All language subtitles for James.Camerons.Story.of.Science.Fiction.S01E06.Time.Travel.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD.2.0.H.264-AJP69

We're sending you back
to the future!

Why is time travel fun?

Here we go.

Because who doesn't
wonder about the past?

Who doesn't wonder
about the future?

Somebody comes back from the
future to change what happened.

Are we basically in a movie
that's already been shot?

I'll be back.

Time travel stories
embrace the potential

that we might open up
new timelines, new worlds,

and new possibilities
for ourselves as people.

That kind of imagination which
can see through everything.

What are we always
trying to do when we

tell stories
about time travel?

What I'm always trying to do
is to touch people

in the heart.

Today, I'm the age
you were when you left.

This would be a real good time
for you to come back.

If we can go any place
we want in time,

time is no longer our jailor.

Every second of our past
makes us who we are.

And the idea that we could
relive that or view it

from another perspective

is so human, and so spiritual, I
think that it touches everyone.

You've basically
covered just about

every base
in science fiction,

from alien contact, monsters,
space travel, everything,

and you executive produced

the "Back To The Future"
series of films.

Series.
Yeah.

Do you think time
travel is possible?

I asked Stephen Hawking
that one day,

when I worked
with Errol Morris.

How many people
get to say that?

But when I was working
with Errol Morris

as his executive producer
on the documentary

on Stephen Hawking's book,
"A Brief History of Time."

I asked Stephen Hawking
that question

because "Back To The Future"
just came out.

And Stephen Hawking said
it's very possible

to go into the future,

but impossible
to go back into the past.

Hey, we're time traveling now
at one minute per minute.

So he kind of was eluding
to the fact that everything in

"Back To The Future"
could never happen.

Couldn't really happen.

The classical idea
of a time machine in which

you can go into it
at one point in time

and come back out the other side
at some other point in time,

it's almost
certainly impossible.

But what's beautiful
about filmmaking

is you don't have
to listen to the physicist.

Whether or not
time travel exists,

it speaks to that question
of free will, essentially.

That's the question
we're playing with

when we're playing
with time travel.

It opens up
all sorts of fascinating

thought experiments about
how that might play out.

In the summer of 1980,

I discovered my father's
high school yearbook

and that was where
the proverbial bolt

of lightning struck.

What if you could go to
high school with your dad?

And what if your mom went
to the same high school?

Don't I know you
from somewhere?

Yes, I'm your density...

Who wouldn't want to be
a fly on the wall

on their parents'
first date, right?

So in "Back To The Future,"
a kid named Marty McFly

accidentally goes back in time,

and interferes with the event

that made his parents meet
and fall in love.

So Marty has two problems.

One... he has to get
back to 1985,

but before he can do
that he has to make sure

that he puts the love affair
between his father

and his mother back on track.

Everybody has that
fantasy... time travel...

And I feel "Back To The Future"
just makes it so rich

with possibility, with a kid,
this crazy guy, and a DeLorean!

You know, I mean,
it's just, my God!

So there have been time
travel stories in the past,

such as Charles Dickens'
"A Christmas Carol,"

in which Scrooge travels
by means of dream visions

that allow him to visit the past
and the present and the future.

In Mark Twain's "A Connecticut
Yankee In King Arthur's Court,"

our protagonist
is bonked on the head,

and that's what returns him
to medieval England.

We never bought that stuff.

We wanted it to be scientific.

It's gotta be via
a time machine of some sort.

So, that would be some guy
who invented time travel

in his garage,

and that of course is
Dr. Emmett L. Brown.

Doc?

Don't say a word!

I just loved this Doc who is
feverishly trying to invent

everything he could
imagine inventing,

and time travel of course
would be the ultimate.

When this baby hits
88 miles per hour,

you're going to see
some serious

His excitement about
achieving that is incredible.

I loved it.

Mark. Action!

Movies like "Back to the Future"

provide a kind of tutorial
about how paradoxes

are things you can play with.

Prior to this point in time,
somewhere in the past,

the time line skewed
into this tangent,

creating an alternate 1985.

It's necessary
for Doc to say it,

not just for the audience
to be caught up with the story,

but because he's gotta say...

"I've got to do this because of
this because if that happens,

then you've got this going!"

Marty, whatever happens,

you must not let
your other self see you.

The consequences
could be disastrous.

Excuse me, sir?

He's in total terror
that one mistake of judgment

and the whole cosmos
could collapse.

This is the thing that every
writer always struggles with

in time travel stories.

If you go back in time
and something that you do

when you're back there,

causes the death
of your grandfather

before he has impregnated
your grandmother,

and you therefore
cease to exist.

-Right.
-But if you cease to exist,

then you weren't around

to get in the time machine
in the first place

and to go back
in time and do that.

So what happens?

They call it
the grandfather paradox.

Now remember, according
to my theory

you interfered with
your parents first meeting.

If they don't meet
they won't fall in love,

they won't get married,
and they won't have kids.

"Back To The Future" laid out
its rules so clearly,

it effectively taught
the movie audience

this is what happens
when you change the past,

this is what an alternate
timeline might look like.

There are also kind of
creepy questions like

what happens when
your mom falls in love

with you as a teenager...

The most memorable piece

is Marty's photograph
of himself from the '80s,

which he carries around
with him back into the '50s

and keeps looking at it to make
sure he's still in the picture.

Erased from existence.

So the photograph itself
is obviously

incredibly paradoxical.

Because why would his brother
and sister be there

if his parents had never met?

And like, why would there
even have been a photograph

in the first place?

But nobody ever stops
to think about that,

because we've set up
this rule that says that

when Marty disappears
from this photo,

he's going to fade
out of existence.

It's a perfect dramatization
of the idea

of erasing yourself
from the timeline.

Time travel movies
sort of invent

whatever device will
create the best story.

"Back To The Future"
really set up a mousetrap

to create the perfect
kind of suspense.

Time travel opens up
a lot of possibilities.

So you can have
an alternate history,

you can have
an alternate present.

It allows us to change
a lot of different weird things

about our reality.

And the possibilities
are kind of limitless.

Why is so much of our fantasy,
you know our,

our imagination
in science fiction genre

taken up with this idea
of time travel?

Because we can't do it.

I think it is just wonderful
to see it on the screen

and imagine ourselves
being in that situation.

I would have loved
to be able to time travel.

I mean, imagine
to go back and say,

"I'm not going to do
'Hercules In New York.'"

My name is Hercules.

Hercules, Schmercules.
Give me the dough!

I mean,
it's like, unbelievable.

That's the thing
you want to go back and do?

Not meet Jesus,
not kill Hitler.

You want to go back
and fix that one movie.

This haunts you.

To go to kill Hitler or to go
and be back in the Roman days,

it would be
really interesting

to be able
to time travel.

But the question is,

If you can move
back and forth in time,

do we have free will?
Right.

Because "The Terminator" movies
are kind of about that.

They're about free will.

If somebody comes back
from the future

to change what happens
down there,

then are we just all puppets
of a time line?

I have total faith in you
that you will figure it out.

There's an interesting
theme in "The Terminator" about

Can we change the past?

Can we change the future?

And what you see is the future
coming back to destroy the past.

The Terminator coming back
to try to kill

Sarah Connor also brings
back Kyle Reese...

Who becomes the father
to John Connor

and creates the leader
of humanity.

The time machine was a mechanism
to put the Terminator

and also Michael Biehn,
the soldier, into the past.

That character was sent
by John Connor in the future

to go back in time

to protect this girl
from the Terminator.

Once they're there,
then you have this chase,

who's gonna rescue Sarah Connor
or is she gonna get killed?

Science fiction is a great place
to ask is our destiny fixed?

Or can we change it?

I didn't do anything.

No, but you will.

The question is are we locked
into one series of events?

Like, by the end
of the first film,

you realize you're seeing
the creation myth

of the thing they've gone back
to prevent in the first place.

The 2nd film opens up
the possibility

and Sarah Connor
speaks to it directly.

Maybe that's not the universe
we're stuck in.

Maybe the future isn't written.

Sarah sticks a knife
in the table and says,

"There's no fate
but what we make for ourselves."

She's been told that
she can change the future.

But is that just an illusion?

Are we basically in a movie
that's already been shot?

It's already rolled up
in the can someplace?

That could be!

You can play it forward and
backward as much as you want,

but the ending
never changes?

I think that we have control
over ourselves

and I think that we have
the power to create changes.

Your son gave me a message
to give to you.

"The future is not set.

You must survive
or I will never exist."

The future is not set.

You know, I mean that's...
That's kind of the line...

The future's not set.

And it can be altered.

Should I tell you
about your father?

If you don't send Kyle,
you can never be.

The point that the film makes
is that you can change history.

You can escape the Terminator.

But time travel
is not about history

and it's not about time travel,

it's about
accepting responsibility

for all the possibilities
in your own life.

The idea of taking
the wrong turn

and making
a correction later on,

it's not a new idea
in science fiction.

It's not even a new idea
in the movies.

"Looper" is one where
you're essentially trying

to not change the world,

but change your world,
change your life.

In "Looper," the
time traveler is a hit man.

Wouldn't you know?

He's a hit man played both

by Joseph Gordon-Levitt
and Bruce Willis.

When you agree to be a Looper,

it's not a long-term job.

There's not much
of a future in it.

One day, you know
that your future self

is going to show up
in front of you...

and you're going to
have to shoot it.

That's gonna be
his final hit.

To kill himself.

And he, and all of
the other loopers,

enter into this bargain.

And you have to do it.

If you don't do it
it's a really big problem.

The older one,
the Bruce Willis character,

knows the whole story.

But the younger one is learning
for the first time what's...

What's going on.

And he naturally
has a few questions.

So do you know
what's gonna happen?

I don't wanna talk about
time travel

because if we start
talking about it

then we're gonna
be here all day

talking about it,
making diagrams with straws.

Talking about time travel.

It makes you go crazy.

And the option of going
through a conversation like that

with you at a younger age
would make you even crazier.

Move, damnit.

Time travel is a device that

story is using to tell a story
about human nature

and how humans
treat each other and why.

Move.

Then I saw it.

If "Looper" is a
story about how violence

perpetuates more violence,
to me, the lesson is

that you just create more
problems and worse problems.

I saw it...
and the path was a circle.

It's kind of about
changing your own destiny.

And it's kind of about
how your destiny

is always being shaped by people
more powerful than yourself.

And how do you really
get out of a dark cycle?

The movie is pointing out
another way to end that cycle.

So I changed it.

It is an existential dilemma.

A lot of time travel is
very philosophical in that way.

Joe finally takes control
of his life by ending it.

Why are we fascinated
by time travel?

Well, you know people
very often ask me

why am I interested
in time, I say,

"Well, because
I've always lived in it."

-Yeah, right.
-It's... I'm... we are.

We feel very trapped in it.

It's like, we try to
hang on to the moment.

We take photographs
of everything, right?

We desperately
want to hang on to

this reality
and it recedes.

What time travel allows us
to do is to say,

"Okay, but what if
we could?

What if we could
preserve that moment.

What if we could revisit
that moment, genuinely?"

Well, that's all science fiction
is about... What if?

What if we could
travel through space,

what if we could
travel through time?

What makes
"Interstellar" so compelling

is that the filmmakers
devised these turns of plot

to create a real
classic family story

with the deepest
possible emotions.

Fundamentally,
"Interstellar" is about

the human cost of time travel.

It's a deeply and intensely
personal drama,

and the story of what happens

when a father is separated
from his child.

I said stay!

No, I'm coming back.

When?

Will he go and save humanity

or will he stay
with his daughter instead?

I mean, by the time
I get back, we...

We might even
be the same age.

Murph.

You have no idea
when you're coming back?

"Interstellar" projects
us into a near future

in which the world has
gone through

an enormous global catastrophe.

Nelson's torching
his whole crop.

Blight?

They're saying it's the last
harvest for okra.

Ever.

I play Cooper's father-in-law.

Matthew McConaughey plays
Cooper, a former astronaut,

who by several turns of plot,

goes shooting
into outer space.

We've got to move to another
planet or we'll not survive.

"Interstellar" is
an unusual time travel film

because instead of building
a literal time machine

and having it be
about an invention,

it's about the way
time works in space,

the way that it speeds up
or slows down

depending on wormholes
and gravitational pull.

I think there are
all sorts of different ways

of looking
at time travel,

and when I came
to do "Interstellar,"

which is not a time travel movie
but has that element in it...

It does fold time at the end.
It does.

-You still approached it very rigorously.
-Yes.

By going to some
of the top experts.

It was a really fascinating
part of the process

because Kip Thorne who was
one of the original...

-Caltech I think.
-Caltech.

And Kip is one
of the great minds in physics.

What he taught me is
that once you can grasp

those physical concepts
as concepts of astrophysics,

they offer you
this great launching pad

for story possibilities

to do with relativity
and all these things.

-Time dilation.
-Exactly.

There are two forms
of time travel.

There's the time travel
that is probably impossible

and that's going backwards.

Then you have time travel,
which is not only possible,

but already a feature
of our world,

which is time dilation forwards.

In science, there's this
thing called the "twin paradox,"

which basically says that
if my twin gets in a spaceship

and goes traveling at,
near to the speed of light,

and then returns to Earth,

when my twin gets back
to Earth, my twin

will be younger than I am.

That's a form of time travel.

And that is actually
brilliantly illustrated

in the movie "Interstellar."

Go, go, go, go, go.

Seven years per hour here.
Let's make it count.

"Interstellar" explored,
in the most advanced way,

how time travel
really might work.

When they go
to the water planet,

time works differently.

They come back to their ship,

and the guy who stayed
on the ship has grown old.

I've waited years.

How...
How many years?

By now it must be...

23 years, 4 months, 8 days.

"Interstellar" suggests that
time travel will always

have a certain kind of tradeoff.

So on the one hand,
the scientist's ability

to travel through space and time
is essential to saving humanity,

but the fact that he has to go
on this journey

in the first place, and to be
separated from his daughter

for most of her natural life,
suggests the very real cost.

Hey, Dad.

Hey, Murph.

You son of a bitch.

There are moments when Matthew
is allowed to see his daughter,

by, video stream.

It's absolutely heartbreaking.

You once told me
that when you came back,

we might be the same age.

And today, I'm the age
you were when you left.

This might be a real good time
for you to come back.

People talk about,
"My kid was born, and I blinked,

and then I sent them
off to college."

The movie is literally
about that.

The sacrifices that go along
with whatever it is

that you've given your life to,

at the expense of these moments
with your family,

which I think is the very
poetic part of "Interstellar."

So if "Interstellar" explores
the human cost of time travel,

"Primer" does something
very similar,

but it does so
in a different way.

We have two everyday engineers

who accidentally
create time travel.

Anything?

-Is this normal?
-I don't know.

Some people think
it's the most credible,

complicated,
time travel movie.

It's done on a very low budget.

Do you know who directed that?

Shane Carruth.

He's in it, he's lovely in it.

What's it doing?

I don't know
if I'm making it up...

These two guys, Abe and Aaron,

keep investigating
this phenomenon.

There's this weird
anomaly that shows up.

What they finally realize
is that they have

created a space

that you can travel
through time in.

So they take this,
and create a bigger box,

big enough for a human to be in.

When they do this,
they use it for really mundane

and very human purposes.

One uses it
to play the stock market.

And time travel ends up
pulling the friends apart.

I just want to know
what box you used.

You built the one for you,
right? Just the one?

Yeah.
How many do you think I made?

They are suspicious
of each other

and they're also
deceiving each other

because something
about going back in time

affects their brain,

and they do start
losing their minds.

Like many other movies,
"Primer" does indeed suggest

that there is a cost
to time travel,

and in this case the cost
is both emotional and physical.

What's on your hand?
Are you bleeding?

So when we start seeing
our characters show up,

and they've got,
you know, bloody ears,

and they lose
the ability to write,

their right-handed writing looks
like their left-handed writing,

there's something
going on mentally that

they are paying
the price with.

The time-travel story,
it's a kind of Faustian tale.

The bargain with the devil.

Everything is a barter.

If you sell
your soul to the devil,

you can have everything
you ever dreamed of.

But eventually
you pay the piper.

Who doesn't wonder
about the past?

Who doesn't wonder
about the future?

How many times has that game
been played, you know,

if you could go back
in time, where would you go?

Can you remember the first time
you ever heard of time travel?

"I think ancient Greeks
must have had time travel.

Isn't there some time travel
thing in Shakespeare?"

Right?
But there isn't.

Time travel is new.
Time travel is a new idea.

Before H.G. Wells,
it didn't exist.

What Wells gave the time
travel story was the machine.

The idea that somebody
could build a machine

that would do for time what
rocket ships would do for space.

And the idea was just
irresistible.

It's literally true that
the words "time" and "travel"

in English were never
used together before H.G. Wells

invented this character
that he called...

The Time Traveller.

My grandfather, H.G. Wells,
wrote that in 1895.

This is a first edition
of "The Time Machine."

Firstly, he was writing
anything he could sell.

The novels that we now know,

which are these great
science-fiction novels,

came after he'd spent years
writing as a journalist,

but there was an enormous amount
of kind of revolutionary science

going on at the time.

Darwin was talking about
the history of human life

in terms of millions
and billions of years.

Archaeologists were doing
the same thing.

Humanity was developing a longer
view of time than ever before.

When I speak of time,
gentlemen,

I'm referring to
the fourth dimension.

H.G. Wells, "The Time Machine,"

his character
goes forward in time,

no problem there.

Going back in time...
Entirely different thing.

If you go back in time,
then you start running

into all sorts of issues
with causality.

And that's the view
that's expressed in the phrase,

the butterfly effect.

A tiny change, a tiny
perturbation in a complex system

can have enormous and
unpredictable consequences

in a fairly short time.

And it starts with

"A Sound of Thunder"
by Ray Bradbury.

The basic idea
of the story is that you can

travel back in time,
but you're going to be

on this suspended platform
and you can shoot a dinosaur

but it has to be one
that was going to die anyway,

so that you don't change
anything in the future.

And this fairly arrogant
game hunter steps off

and kills a butterfly...

And comes back and his future
has turned into

this kind of dystopian version
of his own world

that he barely recognizes.

Bradbury creates
these deep metaphors

that give shape
to a lot of the way

I think people have subsequently

understood ideas
like time travel.

If you change
a butterfly in the past,

the entire future
might be different.

When writers
of time travel stories

consider the logical
implications

of everything that happens,

they get tied up
in these paradoxes.

Robert Heinlein is the
first writer to get the pleasure

and peculiarity
of time travel paradoxes

and how they can be exploited
again and again and again.

He sees that the problem
with time travel stories

isn't a problem,
it's an opportunity.

He wrote stories like
"All You Zombies,"

which has nothing to do
with zombies, by the way,

but it has to do with probably
the most completely confusing

and delightful science fiction
time paradox story there is,

which was made into
the film "Predestination."

I can do this,
I can change my past.

Yes, you can.

Have you ever thought
about changing yours?

I never deviate
from the mission.

Predestination is about
an intersex time traveler

who starts life
as a woman...

Is forced into gender
reassignment, becomes a man.

That man then travels
back in time,

falls in love
with his female self,

that female self
then has a child

which ends up being
the creation of themselves.

So it's an intersex
time-traveling

incest love story.

And in fact "Playboy"
magazine rejected the story

because all the sex
made the editor queasy,

the editor of "Playboy."

Well, I think it had to
do with the idea of having sex

with yourself
to create yourself,

which is kind of crazy

that "Playboy"
would have an issue

with something like that.

But it was 1959.

Well, it's the age-old
question...

Which came first
the chicken or the egg?

Yeah.
We say the rooster.

Some things
are predestined, right?

I made you who you are,
you made me who I am,

it's a paradox, right?

But it can be para-doctored!

We've had time travel
in science fiction movies

for most of the 20th century,
so I guess the question is why?

Well, because what you're doing
is exploring possible futures.

You're exploring the decisions
that we make now.

It enables us to imagine
what the future will be like

or what the past would be like
if we interacted with it.

It's incredibly important way
of exploring potential futures.

The future is now.

So many science fiction
movies are about these brilliant

scientists and astrophysicists,
biologists.

And "Bill And Ted's
Excellent Adventure" is not.

No way!

Yes, way Ted!

In a way, "Bill & Ted"
becomes important

just because it's so different
from everything else.

It makes you think
what is wrong with us,

the people writing these films,
if we can't imagine

the future
as anything but awful?

Two dudes can be
the heroes, man.

Ready Ted?

Ready Bill?

Let's go back
into history!

Alex Winter and I became
Bill and Ted.

Bill S. Preston, Esquire,
Ted Theodore Logan.

Excellent!

Bill and Ted are idiots.

And our teacher tells us that if
we don't pass our history exam

we're going to fail
out of school.

The lady in that car
over there said

that Marco Polo
was in the year 1275.

So it's not just
a water sport. I knew it.

If they fail Ted's dad is going
to send him to military school,

and if they're
separated their band

will never form
and save the world.

Someone from the future
shows up and says,

"We're going to help you."

Do you know when
the Mongols ruled China?

Perhaps we can ask them.

Bill and Ted of course
can accept everything.

Dudes, you guys are going
to go back in time!

-Yeah!
-They're kind of like

these modern fools, of kind of
an eternal optimism.

We had a funny moment,
Chris Matheson and I,

when we wrote it
we were not involved

in the casting of the film,

and didn't know who
would play Bill and Ted.

We had flown to Arizona where
we were shooting the movie

and we were at
a McDonald's in line,

and we saw a couple
of kids in front of us

and goofing off
and we were like,

"Those are the guys,

that's who should be playing
Bill and Ted!"

And later on that day
we met Keanu and Alex

and those were the guys
that were in front of us

at McDonald's and we were like,
"That's perfect."

And you know of course
we are bequeathed

a time traveling phone booth
by George Carlin

and set upon a mission
through spacetime.

We collect all the various
characters from history

because that would be
the most awesome report

you could have would be
to actually have the real

people there.

We love toying
with all these paradoxes.

And one of my favorite parts
of the "Bill & Ted" movie

is when all the historical
figures are in jail

and they can't get out.

Can we get
your dad's keys?

Could steal 'em!
Good thinking dude!

After the report we'll time
travel back to two days ago,

steal your dad's keys
and leave them here.

See?!

Yeah!

So after the report
we can't forget to do this

otherwise it won't happen.

Ted is like connecting
to his future self

through his present self to know

where his future self
will want to hide the keys

because the future self already
knows what the past self did,

but the past self doesn't know
what the future self did,

but he knows the character.

Come on, Ted.

We've got some historical
figures to rescue.

And it perfectly
encapsulates the absurdity

of the time travel paradox.

You just have to remind yourself
to have done them in the past

and they will be done
in the future.

And I just thought
that was terrific.

It just says, yeah,
don't worry about it.

It's pretty fascinating
honestly how rare

"Bill & Ted's
Excellent Adventure"

is in the grand history
of sci-fi films.

To have a sci-fi film that says,
"This is just fun!"

is an incredible strange relief.

No way!

It's not the only
science fiction film

to have fun with time travel.

In fact, this comedy
was the first to popularize

a particular form of time travel
called the time loop.

Rita, I'm re-living
the same day over and over.

Groundhog Day.
Today.

"Groundhog Day" uses
the device of a time loop

as a way to explore ways
you need to work on yourself

before you can grow up
and have meaningful

relationships with other people.

When I was first
brainstorming ideas,

I actually wrote on
the little index card,

"time machine."

But I didn't really know
what was going to be involved

or how it was going to work.

Phil? Phil?!
Phil Connors?

Phil Connors,
I thought that was you.

Hey, how are you?

I just thought, "Okay,
whatever it is the rule is,

he can remember,
but nobody else can remember.

So for them
it's just the same day.

And for him it's part of a long,
long, long repetition of days."

And the audience learns
to expect that,

and can begin to sort of map
the day along with the character

and see if they can figure out

how to get out of
this time loop before he does.

The real time travel
machine, is your brain.

In here, we're constantly
recoiling

through different versions
of ourselves, memories,

and daydreams, alternate paths,

where we might end up
somewhere different.

Do you ever have d�j� vu,
Mrs. Lancaster?

I don't think so, but I could
check with the kitchen?

And this is what the time travel
story crystallizes for us.

It's a model of consciousness,

which is constantly reeling with
ultimate freedom through time,

and then finding itself stuck,
once again, in the real world.

In the first stretch
of "Groundhog Day,"

Bill Murray knows everything
that's gonna happen to him,

he can make that work
to his advantage.

And he does it in the way
an adolescent would,

just having fun and also
becoming kind of sociopathic.

You don't really care
about the other people.

They are objects in your life.

And then it moves on
to a depression

where he finally decides
to kill himself.

And he finds that
he cannot even do that.

This is Tom, he worked
in the coal mine

until they
closed it down.

This is where he,
for the first time

starts to notice other people,

and realizes that
they have lives, too,

and that he's part
of a community

and by seeing himself
differently,

he actually opens up
a whole new world to himself.

Hello, father, let's get
you someplace warm.

The wonderful thing about
being stuck in a time loop,

it makes us look at our lives
in a fresh way

which is one of the great
things that movies can do,

and especially science fiction,

because it can so
immediately place you

in a different time and place.

Maybe we all do need
a time travel movie

to make us a better version
of ourselves,

but I hope that we're not
stuck as long as he is.

Anything different is good.

My name is Doctor Who.

It's not, is it?

I like it.

You don't know it yet.

But in a short time, you will
trust me with your life.

"Doctor Who" is a
very British, slightly eccentric

extraordinary series

that's been running
for more than 50 years now.

And it involves a charming,
peculiar Time Lord.

We're time travelers.
We tread softly.

He's an alien who has
come down to protect us

from the rest of the universe
by traveling through time

and by interacting
with real historical events

in both the past
and the future.

We're unarmed.

You wouldn't open fire on an
unarmed civilians would you?

It wouldn't be
the first time.

Chuggles, now!

I love "Doctor Who."

Over the past 50 years
there have been a total

of 12 Doctor Whos.

Each new performer brings
his own thing to it.

I've seen literally
every episode of "Doctor Who"

that's ever been made
from "An Unearthly Child,"

which was made in 1963,

all the way up to the current
Peter Capaldi Doctor Whos.

You are the dark side, you are
an enemy of the Daleks.

Yes, I am.

Exterminate!

I grew up with the show.

I lived in a tenement
in Glasgow in Scotland,

and through these flickering
little blue images

I'd be taken to other planets
with strange creatures

with wonderful
imaginative designs.

Do you think you're the first
to try and kill me?

And also there has always been
a kind of B-movie element

to it, which I've always loved.

Is everything out here evil?
Hardly anything is evil.

But most things are hungry.

Hunger looks very like evil from
the wrong end of the cutlery

or do you think that your
bacon sandwich loves you back?

I think one of the things
that's appealing

about "Doctor Who," is there's
a tradition of English humor

which suggests that
the future is all a joke.

He's a Time Lord, yes.

And he can travel back
and forth in time,

and he does it in absurd ways.

Time And Relative
Dimension In Space.

TARDIS for short.

The Doctor's time
machine, the TARDIS,

is one of the best ever
because it invokes

the playing with physics

that is going to be necessary
to travel through time and space

because his machine
is bigger on the inside

than it is on the outside.

So your box can move.

We can go anywhere
we like.

He always has a human companion.

And he brings that companion

along with him
on his adventures.

-Where are we?
-The end of the road.

The last planet.

He seems to have a special place
in his heart for humans.

Picking individual
ordinary people

and showing them
all of time and space

and giving them
a broader view on life.

He's the Doctor.
What do doctors do?

They heal sick situations,
sick people.

But why do you
have to destroy?

Can't you use your brains?

Only one race can survive.

This senseless evil killing.

The first actor, the wonderful
William Hartnell, became ill

and couldn't carry on
with the show.

So they came up with this
rather brilliant idea,

which is that the Doctor has the
ability to reconstitute himself.

This has allowed
this show to last

because we change the lead
actor every three or four years,

which no other show does.

It has all these other levels
of philosophical

and reflective nature

that make it very, very rich.

People always ask me
what is it about the show

that appeals so broadly?

The answer I would like to give

and which I'm discouraged
from giving,

because it is not useful
in the promotion of a brand,

is that it's about death.

And it has a very, very powerful
death motif in it.

Which is that the central
character dies.

Doctor, let it go.

Time enough.

And I think that is one
of its most potent mysteries.

Because somewhere in that,

people see that that's
what happens in life.

You have loved ones,
and then they go,

but you must carry on.

There are a lot of ways
in which time travel stories

sneakily are about
eluding death.

Time is what kills us,
after all.

Time is a bastard.

There's something that speaks
to our souls about time travel

where there's
a fatalism involved

that is
reassuring somehow.

Right.
Because it tells you that the mistakes

were always gonna happen.
Yeah.

I mean, one of
the fascinating things...

I was explaining to my kids
the other day...

That if you look
at the idea of a telescope.

Telescope is a way
of looking back in time,

and not just space.
It's a time machine.

It's a time machine.

And you look at the smallest
star, the further away,

the further back
in time you're looking.

And theoretically
you could make more

and more
powerful telescopes,

and you can look further
and further back in time.

It's just
a mind-boggling concept.

Theoretically
the sun could have gone out

seven and a half minutes ago
and we just don't know yet

'cause it takes light
a while to get here.

Exactly.
Let's hope not.

But that idea of
looking back in time

as you look out
into the world,

the fact that everything
we see in this room

when you look around,
you're looking back in time.

I think the potential
is limitless

for time travel stories...

Chris, thanks for doing this.

No, thank you
for having me.

-It's exciting to talk about.
-Okay. Good.

All right,
give us a cut then.

I'll give you a cut.
Done.

Going home.
Done.