A doodle on time travel.
Beginning at the end may not seem like a logical place, but just think how easy everything could be if we knew that the end result would actually work, and what we could do better on the way to make it work 100% +.
While time travel is debated amongst scientists as to whether it is even possible, the man on the street loves to dream of the possibility of it.
Many books, movies and TV shows have made time travel a reality, even tough it is all created with imagination or visual effects.
It is interesting that part of the human condition is to spend so much time on the “what if’s”. I like to believe it is just ‘wonderment’ rather than wanting to escape the life they are living.
“Escapism” has been a buzz word in the movie world for a long time, but the fiction of our pre moving pictures generations has been providing escapism for hundreds of years!
While the tragedies of the Greek era were more morality tales than escapism the crowds that flocked to see them did so to escape their everyday life. While not a romantic vampire or gossamer spinning super hero, Oedipus did lead us on a terrific journey of self discovery and cruel coincidence. His parents got the prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi that he would kill his father and marry his mother. So shocked were they at this that they sent him off to be killed, though the servants that took him took pity on the babe and left him with peasants to be raised as a peasant (his mother and father were Queen and King).
The fact that he did eventually cross paths with his father one day, and kill him, though he had no idea who he was and did eventually go on to woo his mother, again not knowing who she was, was Sophocles way of showing us our fate is sealed at birth.
Could Oedipus have been saved if he had a time machine?
Moving through history many examples of the desire for a time machine can be sought. H.G. Wells encapsulated mans fascination with the need to know the future in his tome “The Time Machine”. Published in 1895, against a back drop of the rapidly advancing technologies of the day, it reflects a bleak future for mankind.
Where Well’s vision of time is a straight line the now famous (in-famous?) Dr. Who portrayed by David Tennant insists it is not, but a series of squiggles that go off in all kinds of different directions, even coming back on themselves. And who better to explain the concept of time than a Time Lord?
Considering escapism brings me to the best new series on TV this year. ‘Moonlight’ has proved an outstanding success. The subject matter is Vampires, and while they are not time travelers their long immortal lives are a pretty good cheat on time. Think of the changes a 500 year old vampire must have witnessed.
TO BE CONTINUED
