This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Literally Impossible: From YKTTW
- They stole that idea from Larry Niven, who played with it in his time travel series collected under The Flight Of the Horse. The logical end of any self-healing timeline that allows time machines, according to Larry Niven is simply to change itself so that time machines aren't allowed. The time machine used in the series therefore didn't actually go back in time but to other physical timelines - often with wacky results, such as bringing back a "horse" (requested by a mentally-deficient, inbred Secretary-General of the UN that saw it in a kiddie book - that future had no animals left, and mankind had adapted to breathing pollution) that had one horn in the center of it's forehead...
...wait, what? I don't see how this applies to that example or to the trope in general.
- Possibly another take on the second pilot of the original Star Trek, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - where the Enterprise reaches a "energy field at the edge of the galaxy" that turns out to be impassable. Two of the crew gain psychic powers from hitting this wall - one male, one female. The male winds up going insane from power-lust, the female winds up giving her life to stop the male. Complete with lightning bolts from the fingertips, presaging the "Force Lightning" from the Star Wars series.
...or this, for that matter. This just seems to be straight-up Psychic Powers, no fake technology involved.
