Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited
July 30, 2006 2:59 AM   Subscribe

Wonder what it would be like to have Parts I and II of "Back to the Future" synched up on a split-screen during which both Marty McFlys are together? Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited.
posted by MetaMonkey (57 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
I saw this 3-4 days ago. I thought about posting it but once I watched it I was seriously unipressed. Very boring. Really, I was hopping for something better than this crap.
posted by bob sarabia at 3:28 AM on July 30, 2006


Maybe my barriers are a little low because it's a sunny sunday morning here, I thought it was fun way to look at time travel, and appreciate how Back to the Future succeeds in interweaving stories. What else were you expecting from it?
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:34 AM on July 30, 2006


By what measure are the pictures brought in and out? Is the idea that it's the music that is used to synchronise the two, and it's the music that tells the editor when to drop one picture in or out? There are times when there is no music. If it's down to the interpretation of the editor, I sort of wonder what the point is. There are times when a picture drops out just as it's getting interesting.
posted by nthdegx at 3:55 AM on July 30, 2006


Really, I was hopping for something better than this crap.

Well, it is how it is - how many different ways do you think they can synchronise the films? I thought it was as good as can be expected, and it was neat seeing both perspectives on the story.
posted by Jimbob at 4:05 AM on July 30, 2006


The picture was dropped out when it didn't involve the dance - in the movies there were scenes with the Doc/etc. inter-cut in those black spaces.
posted by benzo8 at 4:33 AM on July 30, 2006


I should confess to having a special interest in the subject; as much as I love the Back to the Future movies, and hold them as a high watermark of time travel fiction, they do suffer various anomalies. I have ambitions of making time travel movies that are more wholly logical, inasmuch as such a thing is possible. Though perhaps it simply couldn't be done. I found watching these clips side-by-side is a great way to stimulate ideas about how much more could be done with time travel in film.

Oh, and reading this AskMe last night rekindered my interest in this stuff in the first place.
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:59 AM on July 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


Pretty cool, well done.
posted by stbalbach at 5:42 AM on July 30, 2006


bob sarabia, will you be my friend? You seem like a fun guy!
posted by Turtles all the way down at 5:50 AM on July 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


as much as I love the Back to the Future movies, and hold them as a high watermark of time travel fiction, they do suffer various anomalies.

I still wish that the Star Trek franchise had pursued their time travel fleets story line (the ones that were always giving Janeway a headache in Voyager) rather than that godawful Enterprise.
posted by Zinger at 6:21 AM on July 30, 2006


Really, I was hopping for something better than this crap.


And now you're hopping mad, right?
posted by RokkitNite at 6:25 AM on July 30, 2006


I have ambitions of making time travel movies that are more wholly logical, inasmuch as such a thing is possible.

You should check out Primer, if you haven't seen it already.
posted by farishta at 6:39 AM on July 30, 2006


Maybe I'm a bit slow or something, but where does that third screen of action fit into things? They're taking clips from two films, right? I just don't get where those clips fit in to the timeline (but that could be because I'm drunk).
posted by bunglin jones at 7:17 AM on July 30, 2006


I have ambitions of making time travel movies that are more wholly logical, inasmuch as such a thing is possible.

A logical time-travel movie would be a very, very boring thing, because the sad truth to time travel (if it were actually possible) is that there are no paradoxes. Not really. The only exception is the big elephant in the corner that no one ever talks about: the conservation of energy.

Time travel stories fundamental inability to discuss the ramifications of how stepping backwards in time violates the conservation of energy is key to understanding why they can never quite get the story right, and have to instead use plot contrivances (the "disappearing" photograph, for example, or the "two Marty's at the same time" problem).

The basic problem is this: the moment Marty steps back into 1955, you've now got additional matter that shouldn't be there. The conservation of energy (and thus, matter) states that matter is neither created nor destroyed, only changed. But here you've got 140lbs. of extra man-stuff in the 1955 universe that shouldn't be there.

So what happens? There are (obviously) an infinite number of possibilities, but three in particular that I think address the problem well. What you must keep in mind is that going forward in time, even rapidly, doesn't violate the conservation principles. If Doc's Delorean time machine suddenly gets wrecked in an accident, Marty will just have to go forward through time at a 1:1 speed like the rest of us.

Possibility #1:
Marty goes back in time, interferes in his parent's first encounter, but is unable to get his father and mother together. He then goes back to the future, and his world is changed: no Marty, no sister, etc.

Possibility #2:
Marty goes back in time, interferes with his parent's first encounter, is able to get them back together, but because of his influence, history doesn't progress exactly as it had before. Thirty years into the future, there is no time machine. But, the McFly's are married, and have a son named Marty. So what happens when he "jumps" back into this time? Well, there are now two Marty McFly's, age 18.

Possibility #3:
Marty goes back in time, interferes in his parent's first encounter, but is able to get them back together though all the crazyiness witnessed in Back to the Future: 1. But, right before he "jumps" back to the future, he gets side-swiped by a reefer-crazed punk in a '55 Chevy Bel-Air. The Delorean is toast, and Marty is stuck having to live life at 1:1 speed. So he hides out in a cave for thirty years, and through nearly impossible circumstances, history repeats itself exactly as it had before, so that in thirty years time, George McFly's son Marty travels back in time in 1985. Old Marty then comes out of his cave, set to re-enter the life of his younger "duplicate". Hilarity ensues.

The fundamental problem with all these time-travelling stories is that they go with the premise that you can sever and then restore a timeline. That's bunk. There's no restoration going on. It is, instead, a hope that history progresses exactly the same, and events unfold perfectly so that when the time comes and "you" are supposed to travel back in time, everything else has also progressed in the right pattern (Doc builds a time machine, Doc and Marty are friends, etc.) If any one of those things don't happen, you will end up stuck with a duplicate self when you return from the past. What optimistically happens is that you don't actually restore anything, but instead pray that history re-creates events to match up with what happened in your own history.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:19 AM on July 30, 2006 [5 favorites]



Civil_Disobedient.. well written... however, let's not forget this is a bit of fantasy... as possible as your conjectures....

Sort of the George Bush theory of time travel explanation, "If I say it, it is true." :)

Bunglin Jones... movies are movies... it might take 10 minutes to show 10 minutes of events (one shot, no cuts), or it might take 15 minutes to show 10 minutes of events (multiple shots, various perspectives, shots from another location that include events that are happening simultaneously), thus, the blank screens...

Thanks for the link...I thought it was fun.
posted by HuronBob at 7:35 AM on July 30, 2006


Thanks for the link metamonkey. For me, BTF I is just a perfect movie -- a movie so good, funny, non-pretentious, subversive, and, for what I know, original -- it's one a type of movie that gets you upset even when other, albeit good movies, are not quite what as polished. (For a recent example, I'm the guy, when everyone is talking about how great 40 year virgin was, complains that the last hour was almost garbage.)

At any rate, the link gave me a new perspective on what most that was the weaker BTF II. They were really trying to stay true and tell a story and you never appreciated that since the rest of the movie got confusing too.
posted by skepticallypleased at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2006


For a recent example, I'm the guy, when everyone is talking about how great 40 year virgin was, complains that the last hour was almost garbage.

You are obviously a film critic who should be taken very seriously indeed.
posted by reklaw at 8:11 AM on July 30, 2006


But here you've got 140lbs. of extra man-stuff in the 1955 universe that shouldn't be there.

OK, I didn't take enough physics to work out the math myself, but this sounds a bit too facile. Why can't you define the system so that it includes both 1955 and 1986? In that system, no mass is created, it's simply transferred along the temporal axis.

...thus fulfilling my long ambition to use "temporal axis" in a conversation.
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:15 AM on July 30, 2006


Civil_Disobedient, your analysis contains a number of glaring assumptions about the nature of time. Most particularly, how do you know that all times are not already 'laid out' in a 4d block? The temporal part of Marty could have 'always' been in 1955. Hence no violation of energy conservation. In fact, there could be an indefinite number of parts of the same person inhabiting the same region of time. What makes them all belong to the same person is then a matter of relative similarity in bodily properties/memories between these parts.


Moreover, although I agree the whole changing time thing is extremely dubious, Back to the Future appeals to a branching universe theory (though admittedly, it's not clear on whether these branches all exist at once). The only real problem is how to get from one branch to another. So when Marty goes back in time and apparently changes things, he has in fact caused a divergent branch (or simply arrived in a divergent branch if it 'always' existed). By getting his parents back together, Marty can re-enter normal time in a universe comparably similar to the one he came from (although his girlfriend is now Elizabeth Shue, and so slightly less hot, at least he has a nice car). The other Marty who grew up in this branch has also travelled back in time and presumably finished up in yet another universe, or maybe in the one the orginal Marty came from, thus sparing his poor parents the heartache of their son having disappeared one night.

either that or universes can change or fuse together and marty is some kind of trans-dimensional being and it would all get rather complicated.

btw farishta: although the first half of Primer is nice and consistent, it really fudges things by the end.
posted by leibniz at 8:33 AM on July 30, 2006


Real time-travel version: I want the entire cast to come back and film the scene now, after they have all traveled 20 somethign years, and do it with no special makeup. For the dead ones, stand caskets on end and roll them about on casters. If they're senile, however, it's no excuse. The show must go on!

About time travel: either our times are so boring and inconsequential that no one wants to visit, or there is no such thing as travel into the past. No one comes back here. There are no Marty McFly guys appearing. It doesn't happen.
posted by pracowity at 8:39 AM on July 30, 2006


You know, I always hoped that I'd see it put together like that. Crazy that it took this long.
posted by reklaw at 8:44 AM on July 30, 2006


HuronBob, thanks for the explanation. I'll watch and read again in the morning when I'm sobered up.
posted by bunglin jones at 8:50 AM on July 30, 2006


I'm still waiting for someone to make a joke involving 2.21 GigaWatts.
posted by rbs at 8:54 AM on July 30, 2006


Really, I was hopping for something better than this crap.

What, no "fuck you, I wish Matt would kick you off Metafilter"?

Metafilter: I hate you, and I hate the band you like!
posted by chrominance at 9:20 AM on July 30, 2006


So much back to the future stuff lately! The whole Eric Stoltz thing and then the Nike commercial, I'm 13 again!

You know, the big logical error in the second movie was where Biff took the time machine back to give his younger self the sports almanac, and then where he takes it forward again so Marty can regain the time machine and carry the plot forward. The problem was, when Biff came back to 2015, wouldn't the future Marty was in no longer exist? Biff changed it. Or if it did exist, why would Biff be able to travel back to it?

Like I said, I'm 13 again. Now, back to being a depressed adult all the time.
posted by fungible at 9:32 AM on July 30, 2006


Oh, and to get to the topic at hand: it's really interesting how there were a lot of shots from BTTF2 that weren't taken straight from the first movie, even though they could have been. For example, when Prom Marty runs into Lorraine and George in the stairwell, you can tell the two scenes are different: Lorraine acts slightly differently in each scene. Similarly, Marty doesn't do exactly the same guitar moves on stage, even though the camera angles are very close to the original.
posted by chrominance at 9:32 AM on July 30, 2006


The other problem I have with time-travel stories is that they are incredibly narcisstic in their portrayal of the time-line. For example, Marty goes back in time, prevents his parents from getting married, and what happens to his brother and sister? They disappear? They cease to exist?

No way. Because if you were to re-tell the story from the vantage point of Marty's brother, all he knows is that his bro went missing one day. That's it, life goes on. He doesn't just up and vanish twelve hours after Marty goes back in time because twelve hours after Marty arrives in the past, he interferes with his parent's first encounter. That would be absurd. The events necessary to bring Marty to the point where he steps back in time have already occured, otherwise he wouldn't be there, natch! So whatever happens afterwards--Marty goes back in time and kills Hitler or whatever--doesn't touch the timeline for everyone else that didn't go back in time. They continue their existance like nothing's changed, because history already happened to them.

Why can't you define the system so that it includes both 1955 and 1986? In that system, no mass is created, it's simply transferred along the temporal axis.

Yes, this is a familiar rejoinder, and I honestly don't know what kind of ramifications such a suggestion would have to our understanding of space, time, and energy. So the best I can say is, I haven't given it enough thought to respond intelligently.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:46 AM on July 30, 2006


Curses, MetaMonkey! You have ruined my Sunday by forcing me to read time travel analyses of movies like "Flight of the Navigator" —which I loved as a child, then found out, when my girlfriend called as I was reading, that she also loved the movie as a child and now we have resolved to rent it together one day. And it's all your fault!
posted by Eideteker at 10:24 AM on July 30, 2006


"Oh, and to get to the topic at hand: it's really interesting how there were a lot of shots from BTTF2 that weren't taken straight from the first movie, even though they could have been. For example, when Prom Marty runs into Lorraine and George in the stairwell, you can tell the two scenes are different: Lorraine acts slightly differently in each scene. Similarly, Marty doesn't do exactly the same guitar moves on stage, even though the camera angles are very close to the original."

I myself wondered if those were intentional. To show the slight changes in the time stream caused by each of Marty's presence(s)?

The only thing better than time travel threads is learning you have a girlfriend who is not only willing but eager to listen to you ramble on about obscure time travel theories you've come up with. This thread wins my approval!
posted by Eideteker at 10:31 AM on July 30, 2006


I'm still waiting for someone to make a joke involving 2.21 GigaWatts.

It's 1.21 GigaWatts!! Not 2.21!! <ComicBookGuy>I've wasted my life...</ComicBookGuy>
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:33 AM on July 30, 2006


fungible - yeah, that part always bothered me; Biff would be returning to a Biffworld circa 2015, not the same 2015 where Biff is a loser.

The only way I could reconcile that is that history takes... "time" to propogate through time so that the altered history has propogated to 1986 but not yet to 2015.
posted by porpoise at 10:34 AM on July 30, 2006


Perhaps some sort of tomographic scanner could be used to see past the subspace barrier, and into the world of anti-time. Then, with a reverse tachyon pulse routed through the main deflector, we could finally resolve all of these temporal anomalies.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:47 AM on July 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


Guys? It's a movie.
posted by keswick at 10:49 AM on July 30, 2006


Well my question wasn't so much about what's taking place in the film when the screens black out, but whether the time is preserved perfectly and we're just not seeing bits of the films. What mechanism, then, is used to *time* when to fade out and fade in the picture? If it's merely a clever editing job, what does it prove about the cleverness of the film's timing.

I am a big fan of the first Back to the Future film. This exercise, though, I want to like, but don't quite get.
posted by nthdegx at 10:51 AM on July 30, 2006


Yes, the shortcomings of BTTF were primarily in its faulty science.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 10:55 AM on July 30, 2006


The whole point of Einstein's observation that time is the 4th dimension is that it has similar properties to the first 3, it's just that we process along it in only one direction. If you were really able to move through time, it would probably be more like Slaughterhouse Five, where an individual's consciousness moves throughout where their body already was at different moments along the time axis.

If, according to superstring theory, there are really between 10 and 26 dimensions (and we only perceive the first 3, and move in one direction along the 4th), then time is already simultaneous, as long as the observer is looking at it from 5 dimension or more.
posted by MythMaker at 11:05 AM on July 30, 2006


Well my question wasn't so much about what's taking place in the film when the screens black out, but whether the time is preserved perfectly and we're just not seeing bits of the films.

Yes, and where was that third clip, "You know that sound you were looking for? Well listen to this!", coming from if the other 2 screens were filled?

So, is it really synced or just intercut? I still liked it though.
posted by freudianslipper at 11:18 AM on July 30, 2006


Pamela West wrote a not quite time travel book called 20/20 vision that in my memory does not violate conservation of energy yet addresses changing the past in a realistic way. I had the impression that the timeline had an inertia, a tendency to continue on a similar trajectory. A good read.
posted by pointilist at 11:19 AM on July 30, 2006


"Guys? It's a movie."

The deuce you say!

All the temporal anomalies in the BTTF series can be easily explained away in terms of the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics. There's an infinite number of realities in which anything is possible, including time travel, and the directors just picked and chose which parts of Doc & Marty's ordeal show us and which surrealities to 'edit' into the film. Every time the characters were in danger, there's alternate realities in which they failed. Infinite numbers of them. BTTF's trilogy is the near impossible resolution of the happy ending. There's an endless number of other outcomes that weren't as pretty. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Y'know if there was one thing I'd want them to remake before its time, it's Back To The Future. I don't want them to wait until an appropriate number of years after the deaths of Lloyd & Fox. I want them to start on it now.

In fact I want a cheesy television series of BTTF. Not that animated thing with Jules & Verne, although eventually they could incorporate variations of Doc's offspring into the storyline like around seasons two or three, but an hour long comedy adventure series where Marty McFly and Doc Emmet Brown pop back and forth through time every Thursday at eight, seven central.

Hell if they did Beverly Hillbillies and Addams Family and Dukes of Hazard as films, the least they could do to make up for doing that to us would be BTTF the series. Low budget. The lower the budget the better far as I'm concerned, provided they got good writers with brilliant dialogue and I wouldn't necessarily want them to get impersonators of Michael J Fox or Christopher Lloyd, but they'd need to find two guys who had just as good a chemistry between them. What really made BTTF work was despite the apparent age difference and all the craziness, those two guys were like brothers. That whole ensemble seemed on fire in that trilogy -- particularly part two but overall the whole trilogy is in my mind one of the few good things that came out of the 1980s.

Maybe even not do a time machine this time. Maybe Doc would have a different invention every week. The comic timing and the chemistry with the whole ensemble was remarkable and memorable. I know it's an impossible wish, but I'd love to see lightning strike twice.
posted by ZachsMind at 11:43 AM on July 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


Why do you want a remake of Back to the Future?
posted by nthdegx at 11:59 AM on July 30, 2006


I love BTF and I still consider that the biggest waste of my time that I have ever engaged in. Why post that? Really.
posted by rubyeyo at 12:00 PM on July 30, 2006


BBTF III was really quite a mess :) They could have slingshotted the car up to 88mph with the train using a series of pulleys.
posted by MrLint at 12:12 PM on July 30, 2006


"The other problem I have with time-travel stories is that they are incredibly narcisstic in their portrayal of the time-line..."

This again is explained via the many worlds theory. As I said before, the writers of BTTF had to keep their heroes alive throughout, despite the seeming improbability of their predicament. In the many worlds theory everything is possible, even things that are highly improbable. Timestamps and outtakes and cuts that hit the floor notwithstanding, filmmaking itself is in essence a lesson in Time Control. The production company of BTTF had a tale to tell, and IF this story could be real, the producers would have a wide selection of possible outcomes to choose from. They wouldn't have provided to their viewing audience the most probable of outcomes. They wanted to entertain their audience and make them laugh, so they revealed a perhaps improbable outcome, but it was an outcome that meant Doc & Marty made it back to 1885 relatively unscathed.

Since the dawn of time there have been an infinite number of realities. Every time a subatomic particle could by probability go one direction or another, ALL those possibilities occur, and they're played out, and some of those variables lead to alternate realities that are cohesive and whole, and other realities continue along until they atrophy and end. Well, they ALL do that but for some alternate realities it happens sooner than others. We exist in a reality in which stories like BTTF are fiction, but it's not entirely improbable to imagine a reality, in fact a finite but large amount of alternate realities, in which there was a Marty & Doc in 1985 with a DeLorean as a time machine and they almost wrote themselves out of existence. In fact, in many alternate realities, they probably did.

When Marty was looking at his picture, he was seeing that because of the alternate reality he was NOW in, his meddling with that alternate timeline was making it impossible for his future self to be born in that timeline. The storywriters would have us believe this woulda killed him in that timeline. He'd just fade away. That may or may not be evident.

Now to follow this progression logically, it wouldn't mean he would fade away. It would mean the offspring of his parents in THAT timeline would never exist, because he inadvertently caused his parents to never be married. However, in the reality that he comes from, HIS timeline, his parents were unaffected. You can't go back in time and mess up your own past. Doing so CREATES a new alternate timeline.

Doc Brown refers to this as a paradox because as wise as Doc is, he still sees time as a singular linear progression. IF time travel were really possible, you could go back in time as often as you wanted and defeat Hitler, but then if you went forward in that timeline to your present, you wouldn't be 'home.' You'd be in that alternate reality your actions 'created.' If you went back in time again one second before you arrived the first time, then slingshotted immediately again into the future to exactly the nanosecond you left, you'd have a relatively safe chance of returning to 'your' reality in which you didn't change anything, but then Hitler woulda still been an asshole in your reality. You could sleep well though, knowing that in alternate realities you were a hero who saved countless lives in each alternate timeline where you killed baby Hitler, as thankless as that would probably be.

The real creepy thing is, IF you did all that? You were meant to. In the many worlds theory, everything is not only possible, but probable. Where ALL alternate realities and temporal anomalies are played out to their logical conclusion, both free will and predestined predeterminism are truisms simultaneously. You were meant to do all those things you do, because the probability was high that you would do all those things. Because you are who you are, there's a calculable finite probability that you would do everything you have done and will do.

You chose to do it, but you also were meant to make that choice. Now don't you wish you had a DeLorean?
posted by ZachsMind at 12:25 PM on July 30, 2006 [2 favorites]


"Why do you want a remake of Back to the Future?"

I want a continuation of the storylines with those characters cuz it rocked. =) Much the same way I enjoy retellings of Superman or Sherlock Holmes or even Captain Kirk, I'd get a kick out of the retelling and continuing adventures of Doc & Marty.

But then, I want Bruce Campbell to play Brisco again. So what I want and what happens ain't exactly ever been similar.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:27 PM on July 30, 2006


I'm late to this discussion, but I've had a long-standing BTF question, and the answer is probably listed above or in the anomalies link but I'm too dense to comprehend:

Why wouldn't Marty II (the one whom our Marty [Marty I] sees driving off when he returns to the parking lot) land in 1955 at the exact same place at the exact same time as Marty I did? Both DeLoreans were programmed to go to the same moment in time, so wouldn't they "collide" (thereby possibly destroying the Marty/Marty continuum)? Or do the 2 Marties have different Oct 26, 1955s?
posted by TG_Plackenfatz at 12:50 PM on July 30, 2006


I want a continuation of the storylines with those characters cuz it rocked.

Yes, but you realize that such a continuation of the storylines could only be produced with the hive mind of Hollywood producers, financiers, and flavor-of-the-week pop star "actresses"...at least in this branch of the quantum universe.
posted by thanotopsis at 1:18 PM on July 30, 2006


I think the key point is that the context in which time travel is allowed is necessarily pretty much whatever the author wants, so the plot only need be logical regarding any stated or implied internal logic. What with the many interpretations of quantum theory, there's a lot of wiggle room in setting up the film's universe.

As the premise for a film, I like the theory that allows time travel per se, but posits a quantum force of some kind that ensures no actions taken in the past can change the future (bbc link). This could make a fun film, because you could get all sorts of time travel going on that self-corrects in ingenious and unexpected ways, playing with causality and perceptions.

I'm not sure if this idea has been used in film already, I can only remember a really bad made for TV thing from a few years ago, and I'm probably misremembering that story. But either way, I can't remember ever seeing a time travel movie that seemed to fundamentally make sense, so it'd be cool to make such a film.
posted by MetaMonkey at 2:38 PM on July 30, 2006


I have ambitions of making time travel movies that are more wholly logical, inasmuch as such a thing is possible.

I thought 12 monkies was pretty good.
posted by delmoi at 7:21 PM on July 30, 2006


Why are you guys abbreviating it as BTF?? It's either BF (no articles) or BTTF (both articles)! What kind of nerds ARE YOU?
posted by gorgor_balabala at 7:53 PM on July 30, 2006


Look, it's real simple. "Time" does not exist.
posted by LordSludge at 10:15 PM on July 30, 2006


MetaFilter: 1.21 Gigawatts: The Power of Love.
posted by Eideteker at 2:27 AM on July 31, 2006


what about the part where they ride the train in to the wild west? that was neat.
posted by Kifer85 at 4:38 AM on July 31, 2006


I love the concept, but I'm not sure how well it worked; at 2:10 into the film, Lorraine says "Marty? Why are you so nervous?" twice in a row. I guess it's personal choice, but I still would accept that as being the same statement, albeit with a slightly different intonation in BTTF II.
posted by flameproof at 8:06 AM on July 31, 2006


Of course time as we perceive it does not truly exist any more than "a foot" does in terms of measurement. These are man-made constructs we utilize in order to comprehend concepts.

Still. Makes for good entertainment. =)
posted by ZachsMind at 8:14 AM on July 31, 2006


Why are you guys abbreviating it as BTF?? It's either BF (no articles) or BTTF (both articles)! What kind of nerds ARE YOU?

"To" is a preposition, not an article. What kind of a nerd are YOU?
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:45 AM on July 31, 2006


In time travel related subjects, The Man Who Folded Himself is the best treatment of the paradoxes (but then again, I think I was 13 when I read it).
posted by iamck at 6:51 PM on July 31, 2006


What? All this on time travel, alternate timelines and "correcting the future" and nobody mentions Quantum Leap?
posted by caution live frogs at 8:31 AM on August 1, 2006


porpoise writes "The only way I could reconcile that is that history takes... 'time' to propogate through time so that the altered history has propogated to 1986 but not yet to 2015."

Time Quakes ala Millennium.
posted by Mitheral at 9:56 AM on August 8, 2006


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