So which vision is true?
Now would be a time to point out, again, that when you're dealing with time travel - or, even vision of the future as in FlashForward - there is no way of telling which of competing visions is true, and therefore whether a given vision of the future that any character has is true. This is the case even when parts of someone's vision are confirmed. Even when someone's complete vision is confirmed. Even when everyone's complete vision is confirmed.
Why are such visions so unreliable? Look at it this way: Demetri has a vision of the future, call it vision 1 in reality or universe 1. Because of that vision, Demetri changed his behavior, acts differently, with the result that something is changed before the future in the original vision. At the instant that changes, universe 1 changes, and so, therefore, does vision 1. Demetri is now living in universe 2. If he has another vision of the future, that would be different from vision 1. It would be vision 2, etc.
The fun of FlashForward and all time travel stories which try to change a future already seen or experienced is figuring out what actions of which characters are resulting in which futures. Sometimes the very attempt to avoid a future causes that future to happen. Sometimes acceptance of a welcome future is the thing that prevents it from happening. Time travel's tricky - see my The Enjoyable Trouble with Time Travel and The Plot to Save Socrates for more.
The other part of FlashForward tonight was less paradoxical and more of Mark in deep research. The name and photo of an old Nazi - Geyer - was up on Mark's future wall. In our present, Geyer contacts the FBI and says he has information about the blackout. Turns out his most useful information puts Mark on the trail of a blackout that happened in the early 1990s.
Mark realizes that blackouts (with possible flashforwards) in the past could provide information very valuable to understanding his present predicament. Did those earlier flashforwards come true?
It was also good to hear The White Rose mentioned in this episode - the group that tried, with just a photocopying machine in 1940s, to spread the truth in Germany about the Nazi Government (see New New Media for more). The White Rose failed in the end, but they gave it a brave, noble try, and should what be done with a new medium of that time against overwhelming totalitarian odds.
Will Mark succeed against the seemingly overwhelming odds arrayed against him?
The problem - and the fun - of FlashForward is that success is different, even for the same person at different times, and so we don't even know what success in this time-bending context means...
See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability
Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer
8-min podcast review of FlashForward
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!
3 comments:
Dr. Lev --
First, hope all is well, this is my first time commenting on FF on Infinite Regress (though we've tweeted in the past) because I can't help but think about the creators of "Lost" and FF and time travel. I think more and more about how FF and the latest Star Trek movie may be traveling the same line.
As you mention here, in your post about the movie, there could be an alternate reality here. And not an alternate reality for everyone (or an absolute alternate reality) but an alternate reality for each character alone (or an individual reality).
I could be wrong... I keep trying to pretend that "Penny" would never be unfaithful, haha. Maybe this is my way of justifying that.
Personally I don't think there are going to be any alternate futures as the basis of the show so far seems to be that all the flashfowards are unavoidable.
The most obvious pointer for this in episode 3 was the jailed Nazi using his vision of the future to change his present (and the Immigration officer applying to become a gvt employee BECAUSE of his vision) - these two caused exactly the future they saw by acting on the information the visions gave them.
Geyer *did* play Mark, but he made the gamble that his vision was an unalterable future and took the clue as to what he had to do from what his future self said in it. He won his freedom whilst the information about the birds still meant nothing at all, it was only later that Mark pieced it together. Even if the dead crows hadn't led to a clue Geyer would still have been released, and his vision would come true.
Wish brings me to Demetri - Zoey saw him on the beach....he saw nothing. On the surface these appear contradictory (especially in light of the report of his murder) but only ONE can be correct. Demetri saw nothing, Behrooz's mother saw a written report, but Zoey saw a living and breathing Demetri in front of her.
The solution could be as simple as Demetri just having his eyes closed, knowing that his vision revealed nothing so making sure that what he 'saw' was what happened. The report *has* to be wrong in some way if Zoey has seen him alive after it.
I think the writers are trying to create a time travel story completely free of paradox or contradiction....so far they're doing very very well.
Hey, just catching up with comments here -
Brian - good to see you here. And I agree about alt realities.
Alex - yes, the show is doing a pretty good job of raising paradoxes and then explaining them - which is exactly what a time travel (or time viewing) story should be doing.
But that's not the same as being free of paradox :)
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