Time Travel
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+ | The complex nature of Lost as a long form narrative means that many events happen in parallel as the story and characters move backwards and forwards along the various timelines. In Lost it is fairly typical for a character's future self's actions in the past to effect what happens to them in the present of the show or further down the line in the story. This results in a lot of small seeds paying off down the line in a big way with even the most insignificant of actions having big repercussions later on in the show. | ||
=== Terminator Timeline === | === Terminator Timeline === |
Revision as of 18:44, 19 February 2012
Used in many games, movies, TV shows, books, etc. As both the simplest and most complex of plot devices
While used in many games in the past, none have really dealt with higher level concepts
Split between using Time Travel as a plot device (Time Splitters, Sonic Generations) or in a limited capacity in the game mechanics (Blinx The Time Sweeper, Prince of Persia)
Rarely a convergence of both for the simple reason that the more control the player is given over time the more complex the gameplay/story becomes because Time Travel can be very confusing!
Contents |
Time Travel in TV/Film
Time Travel has been used to varying degrees of success in many TV shows over the years. From time travel storylines in Star Trek to the more "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" stories of Doctor Who. All have different sets of rules and regulations within their fiction to make time travel work for them. In Doctor Who the rules are more fast and loose and in Star Trek there is a sense of order to them. Most time travel stories are self contained to one or two episodes rather than spanning the whole length of a show. There is one big exception to this, Lost.
Lost
As a science fiction show Lost starts simply enough but quickly expands upon itself and time travel eventually becomes the main thrust of the show but not in the typical way. The presentation of the show takes the viewer backwards in time via flashbacks to see key moments from the characters lives while the current events of the show, on the island, play out. Eventually flash-forwards were added to show the viewers where the current events of the show would be leading up to. In the main storyline for the show time travel also played an important role in explaining how key events happened and even as a jumping off point for the later seasons of the show. The result was a show that could be followed easily enough by watching it from one episode to the next but it also gave long time viewers a complex story that worked on multiple levels. The time travel rules for Lost gave fans several time periods and timelines to explore, write and talk about as the story and characters jumped between different periods of time. It also gives us one of the most complex timelines in a modern piece of fiction.
Lost Timeline
The complex nature of Lost as a long form narrative means that many events happen in parallel as the story and characters move backwards and forwards along the various timelines. In Lost it is fairly typical for a character's future self's actions in the past to effect what happens to them in the present of the show or further down the line in the story. This results in a lot of small seeds paying off down the line in a big way with even the most insignificant of actions having big repercussions later on in the show.
Terminator Timeline
Back To The Future Timeline
The Time Traveler's Pocket Guide
The Rules The Game Will Use
Divergent and plastic time are often used together in time travel stories due to their easy to understand nature
You go back in time, change history and create a new alternate future or divergent timeline
It relies on the audience accepting that history can be changed and that the Time Traveller is aware of or the cause of these changes