Time travel, part science-fiction, part fantasy. The one thing we all wish we could do to prevent ourselves from doing something stupid in the past. Unfortunately, we all have to keep cringing about it every night before bed. In the meantime, there’s nothing like enjoying a good time travelling story.

Here’s the thing, I’m not here to go all physicist about time travel, and what is realistic or not, I’ll leave that for the Einsteins of our generation. I’m here for Hollywood time travel. Fiction. And I’m going to going all out on my overly specific rules for time travelling.

Back to the Future 1-3 (1985)

I can’t talk about time travel and not mention the best movie series about it: Back to the Future. There isn’t much that I criticize about how time travelling works in the three movies. Are 88 miles per hour enough? I don’t care. You can choose whatever machine, police phone box, transportation or concoction to be able to time travel. What I’m interested in is the timeline.

I wanted to start with Back to the Future because there is only one thing I have to point out that doesn’t make sense in my theory book. I’m also not gonna bother avoiding spoilers because these movies came out in ’85. I wasn’t even born yet. That’s how long it has been.

Moving on, Marty comes back to the present a few minutes early to try and save Doc from the Libyans. Although that time proves not to be enough, and when Marty reaches the parking lot, he sees himself drive off to the past. Let’s call him Marty 2.

If Marty 2 does everything the same that Marty did in the past, then he will also come back a few minutes early. He will arrive at the same time as Marty creating a loop of endless Marties watching another Marty go back to the past. Imagine the headache! But Marty 2 never comes back. So either something really bad happened back in 1955 or Marty 2 is now part of a parallel timeline. Either way, he’s not part of the version of 1985 we see in the movie. And I don’t like it.

For me, this is the only thing that really annoyed me when I saw the movie for the first time. Throughout the rest of the series, nothing like this happens again so it feels to me like a plot hole. Here’s the thing, I don’t mind two Marties existing at the same time – that’s the fun part of the second movie – what I don’t like is the possibility of Marty 2 just stopped existing once he drove off to the pass or that he’s now part of a parallel timeline that is happening at the same time.

Déjà Vu (2006)

I love this movie! For me, it encapsulates everything I believe time travel should be, except for that ending. I told you I’m overly specific about my made-up time travelling rules.

The characters talk about how going back in time might cause the timeline to diverge into a new timeline. Well… I don’t believe that. For the longest time, Denzel Washington’s character doesn’t realize that the clues on the fridge, the blood in the bathroom, the ambulance were all left by him. This means what we are seeing in the movie has already happened, and it’s repeating again. Although this time, he managed to save everyone on the boat creating a new timeline where everyone survived.

If everyone dies again, then his life gets stuck in an infinite loop of going back in time again and again, which is stupid. Although since I don’t believe in new timelines, either his one was bound to have him go back in time twice to save everyone and then continue normally, or they have to rewrite the whole script.

Creating new timelines is also what happens in all three Back to the Future films. Even the smallest thing Marty does in the past can change the future drastically. His father went from Biff’s employee to his boss – which was an arrogant attitude for George McFly, I have to say. Then Biff became a millionaire marrying Marty’s mother and killing his father. And finally, Doc goes from being killed in a duel in the Wild West to being married with two kids. Without those changes, there is no plot to these movies. That’s what this series is about to correct the past to fix the future. But that doesn’t mean I agree with them. I just overlook them since the movies are so funny.

Timeless (2016-2018)

And now we arrive at what could have been my perfect time travel story: Timeless. This TV series was cancelled twice, saved by the fans once, and got a two hours movie episode to conclude the story, all of it thanks to the fans. The series was all about American history and was a captivating way to “teach” history and introduce historical figures that aren’t that prominent like others well-known.

Timeless touched on something that I really enjoy in time travel: what already happened will happen again. So I already established that I don’t like that new timelines crap, and even though this series has that premise at its core, I remember one episode when they tried to change the past to avoid someone getting killed at the moment they were supposed to die, but that didn’t prevent them from dying. It just changed the time and place. And that’s what I believe.

You can go back to the past as much as you want, but what already happened will happen again, even if it is in different conditions. You can’t change the outcome. So, in reality, there is no point in time travel because you won’t be able to change anything, and if you do, then those changes were already meant to happen, just like in Déjà Vu.

Keeping this idea that the past cannot be changed might not be the best option for storytelling. It takes away the appeal to time travel. Although I’m still searching for a story that can hit all my marks. I don’t even know if it exists already or if it’s ever going to exist. I just know that this is how I like my time travelling rules to be.

In the meantime, I’ll have to enjoy what I can get. Do another rerun of Back to the Future, trying to map out the entire Terminator timeline(s) – which I really want to do! – or to try something new. At the end of the day, what matters is the enjoyment I get out of it.