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Fortunately, this doesn't mean we've burnt through all the good ideas. The subject is so vast and has been explored so many times that a few relatively odd variants on the trope have emerged, and odd in different ways. Some of the items on this list are well-known ridiculous spoofs, some employ scientific concepts, but they are all creative twists on a well-worn notion for those bored with souped-up phone booths and the like. And until the aliens or the Yaqui Indians or whoever decide to show us the real way it's done, we have these options to mull over.
11) Homer's Toaster, The Simpsons
We begin with a beloved bit from The Simpsons' fifth Treehouse of Horror episode. "Time and Punishment," a spoof of Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder," among other things, opens with Homer praising his life and the country that makes it possible. Then he gets his hand stuck in a toaster. In the process of repairing it, he accidentally creates a time machine and becomes, in his own immortal words, "the first non-Brazilian person to travel backwards through time." (this supposedly being a reference to Carlos Castaneda and one of those great esoteric jokes The Simpsons excelled at in its prime). His romp through the past of course has disastrous results, and he ends up zinging back and forth in order to try and restore the present time to the normalcy he remembers. Unfortunately this means he misses out on even better alternate realities, especially the one where it rains donuts.
10) Hot Tub Time Machine
I know not how this idea came about, but I applaud it for a) not using a humor-killing definite article and b) sounding like the title was pulled out of Drew Carey's Uncle Sam hat during a Whose Line is it Anyway? episode. The rest of the world may have forgotten this silly, throwaway sex comedy, but I will never forget any movie that gets Craig Robinson to sing "Jessie's Girl", for many reasons. Both a goofy retro-fantasy farce and a parody of such, it follows the exploits of four dudes transported back to the '80s, three of whom lived through them already. Their means of conveyance? Take a wild guess. It turns out that splashing a can of an energy drink called "Chernobly" causes the otherwise normal Jacuzzi to open up onto a quantum vortex. The comedic palette of the film can be considered complex in that in encompasses jokes of both the vomit and blowjob variety. There's even a role for my beloved Lizzy Caplan as John Cusack's spunky love interest. And what sagacious figure guides our heroes on their journey? Chevy Chase. HTTM may not quite be comedic perfection, but in some ways that makes it better.
9) Mario's Time Machine
The Tubeterwebs are practically choking with videos of would-be James Rolfes spitting bile at this poor educational game from the '90s. Not only did I actually own it for the SNES back in the day, I played it all the way through (this was back before I had learned the concept that a game could be "bad" or "good"). The premise attempts to loosely appropriate Carmen Sandiego into the ill-defined Mario world with infamously disastrous results. Gameplay involves you selecting historical artifacts one at a time from Bowser's museum, filling out a form regarding the history surrounding said artifact, and returning it back to its proper time via the titular conveyance. The machine itself is ugly but not particularly strange at least at first. The weird part is that after you activate it, you suddenly start surfing. Time Surfing. You have to pick up 10 mushrooms and then crash into a whirlpool before traveling to your destination (provided you correctly adjusted the controls earlier). Then, after you've returned the artifact and are ready to leave, you push a button that appears to be imbedded in Mario's palm and get a bunch of points (or don't). Return to the museum, get a new artifact, lather, rinse, repeat. It's hard to say that anything feels out of place in a mythos as random as Mario's, but there's something seriously odd about seeing a 4-foot cartoon plumber interact with painterly depictions of Joan of Arc and Beethoven. This came out around the same time as Mario is Missing!, but at least that one had Yoshi in it, as well as a few boss fights, neither of which can be said for Mario's Time Machine. Instead, this game stands as the only time Mario has met Plato (so far, anyway: fingers crossed for a Mario Teaches Classical Dualism in 2013!). It should be noted that this game exists for multiple platforms, and that the NES version is radically different and much more Mario-like, although probably not good.
8) The Time Barrier, Timeslip
At a time when people were actually trying to compete with Doctor Who, ITV created a very different children's sci-fi program, rooted a little more in actual science and keeping the action closer to home. Consisting of 26 episodes bundled in four separate serials, Timeslip told the story of two inquisitive British kids, Simon and Liz, who discover a malleable point in the membrane of time and find they are able to pass through it to different points in the past and future. It may have been conceived with children primarily in mind, but like Who, Timeslip broached mature subject matter and themes including cloning and global warming. As a side-note, "time slips" are an actual reported paranormal phenomenon (so, "fiction") in which people claim to have momentarily experienced life in another era, though not by breaking through a time bubble. Would that something like this were real, although given the unfortunate future worlds depicted by this series, perhaps we should be thankful it isn't.
7) The Book, The Time Warp Trio
Time travel stories most often find themselves classified as science fiction rather than fantasy, as it's usually some machine or pseudo-futuristic device that transports the protagonist elsewhere. But sometimes magic explicitly fills that role, and Jon Scieszka's beloved juvenile novels gave its pre-pubescent heroes Joe, Sam and Fred an enchanted book that did the job, usually by misinterpreting some word or phrase and hurtling them somewhere. There were occasional variations to this, as when the gang attempted to use the power of numbers to pick a year to visit via "magic square." The book was a gift from Joe's uncle, a magician, though his mother seemed to be a little more adept at using it. Unbeknownst to me until researching this article, Scieszka's books were apparently adapted later into a PBS show which, even though it aired in 2005, still has one of the most '90s cartoon theme songs I've heard in many a moon.
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93 comments
Should you ever decide to do a companion piece to this, possibly one focused on inter-dimensional travel, I'd like to suggest the yoyo from Fuzzy Dice. Which technically also functions as a time machine, but is never actually used as such in the book. Well, not exactly. The he- er, protagonist does at one point travel to the 1960s, but it's an alternate reality where hippies rule, and he's given LSD as part of a criminal trial.
Ian Watson's "The Very Slow Time Machine" required a "running start" to leap through time, so you had to remain sealed inside of it for several years, aging backward and building up chronal momentum. Kinda sucks if you happen to go bugnuts from solitude.
I am deeply disappointed that no one has yet mentioned Lord British's adaptation of the Time Bandits method in the second Ultima game. You even got a cloth map of the timegates!
And don't forget the Time Waterfall that sends you into the Land of the Lost. How hippie is that?
I'm surprised you didn't include the shadow puppets from the Buffy season 7 episode "Get it Done". True, it only works to take the Slayer back, and only to a particular place/time, but you've got to admit that it's a weird fucking way to travel! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Hell, the other comments have some that would fit on the list, too! Any chance we'll end up with a sequel list in the future?
This article didn't mention the haunted Penny-Farthing from the portmanteau horror 'Tales that witness madness'. That tale freaked me out !
How about Chuck Palahniuk's take on time travel in his book "Rant"?!
The main character traveled back in time to prevent his mother from being raped, by contracting rabies and getting in a high-speed car crash. If you haven't read it.....DO IT NOW!
How, exactly, is "non-Brazilian" a Castaneda reference? Castaneda was an American, and Don Juan was Mexican. Those countries aren't exactly a hop, skip, and a jump from Brazil.
I remember back in my "thelordofhell" days complaining about Somewhere In Time not being on a time-travel list...............
http://www.toplessrobot.com/20...Somewhere In Time is the Rodney Dangerfield of time-travel movies
I offer to this list, the Japanese movie "Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust"... the tool for time travel is a washing machine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... I actually thought when Hot Tub Time Machine came out that the writer must have seen this movie. I caught it on an international flight, so it is possible.
I would add riding piggy-back or piggy-front on a brain-dead parapalegic whose legs were restored by a demonic book of pure evil from Todd and the Book of Pure Evil.
There was (at least) one episode of Superfriends where Superman travels into the past by spinning counterclockwise at super-speed. This delighted my kid-self: "Well, if you're going to travel in time by spinning, of course you would travel into the PAST by spinning COUNTERclockwise! It makes perfect sense!" But afterwards it occurred to me that whether the spin was clockwise or counterclockwise would depend on whether you were viewing the spinner from above or below, and there was no reason I could think of to prefer one view or the other. That realization dejected me. (Although in retrospect, I suppose I stumbled across one of the basic concepts of special relativity well before learning about it in school. That's pretty cool!)
I think in some of those same episodes, Batman was able to time-travel just by flying the Batplane really fast, because apparently it can do that.
Solid list. But you really must add: Therapist, Being Erica. If you're not familiar with Being Erica, it's a Canadian show about a woman in her 30s who time travels to significant moments in her life, past or future, as part of her therapy. Definitely more fantasy than science fiction, and honestly, more soap opera than anything, but really good if you're into that sort of thing.
How about 'Slaughterhouse 5'? Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time, living in the past, present and future at once.
HOLY SHIT, DANGEROUS VISIONS?!?! I have both the original and the "Again,..." volume. They were my first introduction to science fiction short stories at the ripe old age of 10. My grandfather was really into science fiction and out of his library of books, this one for some reason stuck out to me. At the time, some of the stories didn't make any sense, and masturbating your way through time was one of them.
I don't have them anymore, but I wasn't much older than that when I read them. I had forgotten all about that story, but reading about it here brought back the memory (or at least a piece of it). . .
was wondering given all the series that have a method of time traveling including most of dr . who not only which episode of who would make the list which interesting to see it be the one with the weeping angels debute but also wondered if both the cult classics trancers and time bandits would make the cut .
Hot Tub Time Machine should be retitled "The Movie where Jessica Pare is topless for a full minute."
Because that's pretty much what it's destined to be known as from now on, post-Mad Men.
When I saw the poster for Hot Tub Time Machine I knew where I saw it before. Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, ep 26 Beyond the Valley of the Dinosaurs. Now that my knowledge of Birdman has finally helped somewhere, maybe I can finally find peace.
I'd add two more:
--the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME, where you can travel back to time if you lie down and reeeeeeeally want to go back and time and reeeeeeeeally don't think about the fact that you're from another time.
--the videogame TIME PILOT, where you can jump ahead in time (to the "future" year of 2001) by shooting a lot of enemy planes/helicopters/saucers, then blowing up the boss plane/helicopter/saucer.
hmmm now why does number 7 sound so familiar....oh yes because SuperBook did it 10 years before the first TWT novelthat and "Flying House" where two of my favorite Time travel themed shows growing up..gimmie a break i was like 8 or 9 at the time i didn't know what proselytizing was.
I remember Flying House. I found it weird that the main cast were all friends with Jesus and they really didn't thing anything about it.
They were FRIENDS WITH JESUS!
Still... it was a house that flew. Didn't really mention anything about time travel, did it?
Hot Tub Time Machine is one of those very underrated movies. When it first came out I wanted nothing to do with it and actually watched in on a dare. And it was shockingly good and not quite what I thought it was. Time Bandits though is still one of my favorites from back when I was a kid.
The TimeSlides episode of Red Dwarf is a favorite of mine, simply for the fact that the guys from Carcass play Lister's back-up band.
Futurama has some good ones: gravitons and graviolis of supernovas hitting Jiffy Pop in a microwave and licking heads.
LOVE Time Bandits!
"Do you want to be in charge?"
"No, we agreed no leader."
"Right. So shut up and do as I say!"
I just watched Time Bandits for the 374th time the other day. Ever notice the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness is made out of giant Legos?
"If I was the Supreme Being, I wouldn't play about with daffodils and butterflies! I'd have started with lasers, eight 'o clock, Day 1!"
A TARDIS not being a bizarre form of time travel is acceptable. A shape changing time travel machine that happens to be jammed in the form of a police call box that also happens to be bigger on the inside is perfectly normal. Yes. Perfectly normal.
Time travel via masturbation helps to explain where the Egyptians got all their slave labour from to build the pyramids. It also explains why Dana Scully actions figures and copies of FHM magazine were found in some of the crypts.
How about "Somewhere in Time"? Christopher Reeve travels back to 1912 through the power of self-suggestion/hypnosis. Although I guess that's not so weird, considering what else is on this list.
Ah yes, but you see, "The Butterfly Effect" stars Ashton Kutcher, who, when up against something that stars Christopher Reeve, will always lose.
