avoid running into narrative dead ends or plot holes.

Tips & Tricks For the Time-Traveling Author

Now that we’ve examined several obstacles you can encounter when writing about time travel, let’s see how you can either avoid them or exploit them. That’s right! Even time travel paradoxes present opportunities for superb storytelling.

Focus on the Future

Fortunately, all the named paradoxes here involve the past, so the easy way to avoid them is to not go there! Thanks to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, you don’t even have to invent a clever way to travel instead to the future.

An aspect of Einstein's theory is time dilation , in which the faster an object moves through space, the slower it moves through time. With this, you need only zip around at near the speed of light for a few weeks or months, and when you come back to Earth, years or centuries will have gone by.

Create a Multiverse

A popular trope in science fiction today, and a theory gaining popularity among theoretical quantum physicists, is the multiverse concept. According to multiverse theory, whenever an event occurs, every possible outcome of the event happens simultaneously, splitting the universe into parallels that each contain differing outcomes.

Since all these realities exist, perhaps changing the past is simply a way for time travelers to travel between realities, shifting their perspective to a timeline where things occurred differently than in their original reality.

Get Creative With Consequences

Instead of avoiding paradoxes, maybe you want them to occur. Leading to some fascinating stories, this can be approached in a variety of ways. Perhaps you want to examine the unintended consequences of the butterfly effect, create a time-traveling police force that enforces the laws of time travel, or simply break time itself and revel in the chaos that ensues.

Just be sure to remember the action-consequence rule and keep your timeline handy for easy reference—especially if you're toying around with multiple timelines!

Best Time Travel Stories

What follows are what I think are some of the best time travel stories. As you will see, the first two fall victim to time travel paradoxes, while the other two do a great job of exploring various elements we’ve discussed.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The corporation Cyberdyne Systems has remnants of the Terminator from the first movie, which they use to create an artificial intelligence system called Skynet. Skynet then actually creates the terminators and sends one back in time. Thus, it gives humanity the technology to create itself in a classic example of a bootstrap paradox.

Back to the Future

In this film, Marty McFly travels to the past and inadvertently interrupts the event where his parents first meet. This causes a chain of events where Marty’s parents never get married and have children, threatening to erase Marty and his siblings from the timeline.

Some argue that the McFly offspring ceasing to exist is a great exploration of the consequences of time travel. However, they would never have been at risk had Marty not been in the past to impede their parents’ romance. And if he ceases to exist, he’ll never go back and get in the way, thus creating a grandfather paradox.

War of the Twins

In this second volume of the Dragonlance Legends trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the mage Raistlin Majere travels into the past, kills a wizard named Fistandantilus in a battle for power, and assumes his identity. Throughout the book, Raistlin unwittingly follows the historical fate of Fistandantilus, in a wonderful exploration of the predestination paradox.

It’s hard to talk about time travel in fiction these days without mentioning Loki. The show explores two suggestions from my list above: the multiverse and policing the timeline. In this series, varying outcomes of events lead to branching timelines, creating a multiverse of possibilities. However, an agency called the Time Variance Authority exists to prevent this from happening, and they set out to eliminate any branches separate from what they consider the Sacred Timeline.

Bon Voyage!

I hope this exploration of time travel leaves you prepared to tackle these obstacles and opportunities that naturally present themselves when playing around with time.

Just knowing about the complexities of time travel and the paradoxes it can bring about is the best way to avoid trouble and create innovative storytelling moments. So, dust off your DeLorean, polish your paradox-proof plot, and get ready to write your adventure through the ages!

Learn more about making a timeline with Campfire in the dedicated Timeline Module tutorial . And be sure to check out the other plotting and planning articles and videos here on Learn, for advice on how to plan your very own time travel adventures!

The 10 Best Time Travel Devices In Movies

By Nate Williams

Comingsoon.net is traveling throughout film history to determine which time travel devices are the most effective. Check out our picks in the gallery below!

Time travel is one of the most confounding plot devices in film—it rarely makes sense and it often ends up creating more questions than answers. Filmmakers do their best to try and avoid any paradoxes or inconsistencies in the logic they’re establishing, but they aren’t always successful at this. That’s why, whenever a filmmaker comes up with a device to make their time travel story convincing, it’s worth celebrating.

More often than not, it seems that a comedic or otherwise lighthearted take makes the most sense when telling a time travel story. Making a joke out of something so complex leads to a whole new level of accessibility—“How does this work?” “I don’t know!”—that’d be unreachable with a more dramatic take. Still, some dramatic filmmakers have managed to achieve this accessibility, as well. Of all the time travel devices in all the time travel movies, these are the ones that get the job done the best.

Time travel movies

About time (2013).

Of all the time travel movies out there, 2013’s About Time has one of the most ingenious ways of explaining things: the film makes it all about genes. In the filmm, the main character’s family passes the ability to time travel through their bloodline. The patriarch explains the rules to their young, and so on. It’s really clever.

Back to the Future (1985)

The DeLorean, the need to get up to 88 miles per hour, the all-important plutonium—all of these things come together for the eccentric Doc Brown, who is then able to create one of the most iconic time travel devices in all of film. As it happens, it’s also one of the most accessible. Enter the date you want to travel to, get the car up to the right speed, and you’re there.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Taking a page out of the Doctor Who time travel rulebook, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure has its two leads travel through time using a phone booth. It helps to have both leads be complete airheads, which allows for a dumbing down of the time travel logic that makes things pretty accessible for all.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

There are plenty of time loop stories in this compilation, but none do it like Edge of Tomorrow . The film opts for what is more or less video game logic, similarly to a theme explored later on in Groundhog Day : you die, you get to go back and start over from a fixed point in time. As an alien invasion action film, Edge of Tomorrow is excellent. As a time travel movie, Edge of Tomorrow is even better.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Harold Ramis’s 1993 film Groundhog Day is a perfect example of how to do time travel the right way: there’s no science involved, there’s no device that needs fixing, there’s no world-ending urgency to the plot. It’s all about Bill Murray’s character and the way he treats other people. Ultimately, it’s a matter of morality instead of a matter of heady, scientific terms.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

You’d think that the time travel device used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban would’ve come in handy more often than it does. Dubbed a Time Turner, the stopwatch-looking device allows Hermione to go back in time to take more classes at school. Why wouldn’t they use it throughout the rest of the series to try and defeat the Dark Lord? Who knows. All we know is that it’s enough to be impressive whenever it’s featured in this third entry in the franchise.

Looper (2012)

Rian Johnson’s 2012 film Looper is nothing short of spectacular, especially in the way it handles its time travel. In the world of Looper , time travel is primarily used for nefarious purposes. Like Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow , Looper utilizes the concept of a time loop to explain its main character Joe’s ability to go back 30 years in the past.

Source Code (2011)

The Jake Gyllenhaal-led sci-fi movie Source Code explains its time travel by transporting a military man into another’s body in the time leading up to a terrorist attack in Chicago. It’s another really unique way of doing things, and it works well within the context of the film.

The Terminator (1984)

Like Looper , The Terminator ’s use of time travel is mostly reserved for those who want to use it for evil instead of good. Skynet is able to send killer cyborgs back and forth in time to do their bidding, keeping the logistics as secret as the rest of the Terminator universe’s lore. Sometimes no explanation proves to be the best explanation, it seems.

Time Bandits (1981)

Terry Gilliam’s fantasy adventure film Time Bandits is one of the more family-friendly entries here, which—like Bill & Ted or Back to the Future —allows for a general simplification of the way things work. Here, random portals spread throughout time are kept track of via a map.

Share article

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravel

Time Travel

"Time travel is theoretically impossible, but I wouldn't want to give it up as a plot gimmick." — Isaac Asimov

For related tropes, see Time Travel Tropes .

• You Can't Fight Fate : The heroes go to the future, only to find a Bad Future where bad things will happen if things keep going the way they are in the present. So they return to their own time and resolve to prevent the Bad Future from happening. They may or may not be successful, and if they aren't, it's because, well... You Can't Fight Fate .
• Stable Time Loop : The heroes go to the past, only to realise that they can't actually change anything. Even if they interact with the past, the timeline has already accounted for it because You Already Changed the Past . Sometimes it's because You Can't Fight Fate , but in the past instead of the future. Other times, it's a Wayback Trip : the heroes go to the past, realise that history is different from what they thought it was, and then change it so that it conforms to what they "know" as history — they think they "changed the past", but history already accounted for their actions.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right : The villains go to the past to change it so that the present is better for them . Better for the villains, obviously, is bad for the heroes. It can result in a Terminator Twosome , where the heroes follow the villains back to the past to try and stop them from changing it.
• Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right : Sometimes, if you go back to the past to try and make it "better", you end up making it worse, either by accidentally making a Bad Future , invoking a Temporal Paradox or Time Crash , or drawing the ire of the Clock Roaches . If this happens, the heroes have to go back to the past and undo their own changes, which returns everything to how it was .
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act : Sometimes, the story makes it impossible to go back in time and stop a Real Life bad thing from happening. Either it makes things worse ( e.g. the past villain is replaced with an even nastier entity, the present loses technological and social advancements spurred by the past conflict), or time itself will prevent you from doing it. In any event, you can't go back in time, kill Hitler, and prevent World War II from happening.
• Reset Button : Something happens that changes the present, and the heroes go back to the past to prevent that thing from happening. If they succeed, everything snaps back to normal without any further intervention. Nobody will even remember that anything was ever different — not even the time travellers themselves, unless they have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory .
• Trapped in the Past : The heroes go back to the past and get stuck there. They now have to figure out a way to get back to the future. If they can't, they have to choose between living a quiet life and trying not to interfere with the past, or using their future knowledge to make the past better . Or they might discover that they're in a Stable Time Loop and can't change anything even if they wanted to. Either way, they might make it back to the present if they take The Slow Path .
• Alternate Timeline : The heroes go back to the past and change it such that the universe splits in twain. It's a distinct separation from a Stable Time Loop in that the future will always be different because of the intervention of time travellers. Whether those time travellers can return to their "original" timeline or are stuck in the alternate one depends on the work.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop : The heroes relive the same bits of the past, over and over and over again. They have to find a way to break out of the loop and start moving forward in time again, often while using what they learned from experiencing that bit of the past so many times.
• San Dimas Time : The heroes go back to the past and have a time limit before something bad happens in the future. Normally this doesn't make any sense — presumably, you have until the future to prevent something bad from happening in the future. But in this kind of story, there's some mechanism or other that will prevent the heroes from fixing the future after a certain amount of time in the past. Sometimes this is because of a Delayed Ripple Effect — the timeline has already been changed, but the change hasn't "caught up" with the heroes yet and they can still work to fix everything before the change catches up with them and prevents them from acting further. Either way, it allows a time travel story to have a Race Against the Clock .
• The heroes go to the past and successfully change history. Only problem is that they've broken causality — they've changed the past so much that it becomes impossible, in the future, for them to even come to the past. This could lead to The End of the World as We Know It and the heroes having to Set Right What Once Went Wrong . Or it could lead to the heroes jeopardising their own existence .
• The villains go to the past and successfully change history — a little too well , as they end up erasing themselves from existence or making the future worse for them in a Karmic Twist Ending .
• The heroes go to the future and find out that they can fight fate. So they resolve to prevent the Bad Future from happening — except that the only thing that would cause them to want to do that is seeing the Bad Future to begin with.
• Timey-Wimey Ball : Any of the above may be in force at any given time.

As you can see, these stories depend in part on the many variants of Temporal Mutability . The characters might expect a certain change to be possible when it really isn't, and vice versa — in so doing, they may be Wrong Genre Savvy and think they're in one type of story when they're really in another.

• A mechanism by which to travel through time, usually a Time Machine . Since time travel is as speculative as Speculative Fiction can get, it usually runs on Applied Phlebotinum . There are many different ways to travel through time — some instantaneous, others not, and still others not dealing with your physical form at all . Whichever form is in use, the heroes will not really understand how it works and may struggle to get it to do what they want or to find Phlebotinum to power it. On the other hand, a Time Master will generally know what they're doing.
• A scientist or scholar who knows more about time travel than the other characters. They consider time travel an untested phenomenon and constantly spout warnings about avoiding a Temporal Paradox . They'll be particularly wary of a Butterfly of Doom or a Timeline-Altering MacGuffin , whether or not they're actually possible in that particular time travel story. They come across as Reluctant Mad Scientists a lot of the time, curious enough to want to explore a groundbreaking scientific endeavour but well aware of everything that could go wrong.
• A Mind Screw . The human mind is used to time going in a single direction at a single speed. Anything outside of that destroys the entire human conception of logic . Things happen one after another — until they don't. Any time travel story is going to deal with characters being unable to comprehend the causality they've set up. They may even encounter Time-Travel Tense Trouble . This can be mitigated somewhat with a Stable Time Loop or an inability to return from an Alternate Universe , which are the only resolutions to the story that are remotely logically consistent with the typical ideas of causality; stories wishing to be more "realistic" tend to favour these.

"Realistic" is a very weird thing to shoot for in your average time travel story. There's no reason to think that time travel is even possible in real life. Rather than realism, the aim is more for consistency ; it's important that the rules of time travel make sense . But this makes time travel stories tricky to write. Too far in the direction of consistency, and you risk hopelessly confusing the audience as they try to wrap their heads around the mess of causality you've made (e.g., unintentional plot holes will become more obvious to the viewer). Too far in the opposite direction, with no consequences for casual time travel, and you risk Opening a Can of Clones —the audience won't even care about anything that happens in your plot if they suspect that a time-traveler can just change it freely in the future. ( Or in the past. )

See also Meanwhile, in the Future… (for how you can run a narrative in two time periods at once) and What Year Is This? (for how your characters can deduce that they've travelled through time).

Examples of Time Travel in Fiction:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Web Original
• Western Animation
• Other Media

Video Example(s):

Captain Flamingo

After several failed attempts to slow down and stop Owen from using his out of control rollerblades, Milo and Lizbeth grabs on to him, going downhill really fast which makes them go backwards in time just before the summer season begins, and once he saw Owen's overprotective mom buying the skates for her son, he jumps out of the wormhole and tells her not to buy the blades, which she decided not to.

Example of: Reset Button

"Where Did Hist...

Sonic the Hedge...

Henry meets Fat...

The Time-Turner

Top 10 Reasons ...

• Tokusatsu Tropes
• Title Theme Tune
• Time Travel Tropes
• Temporal Mutability
• Recursive Canon
• The World as Myth
• Tesla Tech Timeline
• Science Fiction
• Video Game Stories
• NoRealLife/Tropes T to Z
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble
• Time Stands Still
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth
• Tied-Together-Shoelace Trip
• Narrative Devices
• To Be Continued... Right Now
• Tim Taylor Technology
• ImageSource/Photography
• Sounds of Science
• QuoteSource/Creators
• Rowan Atkinson
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
• Diesel Punk
• Heart of a Dog
• Speculative Fiction Tropes
• Time Travel Escape
• Tick Tock Tune
• AlliterativeName/Tropes S to Z
• Time Travel Taboo
• Stock Superpowers Index
• Touch of Death
• Edutainment Show
• JumpStart Series
• The Time of Myths
• TimeImmemorial/Tropes T to Z
• WeAreNotAlone/Tropes Q to Z
• Tin-Can Telephone

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Image Fixer
• New Articles
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

How well does it match the trope?

Example of:

Media sources:

11,241--> Report

Time Travel: The Literary Way To Wander

The English author H. G. Wells inaugurated the time travel phenomenon, receiving nomination to the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, 1932, 1935, and 1946. The notion that humans can move forward into the future or move backward into the past by using a vehicle or other stationary equipment is attributable to his creative vision insomuch as it is through the domain of science. Since the publication of his 1895 book, The Time Machine , several films have been produced that further develop the time travel genre. In literature, the topic provides fertile ground for the motion picture industry to stretch the audience imagination. The film version of the Wells novel produced in 1960 debuted with an apparatus that resembled a Model T prototype. As the masses clamored for more, the movie industry responded in 1985 with Back to the Future , which revamped the chariot-like predecessor into a state-of-the-art DeLorean clad in stainless steel, to counteract those nerve-racking asteroids belts, no doubt. In no small measure, British composer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, explores the matter further by relating a vision of the future where space travel is the medium for a mission to spread intelligent beings throughout the solar system. The novel, 3001: The Final Odyssey , alludes to the science of tomorrow in a reference to astronaut Frank Poole. His frozen body is discovered beyond the orbit of Neptune and is resuscitated by advanced medicine.

Given the wide net of narrative angles, it is no wonder that the time travel story line has produced a deluge of books, movies, and television episodes. The films that form the basis for this particular brand of drama, have set the pattern for a series of critically acclaimed sequels. In consideration of the foregoing, the practicality of technological innovation will be examined as a measure of social, political, and philosophical progress by placing H. G. Wells in line with subsequent motion picture productions.

The film, Planet of the Apes (1968), recounts the dilemma of three astronauts who experience time dilation during a space mission. The dilation effect slows their aging process while the world they left behind has survived a cataclysmic evolution covering a span of 2,000 years. The planet has been re-inhabited by primates after a nuclear holocaust. The new primate order has constructed an Earthbound existence analogous to the human one predating the disaster. Their hierarchical dominance is culturally and intellectually advanced but remains burdened by the plight of the remaining human survivors who languish about the Earth. In one of the early scenes, the Charleston Heston character guides the audience through the state of mind required for travel through time as he grapples with the complexity of the journey.

George Taylor: And that completes my final report until we reach touchdown. We’re now on full automatic, in the hands of the computers. I have tucked my crew in for the long sleep and I’ll be joining them soon. In less than an hour, we’ll finish our sixth month out of Cape Kennedy. Six months in deep space – by our time, that is. According to Dr. Haslein’s theory of time, in a vehicle travelling nearly the speed of light, the Earth has aged nearly 700 years since we left it, while we’ve aged hardly at all. Maybe so. This much is probably true – the men who sent us on this journey are long since dead and gone. You who are reading me now are a different breed – I hope a better one. I leave the 20th century with no regrets. But one more thing – if anybody’s listening, that is. Nothing scientific. It’s purely personal. But seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely. That’s about it. Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving?

In, The Terminator (1984), the human race is once again locked in a battle for control of the future. A cyborg reenters the past by using a time displacement device. The device sends the cyborg and a human soldier into the past where they both seek to either protect or annihilate the birth of a yet unborn leader of the post-apocalyptic movement against cyborg combatants. The soldier sent back to maintain the sequence of historical events that establish his existence in the future, is ultimately confronted with the task of exposing his escape through a time continuum.

Dr. Peter Silberman: Why this elaborate scheme with the Terminator? Kyle Reese: It had no choice. Their defense grid was smashed. We’d won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence! Dr. Peter Silberman: Is that when you captured the lab complex and found the, uh, what was it called… the time displacement equipment? Kyle Reese: That’s right. The Terminator had already gone through. Connor sent me to intercept him and they blew the whole place. Dr. Peter Silberman: Well, how are you supposed to get back? Kyle Reese: I can’t. Nobody goes home. Nobody else comes through. It’s just him – and me. [ . . . ] Sarah Connor: What’s it like when you go through time? Kyle Reese: White light. Pain. It’s like being born, maybe.

Altogether, humans have reached higher levels of innovation through technology but have not entirely achieved complete control over the inherent risks of technology. In the immediate context of these works, man has not fully eradicated the unpleasant realities of coexistence. As this screenwriter and novelist ascertain, the euphoria that emanates from technological alternatives, whether actual or virtual, remains subordinate to the irreconcilable social dilemmas of upheaval, famine, and injustice that persist. Indeed, time travel may only confound the challenges imposed upon future civilizations. The first contention is explained by the Twin Paradox which basically holds that a person who remains on Earth while his twin is transported away from Earth on a spacecraft traveling about the speed of light will age faster than the traveling twin, by undergoing a disproportionate aging process. This is part and parcel to the effect, though The Planet of the Apes  raises it a notch higher by showing that time travel can bring forth a more treacherous tidal wave of complications over what is deemed rational and natural. The second contention, and most mind jarring one, is the Grandfather Paradox which ponders the consequence of traveling back to the point of your grandfather’s age just prior to his marriage, using that situation to prevent the birth of your father and, hence, blocking your own life from ever becoming a reality.

This way of thinking about time dimension, as viewed in The Terminator , can justifiably lead to an infinite number of probable situations; which in turn, reveal the mushrooming effect of time flow, were we to eventually harness its power or potential. In 2001: A Space Odyssey , both paradoxes are interwoven throughout the movie sequence. The film begins with a scene from prehistoric times where apes are seen bearing bones as tools and weapons. Later in the film, there is a scene of an astronaut who ages instantly from one second to the next during a space mission. The film ends by showing Jupiter and a fetus side by side within the picture frame. This sequence of events can set into motion a typical Causality Dilemma. When the first and third scenes are switched around, the fetus first and the apes last, it doesn’t make sense chronologically, within the running theme of the film. This is notable since a fetus is generally considered to be the initial point of life, yet, other screen portrayals set the origin of life by an ape civilization. On the simplest level, time travel may amount to nothing more than a time capsule headed on a fateful mission to oblivion.

Whether by personal affinity or by cinematic-based premonition, the reading of imaginary worlds is taken with disapproval by some students, unfathomable riches by other students with a keen sense for creativity and artistry. In literature, these types of novels constitute a source of entertainment that can justifiably serve to enrich the intellect of the reader and, ultimately, the audience at large. The context is often simplistic enough to aid the reader in readjusting their current situation for reassessment of direction or as a basis for forward action. Through the narrative, the plot twists and turns can provide alternative recourse when the modern outlook is dismal, stagnant, or altogether nonexistent. In other contexts, the intricacy is so thorough and plausible that true fans admire the text for its remarkable detail in relating the unthinkable in a way that would eventually become the mainstay of reality.

In this examination of prolific composition, a symbiotic question arises in light of the practicality of the novel for setting forth a lifestyle replete with considerable innovation and undiluted vision. Do literary accounts of historic events counteract or elevate social, political, or scientific outcomes? To kindle the response, it is necessary to be mindful of the magnanimous verse of the English poet William Blake, “What is now proved was once, only imagin’d.”

In terms of the works envisioned by George Orwell, it seems that literary tales transform the notion of actual into ensuing scientific or social agendas. In the novel, 1984 , Orwell proposes a bleak version of the future and its implication on the vital stance of individual privacy; not to mention, the preconceived role of political institutions vis-à-vis bureaucratic affiliations against individual prerogative, whether legitimate or rogue, self-serving or messianic. The challenges inherent in the eventual onslaught of invention and subsequent distribution of resources, are only a few insights garnered in the 1949 narrative that proved to be prophetic in many areas of modern life.

To further this preoccupation with the challenge or plight or promise of tomorrow, French novelist Jules Verne depicted a substantial list of inventions that appeared untenable in skeptical minds; albeit, long overdue by more optimistic supporters. Verne authored six fictional novels: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From The Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), and Robur the Conqueror (1886). These works, in one form or another, predated the invention of the submarine, the helicopter, the modern city, and Moon exploration. By comparison, Wells provided for the possibility of time travel by conjuring the thought along with the apparatus, perhaps lackadaisically, Verne only envisioned time travel up to and including the Moon, despite a commendable attempt at the necessary apparatus. Yet, the significance of Verne’s foray into the world of tomorrow lies in the longing for a continuance of the impetus stemming from his work and inspiration. In order to reap the rewards of time travel, the unenviable courage and foresight of authors such as Verne must be reread at the onset of each and every new generation of visionary inventors and leaders. For the time being, audiences will have to delight in the silver screen brand of travel, whether through air, space or even water. For that, cinema has weighed in with their design, a Lotus Esprit with a submarine option in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Most literary works rely on layered interpretation of plot, character, or setting to develop the story line. In the realm of science fiction, the matter can conceivably take on a more pronounced and intricate structure of reasoning, due in part, to the underpinning of science or merely by the creative stream of the author.

This point in the matter begins by selecting a screenplay and exploring the underlying philosophical context implied within the character interaction and plot elements. The dialogue noted henceforth is referenced from the television series Star Trek that aired publicly from 1966 to 1969.

By far, the most prevalent allusion in the Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays” is with the Allegory Of The Cave in Book VII of  The Republic by Plato. The cave is a metaphor for man’s ignorance and hence his condition of being a prisoner to that ignorance, being unaware of a world of possibilities beyond the confines of the cave walls. Zarabeth and Spock both allude to Plato’s notion of imprisonment by revealing the event leading to their presence in the cave and their destiny, were they to remain. In this prehistoric setting, love is the only escape from the bitterness of isolation and desperation. Spock’s regression from highly civilized to irrepressibly barbaric is proof to this dilemma. As an aside, the cave takes on further symbolism as the Garden of Eden, where Eve (Zarabeth) is tempered by Satan (Spock) as Adam (McCoy) stands witness.

SPOCK: It is agreeably warm here. ZARABETH: What are you called? SPOCK: I’m called Spock. ZARABETH: Even your name is strange. Forgive me. I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you. Why are you here? Are you prisoners too? SPOCK: Prisoners? ZARABETH: This is one of the places Zor Kahn sends people when he wants them to disappear. Didn’t you come in through the time portal? SPOCK: Yes, we came through the time portal, but not as prisoners. We were sent here by mistake. ZARABETH: The Atavachron is far away, but I think you come from someplace farther than that. SPOCK: That is true. I am not from the world you know at all. My home is a planet millions of light years away. ZARABETH: Oh, how wonderful! I’ve always loved books about such possibilities. But they are only stories. This isn’t real. I must be imagining all this. I’m going mad! SPOCK: Listen. I am firmly convinced that I do exist. I am substantial. You are not imagining this. ZARABETH: Oh, I’ve been here for so long, alone. When I saw you out there, I couldn’t believe it. [ … ] CONSTABLE: Where are you from? KIRK: An island. CONSTABLE: What is this island? KIRK: It’s called Earth. CONSTABLE: I know no island Earth.

In the medieval portion of the episode, Kirk’s incarceration for witchery is another allusion to Plato’s cave analogy. Once again, it is by man’s unsound perception of evil that lands Kirk in a jail cell. It is only through Kirk’s innate reasoning (and brawn) that he is able to convince the Inquisitor to release him and facilitate his return to the future, in Kirk’s case; a stark contrast to the dungeon quarters presumably replete with spirits in hiding.

Within the portions of the episode as set forth by the futuristic setting of the library, the perception of reality reaches full circle. The library holds the sum total of existence and is maneuvered by none other than three versions of the same man, Atoz, a slight inference to the Holy Trinity. In Plato, there is the notion of a puppet-master pulling the strings of reality. In essence, an omniscient (albeit compassionate) force that can only expect so much in return from a cowardly underling that can’t see past the lines of the shadows on the cave wall.

In the end, the overwhelming plea is to confront your cavernous plight and transcend it through spiritual or intellectual alternatives–within the eternal struggle, enlightenment prevails. As a final note, some ploys can be interpreted as foreshadowing moral decay. The first one is the meat offering between Zarabeth and Spock. Another is the reference to ‘spirits’ as a connotation to the perils of imbibing. Not least of which remains, the destructive influence of technology upon the delicate fabric of humanity. A matter to contend with since Star Trek was not the only television examination of time travel insofar as its objective, its method, nor its benefit, if any, are concerned. A television series that aired following World War II in the years 1954 to 1955 , made its own mark on the elusive time travel phenomenon. In the Flash Gordon episode “Deadline at Noon”, the protagonist Flash Gordon attempts a time transition from the year 3203 backward to the Berlin of 1953 using a portable time shifting device. The show characters, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov make the time leap using a spaceship in service of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. This backdrop of war-torn Germany, may well have led to the induction of Flash Gordon  into the US National Film Registry for relating a pivotal moment in human history.

Lastly, in the scene between Kirk to Atoz the preoccupation with thwarting the essence of time through devices of dissipation is revisited as shown by the glacial pace of human progress in relation to the imminent pace of the universe, as it were, a star’s impending evolution into a state of supernova.

ATOZ: May I help you? You may select from more than twenty thousand verism tapes, several hundred of which have only recently been added to the collection. I’m sure you’ll find something here that pleases you. You, sir, what is your particular field of interest? KIRK: What about recent history? ATOZ: Really? Oh, that’s too bad. We have so little on recent history. There was no demand for it.

In such circumstances, being confined to a barren desert, marooned on an island at sea, or having to experience reality through a diminishing aperture, creates ripe conditions for time travel, to quell the stifling sensation of monotony to some degree. To that effect, the title of the episode is derived from Shakespeare’s  Macbeth  during a soliloquy in Act V Scene V that remarks:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

Here, the underlying implication perhaps being that from dust he emerges and to dust shall he return; man’s only elixir in light of his predicament is the illusion flowing from dreams or memories of the past notwithstanding future deferments, fleeting as they may be. On an even more superficial level, the episode lends itself to commentary on the human psyche in terms of personality disorder. Spock begins to transform to a more primal version of the Vulcan identity as the plot develops. There are three impersonations of Atoz which confound the story in a manner not too far removed from a multiple personality complex. As well, the medieval spectacle encountered by Kirk is littered with delusions that: spirits abound.

However whimsical the latter, the relevancy of this epic objective has been entrenched in science fiction circles. In 1955, Jack Finney writes about plant matter traversing through the cosmic layers of the universe, taking root in planetary ecosystems, and thwarting mankind; only to be conspicuously whisked away to ever more distantly protruding points and predicaments. This is best conveyed in an essay by Robert Skylar in reference to the 1956 film version of the Finney novel.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” arrived as part of an explosion of science fantasy and science horror in mainstream popular culture, fueled by the atomic age, advent of space rocketry, and Cold War anxieties. “So much has been discovered these past few years that anything is possible,” say Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) after he discovers that mysterious seed pods grow into human forms and take over actual persons, retaining their former physical characteristics but completely transforming their personalities. “It may be the results of atomic radiation on plant life, or animal life … some weird, alien organism … a mutation of some kind.” Once a pod is ready to become you, the moment you fall asleep you’re a goner.

In view of this, the film’s implication and the novel’s timeliness have both succeeded in resounding certain publicity to the point that it was inducted to the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its allegorical perception of 1950s America. In The Body Snatchers , Finney addresses the probability of plant-based reinsurgency over the natural order; a tenable notion considering the fact that dinosaurs once reigned over all species, until their untimely and inexplicable demise. The 1978 film adaptation of the novel  Invasion of the Body Snatchers , brought home the vulnerability of civilization, not merely so much by human deed, but by the potentially mutinous botanical variety. The Finney novel mangles the social order on the cosmic level, incisively; marginalizing the technological factor as highlighted in this undertaking.

This leaves open the question: given the likelihood of time travel, would mankind remain coherent, distinguishable, or existentially viable across time and space, where ever that may manifest thinly and delicately as proposed? The answer to that may well lie in the camp that has encouraged the dystopian theme: theater. In Blade Runner (1982), the future is reimagined as a setting where human survival is cosmically vetted through genetically engineered replicas conceived primarily for the unfathomable exploration and exploitation of the universe. After a substantial experience at the farthest corner of the universe, the human replicas inexplicably return to Earth to reintegrate themselves into the mainstream: some peacefully, some deviously. In the final scene, actor Rutger Hauer goes against the grain by rescuing his captor from a rooftop confrontation; in a last effort to defeat mortality and in an ironic lament to his misgiving.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

The actor is conveying, in part, the logistical challenges of time travel using a reference to c-beams which are a type of particle beam that are accelerated to levels near the speed of light. They are recognized as cutter beams; cesium beams by scientific denotation; or as abbreviated. In practice, a glitter effect is produced when agitated C55 isotopes reach the contact point of a starship hull, effectively slicing it apart. The glitter pattern is the close range aftershock of defense shields formed by clusters of granulated substance that react explosively with starship material. This occurs upon impact from an energy-prone weapon or by straying into a space minefield. Being in the presence of c-beams glittering simply means that either you are the aggressor or you are the target at close proximity. In space combat, the Tannhäuser Gate would be the ideal zone for sighting this effect. This is because there is an adequate concentration of hydrogen to dither the beam path. A feat that is not otherwise possible since, lasers included, c-beams do not travel at the necessary right angles.

Along those same lines, this scenario raises the concern of what would be waiting at the end point of time travel. Any such destination might be dominated by an animal species that succeeded in collaboratively inhabiting the colony as in Planet Of The Apes , a natural species or an artificial one like in Blade Runner . It may be replete with a plant species that already exists in outer space and that could harbor life by suppressing emotions and continuously spawning human life, as depicted by Invasion Of The Body Snatchers . A civilization that is permeated by an advanced phase of survival technology with little tolerance for humans could be just another of the many possible worlds that await in outer space, similar to that of  The Terminator . Regardless of the destination or its inhabitants, the experience would inevitably prove to be an utterly moving quest. If nothing else, time travel stands as a constant reminder of the dystopian condition of man’s eternal struggle for breaking Earthly bounds in order to reach the distant gates of a heaven beyond.

Apart from the creative impact of these works of art, all three films have the added distinction of being among those selected for preservation into the US National Film Registry for contributing to the voicing of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” trends in government and industry. This honor is bestowed upon by the Library of Congress whose main purpose is to promote literacy and American Literature through repositories such as the American Folklife Center and the American Memory. The role of television in this public endeavor is further indicated by the existence of works such as the  Flash Gordon  series in those repositories. No less commendable is the fact that there is also a considerable presence of the original  Star Trek  series within in the arena of scholarly research.

By this consideration of cosmic colonization, it goes without saying that the film version of the Wells novel has been duly established, but; later motion picture renditions of the concept play more broadly on the intermingling of outer space within the galactic infrastructure belying the time portal effect. In particular, the film industry has competently seared the manifestations of human transformation through time elasticity on multiple levels. It has justifiably provided some glimmer of hope for universal peace despite indications of savagery and constant, if hypothetical, annihilation wrought by machines, or plants for that matter. In contrast to earlier cinematic narratives, the modern versions have added a measure of intrigue and fascination through special effects, greater sensory immersion, and philosophical dimension.

Though some may differ in opinion, the science fiction that is represented by the time travel mystique is part and parcel of the human condition, restless and listless as it may be. One need only be reminded of the historical aspirations of the political leadership that threatened to keep humanity in line, as it were, through the atomic bomb and the Strategic Defense Initiative, among others. Within the context of Wells and Verne, the inventive capacity is optimal where and when machines facilitate and amplify the limitations of man and beast alike, but become disconcerting when systematic eradication of life is only the push of a button away, so to speak. Idealistically, some annals of thought have been more empathetic when dealing with the promise of technological progress. The Gene Roddenberry series has shown a generation of television viewers that amidst all the technology that awaits, one must never lose sight of the overbearing desire and provision for ultimate peace and harmony throughout the universe and across the spectrum of time– for all walks of life .

Another viewpoint places the time travel impulse into perspective by revealing just how far we have to go before reaching the outer banks of the universe. In a speech by astronomer Carl Sagan, he relates to audiences the immense trajectory that befalls mankind in the race for discovery of extraterrestrial life and intergalactic transport.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives…[E]very king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every revered teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Library of Congress has preserved Sagan’s contribution to planetary studies beginning with his past as a student at the University of Chicago and as a professor at Harvard University and Cornell University through an extensive archive containing notes, letters, and speeches. The Sagan files represent a vast body of work regarding the ecosystems in space as much as a solemn reflection of our minuscule role in the universe.

There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, “I am the great silent spaces between worlds.”

Even if only as a tribute to Sagan’s memory, supporters remain in awe toward what lies beyond and when the time will come to experience it firsthand, in its entirety. In March 2014, Joel Achenbach writes in the Smithsonian Magazine on the unrelenting imagination and steadfast optimism that Sagan held in his vision and quest for man’s eventual sovereignty in outer space by way of a time continuum.

In late 2013 scientists announced that based on extrapolations of data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which scrutinized a tiny patch of the sky, there may be as many as 40 billion planets that are roughly the size of the Earth and in orbits around their parent stars that put them in what we consider to be the “habitable zone.” Even if the Kepler-data extrapolation is off by an order of magnitude, or two orders, that leaves an astonishing amount of apparently life-friendly real estate in the Milky Way galaxy—which is, of course, just one of, yes, billions and billions of galaxies.

A 1841 Norwegian folktale by Jørgen Moe and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen reminds us how indelible time travel remains within the human spirit. (Note: shoon is a shoe, bairns are children.)

‘Then they built themselves houses, And stitched themselves shoon, And had so many bairns They reached up to the moon.’

In the final analysis, the aforementioned novelists and screenwriters have reinvigorated attention to the possibility and inevitability of time travel to the dismay of skeptical audiences and to the complacency of sympathetic ones. The destination would undoubtedly require some amount or form of acclimation upon arrival. Assuming that time travel was survivable, it presumes that there would be an immense environment that would have to be tamed in order to settle. That activity would only mire the fact that any such settlement would eventually be further strained by feelings of nostalgia for Earth, as we once knew it. The overbearing question, if at all, is what would we do if the backward destination was irrepressibly lagging and arcane in terms of progress or what would we do if the forward destination was prohibitively advanced to the point of incomprehensible or intangible, and would time travel unexpectedly reconstitute the present in an aesthetically pleasing light? Only time will tell.

What do you think? Leave a comment .

Want to write about Writing or other art forms?

Receive our weekly newsletter:

53 Comments

In “All Our Yesterdays”, I’m going to go with the time portal being a technology so different from ours it’s like magic. When I stop trying to figure out how it works and just try to understand what it’s doing, it makes sense.

So, this is a time travel system that allows time travel but does it without changing the past. Somehow, the people are literally altered to fit into the periods they go to and, through some means we don’t understand, this alteration also keeps them from changing the past in significant ways. Part of the alteration is done by the portal. This is why Spock begins to change once he goes through. But, there are steps that need to be taken to complete or stabilize this change.

I think we can assume this stabilization allows a person to fit into the past in some way as well. Hence, one traveler has become a magistrate in a period that’s very like our renaissance, something that would have been hard to do in our version without a known background and family.

Kirk, on the other hand, can’t last five minutes before he’s a walking anachronism on trial for witchcraft. Granted, he’s Kirk. That’s what we expect of him. But, still.

I like this episode, despite its flaws.

Travel through time has been a popular plot device in fiction since at least the 19th Century.

The first book that introduced me to time travel is ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ by Twain. I think it is one of the first to revolve around the idea of a character from the future introducing his knowledge and technology to a past civilization.

I like how A Christmas Carol is indeed a time travel story. Scrooge travels through space and time, visiting both his past and his future.

Storytellers tend to mix up the narrative time with the actual flow of time in the universe.

A fascinating article and a damned good read. Thank you. Thanks also for confirming my suspicions that the ‘c-beams’ mentioned by Roy in ‘Blade Runner’ were indeed Caesium beams. I’m glad to see that you didn’t get bogged down in the ‘Grandfather Paradox’, so beloved by some writers. A much over explored idea, in my opinion. I liked how you have drawn from a wide variety of sources. This helped to keep me interested and keen to read the whole article. Thank you for your time, research and effort.

All Our Yesterdays was the very first episode of Star Trek I ever saw, and I was absolutely hooked by the Spock/McCoy interplay; it’s probably safe to say that I was a Spock fan first and a Star Trek fan second. It’s still one of my favourite episodes, despite the gaps in logic, and its two prose sequels are among my favourite Trek books as well.

I loved this episode. it was my second favorite of the season, after “The Paradise Syndrome”.

I don’t like this episode as much as everybody else does. I find it bland. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read Nimoy’s books before I watched it – he complains that the writers wrote a love story for Spock without considering that Vulcans don’t fall in love like that, and that they added the rather nonsensical explanation only after he pointed this out to them – but to me it feels as if Nimoy is mostly annoyed that he has to play being in love with Zarabeth.

We’ve seen several types of time travel in Dr. Who, and some of them are less perfected and more prone to error than much else.

While the best known of all books about time travel is The Time Machine, the idea, albeit couched in less scientific terms, goes much further back.

Recommending “By His Bootstraps,” Robert A. Heinlein. It is a short story dealign with the topic of time travel.

If we are doing recommendations, mine is The Time Traveler’s Wife, both the book and the film.

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 1972.

Great post. Helped me to understand how all this time-travel jiggery-pokery works.

I like how in the Planet of the Apes movies, time travel comes in around the third movie or so, which causes the curious effect of having a series that ends right where it started, and where the last couple movies are actually both prequels and sequels to the first films—at the same time.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is not time travel. It starts in the remote past, then the moon, then the voyage to the monolith. Bowman’s transformation does seem to have him see successive future stages of himself. This is not really explained. There is a great book by Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, explaining the logic behind the film and book.

All of the different ways those fictional mortals manage to thrust themselves back and forth in space-time… 🙂

It is interesting in Back to the Future when you see the photograph changing because of something that happened in the past. That doesn’t make sense in anyone’s version of anything. I mean, what is right now? Why is it changing now? What is this supposed to be? It’s something that happened years in the past! It’s clearly a mixed-up attempt to change the past and yet only have one timeline. That would not make sense.

The most shocking thing that one can discover about Planet of the Apes is that it is serious.

Time travel has been one of cinema’s most reliable plot devices.

Time travel is so cool. More people need to write about it

I learned so much!

Although “All Our Yesterdays” was the first TOS episode I saw, at around age 10, I managed to completely drop Kirk’s trip into the past from my memory. In my mind, for 25+ years, this episode only had Spock and McCoy in the past.

Anyone read Outlander by Gabaldon?

Creative time traveling thought… I went forward in time yesterday by 24 hours, and here I am.

There are hundreds of novels and short stories about or involving time travel, but my favorite is “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu.

I believe that, in the T1 movie they of course change the future, not enough to prevent war, but to change how machines are built (technology from the future trapped in past used to build better machines) so that’s why we see how in T2 movie the Terminator is way better and evolved than T-400.

Nice job, well-written. Many novels/films use time-travel for political analysis. Check the novel Moscow 2042 by Voinovich. Also, some episodes of Twilight Zone deal with the topic

Very interesting! The Time Machine of H. G. Wells is one of my favourite books.

One of my favorite and especially geeky bits of Trek trivia relates to the ‘All Our Yesterdays’ episode. The sound effect used for the Atavachron was the IRIG-B time code transmitted by standard time and frequency stations WWV/WWVH back in the 1960s. (The format has since changed.) A time code sound effect always seemed highly appropriate for a time machine.

Stephen King’s new work, 11/22/63, comes into mind. It’s a novel about a man who travels back in time via a storeroom to stop the JFK assassination,

This is not the first novel to deal with the JFK assassination via time travel, it sure is a good one.

You can invent an idea that’s not based in physics, or anything we know about the laws of nature, but you could invent an idea that is sort of like fixed points in the future. There are choices that we have now. Different things could happen. But no matter what we do now, there’s going to be some ultimate outcome.

In common time travel plots in science fiction, there is one time-line, but time travelers can change the timeline by going back and changing events from what had occurred before they travel back. Doing so makes the previously-established timeline exist only in the memories and stories of the time travelers.

“The likelihood of time travel”? Is about the same as the likelihood that a loving and all-powerful god exists.

Its just a matter of time. Time travel will become a reality.

A great discussion, I would liked to have seen you extend this to Dr. Who as really that is perhaps the best example of a wanderer – less driven by narrative and more by the desire to explore. I love HG Wells and his time travel texts, I think also some of the same appeal is present when authors write of immortal beings, such as Simone de Beauviors ‘All Men Are Mortal’, and many of the Anne Rice novels – we innately appear to have a fascination with any time other than our own.

Interesting bit about the National Film Registry. Time travel is certainly a unique facet of human wanderlust.

I wonder what you think about more philosophical time travel. For instance, in the novel A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, one of the characters “travels” in time by writing a diary in the past. That is to say, her words keep her alive in the present (to the diary reader) while all indications seem to point that she died in the past.

If a living memory constitutes time travel, I wonder what that says about The Time Machine – and the other works you have mentioned. You’re writing about them, so maybe they have found a place in the future.

I didn’t even consider this with Blade Runner and his statement at the end of the movie–the improvisation of that shows just how meaningful that movie was. I wonder how that applies to 2049.

A lot of Futurama episodes/movies also had some pretty interesting, unique, and highly scientific approaches to time travel.

One of Futurama’s best episodes is about time travel. It’s also the one that won it an Emmy. “Roswell that Ends Well”

I enjoyed your discussion of how there can be different possible scenarios through time travel. There’s a show called ‘Timeless’ that explores the problems you could cause by changing the past. The heroes try and stop a man who wants to change the past but ultimately just be being there, they always change something.

‘Behold the Man’ and ‘A Sound of Thunder’ are favorite time traveling novels of mine. The former is interesting in that the protagonist, Karl, goes back to visit the time of Jesus, only to find out the Son of God is a mentally-challenged fool and his mother, Mary, is a prostitute having delusions of an angel impregnating her. Karl then uses his knowledge of science to cure various peoples’ diseases and begins preaching the gospel properly as it is known in his time. He becomes popular throughout the Holy Land, leads the disciplines, and tells Judas to betray him to the Romans. He completes the story of Jesus to the end when he is crucified.

Hi this is going to sound crazy but I do believe that time travel is a real thing and that in due time we will discover it. The reason why I do believe it in so strongly is the fact that there are so many strange disappearances that no one can explain, on saying this I have not heard of any strange appearances (except on YouTube). I just think that it does pay to have an open mind about it.

Good article!

As a personal devotee of the time-travel subgenre, I love the way this article was not only fun to read but also insightful about the interaction between literary/cinematic creators and their audiences. My favorite insight in this article was how these works of art allow us as readers and viewers to imaginatively travel beyond the arrow of time imposed by our acquiescence to Einsteinian relativity and live, for the duration of the artistic moment, in some alternate time. In that sense, which this article alludes to, we break those bindings of space-time laws to experience greater lessons to be learned by a wider spectrum of human experience. Time-travel *is* possible, if only through our imaginations, and the trappings of logistics are sometimes express while others times merely implied. If the story’s well told, our desire to participate in these fanciful excursions allows us to forgive and surrender to our willing suspension of disbelief in a way that doesn’t differ whether the story is set in the past, the future, or some alternating combination along the continuum.

Thank you for an entertaining and thought-provoking article about the way humanity overcomes, for now, time-bound realities. Imaginative experience feels no less real (we need but notice the rate of our own heartbeat or the increased infusion of adrenaline brought about by a well-executed story) for these “made-up” stories to transport is to other times.

This makes for an interesting read. I like how you captured a number of source material but I am left wondering what you might hint at as a ‘stone left unturned’ for the science fiction genre when it comes to time travel. Whether possible or not, time travel definitely impired by our want to be agents with control over our past, as we do our future. Yet science fiction material predominately deals with the negative consequence of time travel. Does this tell us something interesting about how we view ourselves?

Beyond technological curiosity, our fascination with time travel reveals our human fear of uncertainty and a frequent, nagging sense of regret. Thoughts along the lines of “If only I could go back” and “What would happen if this or that didn’t” step out of the realm of mere hypothesis in scenarios where time travel is possible. We seem to be ill at ease with determinism and so continuously think up stories in which we can alter the course of our lives. What’s interesting, I think, is that in most of these stories in the end our fate remains beyond control—another great cinematic example that comes to mind is Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly. What we can control however is our reaction to technological progress and whether or not social and political development follow suit.

I also always felt that it was in the genre of science fiction and often time travel specifically where writers really began to play with non-linear storytelling, which has of course now spread across all genres

Time travel is such an exciting notion. I always say it would be my super power if I could chose one. In science fiction, the artist grapples with the effects of technology which scientists and politicians refuse to consider. The Romance genre also loves time travel as evidenced by the Outlander Series and many more novels with the same premise.

In many ways, H.G. Wells was not simply the father of the time travel genre; he was the father for all of Science Fiction.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Prove you are human, type c a t s in singular form below:

• These Time Travel Movies Ar...
• Horror Movies About Time Tr...
• Unforgettable Time Travelin...
• Top Current Shows About Tim...
• Underrated Time-Travel Horr...
• Totally Convincing True Sto...
• Pictures of Real Time Trave...
• Real People Who Time Traveled
• Film Plot Holes You'll Neve...
• All About the Montauk Project

The Best Fictional Time Machines (As Opposed To Real Ones)

Here are the best time machines in entertainment. Time travel is one of the basic plot devices of numerous science fiction movies and TV series, and because it's used so often, there are tons of devices, mechanisms, techniques, and tricks characters use to jump around in time and space. Some of these machines have incredibly inventive names like the TARDIS (Time AN Relative Dimension In Space) while others are simply called what it is, a time machine. But with so many options, it's hard to determine which time machine from across all of screen fiction is the best of them all, but this list attempts to do exactly that with help from your votes, of course.

These are the greatest time machines across all films and TV shows, ranked by you! Scroll through the list and vote up your favorite time travel devices, concepts, ideas, or vehicles. The best part is you don't have to pick just one and the best time machine is sure to rise to the top of the list!

TARDIS ('Doctor Who')

Throughout all of science fiction, there is probably no time machine as well-known or as recognizable as the TARDIS , which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The TARDIS is more than a time machine; it's also capable of traveling through space and can move to any point in time and/or space almost instantly. This also makes it the fastest spacecraft in fiction, but when it comes to the TARDIS, it's mostly about time travel.

The TARDIS most people are familiar with was stolen by the Doctor, a Gallifreyan who left his home with his granddaughter, Susan in the "borrowed" Type 40 TT Device (TARDIS). The TARDIS is sentient and much bigger on the inside. It also has a chameleon circuit, which keeps it from standing out in whichever era it finds itself, but the one the Doctor travels in has a busted circuit. Because of this, it's been locked in the shape of a blue police box since it appeared in the first episode of  Doctor Who  in 1963.

DeLorean DMC-12 ('Back To The Future' Trilogy)

As the great Doctor Emmett Brown once said, "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" He had a point, and despite being a failure in the retail market, the DeLorean DMC-12 became a hit thanks to the success and popularity of the  Back to the Future  trilogy.

Doc Brown engineered his time machine out of the car for one reason: he had to get his device up to 88 miles per hour in order to get it to function. The device in question was the Flux Capacitor, Doc's invention that made time travel possible.

Add to that 1.21 Gigawatts of power supplied by Plutonium, a bolt of lightning, or a Mr. Fusion device, and the DeLorean will take you to any point in time (but not space) you want!

Phone Booth ('Bill & Ted' Franchise)

Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan were given access to a time machine by Rufus in  Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure . The time machine was constructed in the future and made to look like a late-20th-century  phone booth so it would appear familiar to the high school students.

In the movie, the time machine is shown to be able to travel to any place and time on Earth so long as the destination is keyed into the phone in the same manner you would dial a phone. It came with a Yellow Pages directory with all the necessary information, and it only appeared different from a phone booth thanks to the inclusion of an antennae at the top of the device.

As the phone booth traveled through space and time, it followed conduits of energy, which snaked through some sort of interdimensional void. When the booth entered a new time, it would fall from the sky, and when it would leave, it would be surrounded with energy and disappear into the ground.

• Warner Bros.

The Time Machine ('The Time Machine')

One of the earliest examples of a time machine in fiction came in H.G. Wells'  The Time Machine , which was made into a film in 1960 . A remake was released in 2002, but both machines were pretty much the same in function, so this entry will focus on the original film.

In the movie, there were actually two separate time machines. The first was a model used to show that time travel was possible, and the second was a full-size device capable of traveling forward or backward in time, but not space. It featured a seat with a console controlled by a lever with dials indicating the date and time. The rear of the device featured an ornate disk. Essentially, it was what a steampunk designer would have created were they told to make a time machine, but had never seen or heard of the movie or book.

The time machine created an impenetrable sphere of energy around it, which protected it and whoever was inside from anything outside. In the movie, this was shown as lava flowed and encased the device for thousands of years before the rock eroded to reveal a new world.

• Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Time Stone ('Doctor Strange')

While not a machine or mechanical device, this list would not be complete without mentioning the Time Stone from the MCU. Entrusted to Doctor Strange inside the Eye of Agamotto, it allows the user to manipulate time in almost any fashion.

The Time Stone is mostly used to see into the past or future but it is entirely capable of traveling through time. This is most clearly illustrated when Doctor Strange creates a time loop to defeat Dormammu.

• Mr. Peabody & Sherman

The WABAC Machine ('Mr. Peabody & Sherman')

The Wormhole Activating and Bridging Automatic Computer, or  WABAC , is the time machine used by Mr. Peabody who invented it for Sherman. The device served as the primary plot point for the series, which featured the titular characters traveling back in time to undertake adventures.

The WABAC Machine appeared much like a computer did in the 1960s, complete with large dials, lights, and monitors. The coordinates were entered into the machine, and it opened a literal door to the past the characters would then walk through.

When the film was released, the machine was updated to appear more modern as a hovering orange device, but the principal and usage remained pretty much the same as it did in the show.

The Waverider ('DC's Legends Of Tomorrow')

In  DC's Legends of Tomorrow , the Waverider WR-2059 is a timeship created by the Time Masters for the purpose of policing the timeline. It is a highly intelligent and sentient vessel capable of flying through time and space. The vessel is divided into 36 separate compartments including spacious amenities for the crew, an armory, medical suite, and much more.

The Waverider isn't just a timeship, it can also travel through water, space, and hyperspace. It's an incredibly versatile ship, and it's also quite large. The series never explicitly states how many people it can hold, but it's likely in the dozens to around 100 or more.

Time-Turner ('Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban')

In a world full of magic, you might think that people would be running through time... all the time, but it's actually dangerous and taboo in the  Harry Potter  universe. The first time it was seen was in  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  when Hermione Granger is revealed to have in her possession a device called a Time-Turner .

She was given the powerful magical artifact so she could attend more classes than would otherwise be possible, but she ends up using it later with Harry to save Buckbeak from execution as well as accomplish some other tasks that needed doing.

Time Turners work via an Hour-Reversal Charm, which allows someone to go back in time one hour for each time the device is turned. They are engineered in such a way as to limit the time in the past to only five hours. Once the time lapses, the user is sent back to their original time. Other models only allowed a person to remain in the past for five minutes.

• Paramount Pictures

Klingon Bird of Prey ('Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home')

Technically, the Klingon Bird of Prey from  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home  isn't a time machine at all, it's a spacecraft. That being said, it was used as a time machine via some warp mechanics and the gravitational pull of the sun. In the film, the crew have to travel back in time to the 20th century to retrieve some whales, and the only way they can do so involves a slingshot maneuver around the sun.

The math makes sense in the Star Trek universe, and it's a well-known fact that gravity can affect spacetime, so when you think about it, this may be one of the most realistic depictions of time travel in a science fiction film ever... but you probably shouldn't think about it too much.

Stewey's Time Machine ('Family Guy')

In  Family Guy , Stewey has invented a time machine , which he keeps in his room. The machine is used by Brian and Stewey in a number of episodes where the pair go on adventures. In one episode, Brian repeatedly sneaks into Stewey's room to impress women with the time machine.

When Stewey learns of Brian's illicit use of his device, some shenanigans lead to an accident, which causes time to slowly flow in reverse. Eventually, the problem is fixed, but the incident showed how powerful the time machine was in the  Family Guy  universe.

To use the machine, a person steps inside and enters the spacetime coordinated they want to travel to. They are then able to return to the present via a disk, which they need to drop onto the ground and stand upon. This has been used several times throughout the series as a plot device.

Time Displacement Machine ('Terminator' Franchise)

Time travel has been a part of the  Terminator  franchise since the first movie, but it was never fully explained as to how it worked. In the first film, it was revealed that the machines created the Time Displacement Machine , but the humans used it to send back Kyle Reese to save Sarah Connor from a T-800, a Terminator sent back in time to kill her. It was also revealed that only organic matter could travel through time, which explained how the Terminator could move through time (thanks to its organic shell) and why they had to be naked when they arrived.

This was upended in the second film when the T-1000 showed up since it was made of liquid metal with no organic parts. Despite this discrepancy, the films continued to show people and machines arriving from the future in a sphere of energy, which replaced whatever matter was in place wherever it landed. The Time Displacement Machine was finally seen in Terminator: Genisys  (pictured), but the mechanics of how it worked weren't expounded upon from the previous films.

Pym Particles/The Quantum Realm ('Avengers: Endgame')

Pym particles are used by Ant-Man and the Wasp to shrink down to the size of insects but they can also be used to access the Quantum Realm where time and space are not as rigid as they are in our reality. This allows the Avengers in  Avengers: Endgame  (with technology created by Tony Stark) to travel back in time in order to collect the Infinity Stones.

Without Tony Stark's tech it would be easy to get lost inside the Quantum Realm as Scott Lang demonstrated between  Ant-Man and the Wasp  and  Avengers: Endgame,  so use this method of time travel at your own risk.

The Quantum Accelerator ('Quantum Leap')

Quantum Leap  revolved around the concept of leaping through time from a fixed point (the present) to any time in the past so long as it was within the traveler's lifetime. The series opened with the opening narration , which explained how everything went "a little ca-ca."

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator - and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap... will be the leap home.

The Quantum Leap Accelerator worked by taking the mind of the person inside, and placing it within the body of a person in another time. The minds were swapped, which meant the unwitting time traveler would have his/her mind shot forward through time into Dr. Beckett's body while his mind popped into theirs. When they returned to their own time, they had no memory of the event, which served to keep the timeline clean and orderly.

Borg Sphere ('Star Trek: First Contact')

In  Star Trek: First Contact , the USS Enterprise manages to save Earth by destroying a Borg Cube alongside the rest of the fleet, but before the Cube was destroyed, a Borg Sphere shot out from within and headed towards Earth. As it made its way toward the planet, it opened a temporal rift in the fabric of spacetime, and traveled back in time.

As this was happening, the Enterprise was caught in its temporal wake. This enabled the crew of the Enterprise to witness the changes in the timeline wherein the Borg went back in time and successfully assimilated Earth. To stop this, the Enterprise followed the Sphere into the past through its temporal wake.

Unfortunately, the film never went into detail as to how the Borg managed to open the temporal rift in the first place, but it did have a brief mention that Geordi La Forge had found a way to recreate the temporal vortex that initially took the Enterprise back into the past. They were able to duplicate the process to return home, which may not have been properly explained, but it does make the Enterprise-E a time machine as well.

• Columbia Pictures

Time-Jump Device ('Men In Black III')

Men in Black III  introduced a time travel device, which could send a person through space, but not time. The Time-Jump device was created by Obadiah Price, who made it for Boris the Animal. It was illegal for him to do so since the MIB made time travel illegal throughout the universe. 

It wasn't the safest device to use, as it required very specific conditions in order to get it to function properly. The device could only be used to send a single individual through time so long as they reached the correct speed, which meant, they needed to jump from a high point and fall towards the ground.

As the ground quickly approaches, so long as the right speed is reached and the button is pressed at the right time, the person will break through spacetime, and be safely deposited onto the ground at the desired time. It could also send a person back by only a few minutes, but doing this transferred the person back into their own body, not entirely through time as it would for longer periods through history.

The Hot Tub ('Hot Tub Time Machine' Franchise)

The name of the device is in the title of the film, and yes, it truly is a hot tub . In the movies, the hot tub only manages to function as a time machine when a Russian energy drink is spilled onto the controls. When this happens, the people inside are sucked into a whirling vortex and are shot backward through time.

In the first film, this is done randomly to take the protagonists back into the 1980s where they alter their own timeline to make their lives better. In the sequel, it's done more deliberately, but always results in a change to the timeline, which means that whatever they do in the past has serious ramifications on the present.

• CBS Television Distribution

Chronosphere ('Seven Days')

The Chronosphere, also known as the Backstep Sphere was developed by the NSA and allowed former Navy Seal and ex-CIA operative Frank Parker to travel back a week at a time to correct a disastrous event. The sphere was created by using alien technology that was recovered at Roswell.

The Chronosphere runs on a limited fuel source and was therefore only allowed to be used if an event negatively impacted national security and its use needed to be authorized by the NSA. This time machine served a more practical purpose than some of the others on this list and offers insight into how the government might use a time machine, should one exist. 

Rocket Sled ('Timecop')

Timecop used an innovative time machine called a Rocket Sled , but the film didn't go into much detail as to how it worked. Most of the movie was centered around the consequences of mucking about with the timeline than how people managed to do it, but there were some scenes depicting the device.

The Rocket Sled was a two-seater device, which shot down a track via a rocket mounted at the rear. As it moves down the track, it shoots toward a large arched device with a concrete wall just behind it. When time travel works, the sled breaks through the space-time continuum and disappears after distorting reality. If it doesn't work, someone has to mop off the wall at the rear of the facility.

When a traveler arrives at their destination, they are no longer in the sled; rather, they walk through a similar distortion into their destination. They are later returned to their original time through some unspecified means, but always back within the Rocket Sled.

• Image Entertainment

The Supreme Being's Map ('Time Bandits')

In the movie  Time Bandits , the map is a device that belongs to the Supreme Being (God), but it is in the possession of Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally, and Vermin. They were originally meant to repair holes in the fabric of spacetime for the Supreme Being but realized the map could be used to steal riches throughout history instead, so they stole it.

There isn't any real explanation as to how the map works in the movie, but it appears to be capable of pointing to specific points of interest in history, which the group uses to move through various places to find their way through time and space.

The map is clearly powerful, but as time travel devices go, it's not particularly easy for the group to use. That might have been due to being chased across time and space by their former boss, but it seems unlikely that anyone who wasn't already familiar with its workings would be able to use it.

• 20th Century Fox

Interstellar Spacecraft ('Planet Of The Apes')

In the first  Planet of the Apes  film from 1968, Astronauts Taylor, Landon, and Dodge awaken from hibernation to find that they've crash-landed on an alien planet. Their spacecraft traveled at near the speed of light, which resulted in their aging only 18 months during their journey, which lasted from 1972 until 3978, a total of 2,006 years.

Spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movie, but it turns out they landed back on Earth to find it ruled by sentient apes who evolved following a nuclear war. Technically, the spacecraft from the movie isn't a time machine, but thanks to time-dilation and achieving a velocity near the speed of light, the occupants managed to effectively travel through time as well as space.

The Briefcase ('The Umbrella Academy')

In  The Umbrella Academy , time travel is achieved in in two ways. The first was via a natural ability Number Five possessed while the second involved a briefcase carried by agents of The Commission, which is an organization responsible for policing the timeline via assassination.

Though it isn't explicitly stated in the series, the briefcase is capable of transporting people through time and space. It is a portable time machine used by The Commission, but it is never stated exactly what's inside or how it works. What is known is that anyone can use the briefcase, and it appears capable of transporting people to any point in time or space.

The Box ('Primer')

Primer   attempts to explain time travel in a complicated and scientific manner via a special box. The easiest way to explain how the time machine works is to list the steps required to use the device:

• Decide you want to time travel.
• Flip a delayed switch and get out of the area.
• Exit the time machine while simultaneously planning to time travel.
• Enter the time machine and wait out six hours of subjective time.
• Exit the time machine while simultaneously influencing your timeline.
• Enjoy your altered timeline!

The movie attempts to explain time travel using physics (The star and writer of the movie is a mathematician), but takes a step outside of reality to make the whole thing work.

• Universal Pictures

Time Travel Device ('12 Monkeys')

12 Monkeys  has an interesting form of time travel , which requires the subject to be completely naked when they enter into a large device capable of linking the occupant to another point in time and space on Earth via a wormhole.

The film doesn't go into how the machine works exactly, but it does show that a person must be naked and in full contact with the machine via a series of wires attached to the skin.

When a person is shot back in time, the device can often misfire and send them to the wrong era. This occurs several times in the film, and it's intonated that it may have something to do with the traveler's state of mind. The machine can then be used to scoop the subject from whichever time they are sent and either drop them in another place and time, or return them to the present (2035).

• Entertainment
• Time Travel
• Watchworthy

As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

• Reading Lists
• New Nonfiction
• Awards/Festivals
• Daily Thrill
• Noir/Hardboiled
• Espionage/Thriller
• Legal/Procedural
• Literary Hub

The Four Types of Time Travel (And What They Say About Ourselves and the World Around Us)

A science fiction author breaks down the building blocks of time travel, from seeing into the future to traveling into the past..

Time travel is a genre unto itself, one that spans sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, history and more. But there are distinct categories of time travel narratives, each with its own set of rules—and each with a different baked-in outlook.

Getting to a taxonomy of time travel stories, the first question is—who or what is actually time-traveling? Because while the first stories we think of involve spaceships and Deloreans, the oldest time travel stories are stories about…

1. SEEING THE FUTURE

In these stories, it is actually INFORMATION that travels through time. And this might be the most scientifically plausible form of time travel, one that is already happening all the time on the quantum level.

Visions of the future have shown up in literature and mythology for millennia, it’s just that we used to call them prophecy. But the fundamental storytelling device has changed little, even as it evolved with the times, manifesting in various communication technologies. Characters connect to the future through newspapers (the film It Happened Tomorrow , which inspired the show Early Edition ), letters ( The Lake House ), radio ( Frequency), photography ( Time Lapse ) and now, the Internet (my own recent novel The Future Is Yours , the reason I’m interested in sorting all this out.)

All these stories of peering forward in time differentiate into two categories on the basis of one crucial question: If you see the future, can you change it?

1A: Stories of Inevitable Foresight 

These are stories where the future can be seen—but ultimately, what you see can’t be stopped.

The archetype for this form is one of the oldest works of dramatic literature in the Western canon—Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex , where the titular king is warned by the seer Tiresias that he will murder his father and wed his mother… and despite his best efforts to the contrary, he ends up inadvertently doing just that (and then gouges his eyes out for good measure).

Stories of inevitable prediction speak to one of our deepest fears: that we have no free will, no agency, no power to control our fate. A glimpse of the future, foreknowledge of what’s to come, only ends up causing the events we aim to prevent.

Sound depressing? Maybe that’s why it’s a theme that spoke to sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, author of Minority Report— which is, for all its superficial differences, a story very similar to Oedipus Rex. It features a trio of precogs who dream of future-murders, and a cop assigned to prevent such killings—until he finds himself accused of one himself.

Dick was a pessimist about the prospect of free will, and in his story (spoiler alert!) his character ends up going through with the predicted murder. But perhaps unsurprisingly, when Steven Spielberg got hold of the same material, the outcome changed, and Tom Cruise’s version of the character was able to alter his destiny. How? Sheer force of movie-star charisma mostly. Which brings us to—

1B: Stories of Preventable Foresight

Other stories of seeing the future treat altering the timeline as quite evitable. In fact, the very act of viewing what’s ahead empowers the individual to change things, and prevent the foreseen events from coming to pass. That’s how Early Edition worked, with Kyla Chandler given the thankless daily task of averting tragedies only he could foresee.

But the prototype for this story form can be traced at least to 1843, in A Christmas Carol . Yes, even Dickens wrote some timey-wimey shenanigans; what else are the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Yet To Come? And when Scrooge beholds the pitiful sight of Tiny Tim dead, and his own neglected grave, he is promised a chance to rewrite the narrative if he can merely change his ways.

Which means that Dickens was much more of an optimist than Sophocles or Philip K. Dick. Being able to see the future and change it, whether through an epiphany or a magical newspaper, is the sort of world most of us want to believe in… whether that’s the way things actually work or not.

But in other types of stories, it’s not only information that travels through time. Many stories concern people getting to do so too—and the way authors treat those journeys says just as much about who they are and how they view the world.

2. TRAVELING TO THE FUTURE

One of the clearest progenitors of the time travel narrative, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine , is about a man zipping off into the distant future. But the world he encounters—one full of peaceful Eloi and belligerent Morlocks—is so disconnected from our own, it’s hard to know why it’s not simply a story about aliens on another planet.

This points to a problem with time-travel forward. The future feels so unknowable, it often ends up being less interesting than we’d expect. That’s why some “travel into the future” stories make our present the future of the characters—like Time After Time , which features Jack the Ripper fleeing 1890’s London and winding up (via a time-machine that belongs to H.G. Wells) in 1970’s San Francisco (it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, and well worth a watch). But this plot device is really no different from the fish-out-of-water Rip Van Winkle premise, dressed up with technology.

Perhaps this is why “travel into the future” has perhaps been used most effectively as a last-minute twist ending, as in the original Planet of the Apes .

In other words—time-travel into the future is just not that special… maybe because we’re doing it all the time, at a consistent rate of 60 minutes per hour. And given that our own lifetimes have witnessed such seismic changes in technology and society, do we really need to imagine a cosmic leap forward to see things that will blow our minds?

That’s why the most interesting physical-time-travel stories have focused on…

 3. TRAVELING TO THE PAST

Some of these stories are just touristy jaunts that don’t bother with the ramifications of intervening in history (like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court ). Which is fine and well, but more interesting are stories that grapple with the question: Can we alter the past? And by implication… can we alter our own present? Which breaks the category down into two distinct groups…

3A: Changing History

Perhaps the most intuitive mode of time travel is where characters travel to the past, and in doing so, alter the present they left behind. Back to the Future is probably the most popular of all. It’s fun to meet your teenage parents, but if you mess things up, you risk erasing yourself from existence. So then you have to… fight off your mom’s sexual advances and help your dad save her from getting raped? (Yeah, I didn’t really get how messed-up that was as a kid either…) Fix the past, fix the present, life goes on.

Of course, beyond just keeping your parents married and yourself in the family portrait, what people dream of is using time travel to fix history, the easiest go-to being the plot to kill baby Hitler. But in the massive time travel canon, it’s almost exclusively villains who try to rewrite the past. Very few stories feature heroes changing history for the better. Butterfly effects are almost always negative, and even the most well-intentioned time travel plans (like saving Kennedy from assassination in Stephen King’s 11/22/63 ) result in horrible misfortune for the world (catastrophic earthquakes in that case, for, ya know, reasons ).

All of which points to the fact that on some profound level, as much as our minds love playing with the possibilities of altering the timeline, we are deeply attached to the one we have, and innately suspicious of any effort to correct it. Which is why we have…

3B: Immutable Timelines

Stories where characters find themselves fundamentally incapable of altering history,  regardless of their level of intervention. 12 Monkeys ( and the French film it’s based on, La Jetee ) tells the story of a time traveler seeking to prevent an apocalyptic manmade plague. He ultimately fails and realizes, too late, that as a child he witnessed the death of himself, as an older time traveler. The ending is incredibly satisfying—despite the fact that it’s profoundly fatalistic, suggestive of a world in which not even high-tech time-bending can save the human race from killing itself.

A less fatalistic example of this approach to time-rules is found in Avengers:Endgame , in which the characters travel to various moments throughout Marvel history to steal Infinity Stones (think Oceans 11 with a lot of fan-service). Smart Hulk (yes, seriously) gives the stipulation that history will “heal” itself of their interventions, preserving the timeline. On its face, this sounds like a lame gimme of a screenwriting rule — but turns out, it’s actually reasonably well-supported by recent experiments on quantum time travel. Science and sci-fi both point to the same idea: we can’t change the past.

4. TIME LOOPS

Which brings us to the final category—the pinnacle of unalterability—stories where a character is stuck reliving the same day again and again. The prototype here is the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. The formula it set out brilliantly has been replicated in other genres, including but not limited to YA melodrama ( Before I Fall ), slasher-horror ( Happy Death Day ), sci-fi action with aliens ( Edge of Tomorrow), sci-fi action without aliens ( Source Code, ARQ) , episodic existential-dramedy ( Russian Doll ) and then circling all the way back to comedy again in last year’s Palm Springs.

These films don’t merely share a high-concept, they all have essentially the same theme: life doesn’t change until you change. Which would seem to make them remarkably unoriginal, if not for the surprising fact that they’re ALL good. (Seriously, I’ll go to bat for Before I Fall). No doubt there are some bad time-loop movies that I missed, but the fact that one hyper-specific premise has resulted in so many excellent movies points to the fact that there is a deep, resonant truth to the notion of being trapped in time.

Of course, this is only a partial taxonomy of time travel, but even this incomplete catalogue points to a few key takeaways. Most time travel stories are cautionary tales. Attempting to meddle with history is punished; defying prophecy is futile; the best we can do is pull a Marty McFly and close the Pandora’s box we opened in the first place. These stories, for all their far-flung leaps through space and time, are ultimately about how, if we want to change our lived reality, we need to start with ourselves.

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Previous Article

Next article, get the crime reads brief, get our “here’s to crime” tote.

Popular Posts

CrimeReads on Twitter

How the Great Depression and WWII Gave Birth to the Modern Serial Killer

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

• RSS - Posts

Support CrimeReads - Become a Member

CrimeReads needs your help. The mystery world is vast, and we need your support to cover it the way it deserves. With your contribution, you'll gain access to exclusive newsletters, editors' recommendations, early book giveaways, and our new "Well, Here's to Crime" tote bag.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

9 Most Interesting Mechanics Of Time-Travel In Movies

What is  mechanics of time-travel ? Simple, it’s the in-film concept based on which the character(s) experience time-travel. Do people appear and disappear with minimal explanation, or is there an innovative device or a fantastic element powering the time-travel? In short, it is ‘ how ‘ the time-travel takes place. The more thought out this fictional portion is, the better you tend to remember the film. The movie gets even more interesting if the mechanics play a core role in the plot. And how do I define a time-travel movie? Well, as long as there is at least one character experiencing time non-linearly, the movie qualifies for the category. This is Barry, welcome to my site, and here are the most impressive mechanics of time-travel in movies in no particular order.

The Mechanics Score is one part of Barry’s Time Travel Review Score (BaTTR Score), and you can read all about it here – The BaTTR Score . For the complete list, do check the 50+ Best Time Travel Movies of all times. 

Hollywordle – Check out my new Hollywood Wordle game!

Where To Watch?

To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

Interstellar (2014)

Nolan loves non-linear storytelling. In Interstellar, we actually witness events linearly from the perspective of the protagonist. However, that’s not the case for the other characters in the movie. There are two well thought out mechanics of time-travel:

Gravity  – The theory is that gravity warps time. Getting closer to a black hole (a star with gravity so strong that light cannot escape it), results in the person experiencing time much slower. When a portion of the team touches down on a planet in the close proximity of a black hole, and stay about an hour, the other team member (and Earth) experience 23 years. In short, the protagonists experience time travel to the future by 23 years in this manner inadvertently.

5-Dimensional Tesseract – The film presents outstanding visuals on how a 5-dimensional construct can be represented within 3 dimensions. Once again, gravitational forces are theorized to be able to slip back in time to affect objects from the past. 

The notion of time dilation, which unexpectedly causes traveling forward in time, and the brilliant concept of the 5-D Tesseract, which allowed access to the past, makes this film’s mechanics of time-travel unforgettable.

To know everything about the film and the little plot-holes in it, do give this a read – Interstellar Movie Explained .

Back To The Future (1985)

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious sh*t. This sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. 

Back To The Future’s mechanics of time-travel had creativity, complexity, and style. The time machine was built out of a DeLorean, which now is a symbol for time-travel. The invention that powers the time-travel is the Flux Capacitor. While it is perfectly compact to be fitted into a car, it needs 1.21 gigawatts of power to get it going. It’s a three-step process to travel through time in the three films.

• Turn on the Time Circuits and enter the date and time when you want to travel to.
• Ensure that the on-board Flux Capacitor is … fluxing.
• Floor that pedal to hit 88 miles per hour.

If the 1.21 GW of power is available (by means of stolen plutonium or a bolt of lightning), you will be on your way, leaving behind a bright trail of flames.

Back To The Future inspired many films in this space, and the DeLorean went from being a stylish car to the most desired memorabilia thanks to this film.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

To the question “what are your favourite time-travel movies?” the answer might not include Avengers: Endgame. Fair enough, that was not the only theme of the movie, and time-travel is used to enable the Avengers to undo a terrible event. However, the thought and effort put into the mechanics of traveling through time in this film can’t be ignored. Endgame had the option to get lazy and rely on the Time Stone to access the past. But instead, the makers decided that all the stones will be destroyed, and the quantum realm would be used to travel back and forth through time.

There are four components used to travel through time. 

• The quantum suit that can efficiently shrink and enlarge. 
• The Pym Particles that facilitate entering the quantum realm.
• The machine at the Avenger Base which acts as a satellite for space-time navigation.
• The Space-Time GPS that allows the time-traveler to navigate to the appropriate time/timeline.

Not relying on a mystical stone and its powers, but coming up with well thought out fictional science to empower the time travel makes Endgame undoubtedly commendable.

To understand the film in detail, you can check this out – Avengers: Endgame Time Travel Explained .

Primer (2004)

Primer is one of the most complex time-travel movies made. Wanna take a guess what the total cost the film was made within? $7,000! Yes, that’s right, an entire feature film with an ingenious mechanics of time-travel was wrapped up in that tiny amount. The concept is pretty simple, a person needs to enter the machine and stay inside for the period he wants to go back in time. 

For example, if you want to go back in time by 5 hours, you need to have already planned for it. At say 1 PM, the machine needs to be turned on and left for 5 hours. At 6 PM, you have to enter the device with the stopwatch and stay 5 hrs. For the world, the time progresses forward, but for you, it flows backward. Once the stopwatch completes 5 hrs, you can exit the machine, and voila, you will find yourself at 1 PM. Now wouldn’t you run into yourself turning the device on at 1 PM? Yes, you will. And for safety reasons, you don’t want that. A timer is used before starting the machine. You set the timer at 12:45 PM for 15 min and get the hell outta there. This way, when you exit at 1 PM, you are alone.

This simplistic view of time moving backward at the same pace as it does forward is brilliant, and that’s why it makes it to this list in style.

To know the details of the film timeline by timeline, check this article – Primer Movie Explained .

Arrival (2016)

The concept that immersing oneself in a language can alter the way you think and see things was pretty unique. The film, based on the short story called  Story of Your Life,  expanded on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It’s the theory that the language one speaks determines how they think; it affects how one sees everything. And that if you immerse yourself into a foreign language, you can rewire your brain. Alien visitors use the language shown in the movie. The structure of their writing is such that it simultaneously presents an entire sentence using all the ideograms (symbols that represent an idea). Learning the language enables a human to perceive time all at once instead of linearly. 

There is no physical time-travel here, but it’s an imaginative way to make a character experience non-linear thoughts and memories through an alien language. And that makes Arrival very memorable.

To read the detailed explanation of the film, go here – Arrival Movie Explained .

Blink (2007)

Okay, I know the title reads time-travel  movies , and Blink is one episode of Doctor Who. However, this episode is standalone and perhaps one of the most amazing in the series. You can watch this episode without much knowledge about the series Doctor Who. All you need to know is that the Doctor is a time traveler, and his device is called the Tardis (the phone booth). Blink is not on this list for the Tardis, but for the creatures of the abstract, the weeping angels. These statues are explained to be creatures as old as the universe who are quantum locked, meaning, when they are seen, they don’t exist, they turn to stone. 

The exciting bit is that they are described as the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death.  You die in the past, and in the present, they consume the energy of all the days you might have had and all your stolen moments . They live off potential energy. This has to be the most amazing and twisted definition of potential energy there is. 

This brilliant fabrication of a fantastic being that causes you to forcibly travel through time is why Blink deserves mention even though it is an episode of a long-running series.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge Of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese book called All You Need Is Kill (translated). Honestly, the movie doesn’t go into why Tom Cruise’s character ends up resetting at the airbase. The book explains that the aliens can fire a tachyon pulse before its death. Tachyon is a theoretical particle that travels faster than the speed of light. Therefore the pulse goes back in time to the previous day and appears as a memory in the alien’s mind. Using this memory, the alien then changes the course of the attack. On killing an alien, Cage inherits this capability through the blood of the creature. It’s creative reasoning for receiving visions from one day in the future in loops. The tachyon pulse is fired just before death, hence the tag line – Live . Die . Repeat.

A person’s body doesn’t travel through time, but a memory from the future does, and that is why the mechanics of this book and film are remarkable.

To know more about the film and the book, read this – Edge of Tomorrow vs. All You Need Is Kill .

Donnie Darko (2001)

A troubled kid, Donnie, experiences slipping into a tangent universe and finds himself at the center of events that could devastate the primary universe. This causes Donnie and the other characters to experience time non-linearly in this temporal universe. He encounters a mysterious person in a creepy bunny suit who appears to be from the future to guide him. You can alternately consider Donnie Darko not to be a time-travel movie but a psychological thriller presented from the viewpoint of a troubled teenager. But that does not take away the efforts made to define the in-movie logic around the dual realities.

Time-travel is powered by a random cosmic event that creates a wormhole making Donnie the living receiver of an artifact from a parallel universe. The intricacies of this tangent universe, the living receiver, the manipulated dead, and the closure are why the film makes it to this list.

If you’d like to understand this film better, check this out – Donnie Darko Simplified And Explained .

Source Code (2011)

There are many time-loop films like Groundhog Day and Happy Death Day (Part 1) , where there is no explanation for why the person repeatedly relives the day or moment. On the other hand, the Source Code came up with an elaborate setup where a person’s mind is inserted into a machine that seemingly recreates a simulation of a past event. However, the device ends up spawning alternate realities on each run while injecting the inserted mind into an actual person in an alternate timeline. Time travel in the film is a fantastic accident in the movie.

A device that accidentally creates parallel universes and implanting one person’s consciousness into the mind of another makes this film’s time-travel mechanics very unique.

To know about the film’s loopwise details, do check this out – Source Code Movie Explained .

What are your thoughts about these time-travel movies? Do you think there are movies with exceptional mechanics of time-travel that didn’t feature in this list? Do drop in your comment mentioning the films.

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

The Write Stuff

"writers helping writers" with marcia meara & friends, time travel – a frequently used literary device.

Guest Post by Don Massenzio

As a reader, my fascination with time travel began as a child. When I first read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, I was enthralled by the idea of travelling either backward or forward in time.

Traveling backward could allow one to catch glimpses of historical events or important figures. You could go back and wander among dinosaurs. Similarly, traveling forward gives a view of the development of man, technology and the future of our planet.

As I sat down to write my book, Extra Innings , I was fascinated by the different views of time travel that have been used in fiction. This post will discuss those various theories and I’ll give you a view of my thought process in landing on one.

Here are some of the theories that have been presented in fiction:

• Changing the past – This is the notion of time travel that I used in my book, Extra Innings . The idea of changing the past is logically contradictory. Even though the consensus today is that the past cannot be changed, science fiction writers have used the idea of changing the past for good story effect. Stephen King used this method of time travel effectively in his book, 11/22/63 , by having his main character, Jake Epping, attempt to go back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Though ultimately successful, when Epping returns to the present, he discovers that his actions have had unintended consequences.

If you enjoy time travel and the possibility of going back in time to right wrongs and do things differently if given a chance, follow the adventures of Joe McLean in my latest novel, Extra Innings .

Joe McLean hates his life. A lonely, divorced, middle-aged man, stuck in a cramped apartment, the only bright spot in Joe’s life is cheering on his hometown baseball team. Now, the local stadium, the place of many childhood and adult memories is being replaced. Joe desperately wants a piece of this iconic venue to preserve his memories and have some memorabilia from his happier past. That’s when unusual things begin to happen, and Joe begins to rethink the direction his life has taken. Can Joe take a different path in life? Can he use the special ability that he has acquired to change the course of his life? Will he realize the truth about old adage, you can never go home again? Follow the twists and turns in this supernatural story, Extra Innings , to find out.

Share this:

• Share on Tumblr

53 thoughts on “ Time Travel – A Frequently Used Literary Device ”

I loved Stephen Fry’s novel Making History, his character goes back in time to make sure Hitler is never born, but the alternate future turns out to be a lot worse. This novel was published over twenty years ago, ironically the 21st century has turned out to be far different from what most of us could have imagined. I enjoy ( can’t resist ) writing about time travel, I think my novels would fit into Time Paradox… or would they…

Like Liked by 2 people

That’s a very similar to Stephen King’s 11/22/63. His protagonist’s success in preventing the Kennedy assassination doesn’t yield the results he hoped for. That’s one of the inspirations for my latest work. It was fun to write. Continuity was something I really had to focus on as I went from timeline to timeline. Do you have this issue as well?

I didn’t have any well known people or historical events, that made it easier. I loved making up the future. Continuity in the present was the problem. My novel was meant to be set in the present, but by the time it was written, became a trilogy and finally published on Amazon, the present had changed, with all the technological developments etc. So my trilogy is set in ‘the early years of the 21st century.’

Special thanks to Marcia for letting me invade The Write Stuff today. It was great fun.

Like Liked by 1 person

And a special thank you for sharing such a great post, Don! I had never thought about all the various types of time travel, but I recognized each and every example. Very interesting! I applaud your courage in branching out from your more traditional mysteries, and I have I feeling I’m going to really enjoy this book.

My first book was set in two eras, 50 years apart, and that’s as daring as I think I’m likely to get. While I love the concept of real time travel, I’m not sure I could do it justice. (Just like I love epic fantasy, but I know that type of world building is too complex for me to tackle.)

And have I mentioned how much I love this cover? 😀

So happy to have you visiting today! You are welcome back any time!

Thanks, Marcia. It was fun to explore this. Time travel is a device I have enjoyed reading about and watching in movies. It seemed natural once I went in that direction in the story. I thought about having different eras, but I thought it would get confusing for me to keep everything straight.

I’m very happy with the cover as well. The same graphic designer has done my last four covers and I’m very pleased with her work.

Thanks again for the opportunity.

Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio and commented:

I had the good fortune of posting a guest piece on The Write Stuff blog. Thank you to Marcia Meara for letting me invade your space.

I always enjoy a good time travel story. My two favorite devices are the time paradox and altering the past. I pre-ordered Extra Innings and am looking forward to your take on time travel. Congrats on your upcoming release, Don!

Thanks, Mae. I enjoy those methods as well.

Reblogged this on From the Pen of Mae Clair and commented:

I’m a fan of time travel books, especially when it involves altering the past. Don Massenzio is visiting with Marcia Meara today on The Write Stuff with his book, Extra Innings. If you enjoy time travel as a plot device, be sure to hop over and check this out. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy!

Like Liked by 3 people

Thanks for sharing this, Mae

My pleasure!

Thanks from me for sharing, too, Mae! Lovely comment, as well. 🙂 ❤

Great analysis of types of time travel, Don. I find it fascinating and have used it once as a plot device. I love how you’ve incorporated it into your recent book. Good luck! Thanks, Marcia, for hosting. 🙂

I was delighted to have Don post today! Thanks so much for stopping by! 🙂

Thanks so much. I hope it works for readers. Thanks for stopping by.

Very thoughtful comments, Don. I don’t do time travel in my books so this was quite instructive.

Thanks, Jacqui. I’m glad you found it useful.

I’m a fan of the time travel theme and adding this to my TBR list!

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

A nice overview of the various synopsis for time travel, Don. I like your choice.

Thanks, Robbie.

I’ve been hooked on the television series Timeless, where an unlikely group chase criminals through the past and must stop events without changing the course of history. https://www.globaltv.com/timeless/ I love the premise for your book, Don. Best of luck!

Thanks Jacquie. The show Sliders is another good one along with the classic, Quantum Leap.

Loved Quantum Leap!

Reblogged this on Anna Dobritt — Author .

Thanks for sharing this, Anna.

Pingback: Author Inspiration and This Week’s Writing Links | Staci Troilo

Thanks for sharing this, Staci.

Great cover, great blurb. This book looks like a winner (I was gonna say home run but that seemed too cliche).

😀 Funny, I was gonna say he hit it out of the park, but then, I’m old. I remember clear back to when that WASN’T a cliché. 😀 Nice to see you here, Dan! And clichés or not, I do think Don’s book is gonna be a hit. Oh, wait . . . 😀

Nice to be here! And I agree, the book looks very good.

Thanks, Dan.

The subtitle is also a subtle baseball reference. I’m old too.

I noticed that, Don. The subtitle. Not that you’re OLD. Everything is relative, after all. 😀

My relatives are old too. 🙂

😀 😀 😀 I love it!

This is an interesting post, Don. All the best with your new book EXTRA INNINGS. Thanks, Marcia for having Don as a guest on your blog. 🙂 — Suzanne

It was my pleasure to have Don here, Suzanne. He’s always a welcome guest, and especially so with this new book. I can’t wait to read it! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!

Thank you Suzanne.

Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady .

Thanks for sharing this, Viv.

Don, I am a sucker for time travel stories, so your book is about to be downloaded!

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. I look forward to hearing what you think.

I’m a big fan of time travel books, and used time travel in a short story I wrote. Best wishes with Extra Innings, Don!

I have my copy and look forward to reading it! Best of luck, Don. Thanks for sharing this fascinating post about time travel by Don, Marcia. hugs to you both.

It was my pleasure, Janice! I’ve got MY copy of this one, too. Now all I need is TIME! 😯 😀

You could try buying a stadium seat.

Oh, maaan! I’ve GOT to read your book!!! SOOOON. 😀

A nice overview of the various synopsis for time travel.

Thanks, Eric.

Looking forward to hearing what YOU think! NOTE: If in doubt about leaving comments on this blog, please read the privacy statement in the menu at the top of the page. Cancel reply

Southern stories of grace and grit

Writing Tips from Valerie Ormond

Author, Artist, Poet

Sharing writing tips, information, and advice.

Christian Fiction Reviews by Christian Authors

Mystery, magic and mayhem

Passionate Teacher and Future Children's Author

Writing Advice From A YA Author Powered By Chocolate And Green Tea

Humor at the Speed of Life

tell your stories, love your life

From Rat Race to Road Trip: Overlanding With Four Dogs!

Author Page

Random thoughts, life lessons, hopes and dreams

A groovy little website by children's book author Mike Allegra

a collection of trivia, fun facts, humor, and interesting notions.

Suspense Lives Here

Embrace your inner child by reading a good book!

WordPress & Blogging tips, flash fiction, photography and lots more!

Blog about author Jeanne Owens and her writing

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Movies Featuring Time Loops & Time Travel

1. Donnie Darko

2. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

3. Time Traveller

4. Steins;Gate

5. 12 Monkeys

6. The Visitors

7. Groundhog Day

9. The Terminator

10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

11. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

12. Terminator Salvation

13. Source Code

16. Triangle

17. Timecrimes

18. Dead End

19. Time Lapse

20. Project Almanac

21. Timespace

22. Coherence

23. The I Inside

24. Retroactive

More to explore

Recently viewed.

• Tickets & Showtimes
• Trending on RT

• Premiere Dates
• Summer TV Scorecard
• News & Guides

16 Excellent Movie & TV Time-Travel Devices

For that, Hollywood has turned to a quirky variety of devices and charmed objects to facilitate time travel on television and in the movies — from straightforward DIY time machines to phone booths, DeLoreans, and even a hot tub. Here are some of the coolest, weirdest, most inventive, and sometimes highly unreliable devices used to wander through time.

Don’t see your favorite time-travel gadget below? Tell us in the comments.

Related News

35 Best 1980s Fantasy Movies Ranked

All 52 Stephen King Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

150 Essential Comedy Movies To Watch Now

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

Cobra Kai : Season 6, Part 1 First Reviews: Funny and Emotional, but Give Us the Rest Already

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025

July 18, 2024

July 12, 2024

Related News & Interviews

July 19, 2024

September 21, 2023

June 29, 2023

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

50 Best 1980s Cult Movies & Classics

71 Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1950s

Top Headlines

• 50 Best 1980s Cult Movies & Classics –
• 71 Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1950s –
• 35 Best 1980s Fantasy Movies Ranked –
• Glen Powell Movies Ranked by Tomatometer –
• The Best Shows on Amazon Prime Video to Watch Right Now (July 2024) –
• All 21 Disney Live-Action Remakes Ranked –

The 10 Most Rewatchable Time Travel Shows, Ranked

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Travel time is probably one of the more popular plot devices within sci-fi (and some fantasy) TV shows. Fans of sci-fi and fantasy are familiar with various forms of time travel, including time loops, arguably made famous in pop culture by Groundhog Day , and traveling to the past to alter the future, reminiscent of Back to the Future . There are also time doors, time portals, wormholes, and your standard time machine. Sometimes, even events are triggers for time travel.

With all the different ways time travel can occur in fiction, there are plenty of television shows with interesting time-travel plots to choose from. However, some time-travel shows are more rewatchable than others because of plot holes, unrelatable characters, or repetitive plot devices. Luckily, there are time-travel television shows out there that are worthy of a rewatch by sci-fi and fantasy fans. These TV shows make time travel interesting with intricate storylines, loveable characters, and mind-bending timelines.

10 'Ashes to Ashes' (2008-2010)

Created by matthew graham and ashley pharoah.

Ashes to Ashes , in the same vein as Life on Mars , is a British crime drama series that ran for three seasons on BBC One. The series stars Keeley Hawkes as DI Alex Drake; it was shot in 2008 by Arthur Layton, and she is sent back to 1981. She comes face-to-face with DCI Gene Hunt (played by Philip Glenister ), whom she had read about during her investigation into the bizarre incidents surrounding Sam Tyler, the protagonist of Life on Mars . Alex is determined to figure out how to get back to her own time, but in the meantime, she teams up with Gene to solve cases.

While Ashes to Ashes tends to settle into a case in each episode, it stands out from a standard police procedural. The mystery of why Alex has been sent back in time permeates through the plot and keeps viewers intrigued about what is going to happen next. Life on Mars leaves the ending of Sam's story ambiguous, and Ashes to Ashes provides an explanation of Alex and Sam's time travel. There are so many interesting details within Ashes to Ashes that provide hints of what is coming in the show’s finale that it makes for a great rewatch. Viewers can pick up on things that they might have missed leading up to the big reveal. Not only are these hints fascinating for viewers to find and try to connect everything together, but the chemistry between the main characters, the moody Gene and the witty Alex, is magnetic, which gives fans a potential romance to invest in. After all, any police procedural needs a good dynamic relationship to keep viewers engaged with the show. Therefore, the Alex and Gene moments alone make A shes to Ashes worth watching again and again.

WATCH ON BRITBOX

9 'Russian Doll' (2019-2022)

Created by leslye headland, natasha lyonne, and amy poehler.

After getting hit by a car and dying, 37-year-old Nadia Vulvokov ( Natasha Lyonne ) finds herself reliving the day of her birthday over and over again in Netflix's comedy-drama series, Russian Doll . But, Natasha isn't alone in being caught in a time loop; Alan ( Charlie Barnett ) is also reliving the same day. And this is just season one of Russian Doll . In the second season, Nadia and Alan find themselves going between the past and present day. Nadia is taken back to the 1970s to "visit" her mother, x (y), and Alan goes to West Germany before the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

When sci-fi fans think of time loops, they might picture the movie, Groundhog Day . Russian Doll separates itself from Groundhog Day by taking the monotony out of its plot with surprising twists and creating space for complex character development. The complexity of the time loops (and eventually time travel) really makes fans think about how everything is connected. Lyonne and Barnett give incredible performances in Russian Doll . Nadia and Alan are flawed characters, but this only makes them extremely relatable. Viewers will want them to escape the time loop and get back to their normal lives they are missing out on. The second season does away with the time loops and brings in time travel. Both Nadia and Alan want to change the past in order to make the future better .

Russian Doll

WATCH ON NETFLIX

8 'Quantum Leap' (1989-1993)

Created by donald p. bellisario.

Before Scott Bakula helmed the Enterprise as Captain Jonathan Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise , he played a physicist named Dr. Sam Beckett. Dr. Beckett is working to make time travel a reality, but after a few years and lots of money, he discovers that the government is planning to pull the plug on his work. He decides to use himself as a test subject. Ever since he stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator, Sam has been living other people's lives in the past. But he isn't alone, as he has a little help from AI (Dean Stockwell), a hologram from his own time.

Firstly, Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell are really a great dynamic duo in Quantum Leap . The banter between Sam and Ai is one of the biggest reasons that this popular time travel show is worthy of rewatching. This is a formula for each episode, which can make it predictable but comforting at the same time. Sam finds himself in the body of someone else, and he must figure out how to help the person with a problem. Once he solves the problem, Sam then time travels to the next place. The show weaves in a lot of history and famous figures, which makes room for some great guest star appearances, like Bruce McGill as Al the Bartender in “Mirror Image” and Debbie Allen as Joanna Chapman in "Private Dancer."

Quantum Leap

*Availability in US

Not available

7 'The Lazarus Project' (2022-2023)

Created by joe barton.

The Lazarus Project is an action-packed time travel show that, unfortunately, only had two seasons. The show stars Paapa Essiedu as George Addo and Charly Clive as Sarah. George is happily living his best life with his wife, Sarah, but he notices something strange happening—a time loop. No one else seems to realize that the time loop exists, except for George. George is contacted by a secret organization, and it is told that he is one of the few people on Earth who can recall time-reversion events. He is invited to join the Lazarus Project team. Their mission is to prevent mass extinction events by any means necessary and then do a time reset. When Sarah is in a life-threatening car accident that results in her death, George wants to go back in time to save her. However, the Lazarus Project team doesn't approve of this, and George decides to save Sarah, even if it means breaking the rules. George's actions cause a cascade of events that threaten humanity.

Unfortunately, The Lazarus Project only ran for two seasons, but it made an impression on sci-fi fans. The show explores thought-provoking questions around topics like morality, as any good sci-fi TV show should, and brings up interesting dilemmas around time travel, which some shows might hesitate to address because of their complexity. The characters of The Lazarus Project, especially George, are put in high-stakes situations, which makes each episode like a mini-action movie. This sci-fi show has also been praised for the cast's intense performances. It's thrilling to rewatch The Lazarus Project to see how George's character changes throughout the show.

The Lazarus Project

6 '12 monkeys' (2015-2018), created by travis fickett and terry matalas.

Adapted from the 1995 film directed by Terry Gilliam, which is one of the most rewatchable 90s sci-fi movies , Syfy's 12 Monkeys is a sci-fi television show starring Aaron Stanford as James Cole and Amanda Schull as Dr. Cassandra Railly. In a post-apocalyptic world in the year 2043, a group of scientists from Spearhead, led by Dr. Katrina Jones (Barbara Sukowa), discovers the abandoned Project Splinter. After many unsuccessful attempts to time travel, Dr. Jones recruits James Cole, a scavenger, to be a time traveler. She sends Cole back in time (also known as "splintering") to try to stop a pandemic of Kalavirus from happening. Cole meets Dr. Railly, a virologist, and they discover the virus was created by an organization known as the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

One of the biggest challenges for any time travel show is making it believable, and 12 Monkeys manages to do exactly that. There isn't anything off with the way the show weaves in different timelines. The elements of realism woven into the show's intricate plot are what make 12 Monkeys such a great show to rewatch. The writers put lots of hints within the dialogue, and 12 Monkeys fans love rewatching the show because they are able to catch the significance of these lines when they weren't able to before.

5 'Undone' (2019-2022)

Created by raphael bob-waksberg and kate purdy.

After she almost dies in a car accident, Alma Winograd-Diaz ( Rosa Salazar ) discovers that she can manipulate time and sees her deceased father, Jacob Winograd ( Bob Odenkirk) . Alma investigates the truth about her father’s death. This is all just the first season of Undone . In the second season, Alma and her sister, Becca ( Angelique Cabral), go through a time-bending journey into their family’s generational trauma.

Undone is done in rotoscope, and the visuals in both seasons are breathtaking. It's like artwork coming to life. Besides the breathtaking visuals, Undone' s time-bending plot is intriguing, especially so during the second season, when Becca also experiences what Alma has been going through. The best moments of the show are the chemistry between Salazar and Cabral, who brilliantly portray the Winograd-Diaz sisters. This chemistry brings out the show’s best dark humor moments, making it worth watching.

4 'The Ministry of Time' (2015-2020)

Created by pablo olivares and javier olivares.

The Ministry of Time ( El ministerio del tiempo) , also called The Time Department , is a Spanish fantasy drama in which a secret organization, known only to the Spanish Monarchy and the Prime Minister, is in charge of guarding time doors and preventing anyone from changing history through time manipulation. Julián Martínez ( Rodolfo Sancho ), a paramedic from the 21st century, is recruited by The Ministry of Time, along with Amelia Folch ( Aura Garrido ), a university student from 19th century Barcelona, and Alonso de Entrerríos ( Nacho Fresneda ), a solider from 16th century Seville, to make sure that events in history go as planned.

The Ministry of Time is a fun rewatch for history buffs, as this time travel TV show focuses on historical events in Spain and around the world. With its focus on history, there are plenty of opportunities for significant figures, like Salvador Dalí and Isabella II of Spain, to make appearances throughout the show's four seasons. It's also entertaining to watch characters from different time periods interact together, especially Julián, Amelia, and Alonso.

WATCH ON VIX

3 'Dark' (2017-2020)

Created by baran bo odar and jantje friese.

Dark is a German television series on Netflix about generations of families, including the Kahnwalds, Nielsens, Tiedemanns, and Dopplers, over a span of time. In the town of Winden, Germany, children go missing, and there is a connection between the missing children and a cave underneath a nuclear power plant. The show’s main families discover a wormhole within the cave, and soon their secrets unravel.

The families in Dark are very elaborate and complex, just like the show’s plot, so it's easy to miss connections during the first watch through. The cast does a remarkable job of amplifying the show’s intensity with their acting. While the intensity can make it hard to binge-watch, it’s worth rewatching to experience the emotional journey that these families go on. Watching this sci-fi thriller is an emotional rollercoaster, as there are so many layers within the stories that cross different eras.

2 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'

Created by max landis.

It's rare to have a sci-fi show that has humor without being cheesy (or puny), especially one that is also a crime drama. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency takes the absurdity and hilarity of Douglas Adams' novel of the same name to a whole new level. Elijah Wood plays Todd Brotzman, a bellhop whose life is changed forever after he stumbles upon the body of a millionaire, Patrick Spring. Detective Dirk Gently, played by Samuel Barnett , meets Todd, and the two begin to investigate the murder. However, it won't be an easy investigation as Dirk has made some enemies who want him dead.

What makes Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency so rewatchable is just how absurd it is, and the strangeness in the plot (with its eventual dash of time travel) just adds to the show's great sense of humor. Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett make a great comedic duo, and they go above and beyond to roll with any weirdness that is thrown their way. The "villains" in Dirk Gently are just as hilarious with their wicked sense of dark humor. One of the standout "villains" is Bart Curlish ( Fiona Dourif ), a holistic assassin who believes that the universe brings people for her to kill.

WATCH ON SLING

1 'Doctor Who'

Created by sydney newman, donald wilson, and c. e. webber.

One of the most beloved time travel shows is Doctor Who , which first premiered on November 23, 1963. The Doctor is a time lord, and they have been played by multiple actors over the years, including David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker . The current actor who plays the Doctor is Ncuti Gatwa , who gave a stunning performance in his first season debut . As a time lord, the Doctor travels in a Tardis, a time-traveling machine disguised as a police box. The Doctor doesn't travel alone; they are often accompanied by companions, humans who want to see the universe. Currently, the Doctor's companion is Ruby Sunday, played by Milie Gibson .

With over 800 episodes so far, there is so much history and lore in Doctor Who . That means there is a lot to rewatch! What makes this show such a great rewatch is the variation in storytelling and iconic characters. As Doctor Who fans are well aware, time travel makes for great adventures for the Doctor and their friends, which means rewatching episodes doesn't get old at all.

The show follows the adventures of a Time Lord, “The Doctor,” who is able to regenerate, and the Doctor’s human friends. The Doctor and his companions journey through time and space in the TARDIS – a time-traveling ship shaped like a police box – saving the universe with a combination of wit, bravery, and kindness.

NEXT: The Best Time Travel Movies That Aren't Sci-Fi

1.21 Gigawatts: The History of Time Travel in Cinema

• Facebook Data not found. Please check your user ID. Twitter You currently have access to a subset of Twitter API v2 endpoints and limited v1.1 endpoints (e.g. media post, oauth) only. If you need access to this endpoint, you may need a different access level. You can learn more here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/portal/product Youtube 1.1K

SISI & I: The Empress Through Another’s Eyes

Afraid trailer 1.

SIX IN PARIS: A French Dispatch from 1965

Jackpot trailer 1.

HERE TRAILER 1

BACKSPOT: Panic Attacks And Full Splits

THE CONVERT: Powerful Māori Images in a Fair Period Drama

Shelley Duvall and the Gift of Gab

THE BIKERIDERS: An Inspired, Understated Look at Early Bike Culture

THE UNION TRAILER 1

RED ONE TRAILER 1

MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER: A Love Letter To The Preeminent Magicians Of The Movies

Sam is an English Literature student at the University of…

In some ways, the cinema is the closest thing we can experience to travelling through time – certainly the closest of any art form. In the dark room of a movie theatre, an audience can be transported to the distant past or spectacular visions of the future, and even in watching films from the 30’s and 40’s we can look at the lives and faces of people who died many years ago.

Time travel became popular as a literary device with HG Well’s The Time Machine – published in 1895, the same year that the Lumière Brothers made Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat . So time travel and cinema entered the public consciousness at the same time, and it has a long and fascinating history as a cinematic device. While rooted in science fiction, it has flitted around a variety of genres and even today filmmakers are exploring new ways to tell stories with it. Time travel is one of the most popular and interesting tropes in cinema and in this article we’ll look at how it’s developed through, well, time.

The earliest example of time travel in cinema dates to a 1921 adaptation of the Mark Twain story  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court , of which only 3 of 8 original reels remain today. The film shows an American who dreams he is transported back to the time of King Arthur and defeats his foes using his contemporary knowledge.

The success of this silent inspired a sound remake in 1931 and a musical starring Bing Crosby in 1949. A Connecticut Yankee  set the formula for other travel films of this era – the hero is typically whisked back against his own will to the past, where he engages in adventures and falls in love with a beautiful woman. Examples include   I’ll Never Forget You  (1951) and Berkeley Square  (1933), which both send their hero to the 18th century.

It’s clear to see the appeal for audiences of the time, who could find new enjoyment through identifying with a contemporary protagonist in the for the escapist historical adventures that were popular at the time. At this point, then, the time travel itself was merely a device to get the character into the period setting, and fairly unimportant to the plot. These early experiments were firmly in the realm of fantasy – but this would change with the rise of science fiction in the 1950’s and beyond.

Developing ideas

The first year of the 60’s saw one of the most significant time travel films: George Pal ‘s adaptation of  The Time Machine ,  the novel that started it all. The Victorian setting of the original novel remains, as a British inventor (named H.G. Wells in tribute) travels to the year 802,701, where far-future human descendants are hunted by subterranean Morlocks. The Time Machine was in some ways hugely ahead of its time, most significantly in the Oscar-winning visual effects, which use a combination of time-lapse photography and stop motion animation to depict flowers blooming, candles melting and the sun arcing across the sky in a matter of seconds.

Here we can see the visual potential of the time travel film come to fruition, in a way that only the cinema medium can provide. But more importantly Pal ‘s film updated the novel to provide an ominous social commentary, as Wells witnesses a nuclear holocaust on his journey to the future – dated at 1966, just 6 years after the film’s actual release. This, then, was an early example of using time travel to say something about the present; in this case, the fear of nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War.

A similar concept can be seen in a lesser known piece, the experimental French film   La Jetee (1962).  In this 28 minute short, which is constructed almost entirely from a series of photographs, a man from a post-apocalyptic Paris is chosen to be sent back before World War Three to warn the people of the past about the future. A key inspiration for the plot of Terry Gilliam’s   Twelve Monkeys,  it   remains one of world cinema’s first and most significant forays into time travel.

Time travel breaks out

The 70’s were something of a bleak era: Wikipedia lists just seven time travel films for the whole decade, and two are sequels to Planet of the Apes , in which time travel is only used incidentally. But the 1980’s saw an explosion of popularity for the genre, and many of its most famous movies come from this time. Much of this stems from the huge success of 1984’s  The Terminator . 

The iconic Terminator character is what launched the careers of James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger , which may be a good or terrible thing for the history of cinema, but the inventive plot – a robot from the future sent back to kill the future mother of a resistance fighter -showed us that the protagonist doesn’t have to travel at all; it’s the antagonist from a future environment who arrives in the present. The Terminator  was released just months before one of the biggest films and franchises of the decade became perhaps the definitive image of time travel on screen: the still ridiculously enjoyable  Back to the Future .

  Robert Zemeckis  and  Bob Gale  mined the comic potential of the genre by sending an 80’s teenager back to 1955 – via, of course, a beaten up DeLorean – where he attracts the friendship of his geeky dad and the romantic attention of his mother. It’s the culture clash that results from a gap of 30 years, instead of hundreds, that makes this film so effective; far away enough to be alien, but close enough to be recognisable. And despite being firmly entrenched in 80’s culture, the film manages to avoid feeling dated by embracing the atmosphere of the decade so well that it feels like a loving tribute rather than what was, at the time, present day. The appeal of seeing Marty McFly interacting with all the 50’s stereotypes and considering how you would react to watching your own dad get bullied or your own mother trying to flirt with you turned Back to the Future into one of the most successful films of the 80’s.

The effect of this   success was instant, inspiring other films to use time travel as a device for comedy rather than adventure, or simply to spice up existing concepts and tropes. High school comedy  Peggy Sue Got Married  (directed by Francis Ford Coppola of all people)   and slacker cult classic  Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure   were huge hits;  Star Trek IV  saw the crew of the Enterprise beam down to 1986. Meanwhile both  Terminator  and  Back to the Future  were establishing themselves in popular culture with a slew of sequels – many consider Terminator 2 to be even better than the original, and Back to the Future Part 2 was so popular that Marty and Doc’s visit to 2015 is going to be immortalised all year.

Present Day

After time travel became such a popular plot device in mainstream cinema in the 80’s, the films of the next few decades continued to explore more inventive and artful ways to use it. The previously mentioned Twelve Monkeys   took the idea of a time traveller coming to warn us of the future, only to be assumed insane; Shane Carruth’s  impenetrable  Primer , about an accidentally created time machine and shot for just $7,000, has earned a reputation as one of the most cerebral and confusing science fiction films ever.

So where does it go from here? Time travel is being increasingly used in modern cinema – from thrillers like  Source Code   and Edge of Tomorrow ,   which use the concept of time loops, the protagonist reliving the same period of time repeatedly, blockbusters like  X-Men: Days of Future Past  and even  Woody Allen  comedies (2011’s Oscar winning  Midnight in Paris ).

Last year, Christopher Nolan’s   Interstellar  presented perhaps the most realistic representation of time travel yet from a scientific perspective. Using real concepts of gravitational time dilation the film saw its characters experiencing time at different rates depending on their relative position to a black hole – a scenario that would actually happen if we found ourselves too close to one. But then, can such concepts be described as time travel at all if they’re rooted in real science?

The genre – and with 6 mainstream American films using time travel in 2014, it is time for it to be considered a genre – has proven over a century to consistently provide ideas and narratives that capture audiences, and can translate itself to action, drama and comedy with equal success. There is clearly something encased in the simple idea of a protagonist travelling to another point in time that captures the attention and imagination of cinema audiences, and there is endless potential for more. If only we could travel to the future and see where it’s at in 30 years time.

What is your favourite use of time travel in film? Let us know in the comments!

(top image:  Back To The Future  – source: Universal Pictures)

Does content like this matter to you?

Become a Member and support film journalism. Unlock access to all of Film Inquiry`s great articles. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about cinema - get access to our private members Network, give back to independent filmmakers, and more.

Sam is an English Literature student at the University of Sheffield. He likes film, writing, and writing about film. He didn't think Prometheus was that bad.

Away from the Hype: STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENANCE 

Tribeca Film Festival 2024: THE DEVIL’S BATH

ART COLLEGE 1994: An Anti-Nostalgic Trip Back To College

• Write for Us
• Become a Patron
• Comment Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Staff Login

© 2023 Film Inquiry. All Rights Reserved.

Screen Rant

Which sci-fi movies have the most accurate depictions of time travel.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

10 Books That Perfectly Blend Sci-Fi & Horror

What happened to forrest gump's young forrest actor after the movie, there's 1 young hunger games victor i'm way more excited to see in haymitch's prequel than lucy gray.

The portrayal of time travel in cinema is heavily imprinted in our collective consciousness, often used as a staple in sci-fi and dystopian settings , such as in  Back to the Future and The Terminator . Owing to the theoretical nature of relativity and quantum mechanics, as well as misconceptions regarding the nature of space-time, time travel movies mostly hinge upon the concept’s artistic or philosophical implications, rather than scientific accuracy. While lighthearted and comedy-driven films such as Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure or Hot Tub Time Machine are not meant to be scrutinized from a scientific standpoint, narratives that portray convoluted time loops and paradoxes should be dissected on more scientifically accurate grounds. 

What Sci-Fi Movies Often Get Wrong About Time Travel

The sci-fi genre is no stranger to outlandish or illogical time travel inaccuracies, such as the temporal anomalies present in Looper or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban . However, it is difficult to deem what’s plausible and what’s not, as the reality of time travel is still muddled and shrouded in scientific speculation. For instance, a fairly recent series of papers by physicist Nicolas Gisin puts forward a theory backed by intuitionistic mathematics: points in time, such as the past or "now," do not exist, as time holds no physical connection to reality, which is " constantly shifting ," making the act of travelling through time improbable.

RELATED:  Back to the Future: Why The DeLorean Had To Go 88mph To Time Travel

Per Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is illusory and relative, wherein space-time is inexplicably intertwined and cannot be deemed as independent entities. Within the four-dimensional fabric of space-time, one needs to approach the speed of light in order to travel through time—a feat demanding superhuman abilities. On a practical level, this is complicated further by complex gravitational and mechanical interactions. When testing these theories against the portrayal of time travel  in movies like Back to the Future Part II , the science doesn’t hold up. Caltech physicist Sean Carroll criticizes the film’s version of time travel, pointing out the laws of physics forbid one from jumping around the space-time continuum at will. Apart from this, the DeLorean DMC-12 travelling at 88mph for achieving time travel disregards several foundational theories of speed and gravity, in turn, creating irresolvable time dilations and paradoxes.

Sci-Fi Movies With (Mostly) Accurate Depictions Of Time Travel

On the flip side, if weighing the cinematic portrayal of time travel solely against scientific accuracy, it would invariably invalidate the premise for 99% of sci-fi narratives. Keeping this in mind,  Interstellar and Contact come close in terms of their depictions of time travel shenanigans. Interstel l ar does a fairly accurate job  visually representing the supermassive black hole Gargantua, which is based on real-life physics simulations. Time dilation, or the relative passage of time on the planet close to Gargantua, is also portrayed in a believable manner . However, it is highly unlikely that such a planet could practically exist at such close vicinity without being swallowed by the black hole in its entirety. 

The concept of time travel via wormholes is often cited in movies as a simplistic way of travelling from Point A to Point B as a short cut across space-time ( Event Horizon , Donnie Darko , and Thor: Ragnarok , to name a few). Contact , based on a novel by Carl Sagan and starring Jodie Foster, does a remarkable job in balancing scientific authenticity and fictional integrity. The idea of relativistic motion facilitated by a wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge), which is essentially a rip in space-time, is explored with commendable nuance. Conversely, Contact disregards the possibility that wormholes theoretically exist in sub-atomic sizes and are collapsible, requiring massive amounts of negative energy for it to expand and sustain itself, hence making travel impossible. 

Scientific accuracy aside, time travel movies like  12 Monkeys , Groundhog Day , Timecrimes , and Primer need to be recognized for their narrative brilliance and artistic re-imagining of concepts that prove to be elusive. The merit of sci-fi narratives that imbibe the intricacies of time travel should by no means be discredited solely due to ideas that seem practically implausible. These concepts, when executed with the aid of compelling visuals and solid storytelling, can help create the right amount of suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, if time travel is introduced simply as a poorly thought out plot device or a deus ex machina, these narratives can end up hackneyed or trite. 

Related:  Every Upcoming Movie That Can Re-Define Sci-Fi Films (& How)

How Future Sci-Fi Movies Can Portray Time Travel More Accurately

Most sci-fi narratives featuring time travel fail on the accuracy front, as there is a general perception that stories helmed by overtly scientific premises can alienate mass audiences. This can be refuted by the worldwide recognition garnered by the German series Dark , along with the enthusiasm with which fans dissect the "Many Worlds Theory"  presented in Avengers: Endgame . For starters, writers and filmmakers should strive for a balance between scientific accuracy and audience accessibility—this way, one can evoke larger-than-life concepts without compromising on science or art. Moreover, the reason why films like Interstellar and Contact come closest to accurate depictions of time travel is that they were made in close collaboration with real scientists and theoretical physicists (in both cases, Kip Thorne), providing the baseline for what’s wildly implausible and what’s not. 

Apart from this, rather than spiraling into the clichéd tropes of time travel, new horizons can be explored in terms of the ramifications of space-time disruption on the everyday man. While time travel facilitated by magic or supernatural abilities ( Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Doctor Strange ) can be other-worldly or fascinating, these plot devices often neglect the effects of retro causality on human memories, dreams, ideas, perceptions, and identities. Much inspiration can be taken from the latest breakthroughs or controversial theories in quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. For instance, movies can consider the hypothetical existence of tachyons, or particles that can potentially travel faster than light and backwards in time. However, only time will tell if moviegoers will soon witness fresh and (almost) scientifically accurate depictions of time travel in sci-fi narratives. 

NEXT:  The One Problem Sci-Fi Time Travel Movies NEVER Resolve

• SR Originals

• Video Games
• Board Games
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Glasgow Frightfest 2024
• Romford Horror Festival 2024
• Frightfest 2023
• Glasgow Frightfest 2023
• Fantasia Fest 2023
• Romford Horror Festival 2023
• Frightfest 2022
• Fantasia Fest 2022
• Romford Horror Festival 2022
• Grimmfest 2021
• Frightfest 2021
• Fantasia Fest 2021
• Romford Horror Festival 2021
• Grimmfest 2020
• Frightfest 2020
• Fantasia Fest 2020
• Grimmfest 2019
• Frightfest London 2019
• Fantasia Fest 2019
• MANIFF 2019
• Glasgow Frightfest 2019
• Horror-On-Sea 2019
• Frightfest 2018
• Fantasia 2018
• Megacon Orlando 2018
• Horror-On-Sea 2018
• Frightfest 2017
• Fantasia 2017
• PLAY Expo Blackpool 2017
• Glasgow Frightfest 2017
• PLAY Expo Leeds 2017
• Frightfest 2015
• Frightfest Glasgow 2015
• Monster Fest 2014
• Mayhem Film Festival 2014
• Celluloid Screams 2014
• Frightfest 2014
• Dead By Dawn 2014
• Glasgow Frightfest 2014
• TNA Impact Wrestling
• Ring of Honor
• Graphic Novels
• Nintendo 3DS and Wii
• Interview Archive
• Features/Fun Stuff
• Nerdly Out Loud
• History of Bad Ideas
• The Filmmakers Podcast
• Mantic Universe
• Cinema Geeks
• Comic Concierge
• Video Showcase
• Competitions
• Alain Elliott
• Matthew Turner
• Kevin Haldon
• Jim Morazzini
• James Rodrigues
• Jasmine Valentine
• Matthew Smail
• Alex Ginnelly
• Dean Fuller
• Jason Brigger
• Chris Thomas
• Paul Metcalf
• Stuart Wright

Ten Best: Movies Featuring Time Travel as a Plot Device

In the latest in our new “top 10” series of our personal picks for Cinematic Top 10s. This time we bring you our Top 10 movies that use Time Travel as a plot device…

Time travel has always captured my imagination from a young age, consistently giving us the ultimate “what if?” scenario from the wild adventures of Marty McFly to the Relentless pursuit of the T800, these films let us explore the past present and future in the most mind-bending way and what makes a great time travel movie?

We’re looking for films that not only play with the concept of time but also deliver compelling stories, unforgettable characters and a few twists and turns that keep us on the edge of our seats! Strap in because we’re about to traverse timelines break some temporal rules and maybe even bump into our past selves!

Give the video a watch and let us know if you agree or disagree in the comments below – and if we’ve missed any essential time travel movies too!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

About / Contact Us

Like us on facebook, regular columns, sites we like.

• Comic Conventions
• Fright Rags
• Generation Star Wars
• Pissed Off Geek
• The People's Movies
• Travelling Man

Trump's would-be assassin had little time to prepare – and left little trace of plot

Thomas Matthew Crooks wasn’t an ex-CIA agent with a homemade gun that could slip through metal detectors. 

He didn’t carry an Uzi and wear a black tuxedo. 

He was not a professional killer like the ones depicted in those movies – or like a Jason Bourne or John Wick.

Crooks was an isolated Gen-Zer with an associate’s degree who worked a low-wage job and lived with his parents. Yet in an increasingly online world, where digital surveillance is easier than ever, the 20-year-old managed to stay unusually hidden while devising a plan to murder a former U.S. president – nearly successfully – in just 10 days of planning.

Butler, Pennsylvania, population 13,000 , would not have been the most likely campaign stop for Donald Trump. In fact, he had visited just once before his now-infamous July 13 rally, on Halloween night in the days leading up to the November 2020 election. Thousands of red-hatted supporters cheered as he took the stage set up next to the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport. 

It wasn’t until July 3 that The Butler Eagle and other outlets reported that Trump would become the first-ever president, current or former, to return to the city for a second rally.

Until that point, there would have been no way to predict that this rally would be held at the Butler Farm Show grounds – putting the Republican nominee for president 54 miles from the Crooks family home. Or that Secret Service agents and local police would leave the rooftop of an industrial building 150 yards from Trump’s podium unmanned.

Hours before the shooting, Crooks stopped at a Home Depot in his hometown of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and purchased a ladder, CNN and NBC reported. 

Somewhere outside the rally venue, he parked a car with an explosive device in the trunk. Although cops were reportedly stationed inside the building that houses a company that manufactures equipment for the bottle industry, Crooks appears to have climbed on top with an AR-15-style gun , undetected, until some in the crowd spied him and began pointing and shouting. 

“The security failures by law enforcement that day helped him look a lot more sophisticated than he would normally,” said Seamus Hughes, a researcher at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “If you had put an agent on the roof as opposed to in the building, it goes from a very sophisticated attack to a very foolish attack.”

Still, Hughes said, it seems clear that Crooks demonstrated “a level of sophistication,” plotting the attack on short notice, without amassing an Internet footprint delineating any ideology – or even hitting law enforcement’s radar.

“That’s what makes Crooks so unique,” Hughes said. “In this day and age, that’s quite a feat.”

Smart kid who liked to shoot guns – but was a ‘bad shot’

Crooks grew up in a three-bedroom brick house with a covered porch and a wood deck in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. It’s a suburb near Pittsburgh where the median household income is $100,000 and grass yards blend together without fences. 

His parents were licensed counselors, dad a Libertarian, mom a Democrat. He had a sister, also a Libertarian, two grades older.

His own political leanings remain unclear. He donated $15 to ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democrats, in January 2021, the day of President Joseph Biden’s inauguration. Eight days after his 18th birthday that September, Crooks registered to vote in Allegheny County as a Republican.

Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks: Neighbors, classmates, employer speak

As a kid, Crooks wore patriotic shirts, like the ash-gray Mount Rushmore t-shirt he chose for his sophomore yearbook photo. 

He liked to shoot guns. He and his father were members of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, situated atop a wooded plateau eight miles from his home. It’s a sprawling, 180-acre complex with rifle, pistol, archery and competition ranges, a dog training area, club house and more than 2,000 local members. It also has safety classes and youth activities.

Some former classmates described Crooks as a loner – a smart kid who kept to himself and had few friends.

He went by "Tom,” said Sean Eckert, who went to school with him in Bethel Park from 5th through 12th grade. He rarely spoke up in class. He often wore hunting clothes. Eckert said he didn’t remember Crooks playing any sports, belonging to any clubs or student groups or going to school events.

Jason Kohler, who attended Bethel Park High School with Crooks, said he sat alone at lunch and was “bullied every day.” Kids picked on him for wearing camouflage and for his quiet demeanor, Kohler said. Others, though, insisted he was not bullied at all.

Colan Saffer, who had known Crooks since elementary school, said they both tried out for the Bethel Park High School rifle team their freshman year. Kohler said Crooks couldn’t compete with his peers and was asked to leave because he was “a bad shot.”

A year before he earned his diploma in spring 2022, Crooks dual-enrolled at Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, studying engineering science. He also worked as a dietary aide at a nearby nursing home, a food preparation job that pays $16 an hour, according to a job listing.

He completed his associate’s degree in May, school officials said, graduating with high honors and no discipline record. He planned to enroll at Robert Morris University in the fall.

This summer, Crooks was still too young to buy a beer, but he could legally buy an AR-15 online or at one of a half-dozen gun stores within five miles of his home.

He didn’t need to, though; according to FBI officials, he used his dad’s.

What happened on Saturday, July 13 ?

Moments before spectators heard the pop, pop, pop of gunfire at the Butler rally, a handful of spectators tried to get the attention of police: A suspicious man, they said, was on the roof. 

“Someone’s on top of the roof,” a man says in a video posted on social media the next day, while Trump speaks into a microphone in the background. “Officer! Officer!" one man yells. “He’s on the roof!” a woman adds. 

A man with long, light brown hair wearing a beige shirt and pants can be seen lying prone on the upward-slanting roof, adjusting his position, apparently unconcerned about the people yelling and pointing at him and the police officer looking in his direction.

Crooks began shooting nearly a minute and a half after the shouts, a Washington Post analysis found. He fired at least five shots, one whizzing past Trump’s head – nicking his ear. Bullets struck three rally goers seated in the line of fire. One man was killed .

Mike McMullen of the Gibsonia area in Allegheny County, a delegate representing U.S. House District 17, was standing about 20 feet to the left of the presidential candidate when shots rang out.

It sounded like fireworks at first, McMullen said. Then he saw Trump hit the deck holding his ear and Secret Service agents pile on top of him. 

“It was pure pandemonium,” McMullen said.

Seconds later, a Secret Service agent fired one shot at Crooks, killing him. An AR-style rifle was found next to his body. The T-shirt he was wearing bore the logo of Demolition Ranch , a YouTube channel with 11 million subscribers hosted by a gun influencer. Authorities would find a “suspicious device” in his car.

Motive remains elusive as investigation unfolds 

Law enforcement officials remain flummoxed so far about Crooks’ motive, multiple news outlets reported. Although they gained access to his phone, CNN reported that they still haven’t found evidence of a political or ideological impetus, and that his search history did not show he had researched homemade explosives.

In some ways, Crooks resembles a typical mass shooter, said Hughes: Namely, he was young, male and apparently a loner. 

But in other ways, Crooks seems to buck trends. Those who threaten public officials are typically twice Crooks’ age. Whereas more than two-thirds have documented criminal histories, Crooks has none.

The National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, where Hughes works, studies such threats. Among people arrested on federal charges for threatening public officials, those with an ideological bent veered toward right-wing, racially motivated – and often misogynistic or religious – violent extremism.

That profile extends to the man who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket and the man who killed 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. 

But of the 503 arrested individuals, more than half did not display any ideological bent, Hughes said, which can be frustrating for the public and law enforcement to accept. In that way, he said, Crooks more closely resembles the man who shot more than 400 people at a Las Vegas music concert, killing 60, whose motive police still don’t understand. 

“He may fall in this category of what we call ‘The Joker Effect,’” Hughes said. “Some people want to become infamous, or they just want to watch the world burn.”

Contributing: Aysha Bagchi, Bryce Buyakie, Tim Evans, Rick Jervis, Emily Le Coz and Josh Meyer.

CrowdStrike deploys fix for issue causing global tech outage

• Medium Text

Sign up here.

Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Sriraj Kalluvila

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Hong Kong International Airport back to normal operations, Chinese state media says

Hong Kong International Airport has resumed normal operations, Chinese state media said on Saturday, after a mistake in a security software update sparked hours-long outages in global computer systems.

What we know about CrowdStrike’s update fail that’s causing global outages and travel chaos

A faulty software update issued by security giant CrowdStrike has resulted in a massive overnight outage that’s affected Windows computers around the world , disrupting businesses, airports, train stations, banks, broadcasters and the healthcare sector.

CrowdStrike said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, but was the result of a “defect” in a software update for its flagship security product, Falcon Sensor. The defect caused any Windows computers that Falcon is installed on to crash without fully loading.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” said CrowdStrike in a statement on Friday . Some businesses and organizations are beginning to recover, but many expect the outages to drag on into the weekend or next week given the complexity of the fix. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told NBC News that it may take “some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover.” In a later tweet , Kurtz apologized for the disruption.

Here’s everything you need to know about the outages.

What happened?

Late Thursday into Friday, reports began to emerge of IT problems wherein Windows computers were getting stuck with the infamous “blue screen of death” — a bright blue error screen with a message that displays when Windows encounters a critical failure, crashes or cannot load.

The outages were first noticed in Australia early on Friday, and reports quickly came in from the rest of Asia and Europe as the regions began their day, as well as the United States.

Within a short time, CrowdStrike confirmed that a software update for Falcon had malfunctioned and was causing Windows computers that had the software installed to crash. Falcon lets CrowdStrike remotely analyze and check for malicious threats and malware on installed computers.

At around the same time, Microsoft reported a significant outage at one of its most used Azure cloud regions covering much of the central United States. A spokesperson for Microsoft told TechCrunch that its outage was unrelated to CrowdStrike’s incident .

Around Friday noon (Eastern time), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X saying the company is aware of the CrowdStrike botched update and is “working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”

What is CrowdStrike and what does Falcon Sensor do?

CrowdStrike, founded in 2011, has quickly grown into a cybersecurity giant. Today the company provides software and services to 29,000 corporate customers, including around half of Fortune 500 companies, 43 out of 50 U.S. states and eight out of the top 10 tech firms, according to its website .

The company’s cybersecurity software, Falcon, is used by enterprises to manage security on millions of computers around the world. These businesses include large corporations, hospitals, transportation hubs and government departments. Most consumer devices do not run Falcon and are unaffected by this outage.

One of the company’s biggest recent claims to fame was when it caught a group of Russian government hackers breaking into the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. CrowdStrike is also known for using memorable animal-themed names for the hacking groups it tracks based on their nationality, such as: Fancy Bear , believed to be part of Russia’s General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU; Cozy Bear , believed to be part of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR; Gothic Panda , believed to be a Chinese government group; and Charming Kitten , believed to be an Iranian state-backed group. The company even makes action figures to represent these groups, which it sells as swag .

CrowdStrike is so big it’s one of the sponsors of the Mercedes F1 team , and this year even aired a Super Bowl ad — a first for a cybersecurity company. 

Who are the outages affecting?

Practically anyone who during their everyday life interacts with a computer system running software from CrowdStrike is affected, even if the computer isn’t theirs. 

These devices include the cash registers at grocery stories, departure boards at airports and train stations, school computers, your work-issued laptops and desktops, airport check-in systems, airlines’ own ticketing and scheduling platforms, healthcare networks and many more. Because CrowdStrike’s software is so ubiquitous, the outages are causing chaos around the world in a variety of ways. A single affected Windows computer in a fleet of systems could be enough to disrupt the network. 

TechCrunch reporters around the world are seeing and experiencing outages, including at points of travel, doctors’ offices and online. Early on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration put in effect a ground stop, effectively grounding flights across the United States, citing the disruption. It looks like so far the national Amtrak rail network is functioning as normal. 

What is the U.S. government doing so far?

Given that the problem stems from a company, there isn’t much that the U.S. federal government can do. According to a pool report, President Biden was briefed on the CrowdStrike outage, and “his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and impacted entities.” That’s in large part because the federal government is a customer of CrowdStrike and also affected.

Several federal agencies are affected by the incident, including the Department of Education , and Social Security Administration, which said Friday that it closed its offices as a result of the outage.

The pool report said Biden’s team is “engaged across the interagency to get sector by sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed.” 

In a separate tweet, Homeland Security said it was working with its U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, CrowdStirke and Microsoft — as well as its federal, state, local and critical infrastructure partners — to “fully assess and address system outages.”

There will no doubt be questions for CrowdStrike (and to some extent Microsoft, whose unrelated outage also caused disruption overnight for its customers) from government and congressional investigators. 

For now, the immediate focus will be on the recovery of affected systems.

How do affected customers fix their Windows computers?

The major problem here is that CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software malfunctioned, causing Windows machines to crash, and there’s no easy way to fix that. 

So far, CrowdStrike has issued a patch, and it has also detailed a workaround that could help affected systems function normally until it has a permanent solution. One option is for users to “reboot the [affected computer] to give it an opportunity to download the reverted channel file,” referring to the fixed file.

In a message to users , CrowdStrike detailed a few steps customers can take, one of which requires physical access to an affected system to remove the defective file. CrowdStrike says users should boot the computer into Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment, navigate to the CrowdStrike directory, and delete the faulty file “C-00000291*.sys.”

The wider problem with having to fix the file manually could be a major headache for companies and organizations with large numbers of computers, or Windows-powered servers in datacenters or locations that might be in another region, or an entirely different country.

CISA warns that malicious actors are ‘taking advantage’ of the outage

In a statement on Friday, CISA attributed the outages to the faulty CrowdStrike update and that the issue was not due to a cyberattack. CISA said that it was “working closely with CrowdStrike and federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners, as well as critical infrastructure and international partners to assess impacts and support remediation efforts.”

CISA did note, however, that it has “observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity.” The cybersecurity agency did not provide more specifics, but warned organizations to stay vigilant.

Malicious actors can and will exploit confusion and chaos to carry out cyberattacks on their own. Rachel Tobac, a social engineering expert and founder of cybersecurity firm SocialProof Security, said in a series of posts on X to “verify people are who they say they are before taking sensitive actions.”

“Criminals will attempt to use this IT outage to pretend to be IT to you or you to IT to steal access, passwords, codes, etc.,” Tobac said.

What do we know about misinformation so far?

It’s easy to understand why some might have thought that this outage was a cyberattack. Sudden outages, blue screens at airports, office computers filled with error messages, and chaos and confusion. As you might expect, a fair amount of misinformation is already flying around , even as social media sites incorrectly flag trending topics like “cyberattack.”

Remember to check official sources of news and information, and if something seems too good to be true, it might just well be.

TechCrunch will keep this report updated throughout the day.

TechCrunch’s Ram Iyer contributed reporting.

More TechCrunch

Get the industry’s biggest tech news, techcrunch daily news.

Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.

Startups Weekly

Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.

TechCrunch Fintech

The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Tuesday.

TechCrunch Mobility

TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.

Featured Article

Faulty CrowdStrike update causes major global IT outage, taking out banks, airlines and businesses globally

Security giant CrowdStrike said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, as businesses anticipate widespread disruption.

US cyber agency CISA says malicious hackers are ‘taking advantage’ of CrowdStrike outage

CISA confirmed the CrowdStrike outage was not caused by a cyberattack, but urged caution as malicious hackers exploit the situation.

These startups are trying to prevent another CrowdStrike-like outage, according to VCs

The global outage is a perfect reminder how much of the world relies on technological infrastructure.

CrowdStrike outage: How your plane, train and automobile travel may be affected

The CrowdStrike outage that hit early Friday morning and knocked out computers running Microsoft Windows has grounded flights globally. Major U.S. airlines including United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air…

Twitch reinstates Trump’s account ahead of the 2024 presidential election

Prior to the ban, Trump’s team used his channel to broadcast some of his campaigns. With the ban now lifted, his channel can resume doing so.

M&A activity heats up with Wiz, Graphcore, etc.

This week, Google is in discussions to pay $23 billion for cloud security startup Wiz, SoftBank acquires Graphcore, and more.

CrowdStrike’s rivals stand to benefit from its update fail debacle

CrowdStrike competes with a number of vendors, including SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks but also Microsoft, Trellix, Trend Micro and Sophos, in the endpoint security market.

CrowdStrike chaos leads to grounded aircraft — and maybe an unusual weather effect

The IT outage may have an unexpected effect on the climate: clearer skies and maybe lower temperatures this evening

The CrowdStrike outage is a plot point in a rom-com 

There’s a man in Florida right now who wants to propose to his girlfriend while they’re on a beach vacation. He couldn’t get the engagement ring before he flew down…

Here’s everything you need to know so far about the global outages caused by CrowdStrike’s buggy software update.

From the Sphere to false cyberattack claims, misinformation runs rampant amid CrowdStrike outage

This serves as an example for how easy it is to spread inaccurate information online during a time of immense global confusion and panic.

Last chance today: Secure major savings for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024!

Today is the final chance to save up to $800 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets. Disrupt Deal Days event will end tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t miss out on…

Paytm loss widens and revenue shrinks as it grapples with regulatory clampdown

Indian fintech Paytm’s struggles won’t seem to end. The company on Friday reported that its revenue declined by 36% and its loss more than doubled in the first quarter as…

Fandango founder dies in fall from Manhattan skyscraper

J. Michael Cline, the co-founder of Fandango and multiple other startups over his multi-decade career, died after falling from a Manhattan hotel, New York’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information tells…

Researcher finds flaw in a16z website that exposed some company data

Venture capital giant a16z fixed a security vulnerability in one of the firm’s websites after being warned by a security researcher.

Apple Vision Pro debuts immersive content featuring NBA players, The Weeknd and more

Apple on Thursday announced its upcoming lineup of immersive video content for the Vision Pro. The list includes behind-the-scenes footage of the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, an immersive performance by…

Elon Musk is now a villain in Joe Biden’s presidential campaign

Biden centering Musk in his campaign is a notable escalation, considering he spent most of his presidency seemingly pretending the billionaire didn’t exist.

Waymo wants to bring robotaxis to SFO, emails show

Waymo would need a ground transportation permit to operate at SFO, which has yet to be approved.

Why it made sense for an online community college to raise venture capital

When Tade Oyerinde first set out to fundraise for his startup, Campus, a fully accredited online community college, it was incredibly difficult. VCs have backed for-profit education companies in the…

PE firm PartnerOne paid $28M for HeadSpin, a fraction of its $1.1B valuation set by ICONIQ and Dell Technologies Capital

Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne paid $28.2 million for HeadSpin, a mobile app testing startup whose founder was sentenced for fraud earlier this year, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch.…

Meta puts a halt to training its generative AI tools in Brazil 

Meta has suspended the use of its AI assistant after Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) banned the company from training its AI models on personal data from Brazilians. The…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code…

WazirX halts withdrawals after losing $230 million, nearly half its reserves

The Mumbai-based firm said one of its multisig wallets had suffered a security breach, and it was temporarily pausing all withdrawals from the platform.

Fisker scores a win, an AV startup reboots in Texas, and why Elon pushed the Tesla robotaxi reveal

This week’s TechCrunch Mobility looks at Fisker scoring a win, an AV startup rebooting in Texas, why Elon is pushing the Tesla robotaxi reveal and more.

What is Apple Intelligence, when is it coming and who will get it?

Apple Intelligence was designed to leverage things that generative AI already does well, like text and image generation, to improve upon existing features.

The EU just re-elected its president for another five years — here’s what that means for tech

The European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, was confirmed in the role for another five years Thursday after parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly to re-elect her. The scale of her support…

Communia bets social media can be good for you

Olivia DeRamus is flipping the script: What if scrolling through social media didn’t make us miserable? What if, especially for women, social media could actually make us feel more supported?…

TikTok fast-tracks artist account creation for DistroKid members

TikTok is partnering with the music distribution service DistroKid to fast-track the creation of artist accounts for members. The ByteDance-owned short video platform introduced an Artist Account feature last year…

Ford’s EV plans are in flux once again as it invests $3B into its biggest trucks

Ford is still pushing forward on electrification, notably by increasing hybrid options.

OpenAI unveils GPT-4o mini, a smaller and cheaper AI model

OpenAI introduced GPT-4o mini on Thursday, its latest small AI model. The company says GPT-4o mini, which is cheaper and faster than OpenAI’s current cutting-edge AI models, is being released…