# Time travel reset buttons-best and worst **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 7, 2005, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955 "2005-08-07T04:03:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2005, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/41 "2005-08-08T20:49:36Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The time travel program is discovered to be horribly disruptive but the military wishes to continue to bring Cuba into the US and prevent the Pay of Pigs. A noble goal. They’re a bunch of lazy swine who get nothing done but are always putting in for time-and-a-half. I wouldn’t pay them, either. They were only given the contract because of pork-barrel politics. 😃😃😃 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/42 "2005-08-08T21:10:53Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > They’re a bunch of lazy swine [Agreed.](http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/) Be sure you get August 8 ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2005, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/43 "2005-08-08T21:50:16Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > I remember that, because I hated it so much. What the hell difference would that have made? Totally agree. So with no Jackie we would have been spared the Greek Tycoon movie? :rolleyes: Gee, thanks, Powers That Be for sending Sam on that all-important mission… ---
**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:** [August 9, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/44 "2005-08-09T02:01:04Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I don’t have a worst. Here’s one for you: [Timerider](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086443/combined). Fred Ward as a motorcyclist in some Baja race who gets off track, crosses the perimiter of some time experiment, and becomes his own great-grandfather. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/45 "2005-08-09T02:23:02Z")
Back in the late-1980s or early-1990s I read _Thrice Upon A Time_ by James P. Hogan. In it, the heroe’s grandfather invents a machine that can send messages back in time to itself. Of course people in the ‘present’ act on information that they sent in the ‘future’, changing the ‘future’ with predictable results. As the story progresses, the ‘present’ keeps getting ‘reset’. One of the poignant things I found about the story was [spoiler]The hero is attracted to a certain woman, but can never connect. Finally a ‘future’ comes along where everything works out. He’s happy at last! Reset… [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![soulmurk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@soulmurk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/soulmurk)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/46 "2005-08-09T03:58:24Z")
For The Butterfly Effect fans, there is an earlier, more bizarre movie along similar lines called Donnie Darko worth checking out. **Ranchoth** , Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga comes to mind. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/47 "2005-08-09T04:12:52Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Here’s one for you: [Timerider](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086443/combined). Fred Ward as a motorcyclist in some Baja race who gets off track, crosses the perimiter of some time experiment, and becomes his own great-grandfather. And the character’s name: Phillip J. Fry… ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/48 "2005-08-09T04:36:02Z")
Whoosh? His name was Lyle Swan. the full name of the movie was Timerider, the adventures of Lyle Swan ---
**Author:** ![soulmurk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@soulmurk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/soulmurk)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/49 "2005-08-09T04:45:41Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Rick** > _Whoosh?_ Philip J. Fry is one of the main characters from Futurama. He is an inadvertant time traveler, in several instances and vehicles. At one point, through a series of humorous events, he became his own grandfather. ---
**Author:** ![Monstre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Monstre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstre)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/50 "2005-08-09T06:57:11Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > Back in the late-1980s or early-1990s I read _Thrice Upon A Time_ by James P. Hogan. In it, the heroe’s grandfather invents a machine that can send messages back in time to itself. Of course people in the ‘present’ act on information that they sent in the ‘future’, changing the ‘future’ with predictable results. As the story progresses, the ‘present’ keeps getting ‘reset’. I just read that one very recently, and I found it rather interesting. Rather than a high-speed romp like many time travel stories, this one was more a story that made you think, as the author wove some real scientific principles into his story, and built a believable model that the “messages-through-time” were based on. He also addressed the usual “grandfather paradox” issue, and his model tried to explain how a message to the past could propagate changes in the time line, even if (and when) such changes meant the “sending of the message” event would now not occur. Obviously there were a few made-up premises, but the rest followed from them in what felt like a believable model (with the exception of one chapter which had some stuff that contradicted earlier explanations – a chapter which I choose to write off as a sloppy mistake). And there was no actual physical travel through time, just the propagation of “tau waves”, which resulted from the annihilation of matter. (Hogan stretches the “conservation of energy” law by presenting a notion when matter is annihilated in a certain way, some of the energy will propagate back through time). An interesting side effect of this was when a main character figured that a black hole would result in some energy being send back through tau waves, and they estimated the amount of time, and hypothesized that this was responsible for quasars – that the quasars we see from something like 4 billion light years away are a result of some of the energy from today’s black holes being sent back temporally. Another hypothesis was that this could also explain the “Big Bang” – the eventual collapse of the universe, which sends its energy back in time, resulting in the Big Bang – the whole thing being a closed system. > [@](#): > > One of the poignant things I found about the story was > > The hero is attracted to a certain woman, but can never connect. Finally a ‘future’ comes along where everything works out. He’s happy at last! > Reset… Actually, that’s slightly off… It was… First major timeline of events: Main character **does** hook up with the woman. Then, to prevent something with catastrophic ramifications for the Earth, they have to send a message back pretty far, and due to a slight change in a small event, he **doesn’t** hook up with her in this modified timeline. He meets her, but never ends up dating her, like before. Finally, there is one more big change, due to another pending catastrophe, and after this message is sent back at the end of the book, the final section takes us back to the scene where they first met (again), and this time the small event occurs like it did in the original timeline. The implication is that now he’s going to get the girl again (finally). ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/51 "2005-08-09T15:41:26Z")
> [@Saltire](#): > > A bit of surprisingly good science-fiction plotting from an episode of _Red Dwarf_ had the crew going back in time (while attempting to restock the galley with curry) and accidentally disrupting Oswald’s shot at President Kennedy. Kennedy survives, and ends up totally disgracing himself and the office during his second term (something about Mob influence and sex scandals). > > The Red Dwarf crew goes to Kennedy at the nadir of his presidency, and convinces him that it would have been better had the assassin succeeded. So they take Kennedy himself (from 5 years in the future) to the grassy knoll, where he acts as the second gunman and shoots himself. Then the older president just fades away, leaving no trace of the mysterious shooter. One of the best! They had one or two more time-travel episodes and a few with parallel worlds, not to mention (if I remember the title) _Backwards_. One of the first (and driest) reset novels was Ward Moore’s _Bring the Jubilee_, in which the traveller ends up hiding in a tree at Gettysburg and accidentally delaying the Southern troops who had intended taking some hill that was the key to the battle. As usual, we end up in our own world. Also, speaking of retcon as in the Buffy season mentioned above, look at “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. Le Guin. ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/52 "2005-08-09T15:42:28Z")
That was supposed to be a spoiler box! Mods? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/53 "2005-08-09T15:51:05Z")
> [@Monstre](#): > > Actually, that’s slightly off… It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, so my memory was off. Perhaps I was remembering how disappointed I was at the passage in your spoiler. I don’t remember how it ends. I still have the book (I never throw books away) and I’ll have to dig it out one of these days. ---
**Author:** ![AmericanMaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@AmericanMaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmericanMaid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/54 "2005-08-09T17:31:01Z")
Quantum Leap is a huge series long time travel reset but one episode stood out for me. It’s the JFK assassination episode. Where (this is from memory): Sam thinks he failed on his mission because JFK was still assassinated. Al looks at him and tells his that Jackie was killed in the original timeline. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/55 "2005-08-09T18:19:51Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > I remember that, because I hated it so much. What the hell difference would that have made? To Jackie and the world’s fashion magazines? Quite a bit. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/56 "2005-08-09T19:02:48Z")
> [@AmericanMaid](#): > > Quantum Leap is a huge series long time travel reset but one episode stood out for me. It’s the JFK assassination episode. Where (this is from memory): > > Sam thinks he failed on his mission because JFK was still assassinated. Al looks at him and tells his that Jackie was killed in the original timeline. This would be why you should read the whole thread (particularly when it is short) before posting). The first Terminator had a good closed time loop. I always find these more satisfying than the other possibilities. 12 Monkeys was another one of these. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/57 "2005-08-09T19:05:57Z")
Has anyone mentioned the Change War stories by Fritz Leiber? The enigmatic Spiders and Snakes use human agents to continuously try and change the timeline to suit their own purposes. ---
**Author:** ![easy\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/eb8c5e/32.png) [@easy\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/easy_e)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2005, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/58 "2005-08-10T00:13:29Z")
> [@Odinoneeye](#): > > **Time Without Number** is one of those “things are different, but get reset to our world” > > In it, the Spanish Armada destoyed the British fleet and Spain ended up doing most of the colonizing of the New World. > > In Spanish America, time travel is invented. There’s kind of a bad guy trying to change history and a good guy trying to change it back. > > At the end, the good guy arrives in an English speaking America and realizes that time travel had never been invented. > > The idea of the book is that time travel couldn’t happen because if it did, it would eventually change the world into one in which it hadn’t. That’s similar to things that happen in Orson Scott Card’s **Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus**. The main characters live in a future several hundred years after our timeline. Life sucks. They eventually come to find out that our timeline was the result of an interference by people living in an alternate timeline. These “interveners” send a box back to Columbus’s time that plays a message in the form of the Trinity telling Columbus to sail west and claim the land for God. We’re led to believe that in the timeline of the Interveners, Columbus led a Crusade on Constantinople. Europe tore itself to shreds. Meanwhile, the Mexica are learning how to use iron and build big ships, and they sail east and conquer Europe. There’s something about small populations of Europeans making it to the Americas so the Mexica get innoculated against Eurasian diseases. This future was also theorized to be so bad because the Mexica practiced human sacrifice. After this revelation, and due to deteriorating conditions in their timeline, some members of “our” future actually go back in time. There’s 3 of them. They all carry viruses that will innoculate the American naitives against European diseases. One works on teaching boatbuilding and metallurgy to a specific tribe in Mexico, as well as discouraging their practices of slavery and sacrifice. Another works on destroying Columbus’s ships so he can’t sail back to Spain and report about the New World. The third works on making Columbus and the members of his expedition more “true” Christians–seeing the naitives as equals, etc. In the afterword, we find out that the Mexican empire and the Caribbean empire (a confluence of European and Caribbean cultures) unites and sends a huge expedition back to Europe with what was essentially the Monroe Doctrine. We’re to assume that the future they created was much better than our own. ---
**Author:** ![Monstre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Monstre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstre)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2005, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/59 "2005-08-10T06:10:12Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, so my memory was off. Perhaps I was remembering how disappointed I was at the passage in your spoiler. I don’t remember how it ends. I still have the book (I never throw books away) and I’ll have to dig it out one of these days. It ends really only with the _implication_ that… [spoiler]Murdoch will be back to hooking up with Anne in the “final” version of the timeline – at least the one we see at the end. The minor event was the moment that the wadded up piece of paper blew away from where it was caught against a post. In version 1: The paper blows away, the kitten that had stowed away in their car leaps after it, and gets underfoot, causing Anne (emerging from a store) to drop her packages, breaking some. That leads to Murdoch and Lee hanging around for a bit, talking to her, socializing a bit. In version 2, after the first major “reset”: The paper hangs for a while longer, the cat doesn’t get underfoot. Anne notices the cat hiding under the car, and their attention is taken with retrieving the cat. They say thanks as she gets in her car and drives away. Murdoch encounters her at other points in that timeline, but never hooks up Version 3: after the last big “reset” – the book ends with that scene once more, with the paper blowing away, the kitten chasing, and making Anne drop her packages again. Murdoch goes to help. (Implication is that he has his chance once again). One of the things that was rather interesting is that it was Murdoch and Anne, already an item, that made the decision to use the machine for the first major reset. Fully aware that it was going to alter their own pasts, and knowing that there was no way to predict what effect it would have on the time they’d already spent together – and knowing that they would never even be aware of it in the altered timeline.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2005, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955/60 "2005-08-11T11:12:40Z")
[hijack] **rjk** , I’ve fixed your spoiler boxes. FYI, the only reason I saw it was that someone reported it. The fastest way to get attention from a Moderator is to use the REPORT THIS POST button (the small exclamation point in the red triangle in the upper right corner of each post.) That gets into my email so I see it. I do not read all threads – I barely read a fraction of them – and I would never notice a post calling out “Mods!” You’ll note that I didn’t get that fixed until around 20 hours later, when it was reported. If you had hit REPORT button, I would have seen it yesterday, probably within a couple of hours. I know, you can’t report your own posts. Just report the post above or below and be specific in your message about what’s going on. I’m making this a lecture for everyone, because this happens lots. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-reset-buttons-best-and-worst/315955.md?page=4)