Witness… The Ticking Clocks
Time travel fascinates me. I mean, why wouldn’t it? It’s a fascinating concept. I’ve often wondered what makes it so fascinating. Is it the prospect of seeing history unfold right before your eyes? Or the idea that you could see what the world will be like long after you’re gone? Or is it some weird masochistic thing as you try to work through the various paradoxes that ultimately arise and you kinda, sorta get off on that confusion? It’s probably some combo of the three, plus many other reasons that I can’t think of right now. In any case, time travel stories rule. Most of the time, anyway.
I think my fascination began when I first saw Back to the Future, Part II. Yes, that’s right, I saw the sequel before I saw the first one. I don’t know how I managed to make heads or tales out of it, as it deals directly with both the notion of paradox and the events of the first film overall, but as I was a child when I first saw it, I probably didn’t care that much and was likely more awestruck by the flying car with the gull wing doors than anything else. Well, it couldn’t just be that, because as I said, the idea of time travel definitely hooked me. So maybe I did actually see the original before Part II? Making this whole paragraph a bust. If only there was some way to go back and redo it…
Maybe I was a fan even earlier. I remember going to Universal Studios when I was maybe 3 or 4 and volunteering to be a part of The World of Cinemagic show. It was a three part attraction that featured cool behind-the-scenes performances featuring BttF, the visual effects of Hitchcock movies, and a foley sound demonstration for Harry and the Hendersons (late ‘80s/early ‘90s, what can I say?). Before I volunteered, an adult man was taken backstage to participate in something for later in the show. So, naturally, when I was called upon, I started to head backstage, prompting the host to scramble over to me and say, “No, no, no, you stay up here.” My role was to be that of Marty McFly, while a girl my age was tasked with being Jennifer, and we got to sit in a replica of the DeLorean as it moved around on a rig and the windshield was pelted with fake rain, making it seem like we were driving in a storm. I had a fucking blast behind the wheel, actually believing that I was somehow in control of the vehicle; the girl, however, mostly kept her eyes closed and curled up into a ball, waiting for the thing to be over. (That first volunteer, by the way, was dressed up as Doc Brown and was told to enact the climax of the first movie, where Doc has to untangle the power cord from the clocktower, only this version ended with lightning striking, and then suddenly the man was replaced with a charred, smoking skeleton. I’m very surprised I, as well as all the other kids in the audience, weren’t traumatized by essentially witnessing an innocent man’s death in the name of entertainment. Maybe it’s good they closed this attraction…)
Seeing as though my tendency as a child was to basically rip off whatever I liked and make my own version of it, in fourth grade, I came up with a three-part novel series titled Time Traveling Kids. It was actually based on some live action make-believe I took part in with my friends Ian and Cassie when we were on a class field trip with our kindergarten buddies to some kind of beach; I can’t recall the name, but I remember there being these big sand dunes that were a blast to roll down, although I don’t remember being covered head to toe in sand after doing so. In my story, Cassie’s character was a genius, obsessed with and inspired by the work of Emmett Brown, the great-great grandfather of her best friend (Ian’s character). I was the other best friend who had no association with the original films. Wait! That’s not true! My favorite band was Marty McFly’s band, because in my head canon, he became a rockstar. Good for him.
So, I ripped off Bob Zemeckis, and continuing in grand-young Andy tradition, I plotted the basic outline for all three parts (including a Wild West outing for Part 3, ‘cause originality 😕), but never got past ten pages in the notebook I used to write the novel by hand. I didn’t even get to the part I was looking forward to the most, where the three friends take the time machine to the future, my character is killed, so Cassie and Ian have to go back in time to replace me with a past version of me, and somehow I didn’t realize the universal implications of such a timeline faux pas? Also, I wanted to kill myself off? Well, there’s something new to discuss with my therapist…
Time travel stories, while some of my favorites, were not MUST-SEE entertainment for me. Not all the time. I’ve never read A Wrinkle in Time or seen Primer. for crying out loud! But figuring out the rules of time travel stories was always a fun game for me. Like, are we dealing with BttF rules, where butterfly effects reign supreme, or Terminator rules, where, to quote Lost’s Daniel Faraday, “Whatever happened, happened,” and we are all subject to fate no matter what, even if that means there are about a thousand time loops everywhere you look. But one story, one movie, specifically, has always stuck with me for its portrayal of time travel, and that movie is the 1998 film adaptation of Lost in Space.
Don’t get me wrong, Lost in Space is a TERRIBLE movie. I’ve only seen it the one time, and sure, I was 11 and therefore susceptible to crap (I saw Phantom Menace four times in theaters and thought I was cooler than the younger kid playing Pod Racer with his hands a few seats down from me 🙄), but I think even back then, my reaction to that would-be-Matt LeBlanc vehicle was along the lines of, “What is this thing? Wasn’t the show fun?” But what has always stuck out to me was the way they presented time travel. They approached the actual travel through time as consequence. While you’re traveling through time, the world goes on without you and considers you missing. Think about it: how could Marty McFly see his older self in the future when he wasn’t there for all the in between because he was too busy traveling to the future with Jennifer and Doc? Something to consider, right??? So when patriarch John Robinson finds a portal that allows him to cross over to twenty plus years in the future, he ends up encountering an older version of his son, Will, who feels abandoned by his father because he “left” all those decades ago, even though, from John’s POV, he’s only been gone five minutes. This, this, THIS, is fascinating, and I’ve honestly never seen time travel done like this in anything else.
So, like always, in true me fashion, I decided to rip it off for these two episodes.
Truth be told, in spite of the stories that I inspired it, I never intended for this to be split up into two parts. The idea of a two part episode at any point only crossed my mind fleetingly. But in writing “Part 1”, it became apparent that, as I was approaching 40 pages, the story wasn’t even close to finished. So, as a loving tribute, I chose to write a second part. I never considered a third part, because I still wanted S3 to have six episodes and didn’t want half the season taken up by time travel antics; I had other stories I was dying to tell.
Before setting forth on writing the script, there was a lot to figure out. Namely, how exactly to map out the timeline, and how to insure that no paradoxes could be found. As fun as it is to make people scratch their heads, I didn’t want them turning their noses up at something, like how in Looper where Bruce Willis wants to kill the kid who will grow up to murder his wife, even though that process ends up being the origin of the kid turning evil, which doesn’t make sense because he hadn’t killed the kid in his original timeline and—oh no, I’ve gone crosseyed. I’ll admit right off the bat: I don’t know if I succeeded or not. But the concept of “paradox proof” certainly made things interesting.
My first crack at a timeline.
If you look closely, you’ll see that this is clearly not what takes place in both episodes, and to be honest, I can’t make heads or tales out of how, exactly, everything was supposed to work.
My second attempt at a timeline.
I must have understood it at some point, because I started writing with it in mind, but it soon became apparent that Jesse was going to have a bigger role beyond just the driving test proctor. He was going to time travel as well. So, I started from scratch in order to incorporate Jesse’s journey as well.
As you can see, though, there are a lot of ideas that never came to fruition. Hannah never pisses Alice off, causing her to send Hannah more forward into the future instead of to the past. Three versions of Hannah don’t wind up existing at the same moment. The original Hannah doesn’t end up getting hit by a car and dying; I remember at one point I imagined her getting hit by herself, but I didn’t know how that would end with Hannah ever taking the driving test, not just because she hit someone, but she hit herself. That’d certainly be a mind fuck capable of knocking all the rules of the road out of your skull.
So now I had this new timeline to work with, but even so, things didn’t feel right. There was too much focus on the logistics of time travel, and more over, the travel, but not the journey, to be all pretentious about it. I knew from the get-go these episodes were going to be about not taking risks and staying in one place for too long, because this is a problem I have dealt with and continue to deal with. I mean, and not to get self-pitying, but I can’t but feel a little embarrassment towards not having achieved my big, bombastic dreams by 35 years old. And I’m turning 36 in twenty days! That’s almost fucking 40! It’s hard not to feel at least a little incomplete and dissatisfied, and as writing is the best form of therapy at my disposal (besides, you know, actual therapy), this seemed like as good a theme as any to sew into the folds of the story. Although, like I say in the coda, my characters may learn lessons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to, because that’s still something I need to work on: putting my words and ideas into actions in the real fucking world, not just on the page.
Ahem… All of that is to say I put a renewed focus on the challenges Hannah was facing, especially when it came to her relationship with her younger, technically more-successful (in terms of progression) sister, which I tried to make the heart of the story.
That doesn’t all just come from the page, though; it’s gotta be in the performances, too. So casting needed a lot of thought put into it. I knew fairly early on I wanted Kia Salehi to voice Alice. I coached Kia as part of the indie team Corn Opera, and besides hilarious, I knew she had this vulnerability she could tap into that would come in handy as both the younger and older versions of Alice. And for Hannah, I knew I needed someone who could portray a similar vulnerability (albeit one expressed in a different way), as well as, and I say this as a huge compliment, the immaturity of a teenager. Kaitlyn Cornell, a Bay Area native who has done comedy both there and in L.A., could do both, injecting Hannah with equal parts snark and sensitivity. As for the remaining two roles, I knew I wanted to get Max McCal back in the “recording booth” after his awesome performance in Season 1’s “The King of Sheep,” and Sam Turnbull, my first ever improv coach, was someone I was always trying to get my greasy mitts on to do a voice, only it was just a matter of finding the right role and the right time.
Recording sesh #1.
Clockwise from left: Kia Salehi (Alice), me, Sam Turnbull (Jesse), Max McCal (Christopher/Bungie), Kaitlyn Cornell (Hannah).
Recordings were scheduled for the first two weeks of March 2022, a week apart from each other. The option of doing both parts during one recording sesh was offered, but that would have likely meant four hours on Zoom, and nobody was really into that idea, myself included. The first recording sesh, for “Part 1",” was fun, natch; all the seshes are. Although, there was a little bit of panic when Sam had a work meeting that went long and was delayed by a half hour (again, that damn outside world impeding on our artistic endeavors [shakes fist]).
I guess this was during a very serious part of the script?
A snafu did snag the “Part 2” sesh, as Kaitlyn, who also records audio books, had accidentally double booked herself and couldn’t make it. This meant I had to sit in and read for Hannah.
Recording sesh #2.
Kaitlyn, don’t take it personally that we managed to have a good time without you 😬.
Kaitlyn and I rescheduled for the following week, and seeing as though the bulk of her scenes in “Part 2” featured only her and Kia, I figured it was a wrap on Max and Sam, at least until the retakes were needed.
Recording sesh #3.
Looks like I’m not the only one who records in a closet. Although Kaitlyn’s setup is loads more professional.
Ironically, despite the fact that there were always going to be the first two episodes of S3, they were the last two episodes to be finished and locked in. I don’t think there’s any specific reason why that was the case; it probably has to do with my overestimation for my ability to work on multiple episodes at once, and these two unfortunately were put on the back burner for a while. But that isn’t to suggest that I’m not proud of them. I am. This was a complicated story to break. I mean, I had to split it into two! And it’s rewarding to know that I’ve finally achieved my goal of creating and publishing my very own time travel story, all for your listening pleasure.
Although, yes, I’m sure there are many plot holes I missed regarding the time travel mechanics. To quote Austin Powers again, “I suggest you don’t worry about those things and just enjoy yourself.”
—Andy