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Where Gillian thinks aloud
Nov. 7th, 2010 01:39 pmYesterday I spent the afternoon watching various Star Trek episodes with just one aim in mind: to work out how they convinced the audience that time travel of various kinds was not only possible but essential to the story. Why Star Trek? partly because it was in the library when I was looking for something, but mostly because Star Trek has the reputation of just occasionally using non-existent science covered by hand waving and cool terms. This means they have to make their plots work using other techniques.
I've sorted out most of the time travel possibilities for my novel and I've made most of my choices. One thing that got me with my early reading of time travel novels, though, was that the science could be perfect and the book abominable. The novel might be lauded for its science, but if the science was taken away, it didn't work.
Lots of people criticise Star Trek, but the truth is that it has a consistent audience and it holds that audience. There have to be narrative devices that make various part of it work. For instance, Tasha Yar indicates alternate universes or travel to the past in TNG, so does Guinan. A character as a device to indicate that the reality is not the one we expect. It's one of several devices that remind us of the time or place the current element is set, at regular intervals. Tasha Yar is what makes this stick for me. Several times she only spoke to show that Picard was in his own past.
The obvious techniques are used: more or less hair, a voice that's ruffled by age, a different set. There is a lot of explanation - not of science, but of lifestory, so that we can see that these people have had long lives since we last met them.
Another technique that's used is illness. Tuvok and Picard in particular, have illness that help pinpoint where they are in time.
Also, there's tech glitz. The assumption behind tech glitz is that knowledge grows over time and that a future someone is going to have a better chance of solving a technical problem than a past someone. This makes me unhappy, because it reminds me of the Whig view of history. Time is not a constant in the incremental growth of understanding. it works for technical components of a solution if they depend on knowledge expressed earlier (if the technical insight has a clear plot arc, basically) but otherwise it posits acquisition of knowledge above human behaviour. "We are better because we live in the future. We have cleverer solutions because we live in the future." When this breaks down (in a TNG episode) and three different periods have to work together, suddenly things are much more alive. I guess the lesson from this is that it's the complexities of knowledge development that make the plot come to life and that the simple linear acquisition of knowledge and technical skills may be easier to write, but it's not very convincing. This reminds me of the Whig view of history again.
Speaking about Whig history (which likes Big Events) Star Trek uses nods to big events in US history to indicate that the episode has an historical theme and that the characters are creating history: Roswell, the Great Depression.
The big thing - and some of these are tools towards it - is that the episodes each have a sense of movement when time is shifted. The viewer sees the shift. It's like the visual tricks that show that someone is coming through on the transporter - we have our moment to adjust to the different time and place. It can be walking through a device (the city on the edge of forever) or through waking up with a start - the time travel that works has a moment for the viewer to adjust.
Am I missing anything? Which ones of these are essential to a novel and which are really only suitable for TV? Which of these consistently fail? Which of these are entirely magic for viewers?
I've sorted out most of the time travel possibilities for my novel and I've made most of my choices. One thing that got me with my early reading of time travel novels, though, was that the science could be perfect and the book abominable. The novel might be lauded for its science, but if the science was taken away, it didn't work.
Lots of people criticise Star Trek, but the truth is that it has a consistent audience and it holds that audience. There have to be narrative devices that make various part of it work. For instance, Tasha Yar indicates alternate universes or travel to the past in TNG, so does Guinan. A character as a device to indicate that the reality is not the one we expect. It's one of several devices that remind us of the time or place the current element is set, at regular intervals. Tasha Yar is what makes this stick for me. Several times she only spoke to show that Picard was in his own past.
The obvious techniques are used: more or less hair, a voice that's ruffled by age, a different set. There is a lot of explanation - not of science, but of lifestory, so that we can see that these people have had long lives since we last met them.
Another technique that's used is illness. Tuvok and Picard in particular, have illness that help pinpoint where they are in time.
Also, there's tech glitz. The assumption behind tech glitz is that knowledge grows over time and that a future someone is going to have a better chance of solving a technical problem than a past someone. This makes me unhappy, because it reminds me of the Whig view of history. Time is not a constant in the incremental growth of understanding. it works for technical components of a solution if they depend on knowledge expressed earlier (if the technical insight has a clear plot arc, basically) but otherwise it posits acquisition of knowledge above human behaviour. "We are better because we live in the future. We have cleverer solutions because we live in the future." When this breaks down (in a TNG episode) and three different periods have to work together, suddenly things are much more alive. I guess the lesson from this is that it's the complexities of knowledge development that make the plot come to life and that the simple linear acquisition of knowledge and technical skills may be easier to write, but it's not very convincing. This reminds me of the Whig view of history again.
Speaking about Whig history (which likes Big Events) Star Trek uses nods to big events in US history to indicate that the episode has an historical theme and that the characters are creating history: Roswell, the Great Depression.
The big thing - and some of these are tools towards it - is that the episodes each have a sense of movement when time is shifted. The viewer sees the shift. It's like the visual tricks that show that someone is coming through on the transporter - we have our moment to adjust to the different time and place. It can be walking through a device (the city on the edge of forever) or through waking up with a start - the time travel that works has a moment for the viewer to adjust.
Am I missing anything? Which ones of these are essential to a novel and which are really only suitable for TV? Which of these consistently fail? Which of these are entirely magic for viewers?