Episode 101: Hell Yeah, We Want To Change the Timeline

Is Legends of Tomorrow the greatest TV show ever made? Yes, probably.

Many people claim that if you traveled back in time, you could never succeed in changing the past---but our favorite time travelers break that rule. Why is it so fun to rewrite history? To find out, we talk to Keto Shimizu, showrunner of Legends of Tomorrow, and Terry Matalas, showrunner of Star Trek: Picard.

Works Cited, & Etc.

Terry Matalas on Twitter and Instagram

Keto Shimizu on Twitter and Instagram

12 Monkeys was a TV show based on the film of almost the same name, which in turn was bsed on the French short film La Jetée.

In the movie version, Bruce Willis can't change the past at all, but the TV show features a much more malleable timeline.

The 12 Monkeys TV show includes an incredible scene where Jennifer Goines sings "You and Your Hand" by Pink to Adolf Hitler while her friends gun down Nazis.

Matalas became showrunner of Star Trek: Picard for season two and the upcoming third season.

Legends of Tomorrow has been airing since 2016 and is a spinoff of Arrow and The Flash.

In The Flash, there are a lot of guilt trips around changing the past because of the Flashpoint storyline in which Barry Allen tried to undo his mother's death and made a giant mess.

Early Doctor Who episodes feature the Doctor insisting that you can't change history, a point that's expanded upon in the novelization of "The Crusades."

Stories in which you cannot change the past include Robert A. Heinlein's "All You Zombies," the TV show Lost, and arguably, the first Terminator movie.

When researching their novel, The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee talked to physicists Sean Carroll and Adam Becker about time travel.

The movie Avengers: Endgame features a type of time travel in which any changes you make result in a whole new universe.

In one early Star Trek episode, a 1960s fighter pilot is deemed unimportant to the timeline (except for his offspring), but in another episode, Edith Keeler's death is a vital part of history.

One common time travel trope is that if you try to change the past, you'll just screw up somehow. Your gun will jam, or you'll trip. In a recent episode of Legends of Tomorrow, this phenomenon is revealed to be the work of a white dude in a top hat.