Plot synopsis
Captain Taylor has been on a spaceship for six months. The dashboard shows that on Earth nearly 700 years have passed since they left. This is normal, as their ship has been travelling at close to the speed of light.
The crew go into a deep sleep for the remaining 12 months of their journey. But they wake to find their ship crashed on a planet with a similar climate to Earth.
The dashboard shows the Earth’s year has jumped forward another 1215 years. When they explore, they soon discover intelligent talking apes are running the planet with savage human mutes as their slaves.
My comments
The theory of a scientist called Dr Hesline obviously refers to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Travelling extremely fast through space will cause time to slow down on the vessel relative to an object like the Earth that is moving at a much slower speed.
Time will seem to be passing normally to both the crew of the ship and to the inhabitants of Earth, but when they meet again, their clocks will be out of sync. In this case 1215 years out of sync.
The science is very sound in this movie and as no one goes back in time, there are no temporal paradoxes to explain.
Summary of time travel
The past is not changed, but the future timeline obviously diverges away from the original.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: time-travel vehicle.
Model of time
Undefined past, open future with a future timeline.
