H.G. Wells - The Original Time Traveller

Written by Robin Pierce Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Future Imperfect - by Robin Pierce

Before a fugitive madman in a blue box stole a Gallifreyan vehicle with a faulty Chameleon circuit, before two scientists ran down a temporal tunnel and got lost, before a wild eyed scientist souped up a DeLorean with plutonium, there was H.G. Wells.

"A man before his time" - that’s one of those plaudits hurled around the world of science fiction so often that frankly, it’s become a trite cliché, especially in the field where we routinely imagine what the future might be. However, Herbert George Wells is one of the few who richly deserve the title, being a pioneer of the genre that we all love. Not that Wells knew he was writing science fiction, of course - the term hadn’t yet been invented, much less "sci-fi" (which wouldn’t be coined by the late Forrest J. Ackerman for another half century or so). No, H.G. Wells concerned himself with "scientific romances". The first of which, was entitled The Time Machine - and it would ultimately dare (I say, "in time") usher in a whole new sub genre of science fiction. Okay, strictly speaking, it wasn’t the first time travel story, L.S. Mercier had written L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante (translated as Memories of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred) way back in 1771 and of course there was Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle in 1819 - but the difference is, time travel in Mercier and Irving’s cases were all because the protagonists fell asleep and woke up in the future, not through means of an actual device that travelled through time. So, I guess equally those two could be credited as being the first to introduce concepts of suspended animation in the genre-yet-to-find-a-name.

In 1895, The Time Machine was published and told the account of an unnamed traveller who puts forward that travel in the fourth dimension is as possible as in any of the other three. You can move left, right, backward, forward, up and down, - but that elusive fourth dimension is, simply put, duration.

Using his machine to go forward in time, he arrives in the year 802,701 A.D. And finds the Eloi. A humanoid society living in a communist styled societal structure. He also discovers the Morlocks, brutish cavemen who live underground, appearing only at night. He deduces that the ruling classes have evolved to become the ineffectual Eloi, while the working classes have become the light sensitive Morlocks. However, rather than a ruling class and workers, evolution has changed the roles to farmers and livestock, and it is the Eloi who are at the losing end of the food chain, being preyed on by the Morlocks. (H.G. loved his thinly veiled social commentary)

The traveller takes further leaps into the future, each one taking him closer to the end of the world, until he returns back to his own time, with proof of his journey (flowers from the future) to tell his tale to his friends at dinner as the whole adventure has only taken three hours as far as they’re concerned. The following day, one of his dinner guests finds the traveller preparing for another journey, which will only take half an hour, but three years later - he still hasn’t come back.

Despite his overt political views creeping clumsily into his work, Wells’ Time Machine is an outstanding piece of science fiction which still holds up well today. What struck me as strange though was that the story took 65 years to reach the screen. Several of Wells’ other seminal science fiction works had successfully been brought to cinematic life years previously, both well known such as The Island of Doctor Moreau (as Island of Lost Souls) in 1932, The Invisible Man in 1933, Things to Come in 1936, War of the Worlds in 1953 and some less well known (but equally entertaining) such as The Man Who Could Work Miracles in 1936, scripted by Wells himself.

There had been previous adaptations of the story. One was a live TV performance by the BBC in 1949, which was never recorded, so I can’t really comment on it here and an earlier American CBS radio version in 1948 - where the traveller was renamed Dudley for some reason.

When The Time Machine arrived in 1960, it was worth the wait. George Pal was in his heyday when he produced and directed an adaptation written by David Duncan. Duncan dispensed with most of the political allegories, providing instead a charming science fantasy adventure, but adding one small conceit that would prove to be ingenious. Duncan wrote that the previously nameless traveller was H.G. Wells himself. Even better, Australian born actor was cast as George, dropping much of his customary suaveness, instead bringing both a sense of Victorian authority and credibility to the role.

The time is January 5, 1900. We join a gathering of friends who are impatiently waiting for their absent host. We have the stern, businesslike Kemp (fifties and sixties sci-fi stalwart Whit Bissell), the permanently tipsy Bridewell (Tom Helmore), the pompous Hillyer (Sebastian Cabot) and perhaps Wells’ only true friend among them, the dependable and kindly Filby (Alan Young).

George arrives dramatically at the door, dishevelled, dirty, thirsty and starving, with an incredible tale to tell. So we dissolve to five days earlier - the last day of 1899, the dawn of a new century. George is hosting a dinner for the same diverse group of friends, but he wants to demonstrate his latest invention. A machine that can travel through time.

George gives his demonstration to an incredulous and sceptical audience as he sends a functioning model time machine presumably into the future. The theory being that it will occupy the same space but in another time. (I’ve always felt that might be a plot hole here because people would see the machine there in place the whole duration of the journey - especially since George can watch the world around him change as is seen later on in the film. Surely then his machine would similarly be visible to them, as it stays in the same place, but outside of time?)

As his friends go to their evening plans, Filby is the only one who seems concerned that George might be planning something - and he’s right. In the conservatory, George has built the full sized version. Promising not to leave the house, George bids farewell and heads off to experiment.

Sitting in the ornate (and iconic) machine, he pushes the lever forward "ever so slightly" and realises he’s a couple of hours in the future -his candle has burnt down. Giddy with success, he goes further into a frenzy of time lapse photography as flowers open and close the sun arcs across the sky ever faster and the clothes on a mannequin in Filby’s show window opposite George’s house change - which is a very clever and imaginative way of demonstrating the years flowing by. He stops in 1917 to investigate why his house is boarded up around him.

Stepping out of his now neglected and falling to ruin home, he sees a familiar face - Filby, but this is the son of his old friend. Filby himself has been killed in the war a year ago.

Returning to his machine, he proceeds again, stopping in the blitz of 1940, mistakenly believing that the war from 1917 is still raging. The house is hit and both traveller and machine are out in the open air. He decides to stop in August of 1966, where wardens wearing the uniforms from MGM’s Forbidden Planet released four years earlier in 1956, are herding people into shelters. He sees the younger Filby again who warns him that the mushrooms will be sprouting. This is of course the Atomic War of the sixties. Remember that? (Personally, I hate when filmmakers insert improbable near future references in their films - nothing dates a film faster than an imagined future that never happened. Did Pal and Duncan really believe that we’d all be blasted to glowing molecules in 1966, a mere six years after the film’s release?).

Unluckily for George, another war, another missile hit and cue a mushroom cloud, quick insert of stock footage of a water tower exploding from War of the Worlds, some unexplainable volcano footage (are there volcanoes in London? Didn’t think so) and some truly shoddy model work. (Incidentally, look at the toy vehicles - apparently we all drove left hand drive American convertibles in ‘66).

Back in his machine, George metaphorically puts his pedal to the metal when he’s buried in lava which becomes solid rock and doesn’t erode away until the year 802,701.

He believes he’s found his future Utopia.

Okay, he can’t quite explain the sphynx-like structure he’s right next to, but he’s happy enough to go wandering and exploring. He soon meets the Eloi, a primitive, gentle apathetic race, but quickly gets impatient with that apathy. They have no culture, they have no books, they’re a stagnant race of wasters, really. They’re so frustratingly passive that they’ll sit around and watch one of their number drown in a river. As the distressed swimmer is a young Yvette Mimieux in the role of Weena, George does the right thing and dives to the rescue.

Still disgusted at the Eloi attitude, George realises that maybe Utopia isn’t Paradise after all and returns to his machine in a huff - but finds it has been moved to inside the Sphynx. The Morlocks have seized it.

Now, the Morlocks are really impressive, they’re a bit Neanderthal looking, blue skinned, white haired, very sensitive to light and have tiny little eyes that glow. They’ve been underground since the Atomic War and have evolved into, basically a race of albinos. They also have an apparent dependency on machinery (their caverns have a lot of machines) which is odd as they don’t appear to have thumbs - making the holding and manipulating of any tools impossible. They farm the Eloi for food, luring them to their grisly fate by sounding the alert sirens from 1966 - the Eloi have been programmed over the centuries to respond.

As Weena is among the latest crop to be harvested, George finds he has to rescue her and retrieve his machine before heading back to run a quick errand on Jan 5, 1900 which is where the story began. Naturally, his friends still don’t believe a word of this fanciful tale but Filby is convinced by the sight of a future flower. Actually, another plot hole is that Filby seems to have taken the news of his impending certain death in 1916 very well. In his stride as a matter of fact. He doesn’t seem to have reacted at all.

And the errand? He’s come back to fetch three books to take back, or rather forward to 802,701 - but which ones? It was popularly thought that the Bible would be among them, but as Wells didn’t subscribe to any religion, this is pretty unlikely.

Pal reportedly has plans for a sequel but these never materialised and it would be 19 years before Mr Wells would return to the screen with his amazing device. The year was 1979, the writer/director was a pre Star Trek: Wrath of Khan Nicholas Meyer and the film was Time After Time.

Now, this is not a sequel, a reimagining or a remake - it’s a standalone, but I’m including it here because it just belongs. It’s a charming romantic fantasy, but sadly doesn’t stand up to any logical scrutiny as we’ll see.

Set in 1893, we open on a stereotypical foggy London street and witness a killer’s eye view of the murder of a drunken prostitute - allegedly a Jack the Ripper murder. (The actual murders took place in 1888, with the last one attributed to Jack being Mary Kelly. There were later Whitechapel murders but these have never been proved nor disproved to be the work of the same killer so I’m not citing this as a plot discrepancy. Also, It’s mentioned in the film that the murders might be starting again, which coves this, plot-wise).

Presumably a short distance away, in his comfortable home, Herbert George Wells makes the announcement to his dinner guests that he is leaving for a trip, teasing with a cryptic sentence that he won’t leave the house, he proudly displays his blueprints and then takes them to his cellar workshop and shows them his time machine. Wells is played here as a headstrong young idealist by Malcolm McDowell.

The time machine, (named "Argo") as seen in this film is an enclosed cab with a strange jewelled pattern on the side and a dish behind to gather up the rays of the sun. (Which is fine, except it’s in a dark cellar and has, we assume, never been outdoors so where does the power come from? Also, let’s bear in mind this is November, a less than ideal month for capturing the sun’s rays.) It boasts of a cruising speed of 2 years per minute. Pushing the lever forward sends you into the future and pulling back reversed you into the past. Simple, eh? Oh, and this model has safety features. No, not airbags - but without a key in place, the machine will automatically return to its point of origin. There’s also a second key, a vaporising equaliser, which is located on the outside and this needs to be in place to keep the traveller and machine on equal terms because if it is removed, then the traveller falls helplessly through time for all eternity.

I sort of understand the necessity of having the key that returns the machine to its point of origin in case the traveller gets injured and is unable to work the controls, I suppose -but the vaporising equaliser has "clumsy plot contrivance" written all over it. Think - if you were going to have something that dangerous on your machine - would you actually place it on the OUTSIDE, where just anybody could yank it out?

As the constables arrive, conducting a house to house search for the Ripper, they find all the evidence they need to deduce that one of Wells’s guests, Dr Stevenson (David Warner) the Surgeon General is the man they’re after. But he’s canny enough to make his escape in Wells’s machine, which handily returns to its point of origin because the non-return key was in Wells’s pocket. (See what I mean about clumsy plot devices?)

Seeing that the control was set for November 5, 1979, the intrepid Wells resolves to take off in pursuit, fearing that he’s let loose history’s more feared serial killer on a gentle future utopia. He’s wrong. Stevenson has landed in San Francisco and is perfectly at home. 1979 is easy for the psychopath to adapt to as he says to Wells during a confrontation "I belong here completely and utterly. The world caught up to me - and surpassed me".

Ah, but how did he end up in San Francisco if the device stays where it is in space but moves through time? Easy - the machine was discovered and thought to be a mere mock up as part of a H.G. Wells exhibit in a San Francisco museum. That explains that - BUT, Wells can see his entire future on show here. He can see everything he’ll write, everything he’ll do, even the exact date of his own death. Surely there’s the potential for an infinite number of time meddling paradoxes here? I mean - really - who wouldn’t look?

Wells also meets a bank teller by the name of Amy Robbins, played by Mary Steenbergen who becomes the romantic focus of the film. Steenbergen would more or less repeat her role in Back To the Future 3, where she would fall for the equally temporally displaced Doc Brown - and give more or less the same haughtily sceptical speech when the hapless, lovelorn Doc tried to tell her the truth about his origins as she does to Wells here. (As a side note, if you notice a certain spark between McDowell and Steenbergen in their roles you’d be right on the money, they were married the following year)

In a nutshell, Wells wants Stevenson to return with him to his own time to answer for his crimes, Stevenson declines but demands the key to the time machine so he can’t be traced again by the device returning to it’s starting point. He takes Amy hostage having killed her friend, while Wells is in police custody as a suspect (well, he did foolishly and naively give them a false name of Sherlock Holmes). Ultimately though, having surrendered the key, just as Stevenson is about to make his escape, Wells pulls the vaporising equaliser out and Stevenson disappears never to return. (What did I say?). The fiercely pro feminist Robbins decides to ditch her beliefs and go and live with Wells in Victorian England and they live happily ever after, never once concerning themselves with the massive potentially universe shattering time paradoxes they’ve just caused.

In an era of reimaginings and remakes, nothing is safe, nothing is sacred, and so it was in 2002 when a very loose reworking of the original story, David Duncan’s screenplay from 1960 and a lot of new material found its way to screens. But what it lost in the retelling and in the relocation from London to New York, it made up for in some outstanding CGI work, and a director fresh from animation work, one Simon Wells - in an incredible quirk of fate, the great grandson of H.G. himself.

In this version, H.G. Wells is not the traveller, a young inventor Dr Alexander Hartdegen played by Guy Pearce is the central character. On the evening he proposes to Emma (Sienna Guillory) the love of his life, she is killed in a robbery attempt. Even in 1899, there were muggings in Central Park.

Fast forward four years and Hartdegen, who is in touch with a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein has become a morose, grief stricken recluse obsessed with the idea that he can build a machine to take him back to that fateful night and change things. His machine is a large industrial looking creation of copper, glass and spinning fans. He takes his first journey back and though beautifully staged, this is one of the moments where the film falls flat on its face.

He travels back in time to his own house and manages to avoid all contact with his housekeeper and himself. He meets Emma a few minutes early so they choose another path thus avoiding where the robber was waiting for them (so somewhere in the Park, there’s a sad, heartbroken Hartdegen, convinced he was jilted on the night he was going to propose because she went with future Hartdegen (and didn’t even notice he was four years older).

Again - this would’ve altered the timeline, surely? In any case, as future Hartdegen buys past Emma some flowers from the original Filby, (Alan Young in a welcome cameo) - she is tragically killed by a runaway car.

He realises he can’t change the past, and thinks he might find the reason for this in the future. As he makes the journey, we are treated to a high point of the film - a truly amazing montage time lapse CGI sequence showing the development of New York from 1899 to May 24, 2030.

We have a lot to look forward to - condominiums on the moon and annoying holograms of Orlando Jones in public libraries. This won’t last though, because in an effort to avoid Orlando Jones, Hartdegen hops 7 years further into the future where our subterranean moon excavations have destroyed its orbit and it’s breaking up, causing planet-wide havoc.

During a violent eruption, Hartdegen is knocked unconscious, forcing the control lever forward and sending the machine spinning out of control into the far distant future of 802,701, via another CGI extravaganza of canyons being formed and a second ice age.

From here on, the story is back in more familiar territory with the Eloi. As ever, they are a peaceful people - this time living in huts built on the sheer face of a cliff. Hartdegen is found and cared for by Mara (Samantha Mumba). He soon discovers that the Eloi are living in fear of the Morlocks, who hunt them down in a scene very reminiscent of the original Planet of the Apes and capture Mara.

The Morlocks are sadly another weak point. They’re just not convincing, even if they ARE seven feet tall and led by a repugnant looking Jeremy irons, who voices his role in the same tone he used in The Lion King. As the Uber Morlock, Irons explains they are the descendants of the humans who fled underground for shelter when the moon broke up. The Uber Morlock also helpfully points out that as Emma’s death was what drove Hartdegen to build the time machine in the first place, he cannot go back and save her because to do so would cause a temporal paradox. (Well, it’s a bit late to worry about those now, I guess after all the meddling and interfering he’s already done) yet - he CAN kill the Uber Morlock by kicking him out of the time machine while it’s travelling into the future of 635, 427, 810 and then travel back to 802,701 and free Mara. He jams the gears of the time machine which destroys it and the Morlock caves - and actually - the whole race. Apparently, instant genocide does not cause a temporal paradox in this instance.

The final scene is a touching one as Hartdegen and Mara start to plan a new life, while back in 1903, his friend Filby and housekeeper Mrs. Whichett wonder where he went, a week ago. Both parties in the same physical space, but in different times.

It’s a poignant and sentimental scene which undoubtedly leaves the audience with a warm fuzzy feeling.

However, there’s one gaping ever present plot hole that Simon Wells fails to address.

I hate to niggle and nitpick, but... er... Hartdegen’s still there in his lab. He HAS to be.

Look at that large machine you’ve undoubtedly watched him build over the past four years, Mrs. Whichett. Yes, the one that’s whirring and glowing (you can’t miss it) and generally making a racket. He’s in plain sight because the machine travels in time, not space and though he can’t see you because if he blinks he misses a few weeks, you can certainly see him because to you, he’s moving in super slow motion. True, the machine has been destroyed, but that won’t happen for another 800,798 years.

It’s not another temporal paradox, it’s sloppy attention to detail.

Anyway, speaking of time travel, this is the last Future Imperfect of 2011. I’ll see you in the bright future of 2012.