Questions tagged [time-travel]
For use on questions regarding travel forwards or backwards (or both!) in time. This tag should be used in conjunction with the universe it is found in. Can also be used to signify that the question contains time travel when asking in relation to an identification question: [story-identification], [episode-identification], [character-identification] and [object-identification].
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How long was Bill Murray's character (Phil Connors) supposed to be in a time loop in the film "Groundhog Day"?
I've often wondered how long Bill Murray's character (Phil Connors) was supposed to be in his time loop before he got out of it. You could count the number of days depicted in the movie, but there are ...
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How much older was Hermione after her third year at Hogwarts?
In her third year at Hogwarts, Hermione is given a time-turner so she can take more classes. Several of her classes are concurrent to each other, so she attends one class (for 1-2 hours) goes back in ...
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In Back to the Future, why was the speed 88 miles per hour?
Why not use 89, maybe 100 miles per hour? Is 88 the fastest a DeLorean can go? In other metrics, I have:
Unit
Equivalent
Abbreviation
Miles per hour
88.00
[mph][mi/h]
Miles per second
0.0244
[mps][...
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Where is Hill Valley?
Many BTTF fans know that Marty, Doc and Jennifer arrive in Hill Valley on October 21st 2015, and were eagerly awaiting that date.
As outlined in this question, they arrive at 4:29PM. However, the ...
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Why was Hermione always late when she used the Time Turner?
There are multiple scenes in the PoA movie where Harry and Ron are startled by Hermione "appearing from nowhere" to chime in during a lesson. They would ask her where she came from, and she never gave ...
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Time Travel story where an imprisoned psychopath kills people from his past?
I read a story some years ago (probably about 35) in an monthly sci-fi anthology...
It's set in a prison. The main character is a psychopath who has sessions with a psychiatrist - in these sessions ...
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Nude time travel in Terminator Universe
Why do they travel naked in time in Terminator universe? Is it ever explained in the movies or tv serials? If they cannot carry weapons, how do the cyborgs travel with metal under their skin?
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What story does C.S. Lewis acknowledge in the preface to "The Great Divorce"?
This isn't a typical story-identification question, since it's not a story I've read myself. As such, I unfortunately can't offer any more details or more clarification beyond what's already in this ...
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Did Ducktales actually ever rewrite history?
The Ducktales Song (C'mon, sing it with me)
Life is like a hurricane
Here in Duckburg
Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes
It's a duck-blur!
Might solve a mystery
Or rewrite history!
Did Ducktales ever ...
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Why didn't Hermione use the Time-Turner to sleep more?
Hermione has the Time-Turner in Prisoner of Azkaban and uses it all year to take extra classes. Many times in the book she's exhausted and barely managing all of her studies.
What I never understood ...
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Why Couldn't a Time Turner Have been Used to Stop Voldemort?
With the use of a time turner, that opens a whole "Pandora's Box" of possibilities. While the use of one can be problematical, when the Ministry of Magic found out how dangerous Voldemort was, why ...
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Why was Marty present in his jump to 2015 in Back to the Future 2?
I was doing some thinking about the paradoxes that arise during Back to the Future 2 when Marty, Doc and Jennifer travel to 2015 to see their future selves and help Marty's kid.
It was shown that ...
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A short story where criminals are sent back in time as punishment?
I've already searched Wikipedia's list of time travel stories in hopes of finding it, but no such luck.
This is the basic plot of the story:
In the future, criminals are sent back to the Renaissance ...
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Back To The Future Flaw - why don't Marty's parents recognize him in the new future?
I believe I've spotted a flaw, and I'd like to know if other fans have noticed it too.
In the first BTTF, Marty McFly travels back to 1955 (his parents' high school era).
He meets his mother and she ...
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Movie where protagonist time-travels to dystopian future when people become mentally degraded
Please help me identify a movie referred by an acquaintance. (I haven't watched it.) No cast or director info is available.
The protagonist is today's average man who participates in a scientific ...
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How did Skynet send back the T-1000 and the T-X?
As we learn in the original Terminator movie only living, organic material can be sent back in time:
REESE: "You go naked. Something about the field generated by a living
organism. Nothing dead ...
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A Novel About Time Travel Into The Future
So this is what I remember, and it's very specific, but even so I can't seem to track down the novel:
a man discovers a portable time travel device that he can carry around with him. He gets caught ...
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What Star Trek work takes place the furthest into the future of the Federation?
Star Trek: Enterprise turned out to be a cool series, with some convoluted time-travel story arcs. In one, you see the Federation far in the future fighting a battle against the sphere builders. I ...
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Identifying a story about a girl named Sarah who finds out she is a robot
I read this sci-fi novel for young adults when I was a kid, and I would love to re-read it but I can't remember the title. I remember the copy I borrowed from the library had some sort of television ...
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Looking for an old time travel story which has a doctor pulling a gun on her new patient when he says something weird
Chronology and other relevant info
Roughly 30 years ago (early-to-mid 1980s?), I read a paperback science fiction anthology which contained a story of which I only have fragmentary recollection at ...
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Time travel short story where dinosaur doesn't taste like chicken
I ran across this other question about time travel and dinosaurs, and it reminded me of an old short story I read a long time ago.
I read it in a collection of short stories. It would have been a ...
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Need help to find a sci-fi collection I read at school (mid 80s)
I am now 46 and so it's been bugging me for over 30 years - time to try and do something about it.
The collection was in my lower school library (UK). It was a thick black hardback book and I believe ...
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Earliest instance of the grandfather paradox
I was just discussing Back to the Future with a friend of mine (I've never seen it), and he described the grandfather paradox to me. I told him the term for it, and he told me that BttF invented it. I ...
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Did Avengers: Endgame break its own rules?
At the beginning of Avengers: Endgame, there was exposition dialog explaining the rules of time travel this movie was working under.
Banner explained that modifying the past will not alter the ...
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Why didn't the time cops try to stop Janeway when she traveled back in time to rescue Voyager?
In the series finale "Endgame", a future Admiral Janeway travels 26 years into her past to take the ship and crew through a Borg transwarp hub to the Alpha quadrant.
However, in "Relativity", Captain ...
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Can Marty McFly ever truly return home?
In the Back to the Future trilogy, the character Marty McFly travels back in time, and meets his own parents. In doing this, he directly changes the outcome of many things including the relationship ...
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A man condemned to serve his sentence in other times
Looking for help to find a science fiction short story about a man send to the past to serve his sentence, and at the end when he is happy, married and successful, his is recaptured by a co-worker who ...
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Time travel alters history but people keep saying nothing's changed [duplicate]
About 2005-10, I read a story in an anthology. Don't recall the title of the anthology, story or author. Involved the protagonist making repeated trips to the past. At each return, he found the ...
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How did the rest of the world experience Groundhog Day?
We know that Phil was stuck in Groundhog Day for many, many years, by his own reckoning, and that he was fully aware of it throughout his ordeal. But it seems that everyone else was blissfully ...
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What happens to the second Marty at the end of Back to the Future?
In Back to the Future (the original movie), Marty comes back from 1955 10 mins early to prevent Doc from being shot (which he fails at). He then rolls up to the Lone Pine Mall and sees himself hit 88 ...
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Book about a time-travel war fought by computers
I read a paperback in the mid-1970's in which combatants fought a war using time travel and adaptive computers. After a battle, the victors had to quickly flee because the opponents would return from ...
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Looking for a story about a paleontologist uncovering fossilised dinosaur tracks who finds that it is chasing a jeep
Looking for a short story from probably 70s or 80s.
I can't remember most details but I think it involves a paleontologist and another scientist chatting. The paleontologist is in a desert and ...
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Time traveling boy takes girl to two-caste future, where the rich live on buildings with stilts
I hardly remember anything about the series, except that a girl meets a boy from the future, and he takes her back there. The society has become double-tiered, with the rich living on a new surface ...
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Why do the Avengers care about returning these items in Endgame?
Background
It seems that the writers and directors of Avengers: Endgame disagree about the nature of the
in the film.
At the end of the film,
Under the interpretation of the writers, i.e.
the ...
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Title of a time travel movie involving a boy in alien armor and a girl?
So years ago I saw this move with time travel but I didn't watch it from the very beginning.
I really would appreciate finding out the title of this movie.
Some random facts from this movie (I'm not ...
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How did Superman turn back time in the first movie?
In this what-if xkcd there is this question and answer about Superman:
In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. This ...
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Movie: Scientists travel to the future to avoid nuclear war, last surviving one is used as fuel by future humans
My family used to rent a lot of VHS tapes over the school holidays when I was young, and this movie was amongst them, which would make it pre-mid 90's, (possibly 70's or 80's from what I remember of ...
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Has anyone tried to map out all the different Star Trek timelines?
I'm thinking of some sort of visual guide to show the relative relationships of all these time-based events.
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Identification: short story about an astronaut who travels back in time to stop himself
I read a story 2 years ago about an astronaut on Earth who was preparing for his flight that will occur in 2-3 months. He wakes up and sees a guy in full astronaut suit that tries to kill him. The guy ...
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American astronaut abducted from moon, placed in alien zoo, must work with time-traveling Roman soldier
I found this novel in English at my local library in the mid-1990's, but the book itself looked like it was from the 1950's or 60's. If I remember correctly, it had a picture of an astronaut in a ...
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How did the T-1000 avoid the bootstrap paradox?
I have watched Terminator 2 several times now, but there is one major problem with it that has been bothering me. The Terminator* was sent back in time to (unsuccessfully) assassinate Sarah Connor, ...
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What were the 17 instances of Kirk traveling through time?
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," we meet the agency of Temporal Investigations. They mention that Captain Kirk has traveled through time on at least seventeen ...
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Why was the new timeline in Star Trek considered acceptable?
In the 2009 Star Trek movie, why was the new timeline considered acceptable?
In episodes of TOS and the movies, the crew would always go to great lengths not to alter the timeline and to restore any ...
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Story about plagiarism by means of time machine
I can't remember the name of the story, and couldn't find anything on Google searches either.
The story is about a science fiction writer whose story gets rejected by the publisher because it's word-...
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Identify a short story where a young boy is time-shifted several minutes into the future
Please help me identify this short story of speculative fiction about time travel (or maybe more accurately, time shifting) which I read some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I may have some of ...
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Time travel to the crucifixion of Jesus and changing the past
The story I'm looking for is not Let's Go to Golgotha!, although there are a few core similarities.
It's not Up the Line either.
In the mid 2000s, I read in a magazine a science fiction short story ...
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Why is the "Arnold Schwarzenegger" terminator referred to by two different product numbers (T-101, T-800)?
In the original film, The Terminator, Schwarzenegger's character was a "Cyberdyne Systems Model 101". Likewise for Terminator 2 & 3.
However, in the video game adaptation of Terminator 3, this ...
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Why not send back hundreds of Terminators?
Since the first Terminator failed, Skynet sent back increasingly sophisticated Terminators.
Another strategy would have been to send back multiple Terminators. Why was that not attempted? Was there a ...
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Why was the time turner never used again?
It seems like it would be a very helpful device.
Why was it never used again, regardless of the purpose?
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Attempting to identify various time travel devices in a comic book image
In a Star Trek and DC Comics crossover comic that came out today, there is this image featuring various time travel and dimensional travel devices from tons of different movies/tv shows/etc. My ...
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