# Let's talk about time machines.............. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 15, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158 "2019-03-15T01:38:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/61 "2019-03-18T14:44:25Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Four tried, although that turned out to be a subconscious suggestion planted by the Master and the whole effort was sabotaged. I’m not a regular viewer. Especially not from the beginning. is there only one TARDIS? Or does every Time Lord have his own? I mean, I understand it’s a cute conceit and all that it’s always the same outside shape (The Angels have the Blue Box!), but it might be more useful “in reality” if they’d fix it. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/62 "2019-03-18T14:54:59Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > The best, without doubt, is the DeLorean in _Back to the Future_. > [@TBG](#): > > took 21 posts, but yes, at least it has the best style:D Unfortunately, it resulted in Bill & Ted using a phone booth. I would’ve liked to seen Rufus’ time-traveling Chevy Van. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/63 "2019-03-18T14:59:27Z")
Isn’t the TARDIS’s call box camouflage, and the switch to put it back to normal was broken? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/64 "2019-03-18T15:04:32Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Isn’t the TARDIS’s call box camouflage, and the switch to put it back to normal was broken? It’s a chameleon circuit that’s supposed to alter appearance based on the surroundings but it never works properly. Six ended up with ornamental gates among tombs of Cybermen! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/65 "2019-03-18T15:06:57Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Isn’t the TARDIS’s call box camouflage, and the switch to put it back to normal was broken? I think she keeps that shape to constantly remind the wayward Doctor of his humble beginnings. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2019, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/66 "2019-03-18T22:12:04Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Four tried, although that turned out to be a subconscious suggestion planted by the Master and the whole effort was sabotaged. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I’m not a regular viewer. Especially not from the beginning. Briefly, this was part of the three-episode story arc \*(Keeper of Traken; Logopolis; Castrovalva)\*that reintroduced the Master and saw the death of the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and his regeneration into the fifth Doctor (Peter Davidson). ---
**Author:** ![BlueInfinity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BlueInfinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlueInfinity)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/67 "2019-03-19T01:34:02Z")
No mention of running a Stargate wormhole through a solar flare? But seriously, give me the BTTF2 DeLorean. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/68 "2019-03-19T20:41:06Z")
I’ll do you one better than the Back to the Future 2 DeLorean: The DeLorean from Back to the Future: The Animated Series. It’s got the 2015 hover-conversion package intact, and comes with voice-activation. You can also indicate _where_ you’d like to go, so you’re not stuck having to drive all the way to your destination. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/69 "2019-03-19T21:12:00Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Does _stopping_ time count as time travel? If so, I would go with the gold watch from “The Girl, The Gold Watch And Everything” by John D. MacDonald. > “_Tempus unum hominem manet_” - “Time Waits For One Man” > [@KneadToKnow](#): > > If stopping time counts, I’m reliving certain parts of Nicholson Baker’s _The Fermata_. Only certain parts though. I’m not sick. > > Well, I’m not \*that \*sick. “Imperial Battleship! Halt the flow of time!” [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/jAU2U7uSk7Y/hqdefault.jpg "Starcrash Quotes") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAU2U7uSk7Y) ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/70 "2019-03-19T21:14:31Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I’m not a regular viewer. Especially not from the beginning. > > is there only one TARDIS? Or does every Time Lord have his own? AFAIK, that’s never been made clear. There’s definitely more than one and the Master had one with a functioning chameleon circuit. TARDIS technology has also been seen in other places, like the SIDRATs Two encountered in “The War Games”; [those things were created by a different renegade Time Lord.](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/SIDRAT) ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/71 "2019-03-19T21:24:26Z")
Even after reading this whole thread my favourite is Calvin’s time machine in Calvin and Hobbes. Not the least because it wasn’t overused and didn’t cause any paradoxes. My second favourite is the one from Making History, which is a large duffel bag with some electronics in it, that you have to crawl into before activating. Just the kind of thing you might discover your genius dad made in the shed and never told you about. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/72 "2019-03-19T22:05:13Z")
Larry Niven thought a lot about time machines. He formulated one prominent joke law about them. [Niven’s Law of Time Travel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven%27s_laws#Niven's_Law_(re_Time_travel)): If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe. Because if temporal meddling is possible, it will go on until the universe ends up in a state in which temporal meddling is no longer possible. Kind of a maximum-stability configuration in an otherwise unstable system. Keeping that in mind, consider the [universe of Hanville Svetz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Horse). In the distant future of Earth, technology has proceeded quite far, which is good because humanity has wrecked the ecology so well that it’s the only animal species left. The United Nations has become the government of the entire human race, and the Secretary-General is the hereditary dictator of that government. And, at the time of our protagonist Hanville Svetz, an inbred cretin who likes animals a lot. Hanville Svetz is a bureaucrat in the UN Institute of Temporal Research, which is a thing because the technology of this world includes a form of time travel. Which is used at the command of the Secretary-General to fetch living animals from the distant past for the Sec-Gen’s menagerie. The time machine they’re using has an interesting but unnoticed twist: it keeps going back into mythical pasts, not any historically valid one. In the title short story “The Flight of the Horse”, Svetz is tasked with retrieving a horse, and comes back with a horse… with a horn on its forehead. When directed to bring back a wolf, he brings back a werewolf (or more accurately, a wolf-were: a wolf that can take human or humanoid form). Of course, the state of historical research is so poor that no one but the reader recognizes that these myth-adventures are happening. The theory that ties in with Niven’s approach to time travel is this: time travel is mythical, so if it works it only works to travel to mythical time periods. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/73 "2019-03-20T00:39:32Z")
Niven did think a lot about time machines, but not nearly as deeply as he thought he thought. His arguments are full of holes. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/74 "2019-03-20T02:31:51Z")
We did have this thread years ago, so that is fine. I’ll just jump in my time machine and nominate my pick from that time, Robert Heinlein’s **Gay Deceiver**. A sentient car/aircraft/time machine character in the 1980 Robert Heinlein novel The Number of the Beast. Gay is a good girl. She is bigger on the insider though nowhere as big as the TARDIS, but she is a flying car and cooperative AI with a special device that allows for inter-dimensional hopping and time travel. 6^6^6 options in fact. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/75 "2019-03-20T02:42:14Z")
[Earlier related thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7675911#post7675911) I like my argument for Gay: > [@](#): > > I think Gay Deceiver is probably a better overall choice than the TARDIS. It seems she works more consistently than the TARDIS. I think the TARDIS is more powerful overall, but has been known to be a little buggy in operation. > Besides, I can cruise around in Gay Deceiver and visit fantasy worlds. > How else can I visit Bree and grab an Ale at the Prancing Pony and then visit Sherlock Holmes the next day and round it off with dinner at “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” > > Jim ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/76 "2019-03-20T04:18:38Z")
[The TARDIS has visited a fantasy pocket universe.](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Land_of_Fiction) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2019, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/77 "2019-03-20T05:53:19Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Murray Leinster actually wrote a novel called _The Time Tunnel_ before the TV show came out, which I suspect influenced and inspired that show. Leinster later wrote a couple of novels based on the TV show. Leinster did write a novel called _The Time Tunnel_, which was unrelated to the TV show, but the show itself was inspired by a 1964 movie called _The Time Travelers_. > **[The Time Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel)** > > The Time Tunnel is an American color science fiction TV series written around a theme of time travel adventure starring James Darren and Robert Colbert. The show was creator-producer Irwin Allen's third science-fiction television series and was released by 20th Century Fox Television and broadcast on ABC. The show ran for one season of 30 episodes from 1966 to 1967. > A new pilot was produced in 2002 but did not proceed to a series. A history of the series by Martin Grams, Jr., was published in ... ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/78 "2019-03-25T00:20:08Z")
I seem to remember a scene in a book where a time traveler is visiting 1960s San Francisco (hippies, music, cultural revolution, and all that). The time machine is built into a ring worn by the time traveler, and its user interface is displayed via a pop-up hologram. The ring is called a ‘knuckletop’ and in the story there was mention of flipping through online help pages. Anyone have any idea what story this was? I want to say that the scene is in the prequel to Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing”, but I’m not sure I’m right, and I wonder whether I’m conflating more than one story. (The memory inspired me to get out my animation and prototyping tools and start creating a user interface for such a time machine. I am at this moment wearing a T-shirt inspired by the effort as well. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/79 "2019-03-25T01:33:23Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I seem to remember a scene in a book where a time traveler is visiting 1960s San Francisco (hippies, music, cultural revolution, and all that). The time machine is built into a ring worn by the time traveler, and its user interface is displayed via a pop-up hologram. The ring is called a ‘knuckletop’ and in the story there was mention of flipping through online help pages. > > Anyone have any idea what story this was? I want to say that the scene is in the prequel to Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing”, but I’m not sure I’m right, and I wonder whether I’m conflating more than one story. Paging [Andy L](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=482118)! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2019, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158/80 "2019-03-25T02:38:17Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I seem to remember a scene in a book where a time traveler is visiting 1960s San Francisco (hippies, music, cultural revolution, and all that). The time machine is built into a ring worn by the time traveler, and its user interface is displayed via a pop-up hologram. The ring is called a ‘knuckletop’ and in the story there was mention of flipping through online help pages. > > Anyone have any idea what story this was? Sounds like Lisa Mason’s [_Summer of Love_](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love_(novel)). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-time-machines/831158.md?page=5)