Why I kind of detest time travel in my science fiction

Continuum is a show that's on SyFy, and its third season started a week ago. Warning: there will be some spoilers ahead (if only to use as a platform to allow me to bitch). So in Continuum, we've got this organization called Freelancers. We don't know much about them other than they like to put time travelers in glass boxes similar to Joss Whedon's horror movie Cabin in the Woods and they are an ancient organization that's been around for over a thousand years that doesn't "time travel." Instead they know all about "time travel", have great technology to do so, and monitor the integrity of the timeline like a "firewall" monitors the integrity of your network. When bad stuff gets through to corrupt the present, then they selectively choose and dispatch a cure because not everyone that goes into the past has the ability to change the future.

Continuum has decided to integrate time travel so much that it's a plot device. In some ways this works for me. I do like the idea that every time you time travel, you create a new branch of the timeline. I like the idea that when you time travel, you could meet yourself and this would be bad. It explains why Kagame had to sacrifice himself on the day he was born just to make sure that he never met himself (that was season one). It also explains why Kiera could not go forward in time and just stop herself from ever embarking on time travel to begin with.

I also like the idea that major paradoxes cause the universe to destroy itself. In Continuum, there's no Alec to grow up and invent the time machine and create Kiera's advanced suit and weaponry so super storms are basically destroying the earth. That scratches out one timeline.

It all sounds like great science fiction, right? But here's the thing: I feel like too much time travel just moves all the writing "left" into another universe kind of like a dream or where all the characters are just slightly different because they don't shave or wear wigs. I'm not a fan of "good Spock" meets "evil Spock" (nerdy Star Trek reference I know) and that's essentially what we're getting in this season of Continuum. Kiera has basically become an asshole because she's so stressed out over what her timeline Alec has done and it's almost like we've got entirely different characters. For one, she no longer trusts Alec (which was one of the things I really liked). Also, the flash futures no longer make sense to me because I don't know if they're actually plausible given the split that's now caused by so many time travelers going back in the past. Like why should I care if these things may or may not even exist now?

I guess this is where time travel really gets under my skin in a bad way. I detest clones running around and I don't think it ever really improves a narrative. Back to the Future's installments 2 and 3 were not superior to the original in this aspect and were simply an excuse to spend more time with a loveable character. Hopefully they (the writers of Continuum) will just stick with the one timeline and not pull this crap again because its too confusing, and I don't like the character changes occurring in their personality. Honestly, writers should steer clear of time travel. No one ever does it well unless "time travel" is part of the opening and that's where the readers/watchers are dropped. Doing time travel mid-series is just too awkward.

I don't think I like time travel without Michael J. Fox

Here's a spoiler alert for any of you that are going to see Looper. I left confused at the ending, and I blame it on poorly designed time travel tropes.

I'll keep Marty McFly and the Back to the
Future paradoxes over those ones
that drove me insane by watching Looper.

This weekend, I saw the film. It had one of the most horrific scenes in it that left me haunted for a couple of days afterward. Basically, I kept thinking of the horrible implications of torturing a young person and watching those wounds instantly appear on the older (but same person) who existed in the same timeline.

But aside from that, the ending left me really confused. JGL's character commits suicide at the end of the movie to PREVENT his older self from performing an act that sets the future on a course that he does not like. But I don't get how this solves anything? By killing himself, his older self doesn't exist thereby creating the reason for him taking this action in the first place.

Plus, the whole "kill yourself to change time" trope has been done a lot. Dr. Who's "Angels take Manhattan" did the same thing. Star Trek did it in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and in "Year of Hell." It happened in Terminator 2.

So on another level, the trope was incredibly unoriginal.

I don't think I like time travel without Michael J. Fox. At least then it was funny and Michael was charming.

This remake handled time travel really
well, even if it was underwhelming
(and short) as a film.

One show that I think handled time travel really well was the Time Machine. In it, Guy Pierce invents a time machine in order to go back into time to save his beloved wife from an untimely death. Well he does so, but she dies a few minutes later from something else. To understand why, he travels into the future and discovers that in creating a time machine, he created a paradox. The moment that he saved his wife, the motivation for the creation of the time machine evaporated and hence, wouldn't be invented.

Why couldn't Looper embrace this? Why couldn't Looper have seen that JGL needed to stop Bruce Willis in a way that didn't kill himself. And why the hell wouldn't Bruce Willis have JGL's epiphany suddenly pop into his mind so that he would know that what he was about to do would set the future on a course that his younger self did not like?

Anyway, overall I think I liked Joseph Gordon Levitt and that's about all I can say that's positive about this movie. I think before any writer tackles time travel and expects me to swallow it, they need to think really really long on it, or I'm most likely going to be frustrated, confused, and just simply prone to not liking it.