THE WHOLE ITTDB   CONTACT   LINKS▼ 🔍 by Keywords▼ | by Media/Years▼ | Advanced
 
The Internet Time Travel Database

Making Things Worse

Time Travel Tropes

Of All Possible Worlds

by William Tenn

Max Alben Mac Albin is genetically predisposed to survive time travel, so he’s the natural choice to go back in time and shift the course of a missile that shifted the course of history.
— Michael Main
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!
Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!

“Of All Possible Worlds” by William Tenn, Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1956.

12 Monkeys, Season 1

written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, et al., directed by multiple people

Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow).

— Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]


12 Monkeys, Season 1 written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, et al., directed by multiple people (SyFy, USA, 16 January 2015 to 10 April 2015).

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance

by Anthony Q. Farrell, directed by Robbie Countryman

Superhero teens Phoebe and Max and their younger siblings have heard their parents tell a hometown hero legend once too often, so they “borrow” Cousin Blobbin’s time machine to find out the truth. But they manage to screw up the past and create a disaster in their own time, so they have to make a second round trip to sort it all out.

And just for fun . . . we get to see a flying pig three times! [Sadly, we have no Flying Pig tag. —the curator]

— Tandy Ringoringo
If we see ourselves in the past, the whole universe could close in on itself. Watch a movie, you bookworm!

The Thundermans (s04e15), “Save the Past Dance” by Anthony Q. Farrell, directed by Robbie Countryman (Nickelodeon, USA, 18 November 2017).

See You Yesterday

by Fredrica Bailey and Stefon Bristol, directed by Stefon Bristol

Up in the ITTDB Citadel, our first attraction is naturally to the time travel aspects of any movie, even when the result is an incomprehensible time wreck resulting from a pair of teenage geniuses. That’s what’s on the surface here, but it also seems to be a metaphor for the even bigger train wreck of the racist society in the 21st-century United States.
— Michael Main
You’re missing the big picture here: If time travel were possible, it would be the greatest ethical and philosophical conundrum of the modern age.

See You Yesterday by Fredrica Bailey and Stefon Bristol, directed by Stefon Bristol (Tribeca Film Festival, New York City, 3 May 2019).

as of 4:15 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
This page is still under construction.
Please bear with us as we continue to finalize our data over the coming years.