Five Years Gone - A Problem?

For all that, I still loved the episode. Ignoring the time travel (and a couple other odd situations that can be explained away), Five Years Gone was AWESOME.

Wow, an A for effort on this thoughtful piece.

It's interesting to see how the various scenarios you present change the nature of Hiro's powers. The latter 2 scenarios really open up his powers a lot more -- especially the 3rd scenario. I do think that this will create the potential for creative abuses with the plotline, though the writers have been fairly disciplined so far.

Bloody hell. Great analysis Michael. Makes me want to work a novel about time travel.

My head asplode. (great writeup)

Until I read your article, I didn't see any reason to believe anything other than Linear Time Travel in "Heroes", since the protagonists didn't actually change any events in episode 20...but your point about the desirability of the plot line is a good one. While I think it would be cool, I don't know whether the studio/network would be brave enough to do it. Smaller cable networks, maybe, but I have my doubts about one of the major four.

So the question is: do the producers plan on wrapping up the show in less than five years, or will they pull a "Battlestar Galactica" at some point and just jump forward in the story to where the events in "Five Years Later" is the present?

I agree with most of the ther posters, that it's definitely a great and well thought out write up. However, i disagree with your conclusion.

I'll try to avoid the quantum physics, probability curves and collapsings, and so on and try to explain it in a way most people can understand.

The first two models have thier own issues in this scenario.
In the first model, Fixed Linear Timeline, time travel (at least time travel to the past) is impossible. This is becuase, at any point in time the universe has a fixed mass. Even if the mass changes from moment to moment at any one moment it has only one mass. Therefore a time traveller travelling to the past either has to increase the mass of the universe at the point he travels to or absorb enough matter to create his own body. Both cases will change the past and therefore the timeline will not be rigid. The only way the timeline can remain rigid is to prevent any incursions into it from the future.

A clearer example, assume in the past, at the point our time traveller wants to travel to, there is a rickety table, which weighs exactly the same as our time travller but can't support much any weight. If our time traveller travels there, there will be two possibilities:
either he appears on top of the table and the table breaks (in which case the past has changed) or he appears by reforming the table into himself so the table no longer exists (still changed). Of course he could appear beside the table, but what about whatever was already there, a chair, some water, or even air! Most people overlook the fact that even empty spaces contain air. And if a butterfly flapping it's wings could change the course of a tornado on the other side of the world, think what the appearance of a comparatively massive person will change.

As for the multiple braches theory (a favourite of many Sci fi staples) where everything that can happen does. It's flaw is that (before the timetraveller arrives) only one thing can happen!
This is where most people will disagree, quoting the popular favourite "Unpredictable choice". In order to not get bogged down in an old arguement let's start with events we can agree on, events that don't include choice.
A rock rolls of a cliff (assume there are no living creatures around) once the rock start falling, there is only one place it can land! Remember, the landscape, wind direction and motion of anything else that can interfere with it is already fixed! There is only one possible outcome and as such only one possible result! All apparent randomness comes from the fact that it's practically impossible to repeat anything perfectly with all the initial conditions the same e.g. flipping coin with exactly the same angular velocity, wind speed, height from the ground, vibrations in your fingers (e.g. due to blood pumping), etc. But at the point the coin leaves your finger, it CAN only land on ONE SIDE. There can be no alternate future where it lands on the other side! and as such, no branching reality.
As for probability curves that collapse to different values (yes, i know I said I wouldn't mention it but I'm sure someone else would have) those only exist in our MODELS of the universe. They serve to help us account for effects we don't fully understand or don't have enough information to predict. It's basically statistics for physicists! The same way a the third child of an average family with 2.4 kids doesn't magically appear or dissapear when you observe him neither do those subatomic particles! Observing him simply gives you the knowledge necessary to adjust your model so it is a better representation of reality.

The third one is closer to the most likely one (if you assume time travel is possibly which heroes already has). With a small change, the 'fragment' isn't an independent floating alternate reality, it is a direct result of a shared pst and fragments at the point that the timetraveller arrives and changes it!
Using the example of the ricketty table from the earlier. A past exists where this table lives a long uneventful life and is eventually sold as an antique and put in a museum. Our careless timetraveller decides to go to the past and see the table in it's original glory. However, his arrival destroys said table!
Once the table is destroyed the whole future where the table was in the museum ceases to exist, becuase the events that led up to it no longer happend! Events now flow down a different route changing the tables future, even though it is the time travellers past! The old futre becomes a fragment that no longer exists, and the new future becomes the only real future, until another time traveller changes it.
Of course, this model has it's own side effects. For instance;
if the time traveller destroys the table...
then he would see it in the museum...
so he would never travel to the past...
then he would never destroy the table...
then he would see it in the museum...
then he would travel to the past...
then he would destroys the table...
and on and on

This is the infamous time loop. However, one thing is usually ignored in these examples and that is that, the timetraveller cannot changes only one thing. Each time through the loop the flow of events will change slightly, and it will keep on changing until it reaches a set of events where the loop can be avoided and it will continue to flow down that course.

This leads to the conclusion that, a time traveller cannot perform an act in the past that will prevent him from performing that act in the past. Performing that act will begin a time loop until a set of events is achieved where that act did not occur! A self correcting, flexible, but linear timeline.

As a result of this (back to the movie) Hiro could not save the girl in the cafe from Sylar. Everytime he suceeded, he would create a future where he never travelled to the past, which would mean he didn't save her, which would mean he would travel to the past, on and on until he ends up with a future where she died, he travelled to the past, but couldn't save her! These would be the limits of his powers and woud create all sorts of interesting (but not deus ex machina like) possibilities.

I know they are still some issues I haven't covered fully (e.g. I never did talk about the choice thing) but I realise this post is already long, and if I haven't bored you yet, I don't want to try :) . Besides, it's the middle of the night and I have to go to work tommorow.

laters

Sorry! My in that post grammar is atrocious. Side effect of sleep posting :-P

We know that heroes will last at least five years right?

Well i think that it is a linear time frame, and we will, in five years return to the same point in five years on. and from there, the story will either end, or more likely keep on going for another year or two to wrap everything up!

So that means we will know exactly what happens at the end of five years on, in five years.

if they do that, i think it would be pretty cool!

Hey, Anthony from Puerto Rico here, I just want to stop by to say that ''Five Years Gone'' was by far the best Heroes season one episode, I love the Line between Peter P. and Sylar was great and knowing that Mohinder is still good in this Bad Dark Futere. I was kind of sad when I descover that Peter`s HUNKY brother Nathan P. was dead, but still I loved it and I even download the episode for my I-Pod... Love ya` guys and keep up the good work!!!bye

That was some heavy reading!!! We don't know what will happen in 5 years... those events are the unchanged future. As Doc Brown said at the end of BTTF 3.... "Your future is, whatever you want it to be. So make it a good one!" That is the mythos that I understand Heroes through.... and that is how I feel they are going creatively, Hollywood science.

Good analysis, Michael. But I disagree with your conclusion - I think Heroes is very much in the alternate universe scenario. Time travel stories are indeed tough - it took me longer to write The Plot to Save Socrates - a strictly linear time-travel story - than any of my other novels. I have a piece on Five Years Out - Triumph of Time Travel which offers some general points on this fascinating subject.

Thanks to all for writing about the time travel issue so cogently and thoroughly! I wanted to point out one thing: at this point, we have no definitive evidence for any of the three models. A few of the posters have guessed that the Heroes universe works on one model or another, but most of these conclusions, as I read, them, are based on personal preference rather than facts from the series. I want to start the assembly of the facts we know that would help "solve" the problem. Here's what I've noticed.

First, nothing contradicts a linear time travel model except, as was pointed out, the apparent problems of writing a TV show for five years when certain plot elements are "predestined". Personally, I don't think that presents an insurmountable problem - in fact, the show has worked that way since very early on. We've "known" that the bomb was or is coming, that Claire needed to and would be saved, that Peter would die saving her, that Isaac would be killed by Sylar, and on and on. Seeing five years into the future told us a bit more about the future in a linear model, but not so much that the story line couldn't continue to be interesting. We know that Sylar killed Nathan, D.L and Candice. We know that Parkman works for Nathan/Sylar. We know Micah died in the explosion. We know a bit about the future of Primatech Paper. But we know very little about what happened to Peter, Hiro, Niki, Mohinder, Sylar or the Haitian to bring them to where they are. How has Sylar avoided being "outed" by the Haitian? What happened to Linderman? What about all these attacks by Hiro and others? These may not be interesting enough questions to sustain five years if the universe is definitely linear, but I submit that the linear universe isn't definitively closed off. What's more, if I were forced to wager I'd bet the writers allow the bomb to happen, but in a slightly different way than has been predicted, leaving open the possibility of a linear or "semi-linear" universe (like the one in "Sliding Doors", where details may change but certain key facts are predestined). I think that some certainty in the structure of time is key to the integrity of the story - something has to constrain Hiro from running willy-nilly throughout time. But that problem could also be solved by this idea of a potential "rift," whatever it means.

When Hiro goes back in time to talk to Peter, he makes a statement that saying too much would risk a rift in the space-time continuum. first, that statement seems to contradict a multiple universes theory, in which universes "rift" naturally whenever Hiro travels in time. Maybe this is evidence for the fragmented universe theory, and Hiro needs to be certain that his jump alters the main universe without tearing off the changed portion as a fragment? That structure for spacetime would also constrain Hiro's use of his time travel powers.

I also noticed that, in episode two, it looks as though Isaac had been killed on the day of the nuclear explosion and he doesn't seem to have been killed in the same spot on the floor or in exactly the same method. Mistake by the directors or hint that Heroes embraces multiple universes?

In any case, I just wanted to point out the little bit of evidence I've noticed as an encouragement for others to dig up more and to talk about what we do know and have observed as evidence of this or other theories about how spacetime works in the Heroes universe.

decomplex, if the producers keep to linear timeline (even with slight detail changes but keeping the major plot secure) and go through with events leading up to what we witnessed last week, then Heroes could very well be the best show ever made.

Your observation about episode two and Isaac's death was very interesting. I'm thinking it was an oversight by the writers/directors.

Since the future hasn't happened yet, couldn't it be that when Hiro travels to the future he experiences what is mathemetically probable to happen. But why does that probability need to collapse into a reality? Why couldn't he experience an as yet unreal event that is mathemetically probable or likely to happen? Why couldn't it be that Isaac draws what is probable or likely to happen?
Even if this isn't good physics, is this where the show is going anyway? New York is not really going to explode? Someone is going to rise above what is mathematically probable for their character to do and change what is destined to happen.

very interesting read however...with or without hiros time travel you guys are forgetting issacs precog....in which he already sees the future...when he outlines what happens hiro stills follows that timeline by doing exactly what hes already done to lead to that future(this is my first time at this i hope you guys are getting what im trying to say)now if im getting this right since there is no actual time travel involved nothing changes however if future hiro has come back and spoken to peter, the butterfly effect has occured so which future is issac seeing based on these tme travel physics?

It's really interesting to read all of the comments on this article. First off, as a science fiction fan, I feel the need to be cautious about taking television science fiction too seriously. I don't know that there is one vision of what "kind" of universe Heroes portrays. Also, as desirable as it might be for fans to believe that there's a logical way to explain time travel, Heroes, as fiction, doesn't need and can't have an adequate explanation for our non-fictional world.

I wonder if the three models for time travel suggested in the original article here are really the only three. It seems to me that time travel, being such a fascinating plot device in science fiction, must have more types of application that just three. Admittedly I can't come up with any, so I'll accept that these are it until someone else comes up with one (as equally well explained as the three here, and sufficiently different).

In any case, I think that trying to decide which model Heroes is working off of, or which is most desirable, most likely, is in some ways besides the point. Which point? the point of time travel. In any of these models, there are some fundamental paradoxes and assumptions which impede our full comprehension of the workings of time travel (meaning they show to us that time travel is impossible). And clearly, in fiction it can be possible, but there is not necessarily anything to show us that the Heroes universe is sufficiently different from the "real" universe in order to solve these problems.

But these questions about time travel are also questions about the nature of time. So far, mentions in the show about the "space-time continuum" suggest that the writers are going for a conception of time as another dimension to the composition of the universe, where everything in the universe is defined by its position in the dimensions of space and time. By this, there is nothing which has no space (not just no volume, but no atomic composition - or whatever else they decide it is) and nothing which has no time. Time travel just means that a person, Hiro in this case, has a dimension in time, and changes that dimension. But then there are still problems of the mass of the universe and all that, because this is clearly all fictional.

Just thinking about it, in the show, Isaac draws the comic book "Hiro in Future" which shows Hiro killing Sylar and (he tells Sylar) saving the world. He does this before "Five Years Gone", where Hiro sees the future in which what the comic book shows clearly didn't happen. Previously, Isaac's visions had been pretty accurate; I can't remember one which didn't come true, and now both Peter and Sylar, using the power, have been coming up with the same results (New York explodes, etc). It seems to me that Isaac drawing "Hiro in the Future" is what really contradicts the "Five Years Gone" view of what happened and also Hiro's time-traveling ability. Isaac's power and Hiro's are very much against one another in coming to some unified concept of what time is like in Heroes.

Also, in "Five Years Gone", future Hiro had gone back to give Peter the message to save Claire, (it's sill unclear to me why he had to say "the cheerleader" instead of her name - but more fun for the writers and audience that way) but it was never clear if future Peter had a memory of that meeting. In any case, it does present a problem for memory formation, if this future Hiro was the one who traveled back, and the "future" that he had experienced was unchanged. A lot of things would not have happened if future Hiro hadn't told Peter that, so clearly it would change the "future" (or change which future it was) even it didn't avert the disaster. And if not, if the event of Hiro traveling back to warn Peter was already part of the timeline of which future Hire was a part, then he wouldn't have needed to spend all that time working out when and what message to bring back (with his string lines in Isaac's loft). So contradictions there.

Anyways, I'm getting kind of incoherent, but I really think that analysing a show like this, while interesting, is besides the point of enjoying it. Hopefully everyone writing posts here is enjoying the show more than they are thinking about it? And it was nice to see in "Five Years Gone" the actors stepping out of their regular roles and getting to have a little fun doing something different with the characters. Sorry this was so long. I do agree that it would be satisfying to have a really tight plot on Heroes, but with so many writers, so many chracters/storylines and all the pressures of network television, it's not like they (the writers and creators) have full "creative license" anyways.

I feel so stupid. Erg.

Anyway, awesome writing.

You get a electronic smiley face. (psst look at your props)