MovieChat Forums > The Time Machine (1960) Discussion > The doc had it right: The model on the t...

The doc had it right: The model on the table should NOT have disappeared

posted 8 years ago by bg_mog
13 replies | jump to latest

Let's say (hypothetically) you program the T.M. to move 30 seconds into the future. Undoubtedly, you will then see it on the table in 30 seconds. But why should you NOT see it in every of the 29 seconds between its "departure" and "arrival"? Why should it disappear? In later scenes, the large machine is clearly shown as MOVING through time, not JUMPING from moment A to B; it just moves through time faster than its surroundings, and its surroundings should therefore be able to see the machine at any moment in time just as the machine (or its pilot) sees the surroundings.

If that is true for a short travel, it should be true for ANY travel, even into infinity. My conclusion: They should see the model just sitting there on the table, unable to tell whether it is moving faster in time than they are.

Your thoughts?

[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

The way that I can envision the time Machine disappearing, is if the TM works like this: There is a volumetric enclosure, or bubble, around the TM that isolates it from the cause and effect stream of the universe. Then it is detached and can move through time. It can't be seen if it's not part of the caused and effect stream.

Then, when it stops time traveling, it reconnects to the cause-effect stream. If those men were there next week, and that's when it set its time travel destination to, then it would suddenly appear to them, right in the same place.
____________________
The story is king.

[–] moodie-1 8 years ago

Go back and watch the movie again. IIRC, George never mentioned anything about the miniature time machine stopping. In fact, I recall him saying that he could only demonstrate using the miniature once, since once it started its travel it would never stop and he would lose it forever. This is why it would never reappear - as long as it continued traveling through time it would remain outside reality for anyone in any time.

[–] loveagoodstory 8 years ago

I saw it in the same way as cars on the motorway watching one going far faster disappearing off into the distance. The 'normal speed' cars will pass the same points but much more slowly and in (e.g.) a day's journey will not reach the same points as the super-fast car will in its day's travel.

If it was visible all the time while travelling, it wouldn't be a time travel machine but instead one for slowing down time for itself and those within it, giving them the illusion of fast travel. That seems a more complicated view of it.

By the way, I'm not trying to propose an impeccable premise for time travel as seen in this film, just how it struck me.

---------------------------------------------------------
Free your mind and the rest will follow

[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

So does that mean a time traveling machine would become briefly visible as it passed through different now-points, like a car passing yours on the highway?

____________________
The story is king.

[–] loveagoodstory 8 years ago

Not as I see it, it wouldn't. But I was more trying to describe an impression than literal movement.

I prefer the idea that it just travels in time and doesn't interact with space. Otherwise you could stop to find that you're buried in a future wall or all sorts of things.

---------------------------------------------------------
Free your mind and the rest will follow

[–] bg_mog 8 years ago

If it was visible all the time while travelling, it wouldn't be a time travel machine but instead one for slowing down time for itself and those within it, giving them the illusion of fast travel.

I was under the impression that the machine did indeed work that way because everything around it was shown "fast-forwarding".

Also, the (large) machine WAS visible all the time because it was shown from the outside while travelling.

I think the movie was just a little inconsistent in showing the model disappear (for dramatic effect) but NOT the large machine (also for dramatic effect, because they wanted to show the machine and the pilot during travel).

Actually, had the small model not disappeared, it would have been flat-out impossible to demonstrate to the audience what was happening (or that SOMETHING was happening at all). It would have also been an utter failure for the Time Traveller's demonstration to his friends:

T.T.: "There, see?"

[the model just sits there]

Friends: "What?"

T.T.: "It's travelling into the future!"

[the model still sits there]

Friends: "Yeah, right!"

[friends leave]

[credits roll]



[–] loveagoodstory 8 years ago

Yes, you're right, the mini-machine had to do something to be a demonstration. Mind you, it could have been shown as faded, just visible, and they could have got the story to fit around that, too. But vanish was what they chose.

[–] Soodinum 8 years ago

He explains that in the book.

'Then' and 'than' are different words - stop confusing them.

[–] mcdemuth 8 years ago

First off, we have no idea how the machine is able to travel through time.

Perhaps it enters hyperspace or travels through a wormhole or something. Or it may create a large gravity field, and bends light around it. Maybe it accelerates itself to the Speed Of Light.

(When was the last time you could see light waves without dust or smoke interfering with it?)

But if you were traveling at the speed of light, you would see planets and stars moving past you.

You could also think of it like Bullet Time. I am sure you have seen that in movies and tv shows. You can't see bullets either, but if you were to move as fast, it would look like time slows down around you.

So whatever this method of time travel is, it just renders what is inside the time field invisible, and untouchable.

The model works the same way as the full sized machine...

No one saw George or the Machine traveling through time either. They were not seen in his lab sitting there like mannequins. And no one outside the machine ever bumped into invisible but solid objects. Otherwise, Filby and the others would never have believed he disappeared from the world, and his house would never have been boarded up.

I know it is hard to believe, but almost all time travel shows and movies that show time travel do it in a manner that requires you to "suspend your belief".

In case you never realized, Back To The Future is flawed. How does the Delorean arrive in the same place using the instant time travel method, when the Earth is constantly rotating on it's axis, and revolving around the Sun? Hill Valley, California is never in the same place! The Delorean should have ended up inside the Earth, or on the moon, or arrived floating in space...

Just accept what you see, as to how it works, and move on...

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

"In case you never realized, Back To The Future is flawed."

I haven't found a flawless movie yet. Back to the Future indeed has many flaws, illogical things, and implausibilities, but what you suggest is not one of them.

"How does the Delorean arrive in the same place using the instant time travel method, when the Earth is constantly rotating on it's axis, and revolving around the Sun?"

Every time travel movie actually falls under this consideration.

My way of explaining this is that people don't normally fall out of a planet, when they are traveling through time the 'regular pace' - why should they fall out of the planet just because they're traveling a different pace?

Another way of explaining it is that the DeLorean's computer calculates Earth's position and thus always arrives accurately.

Yet another way of explaining it, is that maybe time works together with planets in such a way that 'local time' is tied to any given planet, thus, if you move back or forward in time, you move 'within the planetary path' or 'planetary history' - in other words, you're always 'tied to the planet' and end up where the planet was back then, because you are in the planet's magnetic field and influence sphere and whatnot.

So when you travel in time, you always end up on the surface of the planet, regardless of how much the planet moves, just the same way as if you use an airplane on the planet - regardless of the planet's movements, you're still traveling within the planet's realm and atmosphere, and can't accidentally be flung to space just because the planet constantly moves. Same thing happens fourth-dimensionally, too - perhaps it's an 'universal constant' that's only discovered by practical experiments in time travel movies.

I am sure there are plenty of similar ways to explain it, so it's not a flaw, it's just something the writers didn't address. I mean, a planet's movement might leave a 'particle trace' that all time travel utilizes in its path, etc..

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

My thoughts:

In my opinion, the 'speed' is relevant. It may very well be true that the time machine exists sort of 'protective bubble beyond existence', sure.

But another way of approaching this would be to change 'speed' into 'increments'.

We all know that animation consists of nothing but a series of images or pictures. If you have enough of these pictures per second, the animation will look like movement, although it's not - it's still just a series of pictures.

Perhaps the time machine works with a similar principle. When it moves slowly enough, you can still see it, but from an outsider's perspective, the time traveler will move extremely quickly, or every second, you just see a quick flash of the time traveler arriving and then departing that second, etc.

When we're shown the big time machine from the 'outside', please keep in mind that we're still ALSO traveling with the time traveler, so we're not seeing it from the 'normal time frame', as in -completely- from the outside. We're still in the 'protective bubble', or at least traveling through time the same speed as George and the time machine, and therefore, of course we see the time machine.

It might still be that someone TRULY outside (meaning, traveling through time the 'normal' speed, that environment outside the time machine would be) would not see the time machine, because it's traveling so fast - or perhaps it's "skipping" seconds, or minutes, or hours, or days.

The faster it goes, the more it skips (the faster those animation frames would be played, for example).

This would cause it to, for example, arrive at 10:00 briefly, and then instantly vanish - then arrive immediately at 11:00 briefly, and instantly vanish. So a 'true outsider' might actually see quick glimpses and flashes, if they observe very carefully, and have a 'fast eye' for it.

If it's moving slowly, it could perhaps be seen (a glimpse of) every minute or so. So, 60 flashes or quick glimpses per hour.

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

This way, it's easier to understand what the good inventor tries to explain. If you don't think of it in terms of seamless speed, but if you think of it in terms of 'increments' that increase when the speed increases.

When the time machine travels really fast, it could skip 10 years at a time, meaning, you can see a quick glimpse of it once in 1918, then another glimpse around the same time of year, during one day, certain hour, certain minute, certain second in 1928, and then it'd be gone again.

At least this is how I explain it - after you understand it 'skipping' larger and larger time increments, it's easier to understand why it can't be seen usually. And then you can try to apply that understanding into 'seamless speed', the way George is trying to explain it.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but this is sort of how I understood it. If it could be seen all the time, it would be traveling just normal speed in time. But if it moves through time faster than its environment, it's only natural that anyone in the environment can't really see it, as it whizzes by that moment faster, perhaps, than eye can see, or faster than light can hit and radiate from it so it could be seen.

By the time the light's rays reach it, it's already in some future time.

I imagine the time machine and its traveler becoming first sort of transparent - at lower speeds - then more and more transparent - at higher speeds -, until you only see glimpses of them very rarely, and then pretty much nothing at all -at very high speeds-.

I prefer the Flux Capacitor, though.. it's a fully encased and thus better protected time machine, you can bring more luggage, it's mobile (though dependent on gas), the travel happens intantaneously, so you don't have to wonder about these things.. the only problem with what Doc Brown did with it, is that it can only travel between the year 0000 and 9999 (though I guess 0000 would be something like 1 BC, if it's true that year 0 never existed).

[–] Satan2016 (25830) 7 years ago

If the machine sped up time by a factor of 1000, the intensity of the image will be 1/1000th and barely visible. Just like you can't see bullets flying from the gun.