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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7448024" data-attributes="member: 177">To be clear - nobody has ever done this, so what happens when you do it is fiction, and we get to choose.For example, Mr. Bowman, above, says that if you travel in time, you *cannot* end in a state that removes the reason you traveled back in time.  That's *his* restriction.  He feels that's the appropriate logic.  But that's a choice for metaphysics in his world.  It isn't the most common choice - usually, you see a person travels in time, changes the past, and comes forward again.  Kennedy lived (thanks to them), so they have no reason to go back to the Grassy Knoll, but they do not remember the new history, and come back not knowing, for example, that Madonna is now President of the USA.  While Mr. Bowman refers to Timeless, the show doesn't rigorously use his metaphysic in general.  This may not be obvious at first, because the protagonists are reactive - they almost always travel in reaction ot the bad guys travelling - so long as the bad guys have a reason to travel, so do they.  But, let us look more closely at the episode mentioned....In backstory, before the series begins, Wyatt's wife Jessica is murdered.  Wyatt is told a man who is in jail for two other murders did it.  So, Wyatt goes back in time to make sure this serial killer is never born.  He *succeeds*, by killing the murderer's father, the murderer is never born.  When he returns, the two other women are alive, but Wyatt's wife is still dead. Here's the thing - in this, Wyatt *does* remove the reason for him to go back in time.  He went back to remove a serial killer from history.  He did so.  That serial killer does not exist.  He cannot go back in time to stop the birth of a man who never existed!  His wife is still dead, but that fact is not a reason for him to take that time trip!  This episode violates Mr. Bowman's metaphysics.Timelsss has been smart, in that it has not laid out all the rules of time travel for us to see.  The only rule they have is that you cannot travel to a time in which you already exist.  In the final episode of the second season, that rule is broken, as future versions of a couple of the characters show up in our present in a heavily modified time machine.If you run time travel, you get to choose how it works.</blockquote>

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