tips for time travelling on the cheap

On By StephanieIn lists in all caps, science!

Tips for Time Travelling on the Cheap

  1. Don’t travel through time.

Notable travellers through time who ruined it for someone and definitely don’t deserve that power:

  • Marty McFly and Doc Brown
  • Doctor Who
  • The crew of the Enterprise. Every crew
  • Hermione Granger
  • The crew of the Enterprise-E
  • The Terminator
  • Cameron (unknown model of Terminator)
  • Bill and Ted
  • Austin Powers
  • The Time Traveller
YOU SEE? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. WHY.
YOU SEE? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. WHY.

Notable travellers through time who didn’t ruin it for anyone:

  • Maybe Martha Jones
  • Scrooge, in the company of Gonzo and Rizzo and a few creepy ghosts, but only because that wasn’t time travel, that was a strong cheese before dinner and some Muppets

Things that get ruined by time travel:

  • EVERY THING
  • TIME AND SPACE
  • PHYSICS
  • Come on these all caps are intentional
  • STEPH’S BRAIN
  • IF YOU GO BACK IN TIME AND TEAR THAT DRESS WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS
  • If you go back in time and condescend to a lady, who knows want misandry or misanthropy you encourage
  • ALL THINGS
  • You can’t trust people not to ruin things
  • Look at how the Doctor is all benevolent and STILL RUINS THINGS
  • I can’t even
DO NOT LET THESE PEOPLE NEAR YOUR PAST OR YOUR FUTURE
DO NOT LET THESE PEOPLE NEAR YOUR PAST OR YOUR FUTURE

You may discontent in the comments, but please note that you are wrong. Time Travel is the worst.

15 thoughts on “tips for time travelling on the cheap”

  1. I feel compelled to comment to say:

    1. You are entirely wrong about time travel.
    2. “Doctor Who” is the name of the show; “the Doctor” is the name of the character.
    3. Romana never ruined anything.
    4. Neither did Hermione.
    5. You forgot to mention the crew of Voyager, which absolutely ruined everything (except Star Trek, Rick Berman did that, and it’s not cool that people keep sheeting blame home to the Starfleet captains who were not white men, on which note…)
    6. The crew of Deep Space 9 and the Defiant also ruined nothing, except that time things went slightly awry and Sisko had to take the place of a revolutionary leader, but that’s okay because he was great and helped destroy late capitalism.
    7. …so I guess you could argue that the crew of DS9 did ruin stuff, but only if you think late capitalism was worth saving.
    7a. On further consideration, I would also argue that the Enterprise-E did not ruin anything by time travel, as they successfully un-ruined the universe after the Borg time travelled first.

    1. I am JUDGEMENT FREE. Just because I think late capitalism isn’t worth saving doesn’t mean I think WILLY NILLY TIME TRAVEL by UNKNOWN FACTORS should be allowed to destroy it. If time travel is allowed to destroy things I dislike, why can’t it destroy things I do like? THEN WE’LL ALL MARRY CATS.

  2. Ess

    Let me tell you about a little show that will change how you feel about time travel FOREVER. It’s called Odyssey 5 and it’s AMAZING. Nix & DB will back me up on this. If you want to know how great it was, just know that it was cancelled within its first season, it was THAT GREAT: television, its viewers (all 3 of them) and the world couldn’t handle how AMAZING it was. I think it might even have Robocop in it.
    Watch the opening thing and marvel:

    1. Other Canadian evidence that time travel is great: Continuum.

      I mean, yes, I ragequit three episodes in because I wasn’t in the mood to spend three seasons watching the heroine learn that capitalism is bad, but time travel as the tool for dismantling late capitalism: YES.

      1. Caite

        I wanted to love Continuum so much, but I ragequit after four episodes for the same reason. In my headcanon she’s a lot smarter and figures out how to use time travel to fix everything before the mid-season break. Then she spends the rest of the show trying to repair the timeline just enough that her family is still a thing in the utopian future she now leads.

  3. I’d like to put in a vote for all the characters in children’s and YA books who travel through time without ruining anything. It was a weird sub-genre I read a lot of as a kid, even though I have no strong feelings about it these days

      2. The theory of the multiverse suggests that everything IS ruined, and also not ruined, and also every possible state in between, to infinity.

        This worried me a lot when I was a child.

      3. The Wish is one of my favourite episodes of Buffy ever, which is interesting given my hate of time travel narratives. BECAUSE IT PROVES MY POINT. NO TIME TRAVEL.

        > This worried me a lot when I was a child.

        This worries me now!

  4. merriank

    Connie Willis’ book Domesday does lpts of much thinky thoughts on this including thinking about what we bring back not just how we affect theast

  5. Pingback: No Award Writes Books | No Award

Comments are closed.