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Post by elder on Dec 11, 2006 4:12:06 GMT -5
1: In "the truth is out there and it hurts" we see a warlock come from the future and at the end of the episode...he is killed. So how exactly can a being come from the future if it is killed in the present day? (It never made it to the future...)
2: Piper goes back to 1975 two times in the series...once in season 1 and the other time in season 8. When she went to 1975 in season 1 she arrived at a point three weeks after she got there in season 8. So when she got to 1975 the first time, she was 33 and when she got there the second time, she was 25 (both in 1975 time and not episode-wise).
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Post by vandergraafk on Dec 14, 2006 19:06:23 GMT -5
Elder, the first is a paradox I cannot adequately explain. Suffice it to say that dying in the past really screws up the future, actually a lot of little futures. Just think about how many individual encounters this warlock had before going back in time. Dying there extinguishes his existence in the future. How do these people explain his sudden disappearance? Do they resort to Bermuda Triangle like explanations?
If time is truly fluid, then at least some futures, those where the warlock continues to exist, must terminate. Others, where the warlock no longer exists, continue to grow and flourish. One would think that since so much is at stake the price - in terms of power - would be enormous for time travel to occur. Yet, for the love travel in Forever Charmed, as well as for the myriad trips that Chris takes, there doesn't seem to be too much of an entrance fee.
As for the second comment, obviously a 25 year old Piper cannot know what a 33 year old Piper knows. Consequently, the fact that she went back in time - more or less - to the same period in 1975 is irrelevant from her point of view. From the perspective of those living that time, it is of course of profound importance. The memories of those participating in That 70s Episode were not completely erased. Certainly, little Prue's and little Piper's were, as well as any lingering memories that they had ever had and even exercised powers as children. Whether Patty's memories were erased, I cannot say. Grams must retain her memory at least until Phoebe is born so that she can confidently cast the binding spell, knowing that the sisters will not be in danger from Nicholas after her death. Whether she chooses to erase her memories after casting that spell, I cannot say. But, perhaps she did. If so, this would clear up one of the problems on Forever Charmed when Grams claims not to know that her granddaughters were the Charmed Ones. I, for one, just can't see Grams ever following through on that. Nor can I see Patty's memory being erased, for that matter. As long as they did not use any information for "personal gain", wherein lies the harm? The children, on the other hand, clearly would not possess the maturity to handle future knowledge. That's why Piper proclaims that Grams will deal with 10 year old Phoebe the moment she starts spouting off about future Phoebe 1 and 2.
As for the love travel stuff in Forever Charmed, Coop claims that he will deal with all of the memory problems. This would explain why a younger Patty would not have any memory of the Charmed Ones, as well as the death of Prue, when she encounters them several weeks later in That 70s Episode. Grams' memories too will be erased, even though she desperately wants to retain them.
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:19:19 GMT -5
Once again, the Charmed Cafe got caught in another time loop. Vandergraafk made note of this when he commented:
We've danced around this topic before. I thought we concluded then that when the Charmed Ones traveled back in time (That 70s Episode), they did not have their powers since before going back in time they did not cast a spell to preserve their powers. In All Halliwell's Eve, they did not have an opportunity to cast such a spell either, given the maelstrom into which they were quickly drawn without warning.
All other examples of time travel involve calculated attempts to go back in time. Thus, Chris keeps his whitelighter/witch powers when he rescuses the Charmed Ones in Oh My Goddess. Since he isn't even conceived yet, a spell can be the only explanation. Bacarra likewise goes back in time with his powers intact. This is probably provided to him by Cole. When Cole went back in time at the behest of the TRIAD, presumably they too could cast such a spell. Gavin, who I'm not sure is a warlock, is a terminator who goes back in time with a specific mission: to eliminate those individuals who develop a vaccine to prevent a warlock mutation from occurring.
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:21:21 GMT -5
The issue flared up when whitelightertony analyzed a comment made by maracev in response to another issue, namely, one involving the absence of powers from the womb for baby Chris.
Quoting maracev, whitelightertony argued the following:
I always made that claim myself but in Chris' case, you also have to remember that when old future Chris came, he kept his powers, and two sets of people aren't supposed to have powers at the same time (explaining Wyatt in Imaginary Fiends is a toughie though). This could explain why baby Chris didn't display any powers from the womb, big Chris had them.
That theory has been busted up in later episodes. Bianca didn't lose her powers when she traveled back in time. Neither did Gavin, Bacarra, Cole (in "All Halliwell's Eve"), Piper or Billie (in "Forever Charmed")....I think the reason our Halliwells lost their powers when they traveled back to 1975 in "That 70's Episode" is because their current powers (as in their reconstituted powers) didn't exist....when the Power of Three was reconstituted in "Something Wicca This Way Comes," that was a different incarnation of their magic than the period of time before the girls' powers were stripped by Grams/Patty.
I think the difference, when you time travel to a period of time before you existed, is that you lose your powers because you didn't exist during that time, so neither did your powers. Cole probably found a way around that in "All Halliwell's Eve" (as did, apparently, Chris and Wyatt in "Forever Charmed") with a special spell that allows you to retain your future powers. But in the absence of that kind of spell, a magical creature loses its powers when time traveling back to before they were born.
Quote:Once big Chris was gone though, there is no explanation for why it took baby Chris so long to come into his powers. I can go for the powerless conception time to explain that one.
I like that theory too (and not just because it's mine! ). But I seriously think it also partially had to do with Chris not being as powerful as Wyatt (the oldest born), as well as his personality. Even as a newborn and a toddler, Chris had an inferiority complex to Wyatt, so it took him longer to display his powers. His sister Melinda, assuming she had a more confident personality, may have begun displaying some powers even from within the womb, despite Chris being comparatively more powerful than her.
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:22:24 GMT -5
Elder, once again, expressed his puzzlement over time travel issues:
This time jumping thing is just way too bizarre.
Chris goes back to save his family (or something like that) but shows up during the attack...cutting it close.
Gavin goes back to kill the mom of this unborn kid, but it would be easier to go back to before TCO became TCO as we knew them. This gets Gavin to kill future mom before being stopped by TCO.
These people come from the future and have no concept of when to go back to do their job with the least amount of problems possible.
If I went back to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor, any day prior to 12/7/41 would work. To show up the morning of (or during) the attack is just pointless and useless.
They have all the time in the world but still show up at a bad time.
Once more, vandergraafk weighed in with his take on time travel:
Well, I think the problem is more conceptual in nature. Certainly, it is conceivable - if one allows for time travel - to imagine someone going back to the past. The question then becomes twofold: what changes have been wrought to the main time line - the present of the Charmed Ones - and from what future did these future creatures come?
In The Three Faces of Phoebe, future Phoebe certainly does not wish to interact at all with the present. She knows that to do so will change her future. Yet, the paradox is, of course, that the future is malleable. So, the future that she came from may or may not exist as a continuation of the main time line. Certainly, present Phoebe will make a decision that will affect the future of this main time line. Future Phoebe does not recall any instance in which such a summoning spell was ever done. So from which future did future Phoebe come?
In All Halliwell's Eve and in That 70s Episode, the Charmed Ones went back to the past in order to make one small, but significant change. In That 70s Episode, the change was simply to get the ring back from the warlock - to unbless it, as it were - so that when he attempts to use it in the present, there will be no effect. From the perspective of the main time line, this is an event that MUST happen in order for the main time line to continue as we know it.
On the other hand, in All Halliwell's Eve, the Charmed Ones are sent back in time by the Elders to prevent Cole, presumably sent back by the TRIAD, from altering the past to wipe out the main time line. Since the Charmed Ones serve as midwives to the birth of their own ancestral witch, Melinda Warren, they unwittingly become their own prophecy, which will self-fulfill, when the Charmed Ones are born, their powers are bound, Grams dies and Phoebe returns to incant the spell calling for the witches' powers. In effect, the Charmed Ones are participants in a time loop that must always see them go back into the past to this critical event. Melinda must always repeat the prophecy that three powerful sister witches shall be born, witches more powerful than any predecessors, since her birth to good magic was the necessary consequence of the existence of these three powerful sister witches.
Chris is locked into another type of time loop, one from which he cannot escape, unless the Charmed Ones, the Elders or some other magical entity, succeeds in sending him back to the future at a moment after the time when he first left to save the Elders and Paige from the Titans. Ironically, he will reenter a future that he has never experienced since his memories must be those of a future he has altered by saving Paige and presumably Phoebe and preserving the Elders from the Titans. If, indeed, he is sent back into the future, then the main time line will have been altered. A future where Chris has disappeared from the future to return to (and die in) the past will no longer constitute the main time line, but will exist as an alternate future where Chris is not rescued before succumbing to his own death at Gideon's hands.
Bacara, on the other hand, will not be dispatched by Cole to prevent Phoebe from dying. Since future Piper advised present Piper to take the wrong turn, Miles did die and the main time line that featured a Miles who survives is rendered to a service road where Phoebe does manage to rescue Miles. The new main time line is a present where Miles has died and Bacarra remains a hapless warlock.
In Centennial Charmed, Cole has used his Avatar enhanced powers to displace the main time line and force his alternative past to become the new main time line. Vanquishing Cole/Belthazor in this time line prevents Cole from acquiring Avatar enhanced powers in this new alternative main time line. Yet, Cole also finds himself vanquished in the restored main time line. Why is never explained, but we can imagine that the price that Cole paid for gaining access to Avatar powers was the banishment to a plane of existence between life and death where he retains some limited powers, but cannot escape this plane of existence. Banishment of Cole to this plane of existence allows the Avatars to keep Cole's powers and add them to the collective.
Gavin is a bit of a sticky wicket. He claims to be a warlock, but professes to know nothing about the Charmed Ones. That's odd, considering that he should know that his mission will fail because the Charmed Ones will vanquish him. So, instead of looking at Gavin's actions from a future that cannot be part of the Charmed Ones' main time line, we consider only the Charmed Ones' perspective.
From their perspective, the Charmed Ones must regard Gavin as a nuisance to be vanquished. His future is not their future since he will be vanquished. Moreover, his fuute is made less probable given the incompleteness of his mission accomplishments. He has killed some of the creators of the vaccine, but not all. Is this enough to prevent this altered gene from being acquired by some band of warlocks. Again, from the Charmed perspective, it is probably enough.
To sort through all of this, one has to keep in mind the fluidity of both past, present and future. There must be multiple pasts, presents and futures if one allows for time travel in both directions. One can take a quantum perspective here and simply note that looking into the future or the present or the past (for that matter) is much like opening the box that houses Schroedinger's kitten. From the outside, I cannot tell whether the cat is alive or dead. Once opened, the box will decide. Were I to close it and open it again, perhaps a new state of existence will have manifested itself.
Since everything is malleable, everything is probable. But not all events are equally probable. There are some that are more probable than others. Perhaps a main time line is simply the most probable of all probabilities.
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:24:02 GMT -5
Still puzzled, Elder posed some more questions:
In The Three Faces of Phoebe, future Phoebe certainly does not wish to interact at all with the present. She knows that to do so will change her future.
The fact that old Phoebe comes from the future tells us that Phoebe will be alive in that time. Her life--as well as the world--may be crappy, but at least she's alive.
When Chris shows up and starts going bonkers about his own conception, it presents a quandry for me. Just the fact that he shows up should tell him that somehow, Piper and Leo do get back together (if only for a single night)
Anyway, time travel on this series is tough for me to swallow since I don't get it...but the time travel episodes are some of the most enjoyable and important ones of the show's history.
vandergraafk replied:
No, Chris had to be especially worried since his solution to saving the Elders drove a deep rift between Piper and Leo. Had he done too much damage and made it impossible for him even to be born? That's one quandry in time travel. If you alter too much, you risk truly wrecking your own future.
But what good is it to know that Phoebe will be alive in some strand of the future if that future is not connected to the main time line? Future Phoebe in the Three Faces of Phoebe proves just as little as Phoebe's salvation in Morality Bites does. Indeed, one could argue the opposite and suggest that it provides a false sense of security that could prove fatal. What if Phoebe grows reckless and takes on unnecessary risks and dies perhaps? It could happen and might well have happened in Oh My Goddess had Chris not intervened.
Time travel stories requires lots of patience and clear logical thinking. It also helps to be able to maintain two or more contradictory beliefs at the same time. It's a good thing time travel is probably impossible in the real world.
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:25:36 GMT -5
Whitelightertony chimed in with the following points:
Gavin shouldn't have existed at all. If he's the warlock from "the truth is out there..." episode, he died in the present--so he shouldn't have the ability to come from the future because he didn't exist in the future (since he was killed in the present-day).
No, Gavin was never killed in the original timeline that he traveled from....so for that very reason he was able to time travel backward in an attempt to prevent Tanya's son from being born. Since Prue and Piper killed Future Gavin, they altered the timeline and created a new future that Gavin would be absent from.
Quote:This time jumping thing is just way too bizarre.
Chris goes back to save his family (or something like that) but shows up during the attack...cutting it close.
Gavin goes back to kill the mom of this unborn kid, but it would be easier to go back to before TCO became TCO as we knew them. This gets Gavin to kill future mom before being stopped by TCO.
These people come from the future and have no concept of when to go back to do their job with the least amount of problems possible.
Well, as Gideon explained, time travel isn't always precise...just because you cast a spell to take you back to a certain time period doesn't mean you're going to end up arriving at the exact moment in time that would be most convenient for you.
Quote:In The Three Faces of Phoebe, future Phoebe certainly does not wish to interact at all with the present. She knows that to do so will change her future. Yet, the paradox is, of course, that the future is malleable. So, the future that she came from may or may not exist as a continuation of the main time line. Certainly, present Phoebe will make a decision that will affect the future of this main time line. Future Phoebe does not recall any instance in which such a summoning spell was ever done. So from which future did future Phoebe come?
From what Future Phoebe tells us, we can assume that she and her sisters end up vanquishing The Source and Cole, but it leaves her very jaded and bitter (i.e., no Coop to poof down to Earth and show her true love). Whether Piper and Paige are still alive in Old Phoebe's future is up for debate: it's possible that Wyatt, Chris, and Melinda may not have even been conceived in that future reality...therefore, Piper might not have died due to Wyatt's amoral transformation. By that same token, perhaps Mordock aligns himself with The Source and is killed in an alternate battle, which prevents Mordock from freeing the Titans (and thus, the Titans are still entombed in Future Phoebe's reality)?
The future she comes from currently only exists as an alternate reality (if at all), once Future Phoebe is killed by Kurzon...as far as anyone in her future reality knows, the elderly Phoebe Halliwell simply mysteriously disappears one day, and no one ever sees or hears from her again.
Quote:When Chris shows up and starts going bonkers about his own conception, it presents a quandry for me. Just the fact that he shows up should tell him that somehow, Piper and Leo do get back together (if only for a single night)
Except in the future that Chris comes from, Piper and Leo's "separation" (as blandly as it can be defined) is of a different nature. It's probably not even an official "divorce," or even to the formally-acknowledged extent that it became in Season 6. Leo is presumably still married to Piper in Chris's future, but he is probably stuck doing double-duty and working much longer hours as a result of most of the Elders being killed off. Between Leo orbing out all the time to look after charges, and Leo chasing after Wyatt to stop his first-born son from getting into whatever trouble he gets into, Chris probably feels that Leo (as a father) is highly neglectful of him.
But, since Leo becoming an Elder is something that never actually happened in Chris's future, we can assume that in that future timeline Piper and Leo remained together (albeit with a heavy strain on their marriage) and Chris was conceived through more "normal" circumstances (at least, as normal as circumstances can be expected within the Charmedverse).
Eventually, we know that Piper dies (and probably Phoebe, later on), probably as an indirect effect of Wyatt's turn to amorality, and, as a result, Leo and Chris most likely become further estranged. With all three of his aunts eventualy dead, his brother against him, and Chris not on speaking terms with his own father, Chris turns to Bianca to fill the emotional void in his life (yes, he has Victor, but Chris also implies that Victor's health severely deteriorates by a certain point, due to Victor's smoking habit).
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Post by vandergraafk on Mar 21, 2007 12:28:51 GMT -5
Elder still had some questions, questions that whitelightertony later addressed:
Chris turns to Bianca to fill the emotional void in his life (yes, he has Victor, but Chris also implies that Victor's health severely deteriorates by a certain point, due to Victor's smoking habit).
If you're Chris, would you rather spend time with your nice and decent grandfather or some girl wearing low-cut tight leather tops?
Also, a person doesn't have to come from the future to know about possible lung cancer. All that means is future doctors have not found a cure for it.
Whitelightertony offered in response:
Quote:If you're Chris, would you rather spend time with your nice and decent grandfather or some girl wearing low-cut tight leather tops?
If I were Chris, I'd definitely appreciate my close relationship with Victor. But I would also realize that the love of a grandfather still can't serve as a substitute for the, um...."female companionship" of a special woman.
Quote:Also, a person doesn't have to come from the future to know about possible lung cancer. All that means is future doctors have not found a cure for it.
My theory is that, in the future Chris came from (at least, Season 6 Chris), Victor developed an inoperable form of lung cancer, which Victor ended up needing to be permanently hospitalized for. Sure, Chris probably orbed to the hospice center quite often to visit Victor and look in on him, but at some point Victor's health condition may have deteriorated to the point where Victor could no longer carry on coherent conversation with Chris.
Just speculation on my part, but it would explain why Chris felt compelled to alter the future specifically by cautioning Victor against picking up a regular smoking habit. Endorsing many of the points made by whitelightertony, vandergraafk offered two postings:
Whitelightertony, I agree wholeheartedly with your particulars about Chris's conception in an Elder-bereft, Leo busy world. It is highly interesting speculation, as is your hypothesis concerning Mordock and the Source. Still, I hope that my point about multiple futures and probabilistic presents, as well as malleable pasts is helpful here. It is very difficult keeping things straight especially when quantum mechanics is in play!
The second posting struck a more specific tone:
Still, the fact that Chris, ever protective of revealing the future, lets this bombshell loose is interesting. Yes, he may wish to have his grandfather around longer. But, this is Chris's wish based on a now altered future. Piper and Leo will both be alive and accessible as parents. Victor should spend more time with his grandchildren, especially to discover what he lost out on through self-imposed and Grams enforced exile. But, none of this should trouble Chris who has sufficiently altered the future before his own demise.
Still, in this episode (Hyde School Reunion), Chris truly is quite reckless. He reveals to Victor that Piper will die (in his altered reality) and that Victor will succumb to lung cancer prematurely perhaps. Quite surprising, I must say. Perhaps Chris felt unburdened since so much of his future had now been undeniably altered and his own special secret had been revealed.
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Post by Scott on Apr 12, 2007 16:14:33 GMT -5
At several key junctures, time travel was used by the writing team to show different facets of the Charmed Ones, their ancestors and progeny. Sometimes time travel was mandated to solve story line problems or employed to introduce new characters to the show. Whatever its purpose, time travel carries with it certain risks for any written or visual medium. Logical conundra can slip in almost unnoticed. Loose ends can remaining dangling long after the writers have moved passed an instance of time travel. In this thread, the goal is to clear up some of the misunderstandings that accompany time travel and to explore the how to of time travel, if we allow the possibility of time travel in one or both directions.
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Post by vandergraafk on May 9, 2007 13:58:43 GMT -5
Elder pointed out yet another inconsistency during Season 6. This prompted two responses by vandergraafk. First, I present Elder's question, then vandergraafk's first response, whitelightertony's query and then vandergraafk's extended response:
I hate to keep yapping about this Chris/time travel stuff but what bothers me is this...
You can only live through one life. When we first see Chris we hear him say Paige was dead. Later, we hear him say that in the future, he goes to Paige for cash. (I thought she died.)
Anyway, it would help to know where Chris came from and which timeline we see when we see "Chris-crossed"
Oh, and when we see Chris-crossed, are we to assume that Wyatt is still evil or is that another branch of time? Did Chris and Bianca go directly into the future from where they were or skip over a few timelines to show us what was or could have been?
Vandergraafk replied:
I'm not sure I understand the last question. But, as for the earlier comment - about Chris going to Aunt Paige for money - again, you've pointed up yet another inconsistency. Clearly, he would have no memory of this if this were the first time he went back to the past to save Paige, etc. Recall, though, in Deja Vu All Over Again that with each repetition of the day, Phoebe is able to recall more and more.
Though you may not enjoy the explanation, here's my best shot. Chris has done this time loop several times already. On his first attempt, he may have reasoned that he needed only to save Paige and that would suffice. It apparently did not. Evil Wyatt still emerges as a powerful threat. Yet, saving Paige's life does alter his own future, one where he now can form active memories of Aunt Paige and Aunt Phoebe. When he goes back in time on successive occasions, he retains these memories (in Charmedverse). Thus, the seeming contradiction evaporates. Otherwise, we are forced to conclude yet again that the writers have blundered, an entirely plausible point of view.
Whitelightertony commented:
So, vandergraaf, your theory is that, as a result of this time loop, Chris (during Season 6) gradually begins to remember more and more about different (and sometimes conflicting) versions of the future that he has experienced?
Very interesting.
Vandergraafk replied:
Actually, my thesis is somewhat different. In Deja Vu All Over Again, Phoebe remembers more and more. During Season 6, we have all kinds of weird things going on, many of which have been pointed out by Elder, ShantaD and you. The question is how best to explain these. As you know, I very much believe that the quality of writing suffered a lot during Season 6. Monica Breen and Allison Schapker were gone. It's almost as if every single second of this season has to be watched and analyzed.
What I am suggesting is that I can resolve some of these apparent contradictions by asserting that Chris initially went back in time to save Paige and the Elders. He did this in the belief that this would solve his other problem, namely, his evil brother Wyatt. Given the existence of his aunts and the Elders, perhaps Wyatt could be held in check, i.e., not allowed to run amok. Chris learns unfortunately that saving Paige and the Elders are not enough. The Titans were not responsible for Wyatt turning evil.
Chris must then go back in time again and again until he can figure out a way to fix the future. I don't know how many times he goes back in time. Maybe twice is enough. He is a bright fellow. Something tells me though, for example, the incident with Gith or the Power of Three Blondes, that he goes back more than twice. By the time we see Chris in Season 6, he already has a list of demons he wants to knock off, methodically as it were. He pushes the sisters to the point of rebellion in his single-minded pursuit of demons. Still, he doesn't know everything. He is as surprised as the sisters are when new demons pose a threat. Finally, Chris believes he has solved his problem. He's ready to return to his time once again in order to test his hypothesis that all is well. Of course, once again he is wrong. He doesn't foresee the threat posed by Gideon. No one does. Only this time, Chris dies. He cannot test his hypothesis that evil Wyatt has been averted. Indeed, we know from Scry Hard that not even Gideon was the final threat.
The Chris who goes back in time knows a lot about the past. Yet, he is very reckless about his knowledge. In Love's a Witch, Chris blurts out to Seth, Piper's divorcee date, that he's from the future. One might see that as Chris's way of being facetious - there are enough instances to show how facetious he can be. On the other hand, maybe he just doesn't carefully monitor what he says. I don't know.
Of course, ShantaD and all of the other canon defenders will excoriate my thesis. But, then, for these critics, there is no problem. Oh My Goddess is just simply dismissed as an aberration. No, I think Season 6 was the aberration. There are many, way too many instances of sloppy writing in this season. Who can forget/forgive Witchstock? Who can explain how Richard can throw fireballs/energy balls in Love's a Witch? Who can explain how a witch, an innocent victim in a feud, can acquire the ability to throw a plasma ball within a year of her accidental murder at the hands of Richard's brother when the Lang brothers, who are really, really pissed at Leo, can't manage to throw plasma balls despite being dead for nearly 60 years?
Without Cole and without Schapker/Breen Charmed lost its sense of direction. It took a long time to get it back.
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Post by vandergraafk on May 14, 2007 16:06:49 GMT -5
whitelightertony offered this commentary:
Why would you assume that Chris would know about Gideon from the future? He would only know this if in one of his previous time travels he had met Gideon before returning to the future to determine whether in his future Wyatt was still evil?
I believe that, in the timeline where the Titans have been defeated, Wyatt and Chris were introduced to Magic School. All other things being unchanged, Gideon still would have been the Headmaster of Magic School.
One piece of evidence for this is that, in "Imaginary Friends," Evil Future Wyatt tells Leo, "I always hated this place," in reference to Magic School. Granted, that version of Wyatt was coming from a newly-forged future timeline / alternate reality totally separate from the one Chris traveled from in Seasons 5 & 6...but the point is, in the future reality alluded to by Wyatt in "Imaginary Friends," Piper and Leo brought their sons to Magic School for regular sessions. So it is at least likely that Chris, as we knew him in Season 6, attended Magic School with Wyatt during their childhood in his future (even though it's a different future than the one that has been created by the time the events of "Imaginary Friends" come to pass). In fact, Wyatt, Chris, and Melinda (along with Phoebe's daughters and Paige's children) probably still attend Magic School in the future reality shown in "Forever Charmed"...although those would be under even more radically different circumstances, since Leo has resumed his role as Headmaster after Good reclaims Magic School from Evil (whereas in the future that Wyatt came from in "Imaginary Friends," demons never took over Magic School).
Gideon was most likely still the Headmaster of Magic School in the future that Chris remembered during Season 6, since Gideon wasn't vanquished in the Charmedverse until the end of Season 6. So I agree with Elder that it is probable that Gideon existed in the future that Chris remembered throughout Season 6, especially since it didn't even occur to Chris that Gideon could be a suspect in causing Wyatt's evil transformation.
Of course, Gideon wouldn't have existed in Chris's memories when Chris initially traveled back in time at the end of Season 5, since Chris originally came from a reality where all of the Elders had been decimated. But then, that reality changed by the end of "Oh My Goddess" (after the Charmed Ones defeated the Titans, and Leo ascended to Elderdom). Once Chris's perception of the future changed (between Season 5 and Season 6), Gideon became a factor in Wyatt's destiny.
Whitelightertony was not yet finished as this contribution amply demonstrates:
Of course, ShantaD and all of the other canon defenders will excoriate my thesis. But, then, for these critics, there is no problem. Oh My Goddess is just simply dismissed as an aberration.
Actually, they're not using Charmed canon for the half-baked "Chris-lied-about-Paige" theory. Nowhere in Charmed canon does Chris state that he lied about Paige. They are dismissing "Oh My Goddess" based on their own assumptions.
I'm a big subscriber to established canon. However, the application of some basic creativity can be used to reconcile many of the inconsistencies.
Even the atrocity that is "Witchstock," where Nigel seemingly possesses a cryokinetic power that he should not be able to use against good witches, can be reconciled with the following caveats: one, the first couple of times Nigel appears to "freeze" everyone, he is actually pulling himself and Robin out of the regular flow of time, rather than directly freezing the bodies of others (as The Triad does to Christy in Season 8); secondly, when Nigel freezes Piper and Younger Penny near the end of the episode (after Penny tries to cast a love spell on him), Younger Penny is vulnerable to his temporal stasis because she momentarily loses her identity as a witch due to her hippie-dippy mindset having reached its pinnacle of inanity (obviously, Piper can be frozen when she or any other good witch travels into the past, due to continuity factors -- we've seen the time-traveling Halliwells frozen in "That 70's Episode" by their younger selves, since their reconstituted magical immunity to temporal stasis no longer exists -- they are only able to cast spells in "Witchstock" because they are still innately magical, even without their powers, as theorized by Prue in "All Halliwell's Eve").
Anyway, sorry for the digression. Back to Chris: even in "Chris-Crossed," when, in the future, we see Bianca tell Chris to stick to his "cover story"...she could have easily been referring to Chris posing as a full whitelighter, rather than disclosing his true identity as a witch/whitelighter hybrid. People who want to believe the future Chris described in "Oh My Goddess" was "just a lie" will simply jump on Bianca's statement as "proof" that Chris "lied," even though the Titans probably weren't even present in Bianca's mind when she made that statement (why would they be, if they'd been vanquished by that point?).
And, still, no one has bothered to explain how Piper and Phoebe would have saved a magically-petrified Paige from Meta's clutches without Chris's intervention.
Can you tell that I watched both "Chris-Crossed" and "Witchstock" just last night?
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Post by vandergraafk on May 14, 2007 16:09:41 GMT -5
ShantaD offered this in reply:
And, still, no one has bothered to explain how Piper and Phoebe would have saved a magically-petrified Paige from Meta's clutches without Chris's intervention.
The same way they survived eight years of demonic attacks. There's nothing unusual here. You could ask the exact same question over and over throughout the series. They are the Charmed Ones. They find a way. We just didn't see how this time.
We're never going to agree on this but thinking Chris lied is anything but "half baked". It's based on Chris saying the only reason he came back was to save Wyatt, backed up by all of season six, on Chris forgetting why he was in the past when his memory of Wyatt was erased and not remembering the Titans, on Chris saying his mission was a surgical strike to save Wyatt without changing too much of the past, on Chris repeatedly mentioning events showing Paige was alive while he was growing up, on Chris Crossed showing us the real future, on Chris fading away when he finally did change his future.
The alternative others are suggesting is Chris came back to change the future being destroyed by the Titans. If the story Chris told was true, the Titans ruled the world for years, decades maybe, and destroyed human day to day life as we know it. For Chris to change such a thing would be a cataclysmic shift in the future on par with going to the past to eliminate the Black Death or Hitler or the Roman Empire or Jesus Christ. Yet I'm supposed to believe he succeeds in his mission and either just carries on in the past with saving Wyatt as part two of his mission or alternately, after the future changes, it just so coincidently changes so now Wyatt is the threat and he needs to be in the past at the exact time at he went back to stop the Titans, leaving from the same time 20 odds years from the future. How convenient. And beyond impossible based on the odds of that happening.
If Chris really went back to stop the Titans, when he succeeded he should have vanished, he possibly (and most likely) would not even exist any more, the same as Piper's daughter from Morality Bites never came to be.
If he really went back to the past to save Paige in order to stop the Titans, why wouldn't he go back to save Piper, his own mother who died when he was fourteen, to stop Wyatt and all the other evil which could reign free without the Charmed Ones? Yet in season six, it never seem to occur to him to save his mother or the other Charmed Ones, all whom were dead in his future. He seemed to accept their deaths and realized it wasn't his place to change that. There's a huge fundamental change in his thinking between the season five finale and season six if you believe he was telling the truth about coming to save Paige and ensure that the Titans were destroyed when in season six he was trying not to change the future, other than to save Wyatt, and accepted he would go back to a future where his mother was dead.
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Post by vandergraafk on May 14, 2007 16:10:40 GMT -5
Vandergraafk offered this lengthy reply:
That question has a very simple answer. Assuming you allow for time travel, especially time travel that can more or less be precise, then it is obvious that you select the moment the furthest back in time when everything seemed to go wrong. There you make your impact felt. The hope is that events after this will be set again on the right track.
This is certainly what happened in A Witch in Time. Leo instructs Piper to go back in time to a moment shortly before Phoebe and Piper intervened to save Miles's life. That was when destiny got derailed and allowed Bacarra to go back in time. Leo doesn't advise Piper to go back to the moment just before she and Paige lose the Book of Shadows. That would not fix the problem.
For Chris, the immediate problem is an evil Wyatt in one of Chris's futures. He reasons that Wyatt became evil because his aunts, as well as his mother, were all dead. The Elders were toast, and Leo was estranged. Chris could go back in time to save his mom, but would this solve all of his problems. Probably not. For Chris, the most distant event must surely be the destruction of Paige (and Phoebe) at the hands of Meta. The vanquish of (most of) the Elders follows that event. Subsequent to all of this come the death of Piper (at Chris's age 14) and Wyatt unleashing his evil reign on San Francisco.
What seems to me to be apparent is that yes saving Paige's life is important (and Phoebe's too). This preserves the Charmed Ones intact. It also continues the existence of the Elders and perhaps Gideon too. Yet, my argument simply is that Chris must have gone back to his time, found an altered future and concluded that saving Paige's life and the existence of the Elders was not enough. Wyatt still turns evil. So, if it wasn't the Titans, then what was it?
If Chris goes back in time again, he might skip the incident with the Titans. He might assume that I've already saved Paige once and that might be sufficient. He might pick any time after the Titan incident and try to fix things for Wyatt.
Suppose he does this. Exactly how would he worm his way into the Charmed Ones graces? Would he tell them that he is from the future and related to the Charmed Ones? Would he tell them that he was a close friend of Wyatt's, but now has come to prevent Wyatt from turning evil?
One can imagine how the Charmed Ones would react to these lines. No, wait, we don't have to imagine it because we already see how Piper reacts when Chris tells her that Wyatt is the problem, not demons attacking Wyatt. She sure didn't like what Chris had to say then.
My point is: I don't think Chris can avoid saving Paige yet again. It provides him with a credible point of entry. Paige and Phoebe are indebted to him. With Leo an Elder, Chris can make a case for becoming the Charmed Ones' new whitelighter in order to hang around longer. Perhaps this is what Bianca meant by sticking to a cover story. A surgical strike is not sufficient to prevent Wyatt from turning evil. Chris will somehow have to find a way to become the Charmed Ones' whitelighter in order to stay close enough to Wyatt and direct the Charmed Ones in his quest to ferret out which demon turns Wyatt.
As we know from Season 6, it may not have been a demon. It could very well have been Gideon who turns Wyatt evil. Or, as we know from Season 7, the danger that Wyatt will turn evil is ever present (Scry Hard). The only thing that Piper and Leo, as well as his aunts, can do is provide Wyatt with a warm, loving envirnoment, be as good at role models as they can be, and raise Wyatt with a strong sense of right and wrong so that he will not be tempted to use absolute power absolutely.
Of course, none of this matters if you wish to maintain the naive perspective that Paige doesn't die at Meta's hands if Chris doesn't intervene. But, then I can't see how much you really understand Charmed. Charmed did demand a fair amount from its viewers. Andy Trudeau is killed off, and Prue was too. Yes, I know that Shannen Doherty's character was axed, when Shannen was kicked off the show. But Charmed could have maintained Prue's character, but glamoured her appearance. Or, they could have done a Bewitched and simply hired another Darren Stevens. But that's not Charmed's style. In short, there was no one to save Prue at the conclusion of All Hell Breaks Loose. The Charmed Ones didn't find a way! Nor, did they find a way to save Chris from dying at the end of Season 6.
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Post by Scott on May 14, 2007 17:25:25 GMT -5
Elder is still confused as this comment amply demonstrates:
The Chris time travel is very tough to grasp.
Now that he has come back and saved Paige from being taken by the gods, he very well could go back to the future and save his mom from death when he turns 14.
If she's still alive (based on the series finale, she still is alives at age 80) then either Chris lied about her death or saving Paige saves his mom.
I doubt saving Paige is the sole crux of the Chris time/life journey. Besides, how would he know if everything were okay unless he went into the future and checked it out. If we assume that Wyatt was still evil at the time of "Chris-crossed" why didn't Bianca take him to the happy future we see in the series finale? Did it happen yet or not?
It seems like Chris is having two or more timelines which blend into one.
One where Paige dies and one where Wyatt turns evil. Piper's death is never explained fully as to who (or what) killed her, so we don't know if it's the Titans, the Elders, or maybe even Wyatt going wonky. Whatever it was, we don't know how connected it was to saving Paige.
Before vandergraafk's reply is posted, let me share Spiritkas's thoughts that vandergraafk references in his commentary:
It's obvious the future is highly fluidic in nature. Every action we take afftects, in small and large ways, our entire future because we can not use that time again for anything else or make any other decision. We can change our minds and redirect our actions, and this will alter the eventual outcome,but we still used up the time with the previous decision. If one can go back in time and alter a decision (or decisions), then we are actually rewriting our future. Saying this lays the ground work for two theories. One: There is only one time line, altered or not. Two: There are multiple timelines, running in parallel, which branch off each time we go back in time and alter the past.
Either way, what Chris does alters the future of his current time line. In My Three Witches he is attempting to look in on his future to see if he changed it sufficiently to keep Wyatt good. This poses a question. Not that he was able to see his new future, as changed by his actions in the past, but if he had, and all was good, would he then leave the past and return. Well, that wasn't in the storyline, so it wasn't going to happen, but when does he return to? If Wyatt did not turn evil, his life would have been completely different. There would be another Chris there, living this new life, with a totally new and better set of experiences. He can't go back, ever, given this scenario, which is my point of this entry.
Vandergraafk replied:
You ARE having trouble with this time travel, aren't you? Spiritkas may have muddied the waters a bit, but he is essentially correct. As improbable as it seems, in Charmedverse there are many, many futures that veer off from the main time line. Still, not everyone gets to create multiple future scenarios, though it seems as if the Charmed Ones can have multiple futures, as well as their offspring. Cole created an alternative timeline, but this required the powers of the Avatars.
Chris has the power to go from a future timeline where Wyatt is evil back into the main timeline where he believed the divergence began (with Paige's death). Yet, as Spiritkas noted, every choice can have dramatic repercussions. Thus, fixing the issue of Paige's death and the destruction of the Elders does NOT fix Wyatt's turning evil. These events may have been necessary (to correct), but correcting them was not sufficient to solve Chris's real problem. He knows this because, I assume, he returns to an altered future timeline where he still finds an evil Wyatt. This requires him to go back in time again to start the process over again and again and again - until he gets it right.
No one is saying that saving Paige's life is the essence of Chris's time travel. It is simply the starting point that he must choose since that seems to be where destiny started to go awry.
If Paige and Phoebe are saved, then there perhaps is no reason to assume that Piper will die. Of course, maybe she does die for some reason that none of us knows. But, the contention is, on my part, that saving Paige and Phoebe is enough to prevent the death of Piper when Chris turns 14. Why? I can only surmise that the reason Piper dies is because she was the lone Charmed One left and that not even Wyatt at age 15 is enough to save her. That might be a reason for Wyatt turning evil. But, the Charmed Ones might have enough power to defeat whatever baddie came their way: Zankou?
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Post by vandergraafk on May 19, 2007 13:00:39 GMT -5
The opening scene from I Dream of Phoebe is perhaps useful to consider as well. Chris has been outed by Phoebe in the previous episode. At the beginning of this episode, he begs for Phoebe's assistance. Phoebe bluntly tells me that maybe he (Chris) should have thought about that (his conception) before splitting up Piper and Leo. Chris responds that he had too. It was the only way he could become the sisters' whitelighter and use that position to save Wyatt from turning evil.
Again, I don't want to place undue emphasis on "saving Wyatt from turning evil". That's already been discussed. I would, however, like to note that this is a very clear reference to Oh My Goddess Part 2 since that's the episode where the estrangement between Leo and Piper manifests itself. Remember Piper atop the hill raining terror on San Francisco?
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