tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post1199484236326848064..comments2024-03-18T04:36:26.547-04:00Comments on Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress: Journeyman Continues: 11: Livia's Beau//Save the Paper Save the World!// Contest Winner!Paul Levinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07609987407926836519noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-34208003639367858922007-12-15T03:12:00.000-05:002007-12-15T03:12:00.000-05:00Fair enough, Jesse.Not over until it's over, John....Fair enough, Jesse.<BR/><BR/>Not over until it's over, John. I still say that, especially with the impact that the strike may have on Spring TV programming, anything is possible for Journeyman...Paul Levinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07609987407926836519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-6105249408363226392007-12-13T00:31:00.000-05:002007-12-13T00:31:00.000-05:00Well, it seems that the time has come<A HREF="http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2007/12/12/nbc-says-goodbye-to-journeyman/" REL="nofollow">Well, it seems that the time has come</A>John Muthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09917933189756085956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-6200629981128355532007-12-12T01:55:00.000-05:002007-12-12T01:55:00.000-05:00A problem with your planets metaphor is that they ...<I>A problem with your planets metaphor is that they exist separately in space, and are not connected. In contrast, multiple worlds brought into existence by time travel exist right on top of and through each other...</I><BR/><BR/>That's true, although a lot of stories are based on the premise that once the worlds diverge they have no influence on one another, even if they do in some sense exist stacked up "in parallel" in the same space. Anyway, I'm not really saying either version of time travel is better or worse for storytelling purposes, just that the planet metaphor shows <I>one</I> way that time travel could work, and it's consistent with what we've seen on Journeyman so far.JesseMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09993568347649474812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-33359665562005193732007-12-11T21:55:00.000-05:002007-12-11T21:55:00.000-05:00PS - A problem with your planets metaphor is that ...PS - A problem with your planets metaphor is that they exist separately in space, and are not connected. In contrast, multiple worlds brought into existence by time travel exist right on top of and through each other...Paul Levinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07609987407926836519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-18634793725389502642007-12-11T21:52:00.000-05:002007-12-11T21:52:00.000-05:00Yes, there of course are many possible scenarios f...Yes, there of course are many possible scenarios for what would happen to the memories we have, were time travel and changing history possible...<BR/><BR/>What I am saying is that I like the hypothesis that the person who causes the change - the time traveler - would retain all memories of all universes he or she was in, or caused to happen, or caused to be deleted.<BR/><BR/>In other words, whatever kind of parallel universes we're talking about, I'm suggesting that the person who made them happen would be "supra" these universes, and would therefore maintain all memories of lives, newly created, changed, erased...<BR/><BR/>Unlike everyone else in these universes, who would only have memories pertinent to the universe in which they lived.Paul Levinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07609987407926836519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-52016729154563154482007-12-11T16:28:00.000-05:002007-12-11T16:28:00.000-05:00Jesse and Magical - Right. That's why I said that ...<I>Jesse and Magical - Right. That's why I said that I doubted that Dan had no idea about what his father did back then with his little sons, as Dan indicated to Jack.<BR/><BR/>I would assume that Dan remembers (a) what it was like when his father left without saying anything, (b) Dan's intervention with his father in 1979, (c) Dan's "new" memory of exactly what Jack now says he remembers... (even if Dan had been too young back then to remember much, Jack and Dan would certainly have talked about it, over the years)...</I><BR/><BR/>But if you go with the branching-multiverse theory, Dan wouldn't have two sets of childhood memories like this. Think in terms of my planet-hopping metaphor again. Say instead of traveling through time, Dan was teleported from our Earth, "Earth-A", to another planet, "Earth-B", whose history lagged behind ours by 28 years. So if the trip was instantaneous, when he got there all the calendars would read "1979", and all the people on Earth-B would be perfect duplicates of the people who inhabited the 1979 of our Earth-A history. Dan then intervenes by talking to the Earth-B version of his father, who will now behave differently than Dan's original father did in the 1979 of Earth-A. (and his father is still alive at that moment on Earth-A, where the calendars still read 2007!) Then, so that we can continue to avoid any actual time travel in this metaphor, we can imagine that instead of jumping forward in time, Dan is just put into suspended animation for 28 years, so when he wakes up it's 2007 on Earth-B. (Let's also imagine that the Earth-B version of Dan is teleported to a different Earth-C, or otherwise 'disappeared' in 2007, so there aren't two versions of Dan when the Earth-A version wakes from suspended animation.) He is still the same Dan with no modifications to his brain, there was never any time travel in this scenario so it's still true that he grew up in Earth-A where his dad still left without saying goodbye, and that's what he'll remember. But no one else around him has done any planet-hopping, they've all spent their whole lives on Earth-B so it's the Earth-B history they remember, including the Earth-B duplicate of his brother.<BR/><BR/>Now, I'm not saying that this is necessarily the theory of time travel they use on the show, there are a lot of different ideas about time travel out there, and the parallel universe version could be seen as dramatically unsatisfying since even when you "change" history for the better the original history goes on existing in a different timeline (though I suppose you could modify my metaphor above so that when Dan was teleported from Earth-A to Earth-B, Earth-B was created from scratch at that moment and meanwhile Earth-A was caused to vanish at the moment Dan left it, and instead of the Earth-B Dan going to Earth-C in 2007, he was caused to vanish as well...this way there'd only ever be one Earth, and one 2007 Dan, at a time). So, it's quite possible that in future episodes Dan might show some signs of overlapping memories. But the parallel universe theory I describe is at least <I>consistent</I> with everything we've seen so far on the show, I think (as is the 'multiple histories with each old one vanishing when Dan leaves it' theory, which is perhaps more dramatically satisfying).JesseMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09993568347649474812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-73347948536169027222007-12-11T15:20:00.000-05:002007-12-11T15:20:00.000-05:00Good points, everyone.John - I subscribe to the Bu...Good points, everyone.<BR/><BR/>John - I subscribe to the Butterfly Effect, too, and always embed it in my time travel novels and stories.<BR/><BR/>That's why I was thinking that Jack may be a better person now - as a consequence of Dan's conversation with his father. One of the many reasons I hope the series continues, is I'd like to see how this thread plays out...<BR/><BR/>(And, congratulations, again, on being our contest winner for this week!)<BR/><BR/>Jesse and Magical - Right. That's why I said that I doubted that Dan had no idea about what his father did back then with his little sons, as Dan indicated to Jack.<BR/><BR/>I would assume that Dan remembers (a) what it was like when his father left without saying anything, (b) Dan's intervention with his father in 1979, (c) Dan's "new" memory of exactly what Jack now says he remembers... (even if Dan had been too young back then to remember much, Jack and Dan would certainly have talked about it, over the years)...<BR/><BR/>In contrast, Jack has only one memory - the new one - because Jack was not the agent of the time-traveling change.Paul Levinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07609987407926836519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-14637448125011363192007-12-11T14:45:00.000-05:002007-12-11T14:45:00.000-05:00Yeah, you seem to have forgotten that Dan's memori...Yeah, you seem to have forgotten that Dan's memories are never altered from the stuff he does in the past.Magical Malikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09361783066429290733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-71181172024370158712007-12-11T02:15:00.000-05:002007-12-11T02:15:00.000-05:00In previous episodes, Dan seemed thoroughly aware ...<I> In previous episodes, Dan seemed thoroughly aware of all sets of realities in which he was involved.</I><BR/><BR/>Well, Dan is aware of all the different realities he has experienced as a time traveler, but I can't remember any time when his memories of his own past were changed by something he did. Think of the parallel-universe theory of time travel, where if you change something in the past then history will branch off into a new parallel timeline, but you still remember the timeline you came from originally. This allows you to avoid problems like the grandfather paradox--if you prevent your grandfather from having a kid in the new timeline, that's ok, because your grandfather still had a kid in the timeline you originated from. It's as if you could visit another planet whose history had been exactly like Earth's up until the moment you arrived, but whose history lagged behind Earth's by a few years, so if you arrived today the date might be 1979 or something on their calendar, and every individual there would be a perfect duplicate of everyone who existed in the 1979 of our Earth's history. If you then caused the planet's history to diverge from Earth's by interfering, you could experience the different history that resulted on this planet, and still retain your memories of how things went in Earth's history, but since this is just space travel your memories obviously wouldn't change in any way.JesseMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09993568347649474812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2289595359432630118.post-9203593815177951392007-12-11T01:19:00.000-05:002007-12-11T01:19:00.000-05:00Thank you again. I completely thought I fudged up ...Thank you again. I completely thought I fudged up my chances, when the show cut back in from black to livia and her proposal!! :)<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I do agree that it was a fantastic episode. I really enjoyed the twist on what happened in the past - although for one second, I thought that maybe Dan's dad was going to be involved. <BR/><BR/>I guess, my views on time-travel though vary. In that I ascribe to what is commonly called the Butterfly Effect, where the smallest change can lead to something much larger down the road. And I just have to question, whether either Dan or Jack would be the same person they are at the beginning of the episode, as at the end after something from their past has been changed. I'm not griping though. I do understand that there's really only so much change the production on the show could probably handle. <BR/><BR/>I was thinking about the true ending of this episode and considering what if the purpose of Dan's traveling was to fix it so that Livia's life could be complete. I'm just getting the feeling that there has to be more to Livia's involvement in Dan's traveling than just to get him out of a tight spot. Maybe their fates are meant to be that they never meet - which would be quite a spin for a TV show. I really, really, hope that the show gets picked up for another season, at least to maybe give us the scoop on why these two people are thrown together to do this. <BR/><BR/>Well, thank you again, and I'll eagerly be awaiting to see who wins next week and what the last two episodes hold in store for us. :)John Muthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09234833725328017007noreply@blogger.com