--- In PotaDG@yahoogroups.com
, atragon1@... wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 10/26/2006 2:05:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> patrickmichaeltilton@... writes:
>
> This, really, IS the biggest 'pain' I've had to deal with, trying
to re-interpret Dehn's mistakes. It's bad enough that he imagined the
Brent/Skipper mission to "rescue" Taylor -- presumably sent out from
planet Earth to follow him across 320 lightyears of space and all
that. And then he goes and gives Skipper dialogue about his "wife"
and his "two daughters" being "dead... everyone I ever knew..." ...
as if he didn't expect the EARTH-TIME clock to mysteriously click
ahead to the year 3955 when he left Earth to "rescue" an astronaut.
>
>
>
> *************************
> Ahhh, but here is a possibility that you have not explored.. What
if there was a predetermined "way back" from the onset of the ANSA
missions? Perhaps the Taylor & Brent's ships had the capability to
travel back and forth in time built into them.
>
> This would explain a lot. Perhaps Taylor's real mission was to
gather facts on Earth's future. Remember, he did not have time to
fully check the tapes when he splashed down in Dead Lake. These tapes
would have revealed his secret mission ... gather facts about Earth's
future and report back. "Skipper" was informed of the details before
his launch (as it was a rescue mission), but never had the chance to
tell Brent. This would explain Skipper's grief about not seeing his
family ever again.
>
> Dr Milo had no real concept of aeronautics or space travel. The
apes did not even have electricity or indoor plumbing. I would
surmise that all Milo had to do was hit a big red button
marked "Return" and let the ship fly itself home -- to 1973 Earth.
>
> Sometime before Taylor's launch, an ultra-secret branch of the US
government discovered clues from the future as to the fate of
mankind. They were obligated to send scouts into the future and
report back information with the intentions of trying to prevent this
fate. The irony, or course, is that these missions actually not only
heralded the fall of mankind and the rise of the apes, but also the
destruction of the Earth.
> Bill
-----------------------------------------------------------
*** This, Bill, is indeed an interesting notion, and there is at
least one detail in the POTA saga (specifically, the TV show) which
almost implies some sort of "forewarning" regarding the Future.
In "The Legacy" we see the pre-recorded message from an old guy
speaking to posterity on behalf of "the Scientists", telling about
the Vaults that have been buried in various cities throughout the
world. He says that this was done because "The destruction of our
world, as we know it, is imminent." How did 'they' (the Scientists)
KNOW that their world's destruction was imminent? Doesn't this imply
that they either had direct knowledge of the Future or that they had
indirect knowledge of some sort?
I've mentioned before that the set-up in "The Legacy" seems to
be 'borrowed' from Isaac Asimov's "FOUNDATION" stories. In them, a
brilliant mathematician named Hari Seldon develops a new type of math
called "psychohistory" which enables him to predict the Future; he
discovers that the Galactic Empire is going to fall, and in its wake
there will be thousands of years of chaos before a Second Galactic
Empire emerges to succeed it. So, the "Seldon Plan" is devised so
that the chaotic 'interregnum' can be shortened to a minimal amount
of time -- roughly 1,000 years rather than many thousands of years.
Before Hari Seldon dies, he makes a series of holographic recordings,
each of which will be broadcast in the Future at its appropriate time
(following a "Seldon Crisis") so that -- long after Hari Seldon
himself is dead -- posterity will 'hear' from him as he reveals to
them his awareness of how the Future has unfolded according to
his 'Seldon Plan'. Part of his plan was for a "foundation" to be
developed on a planet called Terminus (near the edge of the Galaxy,
far away from the hurly-burly of the collapsing Galactic Empire... a
foundation which has the ostensible purpose of creating the
Encyclopedia Galactica, a repository of Man's accumulated scientific
knowledge to give "light" during the coming times of darkness...
THIS is the parallel "The Legacy" was developing. Those buried Vaults
were the POTA equivalent of Asimov's "Encyclopedia Galactica".
Does this mean, however, that the POTA "Scientists" -- like Asimov's
psychohistorian Hari Seldon -- were able to PREDICT the Future? Or,
did they acquire knowledge about the Future from the testimony of a
Time Traveler or two or three?
Of course, we KNOW that the Ape-onauts were Time Travelers who showed
up in 1973 after having witnessed the destruction of the Earth in
3955. And, if Hasslein and those like him believe what Cornelius and
Zira told them at Camp Eleven, the "history" and "prehistory" of the
Ape Civilization would constitute a certain amount of foreknowledge
of the Future. We could imagine that the Scientists who made the
Vaults did so due -- in part -- to an awareness of the things
Hasslein learned of from Zira and Cornelius.
In my own POTA scenario, the "15th episode" of the POTA TV series
will resolve the set-up from "ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW": I'm calling the
final adventure of the Fugitives "ESCAPE TO YESTERDAY". In it, Virdon
will finally have the chance (he hopes) to return to "his" time, to
see his family again. He will figure this out after, of course, he
somehow finds that Computer he's looking for (the one to read the
info on the Magnetic Flight Recorder disc)... and discovers that not
only did his ship Timewarp ahead from 1980 to 3085 (FORWARD into the
Future), but that it also traveled BACKWARDS through Time, from July
14, 3085 (Opening Credits date at the end of the Timewarp) back to
March 21st, 3085 (the EARTH-TIME date 'frozen' onto the chronometer
on the day of their landing, after Veska's gorillas smashed the
computer systems). In other words, Virdon knows not only that travel
BACKWARDS through Time is possible, HE'S ALREADY DONE IT ONCE!!!
If he did it once (unintentionally), then why can't he do it a second
time INTENTIONALLY? All he has to do is figure out the CONDITIONS
that caused that 'jump' backwards through about 115 days of EARTH-
TIME.
If Virdon, then, can duplicate the conditions of the negative time
travel, he can find a way to go back to the 20th Century. Before he
goes on such a trip, perhaps he is FATED to do so... if, that is,
there is an actual record of a "lost" astronaut named Virdon having
mysteriously re-appeared on Earth before the Fall of Man's
Civilization...
If Virdon were to manage to get back to the late 20th Century -- to a
period at least a decade or two before the nuclear war -- then isn't
it likely that HE would be the one who tipped off "the Scientists"
about the imminent destruction of their world? Perhaps that projector
at the Oakland Science Institute was (or "will be") put there because
Virdon TOLD this "think-tank" that when he was THERE in 3085 he FOUND
it, and it led him to one of the Vaults (buried in the lower level of
the Midtown Railway Station). Maybe those Scientists never would have
known enough to develop those Vaults in the time remaining to them if
it were not for the 'lucky' return of the astronaut who had been in
the Future and who KNEW what it would be like in their own near
future.
However... the notion, Bill, that the ANSA missions were DESIGNED
predominantly as Time Travel missions to the Future AND BACK... as
interesting as it is, I don't think the main POTA scenario fits in
with that. In "PLANET" it is established that Taylor's mission was
designed to leave Earth in 1972 and to arrive at its destination in
Orion in or about the year 3978 (in order to colonize that new
planet, with Stewart being "the New Eve"...). Taylor, after seeing
the "3978" date on his EARTH-TIME clock, presumes that they indeed
arrived at that 'alien' planet 320 lightyears away from Earth. Taylor
had said in his Final Report that "I leave the 20th Century with no
regrets"... and he implies that he has LEFT it, and if he expected to
get BACK to it on the 2nd leg of his trip, what's the point? How
could Landon hope for the pseudo-"Immortality" that Taylor ribs him
about -- the notion of being alive in the 40th Century, having lived
longer than anybody ever born? Taylor also ridicules Landon's notion
of getting back to Earth: "Even if you COULD get back, they'd think
you were something that fell out of a tree!" If Taylor's ship was
supposed to fly out to that star in Orion (getting there in 3978) and
then fly all the way back to Earth BACKWARDS through Time, back in
the 1970's, he wouldn't have said these particular things to Landon.
In "RETURN" there was that bit about "Dr. Stanton's theory of Time-
Thrust" of course, which supposedly was proved true: the Venturer
seems to have been designed to travel FORWARD into the Future and
then BACKWARDS again to the Past (or Present, the time they left).
But I don't think that the live-action POTA stuff can be reconciled
to this notion. The cartoon is a whole nuther POTA!
But don't rule out the possibility that ANSA knew that (under certain
conditions) backwards-through-Time voyages COULD indeed happen. The
fact that the EARTH-TIME clocks CAN and DID click backwards on at
least three occasions pretty much PROVES that Hasslein's Theory of
Time embraces the notion of "retro-temporal" travel. Milo and the
other two ape-onauts actually saw the "date meter" clicking backwards
from 3955 to 1973 -- and the clock couldn't have done it unless it
had been programmed to do so, given the right circumstances.
But what ARE those circumstances?
The Ape-onaut ship undergoes the Negative Time trip only after the
Doomsday Bomb detonation has destroyed the Earth and created
a "tornado in the sky" which hits the ship as a shockwave.
In my POTA scenario, the Earth had been converted into a BLACK HOLE
as a result of the Doomsday Bomb's detonation. And it is the Ape-
onauts' proximity to this Black Hole that seems, to them, to be like
a "tornado in the sky". The accretion disc swirling around a rapidly
spinning Event Horizon would look like a tornado. If their ship fell
towards the Event Horizon (and the Singularity inside it) and then
the Space-Time bending Hasslein-invented propulsion system were to
kick in, into overdrive, so as to protect the ship within a bubble of
hyperspace, perhaps the interaction of the bent Spacetime that is the
ship's warpfield with the bent Spacetime that is the Black Hole
results in the traversing of Negative Time. In other words, travel
backwards through Time is a function of the ANSA warpdrive in the
vicinity of a Black Hole -- perhaps THROUGH a Black Hole (i.e. down
to the Singularity and BEYOND it, through a wormhole).
Virdon's ship had been trapped in the Alpha Centauri system -- in a
Timewarp -- that lasted for 403,557 days of EARTH-TIME (from AUGUST
19, 1980 until JULY 14, 3085)... during which only about 25 seconds
of SHIP-TIME transpire. Then Jones activates the Emergency Homing
Device, and they zip BANG-ZOOM all the way back to Earth, a distance
of 4.34 lightyears... and, somehow, they get there on MARCH 21st,
3085, having gone backwards through Time about 115 days of EARTH-
TIME.
The ONLY thing that makes sense of that Time Warp information, I
think, is the presence of an unseen Black Hole in the Alpha Centauri
system. Virdon's ship had inadvertently flown into the gravity well
of that Black Hole and become trapped in it. Even with its warpdrive
on, it was orbiting that Black Hole at a point so near to its Event
Horizon that the GRAVITATIONAL ACCELERATION imparted to the ship
resulted in the Time Dilation effects we see in the Opening Credits
sequence.
ANSA didn't know that there was a Black Hole in the Alpha Centauri
system, mind you. But I suspect that they knew there was a planet at
the location where Virdon's ship de-warped. Unbeknownst to the
mission planners, though, that planet had been destroyed by the same
sort of Doomsday Bomb that would eventually destroy the Earth,
converting it into a Black Hole. The Alpha Centauri black hole could
NOT be a stellar-mass one, since that would affect the orbits of the
other two main stars, Alpha "A" and "B" (Proxima Centauri is very far
away from the other two stars). Only a planet-mass Black Hole could
be in that system and yet not affect the known orbits of those stars
around each other.
In my scenario, if there ARE any other ANSA ships zipping around in
Deep Space, and if they don't have a clue that Taylor has detonated
the Doomsday Bomb in 3955 and turned the planet into a Black Hole,
then if they should warp back to Earth and de-warp TOO CLOSE to the
vicinity of where they expect the planet Earth to be... then they,
too, will find themselves in the same sort of predicament that Virdon
found himself in at Alpha Centauri: "radioactive turbulence" due to
flying directly into the accretion disk of a Black Hole swirling
around the hyper-spinning Event Horizon.
When Han Solo popped out of hyperspace in the Alderaan system
in "STAR WARS" only to find a "meteor storm", that was NUTHIN!
Patrick
