Seamless Branching

Seamless Branching of 

The Theatrical Version, 

Special Edition Version and 

Extended Special Edition Version

“That’s the movie’s main plot, but let’s observe here that one of T2’s subplots actually echoes Cameron’s Schwarzenegger dilemma and creates a kind of weird metacinematic irony. 

Whereas T1 had argued for a certain kind of metaphysical passivity (i.e., Fate is unavoidable, and Skynet’s attempts to alter History serve only to bring it about), Terminator 2’s metaphysics are more active. 

In T2, The Connors take a page from Skynet’s book and try to head off the foreordained nuclear holocaust, first by trying to Kill Skynet’s inventor and then by destroying Cyberdyne’s labs and the first Terminator’s CPU (though why John Connor spends half the movie carrying the deadly CPU chip around in his pocket instead of just throwing it under the first available steamroller remains unclear and irksome). 

The Point here is that the protagonists’ attempts to revise The “Script” of History in T2 parallel The Director’s having to muck around with T2’s own script in order to get Schwarzenegger to be in the movie. 

Multivalent ironies like this — which require that film audiences know all kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff from watching Entertainment Tonight and reading (umm) certain magazines — are not commercial PostModernism at its finest.” 

— David Foster Wallace

He Who Remembers

AMY: 

I killed someone. 

Madame Kovarian, in cold blood. 

RIVER: 

In an aborted time line, in A World That Never Was. 

AMY: 

Yeah, but I can remember it, so it happened.

The World is changed.

I feel it in The Water.

I feel it in The Earth.

I smell it in The Air.

Much that once was, is lost. 

For none now live, Who Remember It.

The Anti-Monitor, The Enemy of The Free-peoples of New Earth was defeated. 

The Speed Force passed to Wally West, 

and The Superman of Earth-1 had this one chance to destroy Evil forever.

But The Hearts of Men are easily corrupted. 

And HyperTime has a will of its own. 

It betrayed Hawkman to his death. 

And some things that should NOT have been forgotten, were Lost.

History became Legend

Legend became Myth

And for two decades, the Multiverse passed out of ALL knowledge. 

Until, when chance came, it ensnared an NEW Champion.....

The aliens are yellow because Animal Mans (original) Origin occurred in a back-issue, 20 years pre-Crisis (in 1968).

Non-acid-free paper turns yellow when it gets old.

 

“The “final crisis,” as I saw it for a paper universe like DC’s, would be the terminal war between is and isn’t, between the story and the blank page. 

 

What would happen if the void of the page took issue with the quality of material imposed upon it and decided to fight back by spontaneously generating a living concept capable of devouring narrative itself? 

 

A nihilistic cosmic vampire whose only dream was to drain the multiverse dry of story material, then lie bloated beneath a dead sun, dying.”

Excerpt From

Supergods

Grant Morrison

The Hypertime of Back to The Future

"How does it work? Off the central timeline we just left. Events of importance often cause divergent “tributaries” to branch off the main timestream. 

But what’s astounding is there’s far more to it than that. On occasion, these tributaries return—sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course. 

An old friend is suddenly recalled after years of being forgotten. 

A scrap of history becomes misremembered, even reinvented in the common wisdom. 

There are hazards to Hypertime, of course.... 

Artifacts carried into differing hypertimelines dangerously break down the barriers between kingdoms... but you’ll learn more about that in the months and years to come. "

 

— (Rip Hunter, The Kingdom #2, 1999)

One reassuring thing is that, despite the fears of some, the timestream seems capable of absorbing paradoxes.  

“Some would have you believe that time is a house of cards, and that if you remove one card, the house collapses. 

The physics of time, however, allow for another possibility: remove that same card, and the house rebuilds itself— but never to its original form” 

— (Chronos #9, 1998).

BRUCE BANNER: [Disgusted] 

First of all, that's horrible...

RHODEY: 

It's Thanos.

BRUCE BANNER: 

...And secondly, Time doesn't work that way. 

Changing The Past doesn't change The Future.

SCOTT LANG: 

Look, we go back, we get the stones before Thanos gets them... 

Thanos doesn't have the stones. Problem solved.

CLINT BARTON: 

Bingo.

NEBULA: 

That's not How it Works.

CLINT BARTON: 

Well, that's what I heard.

BRUCE BANNER: 

What? By who? 

Who told you that?

RHODEY:

 [counting with his fingers] 

Star Trek, 

Does not apply to Capt. Benjamin Sisko/Gabriel Bell,

Emissary of The Prophets,

or The Prophets of Bajor themselves —

It is Not Linear.

Terminator

Terminator actually exploits a Deterministic Bootstrap Paradox.

TimeCop

Time After Time -

Nobody Travels into The Past in Time After Time — 

Jack The Ripper travels into The Present, pursed by  H.G. Wells

SCOTT LANG: 

Quantum Leap -

 This is, in fact, exactly how Time Travel in Quantum Leap works — it's the entire premise for the whole show :

It's The Observer Effect — 

You Change The Result by Measuring It.

The only reason Dr. Sam Beckett is able to make The Journey of crossing his own timeline, be an actor in events of The Past and change established history is because he has no memory of history, as a consequence of making The Journey.

That's also the reason why his range of travel is restricted to The Past within his own lifetime - he is not actually travelling history to change it, he is re-visiting events in Living Memory, making new memories and Remembering it Differently.

He is only able to do this, because he has completely forgotten The Past — or, at least, is far-from certain he is remembering it correctly

Meanwhile, Al, "The Observer" either does remember the original history, or is able to access it's records via Ziggy The Computer's Database — he is able to project an image of himself into the Memories of The Collective Unconscious to communicate information (in the form of stochastic Quantum Probabilities) to Sam, whilst being unable to directly affect any change himself)

It is significant that when Sam is able to recall memories of History or his past life, he invariably misremembers them, until 'corrected' by Al, who remembers Sam 'accurately'.

Sam initially misremembers Ziggy as being the 'Little Guy, with The Bad Breath.' But no, that's Gouschi, as Al correctly informs him.

Sam then misremembers Ziggy as being the Male Personality of the Quantum AI Supercomputer controlling Project Quantum Leap, for the next 3 Years — 

Al never corrects him.

Ziggy is Male — until he swaps places with Al, arrives back home at his Point of Origin and Ziggy has become a female supercomputer (programmed with Barbara Steisand's ego).

And Sam is now a married man. 

Which he wasn't before.

He returns to find himself released into The Present,

Facing Mirror Images that are finally his own,

And driven by manifest necessity to rescue his friend from History.

His only bride in this endeavour is Donna (neé Elisi), 

A Science-WorkWife from His Own Field,

Who appears in the form of a Woman everybody else can See and Hear —

And so, Dr. Becket found himself, married to his former long-lost sweetheart, 

whose life he successfully turned around in one of his earliest leaps, somehow happily married to him despite having previously having jilted two former financés at The Altar, with Sam being the second and latter of the two-time loser schucks she went and made them look ridiculous....

RHODEY: 

A Wrinkle in Time, 

Somewhere in Time -

Where Christopher Reeve travels into The Past via Deep Trance Hypnosis.

SCOTT LANG: 

Hot Tub Time Machine -

The Theory of Time Travel in Hot Tub Time Machine actually plays to The Bootstrap Predestination Paradox — 

You can visit The Past to create The Present, but you cannot create any outcome that hasn't always been True.

RHODEY: 

Hot Tub Time Machine. 

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. 

Again, Bill and Ted can cross their own timeline to create their present circumstance, but they can also generate future events and consequences simply by an Act of Will, through sincere intent — 

'Once I and My Friend Have Succeeded and Triumphed,

I Will Go Back in Time After Now to Steal My Dad's Keys, 

Therefore I Know Where They Are 

and So Once I Collect Them, I Shall Have Them'

Small wonder it is then, that the people of the society of Rufus' era come to regard William S. (Hey, I only just noticed that one! —) and Theodore Logan as Nietzschan Superman —

Thus Spake Zarathustra : —

'No Way...!'

Basically, any movie that deals with time travel.

SCOTT LANG: 

Die Hard? No, it's not one...

Now, There's a line to be pondered-over for decades to come, if ever I saw one....

If I was to speculate at this point, I would maybe suggest that Scott suggests this because he is remembering the line 

'How Can The Same Shit Happen to The Same Guy Twice?'

Now, that's just a guess — and I am a good guesser, generally.

But I am certainly not prepared to commit myself emotionally to any answer on this, and definitely not at this stage, at a point so early into The Game —

Time May Tell — it usually does.

RHODEY: 

This is known.

BRUCE BANNER: 

I don't know why everyone believes that, but that isn't True. 

Think about it: If you travel to The Past, 

that past becomes Your Future. 

And your former Present becomes The Past. 

Which can't now be changed by Your New Future...

NEBULA: 

Exactly.

SCOTT LANG: 

So... Back To The Future's a bunch of bullshit..?

Well, Back to The Future Part II certainly isn't — and  nor mostly is Back to The Future Part III, which is also fine, because it involves journeying into History beyond Living Memory (which is precisely what Dr. Sam Beckett is unable to do — 

except for that one time when he was flung back into The Civil War, into his Family History, by swapping places with his own ancestor.)

So, how is it that Marty and Doc Brown are able to interact and commune across time in safety so relatively freely in 1955, and interact with Marty's closest blood relatives and immediate antecedents, whilst avoiding many of the most serious hazards (unless you happen to be a Pine Tree, of course), and have those interactions affect stable and lasting change in The Present?

Rather alarmingly, it appears to have much to do with suffering concussive head trauma —

Marty Mc.Fly gets knocked unconscious a lot....

Almost all of the major characters do, at some point or another, whether by means of Chloroform, gut-rot whiskey, the Doc's Delta-Wave sleep inducer, a bolt of lightning, getting chased by a bear over a cliff.....

But if you pay careful attention, almost any change in temporal location for Marty is usually either accompanied by, or swiftly followed by a severe blow to the head, which renders him completely unconscious for several hours — almost every character comments upon this, but Doc Brown's initial encounter with Marty in 1955 and all of his subsequent interactions occur beginning on the day he slipped, standing on the wet edge of his toilet and cracked his head against the sink, whereafter he first conceived of the Flux Capacitor as a vision in his unconscious stupor. 

This is initially speculated to be the cause for his apparent failure to remember the subsequent events of November 5-12th 1955 whilst Marty stayed with him, and failure to prepare for What is to Come, in spite of giving him privileged access to and future knowledge of the finished and completed time vehicle he hasn't built yet.

Of course, as we all know, it eventually transpires that he does remember them (although whether or not he did before, and all along is somewhat open to debate, given the evidence of Lone/Twin Pines Mall), and the Doc's freedom and capacity to choose a New Future for himself ultimately hinges solely on his decision to trust his friend, and have faith in Marty's love and affection for him, irrespective of the fact that he is a friend who has not yet actually met yet, in a strictly linear sense of the causalities involved.

Just for good measure, at the start of Back to The Future III, now that things have become really complicated causally with respect to Doc Brown's memories, he throws in the additional piece of speculation, whilst Journaling about the previous evening's successful time experiment, that the consequence of having electromagnetic flux (fluxing), when having been stood directly next to a bolt of lightning striking a copper cable (with quite a considerable jolt of that old 1.21-JgW. likely having passed through his body) had erased part of his memory and induced a degree of retrograde amnesia of the past week's event — which is all very sound scientifically..... 

Magnetic Pulses of relatively minute flux density, directed towards the frontal cortex and cerebellum are proven to produce (or rather, induce) profound subjective sensory and perceptual synesthesia, and can most certainly block formation of new memories, and even erase, re-contextualise or re-write existing memories, both recent and long-term. 

TIMELINES

KIRK: (to Spock Prime) 

Your coming back in time, changing History -- it's cheating.

SPOCK PRIME: 

A trick I learned from an old friend. 

(he does the salute) 

Live long and prosper.

History became Legend, Legend became Myth

Much That Once Was, is lost

And some things that should not have been forgotten, were lost.

For none now live who REMEMBER it.

AMY:
I killed someone. Madame Kovarian, in cold blood.

RIVER:
In an aborted timeline, 

in a World That Never Was.

AMY: 
Yeah, but I can remember it, so it happened, so I did it. 
What does that make me now...?

"How does it work? Off the central timeline we just left.

Events of importance often cause divergent “tributaries” to branch off the main timestream.

But what’s astounding is there’s far more to it than that.

On occasion, these tributaries return—sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course.

An old friend is suddenly recalled after years of being forgotten.

A scrap of history becomes misremembered, even reinvented in the common wisdom.

There are hazards to Hypertime, of course.... 
Artifacts carried into differing hypertimelines dangerously break down the barriers between kingdoms...but you’ll learn more about that in the months and years to come."

“Some would have you believe that time is a House of Cards, and that if you remove one card, the house collapses.

The physics of time, however, allow for another possibility: remove that same card, and the house rebuilds itself— but never to its original form"

[Enterprise Bridge]

SPOCK: 

Have you confirmed that Nero is headed for Earth?

UHURA: 

Their trajectory suggests no other destination, Captain.

SPOCK: 

Thank you, Lieutenant.

(Kirk is seated in The Captain's Chair)

KIRK: 

Earth may be his next stop, but we have to assume every Federation planet's a target.

SPOCK: 

Out of The Chair.

CHEKOV: 

Well, if the Federation is a target, why didn't they destroy us?

SULU: 

Why would they? Why waste the weapons? 

You know... we obviously weren't a threat.

SPOCK: 

That is not it. He said he wanted me to see something. 

The destruction of my home planet.

MCCOY: 

How the hell did they do that, by the way? 

Where did the Romulans get that kind of weaponry?

SPOCK: 

The engineering comprehension necessary to artificially create a black hole may suggest an answer. 

Such technology could theoretically be manipulated to create a tunnel through space-time.

MCCOY: 

Dammit man, I'm a doctor, not a physicist.

Are you actually suggesting they're from The Future?!

SPOCK: 

If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, 

however improbable, must be The Truth.

MCCOY: 
How poetic.

KIRK: 
Then, what would an angry, future Romulan want with Captain Pike?

SULU: 
As Captain, he does know details of Starfleet's defenses.

KIRK: 
What we need to do is catch up to that ship. 
Disable it, take it over, and get Pike back.

SPOCK: 
We are technologically outmatched in every way. 
A rescue attempt would be illogical.

CHEKOV: 
Nero's ship would have to drop out of warp for us to overtake him.

KIRK: 
Then, what about assigning engineering crews to try and boost our warp gear?

SPOCK: 
Remaining power and crew are being used to repair radiation leaks on the lower decks...

KIRK: 
Okay, alright. There's got to be some way...

SPOCK: 
...we must gather with the rest of Starfleet, to balance the terms of the next engagement.

KIRK: 

There won't be a next engagement. 

By the time we've gathered, it'll be too late. 

But you say he's from The Future, knows what's going to happen, then the logical thing is to be unpredictable.

SPOCK: 

You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold. 

 

To the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party.

UHURA: 
An alternate reality?

SPOCK: 
Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. 

 

Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three.

KIRK: 
Spock, don't do that. 
Running back to the rest of the fleet for a, a, a confab is a massive waste of time...

SPOCK: 
...orders issued by Captain Pike when he left...

KIRK: 
He also ordered us to go back and get him. 
Spock, you are captain now! You have to be...

SPOCK: 
I am aware of my responsibilities, Mister...

KIRK: 
Every second we waste, Nero's getting closer to his next target.

SPOCK: 
That is correct and why I am instructing you to accept the fact that I alone...

KIRK: 
I will not allow us to go backwards...

MCCOY: 
Jim!

KIRK: 
...instead of hunting Nero down!

 

SPOCK: 
Security. Escort him out.

(two security officers grab Kirk and he starts to fight them off)

SECURITY OFFICER: 
Hey!

MCCOY: 
No, Jim!

(Spock stops the fight with a Vulcan nerve pinch)

SPOCK: 
Get him off this ship.

(Kirk is shot out of the Enterprise in an escape pod, into Delta Vega)

(Kirk's nearly eaten by the monster when the elder Spock shows up with a torch, scaring away the monster)

SPOCK PRIME: 
James T. Kirk.

KIRK: 
Excuse me?

SPOCK PRIME: 
How did you find me?

 

KIRK: 
How do you know my name?

 

SPOCK PRIME: 
I have been, and always shall be, your friend.

KIRK: 
Wha... oh, look... uh, I don't know you.

SPOCK PRIME: 
I am Spock.

SPOCK:

Father?

SPOCK PRIME:

I am Not Our Father. 
There are so few Vulcans left, we cannot afford to ignore each other.

SPOCK:

Then why did you send Kirk aboard, when you alone could have explained the truth?

SPOCK PRIME:

Because, you needed each other.

I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together.

Of a friendship, that would define you both, in ways you cannot yet realize.

SPOCK:

How did you persuade him to keep your secret?

SPOCK PRIME:

He inferred that universe-ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise.

SPOCK:

You lied?

SPOCK PRIME:

Oh, I... I implied.

SPOCK:

A gamble.

SPOCK PRIME:

An Act of Faith.

One I hope that you will repeat in the future at Starfleet.

SPOCK:

In the face of extinction, it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race.

SPOCK PRIME:

And yet, you CAN be in two places at once.

I urge you to remain in Starfleet.

I have already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony.

Spock, in this case, do yourself a favor -

 

Put Aside Logic. 

Do What Feels Right.

Since my customary farewell would appear oddly self-serving, I shall simply say : Good Luck.

If I'm Going to Have a Past, I Prefer it to be Multiple Choice

The Apprentice: 

Well, look. I read about something that's just happened; -

The next page says it didn't happen at all. 

Over the page says it DID happen, but many years ago. 

Teeth+Curls : 

Ah, yes. 

Well, I suppose it is a bit above your head. 

Mind you, they did say I had a very sophisticated prose style.

The Apprentice: 

As for your handwriting....

Teeth+Curls: 

Handwriting? 

What about my handwriting?

The Apprentice: 

It's marvellous. 

[ And it says “DIG HOLE HERE” ]

"So... I see you received the free ticket I sent you. 

I'm glad. I did so want you to be here. 

You see it doesn't matter if you catch me and send me back to the asylum... 

Gordon's been driven mad. I've proved my point. 

I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! 

All it takes is one bad day to reduce The Sanest Man Alive to lunacy. 

That's how far The World is from where I am. 

Just one bad day. 

You had a bad day once, am I right? 

I know I am. I can tell. 

You had a bad day and everything changed. 

Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? 

You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... 

Only you won't admit it! 

You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! 

God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? 

What made you what you are? 

Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? 

Brother carved up by some mugger? 

Something like that, I bet. Something like that... 

Something like that happened to me, you know. 

I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. 

Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... 

If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! 

But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. 

When I saw what a black, awful joke The World was, I went crazy as a coot! 

I admit it! 

Why can't you? 

I mean, you're not unintelligent! 

You must see the reality of the situation. 

Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? 

Do you know what triggered the last world war? 

An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! 

Telegraph poles! 

Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! 

Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! 

So why can't you see the funny side? 

Why aren't you laughing?"

Hypertime

"How does it work? Off the central timeline we just left. Events of importance often cause divergent “tributaries” to branch off the main timestream. But what’s astounding is there’s far more to it than that. On occasion, these tributaries return—sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course. An old friend is suddenly recalled after years of being forgotten. A scrap of history becomes misremembered, even reinvented in the common wisdom.

There are hazards to Hypertime, of course.... Artifacts carried into differing hypertimelines dangerously break down the barriers between kingdoms...but you’ll learn more about that in the months and years to come."

http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/hypertime.html

Hypertime

"Hypertime is our name for the vast collective of parallel universes out there, in which you can somewhere find every DC story ever published - but it's also more than that. The standard model of parallel timelines is the branches of a river, right? The main timeline is the main stream while tributaries symbolize the alternate timelines? Well, imagine that sometimes those tributaries feed back IN to the main stream, sometimes for a while, sometimes forever. Other times, they cross OVER for only a MOMENT before going in an altogether NEW direction - and for the most part, no one notices these discrepancies but the fans. In short, the reality of the main DC Universe is a lot more malleable than we've ever given it credit for and allows for more wonder and more possibilities than we'd ever imagined."