Plot synopsis
This Bond movie spoof, set in the 60s. Austin Powers is the world’s coolest photographer and part-time British secret agent. His nemesis, Dr Evil, cryogenically freezes himself. His plan is to wake 30 years later as an unknown, so he can steal a nuclear weapon and hold the world hostage for 100 billion dollars.
Austin chases him through time by also freezing himself, and his plan is to stop Dr Evil when he resurfaces. They both arrive in 1977, but they have 30 years of missing information they need to catch up on.
My comments
A cryogenically frozen body of a human is suspended in time until such time it is thawed. The human will wake to find themselves at some point in their future, so technically they will have time travelled.
See also other films with cryogenic freezing, such as Forever Young (1992), Idiocracy (2006), Sleeper (1973), Demolition Man (1993) and Vanilla Sky (2001).
Summary of time travel
As neither Austin nor Dr Evil goes back in time, they do not change the past. Therefore, we cannot say if the past is changeable or not, so it is undefined. However, from the moment they are frozen, they ‘disappear’ from their timeline. And their absence could cause the timeline to diverge away from what it would have been had they stayed.
When they are unfrozen in the future, they will awaken on a timeline, but they have no way of knowing what the events on the original timeline would have been if they hadn’t travelled. Therefore, they cannot say if their disappearance has caused the timeline to diverge or not.
It may have diverged away from the original, diverged but then converged back to the original, or it may not have changed at all. They would need to travel backwards in time to know this.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: cryogenic freezing.
Model of time
Undefined past, open future with a future timeline.
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