The Two Ways Science Fiction Is Slowly Destroying Itself | Giant Freakin Robot.
Time Travel Is Just An Excuse
Time Travel used to be the most surefire of science fiction premises. It gave us brilliant movies like Back to the Future, The Terminator, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Things started going south when Hollywood noticed how much money those time travel movies were making and wrongly assumed it was because of time travel, not great writing and directing. So they began working to insert time travel into all manner of ill-fitting vehicles, but that’s not what really killed it. Things really went wrong when time travel stopped being an actual premise and became more of an excuse.
For the most part, I’d agree with this. What happened to the sense of wonder that SF should impart? Whether that wonder is positive (Trek, SG, 2001) or negative (Prometheus, Inception, BSG), SF should inspire us to look beyond ourselves. On the time travel front, I agree wholeheartedly and it’s why EPILOGUE broke away from the traditional and made time travel come at a cost.
To quote Brandon Vescovo, Epilogue’s production documentarian:
[EPILOGUE] has consequences, and the script asks questions about the nature of time itself. It’s more than just a plot device.
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Otherwise, why not just climb in a phone booth?
Watch the series and decide for yourself – did Epilogue break out of the current SF Time Travel rut or could we have gone further?
Epilogue: “The Past is Prologue” (Episode 1) from Epilogue the Web Series on Vimeo.
Epilogue: “Bad Trip” (Episode 2) from Epilogue the Web Series on Vimeo.