Season 4, Episode 6
A Timeline and Place
Margo negotiates for a cure to the flower rendering the animals dumb, Quentin and Julia search for the next piece of the Monster's body, Alice tries to find her place, and Penny 23 and Marina 23 find themselves hopping through timelines thanks to a horomancer that wants them out of Timeline 40.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Afterlife Antechamber: Penny 23 accidentally screws up the use of the time travel device and ends up here, which allows Penny 40 to have a chat with him.
- The Bus Came Back: Penny 40 briefly returns and meets Penny 23.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: To keep the Monster from killing Eliot's body through substance abuse, Quentin threatens to stop helping the Monster altogether. Since the Monster lacks the ability and patience to track down his body on his own, he relents and agrees to take better care of himself.
- Cutting the Knot: Rather than continue trying diplomacy after Lady Pike refuses to take back her deal with West Loria, Margo goes with something a little more her style—threats. This turns out to be much more effective.
- Didn't See That Coming: Stoppard doesn't realize that magic is shut off in Timeline 23, so as soon as he brings himself, Penny, and Marina there, his anti-traveller ward fails and Penny is able to punch him out.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Sheila has an innate ability to sense things that might help others. She is able to find a buried box of valuables before even knowing magic exists, and later senses that one of the Library's pipes has a leak.
- Necromancer: The Monster reanimates a mummy to help Quentin and Julia's research into the god they're trying to find.
- The Needs of the Many: Penny 40 insists that Penny 23 needs to go back to Timeline 40, though he won't give specifics.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Josh convinces Margo to be diplomatic in her attempts to get the beets she needs to cure the talking animals, but makes the mistake of saying she's doing better than Eliot would have under the circumstances. Margo gets pissed and resorts to threats to get what she wants.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Alice helps Sheila fix Modesto's lead-tainted water, which requires damaging one of the magic pipelines the Library is using to regulate the level of ambient magic. A resident hedge witch immediately notices and teams up with a friend to blow up the local Library branch, and Library operatives show up to question Sheila.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Stoppard somehow manages to recreate and power his time travel device in a timeline with no magic.
- Other Me Annoys Me: After a bit of time as a member of the Library, Penny-40's gotten way too abstruse for Penny-23's tastes.
- Police State: The second timeline Penny and Marina travel to has a Broken Masquerade where magic has been completely outlawed and magicians are arrested on sight.
- Replacement Goldfish: Penny-40 tells Penny-23 to essentially become this.
- Shoot the Dog: Once he's convinced by Penny 40 that he belongs in Timeline 40, Penny 23 spreads dandelion seeds from a different timeline so Stoppard will never be able to get rid of the interference and thus won't bother trying to get rid of him and Marina.
- Spanner in the Works: Since they're from a different timeline, Penny and Marina are messing up the delicate magic which is keeping Sanya alive. Stoppard tries to send them back to Timeline 23 to fix it.
- Whatevermancy: Sheila is a quaeromancer, a magician who specializes in finding things, which is a rare talent.
- Your Days Are Numbered: When Penny 23 is reluctant to doom Sanya to die simply so he can stay in Timeline 40, regardless of the vague higher purpose Penny 40 insists he's there for, Penny 40 explains that Sanya will be dead in a month even if he stayed away.
