Right, well, after my excitement died down I can say I'm generally very happy with this show, I hope they continue the excellent run they've had with the past 3 episodes and I really really hope Sylar is around for a lot more than one series, it would be interesting to see him develop in to a proper full on super villain in the Joker vein, not just a one season threat.

Scars are part of the healing process, not the injury process. If a wound is left open, it'll never scar because it'll never heal. It's more than feasible that if Peter is lazy about his healing (just heals enough to close the wound, not to heal it) that a scar will form naturally.

2) It explains why Claire has been under subsequent threats (Sylar again, Ted) but Isaac hasn't been painting anything related to it

3) Isaac's paintings overall seem very tied to Peter; there hasn't been a picture of Claire since she was saved by Peter. Maybe the pictures of the cheerleader only existed because of their connection to Peter (this is more evidence than implication)

or what if he just kidnaps her, and since she would still be alive while he did his brain thing, that's how we finally get to see what he actually does with the brains. you know, that's not a bad idea. if they do off claire, that's the only feasible way, yeah?

and not for nothing, but remember when everyone was speculating about "save the cheerleader, save the world" as in, is it a causal statement, or a following statement. as in, save the world BY saving the chearleader, or simply, save the cheerleader, then save the world? by your hypothesis, it's both! interesting...

I want to know how they can show 5 years into the future without making the explosion (which has been sort of the climax at the end of the rainbow) a moot point. if NC has already blown up, then why should we be tense and invested in whether or not Peter is going to succeed in blowing it up? he obviously doesn't. but if the 5 years into the future is a future that can be changed, how did Hiro end up there with a sword, and why couldn't he fix sylar himself, go back to sylar as an infant, and pop him. grandfather paradox, in some way? I love time travel stories, but I can't help but think that on a TV series, even one as cool as this one, their gonna screw up the logic somewhere down the line. when Hiro was going all over the place, they left it vague as to which idea of time travel they were adhering to. (which is why no one can agree exactly, as to what happened with wiki-woman, even though we know sylar got her power [from the online comics] we don't know what role Hiro's time travel had in it) I'm geeking out at the though of seeing future Hiro again, but if they give us 5 years from now, why do we care about 5 minutes from now?

Chrth, please explain...

We have another clue that this is going to happen: Sylar's problem with the super-hearing. He can't control powers right away *either*. If Sylar takes Ted's power, than I don't think he'd be able to contain it ...

I'm going to miss Sylar.

On the other hand, in my own time travel theory (objects are independent of time, therefore you can go back and kill your grandfather without causing a paradox because you already exist back then. Your future self will never be born, but you won't be erased) you can change the future simply by travelling to the past. However, Hiro was unable to save WikiWoman, so either this isn't correct or Hiro's power is subjected to other forces.

Or they're making it up as they go along.

I'm inclined to believe that if time travel is ever found to exist, we will only be able to go into the future. no logic problem with that, as far as the ret of the world is concerned, you just disappear for a while, then pop up later without having aged. (no, you can't go visit your future self like in back to the future, because once you leave in your time machine, you don't go on living in that timeline, so you can't visit yourself later on it.) but chrth, in your independent of time theory, couldn't you do that?

I gotta go to Red Lobster for lunch now (Yay LobsterFest!) but when I come back I'll go into the theory some more.

This is simple, people. Hiro said it himself: he can't change the past. If you watch the show it's clear Hiro can't change events that have already happened in his own timeline. In the beginning of the season he starts out in his cube and goes to NYC. He winds up in the future and witnesses a nuclear explosion, the event he is now trying to prevent. Later, he saves Walk Through Walls guy from an exploding car by slowing down time and knocking him out of the way before it hits. He encounters Memory Waitress in Texas and is unable to prevent Sylar from taking her head ("There can be only one!"), so she dies. He tries to go back in time to save her, but he can't because she's already died in his timeline. Now, the thing that isn't quite explained by this is FutureHiro going back in time to tell Peter on the subway about the cheerleader. One possible explanation is that Hiro knows that by encountering him, Peter has now acquired Hiro's abilities. Therefore Peter now has the ability to change events in his future -- which, for him, includes the NYC explosion. I think it's significant that Hiro specifically visited Peter. As far as I can tell, the writers have been extremely consistent about Hiro's powers so it seems likely the subway thing fits in with everything else.

As for the "Save the cheerleader, save the world" business, this seems pretty straightforward too. FutureHiro clearly knew that Sylar was out to get her. Imagine Sylar with regeneration -- how the hell do you kill a guy with a thousand different powers and regen, too? How many times have we seen Claire come back from dying? That's why they have to keep the cheerleader alive. Once Sylar gets her, it's game over cause there's no way to stop him. For all I know it ties into the nuclear stuff too, as other people pointed out.

but what if ChrTh:33 goes back in time, and instead of killing ChrTh:32, cuts him on the face, leaving a scar. you're saying, ChrTh:33 won't instantly have a scar himself (he's a separate entity), but then when he goes back to t=33, everyone will say, "where's the scar you've had for a year?"

so what if you steal a time machine, then go back in time and kill the guy that invented it? in your idea of time travel, you could just back home to a reality where no time machine ever existed, except you have one, and you could claim to have invented it, right? again, no problem

but it seems like all your theory does is ignore the the causal loops, the grandfather's paradox and all that, rather than solve them. you're saying that you can go back in time and change the past, and the timeline will be altered from then on, but only the time traveler will be unaffected. you can kill the tiem machine inventor, and still have a time machine. you can kill your old self and still exist. the only way this makes sense, is if you cannot return to your original time. you go back to the past, do whatcha like, and then just hang out. but if you go back to your original time, either everything has been changed, and you chould be changed as well, or nothing has changed, meaning, you can'[t change the present by going into the past. so then what happened to the dead ChrTh a year ago? multiverse? nah.

Here's how (I think) it would work: once you've gone back in time, you've essentially removed yourself from the point in time you came from. Therefore, if you went back in time and didn't kill yourself, once you returned to the future, there'd be two of you. This makes sense if you think about it this way:

ChrTh:33 goes back a year, gives ChrTh:32 a winning lottery ticket, and decided to hang around. One year later, Millionaire ChrTh:33 and Time Travelling ChrTh:34 would both still exist. So going forward a year via time machine is no different than hanging out in the world for a year (except you don't age if you go via time machine, naturally).

I'd go so far as to say that even if I did absolutely nothing to effect my younger self, the mere act of going back in time duplicates you.

As for the future you left, it gets erased. Think of time as a spool slowly winding thread upon it. The thread on the spool is the past/history, the thread off in space is the (unknown/unwritten) future, and the point in which the thread contacts the spool is the present. If you travel back in time, the spool essentially unwinds to the point you're going to. Therefore everything that you remember happening may no longer happen in that section of time.

The only reason I put up my theory is because it allows time travelling to change the future and it also does not inherently contain the grandfather paradox. I thought this last point was important since apparently everyone is related to everyone else.

again, it seems like your not necessarily contradicting causal loops or paradoxes, just sort of ignoring them. I will keep thinking of a specific example that would show your theory can still get you into logic trouble, I just can't seem to think of one, now.

my guess is that Hiro is not bound by those normal laws of physics, that's the only way it makes sense. or else him contacting Peter did nothing. or else Hiro is from an alternate universe.

To put it a different way: time is really a sequence of unrelated events. Causality is something that humans ascribe to the passage of time. I'll post something, and you'll respond; while it may be on a related topic, it's not like Time Itself dictated that it be so.

As a species we give too much credit to Time (unless Time does use the causality loop model a la To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which case it deserves the credit). It's a dimension no different than height or width. If I crush a can, I don't expect Height to demand that the can be restored ... why should I expect Time to?

However, this doesn't mean alternate timelines per se. The original timeline has gone bye-bye. ChrTh:33 remembers some of what happened in that timeline, but it no longer exists. It never happened except in his memory (and possibly others ... but that's a different theory about memory; I'll save that for another time ;) ). So yes, relative to the original timeline the 'returned to' timeline is 'alternate'. But the original timeline can not be reclaimed, so there's no point in calling the new one an alternate timeline.

Personally, part of the reason I developed this theory is because I can't stand how Star Trek does it. Trelane is right: all these timelines are a waste.

In the Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer changes the past (via toaster), every time he comes back to the future, he is the same but the world has changed. He remembers what he has done in the past, he remembers how it used to be, etc. etc. So when *SPOILER* he finally gives up and says "Close Enough", he doesn't have a forked tongue, nor should we expect him to.

no matter what, if there is travel back and forth in time, it's a timeline. and if you can do that, AND you have free will, there are logic problems.

"so now, what happens if you go back 6 months? do you find the original reality? or do you find the reality with you dead?" The Reality with You Dead.

"what if you decide to go back a year and a day, and wait. does the future you come back and try to kill the past you as you watch?" No! Ah ha, that's a great question, btw. When you go back a year and a day (say to March 2, 2007) everything that has happened between 3/2/07 and 3/3/08 is ERASED -- INCLUDING the death on 3/3/07!

See, this is why we needed Jean-Claude Van Damme as a Timecop.

Now, let's say there were two people involved, ChrTh and Wonka. Wonka decides that this talkback has driven him insane, so he decides to go back and kill ChrTh before the exchange can occur. ChrTh, realizing what's about to happen, goes back in time as well. Wonka goes to today, ChrTh goes back to yesterday (btw, they have to leave at the same time, otherwise whoever leaves first wins ... we'll presume simultaneity). Now even though ChrTh erases the future by going back to yesterday, Wonka will still be there today because time-travelling, presumably, would remove you from the time stream. Therefore an epic struggle would result!

In the Hayek scenario, though, only one ChrTh is travelling back in time, not two. If there isn't another ChrTh travelling back in time, then there's no ChrTh to pull the trigger.

ok, so take the last scenario. you go back a year, kill your former self, come back to present day. as we've said, the present day is altered, you are not in it. at least, you shouldn't be in it, but somehow, there you are! your family will be shocked. but having a non-chrth present means that in the timeline as it now exists, you went back and killed yourself. it's as plain a fact as saying it rained on thursday. that is why if you go back 6 months, you're in the timeline with no chrth, meaning the murder is still a fact.

now where you get kooky with it, is you say, if you go back a year and a day, there is instananeously no murder on 3/3/06, the moment you travel back to 3/2/06. why is that? you're implying that simply by traveling back to a day earlier, you've erased the entirety of future time after that point. so your time travel becomes the catalyst for whatever timeline exists. well, fine. but if that's the case, the murder should still take place on 3/3/06, because you did it in YOUR PAST. jsut like when you originally made the return trip to 3/3/07 after the murder, it was in YOUR PAST as well as the timeline's past.

what is the distinction between the murder existing in the past when you're in 2007, and it existing in the past when you're at 3/2/06? it's still in your past, and you're the catalyst for the timeline, according to your logic,

What you're thinking is that if I go back again, I subtract 366 days, so that X=X on 3/3/06. But why? I lived 366 days between the first 3/3/06 and the second 3/3/06. Those days don't disappear for me. In a way, the time traveler no longer reckons the passage of time via the calendar.

Here's the best way to sum it up: a person never travels into *his* past (or her, if it's a female), just to a point in time in the past. If that wasn't the case, they would always time travel into themselves (and thus be limited to their own lifetime -- I believe this is the Peggy Sue Got Married/Butterfly Effect theory of time travel, but since I never saw either, I'm guessing). So I'm not going back into my past, just 366 days earlier. While I possess memories of what transpired over those 366 days, that does not mean they will occur again.

Here's an example to see how you're thinking of it incorrectly. If I go back to the day before, and instead of killing myself on 3/3/06, I blow up NYC (I'm not killed by that). Does that mean on 3/4/06, NYC is ok because the last time I experienced the day 3/4/06 NYC was ok?

Everybody: Killing Claire is EASY: Stick a branch in her brain. We already know this works. We also know that the brain is the center of the Heroes' power (Chandra tells us this). Removing her (or Peter's) brain would be fatal.

AND NOW THAT I THINK BOUT IT...if Petey boy can use any power, why doesnt he just use Isaacs power all the time...? flyin and healin cool, but u can win a lot of money from the lotto wit that power...

I followed the time travel debates intently, and intend to bring my own logic to the table at some point... But it's so hard to 'explain' time travel without any kind of visual aide. Oh well. Love the ideas tho.

How many Chrth's can kill Chrth before Chrth becomes the Chrth that is killed? =D Better than woodchucks.

Actually, a note on something that just popped into my head... Although it's not as literal as Hiro's power, Isaac has the ability to 'time travel' as well, he just can't travel through space. He can visualize the future, but not transport himself to it. But does he alter it merely by visualizing it? If he had never drawn the painting of Peter 'dead' at the Homecoming, Peter wouldn't have known where to go and therefore wouldn't have been there to fulfill the prediction of the painting. Therefore, by being drawn the painting made itself true. Self-fulfilling destiny? Every other painting Isaac has drawn has come true... None of his painting actually depicted the cheerleader dead. The reason we believed the paintings related to the cheerleading dying were because of Future Hiro's 'prophecy', but in fact each painting being created led to the events within the painting happening. The paintings which have not come true are: Hiro fighting the dinosaur, the Exploding Man, and the Destruction of New York.

Now, I can't exactly remember EVERY painting, so chrth, wonka, all the other Heroes TB junkies, help me out here... Have there been any paintings that depicted an event that passed in a different way than the painting portrayed? I remember a painting of Charlie the waitress at one point, right? Hmm... I need a grouping of screenshots of every Isaac painting shown so far...

Where am I going with this? Well, there are two possibilities. If none of the paintings have ever been wrong, then the destruction of New York is most likely inevitable and can't be changed (and, in fact, the painting itself may be the indirect cause of the explosion - it led Peter to Isaac in the first place, which was a major catalyst for these events). But perhaps they *can* be changed, but only by altering the timeline, such as Hiro can. If Future Hiro never came back, the paintings wouldn't have been linked to Claire since it was Peter who informed Mohinder who informed Eden who informed HRG about Isaac, and HRG who connected the dots to Claire. Then Isaac may never have painted Peter at the homecoming at all, if HRG never kidnapped him and forced heroin on him, and all the other paintings would have come true as they did.

Ok, I said I wasn't going to get into time travel right now, dammit, so I'm just going to stop rambling... More from me later.

If we assume it *was* Claire, then Future Hiro managed to save her by warning Peter, therefore Hiro at least has the ability to alter Isaac's predicitions. If it was Jackie, then everything Isaac paints has and *will* come to pass. Following this logic, Jackie would have died anyway, whether Peter came or not, and Isaac never painted Claire actually dying.

Hmm... I'm gonna make some tacos. Fiesta!

Heh. Copy Nin Peteru... The Mutant Sharingan(!!!) Of course, Kakashi or any of the Uchiha clan need to see the jutsu performed to copy it. Hm, you mentioned Heinlein *and* anime in a post about Heroes. I applaud you, sir! Really wish they would have done Kakashi Gaiden before continuing on with Part 2. Hopefully, this means they'll make it into a badass hourlong movie.

...anyway. I did have something to say, I swear... O_O! Damn spastic junkies, makin' me lose my train of thought...

Which reminds me, if Isaac does die, when did he get around to actually drawing/publishing his comic that Hiro is *about to find* on the magazine rack? There hasn't been any mention of it, but it's kind of a big plot point, and it seems that there was more than one issue published. Or, weirder still, the very issue Hiro brings back in time with him becomes the template for printing? In which case the comic created itself? Cooool. Or stupid.

feel free to tell me that hundreds of loyal fans have already come up with this Nikki/Jessica theory and I'm tragically behind the curve.

chrth, there's gonna be a way to poke a hole in your time travel theory, I just can't wrap my brain around it yet. I just got back from the editing lab for 8 hours, so I've got the idea of piecing together timelines and reality on the brain. (how many times can I say brain in one post?)

look for a definitive hole being poked later tonight (which you'll see tomorrow I assume) or tomorrow morning (which you'll still see tomorrow). so basically, look at my next post...(I'm retarded)

imagine, as you said, time as a roll of string, with the timeline as the string unraveling in one, straight line. wherever the time traveler is at any given point is the end of the string. if the time traveler goes back in time, he's simpling re-winding the ball of string back to a point, so that the end of the string (his time) is earlier than he started. in essence, you're treating time travel as simply zooming forward or backward extremely fast (infinitely fast), rather than jumping from one time or another. you're rewinding and fast forwarding, only once you're in a new time, you don't have to sid idly by, as we would with a videocassette, you can change it. (back ot the string) so if he were to go back to the beginning of time, in theory, the string would be completely wrapped up in the ball, right?

OK, so that means, that if he goes back to a certain point, and alters the string. let's say he dyes it purple. as the string unrolls onward, the very end that he dyed purple (his reality) remains purple, because it's only the end of the string that moves with him. his present time is always the end of the string. the "purple" is the newly created timeline...if he were to go back a little earlier than the last point he went to, and dye the string red, it would be red from then on, because it would negate the purple section.

but in linear time (even treated in this way) the string itself is not sufficient to express it. the string is the passage of time, in actuality, not time itself. the string must be unrolling past (bear with me here) a measuring stick. so that when the string is rolled back up, where the end is as it's rolling, or unrolling, has a measurement (a date, in reality). and when the time traveler goes back and dyes the string purple, in the original scenario, he's not really dying the string purple, he's adding something to the time AND the passage of time after that. he's putting a pool of purple dye on the ground at a certain point on the timeline, so that as the string keeps passing through it, it is continually dyed. (in actuality, it should be thus that the string would become white again, if it went through the pool of dye backwards) so that if he rewinds the ball of string so that the end of the string is past (earlier) than where the pool of dye is, he still must change the pool of dye, otherwise, when the string is unraveled agian, it will pass through the dye again.

wait, shit, I just got myself back into the normal time trvel pradoxes, not your theory...ok, let me rethink this...

but what if there are two time travellers, A and B? A goes back a day, and puts B in a prison. when A returns, B should be locked up in a prison, according to your theory (where A is your only time traveller, who created the reality). but what if the next day, B breaks out of prison, travels back in time to the day that A puts him in prison, and kills A. then you have a man killing another man for doing something that he's preventing the man from doing by killing him. a classic paradox.

the problem isn't that in your time theory ChrTh can't do whatever he wants, because he can (or at least, I can't seem to figure out how to prove he can). the problem is that the only way it works is if he's the only one time traveling...

wait, shit that doesn't work. that's just the same as your epic battle with wonka and chrth idea. suppose A survives, he can just go back and kill B the day before. you just keep rewinding it back until one of them is dead, or incapacitated, and then time unravels from there...shit!!!!

but the problem I have is the omniscience and supreme power of the time traveler. he has a machine, not a godlike power. when he goes back to a point, changes something, then returns to his original time, life is changed, but his memory is not. his memory remains of the original unfolding of the timeline. OH WAIT!!! I GOT SOMETHING!!!

if A goes back in time 10 minutes, and kills himself, then returns to his original time. his body will be sitting there on the floor (the result of being killed). no problem.

if he goes back 5 minutes, his body is on the floor, maybe a little warmer (the result of being killed). no problem.

if he goes back 11 minutes, he can chat with himself, hang out, play poker, no one comes to kill anyone. right?

if he goes back 9 minutes and 30 seconds, he sees the vapor trail left by the time machine. his self is on the floor, bleeding and trying to speak, but then he dies (the result of being killed).

what if he goes back 9 minutes and 45 seconds? following the same progression, shouldn't he be able to see himself killing his old self? how can he not, logically? he sees the result of it in closer and closer intervals, he must be able to see the act itself. and if that's the case, then the time traveler is encountering not just his former self, but his (in a sense) CURRENT time traveling self.

if this is the case, then the timeline cannot simply be an extending and deextending line, we have to say that different points in time exist at the same time. and with that, come all the paradoxes.

that may not be sufficient forever, but it's sufficient for me to be able to fall asleep.

BadMrWonka: Almost there. Yes, he would see the results of the death. In fact, he can see the murder if he arrives *after* the murderer arrived (say the murderer arrived 10:15 minutes ago. If ChrTh time-travels less than that amount, the murder happens). If he arrives before (say, 10:15:01), the murder doesn't happen. He's not seeing his CURRENT time-travelling self, he's seeing his PAST time-travelling self.

One (last?) thing I want to point out about my theory: I don't believe physical time travel is possible for the same reason I don't believe FTL is possible: the energy requirements are too vast to do it. It may be possible to do a 'view-only', or to travel within your mind to the past, but I don't see how objects can be displaced.

Doesn't mean I don't like discussing it though ;)

Hmmm that would actually be a cool way to make a Rogue-type character like Peter and Sylar... Call them 'the Gun', let them absorb powers, but each one can only be used once, like mutant bullets in a clip. Probably been done before. Whatever.

chrth, interesting read, missed that one. Yep, seems she be super deadz0rz. I for one won't really miss her, they weren't lying about her story not being able to go anywhere. They had two options basically, give her a power (which would be kinda lame for her not to know about at this point) or make her pregnant, which is totally played out. I commend them, actually, for killing off characters whose story has played out. Some shows, not so much.... Any bets on the other death being Isaac?

I've already concluded beyond the shadow of a doubt that time travel will never occur in my lifespan (or at least, that I will never be able to personally travel to the past). If I could time travel, then there would be a future me walking in the door right now. Whiiiiich there's not. Oh well. No time travel.

However I do agree with chrth that we will be able to 'time-view', observe the past without actually being a corporeal entity within it. Actually, it's easy. If we could travel faster than light, then we could just travel X lightyears away and view Earth as it was X lightyears ago. So if I travel ten lightyears away and look back at Earth thru a super powered telescope, I would be able to see Earth as it was in 1997. But since I'm just viewing lightwaves, obviously nothing can be changed.

Although, I'm still open to the idea of traveling forward in time, even without using cryostasis or anything, but there would be no way of making a return trip.

The other bitch about time travel (which Hiro accounts for by being able to bend time AND space) is that if I used a device that could theoretically send me a day into the future - literally remove me from the time and space for a day and then deposit me back - Well, I'm going to be floating in the middle of space because in that 24 hours, the Earth has moved X whatever million miles away from that position on it's orbitol path.

Oh, man. It has nothing really to do with time-travel, but anyone ever read Heinlein's "Number of the Beast"? Fan-fucking-tastic book. They cruise around in a flying car that can instantly travel in 6 dimensions - x, y, z (normal space dimensions) and uhh.. I forget the labelings of the other dimensions, but it turns out that there are 6^6^6 alternate universes that can be visited by changing the last three coordinates. One axis is parallel Earths, one axis is completely weird universes (like one that is inside out - Like a hollow ball of space in the middle and land surrounding on all sides. If you dig too deeply into one wall you come out the other side) and the last axis is 'imagined' worlds - such as Oz, Wonderland, any written story. The idea is that by imagining a story, a universe containing that story is created.

Pretty fucking cool. Nothing to do with time travel. Just popped in there.

as in the last example, A goes back 10 minutes, kills his former self, then returns to the present time. then he goes back 9 minutes and 55 seconds, and meets his self doing the murdering. but what abotu the murdering A? from his perspective, he goes back in tinme to kill his former self, and all of a sudden, there's him from the future there. but he doesn't know why, because he hasn't finished the murder, and gone back to his original time, then gone back again. but then, what if he is killed? then he can't finish the murder, go back, then go back again. etc. etc. it's a paradox, either way.

if you look at it as just the end result from the perspective of the time traveler, as though he is the narrator of reality, then it negates the idea of time. if he can go back and do something, then go back a minute earlier, and wait, and nothing happens, then the idea of any consistent timeline is rendered moot. the time traveller goes where he wants, and does whatever he wants, and because there is no logical timeline, there are no paradoxes.

to put it another way, in the same scenario, we are looking at everything form the perspective of the last traveller. he goes back 9:55, sees his former self killing his former former self. what if the former self is startled, and kills him too? now he becomes the arbiter of reality and time. but if the last time traveller had only come a minute earlier, he'd never have existed, right?

I have to go poop.

but sylar never touches his own brain, we never see scars or incisions. I think his power is that he can manipulate his own brain (and by extension, his corporeal form, powers, etc.) just with his own thought. I think he just has to examine the brain of someone with power to get an idea of what he needs to change. a neurosurgeon might be able to examine the brain of a hero, and notice something out of the oridinary, but they could just blink their eyes, and have the power. Sylar has more than just the power of diagnosis, he can alter himself jore than a "normal" person could, jsut with his powers of thought.

I still haven't pooped. I'm hooked on AICN!! look at Mori's new post about 12 years ago.

Twister, go to the Lost talkback, they'll watch anything...fuckhead

There's a deeper question here, though, than just simple time-travel: what happens to the mind? Until ChrTh2 was killed by ChrTh1, essentially, it was the same mind traversing the course from ChrTh0 to ChrTh1 to ChrTh2. With ChrTh2itis Interruptus, though, and the formation of a new timeline for ChrTh1 (note: I'm not saying there's a duplicate timeline, just that ChrTh1's future track is different from the one he had previously lived), what happens to the consciousness? Where is the sense of self? Is it they've become essentially two people with two egos and two sets of memories and thus the death of ChrTh2 essentially ends the mind of ChrTh? What is the nature of ChrTh1's mind? His ego?

Or if we get theological, his soul?

I think I'll avoid time travel.

and chrth...there's still a paradox there...existential debate or not, I'm talking cold hard logic.

if ChrTh kills the original murdering ChrTh before he can get back to his time machine, then how did he get back to the original time, BEFORE he came back to do the murdering...

I've realized the power of your theory. you simply don't sweat the paradoxes, lol...

it's the kid with candy version of time travel...

"you took your sister's candy..."

"yeah...but it's candy! I mean, come on..."

As for downloading.. My god man, haven't you ever heard of bittorrent? The most miraculous things can be found. Google it, you'll see. Obviously, it could be used for great evil (like uhh.. ripping off money grubbing studios, for example), but I see nothing wrong with downloading TV shows I could just record (and which, in fact, my dad *does* record. Religiously. We've got like 9,000 DVD-R's of full seasons of every show in the past 3 years. #_#).

It's not out yet though. Apparently Canadians aren't as quick at ripping off network TV shows, eh?

Oooh, I kid because I love. Wine. I love wine. o_O; Eh?

Thanks to the wonders of 'teh Intranet', I can enjoy the BBC's Robin Hood series in it's entirety long before it airs on American soil. I'm on episode 4 now, and it's pretty good. The inevitable cross between Prince of Thieves and Men in Tights - Serious, but not so serious it can't laugh at itself once in awhile. Case in point: Robin and Merry Man stick rolls on the ends of arrows and shoot them over the town guards to feed people.

Marianne quips, "What a waste of arrows! You could just *throw* the food over!"

to which Robin replies, "But... Where would be the fun in *that*?" Although every other time I hear Robin speak I think "Unlike some other Robin Hoods... I can speak with an English accent."

sigh...maybe I'll try to get bittorrent set up, I just tried a couple months ago and I simply could not get it to work properly. it took me forever to get a few files, one was porn, and I'm not even sure how I got them. and that wasn't even on this computer! I feel like I am a reasonably intelligent person, I wrote the html for my own website, I have 4 college degrees, I speak 4 languages, and I could NOT figure out.

perhaps it's time to try again. you can do it Wonka!

In the ChrTh2 going back a minute earlier, ChrTh1 might still show up to kill ChrTh0. Not for the reasons you believe (because you're hung up on causality), but because of the transit medium.

Travelling through time requires you to cross the distance t somehow. You can either travel through the x,y,z,t dimensions (this is illustrated in that gods-awful Time Machine movie of a few years back) or you travel through another dimension that runs parallel to t which we'll call p. (Note: p may not have a second x,y,z ... you may only be able to traverse it if you convert your body to tachyonic (or similar) particles, and then we get back to the whole 'energy-requirement' denunciation of time travel, which I've already made. Not important for this specific discussion, but I wanted to note it) An example of p would be Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (although theirs did have an x,y,z)

If p exists independently of t (no reason to presume that it doesn't, since every other dimension in this theory is independent of the others), then changes in t DO NOT EFFECT p. Therefore, ChrTh2, arriving 1 minute earlier, would still have to stop ChrTh1 because ChrTh1 would always emerge from p at the specified t.

The problem with p is that it presumes another dimension, thus conflicting with my base idea of the simplest theory possible. It also has the problem of the necessity being tied to x,y,z as well, otherwise going back a day would put you out into space (because the Earth would be a day behind you). This makes it sound like p only exists specifically for time travel. As a result, I'm not sure I'm ready to accept this interpretation.

The problem with x,y,z,t transit is that since you're moving through x,y,z you can affected by events that occur in the space you're travelling through. I know some time travel stories have 'protective bubbles' and what-not associated with it, but I don't see how that's in reality any different than a controlled p.

Ok, I'm no closer to an answer than when I started on this one. I'll keep thinking about it.

Very curious as to how the rest of this season plays out. I'm hoping to see some sort of league/faction be formed.

I would think that at the end of the season, after saving NYC, that a league/faction will be in place.