"Back to the Future" Trilogy

Recently I have watched the "Back to the Future" Trilogy. These movies really support the idea of time travel. Since there is so much information in the three movies, I am just going to try to do a short summary of all three and how they are relating to travelling through time. First, in the title, it is kind of obvious. The movies surround the life of a boy whose name is Marty and a man who everyone calls 'The Doc'. The Doc is a mad scientist who creates lots of different machines. One day, he decides to create a, you guessed it, time machine. This time machine is a little different than others. It needs a little bit more to get it going. Plutonium. The movies have many similarities, but also differences. They are similar by the fact that they all involve time travel, obviously. They also involve going into the future or the past, changing one little thing, which then changes some other part in time. This kind of got confusing, but you get the hang of things. There differences are that each movie travels to a different part of time for different reasons. In the first movie, The Doc first shows Marty the time machine and how it works. The Doc ends up getting shot by tourists and Marty uses the time machine to go back in time really just to check it out. For some background info, Marty's father met his mom when Marty's mom's dad (Marty's grandfather)  runs over Marty's father with a car. They fall in love and have Marty. Long story short, Marty saves his dad, and causes his mom to fall in love with him instead of meeting Marty's dad. Marty spends most of the movie trying to get his mom and dad together and becoming friends with his dad. He then heads back to the future to find that The Doc had been faking death. In the second movie, The Doc, Marty, and his girlfriend head to the future because apparently, Marty and his girlfriend’s kids are badly behaved and that needs to be fixed. When they get there they find the children. I thought it was really cool because the future at the time the movie was made was 2015 so it suggested that in a couple years we would have flying cars, phone goggles, and voice activated greenhouse overhangs. In the future, there was a book that had all of the winning teams of sports in it. A man finds this and the time machine, goes back in time, and uses the book to become rich. Marty travels back to the past, and finds out that the neighborhoods have gone bad and that the world was just terrible and poor. He also finds that his mother is remarried to the man, whose name is Biff. Marty then travels back to when the man receives the book and spends the movie trying to retrieve it and save the world's past. At the end of the movie, Marty gets a letter from a man that was written by Doc saying that he has been taken back to the old west where the time machine has been buried in the ground. The letter says not to come and find Doc, but Marty does not listen, and finds the buried time machine and travels back to the old west. During this movie, they spend the time trying to get the time machine working, because it also requires gas, which had not been invented yet. Marty gets back to the future, but Doc does not, in trying to save the girl he has fallen in love with. The third movie ends with the Doc coming to Marty's present time, in a 'time train' he has created to the future to find Marty. He has along with him, two children and the women. He goes on to say that he has travelled to their pasts and futures, and has many more stops to go.

Short Story: "The Skull"

I thought that this short story was very interesting and had a surprise element to it. The main guy, Conger, is a hunter. He is promised that he will get out of jail if he goes back in time to kill a man who was called the Founder, and gave a famous speech that had impacted the world in a way that they did not like by creating a religion. Conger has one thing to help him identify the right man, his skull. I find that this is very interesting and also kind of creepy. Conger goes back in time to find the day that the Founder had made his speech, so he can stop him. The Founder made the speech in a small town so everybody had known everybody. This is why people would stare at Conger when he walked by and they thought that he was kind of strange. The guy had told Conger that the Founder was new to the town and no one, had known him. Conger then goes to the place that was where the Founder was supposed to make his big speech. When he goes to look at the skull in his hands, he finds the skull is actually his own. This was the surprising part that I had no idea was coming. Conger seems to be comforted by the fact that he will be born later on in time, which is his original birth. He sees the cops coming towards him, and makes a small speech, saying "I have an odd paradox for you. Those who take lives will lose their own. Those who kill will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again!" This created the religion. What happened was, Conger was born, then goes back in time and dies in the past, while creating an event that had already happened in the normal timeline. In his (Conger's) timeline, that was the ending event. So this story kind of has two timelines that it is focusing on. I was confused about this at first but it really is not as complicated as you may think. The story left me wondering if Conger being born in his timeline really was him coming back to life. "The Skull" also made me realize that speeches can impact the entire world whether they are just a couple words long or a couple pages.

The Twilight Zone Episode: "A Kind Of Stopwatch"

The episode, "A Kind Of Stopwatch" from The Twilight Zone I do not think is necessarily time travel, but does have a lot to do with what can happen when you mess with time. It is surrounds the life of a man name McNulty who no one really likes being around. He is a very talkative man who is stuck-up and annoying. McNulty was fired from his job shortly after the show starts. He heads to the bar he always goes to after work and talks to the bartender who is really his only friend. Quickly, the two of them, and one other man are the only ones in the bar, since McNulty seems to drive everyone out of wherever he goes to. The only man left, calls McNulty over and they get to talking. Of course, McNulty seems to be the only one who is talking, but the man, whose name is Potts, does not seem to mind it. Potts soon hands him a stopwatch, which is claimed to be an old family heirloom. McNulty seems to think that it is an odd gift, but takes it anyways. This turns out be not a very great idea. Later on the next day, at the bar with the bartender, McNulty gets out the watch and presses the button on the top. He realizes that pressing the button stops all of time. He uses it on the bartender, and finds that it when you press the button again, time starts itself as if nothing happened and the bartender finishes the sentence right where he left off. McNulty then uses the watch for personal gain. He first tries to get him job back by trying to show how the stopwatch works. He fails at this. He goes to the bar and tries to convice eveyone that the stopwatch stops time, and fails at this too.Then he decides to use it for something else, robbing banks. When he gets to the bank and is about to leave with the money, he drops the stopwatch and breaks it while everyone is frozen in time. McNulty tries to get it to work again, and tries to get at least one person to respond, but no one does. Everyone is frozen in time forever and McNulty is all alone. The episode ends with him shouting, "Somebody move! Talk! Say something! HELP!" I wondered if Potts had known what the stopwatch could do, and gave it to McNulty out of kindness, or to get him to stop being so rude. But maybe he had not even known what it did at all.

The Twilight Zone Episode: "Back There"

This episode of the Twilight Zone was a very interesting one and seemed to support the same idea of time travel I have noticed in all of the selections. The idea is that changing one little thing in time can make a big difference. At the beginning, there is a man sitting in a room with a bunch of other friends at a table. When he gets up to leave, he runs into a man working there whose name is William. The man, whose name is Corrigan, then realizes that he has the ability of time travel when he finds himself in a year way before his own time. He realizes this when he goes to his house and finds a group of people whom he does not know, living there.They mention that they are leaving to go see a play, he recognizes as the one seen on the day of Abraham Lincoln's assasination. He rushes to Ford Theatre to warn everyone, and ends up getting arrested after everyone but one policeman belives him. John Wilkes Booth then comes to the rescue and releases him out of jail. He poses as a Mr. Wellington, takes the main guy, and drugs him to prevent him from telling anyone and ruin Booth's plan. At some point during this, Booth gives Corrigan (the main guy) a handkerchief with the initials J.W.B on it. When Corrigan comes back to normal, he realizes that he is too late and returns back to the future. When he gets there, does'nt find the same man, William, there working. When he gets to the table he apparentally was just at, he notices a different man sitting there. The man tells him that his name is William and Corrigan finds out that he is rich. Corrigan asks how, and William tells him that his great-grandfather, a policeman, became rich by being the one trying to stop the assasination and somehow knowing it was going to happen. Corrigan then looks down and finds the handkerchief with Booth's intials on it that was taken from the past. This episode shows that doing one little thing, in this case telling somebody something you know, can change the future lives of others. In this situation, it was a good change, like going from rich to poor, but who knows what it could be like in other situations.

Doctor Who Episode: "Father's Day"

This episode of Doctor Who had a lot to do with time travel. It showed the possibilities of what could happen if you messed with the balance of time or if you saved someone’s life who wasn’t supposed to be saved. In this episode, Rose, who is Doctor Who's companion, decides to go back in time with the Doctor to see her father on the day he dies, and to be with him when he does. Her mother had told her that he had wished there would have been someone at his side while he passed away. Out of instinct, she ends up jumping in front of the car who was supposed to kill him and saves his life. This then creates a giant collision in time. These huge creatures then start attacking everyone at the wedding Rose, the Doctor, and her dad were attending. Everyone then scrambles inside for protection from them. At one point in the show, I thought it was really cool because, to show what happens when you change time, none of the phones worked. Whenever you tried to call someone, it would just repeat what the Doctor called "Alexander Grahambell's" first call on the telephone. This goes to show how Rose saving her dads life messed ALL of time up, not just the future, but the past too. Rose then tells her father that she is her daughter. He asks her whether he was a good father, since he doesn’t know that he was supposed to die and Rose lies and says that he used to read her a bedtime story every night and took her on picnics every weekend. But she does not fool him, and he realizes he was supposed to die. As Roses father tries to explain to her mother what is going on, he puts the baby Rose into the adult Rose's arms to compare and show they are the same, which causes a paradox in time and lets the creatures into the church. The Doc steps in front of everyone and ends up getting eaten. As Rose grieves, her dad looks out the window and notices something suspicious. There is a car driving on the road, and then disappears. This happens over and over until Rose's father realizes that it's the car that was supposed to kill him, and it is stuck in that one period of time until he is killed. He decides that he needs to be dead in order for time to move on. He tells Rose and adds that he wants her to be that one person with him when he dies. So he runs out in front of the car, and Rose watches him die in her arms. Everything goes back to normal, and the Doctor comes back. It goes to a scene of Rose as a little girl talking to her mom. Her mom tells her that when her father died, there was a mysterious girl holding him and comforting him and then she disappears and isn't seen again. This episode had a lot of time travel elements in it, but also was very sad. I have to admit, it was kind of upsetting, but it was still good.

Short Story: "Sound of Thunder"

I thought that the short story "Sound of Thunder" was very interesting and not nearly as confusing as "All You Zombies" had been. The story had a lot of time travel in it including a 'Time Safari' company which took you, if you were willing, back in time to hunt various animals. Before every travel a man would go back in time to figure out which animal was going to die naturally and mark it with red paint. This way the hunters were taken back to right before the animal was killed and weren’t actually harming animals, just killing them right before they were going to die anyway. For example a dinosaur who was originally going to be crushed by a tree. On a trip, the hunters must walk on an anti-gravity metal path which I thought was pretty cool. Another intellectual excitement part of the story was the fact that while you are travelling back in time, you pass your future-selves heading back to the future without even realizing your passing yourself! Awesome, right? On a particular trip, a man named Eckels travels with a group of guys hunting dinosaurs. Travis, one of the trip leaders, explains to the group that it is important not to destroy any one tiny thing, like a mouse, because it could permanently damage the whole circle of life and cause some major changes for the future. The T-Rex the group is supposed to kill is then spotted. Everything becomes chaotic then and there are random shootings. This is when Eckels freaks out, steps off the path, and runs back to the time machine only to lay down in horror. The rest of the group ends up killing the T-Rex successfully and heads back to the time machine also. Eckels thinks he has done nothing wrong, only kicked up a pile of dirt, but ends up killing a small butterfly. When they get back to the future, everything seems okay accept for a few minor details, like the wrong desk, different wordings on a sign, and the wrong president re-elected. At the end of the story, Travis realizes the dead butterfly and raises a gun, Eckels closes his eyes, and there is a sound of thunder... a gunshot. Who was dead? Did Travis kill himself? Or did he shoot Eckels?

Short Story: "All You Zombies"

The short story "All You Zombies" is a very interesting story that takes a while to understand what exactly is going. After a long time discussing and looking up the story on Wikipedia I finally get what the story is about. I realized that the story has a lot of science fiction elements in it including intellectual excitement, high adventure, and an ambiguous that leaves you to your imagination. The story has a lot of time travel and would not make any sense or wouldn’t be possible without the fact of a time machine. What I got from the story was that a girl, named Jane, was dropped off at an orphanage when she was little. No one knew where she came from or who her parents were. She grows up and falls in love with a man, who seduces her and makes her pregnant. She goes to the hospital, has the baby, to then find out that she had two sets of organs, men and women. The woman organs were used up from having the baby so the doctors took them out, leaving her to be a man whose name changed to the Unmarried Mother. The baby is then stolen from the hospital and the theft was never found. The Unmarried Mother then grows up to be a bartender. The beginning of the story starts with the bartender talking to the Unmarried Mother. The Unmarried Mother then tells the story of his life and the bartender realizes that it’s his life. The bartender takes the Unmarried Mother back in time to find out who the theft was. The Unmarried Mother then finds Jane and seduces her because you can’t resist seducing yourself. The bartender then goes further in time to steal the baby that Jane has. Then you realize that all the characters in the story are all one person, Jane. Jane grows up to be the Unmarried Mother, and then the bartender. When he reaches the age that he is a bartender, he realizes he must complete the chain, and travel back in time with the Unmarried Mother. At the end of the book, you realize where the title comes from when the bartender thinks “I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?” I think he is referring to he knows where he came from, but where did all of you, who are me, come from? I think that this is saying the only person left in the world is Jane. I find it weird that basically when Jane had the baby, she had her mother, father, and herself at the same time. The last words in the story are, “I miss you dreadfully,” creating an ambiguous ending.

Hello there

I'm going to be doing a blog about the great sci-fi theme; Time Travel. I will discuss the different movies and books about time travel.