I Love Time Travel - Part 19 - Changing Back The Change

(This is as far as I go for now. Nineteenth time’s the charm. I hear Wolverine is time-traveling in an upcoming summer movie.  I’ll have to check that out.)

This is just a little beef I have.  Forgive me.

In a story, when a timeline is altered and time travel is used to fix the problem, there are some plot devices creators have to decide upon.  There are two types of stories that come to mind.  First, there is a problem in the present day, and the time travelers go back in time to change the future, or in one case, retrieve something from the past to fix the problem.  Or there is the other side of that, where an antagonist has gone back in time to change the present and the protagonist must travel back to stop him.

The latter issue presents the most problems.  In Men In Black 3, Agent J witnesses the world without Agent K after a villain goes back in time and kills him.  The world is overrun by an alien invasion and to stop it from happening, J goes back in time.  It is the thrust of the movie and a surprisingly fun one at that.  The most memorable scene happens when J jumps off the Chrysler building with the time travel device in his hand, and he can see the events slingshot all the way back to creation and back the to the 1960’s in one minute. 

But here is where we all notice story snags.  If someone goes back in time and alters the events of the future, what would that be like to an observer?  J experiences a ‘temporal fracture’, because he is the only one who remembers the previous timeline, and a life with K.  In any kind of time travel thinking, J would be just like everyone else.  The timeline would be altered and no one would be suspicious of anything, including our hero.  The simple act of going back in time somehow destroys an entire reality.  This is the basis of single string time travel.  It’s just as nutty as a loop, but for different reasons.  It’s a movie and there has to be someone who witnesses the change in reality. We need Will Smith to save the day, so his reality is given a pass so he can go back and stop the creepy alien guy played by Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.

The same issue occurs in Star Trek: First Contact.  While being pursued by Picard and crew, the Borg have gone back in time through a vortex to the time where Earth first established contact with other worlds.  The Enterprise sees an Earth ruled by the Borg for centuries, then they follow them back in time to keep the whole thing from happening.  We need it to work out this way in the story, so we have a movie to watch.  But if the Borg went back in time and changed the future, there would be no Enterprise, Picard or anything else.  The reality should extend to all Earthlings and earth ships, not just the ones that happened to be on the planet that day. But the Enterprise is unscathed by the change, even though the entire Earth fell victim to the Borg, and they travel back in time to save the world.

 In other Star Trek lore, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is more of the other variety.  Earth is in danger of a weird floating cigar that is altering the oceans and atmosphere and is submitting whale noise.  Whales are extinct, so they go back to the 1980’s to snag a couple of whales to bring them back to talk some sense into the alien craft.  This is my favorite original crew Star Trek movie because it is such a kooky premise and it is pretty funny for a bunch of old stiffs wandering around San Francisco trying to fit in.  The time travel premise was a bit cleaner. Two whales taken from an aquarium and brought to the future would scantly change any timelines, and the Enterprise crew was not affected by the whale peaking alien craft in their own time.  They were not trying to rectify some alteration to a timeline, just averting a natural disaster.

This is where the time travel of story and the physics of a possible time travel event collide.  We can still accept artistic license because time travel is theoretical and art has no boundaries.  We need heroes to take us on a journey, but if the journey negated the hero from existing in the first place, where is the damn story? 

 

Castles, Swords, Dragons, and Dirt

How about a democratically-elected cloud realm president? 

I tried.  I am, in fact, still trying.  My wife and watch Swords and Boobs, or it’s common name outside of my house, Game of Thrones, when the DVD’s come around on Netflix. I am somewhere in Season 3.  I can safely say I am 5% less lost than I was in previous seasons.  I just keep losing interest in the middle of each episode.  There are too many characters with unusual names and plotlines that do not emotionally resonate. I want to clearly state that I believe this TV series is well-acted, well-written and the production is amazing.  It deserves all the hype and all of the fans.  It is the overall genre of fantasy, in its most generic form, with swords, castles, maidens, knights, kings, English accents, dragons, and beheadings that I have just never liked. 

I used to believe it is because I have a lot of Irish ancestry.  Maybe something in my DNA made me averse to English accents.  Later I learned to like the accent, just not the fiction.  I remember trying to read The Hobbit and immediately giving up.  I think the early obsession with Star Wars cemented me as a fan of science fiction first, with a dash of fantasy for variety.  I certainly liked to be swept away to another world. I loved hero stories and dragons are always cool.  There are just some tropes and standards in the genre that turn me off.

Life has little to no value.  Heroes and villains are willing to kill and die at the drop of a Renaissance fair hat.  Women are raped, kids are executed.  Women especially are garbage; they’re either brood mares or disposable toys with no rights or place in the world.  Carnage is everywhere. Dead bodies are displayed in a grotesque manner, and simple arguments are commonly solved with a sword in the eye. I mean, I like Die Hard and action movies and all that, but rarely do they actually put heads on spikes.  There is violence in most fiction, but in fantasy it is Shakespearean.  Lives are tossed aside and there is no regard for humanity at all.  Happiness and compassion are weaknesses: peace is for pussies. War is the default setting. Brutality and ambivalence to all forms of empathy are the bread and butter of the sword-swinging crowd.

It’s not democratic.  This is a personal reaction.  I know these stories emanate from some fictional era before modern day government constructs, but the undercurrent of antiquated belief is too much to ignore.  The idea of royal families is just dumb.  A child on a throne leading thousands of men to their deaths is ridiculous.  These ideas are at the core of British society, but I am too ignorant and American to sort them out in a goofy essay.  The characters are commonly royalty or nobility, and people along the hero’s journey have unspoken allegiances to a stranger.  The social constructs are just too silly and foreign for me to take seriously.  Why are they bowing to this asshole? There a thousands of ways to tell a hero’s tale.  There is just something about the knights and princesses part of this equation that rubs me the wrong way.

Honor is a dubious virtue.  These stories are in the style of the ancient tales of honorable men doing honorable things for his Honor, the King…or some such bullshit.  Blind devotion to a lunatic just because he has the correct last name is insanity.  Murdering your fellow man simply because he carries a different-colored flag is the same problem we have with modern-day gangs.  It is meaningless.  Sometimes fantasy stories feature a rebellious hero that wants to infiltrate the system; or one kingdom is peaceful versus one that is a just bunch of dicks.  Those stories are all right, I guess.  Honor among men is what keeps a society together. Honor with no personal connections and lacks a moral purpose supersedes logic and fairness and it is not something worth building a society around.  You can make fiction surrounding it, but I just don’t care about any of the characters whose primary purpose is fulfilling debts and saving face.

The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films are exceptions.  They are the first fantasy films I ever cared to watch and I enjoyed them immensely. Maybe they were light on the kings and queens and heavy on the dragons and battles for survival against monsters. Something in those movies worked for me.  It was not enough to get me to read the source material, but it was something.  I also loved Harry Potter stuff.  It took place in modern day, and Harry was just as lost in the world as the reader.  Maybe I don’t like to be too far removed from today. It is one thing to be in a far-off world, but if the people there do not act or react like anything familiar, I lose interest.

And lastly, it’s usually dirty.  I don’t mean sexy, I mean dirty. Gruel and livestock poop. No bathrooms or forks or garbage pick-up. Nobody bathes, they sleep on the bare earth, and they eat moldy bread with yellow, nasty teeth. Barf.

I Love Time Travel – Part 18 - Timeline

"Psst...Can you believe how crappy this movie is?"  

This movie sucks.  I mean, super massive suckage.

Full confession, I did skim parts of this thing when the action began to drag.  I missed no major plot points, and I managed to save thirty minutes of my life not wasting my time with such an enormous pile of dumb.  Timeline was available on Netflix and for obvious reasons; I wanted to give it a go.  Michael Crichton wrote the original book, and although I never though much of him as a writer, some of his stories have made entertaining films.  This one fell alarmingly short.

I usually just try to concentrate on the time travel aspects of these films, only to see if they added anything to the genre.  Even corny movies can raise a few new questions and plot points. Not here. First, I need to address the style.  There are multiple characters with generic and predictable stories, but it is not as if they are terrible actors.  The late Paul Walker is fine; pre-300 Gerard Butler is in there, too.  My critique is how the scenes are shot.  Most movies have characters interacting with each other, and they are miked so we can clearly hear the dialogue. Overdubs are done later in post, but the point is, there is a camera capturing a story and what the characters are saying is supposed to be important.  Here, multiple characters are constantly talking over each other, sometimes three conversations at once, and we are not following any of them.  It is like a cocktail party.  The camera is capturing a high school stage play where kids are missing their cues.  It is a fucking mess.  It reminded me of my complaint of the Lethal Weapon series.  Ever notice how there was a lot of mumbling in those movies?  Lines delivered like someone was speaking them into his shirt instead of at us, the audience.  Then I checked who directed the movie.  Well, how about that, Richard Donner directed all the Lethal Weapon movies and this turd.  That must be a signature move.   Shitty signature, Rich.

That aside, the story is pretty lame and predictable.  Archaeologists at a dig in rural France.  The head scientist goes missing.  The team fines evidence at the dig that the scientist left behind.  Turns out a team of physicists accidentally discovered a wormhole that can sent someone back to on place at one time only:  France, 1357.  Ugh.  The team goes back to rescue the scientist.  Stuff happens.  Now, the wormhole detail is cool.  It is reminiscent of Primer in a way; however the problems for me arise when the archaeologists are confronted with the reality of time travel.  I think it takes them one whole minute of screen time to react. Then, they are cool with it and ready to go. I would love to see a time machine.  I still think I would freak the hell out if I actually saw one, let alone travel in one.

 The machine is a mirrored room on a platform.  Traveling consists of a bit of light show, then physical pain, and the next thing you know you are in a nondescript era of European history.  Each traveler has a marker, like a token on a string, they can use to come back. The marker’s effectiveness burns out in six hours, however that is not explained.  Also not explained is what exact date and time they are being whisked back to visit.  If it is a wormhole with the capacity to travel to a specific time and place, then wouldn’t the exact second, minute, hour, day, and date be fixed, too?  That seems like a page out of the Magic Pantry in King’s 11/22/63.  If that were true, they would be able to travel back to the exact time the scientist arrived to rescue him. But that’s not what happened. The place is slightly different and the time is usually “later” then a previous visit.

 I have to also mention that early in the film, one of the scientists finds a sarcophagus at the dig.  The carving is a knight and his wife holding hands; and the knight has a missing ear.  I bet you can’t guess that that detail has significance later!  Mind blown!

This movie doesn’t even deserve a synopsis, really.  Stuff happens, some guys die, the main characters get back, and one stays behind.  I hope I spoiled it for you so you will avoid it.  Time travel has its ups and downs and I’m glad there are so many attempts to make a good movie for us.  But in a few cases, the initial idea can only take a story so far and the resulting film, even in the hands of a visionary director, will fall flat.

Sorry, Yoda. There Is A Try.

He was right about a lot of other stuff, though.

Do or do not. There is no try.  It is standard one can set to achieve something.  I believe that thinking this can help motivate you.  But I also understand that the phrase “striving for perfection” does not imply you will achieve perfection.  It is in the doing and striving.  I am not the one to argue the validity of this belief, but I want to add that trying itself has enormous value, especially for an observer, and not necessarily the subject of the trying.

First, it is not scientific.  To try means to you accept possible failure, and failure is always an option.  Failure is crucial to learning, comprehension and growing.  Sometimes you have to find out how something does not work long before you figure out how it worked.  We do that in our own lives.  You may date the wrong type of guy for ten years and nothing comes of it.  You learn, and switch tack.  You go from shitty job to shitty job unhappily, then decide to go back to school.  You are trying to see what works.  If you are viewing those years of crappy relationships or dead-end jobs as failures, you can.  But it is your life and you can shape that interpretation.  You were not failing.  You were leaning how not to have a relationship and how not to make a living.  You can only do that through trying.

We also expect too much from others.  We are all humans and we are all lacking in some way.  For example, we all have established guidelines for contact with others in our lives.  It just happens.  As you get older, you understand that ‘trying’ to stay in touch is different with different people.  Each one of us has to formulate our relationship rules for each person.  It is the only way to successfully maneuver through this life.  Some people are day to day, some are week to week, some are bi-monthly and some are yearly.  If the week to week people become yearly, then something has changed.  Somebody is not trying.  If the yearly’s become monthly, then someone is trying harder.  If they stay the same, that is the level of commitment they can handle. 

Appreciating trying is also critical when someone is one a road of self-improvement.  Quitting drinking or smoking, losing weight, changing an attitude or learning more.  We all appreciate the trying.  That guy is down to half a pack a day but he used to smoke two packs a day.  That girl is still grumpy when I go to work but I hear she is in therapy and she is much better than she used to be.  We all say we’d like excellence as a standard but that is almost an affront to nature.  Nature is struggle after struggle and that implies a problem, and perfection is the absence of problems.  May I conclude that perfection is unnatural? Well, not really.  Snowflakes are perfect.  But perfection is not a human trait.  The struggle and the trying are perfectly human.

Imagine how difficult it is for someone who has had a death in the family to go out and be around people.  Think of that fiend who has struggled with depression for years and how much it takes to just have a good time.  Kids don’t know their strengths and weaknesses like adults; they are in a constant state of succeeding and failing. 

I assume there is a belief out there that accepting trying as a standard implies accepting defeat.  Or, we should constantly yearn to be something more than we are. Trying is not about participation trophies and not letting children fail.  It is the opposite. We need to accept failure and not demonize it. There can’t be shame attached to something that every human being endures!  The victory is in the attempt and a failure is just a failure.  So you suck at baseball. Move on. I guess you weren’t meant for the saxophone. Try the drums. Find another job. There are plenty of fish in the sea.

  How about this:  if you are constantly running toward excellence and perfection, you are always falling short.  You are doomed to a life of thinking you are not enough.  If you accept that even the best and brightest are on their own paths of trying, just as the rest of us are, you will have a life of minor and major accomplishments, and you can feel better about your journey.  You may also not look down on others who are failing more than you and not idolize those who have succeeded.  We are all just on millions of Chutes and Ladders boards, climbing up and getting knocked down.  But if we are trying, we can say we are still in the game.

That last line, “we can say we are still in the game”; did that work, or was it cheesy?  It just popped in there and I thought it had a nice ring to it, and it mirrored the Chutes and Ladders reference from the previous sentence.  I have issues when I sum up these things.  I always think they should have a definitive end.  Depending on the context, they almost sound like “One To Grow On” quotes or something from an after-school special. Oh well.  I tried.

I Love Time Travel - Part 17 - ...And Here's How It Started

I genuinely have no idea how I became obsessed with time travel stories.  I usually know these things. It could have been some Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe Spider-Man traveled to the Old West.  Probably not.   I did not start really reading fiction until I was in middle school so I didn’t get hooked from a book. But there was life before Back to the Future and 1985.  This is back in the days when the DeLorean was the clunky car that brought down a company and before it could shoot itself back in time.  I had a handful of time travel influences floating around the TV rerun landscape of the early 1980’s.  There were also a couple of movies that piqued my interest in the genre in different ways.

First, I would like to detail the first story I ever wrote.  We had a project in my seventh grade gifted English class, and we had to write a fantastical story.  I was twelve (1983-1984-ish).  I may have read six books by then on my own.  I just knew that my little story was going to be about time travel.  I created a scientist that accidentally fell through his time-portal thingy and ended up at Custer’s Last Stand.  He was at the fort and tried to warn Custer and the infantry before they took off, and he failed.  Then the professor went home.  The end.  Three whole pages.  Did I mention I never wrote anything before?

Eagle-eyed readers (and there are none) will notice that what I wrote was a rudimentary Twilight Zone episode.  I am not even sure if I saw many episodes with time travel as a focus, but it was one of my dad’s favorite shows so I saw dozens of them before I hit puberty.  It had some essential ingredients; science fiction, a lesson learned too late and, well that’s about it.  Later I realized that The Twilight Zone taught me more about premise and setting than it did about story.  The hook, and where all the action takes place is just neat and clean creativity.  Story is a lot messier.

Time Bandits came out in 1981 and was shown on HBO 10,000 times, which was the style at the time.  To say I was heavily influenced by the movie would be a lie.  To say that I understood what was happening is a lie.  To say I could follow half of the dialogue because of the British accents is a lie.  But, it was a time travel movie.  It was also fun.  It was ridiculous (it is, actually, an unofficial Monty Python movie) and there was no heavy-handed drama.  It was the story of a boy jumping through time with a gang of little people who stole things as they went along.  I loved that the focus was the confused boy.  I remember feeling jealous of the character, because he was also a nerd who thought about history. Most of the humor and absurdity was over my head.  Comedy at the time for me was Bugs Bunny.  I think Terry Gilliam is best served for people who have at least finished high school.  But having adventures in different time periods was enough.

Another film that ran ad nauseum during cable’s infancy was 1979’s Time After Time, with Malcolm McDowell.  Now this movie, which is undoubtedly more subtle and drier than Time Bandits, was very influential.  McDowell is HG Wells.  Now this is the guy who should be the first time traveler, right?  Author of The Time Machine (1895)!   In the movie Wells actually made the machine.  The man police suspect to be Jack the Ripper discovers the machine’s use and travels forth in time to 1979.  (November 5.  Sound familiar?)  Our hero Wells can follow him to the future in the machine after it returns.  He zips in the machine, which just vibrates or flashes light and he appears in the machine as it sits in a museum in San Francisco.  I thought that was so cool. 

This was a fish out of water movie.  Wells is amazed and confused by everything around him, but he studied it like a scientist.  I still remember him pawning his glasses, which were now antiques, for money to eat.  He eats at McDonald’s and is so overwhelmed by the experience he asked for the same order, in the same voice, as the guy ahead in line.  “Big Mac, small fry.”  I just remember putting myself in his shoes.  What is more alarming: the cars and traffic, airplanes, the amount of people?  Who would believe you if you told the truth?  You have no ID, family or friends.  You have no home.  Unlike Time Bandits, this experience occurs in the real world, so the problems of existing in a time that is not your own were center-stage.  Wells chases Jack the Ripper through the film and eventually is able to return home, along with Mary Steenburgen.  (Not her last time travel experience in film.)

I remember daydreaming about storylines and situations for time travel.  I imagined it was me, having gone back to the kids on Little House on the Prairie or to a black and white WWII movie and trying to explain the future.  How would you do it?  Would it even be a good idea?  What if you only had five minutes to do it? There is just something inherently interesting about the notion of being unstuck in time.  There is a pioneering feel to it; like it is a frontier that has not been explored.  It is difficult to express how my mind was blown in 1985 when I saw Back to the Future.  It was one of those things that seemed like it was made just for me.  The time travel seeds were sown years before, and I also didn’t know that in 2014 I would be compelled to write about it week after week.  But hell, it’s still fun.

I Will Never Tire Of These Three Things - Part 1

After we account for our families and close friends; our jobs and our homes, we are all defined by our stuff.  Not the material stuff, although some of us are “in there like swimwear” as my brother once put it; I mean the stuff we love.   There was too much time in my youth spent categorizing and complaining about all the stuff I did not like.  No one cared, no one should care, and it took precious time away from me finding other cool stuff.  With gray hair comes the wisdom of appreciation.   Now, I find all this stuff that has been around for years is part of my little story.  What everyone else thinks about it is of no concern; but I enjoy detailing these things just the same.  There are just things, it seems, I will always love.

Fried Chicken.  I have talked about fried chicken so much that an outsider would assume I weigh 600 pounds.  I do not.  Since I was a little kid, no meal has excited me more than fried chicken.  I used to have a recurring dream that I was pushed into a giant vat of fried chicken and I have to eat my way out. Steak, barbecue, duck, gumbo, Italian food, Mexican food, all take a back seat to fried chicken.  Words fall short of how I feel when I take a bite into that crunchy, juicy insanely delectable meat.  This is one of the many reasons I feel bad for vegetarians.  They miss out on this sweet treat of fried glory.  When I was a kid, my brother and I could knock out a 20-piece box of Popeye’s in an evening.  Now, with my wife’s perfected a recipe of her own, the leftovers must be wrapped and put away after dinner or I will sneak back for seconds or thirds.  I am at its mercy.  This is why my servings of the stuff only come every four or five weeks.  I’d be dead otherwise. 

Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique. For me, Pauls’ Boutique marks the true beginning of choosing music for myself.  I had been a classic rock fan in the eighties; forgoing most of the music of the decade with a few exceptions. In 1990 or so, most of my music collection was by artists that were my parents’ age. Whatever I did latch onto in my teenage years that was targeted to my age group I picked up and quickly set back down.  I listened to the first Beastie Boys record just like everyone else.  It was super-fun, but it was temporary and without an immediate follow-up most people though the group disappeared with ALF and Max Headroom. 

I read a review in Rolling Stone and they gave Paul’s glowing praise.  The Beastie Boys have glowing praise?  I bought the cassette the next day.  The tape itself was blue, the group was now on their own label through Capitol and to that point it was nothing  like I had ever heard before.  The hip hop was there, but there were more cultural references than a Dennis Miller special. Original musicianship mixed with classic rock beats, the Eagles and busy signals, the Psycho theme and funk, it was so layered and detailed.  I listened to that cassette for weeks, maybe years. I included it in mix tapes and mix CD’s.  In fact, there has not been more than a month or to in my life where I have not checked in and listened to at least something from that album in 25 years.  I really love all the Beastie Boys discography; but something about Paul’s Boutique hit me just the right way at just the right time.

The last half-hour of The Shawshank Redemption. TNT plays The Shawshank Redemption all the time.  We all know it.  We know how it is now an American classic.  It was overlooked when it was originally released and how it was a launching pad for Morgan Freemans’ narration career.  I love the ending so much.  It could be my favorite ending of anything.  My guess is that I have seen the whole movie two or three times, but I have seen the ending through cable reruns about fifteen times over the years.  I will pause the scene where Andy sits in his cell with the rope and waits for the lights to go out and it will stay paused until I have my chores done.  Everything that happens afterward is movie perfection.  The beautiful scene at the end of the rock wall in the Maine summertime…it is the best.  Wouldn’t you like to have a treasure buried for you right there?    I think I could watch that over and over 100 more times and still be emotionally affected.  One more thing that I can’t let go of that teaches me a little about myself.

I Love Time Travel - Part 16 - Continuum

Rachel Nichols and the magic orange wedges.

Continuum is a current show on Syfy that will enter its third season in April.  I don’t aim to spoil that much about a show that is still running, and to be completely honest I think I missed a few episodes of the second season. In the interest of this nerdy blog, I feel I have to at least include something about a time travel show that is pretty interesting. The time travel is interesting and the premise of a sci-fi drama where the protagonist just wants to get home is very old school. 

Keira is a cop from 2077 that is projected back to 2012 against her will.  Along with her came a bunch of terrorist/freedom fighter types called Liber8 (blech) that planned the time travel event at their execution for terrorist activity.  Keira not only wants to get back home to her son, she tries to round up Liber8 in 2012 with the Vancouver PD and keep them from altering the future.

The tech is cool.  There are a few shows out there with some cool ideas for future tech (Almost Human) and this one is among the slickest.  Keira’s cop gear includes a type of switchblade/transformer laser blaster and a slick cop cat-suit that does practically everything, including invisibility.  The thrust of the show is the time travel itself, which, for the most part, all happened in the first episode.  Episodes switch back and forth between the future and modern day, and the nature of the time jump is a mystery.  Was it an accident?  Who is behind it?  That type of crap.  There are some nice action scenes and it is refreshing to see one of the many show that are filmed in Vancouver actually take place in Vancouver.

It is a deep cable show, so some concessions have to be made.  There are some stale melodramatic moments for sure, and the dialogue I a little laborious at times.  But the weekly crime-solving and Kiera’s quest to keep her secret are enough to keep you coming back.  There is one wrinkle I find quite compelling, and I hope they explore it more in the future.  (The show’s future, dude.)  Kiera represented the technological police state of the future and the escapees represent a type of domestic terrorist freedom fighter group. It is not entirely clear to route for.  She’s the obvious hero and a good cop, but the people she fights for are shady.  The terrorists are guilty and the established baddies, but they seem to be fighting on the side of justice even though they are murderous assholes.  Two or more savvy writers added to the staff and it would be golden.

Time travel is the center of the show, but what type is in use remains a mystery to the characters in play.  Liber8 (still…blech) attempts to alter the rise of the technocratic regime that owns the world in 2077 (single-string), but there are signs they were the ones who were the catalyst in the first place (loop).  Kiera tries to stop the bad guys from changing her future and possibly herself and her son’s existence (single-string), but some episodes suggest her trip to 2012 helped the future Bill Gates of 2077 create the tech that ruined the world (loop).  The writers insist there is a bible and a set of established rules, but the characters are still unaware.  A little frustrating for a time travel nerd but cool for the story.

I’ll keep an eye on this one.  If you like a little low-budget sci-fi you could do a lot worse.  If you like time travel TV, it’s your best bet.

*I just watched the season premiere last night.  It does not suck.

When Nerdiness And Football Collide

Hey, I'm just looking at the numbers, here.

So, I like football.  There is no football now, and that I one of the many things I like about it.  Short season.  Another reason to enjoy a sport is that the conversations about it are endless and ridiculous and fun.  I have worked up another reason to argue after an hour of collecting data and having a little fun with an Excel spreadsheet.  I realize I am stretching the boundaries of what can be described as “fun”.

My premise was simple:  What is the best NFL team of the Super Bowl era?  It has been 48 years and that is a pretty decent sample size.  Most fans don’t give a shit about the old leather helmet days, anyway.  Sorry.  I think it is pretty cool, but the game is so different now that sticking to a modern era seems like a wise choice.  It was not the era that made me try this out, it was the criteria.  You see, sports people usually say they only care about championships.  I believe this to be a lie.  If that was the truth, the Lions, Browns, and the Cubs in baseball would have no fans. I also think it is particularly untrue in football. The season is so small, I think fans that watch or attend home games need to justify the experience and they want to find the moral victories where they can.

Also, keep in mind I am interested in fandom itself.

A Super Bowl championship means something.  Your team won the season.  Cool.  My team (one of my two, really) just won.  I was happy the Seahawks won.  But if the Niners beat them and that team went to the Super Bowl, would I have retroactively hated all the wins and great games and accomplishments of the season?  No.  I don’t think fans do that.  “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”, is a quote from Vince Lombardi.  If you play football, you should pay attention to him.  If you watch football sitting on your ass like me, there are more factors.

            Also, teams like the Bills and Vikings have no championships, but they should not be delegated with the likes of the worst franchises ever.  They have won divisions and made it to 4 Super Bowls each.  That should count when estimating the sum total of a team’s accomplishments.  The Broncos have two championships which is nice, but they also made it to the big game 7 times.  I still believe that making it to a Super Bowl is tougher than winning that one game, even if it is the biggest of the year.

I devised a point system to account for the whole of the accomplishments:

5 points for a Super Bowl win

5 points for a Super Bowl appearance

3 points for an AFC/NFC championship appearance

2 points for winning the division.

I let Excel crunch the numbers and the results have a few surprises.  First, the greatest team in the Super Bowl era is the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Not only do they have the most points overall, they are first place or tied for first in all the above categories except division wins.  (Dallas leads that by one win.)  Here is the list of all 32 teams:

1.       Pittsburgh Steelers             153

2.      Dallas Cowboys                    147

3.      San Francisco 49ers            138

4.      New England Patriots         112

5.      Oakland Raiders                  103

6.      Denver Broncos                   98

7.      Green Bay Packers              94

8.     Miami Dolphins                    84

9.      Minnesota Vikings              80

10.  Indianapolis Colts               78

11.   New York Giants                 76

12.  Washington Redskins         74

13.  St. Louis Rams                     73

14.  Chicago Bears                       66

15.   Buffalo Bills                          55

16.  San Diego Chargers             47

17.   Philadelphia Eagles             46

18.  Seattle Seahawks                 40

19.  Baltimore Ravens                40

20. Cincinnati Bengals               34

21.  Kansas City Chiefs               34

22. Tampa Bay Buccaneers      31

23. New York Jets                      30

24. Cleveland Browns                29

25.  New Orleans Saints             26

26. Atlanta Falcons                    24

27.  Carolina Panthers               24

28. Tennessee Titans / Oilers  23

29. Arizona Cardinals                16

30. Detroit Lions                        11

31.  Jacksonville Jaguars           10

32. Houston Texans                  4

Observations:

The average score is 59.4, which splits the list between the Bears and Bills.  That seems about right historically.

The top three teams are at least 26 points ahead of the Patriots, in fourth place.  The Steelers, Cowboys and 49ers are undeniably the top teams of the last 48 years.  Maybe there is room to argue about the placing, if you feel like it.  But these teams have been in nearly half (22) of all the Super Bowls, and won one-third of them (16).

Most people, including myself, would not have guessed the Raiders would be in the top five.  They are with the Vikings and Dolphins in the top ten of teams that have not shown up for much in the last fifteen years. 

The Ravens and Seahawks are tied with 40.  That says a little more about the Ravens’ success in their short existence than is does about the Seahawks.  The Seahawks, Chargers, Bills, Bengals, Chiefs are the middle-of-the-pack teams with little Super Bowl experience and only two total wins.  They are considered second-tier   because of better consistency and attempts in the playoffs. 

I would say the shameful section begins at the Jets at number 23 to the end of the list. The Jets have basically done next to nothing since 1970 or so. The Panthers get a bit of a pass because they are still relatively young.  They have more consistency then the Jaguars who also started in 1995.  The Texans don’t have much to be proud of, and that brings me to another point: Division placement.  The Texans came into the league in 2002, right when Peyton Manning and the Colts were dominating the AFC South.  That is no excuse, but it is one reason the Texans took so long to get into the playoffs.  This also applies the AFC East, where Brady and the Pats have stomped over the lowly Bills, Jets, and Dolphins for 14 years.  Does a bad division help a golden team each year?  Does sharing a division with a Hall-of-Famer have an effect on team success?  There are your arguments. Have at it.

But no sympathy is given to the true bottom of the barrel franchises of the Browns, Cardinals and Lions.  Three of the oldest franchises in the league have appeared in exactly one Super Bowl in 48 years.  The Lions and Cardinals have appeared in one Championship game each.  Shame on you!

However, things have changed dramatically in the last 15 years.  The reason can be boiled down to the careers of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.  The same list of criteria, now from the 1999-2000 season to last season, shows a much different list:

Since ’99-’00:

1.       New England Patriots         83

2.      Pittsburgh Steelers             42

3.      Indianapolis Colts                40

4.      New York Giants                 33

5.      Baltimore Ravens                32

6.      Seattle Seahawks                 27

7.      Green Bay Packers              24

8.     Denver Broncos                    19

9.      St. Louis Rams                     19

10.  Chicago Bears                       19

11.   Philadelphia Eagles              19

12.  Tampa Bay Buccaneers      19

13.  New Orleans Saints             18

14.  Oakland Raiders                  17

15.   Tennessee Titans / Oilers  17

16.  Carolina Panthers               14

17.   San Diego Chargers             13

18.  San Francisco 49ers            11

19.  Atlanta Falcons                    9

20. Arizona Cardinals                9

21.  New York Jets                      8

22. Minnesota Vikings               6

23. Cincinnati Bengals               6

24. Dallas Cowboys                    4

25.  Miami Dolphins                   4

26. Kansas City Chiefs               4

27.  Houston Texans                  4

28. Jacksonville Jaguars           3

29. Washington Redskins         2

30. Buffalo Bills                          0

31.  Cleveland Browns               0

32. Detroit Lions                        0

This time, the average cuts off right around the Titans and Panthers.

The Patriots are ridiculously dominant; having more than twice the points of the number 2 team…well what do you know, Pittsburgh.  The Steelers are not only the most successful; they have to be the most historically consistent team in the league.

How different would the top ten be if Archie Manning never had kids?  Could the Giants have won two Super Bowls without Eli?  The Broncos would not be in the Top Ten without Peyton’s last two years, and the Colts have half of their total points overall (78) during Peyton’s reign.

The Seahawks are number 6!

The Bears are a more consistent team than I realized.  The Cowboys get the most media coverage for a team that has been among the worst in the last 15 years.  It is interesting to note they have the same point total as their fellow state team, the Houston Texans.

The Redskins fell the furthest; from among the top numbers to the next to worst.  And the Bills, well, more shame.  I don’t want to address the Lions and the New Browns.  Zeroes.

            Now, I need a superhero movie to balance this out...