Delorian vs. Wayback Machine
Remember the central lesson in Back to the Future? Doc tells Marty: "You must not leave this house. You must not see anybody or talk to anybody. Anything you do could have serious repercussions on future events."
I always interpreted this lesson to apply to all time travel — a Simpsons' Halloween episode applied it as accepted theory. But watching Rocky and Bullwinkle tonight on TV, I realized that Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman took an entirely different approach to time travel in Peabody's Improbable History.
Traveling in their Wayback Machine, they purposely intervened in the past and then returned to the present times without any known consequences. It made me wonder: Does time account for time travel? Why should one fool, traveling into the past, screw up the already-existing reality for the rest of us? It's not like a tree is falling in the forest and no one is around to hear it. I think we're going to notice if donuts unexpectedly stop existing.
