A Letter to Directors of Films About Time Travel
You made it look too easy and now, in 2372, my family do not believe that I work hard for a living
Dear Directors of Films about Time Travel,
I am writing to you from 2372. I enclose a photograph of me at work in my office, at the Spare Earth Institute of Time Travel. I hope you can see the photo. Usually we just beam images directly onto the recipient’s retina, but you have not yet had the appropriate upgrade. It comes in iOS 31.5.
(Tip: hold off on the upgrade until 31.6, when they will have sorted out the issues with accidentally cloning you every time you unlock your iPhone).
But I digress. My real reason for writing to you today is to ask you to please consider the impact that your depiction of time travel has on my profession.
I would like it to be noted that I do not go off on fun-filled jaunts through time by accelerating in a stylish but otherwise highly impractical car.
I certainly do not travel through time repeatedly, unintentionally, with fraught emotional consequences for myself and my wife.
I will be writing to your colleagues in television separately regarding how I absolutely do not have a series of entertaining adventures in time using a blue box originally intended for British law enforcement communications.
The technology I use is beyond your understanding and therefore not represented in film, but this is not the inaccuracy that bothers me. Instead, it is the complete disregard for how I and my colleagues actually spend the majority of our working hours.
Yes, we all go off on missions across time and space.
Yes, I have been in the presence of dinosaurs.
Yes, I have seen what becomes of humanity in the far far future.
(Spoiler alert: from what we can tell, it all starts to go very wrong around iOS 5845.2).
But I also spend many hours filling in risk assessments, for example. The day I spent with a flock of velociraptors was preceded by weeks of discussion on hazard identification and risk reduction.
Do you show this careful preparation in your films? No.
And don’t get me started on your complete failure to recognise the challenges of financial planning for an organisation running operations in different time periods.
For visits to the pre-21st century cash-based societies, we are required to hold a huge variety of currencies from different places and times. For the post-26th century toenail-based societies, we hold a large number of clippings in different denominations.
This all requires some very complicated accounting methods, which you do not show in your films.
My working time is 96% paperwork, 4% fantastical adventures. Please consider this in future. It is the sheer volume of paperwork that often keeps me away from my family and our loveable but snappy pet crocodile-kitten hybrid.
Surely these important but more domestic tensions are just as worthy of inclusion in your films as some complicated time travel paradox that may cause the universe to collapse?
Regards,
An overworked Time Professional
