OK, so the characters you loath thread got me thinking more about Babylon 5, and things in it I never quite understood. The biggest “mystery” to me happened in “War Without End,” (where they steal B4.) Spoilers below:
OK, when Sheridan becomes unstuck in time, he goes forward…25-ish years to when he is a prisoner on Centauri Prime. While there, Delenn tells him not to go to Z’ha’dum. He says ok. In a later episode (possibly “Z’ha’dum”) he tells Delenn about the incident and how she said not to go, and he agreed. He then said something along the lines of,
“When I agreed, I thought, what if that future, with Centauri Prime ravaged, was because I didn’t go to Z’ha’dum? If I go, I can prevent that future.”
Huh? That makes no sense. If that was the future in which he didn’t go, why would Delenn tell him not to go? Clearly, that was the future that he DID go, and he somehow twisted around the logic to make it seem like he should go. Of course, we know that Delenn told him not to go because it shortened his life by 30-40 years, and it had nothing to do with what happend to the Centauri, but still…makes no sense.
IIRC, time travel on B5 was handled differently than on most shows. Nobody ever changes history, even if they try to, because they can’t. I don’t know if there’s a specific term for it, but the gist of it is that the past has already unfolded with the interference of time travellers and/or advice from the future.
There is no future in which Sheridan didn’t go to Z’ha’dum. His flash forward was to the only future, in which he had gone to Z’ha’dum. Delenn attempts to change the course of history by telling John not to go to Z’ha’dum; she doesn’t realize that when John went to Z’ha’dum, he had already heard her advice during the flash forward. John also thinks that he can alter the course of history: At the time that he saw the future destruction of Centauri Prime, he (having heard Delenn’s advice) had intended to not go to Z’ha’dum. He thinks that not having gone to Z’ha’dum causes the destruction, so he ultimately decides to go.
In other words, the characters think that it’s possible to alter history, but it isn’t. Does that make sense?
Or maybe they did alter history, but never knew about it, since the timelines ultimately fell in stable, continuous configuration. Or something.
Anyway, it wasn’t in Sheridan’s character not to go, so he went, and would have gone no matter who suggested he not. And it turned out to be a very good and neccessary thing.
interestingly enough there was an article about that particular paradox not too long ago, here linky, that said you can’t change the past through time travel
There’s something about that article that doesn’t quite seem to “get it”. Do you really need to cite esoteric quantum physics to argue that “Back to the Future”-style time travel is wrong?
By my logic, it’s a very simple principle: The past has already happened. Any time travellers, even if they haven’t left yet from our perspective, have already arrived in the past and mucked about. It’s not that a time traveller can’t alter the course of history; he just can’t further alter it.
