I think everyone is getting WAY too concerned about this. Everyone basically seems concerned that the writers haven’t actually considered the single biggest question in their show.
I know we all have low opinions of TV writers, but I think everyone is automatically assuming too many negative things. They’ve thought about it. Whether or not any given person will like the answer, well, we’ll see. But I have no doubt that they’ve got a plan on this.
It may be a handwave, and it may be an awesomely cool hunk of awesome coolness, but one way or another it will come up.
(fanwank) It was at altitude, so it didn’t crash into the building until a minute into the flash. What we saw was the helicopter finally falling free of the building after the crash, not the crash itself. (end fanwank)
Yeah, the writers have said they know how this season ends and they planned a five season arc and know how that ends. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that the first question that pops into every alert reader’s mind in a time travel story with a known event is whether the event is fixed or changeable. Yet, it would completely ruin almost every story to have anybody take real irrevocable steps to test that future in the first five pages or five minutes.
That’s a flaw that most people accept for the sake of the premise, just like they accept physically impossible superpowers in a superhero comic or movie. I have no idea what the writers plan to do with this issue. I will say that in the real world you’d probably have a billion people trying to change their actions for that day, either early or late and that means April 9, 2010 will be a very busy day.
Whether you let that flaw eat at you the whole series will also affect whether you enjoy it or watch it at all. I thought the first episode did pretty well in setting up characters and plots and making an inherently absurd scenario entertaining despite the usual television implausibilities. (A worldwide event that is the biggest thing in human history and three shlubs from the L.A. branch office of the FBI get the case? Couldn’t they at least bring in Charlie from Num3ers? :))
As science fiction, BTW, implausible and ridiculous as the scenario is, it’s the one that television writers have been waiting for forever. It’s set in the present, no special effects are needed other than destroying stuff, which is what Hollywood does best, and the rest of the series is just a cop show with profundities. It’s not really science fiction at all, you see. It’s about character. (Where’s the gagging smilie when you need it?) But that’s the way it will be played. SF that isn’t really SF. The best of both worlds.
Robert Sawyer already has a penthouse. How rich is this going to make him?
But we don’t know that they won’t. Since this obviously would have come up with the writers, I’m going to guess that we’ll see something. Fact of the matter is that we could be dealing with a rubber time scenario, so nobody knows what will happen or not happen. Unless you’ve got a lot of people willing to commit suicide or gun down their loved ones, you can’t be 100% sure.
It could be that it IS changeable…but as time goes on most people (FBI guy, almost certainly I’ll bet) will realize that changing it would be a Very Bad Thing.
Going to get a tattoo? Assuming in those two minutes you looked at your arm, and didn’t just mentally pass over it, and you’d actually notice it being there, what if it’s not? Maybe you can’t change time on the big stuff, but completely irrelevent stuff like the tattoo (or Dave Lister saying, “Fine, then I won’t wear a hat, so it can’t happen now, can it?”) the universe doesn’t care? Maybe you get a tattoo, realize that you now WANT what happened in the flashforward to happen, so you do your damndest to make sure that future happens - including getting rid of that tattoo.
Now that’s just silly. Is there any reason to believe that Our Heroes are the only ones working on it?
Anyway, I think it’s safe to assume that the future seen is one in which there was no flashforward - or at least not THIS flash. If nothing else, I think that FBI Boss Guy would have made sure to be looking at the Powerball results at the time, not the sports page.
Anyways, my whole point isn’t to take guesses about what will happen with the this or the that, but to point out to people that the writers probably came up with answers to a lot of this. It’s kind of hard to believe they’d write a show about free will vs. predestination without actually considering having the characters try to fight against one or the other. Whether or not the answers satisfy is up to the individual consumer.
Sorry. I’ve watched too much TV and seen too many movies over the years to have any faith whatsoever in the writers or producers unless they’re named Whedon. I can totally believe that they haven’t even remotely thought about the situation logically. Is this likely? No. Is it possible? Based on Hollywood and History, hell yeah.
Yes, this is the basic time travel paradox. Where does the circle start? It’s one of the reasons why some physicists and philosophers rule out the possibility of time travel. However, you have to start with the premise that the circle started somewhere in order to have a time travel story.
Again, agreed.
Agreed again up to a point. There will that scene six months into the future of the hero being attacked in the FBI office.
That’s not a metaphysical necessity. The plot of the first season of Heroes depended on their vision of their horrible future not coming to pass. And it’s possible that the hero (it’s a problem that I have no idea what his name is) will wake up alongside his wife and have a nice quiet day at work on April 10, 2010.
I just don’t believe that for a second. I think he’s the father of the pregnant woman/third member of the team whose name I don’t remember either’s baby. I think he will become an alcoholic and his wife will leave him. And I think that we’ll see that scene in the FBI office.
The interpretation/context/backstory of those scenes will probably differ from what we think they mean based on the first episode. But they will happen, because this is a television show.
Fiction has its own imperatives. Sensible and successful writers don’t trample on them. And one of those imperatives is that the future is changed with one second left on the countdown clock, not in episode two.
Or maybe the future will start changing right away, it just won’t become apparent until later. I expect the things that were seen in the flashes are going to happen, but I also think that the circumstances of all or most of them will not be at all what we think they are as of now.
For all we know, Mystery Englishman (Jack Davenport) is actually going to be Doctor Wife’s long lost brother or something. That’s why she has such strong feelings for him.
The other thing to consider, is unless we actually see them, anyone in the show could be lying about their flashes.
G’Kar strangled Londo in the far future. Since they were enemies from the first episode, it was obvious why he was doing it…
No, I think Cho/Noh is the father of her baby. They even gave us a bonding moment between those two. Since he’s supposed to be dead at the time of the Flashforward this would also explain why she’s crying during her ultrasound.
Confirmations of his death upset me, I like the actor and I hope there’s some way to keep him around. I wondered if they were writing his character a little dickish so we wouldn’t get too upset or if he’s just going through the anger stage of grief.
Curses on the cupcake woman! I wanted a cupcake so bad.
I liked the second episode. Benson (is that his name?) threw his friendship bracelet into the fire, so he’s trying to change the future. I like the way that they keep getting new clues to what happened. I’d really like to know what Charlie and the little boy were doing during the flashforward, and how the boy know’s Olivia’s name when she did not see him in her vision.
I still don’t think Noh will be killed. Maybe they will fake his death for some reason, and he will be unconscious/asleep during the FF. I do think he will be the baby’s father.
Even if she saw the little boy, I’m puzzled at how Charlie and the little boy apparently have bonded so tightly. There is something more going on with these children than a simple glimpse of a couple minutes of their future.
I was wondering the same thing about the kids. Maybe they are talking to each other about everything that happened and that’s how the boy knows Olivia is the doctor helping him.
I considered that reports of Noh’s death may be faked but he is actually injured and in a coma. Perhaps he isn’t expected to recover, hence the pregnant co-workers grief. By the way, when I mentioned the woman crying during her ultrasound it seemed to me that was not happy crying (she was not smiling) but sad crying.
Count me in on the Noh is the baby’s father camp. I really like John Cho’s character being the skeptic. I rolled my eyes at the “chance of something happening at the top of the hour being incredibly rare” speech, and sure enough he chimed in with the fact that it’s not that rare.
The little boy is autistic right? Maybe the fact that he’s autistic made him have a longer flashforward, since he knew so much.
I liked this episode. We got some good progress on the mosaic clues and they addressed some things that seemed neglected last week like the scale of the disaster, with full hospitals and military coming in, as well as burning the bracelet to try and change the future. I wish he’d tell his wife about his drinking secret though. Only thing I didn’t like was “justify your budget” woman. I hate when shows have “justify your budget” episodes especially when it’s done kind of arbitrarily for it’s own sake. I think an investigation team for a world wide scale terrorist act is pretty obviously justified as is the mosaic website. Killing the cop woman was also a little over handed. Something weird is going on with the kids. They seem to know a lot more than they should for a two minute flash in which they weren’t with people they recognize and say ominous things like ‘no more good days’.
Killing the cop woman may have been over handed but as soon as she said she hadn’t had a vision I turned to my wife and said “poor her, she’s a plot device to confirm Noh’s fear that he’s doomed.”
What city’s skyline was shown behind the woman informing Noh of his situation?
That was pretty obvious to me too. I said to myself “yeah she’d dead”.
I still don’t think Noh will actually die. I could see them faking his death in some intelligence report in order to throw off the bad guys. Also, John Cho is the second name that shows up when I view the description of the show on my DVR (out of two). If he’s got top billing like that he’s not going to get killed off in the first season.
I like how FBI guy burned the bracelet… but he needs to do something more substantive if he wants to change the future. His daughter could just make him another bracelet so it’s a meaningless gesture (especially since she’s made them in the past as well). I wish he would just tell his wife what he saw instead of being a dick to her about her flash forward when it’s going to be his own fault if it happens.
FBI boss’ story was pretty funny. Having a flash forward of himself on the toilet while he’s on the toilet. Maybe it was a hint of some kind regarding time loops.
