Do plot bunnies live in plot holes?

[omorka]

Finished watching the first season of Eureka at TV Night, and I admit I'm confused about something.



Soo . . . let me get this straight . . . Henry was so deeply in love with Kim that he was willing to risk the entire space-time continuum for her - but two episodes prior to that, he was ready to leave Eureka, and her, behind him permanently? I don't get it.

I can construct a sequence of events that would have him realize, say, two years down the road how much he missed her, and then have him activate Walter's device from there, but Henry seems like a pragmatic individual - surely, if he was about to leave her anyway, he could deal with her death without, you know, unravelling the fabric of causality. This also leaves us with the problem that now we have two people in town - Henry and Jack - who both have memories of futures that haven't happened yet, futures that are incompatible with each other. That means we have at least one paradox, and probably two, as in trying to anticipate their own futures, they're going to end up constructing a third future that won't match either of theirs.

I'm sure Fargo or Stark can handwave that with some parallel-universe pseudoscience babble, but I'm still confused about the character inconsistency, unless the Henry who came back is from the future that he caused, which would be a particularly complicated version of the Sculptor's Paradox. And that isn't, ultimately, any better when the statue never gets made.

Gah. Time Travel sucks. I'm making a cross-fandom house call to the Doctor to come fix this. (If any of this gets resolved in Season Two, don't tell me.)

Comments

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

If any of this gets resolved in Season Two, don't tell me.

Ok. I won't.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible to want someone to be alive but not need to live in the same town with them.

With respect to the causality loop: both Henry and Jack have memories of futures that cannot happen from where they are. I see no paradox in that. Branching and looping timelines are old news in sci-fi. They are on a third track, clear and simple. I see no causality paradoxes inherent in what they know, (except Jack can get in Allison's pants through his knowledge of her from their future marriage.)

[omorka.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible to want someone to be alive but not need to live in the same town with them.

To want them to be alive, sure. To need them to live so badly that you break the laws of time and space? Nope, no way. "Away" asymptotically approaches "dead" as distance tends to an arbitrary large number, and it wasn't sounding like Henry was just thinking of taking a position at the state university.

Also, what I saw was something much closer to Carter-2006 being, essentially, permanently possessed by Carter-2010; Carter-2006 is, in essence, dead at this point. Presumably the same is true of Henry-200?. So Carter-2006 and Henry-2006 will never get to grow into the people who have deleted-and-replaced them, leaving Carter-2010 and Henry-200? without origins of their own. That's paradoxical even if no matter ever moved.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

Any student of sci-fi tropes should be familiar with the branching time model. The orig. timeline isn't destroyed. Henry and or Carter just jump ship from it and loop back to a previous point. That point creates a new branch, since they are changing history, and the experience a new future without un-writing the original one.

The only question is what the 'consciousness transferred' selves left in the future are like. Are they zombies? Do they seem normal?