Fringe Season Finale & Ten Other Offbeat Time Travel Tales You May Not Know or Care About

SPOILER ALERT – I’m going to spoil everything.

After a season that groped for, neared, but never quite reached last year’s stunning “Peter” ep, Fringe, my favorite bastard child of The X-Files, let loose with a tight, dramatic high point — “The Day We Died” – which sends poor Peter into the future.

Time travel stories are rife with pitfalls. Logistically silly, they’re nearly impossible to maneuver with grace. Fringe‘s challenge was more so. After all, Peter Bishop’s temporal two-step doubles-down on the dual universe played with from the beginning, giving us (count ‘em!) four versions of each character (i.e., Walter, Walternate, alternate future Walter, alternate future Walternate, ad absurdum.)

Even so, I was hooked. The pacing was electric, the variations fun, the acting, in spots, terrific. It reminded me why I watch the darn show, especially after Anna Torv’s painful vocal impersonation of Leonard Nimoy earlier this year.

Only one moment raised my eyebrow in a Spock-like fashion. When future-Walter explains that they can’t not build the time machine that caused all their earth-shaking problems, the reason he gives is simply, “that’s not how it works.”

I imagined the writers thinking themselves out of that box.

“Got it! Why don’t we have him not build the time machine?”
“Nah – that’s not how it works.”
“Right. Oh, well… How about a fifth Walter shows up…”

The sideways explanation we’re given – that only consciousness can thusly travel, was classy enough, but suspiciously convenient and a tad contradictory. After all, the machine had already travelled back in time. Still, as Basil points out in one Austin Powers sequel or another, you can’t think too much about this stuff, so just sit back and enjoy, which I did, whole-heartedly.

At the same time I couldn’t help but be pleasantly reminded of other time travel tales, some similar, some just, you know, from the fringes of reason. So here for your reading pleasure, I’ve assembled a list that doesn’t include The Terminator, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, or even Time After Time.

1. X-Men: Days of Future Past
Stan Lee is a meme-birthing genius, but in the 1960s, The X-Men floundered, cancelled after 66 issues. It was only when it was revived in 1975, first by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, later Chris Claremont and John Byrne, that things took off. This highlight of the Claremont/Byrne tenure bears more than a passing resemblance to the Fringe finale. With a nod to The Terminator and a title from The Moody Blues, the reader is plunged into a dystopian future where our favorite mutants are mostly dead or twisted beyond recognition, hunted down by all-powerful Sentinels. An older, war-weary Kitty Pryde transfers her mind to her younger self in an effort to stop the carnage. Sound familiar?

2. Dark Shadows
My weakness for this show is as eternal as the love of Mulder and Scully. Aside from vampires, werewolves, and witches, Barnabas and crew travelled to other times and parallel worlds so often, you’d think they had free tickets. No time machine needed here. It’s magic! For their maiden voyage, long before Fringe or The X-Men, 175-year-old Barnabas used, of all things, the I-Ching to mentally inhabit his younger body (younger here meaning only about a century old).  Unfortunately, he arrived chained in a coffin.  Fortunately, the I-Ching isn’t bound by that whole “that’s not how it works” thingy, so his pal Julia Hoffman was able to join him in her own body and free him.

3. The Shadow out of Time
There’s a lovely scene in “The Day We Died” in which Future Walter realizes he built the dread machine. It neatly echoes an earlier moment from “Ability” where Walter remembers he wrote, not the book of love, but “Destruction by Advancement of Technology.” Both smartly echo this drop-dead great short story by horror master H.P. Lovecraft . In it, Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee is plagued by dreams in which he’s been possessed by an ancient alien race. To keep from going mad, he desperately hunts for proof of their existence, and finds it buried deep in stygian ruins. In the chilling conclusion, among the alien architecture, he finds an equally ancient book, written in his own handwriting. After that, well, he probably goes nuts, but that’s Lovecraft for you.

4. The Man Who Folded Himself
While most writers shy from or gloss over the paradoxes inherent in time travel, David Gerrold passionately embraces them in this Nebula-winning 1973 novel. Daniel Eakins inherits a time travel belt from his uncle (what, no suspenders?). Traveling back an hour, he meets his earlier self.  Soon the Daniel Eakins are flying fast and furious. He makes love to himself, kills himself, finds a female version of himself, sires himself, turns out to be his uncle in the first place, and ultimately collapses into a satisfying mind-bending solipsism. If you want to experience Homer Simpson’s frustration in the next entry, first hand, read this!

5. Time and Punishment
This seminal Simpsons sequence neatly sums up the biggest problem with time travel: it’s freaking annoying to think about. After killing a mosquito at the dawn of time, (echoing classic science fiction story, A Sound of Thunder) Homer changes the present. He keeps going back to try to fix things, with various results, until, finally, fed up, he heads back again and tears up every plant, squishes every bug and kills every animal he can find. And he still comes back next week!

6. Zardoz
Sure, some consider this 1974 flick a clunker; the fact it was the first R-rated film I ever saw aside, I’ve always loved it. John Boorman’s wildly creative, totally bonkers celluloid vision plays like a delightfully drug-induced sixties science fiction novel. Way, way in the future, Sean Connery worships a giant flying head. One day, it rubs him the wrong way, so he follows it back to a bunch of smart-ass yuppies who are both immortal and incredibly dull. Some are so bored, they go catatonic. One taste of Sean’s sweat, though (literally), and their apathy disappears! Sean goes on to briefly acquire god-like status from a mega-computer, and uses his newfound abilities to run an attacking mob backwards in time, all to the dulcet tunes of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. What more could you want? Come on! Sean Connery worshipping a giant floating head!

7. The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones
A gritty, unapologetic look at the danger of meddling with things best left to a loving, but indiscriminately violent, God. Two families from different cultures clash and, in their self-centered ignorance, destroy six lives and two worlds. In it’s way, it’s a cartoon The Hills Have Eyes. No, not really.

But seriously, while it’s not a highlight for either show, and a tad slow-paced, the mash-up’s a lot of fun. Elroy builds a time machine, the Jetsons plan to use it to take a vacation, but doggie-Astro paws the wrong button and sends them back to Bedrock. Hijinks ensue. Frankly, I think the Great Gazoo could’ve fixed things with a snap of his fingers. But, since “that’s not how it works,” the only real question I was left with was, “Where is Scooby-doo in all of this?”

8. Six Feet Under – “Everyone’s Waiting”
Remember when Michael C. Hall wasn’t a lovable serial killer? Sure, perhaps it’s a stretch to include this drama on the list, especially since there’ no machine or magic that causes the time travelling, just a narrative leap. But hell, calling anything in a list of time travel stories a stretch is its own paradox. While most time travel stories involve efforts to to avoid destruction, and set things “aright” (whatever that means), this one embraces it as a natural part of life. The final moments of HBO’s death-devoted series flash forward to various future scenes, allowing us to witness the death of each character. It remains the best finale ever.

9. Timetripper
Yeah, okay, it’s mine, I wrote it, but part of the reason I write this column is to promote my work. In this case, the adventures of Harry Keller (originally a comic book with art by the late great Tom Sutton) has what I think is a unique take on the timely theme. Believing he’s going crazy, surrounded by a lot of people who agree, Harry Keller winds up, not travelling through time, but transcending it. His weird brain plops him in A-Time, where past, present and future all co-exist. Thing is, it’s inhabited by all manner of timeless beasty, like Quirks, who seek to meddle with the time trails and do damage to we of lesser perception. Read the books! Check out the song!

10. Trinity
Back in the eighties, we had to walk fifteen miles just to wind up our computers. Computer Games didn’t have no pretty pictures, and some actually had to rely solely on, wait for it… words. With verbal dexterity and sheer creativity as their stars, Infocom produced a number of gems, chief of which, imho, was Trinity. Released in 1986, it sends the player from the moments before a modern nuclear blast, to a weird, lushly surreal in-between realm not unlike A-time. From there, you visit a series of nuke sites, finally arriving in 1940s New Mexico. Your goal: stop the detonation of the first atomic bomb, which of course ripped the hole in time that brought you here in the first place. A delightfully inventive classic that sadly, only retro-gamers get to enjoy these days.

BONUS SPOILER! The Shortest Time Travel Store Ever Written!

Written by the brilliant Alan Moore, it spoils the story because it *is* the story!  I present it in it’s entirety:

“Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time…”

That’s all I got!  If I left out any off-beat favorites, send a comment – Free signed copies of Timetripper to the first five! But they have to be off-beat, no Star Trek IV.

This month, May 24-26, your humble author will be appearing in NYC at the 2011 Book Expo America shilling my sundry work. Come visit at the Papercutz Booth, # 3139.