My take on LRR’s “A Stitch in Time”

While thinking about how to publish this, I suddenly remembered I had a blog. So much for my intentions about a year ago. So Hello World again, I guess.

Anyway, I want to write a brief analysis on “A Stitch in Time”, a short comedic video by LoadingReadyRun dealing with timetravel. This is a topic that has fascinated me for quite some time. Paul Saunders, the author of the script behind this video (you can watch it at the Escapist by the way), has published a little timeline graphic over at the LRR Blog. It is definitely a valid take on timetravel (hey, nobody knows how it would really work), but I don’t see the need for a paradox.

Paul apparently trys to fit the story into a single timeline, which must fail without some major paradoxes. As apparent by his graphic, he has to start with two people, since the origin of the sunglass-man would otherwise not be logically explainable.

But why use the old deterministic concept of a single timeline at all? If Primer has taught us anything at all, then that you can portray timetravel intelligently and realisticly without having to struggle with loop problems. So here is my take on “A Stitch in Time” with Primer logic:

The first important thing to realise is, that we only get to see one continuity play out. There is a lot happening behind the scenes and especially in other timelines that we do not see. The basic premise is, that whenever somebody travels back in time it leaves the original timeline untouched, but it forks a new one at the exact moment they arrive. This feature alone solves almost all of the paradoxes commonly associated with timetravel. Yes, you can travel back in time and prevent yourself from travelling back. But nobody cares since the original timeline where you came from has already played out so you don’t need to travel back again in this new timeline. Got a headache already?

Primer does not show travel into the future, the LRR video does however. It was much easier to incorporate this into the Primer logic than I originally thought it would be. This just takes the concept one step further. By every decision we make, we pick one of the many possible futures. So somebody from the past arriving is always a possible timeline in the future, you don’t even need to fork the past, since it didn’t already happen.

Anyway, enough of the talk. I’ve made my own little timeline graphic. This shows the basic concept of what I just talked you through applied to “A Stitch in Time”. Note: There are hints that this is not the first time the characters played out the events shown in the video. Again: Please remember that anything could have happened in the timelines we do not get to see (T0 and T1 after the fork in my graphic, the whole part shown might just be a fork of a previous timeline).

(click picture to view in full size)

Tags: LoadingReadyRun, paradox, Primer, timeline, timetravel