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Plot Hole In H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"

Mal12345

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They have a time machine, but only candlelight and no automobiles. Especially no automobiles. You'd think they would have spatial travel mastered first. But no, somehow someone mastered time travel first.
 

Cellmold

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I would have thought the premise of time travel in the first place would be the most questionable aspect of the story....

Oh did you ever watch the recent movie of The Time Machine? There was a single automobile in that one, well ok an early prototype, although it didn't really encompass the story as it is in the book, in fact there are a few forth wall references in the film.

I understand your point of course. It makes sense that advanced methods of spatial travel should really have been developed first.
 

Mal12345

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I would have thought the premise of time travel in the first place would be the most questionable aspect of the story....

Oh did you ever watch the recent movie of The Time Machine? There was a single automobile in that one, well ok an early prototype, although it didn't really encompass the story as it is in the book, in fact there are a few forth wall references in the film.

I understand your point of course. It makes sense that advanced methods of spatial travel should really have been developed first.

I watched one movie years ago. If time is seen as a fourth dimension of space, then we are all traveling in the same direction and at the same speed. Wells's character invented a machine that can travel forward and backward through the fourth dimension at great speeds.

But notice that the Time Traveller had a subjective impression of the passage of time during his voyage. Moving forward 800,000 years took, let's say, 15 minutes. Or it could have been 3 hours.
 

Lark

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I've barely started the book.

:laugh:

Its a great book, I love Well's books but there are others I prefer to that one. Actually I think I liked War of The Worlds the best.

I seriously recommend the earliest film adaptation of that book, absolute classic, I think surpasses the book itself but avoid the more recent one with Jeremy Irons in it, it has more to do with Morlock Night or other "sequels" to the novel by other authors than the novel itself.
 

KDude

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I don't think it's a plothole so much as it's just a book written before the automobile.

Is that too literal for you? :|

As a way to mentally relieve the issue and trick yourself, how about "believing" in a fake theory on time travel - that big events and achievements like automobiles create vast ripples and change the trajectory of where time is heading. They change the course of time. So if you had a time travel machine before the invention of automobiles, jumping into the future would only take you into a future without those ripples.

In a sense, science fact creates more interesting science fiction..
 

Mal12345

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I don't think it's a plothole so much as it's just a book written before the automobile.

Is that too literal for you? :|

As a way to mentally relieve the issue and trick yourself, how about "believing" in a fake theory on time travel - that big events and achievements like automobiles create vast ripples and change the trajectory of where time is heading. They change the course of time. So if you had a time travel machine before the invention of automobiles, jumping into the future would only take you into a future without those ripples.

In a sense, science fact creates more interesting science fiction..

It's possible I was making fun of the "plot-hole" meme so popular on IMDB. But there could be a plot-hole in the fact that neither the time machine nor the time traveller aged 800,000 years.
 

Blank

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harry-potter.jpg
 

Mal12345

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:laugh:

Its a great book, I love Well's books but there are others I prefer to that one. Actually I think I liked War of The Worlds the best.

I seriously recommend the earliest film adaptation of that book, absolute classic, I think surpasses the book itself but avoid the more recent one with Jeremy Irons in it, it has more to do with Morlock Night or other "sequels" to the novel by other authors than the novel itself.

I finished the book yesterday, now I'm watching the 2002 movie (5.4 stars at IMDB). The classic version sounds more interesting. This movie has a "perambulator" in it, it's some kind of proto-car that breaks down all the time. And yet someone manages to invent a time machine? Astounding...
 

Werewolfen

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When it comes to fantasy movies like these, I tend to ignore hard scrutiny and get involved with the storyline. I enjoy predicting what's going to happen next over picking apart flaws.
 

Mal12345

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When it comes to fantasy movies like these, I tend to ignore hard scrutiny and get involved with the storyline. I enjoy predicting what's going to happen next over picking apart flaws.

The Time Machine isn't fantasy, it's science fiction. Any fiction could be called a fantasy.

I'm distinguishing between the far-fetched idea that someone invented a time machine before we mastered spatial travel, versus the analog chronometer seen in an original 1960s Star Trek which takes place in the 23rd century. I can understand the presence of an analog time-piece because nobody had heard of digital time technology in the 1960s. Definitely not Gene Roddenberry anyway.
 

Mal12345

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I should've said "Science Fiction Fantasy". :doh:

Only if the sci-fi lacks credibility. Breaking the light barrier is credible, by going around it, so to speak - manipulating space itself. It's feasible in theory, and I suppose that would also break the time barrier although nobody I know of has mentioned how yet.

But this 2002 Time Machine movie is going too far. Some time in the 21st century the moon was shattered by a nuke. Eventually the human race, in attempting to survive without a moon (why would this be so difficult?) split off into two new races, the tech-savvy, tough Morlock, who live underground, and the simple-minded, weak Eloi who live above-ground. In the movie this division was created by some kind of breeding program. So now we have a third species, those who control? That's the explanation for a society existing in the year 800,000 or so provided by this movie.

:doh:

The book was far, far more believable. In the book version, the two races are the natural product of human social structure: Rich, and poor. Wells says nothing about a middle class, but it was published in 1895 England after all, where there was basically the super-wealthy aristocrat class and the working class. Or at least that's how Wells apparently viewed his society.

The Eloi are the evolutionary product of trivial wealth and a comfortable lifestyle consisting primarily of those who only consume the products of the working class, while the Morlock evolved from the working class, consisting of those who produce. The Morlock also use the Eloi as food. So in the long run, the tables have turned. The consumers have become the consumed.

That's a great irony produced by an author of great classic novels. Too bad Hollywood can't even begin to compete.
 

Mal12345

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The Time Machine (2002)

Head Morlock - "Who are you to question 800,000 years of evolution?"

Um, well, you just admitted that the present situation is the product of a breeding program instituted by your own ancestors.

:doh:

Edit - At least the time traveller gets his question answered by the Head Morlock ("Why can't I change the past?"). That was worth the rest of the junk in this movie.

:D
 

Mal12345

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I'm watching the 1960 version of The Time Machine. It starts out just like the book. The time traveller reflects to his refined British companions:

"The difficulty in explaining the 4th dimension is that it cannot be explained or felt."

Irish bloke: "If you don't mind, George, would you refresh me on the first three dimensions?"

LOL

Finally, a decent movie.
 

Mal12345

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Talking about the time machine: "But what GOOD is such a contraption?"

Oh, I don't know. Betting on horses?
 

Ene

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I suppose that Wells was like Di Vinci in a way, always thinking thoughts that had yet to be "thunk" as Dr. Seuss would say. Anyone ever read C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet series? Same thing. Plot has holes, the science is faulty to the point that even fourth grade Astronomy would now make it unbelievable, but no one's eyes had been to the surface of Mars or Venus at that time, no probes had been launched. He had to work with the science he had available to him [well, actually, he was more concerned about the theology, but still, the point remains.] Oh, and DUNE. How can there be an entirely desert planet? That has puzzled me for a long time. Still, the writer's world building skills are pretty amazing.

On, another note, I like the discussion about Science Fiction/Fantasy. From a writer's standpoint the difference is that in Sci-Fi the plot must be based upon some element of science [even if it is soft-science or minutely mentioned in the story] whereas in Fantasy there must be some element of magic. Therefore, techinically Star Trek is Sci-fi, but Star Wars crosses over into fantasy with elements of both.
 

ilikeitlikethat

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I noticed a plot hole in Back to the Future...

When Marty went back to November 1955 from October 1985, when he arrived, he should have been in outter space 'or somewhere, probabbly him and Doc's Time Machine's matter should have arrived to tragically be in the middle of some giant rock instead of the more likely; floating in empty space; Hill Valley, where Back to the Future's set, is fixed on an ever moving planet Earth; The orbit of the Earth, means that Earth is always moving around the Sun; So I just assume 'Good Science' Doc must have made that Flux Capacitor compensate for the ever spinning/orbiting Earth. So when it travels through time, it also travels to where the car left is at at the time it wants to go to.

I'm thinking, since two things can't occupy the same exact space at the same time with out something giving up... If Doc's Time Machine and Marty where to find a big massive alien rock hanging around in November 1955 where in October 1985 Twin Pines Mall is; Then, apart from spelling death for Marty because, his matter arrived in a rock, I wonder, what will happen?

Will the sudden push/introduction of extra matter into that space occupied by the rock cause an atomic type explosion or worse, rip the space time continuum? Idk...
 
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