In two somewhat separate though no doubt ultimately intersecting stories, actually -
1. Hiro learned his lesson about the damage that traveling to the past can bring. So he travels to the future - only to see himself killed by - Ando. He travels back to the present, and finds that travel to the future is no bed of roses, either, and carries its own paradoxical wallop. We the audience also see how Hiro, in reacting in the present to what he saw in the future - Ando killing him - is actually unbeknowingly starting to turn Ando against him. (But there's a nice new speedster hero in this story - she's blond, travels at the speed of sound, and may be Hiro's nemesis.)
Meanwhile -
2. Peter has not yet learned how dangerous changing something in the past may be - but he learns tonight. Turns out he shot Nathan, in an effort to stop the awful future we saw in Season 2 from happening, since it was due to what Nathan was about to tell the world from the podium. Nathan is not killed. But Claire, seeing Nathan shot on television, calls Peter - who tells her to stay home. Not a good idea - her being home lets Sylar get to her. And in a nice unnerving twist, he takes her recuperative power but cannot kill her, because (according to Nathan) she cannot die. Does his mean she will would survive a bomb that blew her to bits? Always the question with Claire.
But Claire's the least of what Peter's intervention unleashes in the past. Probably the worst are the bad dudes set free from Level 5 - the truest villains in Heroes. But it was good to Jamie Hector - the cool killer Marlo from The Wire - amongst them, playing Benjamin "Knox" Washington.
There's also some fun stuff that (so far) apparently has nothing to do with time travel. Nikki is somehow back - but she claims to be someone else, and her claim seems sincere, even though there's no mistaking Ali Larter. Parkman is somehow in a desert - in Africa - but how knows when. Mohinder may have finally made himself a physical as well metaphorical hero. And Peter's younger self - the one who was already in the present in which Nathan was shot - has somehow been embedded by his older self in someone who looks like former NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik (sorry to say he's a real person in our world - appointed by Giuliani - not a character in Heroes, I'm not kidding).
Which does bring us back to time travel. One of its exquisite problems is making sure, if you travel back to the past, that you stay the hell away from your younger self, lest you trigger a cascade of infinite regress paradoxes that will make you totally crazy.
That's why I enjoy time travel so much, why I named this blog Infinite Regress, and why I'm really looking forward to more of Heroes this season.
I want to understand, for example, if Hiro tries to change the present so the future he saw does not come into being, how he could have seen that future tonight in the first place?
Time travel never grows old.
See also Heroes 3.2: Sylar's Redemption and Further Heroes and Villains Mergers
Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 2 ... 3
... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
more about The Plot to Save Socrates...
Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!
5 comments:
This time travel stuff is great, but a real mess with your head issue... I mean, if you really wanted to stop your brother from saying something he shouldn't, wouldn't you simply go back in time a little earlier than the news conference and simply alter his alarm clock or pop a few sleeping pills in his late night drink??? A tad better than shooting him!!!
And what I need to do now is invent a machine that will take me back a few days... I can then leave myself a little note to NOT read this blog post until after the season opener has aired in the UK, next week ;-)
But shooting him - to kill (even though that didn't happen) - is the most sure way of making sure he doesn't speak those words...
And shooting closest to the time he actually said the words should pose the least damage to history (if you shoot the speaker earlier, you're changing history earlier than need be)...
Ah, the grim logic time travel...
PS - But your logic about reading this post is prime ... :)
I'm currently reading a book called "The Time Traveler's Wife", by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm a huge fan of time travel, and up to the point I've gotten to, this is probably the best written and most elaborate story in the genre I have ever read.
The science fiction element is not really in the foreground. It mainly revolves around the relationship of the time traveler and his wife in many different dates. It has successfully navigated through most of the pitfalls of time travel stories and it doesn't seem prone to falling into some others due to the style it's written in.
I won't say anything more so as not to spoil it for anyone who wants to read it. I strongly recommend you pick this up (if you haven't already)
P.S. This is a very interesting blog Paul, and I always look forward to your posts right after episodes of Lost and Heroes. Keep rockin'!
Thanks, Nicholas.
Let me know what you think of the time travel in The Plot to Save Socrates, if you get a chance to read it.
Also, the Loose Ends saga.
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