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9 A Big Glowing Thing
From: Galaxy Quest
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The Omega 13 is the mythical device the evil aliens want to get their hands on, believing it could be a doomsday device that could destroy the universe in 13 seconds.
What it actually is, though, is a machine capable of reversing time 13 seconds. So though it looks very impressive, it certainly deserves its place in a “bizarre” time machines list.
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Limited range. Not good for the superstitious.
8 A Diary
From: The Butterfly Effect
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Okay, a diary is not exactly a machine, but it’s the device Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) uses to, ahem, rewrite history and try to confront memories of being abused as a child.
Let this entry instead, then, represent some other bizarre methods of time travel that aren’t really machines, such as holes in the universe ( Time Bandits ); a James Taylor song ( The Callahan Touch by Spider Robinson); stone angels ( Doctor Who ’s “Blink”); masturbation (Ray Nelson’s short story “Time Travel For Pedestrians”); a portrait ( Somewhere In Time ).
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: In Evan’s case, when he travels back in time, it’s only his conscience that does the travelling, he’s only limited to travelling within his own life up to that point. It’s a bit like he’s Quantum Leaping into has past self.
7 A Liquid-Filled Vat
From: Timecrimes
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If you haven’t seen director Nacho Vigalondo’s ingenious, low budget time travel movie yet, do yourself a favour and rectify that situation as soon as possible. We won’t give too much away here, because we don’t want to spoil it for you, but we will mention that the scientist who invents the time machine (played by Vigalondo himself) draws a diagram to explain time travel that’s a darn sight simpler and less nonsensical than the one Doc Brown comes up with in Back To The Future 2 .
The time machine itself is a big vat full of goo. We think it may have later developed into the Hot Tub Time Machine.
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: It’s not the driest experience. And when the lid comes down, there’s no airspace left, so pray the journey’s quick or you’ll drown.
6 A Giant Plastic Syringe
From: 12 Monkeys
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When pen-pushers from a ravaged future want to change the past to try to prevent a catastrophe, they send Bruce Willis back as their very own pseudo-Terminator (he even has to travel naked). And they get him there in a typically Terry Gilliam-esque combination of steam-punk, plastic, goo and unsettling sound effects, injecting him from a giant plastic syringe into a hole in the wall.
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Not only do you arrive nakled, disorientated, dribbling and dripping goo, there’s a good chance you won’t even be when you need to be, because the scientists controlling the time travel are a bit hopeless, to be honest.
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5 A Breezy, Well-Lit Room
From: Quantum Leap
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Conceptually, Quantum Leap ’s Quantum accelerator is certainly the most bizarre method of time travel in the list. Sam Becket would swap places with somebody from the past; he got get to live as them while they hang about in a waiting room in their future. Some people assume only Sam’s conscience leapt into the past, and he inhabited the host’s body, but that wasn’t the case; he was there physically, exerting “the illusion of the host’s physical aura”. Hence when he leapt into a man with no legs, he was able to walk (although to onlookers it appeared as if he was floating).
It was never made quite clear, either, if the people Sam leapt into recalled their time in the Waiting Room; were they even conscious when they were there, or did someone sedate them? And were they never suspicious, on return, about those hours and days they couldn’t recall, or, indeed, the fact that their lives seemed to have changed completely? (“Hang on… my career’s not going down the drain? How’d I do that?”)
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Somebody called God seems to be a backseat driver. And the time travel can leave you with “Swiss cheese” memory.
4 A Phone Booth
From: Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure
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26 years after the Doctor popularised time travelling in a police box – and approximately 25 years and 364 days after somebody thought it was funny to do a Doctor Who skit involving a phone box instead – Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure featured a time travelling phone booth. And to this day no-one is 100 per cent sure if it was coincidence, homage or rip-off. Originally they were to travel in a Chevrolet van, but that was deemed to close to Back To The Future ’s preferred method of temporal transport. Nicking ideas off obscure British TV shows was obviously less open to accusations of plagiarism at the time.
Of course, these days, even in America, time travelling in a telephone box of any kind can be reference to only one thing…
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Unlike the TARDIS, this phone box was as big on the inside as it was on the outside, which made it very uncomfortable for travel when there was any more than one person aboard. And there frequently were more, leading to some people clinging on to the outside for dear life as they travelled through the time Vortex… which, ironically, Doctor Who copied many years later in “Utopia”.
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3 A Police Box
From: Doctor Who
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The TARDIS is a metaphor for everything that’s right about Doctor Who – and ingenious, quirky solution to budgetary constraints that became an icon. Back in ’63, when the show was being launched, the canny creators knew they needed a ship, but they couldn’t afford a spaceship that would require either complex model shots to be filmed, or a large-scale expensive prop that would need to be constructed week-in, week-out. Instead they came up with the barmy idea of a shapeshifting ship that could disguise itself as everyday objects, then went one step further by explaining that the mechanism that controlled the shapeshifting had broken down. Out of desperation, genius is born.
The next step was explaining how such a small object could carry four people around all time and space. Easy. The inside existed in a different dimension. Confused? The Doctor himself explains it brilliantly here:
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Very few, now that it’s not as unreliable as it used to be. It’s odd, though, that a ship which can rebuild itself after its internals were gutted – and treat itself to a makeover at the same time – still can’t work out how to fix its own chameleon circuit.
2 A Delorean DMC-12
From: Back To The Future Trilogy
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“If you’re going to build a time machine into a car,” said Doc Brown, “why not do it with some style?” Fair point, Doc, and it’s difficult to deny that his DeLorean time machine – complete with gull-winged doors and brushed stainless steel exterior – is one of the best-looking bits of equipment on this list. Some people have even confused it for a spaceship.
For all its good looks, however, it’s a flawed piece of kit. That said, if it wasn’t for the many faults with Doc Brown’s creation you wouldn’t have had a plot for one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. And had the filmmakers gone along with their original plan, Marty McFly would have time-hopped in a fridge. Which would have been rubbish.
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: For starters, it’s a real hassle that you have to get your vehicle up to 88 miles per hour to travel through time. Not only do you have to break the law to see the wonders of the past and/or future (unless you’re on the German Autobahn), owners yet to hover-convert their motors can only travel to time periods with properly surfaced roads.
Meanwhile, the fact that early models require plutonium (not commercially available) to generate the1.21 Gigawatts a time-traveller needs under his/her bonnet makes this time machine particularly unfriendly to the casual user. And on a practical level, the DeLorean Motor Company went bust in 1982, making spare parts rather difficult to come by. Useless.
1 A Comfy Armchair
From: The Time Machine
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It seems only fitting that the film version of HG Wells’ The Time Machine – the book that kicks-started the genre – should also give us cinema’s most memorable time machine. Although director George Pal’s wonderful film came out in 1960 (and it’s mostly set in the far future), the machine looks like so authentically Victorian you half expect to see it on show in the Victoria & Albert museum, with Holmes and Watson poking at it.
Constructed around a comfy chair, it has a look of steampunk version of those hovercraft that scout the Florida Everglades, with huge fans at their rear. With its brass fittings and velvet upholstery it’s clearly built as much for comfort as for scientific curiosity, and wouldn’t look too out of place in the drawing room. A lovely touch is the great, revolving disc at the back, which turns faster the more rapidly the machine ploughs through time. It’s such a thing of beauty, models makers have been making exquisite replicas ever since.
The open design of the craft also means the passenger gets to see time moving – backwards or forwards – at an advance rate around them. No popping into the Time Vortex for Wells’ machine; you literally get to see civilisations rise and fall (or on a more prosaic level, women’s fashions changing) in the blink of an eye.
The George Pal design for the time machine is far better than the golden walnut we got in the 2002 remake. The time machine in the brilliant Time After Time (in which HG Wells becomes the time traveller) is clearly trying emulate the Pal time machine while not being a complete rip-off, but doesn’t have anywhere near the same simple elegance.
Drawbacks with this model of time machine: Very bad at the temporal equivalent of an emergency stop, it prefers gentle deceleration. It also doesn’t move (well, not unless some passing Morlocks decide to TWOC it); this is a pure time travel machine. Also costs a fortune in Brasso.
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