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masterofmidgetsI realize that trying to apply real-world logic to comic book physics is an exercise in head-bashing futility, but I've been reading Booster Gold this weekend, and there's this one thing that is really driving me crazy.
So here's the premise: Booster Gold fights, and finally defeats, the leader of the criminal organization the 1000, his Big Bad so far in the series, but gets his ass kicked pretty thoroughly before he manages to pull it out. Skeets is broken, his supersuit is totally depowered, his arm and several of his ribs are broken, and because his forcefield isn't protecting him from the 20th Century germs anymore, he is dying of some mysterious wasting disease. Also there is a mob of anti-superhero citizens storming the hospital; it's really not Booster's week. So anyway, in order to fix his suit and save his life, Booster, his secretary, his manager, and his random Asian scientist meet up with Rip Hunter and convince him to test-run his time sphere by taking them to the 25th Century. But when they get there, Booster's mom is dead and he's a wanted criminal. There are a lot of hijinks, police bikes getting blown up, etc.
And you know, a lot of the iffy science (Trixie's magnetic suit, for example, makes no sense at all) I can deal with. I'm not bothered by Booster's melodramatic manpain or the fact that 500 years in the future everyone still speaks perfectly comprehensible English. But for some reason it bugs me intensely that they go to a point in the future several months after Booster left, like the time he spends in the past has to have a real-time equivalent in the future. It makes no sense!
Consider: if you assume that linear time travel is possible at all, as DC obviously does, than you can travel at will to ANY point in the time line. Since Booster has lived through those years, they already happened - it's no longer a possible future, it's a set in stone defined future. There is nothing stopping them from going to the future three weeks before Booster left, or two months, or whatever, aside from the potential danger of meeting Booster, but the guy's a night watchman, not the president, he's probably pretty easy to avoid. The technology they need, the supersuit and whatever, already exists, since Booster didn't make it, he just stole it. And Booster knows that in the future he's a criminal. Why would he deliberately go back to a time period where he's a wanted man, when they could accomplish their goals just as easily if they went a little sooner in his timeline? I DO NOT GET IT.
I know it makes for better story-telling. It just really, irrationally pisses me off.
So here's the premise: Booster Gold fights, and finally defeats, the leader of the criminal organization the 1000, his Big Bad so far in the series, but gets his ass kicked pretty thoroughly before he manages to pull it out. Skeets is broken, his supersuit is totally depowered, his arm and several of his ribs are broken, and because his forcefield isn't protecting him from the 20th Century germs anymore, he is dying of some mysterious wasting disease. Also there is a mob of anti-superhero citizens storming the hospital; it's really not Booster's week. So anyway, in order to fix his suit and save his life, Booster, his secretary, his manager, and his random Asian scientist meet up with Rip Hunter and convince him to test-run his time sphere by taking them to the 25th Century. But when they get there, Booster's mom is dead and he's a wanted criminal. There are a lot of hijinks, police bikes getting blown up, etc.
And you know, a lot of the iffy science (Trixie's magnetic suit, for example, makes no sense at all) I can deal with. I'm not bothered by Booster's melodramatic manpain or the fact that 500 years in the future everyone still speaks perfectly comprehensible English. But for some reason it bugs me intensely that they go to a point in the future several months after Booster left, like the time he spends in the past has to have a real-time equivalent in the future. It makes no sense!
Consider: if you assume that linear time travel is possible at all, as DC obviously does, than you can travel at will to ANY point in the time line. Since Booster has lived through those years, they already happened - it's no longer a possible future, it's a set in stone defined future. There is nothing stopping them from going to the future three weeks before Booster left, or two months, or whatever, aside from the potential danger of meeting Booster, but the guy's a night watchman, not the president, he's probably pretty easy to avoid. The technology they need, the supersuit and whatever, already exists, since Booster didn't make it, he just stole it. And Booster knows that in the future he's a criminal. Why would he deliberately go back to a time period where he's a wanted man, when they could accomplish their goals just as easily if they went a little sooner in his timeline? I DO NOT GET IT.
I know it makes for better story-telling. It just really, irrationally pisses me off.
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Date: 2009-02-17 04:46 am (UTC)Very possible - my grasp of the timeline is a little iffy.
In my writing class last week, we workshopped a story where a guy's dead best friend calls him to come out to him and stop him from cheating on his girlfriend, and everyone threw a fit over the idea of him getting phone reception at Lake Tahoe. I guess this is sort of like that? I can deal with timetravel and robots and magnetic supersuits, but god forbid the timelines be wonky. XD
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Date: 2009-02-17 05:11 am (UTC)It also bugged me a little that they never settled why Booster was getting sick. They had two different explanations for that. (and seriously, bringing diseases back and forth should be a big terror for time-travel, and they haven't mentioned that at all in the new Booster Gold series.)
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Date: 2009-02-17 05:16 am (UTC)...I think I was going to write a cute hurt/comfort story once whose plot mostly hinged on the idea that Booster was immune to most 20th century stuff like AIDS and cancer but had disproportionately severe reactions to colds and flu and that sort of thing because they've mostly been irradicated by his time. Maybe I should dig that out again.
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Date: 2009-02-17 06:04 pm (UTC)