Wetlook World Forum

What really broke Superman for me was time travel. I’m not against time travel in science fiction, but you have to use it with extreme care. Both the 1978 Superman film and Star Trek IV made the same mistake: once you’ve demonstrated that time travel is fairly easy and you can just roll back any mistake, why does time travel not become the de facto solution to every problem? Gorkon assassinated in Star Trek VI? No biggie, just whiz around the Klingon sun and prevent it.

I have no idea how classic Doctor Who dealt with this, but there was a “new Who” episode that demonstrated the danger of doubling back on your own timeline, in a completely bizarre and meaningless way. Apparently it makes flying gargoyles steal all the children from the playground or some shit.

The more you stray outside of the bounds of the plausible, the harder it seems to become to formulate a plausible set of universal laws that govern the world. One of the reasons for my great respect for Babylon 5 is how carefully it treated the subject, minimising the amount of loopholes and inconsistencies inherent in science fiction.