Time pop is a podcast that discusses time travel and pop culture

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Hello. If you can hear this, it’s not too late. I return to warn you. This is Time pop, a podcast that discusses time travel and pop culture. There are spoilers. I’ve seen the future, and nothing is sacred to these folks. Your past, present, and future are sure to be ruined. Even if you could go back in time, as I have, you will never forget what you are about to hear. You’ve been warned. This is Time pop.

Are we just going to kind of talk and see what happens, or do you want to, like, make a game plan? Um.

As we bring you back to December 4, 2018, and guide you through the experience of time travel using pop culture as our loo or bathroom or what?

This is time pop. I am Desmond. And I am Ari. And what the hell did they use to time travel with Ari? Well,

This is time pop. I am Desmond.

And I am Ari.

Excellent. All right. Uh, so I guess, yeah, my big plan was to use the time travel device of the film that we just watched as our launching point. Oh, by the way, we just watched frequently asked questions about time travel, everybody. And what the hell did they use to time travel with Ari?

Well, it is not clear. One character does mention that she has a time travel device built into her bones, and we never actually see anybody time travel.

I guess we don’t, do we?

It’s unclear.

It just happens around them.

Mhm. Because the thing that happened at the end was completely different.

That brings up a whole nother issue, is that I was going to have a debate since it’s being our first episode of what types of devices we were going to use. And I was going to have a conversation with you on whether or not parallel universes were going to even make the cut into our theme. And they have just backdoored their way right into this whole situation. We won’t give away the end too much, but yeah, I guess the bathroom for the movie was the.

First of all, I very much liked this movie

Well, let’s give you a little overview of the movie. First of all, I very much liked this movie. I thought that it catered to nerds.

Don’t use the n word.

Don’t use the n word.

Yes.

To anybody who likes Sci-Fi specifically time travel. So this movie spoke to us perfectly.

This was a great starting point. Um, as we will be, uh, asking many questions about time travel. This gets us in there.

Are we giving anything away? So is this like a spoiler alert?

Yes.

Uh, yeah. If anyone is, uh, worried about frequently asked questions about time travel being spoiled, stop right now, watch it and come back to us and have a little chat about it.

Desmond talked about the bathroom possibly being the source of time travel

Ari, do you want to give us a quick little rundown of the plot of this movie.

Sure. So this movie takes place roughly in the same location, and it’s three friends who are into science fiction, one of them not so much than the other two, and specifically time travel. And so they talk about time travel, and all of a sudden, they meet a woman who says she is from the future and that she needs to fix a time leak. That was one thing she said very specifically, and I liked that. And then one of the character goes into a bathroom, a men’s room, and there happens to be a leak of water on the floor coming from one of the urinals.

Oh, the leak. See, I didn’t even put that together. I kept looking at that water, too, wondering what that was. That might have been their leak.

Yes. So that’s why Desmond talked about the bathroom possibly being the source of the time travel. Because every time these characters go into the bathroom and then come out, something has changed.

Nothing specific seems to go on there. They try to recreate it, which I guess they do.

They try to recreate their same motions when they go into the bathroom to see if they can duplicate.

And they are able to recreate time travel, but they’re not able to recreate the exact specified distance that was traveled the first time.

Right. Something else happens when they come back out of the bathroom.

Yes.

So, like I said, they go into the bathroom. They come out, things have changed. They’re shocked. They try to figure it out. They go back into the bathroom, more things happen. A couple other characters get introduced. It’s quite fun.

Yes, it is. Yeah. It gets kind of complicated very quickly. It’s kind of a slow start, and then it gets tied in knots very quickly. So. Real quick. So, yeah, just to remind myself. So the first time, the main character, Ray, he comes back after meeting a time traveler and then played by Pete.

Played by Anna Ferris.

Played by Anna Ferris. Awesome. Anna Ferris. And then Pete is the first main character that experiences time travel himself.

He’s the one who was a little bit of, uh, a skeptic, not a fan of time travel or science fiction.

And then, wow, already I’m confused.

I thought, uh, so this does the time travel storyline of they see something that happens, and then later on in the movie, it comes back and it’s fulfilled.

That’s right. Because, yeah, when Rey comes out, our first main character, that time travels, he comes out and there’s some devastation that happens, and then. That’s right, the final scene of the film is, uh, us finally seeing that devastation come to light, back to that.

And shows how they got there. So there’s a lot of that happening. They see something, and then later on the movie, they kept back to that and show how it led up to that, which is a fun thing to do.

There’s a lot of time travel in this movie, which. We love. That’s why we’re here

There’s a lot of time travel in this movie, which.

Yes.

We love. We love when time travel movies.

That’s why we’re here.

Do a lot of traveling. Yes.

Yeah. The opening, I love that. Uh, one of my first notes is that two characters make a bet that the third character will mention time travel in under five minutes of their conversation. And that’s wonderful. I liked that the ant came back. I made a small note at the beginning. They show a little ant crawling across the table at the beginning. And then at the end of the movie, giant ants, uh, have taken over the world. This is definitely more about just the not tying of time travel and not specifically where we go. At some point someone says 2094. So at some point we’re at or beyond 2094, but other than that, yeah. The main story just becomes this pub situation and these boys trying to unravel this knot. And also.

Anna Ferris plays Cassie, who has the ability to time travel

Yeah, so Anna Ferris. Cassie is a. She’s not an editor. The editors are the bad people. She’s not a time cop. What is she?

I forget the title that she gave herself, but she’s essentially trying to fix time leaks.

Uh, yes, and repair time leaks.

They do a good job in the beginning of making her seem like she’s making it up. She doesn’t really know much about time travel. She even admits that she didn’t read the entire book about it because it was too big. So it really makes you seem like someone had put her up to being a fake person.

Yes, that’s right. Because at first he thinks that his friends set her up, for lack of a better term, paid a prostitute to pretend she’s a time traveler just to play a prank on their friends, and they end up doing a really good job with her. As far as time travel goes where. Yes, we see her the first time. She’s new at her job, basically, so she doesn’t know it very well. And then we see her five minutes later or six months later, and she’s gotten a little bit better at her job. She’s off probation, and then she goes away for another five to ten minutes in our time, and then she comes back another six months later, and she has gotten a promotion and knows a lot more about her job.

So essentially she’s like a time fixer. And then she does mention other people who also have the ability to time travel, called time editors, like you mentioned, they are the bad guys.

Yes.

What they do is go throughout time and kill famous people after they’ve done some sort of great thing. Artwork, movies, kill them so that that piece of artwork becomes more valuable. They make a couple of funny jokes about if they had killed certain people right at the peak of their career, then their work wouldn’t have been bad later on.

But they can’t really. Yeah, they. They kind of jump over it, but that seems to play. It doesn’t have as big of an effect on time because their art still exists, whereas you still can’t really go back and kill Hitler because the ramifications of his whole lifespan would be too much and our, uh, current time couldn’t take it. Everything would unravel.

Right. They do a good job of talking about all the different time paradoxes here and all the fun storylines you can do within time. So it’s really speaking to us, uh, time travel geeks.

Yes, they mentioned, yeah, the grandfather paradox and then chaos theory, which I’ve never really heard. Have you heard chaos theory? That’s basically the butterfly effect. And is that a common crossover of terms?

Yeah, I think that one is referred to as a chaos theory or the ripple effect. I’ve heard of it.

There we go. Yeah, I always just heard chaos theory from jurassic park. And that seems to just be. I think that’s what he talks about. Just everything super random. And so when they mentioned chaos theory and then explained it, as I would call the butterfly effect, I wasn’t sure if I was the only person who didn’t know what that.

There was.

One thing I was confused about this was towards the end of the movie

One thing I was confused about this was towards the end of the movie, they show these three characters being famous in the future, and specifically for this piece of paper that they were writing down. Was it a story they were writing down or a theory?

I don’t know, because, yeah, they leave that super vague so that we can only imagine. They kind of play it off almost as like, uh, the suitcase in pulp Fiction at the end. They even have a shining light come out of it when they finally get a glimpse.

That’s right.

At what their theory was. But, yeah, I assume just for a minute, I was trying to figure out what they talked about this particular evening, but I think this was an old piece of. Was it. Toby is the one who. He’s the writer of the group, and, um, while they sit around and chat and have pints at night, he tends to write down some ideas. So at some point in the past, they had been discussing time travel, and he was taking notes and apparently, uh, discovered time travel. Yeah.

Well, that was where I was confused. Did they discover time travel, or was it just a famous story? Because they talked about being writers and having a career as a writer, but they could have actually discovered time travel. So this piece of paper is why they became famous.

Yes.

So the time editors, ultimately the bad guys, wanted to come back and kill them right after they wrote this little piece of paper so that it becomes more valuable. So was the paper the catalyst for time travel?

I think so. I think the piece of paper explained time travel.

Okay.

It was the, uh, flux, uh, capacitor, if you will, of this whole situation. It’s kind of vague how that in alpha, in timeline alpha, it’s kind of vague how that gets out in the world if someone finds it on the bar, if one of them eventually turns this piece of paper into reality.

Yeah. They don’t show that part.

No.

So at the end, when they finally destroy the piece of paper to reset everything. So a battle to save their lives versus becoming rich and famous for this piece of paper, big decision had to.

Be made, and it had to be burned for whatever reason. I saw both of us kind of, like, itching. Like, just swallow it, just rip it up, do anything with it.

Yeah, it had to be burned.

It had to be burned. And so the final battle. Yeah. Is the editor trying to get her hands on it while they fight over, getting matches, getting it lit, burning it, and it ends up being destroyed with a simple pint of beer.

Right.

Just dissolves the writing on it.

So when it does dissolve and erases it, uh, everything goes back to normal. Except they have the memory of everything.

Yes. That I didn’t see coming. Did that make sense within the world they created? Like, did you feel like when they came back to that moment, that they should have reverted back to none of this ever happening?

I mean, as far as a storytelling aspect goes, yes. It’s more fun if they can remember it. Nobody else in the bar or around them appears to have remembered it. But of course, they didn’t go through this journey that these three characters did. So I guess you could argue that only they would remember it, but it does, to me say that this was one timeline with multiple versions of themselves.

The movie ended with the potential to have a sequel with parallel universes

I have one note here saying, so are there only two versions of themselves that they keep running? They keep running into themselves at different points of the timeline. And at one point, I was confused as to, are there two of them, or are there three of them?

I think there might be three or four, because at one point, because while they’re hiding in the closet, then there’s a, uh, version of them in the bathroom. So we only see two of them. But when they come out of the bathroom, that’s when they then go into the. When do they go into the pub and see themselves again in there?

I thought it was when they came out of the closet, but again, it’s not clear. The movie isn’t clear about that, which helps them to kind of create their own rules and laws within this story, which is what you have to do with time travel. You have to pick which rules and laws you’re going to apply and just write your story.

At one point, there could be three or four of them in and around that pub, in the bathroom, in the main part of the pub, in the.

Closet, in the backyard as well.

And then there’s the backyard.

The party in the backyard.

Yeah.

So there are multiple versions of themselves within the same timeline.

There’s at least two. Yeah, at least two.

And when they destroy the piece of paper, it all gets reset back to the very beginning of when this all started. And they remember all of it.

Pete, Ray and Toby Alpha remember everything that happened and all the knots. And then that’s when they step outside. They think that all of this has gone away. And then that’s when Cassie Ona Ferris comes out of the portal.

A portal you actually get to see some sort of. Because the whole movie, you never see the time travel. They’ll close up on his face, talking, and, uh, when they turn back, she’s gone. So she just disappears.

And the devices, the editor and Cassie, Millie and Cassie, theirs exist in their body. They’ve been implanted in the future. Now, did the reset when they destroyed the piece of paper, that was how they created time travel. Did that then become m parallel universes instead? Or do you think it was parallel universes the whole time, or did now instead of creating time travel, they’ve created ways to travel between universes instead of through time?

That is a very good question. That is something that they did not answer, they did not explain, which is kind of fun because we get to wonder.

Leave it open for a sequel. God forbid.

They definitely ended this movie with the potential to have a sequel, specifically with parallel universes. I don’t know if them destroying the paper created this universe or if this.

Is just another form, because I feel like Cassie would have mentioned it right off the agree. You know, I think she would have said it’s not time travel, it’s parallel universes. Don’t worry. About it. But through the whole movie, she’s using the term time travel from the future. Yeah. And then at the end, she’s. No, no, wait. And maybe, who knows? Maybe no one knew what they were doing until the end. And she again. Oh, two years. That’s right. So through this movie that takes place in real time of, uh, an evening, three or 4 hours, Cassie has lived three years. She has two six month jumps. And then at the very end, she says it’s been two years. I figured a lot of out. Come with me.

Yeah, but she says that after coming through the portal from another universe.

Right.

She says the two years thing. So that really does beg the question of.

But that’s given her two years to maybe go like, oh, this isn’t time travel, because she’s learning a lot. She kind of. She’s learning too, because even after just the second six month jump, she’s like, uh. She tells Ray, like, I’m beyond what you’ve done, which, again, might be possible, because I think in her original timeline, I think they’re dead. So this technology has existed without the main three guys being there to help proliferate it. And so now Cassie has taken it. Yeah. Like I said, maybe she’s found out through her studying that it’s not time travel, it’s parallel universes.

Yeah, it definitely could be a sequel.

And God bless them for turning this movie into a feature film. It is an hour and 22 minutes.

Is this based off of a story?

You know what? I don’t know.

Okay. I like when stories can do a time travel movie within a single location or a small range of locations. This does remind me of arc, the Netflix movie, which I believe is like barely an hour and a half, but does take place in one location.

It gives you, at least from the beginning, it gives you an idea that you can follow it. And I love it when I’m like, okay, I can do this. It’s just one location. I can track all the characters and they still manage.

Yeah. Even with that one location, it was still quite complex as far as timelines and jumping around, which was fun. Ah, it was written smartly. Things loop back around, which is always fun in time travel.

So I have a couple of questions about this movie. First question is where does the gun come from

So I have a couple of things I wrote down as far as, like, questions. I wrote down that the bathroom was not destroyed. When they travel to the future apocalyptic world, the bathroom was not destroyed. So that does bring up maybe that it was the bathroom. That is the time travel catalyst that.

Was, uh, the wormhole, maybe.

And then my next question is, in the end scene. Where does he get the gun? Yeah, it just appeared out of nowhere. In the very beginning, the main character has a toy gun that he has at his job. And, uh, he ends up getting fired from his job. And it’s this big futuristic rifle looking thing, um, that he used at his. I think it was like an amusement park. And in the very end, when he has the standoff with the time editor, bad guy girl, bad girl, he all of a sudden has this futuristic gun from the beginning of the movie pointed at her, bluffing, saying that it’s a futuristic.

He had a big long story about what that gun was.

Where did it come from?

That is a good question. I did notice at the beginning, I did make a note. First I said Halo outfit because it reminded me of Halo. But then right after it, I noticed he was stuffing it in his backpack. So I did notice at the beginning that that was his outfit, which was very interesting because he’s a huge nerd. So the fact that most people who do that job probably just wear shorts and a t shirt, maybe a goofy hat, but he had this whole Persona that was his. Okay, I missed that now where it was the whole rest of the movie. I mean, it’s a big gun.

Yeah. It could have been in his backpack on the ground the whole time. That is one thing this movie does well. You really have to pay attention and watch everything because there are all these little hints and Easter eggs that they place that do come back around. Um, like, for example, there’s one scene where he’s in the bathroom looking into each stall and just to see if there’s anyone in there. And then the very last stall, he opens the door but doesn’t look in because he gets distracted. And then that comes back around where there was actually some people in that stall. The thing with the ant.

I, um, just want to point. So this was written by a gentleman named Jamie Thiason Matheson. Not sure this looks like the first thing he’s ever written, but this is obviously, uh, something he’s into. He has gone on to write some other things, a few of them for Doctor who episodes.

Oh, awesome.

So this is not just, uh, a one off for him. This is something.

I thought it was very well written. It was funny. It was fun. They made fun of themselves. They made fun of science fiction and time travel. It was great. I really enjoyed it.

It was very good. I liked it as well. This is great. Any other? Um.

I also just wondered why the bad girl, bad guy girl didn’t take the piece of paper. After she destroyed all the people in the bar, she made that huge energy pulse that sent out and killed everybody. And then she just walked away. She didn’t take the piece of paper with her.

Did she walk away?

Yeah, because it was on the table and he was able to knock the beer over, which erased it all. But she just walked away.

So I don’t know if she must have just been self preservation at that point. I mean, you got a time machine. That’s always the problem with all of these movies is just come back five minutes earlier. Just save your ass. Come back five minutes earlier. You’ve got it. Yeah.

I mean, there’s always going to be holes in stories like this. Uh, probably in time travel in general. Let me know if I’m wrong. Let me know if there is a time travel movie book story out there where there are zero holes in it. I want to know.

Love to find that.

But so in this, that was probably a hole, or at least a question. Maybe there’s a debate that could be brought up as to why she didn’t take that piece of paper. That was what the whole focus of the movie was.

It’s a good thing too. That’s a lot of times why in these movies leave some vaguery. So that, who knows? Maybe you’re not allowed to travel back to certain points in time more than once. Or who knows what it is. And then if it’s all parallel universes, then I guess that would make sense too. If it’s parallel universes, if that is it, then that time has passed in any universe. All right, I’m confusing myself.

Yeah.

I would love to ask.

One of the things I’d like to ask is how you might use time travel

Uh, one of the things I’d like to ask is how you might use personally if this time travel, uh, technology, uh, existed, how you might use it. But we don’t know what this time travel is.

That’s right. It’s not a focus. The how they. Time travel is not a focus.

Would you get a time machine implanted in your body, absolutely. No questions asked?

Oh, yeah.

I don’t know that I would really not the way this was because it didn’t seem very precise on how you started up and where you might go. And I would be afraid that I would crack my neck and end up getting stepped on by a dinosaur. I think I want something that I could look at and visualize and adapt with.

Yeah.

But I guess, yeah. I mean, if this is the only version, if it’s this type of time travel or nothing, maybe I’d try it out just to find out.

Well, I mean, you could always get the upgrade of where you can shoot lightning bolts out of your hands.

True. That’s true.

Come on.

That’s pretty cool. Hers came with armor. Uh, whatever she says there. Yeah, she got some serious upgrades with hers. Definitely an interesting future that this movie portrays that, uh, could be delved into.

That was another thing. They traveled into the future. They said something about 2094 and it was a post apocalyptic world. It looked totally destroyed, like a bomb had gone off. But they didn’t mention anything about where the time travelers came from. We don’t know what their future looked like or when they were from.

Was that devastating 2094 when it was just a wasteland? Was that right after we saw. What did we see in the current timeline that led to that? Was that after we saw the dead bodies in the bar? Do you remember what the last thing we saw in current time that led to the ant apocalypse?

I don’t think there was anything specific that would have led to it. Like a bomb going off or something that caused the post apocalyptic future.

That’s right. It was when they came out of the closet, Pete ran into the bathroom and then bearded Pete came out of nowhere. Is that so?

They all went into the bathroom and came out into the post apocalyptic future and we’re like, holy. And then they were going to turn back in to just go back into the bathroom. And Pete went in first. And right before the other two were about to go in, he came around the corner saying, don’t go in there. And then they were in that post.

Apocalyptic, Pete created it.

I, um, don’t think so, because all three of them just appeared there and we’re going to head straight back. But one did. And before the other two could, he came around, meaning he went in and.

Then 30 or not 30 years. But some time passed. Pete was doing something. I mean, long enough to grow a beard.

That’s right. Remember he said he fell 40ft because the ground had shifted.

So the bathroom was gone at that point. So our time machine, where we thought maybe the bathroom was the time machine. That’s right. When Pete goes in alone, he falls.

Maybe he goes in, then comes back out and then falls. Because he said the ground shifted.

Well, no, because he to. He goes in the bathroom and then the next time we see him is a half a second later where he comes around the corner with a beard on.

But I think how he explained it to the two other people were he went in and came back out, maybe because the other two weren’t there, and then fell 40ft. Because he said the ground had shifted. But when they showed him falling, it was through like trees.

That’s right.

It was like a jungle and he had to start a fire and then survive. And then there were like dead skulls. It was very quick segment of the movie that they sped through.

That’s right. But again, that still keeps the bathroom salt. Yeah, the bathroom. The time leak or whatever. The time leak. The time leak, time leak.

And they never fixed that leak in the bathroom. I was hoping that maybe Anna Ferris’s character would be like, oh, and show up with a wrench and just like fix the pipe and it would all be better.

Yeah, it’s all good. It was literally, I kept waiting for him to step in it or see something, uh, to focus on it. Time travel. Turn your brain into spaghetti if you let it. Best not to think about it.

After you like and subscribe to Time Pop, please tell a neighbor or a friend about it

Thank you in particularly for listening to time pop. This has been a fun travel back in time to our first episode last December and hint, hint, it actually isn’t our first episode ever. We may really dig down there in the crates and find that mystery box someday and see if there’s anything worth scraping up out of there that should be fun for all of us. Really upgraded from that first mic test well over a year ago now. Yeah, and I was wondering if my pop filters were doing their job in listening to those old episodes, I’d say, uh, yeah, my pop filters are working, maybe not as well as they could. Uh, but compared to that first episode ever, the peas were really popping in those old episodes and we’ve, uh, cut them down to a dull roar, at least. Hopefully, if you’ve made it this far, it is because you have enjoyed the program. After you like and subscribe to Time Pop, please tell a neighbor or a friend about it so you can enjoy a discussion of your own on the topic of time travel. And if you didn’t enjoy it, tell someone you hate to download and listen to Time pop. We’ll take the traffic any way we can get it. If you would like to add to the conversation, please email us at time pop 90 216. That’s timepop nine 2116 at ah@gmail.com and tell us your thoughts about this particular depiction of time travel and how you might use it. And definitely let us know about a time travel movie, book, game, et cetera, that we might discuss on a future episode. And if you would like to start your own discussion on the topic, please head over to face Insta Twitter book. We are at tpop 90 216. That is at tpop nine 2116. And please check out sounds awesome. 90 216 dot to hear what else sounds awesome.

Desmond McNeese: I highly recommend this movie to anyone

And now back to the big finish. No limits. Well, it’s obvious it’s got to be Time Lord. Oh, come to daddy.

What’s that?

Four minutes, 32.

Yeah, so this movie definitely warrants a really good movie.

A rewatch.

Um, yeah, a lot happens. I enjoyed it anyways. But this was very well written.

Yes, I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes science fiction, time travel or just a funny movie about.

Yeah, and, uh, great actors, great writing. Great. Yeah. And again, it’s only an hour and 22 minutes. It’ll blaze right by.

Yeah, it’s a fun watch.

All right, Ari. I’m Desmond McNeese.

I’m Ari Gala.

Uh, have a great time.

Thanks for listening.

Yes.

Cool.

Close.