The Time Machine, Redux

Since the last post (See here.)  one of my two readers took issue when I recommended the new film, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. 

 

I do recommend it highly. I mean, like many SF films, it’s dumb as a stick but it is, as they say, the journey that is important.

 

Okay, okay. It’s not that dumb. 

 

He insisted I explain myself. If I don’t like time travel stories, how could I recommend GLHFDD? 

 

There are a lot of problems with most time travel stories. And, yes, I’m looking right at Star Trek, all iterations. In the original series, time travel was introduced in season 1, episode 24. In The Next Generation, they held off until season 2, episode 13. In Voyager, season 1, episode 4. They started the series Star Trek Enterprise with time travel. In Deep Space Nine, season 1, episode 7. I could go on but I won’t.

 

Let’s think about that. They have the entire galaxy to work with. All these different suns, planets, different species, different biologies, and we have to look for our own past to tell stories? The Expanse didn’t need it. Star Wars didn’t need it. The Alien franchise didn’t need it. 

 

This site claims to have 6,000 time travel movies made since 1896. Given that, is it realistic to go down to that well every time you need inspiration? 

 

I do not say that there are no recent time travel stories that aren’t fun. Time Bandits is one of my personal favorites. I’m just saying that there are a number of SF tropes that have either 1) been done to death or 2) were tired from the beginning. Another similarly tired trope is the Higher Order Being. (That’s right. I’m looking at you, Q.) 

 

A gimmick story works the first time it’s used. That’s why The Time Machine works. It’s because it was the first such idea in use. At least, that’s the idea. However, Wells reused his ideas from an earlier story, The Chronic Argonauts. (The title suggests to me people with chronic stomach distress, but I digress.)

 

After that, there are two ways the gimmick can be used: exploring the ramifications of the gimmick or using the gimmick to tell a story apart from the gimmick. For the first, I suggest Primer and David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself. Both of these explore many of the consequences of time travel. 

 

And, after 6000 tries, I think we’ve exhausted the ramifications of that particular gimmick. Even in just the 21^st century, there have been nearly five hundred films involving time travel. Come on! Given that most time travel stories are about correcting a mistake, (Even Good Luck* falls into this category.) I think we can dispense with most of them. How many times do we have to watch someone go into the past (or an alternate world) to save their nation/save the world/save their wife-brother-mother-son? 

 

It’s like cop shows, doctor/hospital shows, and lawyer shows. After seventy years of television, there’s not much left to mine out of the subjects. 

 

The second use of a gimmick is in service of something else. This is where works like Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die come into play. The time travel is barely on stage. It just hangs there like Checkhov’s gun. It’s important but it’s not the story. Time Bandits uses time travel for an absurdist journey. It’s essentially a way for Terry Gilliam to show us the inside of his mind. 

 

When you lose the gimmick aspect of time travel, interesting things come up. Donnie Darko (2001) is a very interesting film involving time travel and the nature of cause and effect. It’s an example of my point. The film involves time travel but it isn’t about time travel. The day of the time travel gimmick is over. Long live it’s utility in storytelling. 

 

I think the film Predestination (derived from what I think is one of the finest time travel stories ever written: All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein) is very interesting. In this film, time travel is central. But the main story is the arc of the main character. It does explore a gimmicky side of time travel—which the story also does—but it’s one that I don’t think had been done before as a film.

 

I don’t know other genres as well as I know SF so I won’t speak to them. SF has tropes that have also been done to death. At this point stories involving time travel, Higher Order Being, first alien contact, etc., have been done and redone so many times that I’m jaded. I don’t want just another time travel story to save the world. Or a first contact where the alien turns out to be the good guy. Or eats people. Or nearly every Frankenstein story for the last twenty years.

 

This is not to say that there isn’t still meat on those old, old bones. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is pretty fresh. The Expanse had a pretty original take on first contact. I thought both Poor Things and Moore’s Anima Rising were both interesting takes on Bride of Frankenstein. I’m looking forward to seeing The Bride. 

 

Even I’ve written two time travel stories. One published, Another Perfect Day, and one not. (Another Perfect Day is collected here.) APD was, essentially, a story that described the impossibility of time travel. I.e., one could travel in time but only to a time that had no relation to your own. That pesky causality thing. 

 

There’s even time travel regarding Orange Voldemort. 

 

Hm. Time travel to the past to save the world.

 

Okay. Sign me up.