Time Ravel

No! That Is Not A Typo

 Nor is is anything to do with Maurice, that French composer chap probably best known for his 1928 composition 'Bolero', mention of which allows me to include a click-baity picture to entire the masses.  Art!

     No, what this Intro is about are the threads woven into at least three versions of time travel in a very straitened circumstance, what you might call 'Time Corridors'.

     Bear up, it might have been "Time Funnel" instead.  Art!

We may come back to this

     Which would have been harder to work into the Intro.  Nor will you find any reference to a certain person with two hearts whom travels around in a big blue box.

     What brought all this on?  Why I'm so glad you asked!  Art!

     For those of you not familiar, this was a sit-com merged with drama that lasted for 6 seasons and which still gets requests for more sequels.  In it, Gary Sparrow, an everyman character who repairs televisions, discovers that the alleyway 'Duckett's Passage' allows him to move from 1993 to 1940.  Art!

In                                                                              Out

     

     Just as importantly, it allows him to move back from 1940 to 1993.  This movement in time works only for himself, or you'd get hordes of Japanese or Spanish tourists turning up in 1940 and really mucking up the timeline.  To prevent his new lifestyle from unravelling (do you see wh - O you do) Gazza enlists the aid of his friend who runs a printing operation, and is thus able to obtain convincing facsimiles of 1940 documents, including money.  Art!

     That's the 'Royal Oak' pub, with windows taped up in case of breakage due to bomb attack.

     So, what does Gazza do with this new-found ability to traverse time?  He gets to romance the daughter of the RO's landlord, is what, whilst masquerading as an agent of MI6.  He's able to pull this deception off convincingly as, thanks to having nearly 50 years of history to draw on, he knows all about the secrets of the  Second Unpleasantness in detail.  He is also careful to not strain the fabric of historical events, at least overmuch.

     One other thing about both worlds he has access to: real-time elapses in both of them at normal speed, so if he has to wait a fortnight to get back to his (possibly) bigamous liaison in 1940, then two weeks will also have elapsed there.  Art!

Brodie battle bowlers upon bonces!

     It's quite an elegant idea, which had numerous changes rung upon it for six years, and is a classic example of the 'Time Corridor' concept I mentioned before: a fixed physical location with end-points also fixed firmly in time.

     Now, bear in mind that GS ended in 1999.  It was shown in South Canada, where it wasn't a major success, perhaps due to it being as British as a badger wearing a bowler hat on a bike eating brown barm bacon butties.

     However - a word you knew was coming - what am I reading of late but - Art!

     This novel concerns Jake, whose friend Al discovers another 'Time Corridor', which is reached via a portal in the back of his storage space in a fast-food trailer restaurant.  One exits the present and descends a flight of steps into what Al has determined is 1958.

     There are a few more wrinkles than in GS.  For one, there is no limitation on who can access 1958.  Secondly, even if Al, or Jake, spends days or weeks or months in the past, when they return up the steps, they have only been gone for 2 minutes.  Art!

'Diner' is a lot more succinct

     They still age the amount of time spent in the past, mind, which is why Al suddenly looks far the worse for wear after a single day goes by.  For him, it's been years spent in the past, not the two minutes elapsed in the  present (2011 if following the book's publication date).  Also, if either he or Jake attempt to change events in the past, then leaving 1958 (or a later date) and then returning to it will activate what I'd call a 'Hard Reset', where the original changes are expunged and all returns to as it was before any interference.  Art!

     In another difference from GS, both Al and Jake find that the past actively resists them trying to change it, with causality being affected in what seems like a depth related to the degree of change being exercised.  They are both deliberately trying to make unambiguous changes to the past, unlike the far less intrusive Gazza, which has implications for the plot.  Art!

     Ol' Stevo also works in details about the exploits of Pennywise in Derry, and the spate of missing children, which won't mean anything to people who haven't read "IT" but a whole lot to anyone who has.

     So, you can expect the past to stubbornly resist a whole lot of changes that Jake tries to make, because - no spoilers here - he is trying to prevent the Kennedy assassination.  Which is rather a major world event.  So far Jake is only making a trial journey into the past, due to last a few weeks, rather than the 5 year duration he needs to stop Lee Harvey Oswald.

     What can possibly go wrong?

     Neither Al nor Jake have sat down and mapped out, in detail, what would follow from preventing the Kennedy assassination.  Your Humble Scribe is only at page 125, so this analysis and extrapolation may yet come.  Doing it 'just because we can' is not going to be a good enough reason if the world perishes by fire and brimstone.  If it does, there is always the Hard Reset.  Art!

     This one is very obscure, which Conrad only remembers thanks to being around when it was first shown on television (in black and white) in 1970.  It concerns the mishaps and adventures of two young people, Simon and Liz, who accidentally discover a portal in what is dubbed the 'Time Barrier'.  Once again, this portal is not restrictive or exclusive, so anyone can move through it.  Art!

     The portal is along the fence surrounding a disused and derelict naval research site of the Second Unpleasantness, and is fixed in space.  Once Simon and Liz move through it, though, they can be moved either forward or backward in time, and space.  So, effectively, one end of the corridor is fixed and the other motile and you don't know where or when you'll emerge.  Rather a gamble!

     Their first jaunt takes them back in time to 1940 to the same location.  They later emerge in Antarctica, in what was then the distant and futuristic date of 1990.  Their next jaunt is also to 1990, but a different, alternative future to that already visited.  It isn't made clear what caused this different reality, and the introductory blurb for the series made it clear that the two young people cannot interact with the present, past or future and make changes.  Your guess as good as mine.  Art!

     There is no visible indication of where the portal in the Time Barrier is, which is why Liz is trying the Marcel Marceau method of door-detection.  Really, they might have thought to mark it with a couple of jumpers*.  All in all, even if it was intended for young people, "Timeslip" presciently addresses issues that modern-day audiences would recognise, such as clones, global warming and unrestricted technology.  Art!

     I did warn you.  This series utilised a literal corridor in time, which operated under Project Tic-Toc (shoot that scriptwriter!) in it's secret subterranean 800-storey base.  This, again, is one of those Time Corridors with a fixed entry point in both time and space, and a wildly variable exit point that varies in both time and physical location.  Unlike either GS, 22 or TS, in this iteration it isn't simply possible to re-enter the corridor or Tunnel and return to 1968, because in that case it would have only lasted one episode.

     Well, I appear to have gone on for the whole of this blog on a single Intro, because once you build up a head of creative steam, it's a chore to stop and throttle back the invention.  So, I hope you enjoyed this monograph and reassure yourself with a sense of relief that it's not 5,000 words long and on 'Forbidden Planet'..

     Yet.

     

*  Jumpers - threads - ravel O I give up I'm wasted here, wasted.