Time Traveler's Lament
|
We made some very specific decisions very early on about the role time travel would play in our timeline; which is to say, as absolutely little as possible.
This is largely because we're specifically building a timeline. If we started trying to model all the ways time travel can mess with the foundational structure of our project, the whole thing would basically fall apart before we even started to build it. We've made a few very specific exceptions, but we've deliberately avoided certain characters whose whole schtick is manipulating time. Still, we got some really neat pitches for ways to use these characters, and thought they merited sharing. |
~"For the Legion of Doom I would like to nominate two classic villains, the last two members of the Injustice Gang to not be in your timeline so far: Chronos and the Tattooed Man (Libra, Construct, and Abra Kadabra don't count, as they each only showed up with them once)."
Thank you for the nominations! They are definitely classic villains we'd love to use if we can find a role for them! I did include Tattooed Man over in our blog post of Green Lantern villains we're skipping. The issue we had then was really just that we couldn't work out some way to make this a viable character that we felt satisfied with. Maybe someone has a good idea for how to make him work, and then a role he could fufill that would justify all that work, but as of yet we just haven't found it.
Chronos of course presents a larger problem, right? You know how adverse we are to unregulated Time Travel. I think that if there IS some use for him, it might be as a counterpart to Rip Hunter... but I feel like we'd be more prone to use Per Degaton for that. There was a really fun 11-issue Chronos series in 1998 that I really liked, so if we were going to use him it might be some reference to that, but still... Time Travel.
Chronos of course presents a larger problem, right? You know how adverse we are to unregulated Time Travel. I think that if there IS some use for him, it might be as a counterpart to Rip Hunter... but I feel like we'd be more prone to use Per Degaton for that. There was a really fun 11-issue Chronos series in 1998 that I really liked, so if we were going to use him it might be some reference to that, but still... Time Travel.
~"Chronos is in an interesting position because he's arguably more well-known than Per Degaton, but Degaton is clearly the more respectable villain, so if Chronos were to be used you'd have to find an angle that doesn't overlap too much with him because he's always going to look more feeble by comparison.
Personally, I think there might be something to retooling him into a mirror Booster Gold, a nobody from the far future who stole some time-tech and came to the present to set himself up as a somebody, only to stumble his way into being a supervillain. Like Booster he's clearly got more potential than it seems on the surface, but unlike Booster he lacks the proper support network to hone that potential, and ends up being a bit of a joke who keeps making really bad, self-sabotaging choices."
Personally, I think there might be something to retooling him into a mirror Booster Gold, a nobody from the far future who stole some time-tech and came to the present to set himself up as a somebody, only to stumble his way into being a supervillain. Like Booster he's clearly got more potential than it seems on the surface, but unlike Booster he lacks the proper support network to hone that potential, and ends up being a bit of a joke who keeps making really bad, self-sabotaging choices."
Lord, are we opening a whole pandora's box here.
I should begin by saying that we are incredibly stingy with time travel on purpose. I don't know about you, but personally whenever time travel shows up in anything, it just detonates the versimilitude of the thing. I mean... When Marty came back from the 50s, we know that it was NOT the same timeline that he came from originally, right? So the Marty he watched travel back in time wasn't him. It was a different timeline Marty. Well our Marty just came from the 50's, and that Marty wasn't there, right? So what happened to that Marty? Did Doc just kill this alternate Marty to make room for the Marty that he knows just came from the past and saved his life?
I mean, you get my point. It's an infinite spiral of unanswerable questions. If characters are going to travel in time, it needs to be unbelievably controlled. Either by Rip, who has no origin and no personal timeline and whose whole purpose is just to pop into different times and have a single adventures and who *DOES NOT DISRUPT ANYTHING*, or it's the result of an infinitely complex math equation performed by histories only 12th level intellect so that he can prove unequivocally that this is absolutely necessary and, more importantly, it *DOES NOT DISRUPT ANYTHING*.
Even our take on Booster only works with the understanding that there is no "Future Time-Travel Technology" to steal. The time sphere he used wasn't part of the museum display, it was there specifically because Rip left it for him, because that's how Booster goes back in time. It's meant to be a variation on the Bootstrap Paradox that even Rip himself can't explain. While lots of popular versions of Booster have him using time travel as part of his regular adventures... we don't. He did it one time, and that's it. So making Chronos a reflection of him doesn't quite click in our timeline, although I can totally see what you're going for and I think that would absolutely work in a different cannon.
As for Per Degaton being a Master-to-Rip-Hunter's-Doctor, I do 100% see what you're going for. I do think that for that role to work, he'd have to operate much more like Rip in our timeline; a completely originless man with no home timeline of his own, lost in the infinite weave of time. You could do that, although I feel like it presents two immediate problems. The first is that you've kind of robbed the whole Master / Doctor dynamic of what makes it so great, which is the animosty of their shared backstory. The second is maybe the more pressing, and that's that this really isn't Per Degaton anymore. Once you've undergone certain changes to a character, at some point you're just adding them to add them, which is always a major red flag that maybe you could just as easily not do this one.
These are really great ideas, though. If time-travel wasn't such a huge red flag in our continuity, I could totally see these working.
I should begin by saying that we are incredibly stingy with time travel on purpose. I don't know about you, but personally whenever time travel shows up in anything, it just detonates the versimilitude of the thing. I mean... When Marty came back from the 50s, we know that it was NOT the same timeline that he came from originally, right? So the Marty he watched travel back in time wasn't him. It was a different timeline Marty. Well our Marty just came from the 50's, and that Marty wasn't there, right? So what happened to that Marty? Did Doc just kill this alternate Marty to make room for the Marty that he knows just came from the past and saved his life?
I mean, you get my point. It's an infinite spiral of unanswerable questions. If characters are going to travel in time, it needs to be unbelievably controlled. Either by Rip, who has no origin and no personal timeline and whose whole purpose is just to pop into different times and have a single adventures and who *DOES NOT DISRUPT ANYTHING*, or it's the result of an infinitely complex math equation performed by histories only 12th level intellect so that he can prove unequivocally that this is absolutely necessary and, more importantly, it *DOES NOT DISRUPT ANYTHING*.
Even our take on Booster only works with the understanding that there is no "Future Time-Travel Technology" to steal. The time sphere he used wasn't part of the museum display, it was there specifically because Rip left it for him, because that's how Booster goes back in time. It's meant to be a variation on the Bootstrap Paradox that even Rip himself can't explain. While lots of popular versions of Booster have him using time travel as part of his regular adventures... we don't. He did it one time, and that's it. So making Chronos a reflection of him doesn't quite click in our timeline, although I can totally see what you're going for and I think that would absolutely work in a different cannon.
As for Per Degaton being a Master-to-Rip-Hunter's-Doctor, I do 100% see what you're going for. I do think that for that role to work, he'd have to operate much more like Rip in our timeline; a completely originless man with no home timeline of his own, lost in the infinite weave of time. You could do that, although I feel like it presents two immediate problems. The first is that you've kind of robbed the whole Master / Doctor dynamic of what makes it so great, which is the animosty of their shared backstory. The second is maybe the more pressing, and that's that this really isn't Per Degaton anymore. Once you've undergone certain changes to a character, at some point you're just adding them to add them, which is always a major red flag that maybe you could just as easily not do this one.
These are really great ideas, though. If time-travel wasn't such a huge red flag in our continuity, I could totally see these working.
~"My personal idea for Chronos was someone who could manipulate time without outright time traveling. For instance, he could freeze people in time, as well as speed up time or slow it down, but it's not until he joins the Legion of Doom that his tech lets him move forward or backward in time by one hour."
I do absolutely see where you're going, and I think this would be a great way to utilize the character in a different project. For US, this is still sitting in pretty direct oppositon to the way we're executing time travel. Joining the Legion of Doom simply would have no bearing on Chronos' technology, because no one there has even the slightest inkling of anything to do with time travel. This is exclusively only available to Rip Hunter, or Brainiac.
Also, even if he DID have technology that let him jump backward an hour in time; time simply doesn't allow that in our continuity. Our notion of time is that every time you jump, your entire reality is destroyed. Eobard Thawn was driven insane doing this.
This is, of course, exclusive to our continuity, though. Any other version of a DC timeline could easily adapt your concept for Chronos, and honestly it would work really well, you have a great idea!
Also, even if he DID have technology that let him jump backward an hour in time; time simply doesn't allow that in our continuity. Our notion of time is that every time you jump, your entire reality is destroyed. Eobard Thawn was driven insane doing this.
This is, of course, exclusive to our continuity, though. Any other version of a DC timeline could easily adapt your concept for Chronos, and honestly it would work really well, you have a great idea!