4 Shows That Abuse The Rules Of Time Travel

Series nine of Doctor Who is here, with Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor guiding us through a new set of time travelling adventures. We’ll see the past, the far future and other weird timey wimey stuff.

But how does the whole time travel thing work, anyway? What are the rules, and hasn’t Doctor Who broken them plenty of times already? In fact, too many TV shows play fast and loose with the rules of travelling through time.

Someone should take them to task. How can they expect to be taken seriously if they keep flaking out on the laws of travelling through history? Who are the offenders you ask? Here are the worst TV shows when it comes to mucking about with history.

1. Warehouse 13

In the first episode of Warehouse 13‘s slightly embarrassing final season, a bad guy has travelled back in time to change history. How does time travel work in Warehouse 13? Agent Pete Lattimer doesn’t care.

“Don’t try and explain time travel. It never makes sense and it always makes my head hurt,” he says. This should be a capital offence for TV shows playing with time travel. It’s one thing to make rules for how time travel works in your show and then break them. It’s quite another to not even bother with any rules in the first place.

Admittedly, the agents of Warehouse 13 had already dabbled in time travel on a previous occasion. This involved using H.G. Wells’ time machine, but in this case it only allowed a person’s consciousness to time travel. This right here is the problem – each form of time travel in the show is vaguer and more inconsistent than the last.

Why does H. G. Wells’ time machine only allow for mental and not physical travel, yet in season five everyone can travel through time with their entire bodies willy nilly? It’s as if the writers were making it all up as they went along.

2. Primeval

Another show that half-arses time travel and its consequences. With Primeval though, it’s integral to the overall existence of the show. It’s about prehistoric creatures travelling through portals to the present day.

Things don’t take long to reach the bounds of implausibility. When a character is erased from history for some reason, why do they show up next season with a different name and different memories? Even when the show tries to explain this away it seems like the odds on it happening are so monumentally slim as to be hilarious.

I know Primeval is supposed to be a light-hearted show, but it’s full of plotholes even without the time travel.

3. Steins;Gate

This one hurts my head. In Steins;Gate, time travel works through something called ‘world lines’. Each one is separate, but people can jump from one to another by sending information back in time, thus changing history.

Unlike some of the other shows I’ve mentioned, Steins:Gate has a solid set of time travel rules. The problem is they’re so complicated that it hurts my head. When main character Okabe sends one text message back in time accidentally, it stops someone from dying. When he sends a whole bunch though, he comes close to creating the vast conspiracy he delusionally believes is stalking his every move.

While people, events and reality are changing around him however, Okabe is somehow immune. He still remembers the world before he changed it. No explanation is given. In a show where time travel works on complex rules, this sticks out like a sore thumb.

4. Doctor Who

The adventures of the Doctor are riddled with unexplained paradoxes and forgotten time travel errors. With a Time Lord, it’s probably one of the hazards of the job, but can’t we at least make sure the show follows the same rules all the time?

What’s all this business about unchangeable fixed points in time? I get that it’s meant as a reason the Doctor doesn’t travel back in time and stop Hitler, but hasn’t he broken that rule a bunch anyway? He’s practically best mates with Winston Churchill and is willing to give him a hand whenever he calls. Oh, and if certain things can’t be changed, how come the time travel police were going to try and kill Hitler after all?

And while we’re at it, back in the 1980s series the Doctor discovers his current archenemy is an evil version of himself from his own future. The future Doctor, calling himself the Valeyard almost succeeds in robbing the Doctor of future regenerations. If he’d achieved this though, wouldn’t he have erased his own existence?

The Doctor’s other arch-nemesis, The Master, said the Valeyard was the product of the Doctor’s darker side from between his twelfth and final incarnations. Thanks to Stephen Moffat’s creation of the John Hurt doctor, that means we’re technically on the final regeneration right now. I think. You have a lot to answer for, Moffat!

In any case, the Valeyard should have shown up by now. The fact he hasn’t is another example of Doctor Who dicking around with time travel with a complete lack of responsibility. For shame.