Some of the greatest battle in science fiction have n’t involved tussle or shoot - out , but prison term - traveling smackdowns , with two different citizenry adjudicate to alter story out from under each other . Like Marty and Biff , trying to wipe out each other ’s timelines in this cartridge clip from Back To The Future 2 . As soon as you have more than one fourth dimension machine , you may have timeline - altering sniper fights , and whoever can delete the other person ’s time line first wins . Start your paradox engines , and may the slipperiest metre - trickster win !
Time Cop . Jean - Claude Van Damme is the only one who can safeguard history against those who would shift it for their own evil end . But a corrupt U.S. Senator ( Ron Silver ) is messing with the timeline in parliamentary law to become president in 2004 . Van Damme quickly figures out what ’s going on . But then silver gray change story some more , so when Van Damme returns to his present , everything has transfer and Van Damme no longer has a business . It ’s up to Jean - Claude to go back once again and exchange the yesteryear a 2nd time , getting free of Silver in the cognitive process . Weirdly , this is one of the honest picture about time travel in spite of its activeness - movie star .
( Versions of Van Damme ’s Time Cops show up a luck in SF , let in the ChronoGuard in Jasper FForde ’s Thursday Next novels , and the worldly police from the 29th century , who show up in Star Trek : Voyager a few times . Stephen Hawking has famously theorized that some kind of temporal constabulary must exist , to prevent the frightening paradox that would otherwise take place . In Ken MacLeod ’s Newton ’s Wake , they’rereferred toas the “ Quantum Angels . ” )
Primer . Abe and Aaron make a time machine , which requires you to lie inside it for as long as you want to go back for . They go back and start meddling with their own pasts , ponder on the pedigree market and tinkering with other things . But shortly they ’re making more serious change — pink out their past self and taking their places . They live through the same day or two over and over again , creating substitute timelines with subtle differences each time . Eventually , Abe and Aaron start trying to foresee each other ’s interference , but proceed up with which version of Abe or Aaron you ’re learn gets trickier and sly .
Up the Line by Robert Silverberg . Jud Eliott III gets a job as a time courier , showing tourists the wonderment of history . But some of his crazy colleagues start messing around with the timeline and wreck story , so he has to keep pass away back and test to cook the wrong without attracting the attending of the Time Patrol . And then he falls in love with a time paradox advert Pulcheria , his own great - great - slap-up - corking - grandmother , and it all goes to wad .
The End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov . Harlan belongs to a time agency called Eternity , which exist outside of metre itself . He and his fellow agent go around switch story to concentrate human hurt . But then Harlan has a fall - out with his bosses over his girlfriend Noÿs , whom they desire to erase from history . Harlan is guess to help one of his colleagues , Cooper , go back to the twenty-fourth century and become the scientist whose discoveries by and by make the Eternals possible . In a tantrum of irritation , Harlan sends Cooper back to 1932 instead , so he ca n’t lay the groundwork for Eternity and Eternity will never exist . Finally , after the Eternals United Nations - erase his girlfriend , he agrees to go back and rescue Cooper from the past — but then his lady friend Noÿs reveal that Eternity ’s secret purpose is to edit history to check that human beings never colonize the stars . So instead Harlan help her to alter chronicle so that humans discover nuclear energy originally , and start down the course of space geographic expedition . As a consequence , Eternity ceases ever to have exist .
Lightning by Dean Koontz . Laura has a guardian angel who register up to help her whenever she ’s in danger , but then it turns out other people are trying to undo the “ angel ’s ” work . Some evil Nazi metre traveler are trying to ruin Laura . As Laura ’s son explicate :
They can hopscotch around us .. They can pop beforehand in time to see where we show up , then they pick and choose the easiest place along the time stream to bushwhack us . It ’s sorta like … if we were the cowman and the Indians were all psychic .
It also incorporate the great contrast , “ How can you pull ahead against goddamn clock time travelers ? ” How indeed ?
Doctor Who . For a show all about time travel , Doctor Who does n’t have that many stories where the Doctor and another clip - traveler are both alter the timeline back and forth , surprisingly . But the Doctor and his fellow Time Lord the Master get into some duels on a few occasions . The most over - the - top is in the funniness special “ Doctor Who And The Curse Of The Fatal Death , ” where the Master and Doctor gather up in a castle . The Master goes back in clip and payoff the architect to put a trapdoor right where the Doctor bechance to be standing . But then it turn out the Doctor also went back in prison term , and bribed the architect even more — to put the trapdoor where the Master is standing instead .
Dirk Gently ’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams contains a set of cris - cut through back and off in Reg Chronotis ’ time political machine ( much of which is abstract somewhat from the episode Adams wrote for Doctor Who . In especial , the ghost of the last survive Salaxian possesses a dissatisfied literary magazine editor , inspiring him to go back in time to reanimate the Salaxian spaceship before it can explode , back at the break of the day of life history on Earth — which will have the impression of making sure life never develops on this planet . The instructions for fix the ship are buried in the second half of Coleridge ’s poem “ Kubla Khan . ” But Chronotis and Dirk mildly , our investigator submarine , go back to Coleridge ’s clip and ensure he never finishes that verse form , so the instructions are fall behind and the exotic secret plan is foiled .
Terminator . The Terminator movies and tv set show are all about people and bionic woman traveling back in time to modify , or safeguard history . The machine want to kill Sarah Connor before she can ever give birth to future resistance leader John Connor , so John mail Kyle Reese back in meter to protect him — and Kyle becomes John ’s pa . And then , the machines transmit more bionic woman back to belt down John , and eventually Kyle ’s brother Derek end up back in our time hanging out with his friend / nephew as well . And Sarah Connor either pass away of cancer or travel fore in fourth dimension past her own dying escort and somehow avoids it . possibly in the second time of year of Sarah Connor Chronicles the car will figure out they just have to wipe out the Reese comrade as kids , and all their problems go away .
Time After Time . H.G. Wells and Jack The Ripper struggle each other in the bizarre future tense of 1979 . Once they both arrive at the future , metre change of location does n’t act that much of a part in the tale — except that at one point , Wells travels forward in time three days with his girlfriend Amy , only to see Amy ’s obituary in a newspaper . They have to travel back again and prevent Jack the Ripper from make Amy his fifth dupe . ( In the end , it sprain out the obituary was false , and it was Amy ’s friend who was murdered . ) And then Amy goes back to the 19th one C and espouse Wells , change chronicle at least somewhat .
Meet The Robinsons . An animated Disney plastic film , very loosely based on the book A Day With Wilbur Robinson . Tom Selleck invents a time machine . ( We ’ll just pause to let you absorb that spell of info . ) And then a baddie named Bowler Hat Guy travels back in sentence to sabotage a memory - scanning simple machine that a kid named Lewis has cook up , which give rise to all the awful inventions in Tom Selleck ’s utopian future tense . ( “ Tom Selleck ’s Utopian Future ” will be my next circle name . ) So Tom Selleck ’s son Wilbur has to travel back in sentence to our sentence , to make certain Lewis repairs the retentiveness - glance over machine .
Crime Traveler . In this British TV serial , a physicist named Holly Turner invents a meter machine , and a slothful detective named Slade uses it to travel back in clock time and solve crimes before they pass off . But in thefinal sequence , a criminal receive his own time machine , and travels back in time to give himself an airtight alibi for a couple of slaying . Slade has to travel back as well , to catch the other time traveller in the act .
Research by Nivair Gabriel
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