In the classic
Doctor Who series of episodes entitled “Meglos” the titular villain traps the Doctor and his companion Romana in a time loop, (though the precise, Gallifreyan term is ‘chronic hysteresis’) forcing them to relive the same few minutes over and over again for all eternity.
Being Time Lords, the couple have an acute sensitivity to time, and can therefore perceive the trap they are in, but escaping the time loop is something that no one has ever done before, so they appear stuck.
But the Doctor does come up with a solution. He intuits that performing the exact actions of the original interval of time deliberately will set up a sort of “interference pattern” that will allow them to escape. Of course, this being his show, it works.
Time loops are a staple of science fiction, as can be seen by the spate of Groundhog Day inspired television episodes on series such as Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Xena, Warrior Princess. Time loops are seen as unwelcome, even hellish events. To be trapped, for all eternity, experiencing the same things over and over again forever, with nothing new to look forward to, is just unimaginable. Worse, it mimics the Hindu and Buddhist concept of reincarnation, without the benefit of learning new things from new lives.
Though we can experience the joys of our lives with each cycle, we must also experience the pain, and the though the joy eventually becomes commonplace, the pain always seems to intensify. Captain Kirk knows this. At the end of the original Star Trek episode “The Naked Time” the Enterprise is thrown three days back in time, and Spock comments that they have three days to live over. Kirk responds, “Not- those three days, I hope.” Fortunately for Kirk and crew, they were not caught in a time loop in this instance.
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| The Time Tunnel |
Which of course brings me to the Irwin Allen television series
The Time Tunnel. In this series two scientists, Tony Newman and Doug Phillips, are sent willy-nilly throughout time, always landing in places that are about to experience ridiculous catastrophes.
They end up on the Titanic during its maiden voyage, at Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack, and at Pompeii before the volcano explodes. They soon learn that they cannot change time, and can only endure and escape the horrors of where and when they are.
Back in “our time” there is a team of scientists who can watch Tony and Doug’s adventures, and they are always trying to rescue the hapless scientists, or help them to survive. The show features a ridiculous menagerie of aliens, magic, ghosts and super science, and was not very good, but the final episode did something that always bothered me. It set the entire series within the confines of a time loop.
In the first episode Tony and Doug find themselves on board the HMS Titanic, as previously stated. They spend their time aboard the ship trying to convince the Captain that the ship is doomed, even going so far as to show the Captain a newspaper from the future proving their point. The Captain throws the newspaper overboard, dismissing their concerns and locking them up (but not in the same place as Leonardo DiCaprio.) Fortunately, before plunging into the icy waters, Tony and Doug are whisked away to the far future, by the scientists back at the Time Tunnel base.
In the final episode, after dealing with aliens seeking to steal all of Earth’s atmosphere in the future year of 1978, the two scientists find themselves sent back to the Titanic, and scenes from the first episode are shown, strongly suggesting that Tony and Doug are to now repeat all their adventures all over again. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
First of all, for the most part, not counting frequent bouts of amnesia caused from bang to the back of their heads, Tony and Doug remember their adventures. Presumably, they would remember being aboard the Titanic, and be able to take different actions. They might not be able to change time, but they certainly will be able to avoid the mistakes they made the first time through. Secondly, the Time Tunnel personal back at the secret base are not trapped in a time loop. They are continuing forward in history, just like we are. They would also be able to avoid and learn from their previous mistakes. Hence, the adventures Tony and Doug will have in this second iteration of adventures, even if they arrive in exactly the same places at exactly the same time, are not going to be the same.
But wait, there’s more. Tony and Doug are not only unable to change time, they very often are part of the reason that time unfolds the way it does. They are necessary to the way events unfold. But if they arrive at the same time and place as before, and do nothing, the strong suggestion of the series is that time will work out okay anyway. Tony and Doug are free, it seems, to now explore without fear the places they arrive at.
But there’s more complexity to this idea than first appears. When Tony and Doug go back to the Titanic, what happened to the first Tony and Doug who were there? Could this be like Back to the Future II, where Tony and Doug need to skulk around like Marty McFly, trying hard not meet up with their previous selves? If that’s the case, what happens after they cycle through all their adventures, and land back on the Titanic a third time? Or the 23rd time, or the ten thousandth time? At what point does the Titanic sink under the weight of all those Tonys and Dougs?
There was never the anticipated season two of The Time Tunnel, at least not in this iteration of our time line, so the answers to these questions will never be definitively answered. Attempts to revive the Time Tunnel franchise (once by the SyFy channel) have been unsuccessful. Actually, it’s probably for the best.
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