STARGATE UNIVERSE #8:Time/Season 1/2009

[coyote6]

Presumably, the venom kills off all the microbes in them, so everyone's cured. Now that they know the water is contaminated, they can purify it before they use it.

BTW, I figured the next iteration of the time loop found both Kino's -- the original, next to Rush's skeleton, and the second, with Scott's warning. If the first iteration's Kino was there for the second iteration, I saw nothing that would keep it from being there for the third iteration; it was sent back in time to a point long before the SGU folks arrived on-planet.

 

[Merkuri]

The ship is smart enough to figure out what is in the water and that it hurts the passengers but not smart enough to do so in advance. Can it fix its own filters to purify the rest of the water? Will the passengers all be carriers of something but compensating with the venom-serum-cure?

Remember that the ship seems to be highly damaged. It's possible it could detect the organisms in the water but couldn't do anything about them. Maybe it didn't detect them in the water at first for the same reason the crew didn't (they were too small, and too few) and when it detected them it immediately dropped out of FTL and brought them to a planet with a cure. Or maybe it couldn't detect them in the water due to faulty sensors in that area and was only able to detect them in the crew once enough people were infected (but without symptoms at this point).

...I saw nothing that would keep it from being there for the third iteration; it was sent back in time to a point long before the SGU folks arrived on-planet.

Yes, but one could argue that the discovery of the first time-traveling kino prevented it from being sent through at all. Think of it this way... it's the same kino that went through both times. Of course, this is the part of time travel that makes my head hurt, so who knows.

 

[Rykion]

This was definitely one of my favorie episodes so far. I don't mind time travel as long as it is done well. Too many shows just don't do it well.

Yes, but one could argue that the discovery of the first time-traveling kino prevented it from being sent through at all. Think of it this way... it's the same kino that went through both times. Of course, this is the part of time travel that makes my head hurt, so who knows.

Assuming the gate transported the 2nd kino back in time and the dying Rush or an animal didn't mess with it, there should be 2 kinos and a dead Rush for the team in the third time loop to find.

 

[Merkuri]

Assuming the gate transported the 2nd kino back in time and the dying Rush or an animal didn't mess with it, there should be 2 kinos and a dead Rush for the team in the third time loop to find.

In order to have a working theory of time travel and avoid paradoxes (like killing your own grandfather) you have to assume that time travel causes alternate realities. If we assume just one reality for SGU then we have a paradox, because the discovery of the time-traveling kino prevented the events that lead to said kino being sent back in time in the first place. Since there seemed to be no paradox we must assume that SGU has alternate realities spawned by time travel (and perhaps other things).

So in what we'll call "Reality A" the team went through, got completely shredded by the disease and the creatures on the planet, and Scott sent the kino through the glitched wormhole. This created a second reality, which we'll call "Reality B". In reality B the kino lay forgotten for a long time (long enough for a body to decompose) until this reality's crew of the Destiny came along and found it. The crew managed to handle themselves a little better this time, but ultimately Scott was still the only survivor planetside and sent the kino through the glitched wormhole again. This created a third reality, "Reality C". We did not get to see any of what happens in reality C, but presumably things went much better off for this reality's crew of Destiny, and also presumably this reality is what will continue forward for the rest of the show (unless there's another time travel episode).

If you followed all of that, logically the kinos from reality A and B each traveled back in time to a different reality (kino A went to reality B and kino B went to reality C), so that means that there shouldn't be two kinos for the crew of reality C to find.

Of course, there's a second theory of time travel that says that you simply cannot change the future. Paradoxes don't happen simply because they can't. This doesn't seem to be the case with SGU because they did change the timeline by sending the kino back.

 

[RangerWickett]

Or you go the Dr. Who route, where time is wibbly wobbly. So what if an isolated pocket of the universe doesn't maintain hard causality? You have a few iterations of a time loop, where you accrue an increasingly embarrassing number of kinos, until eventually the group on board throws their hands up and says, "Fine, let's not screw this up any more."

This continues until there's an iteration where no one throws anything back in time, in which case the loop breaks and time proceeds forward. This can happen either by Scott screwing up and dying prematurely, or by them saving the day. We assume they've saved the day.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Just FYI, there is a Webisode that specifies that BOTH kinos were found the third time around. I'm not sure how that makes sense logically.

 

[RangerWickett]

Bowl shaped, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

In order to have a working theory of time travel and avoid paradoxes (like killing your own grandfather) you have to assume that time travel causes alternate realities. If we assume just one reality for SGU then we have a paradox, because the discovery of the time-traveling kino prevented the events that lead to said kino being sent back in time in the first place. Since there seemed to be no paradox we must assume that SGU has alternate realities spawned by time travel (and perhaps other things).

So in what we'll call "Reality A" the team went through, got completely shredded by the disease and the creatures on the planet, and Scott sent the kino through the glitched wormhole. This created a second reality, which we'll call "Reality B". In reality B the kino lay forgotten for a long time (long enough for a body to decompose) until this reality's crew of the Destiny came along and found it. The crew managed to handle themselves a little better this time, but ultimately Scott was still the only survivor planetside and sent the kino through the glitched wormhole again. This created a third reality, "Reality C". We did not get to see any of what happens in reality C, but presumably things went much better off for this reality's crew of Destiny, and also presumably this reality is what will continue forward for the rest of the show (unless there's another time travel episode).

If you followed all of that, logically the kinos from reality A and B each traveled back in time to a different reality (kino A went to reality B and kino B went to reality C), so that means that there shouldn't be two kinos for the crew of reality C to find.

Of course, there's a second theory of time travel that says that you simply cannot change the future. Paradoxes don't happen simply because they can't. This doesn't seem to be the case with SGU because they did change the timeline by sending the kino back.

SG1 and Atlantis both established that alternate timelines exist via multiple time travel stories and alternate universe stories involving devices like the Puddle Jumper Time Ship, the Quantum Mirror, and multiple instances of Wormhole timeloops (the episode that takes place in the alternate future where they send the note back in time to lock out a certain address, though they end up meeting that race a few episodes later anyway, and Stargate Continuum).

 

[Mark]

Remember that the ship seems to be highly damaged.

Fair enough.

 

[Rykion]

So in what we'll call "Reality A" the team went through, got completely shredded by the disease and the creatures on the planet, and Scott sent the kino through the glitched wormhole. This created a second reality, which we'll call "Reality B". In reality B the kino lay forgotten for a long time (long enough for a body to decompose) until this reality's crew of the Destiny came along and found it. The crew managed to handle themselves a little better this time, but ultimately Scott was still the only survivor planetside and sent the kino through the glitched wormhole again. This created a third reality, "Reality C". We did not get to see any of what happens in reality C, but presumably things went much better off for this reality's crew of Destiny, and also presumably this reality is what will continue forward for the rest of the show (unless there's another time travel episode).

If you followed all of that, logically the kinos from reality A and B each traveled back in time to a different reality (kino A went to reality B and kino B went to reality C), so that means that there shouldn't be two kinos for the crew of reality C to find.

I understand the concept of alternate realities. There is nothing in the concept that says that a change in the timeline, in this case kino A, only effects one other reality. It should logically effect, and exist in, every divergent reality that the change itself caused, and every divergence those subsequent realities cause. Otherwise you will run into a paradox and will reset to reality A.

In a nutshell, the timeline change in reality A caused reality B. The timeline change in reality B caused reality C. Since reality B cannot exist without the change in reality A, reality C must include the changes made in both reality A and reality B to avoid paradox.

I won't say that this is the only way for time travel to work, but it seems the most logical way to fit what the show was trying to do.