Time Travel and Why It's Stupid (With One Exception)

Day two, and I think I have discovered a potential use for this blog: a place to put all the rants and half-baked theories I have that no one wants to actually listen to.

We shall start with time travel.

Time travel is stupid. There's no two ways about it: it's dumb. Every time I hear someone talk about how they would, "totally go back in time and change such-and-such," I wanna smack them. This isn't because I necessarily believe time travel to be impossible. I mean, yeah, it's more than an idea you have when you crack your head coming off the toilet, and then slap into a DeLorean. But I won't go and just arbitrarily declare it impossible.

Mucking about in time, however, is all levels of impossible. The way I see it, the effects of playing around in time can only turn out two ways. Two possible results.

First, and far cleaner: anything you do when you travel into the past has already been taken into account by history. This means you can't  go back and, say, save Abraham Lincoln. In point of fact, your attempt is already a part of history. Just because it isn't in the books doesn't mean it ain't true. You got yourself a time machine, hopped back to save Lincoln, failed, and that's that. Way too go, loser, what do ya do for an encore, become your own grandpa?

The second theory is an alternate timeline theory, but it doesn't really work. I don't wanna knock Back to the Future, but its theories on time travel are all outta whack. See, say you go back in time to save Lincoln, and you DO. What have you done? You couldn't have altered your own timeline, because if you saved Lincoln and he lives, you never have reason to go back in the first place.

So assume you save Lincoln, but still need a reason to go back. Time gives you that in the form of branching time lines. You saving Lincoln creates a whole separate branching timeline, one which evolves differently because Lincoln never dies, while leaving YOUR timeline - and, thus, your reason for going back at all - intact.

But now how does time know where to send you back to when you time-hop home? Most logically, it'll send you back to right from whence you came, in your original timeline. So ... grats. Lincoln still died, despite your effort, but at least you saved him! Wait, wut ..? But that's the point: you cannot know the fruits of your time-labor, for good or bad.

See, say you DO go back to the new branch you created - or time doesn't branch, at all - and your future does change via your actions in the past. Next thing you know, you're going all Marty McFly, with fading photographs and changing newspapers and this weird thing where your great-grandfather somehow managed to marry a woman who looks exactly like your mom. You save Lincoln, and pop back to your time, and see a world where your efforts changed something.

So then, why did you go back at all? Okay, maybe you went back and time was just overwritten, a la McFly's misadventures. Then you simply CAN'T have gone back at all, or else now there are two of you, or something stupid like that. I mean, say time overwrites itself and you have a new past. Either you replace yourself or time makes a new you, doesn't matter. Either way, the you of THIS history is DAMNED unlikely to have the chance and reason to go back in time like original you did. Maybe s/he won't even want to.

There's an exception to this rule, involving a twist of fate allowing you to exist independent of changes to time, no matter what. But where the deuce does that come from?

Wait, there's another exception to all this. The Doctor. He gets a pass on time travel for two reasons: one, he doesn't overcomplicate time travel. Two, he's the frickin' DOCTOR.