Time traveling is a pretty common theme in sci-fi and geeky topics in general, where the heroes often jump around in time trying to solve problems and often are trying to do nothing more than get back when they started.
Today's quiz has 20 possible points, plus a bonus.
1. (1 point) Name the TV show revolving around a doctor who travels through time in machine disguised as a phone booth?
Doctor Who
2. (2 pts) In this excellent adventure movie a young Keanu Reeves stars as half of a time traveling duo that use a time machine, also disguised as a phone booth, to learn about history. They are helped in this task by Rufus, a man from the future who gives them the machine to use.
Name the Movie.
Name the Movie.
Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure (or, alternatively, their Bogus Journey; I hear rumors of a threequel, by the way....)
Name the famous Comedian who plays Rufus
George Carlin, who presumably is unavailable for future films (although, time machines; who can be sure...?)
3. (2 pts) This cartoon show and its successor ran for 5 seasons in the late 50’s and 60’s and featured a recurring segment starring a talking dog and his companion, a boy named Sherman.
What is the common name for this show?
What is the common name for this show?
Rocky and Bullwinkle
What is the name of the dog?
Mr. Peabody
4. (2 pts) This cartoon show ran far longer than the five seasons the show in the last question did, but during the fifth annual installment of its Halloween Special it features a character who’s mechanical incompetence cause him to turn his Toaster into a time machine while repairing it, eventually causing him to alter time so much by the Butterfly Effect that it begins raining donuts.
What is the name of this cartoon series?
What is the name of this cartoon series?
The Simpsons; this used to be my favorite episode of my favorite series (their parody of the Odyssey has since displaced it.)
Which character ‘repaired’ the toaster?
Homer. Surprised you did not include a question about the original SF story it parodied.
5. (1 pts) This 2004 movie dealing with time travel stars Ashton Kutcher in one of his rare non-comedy roles, and deals with a common theme of time travel, that to change the past only makes things worse.
The aforementioned Butterfly Effect, which perhaps explains why you did not include the aforementioned question.
6. (2 pts) This book, written way back in 1895 and mostly taking place about then and in year 802,701 A.D. is generally considered the first major time travel story. The main character of the story eventually travels all the way to the year 30 Million AD where the only life left on a Dying Earth are large red crabs and the butterflies they chase.
What’s the name the Book?
What’s the name the Book?
The Time Machine
… and the Author?
H.G. Wells
7. (3 pts) Many sci-fi plots are set in the Dying Earth sub-genre, but are particularly common as one of the various, often dystopian futures encountered by time travelers. Just as common is the Twenty Minutes in the Future Crapsack world ruled by homicidal machines bent on enslaving or exterminating humanity. Probably the best known of these, this series of movies features a time machine that only works on naked people, had its first installment come out in 1984.
What the name of that first movie?
What the name of that first movie?
The Terminator
Who played the killer robot in that movie?
Schwarzenegger
What was the name of the character in that series played by various actors including Edward Furlong and Christian Bale?
Um... John Connor? Either that or his dad, and I never followed that franchise nearly closely enough to know HIS name.
8. (2 pts) This famous writer wrote about time travel and robots, especially the latter, though typically his robots were anything but homicidal, his best known work dealing with time travel was titled, ‘The End of Eternity’. His other debatably well known time travel work did involve killer robots, as well as mutants, though he did not write it but rather revised the English translation of this French animated sci-fi movie made in 1988, whose English version includes voices done by a number of notable actors, including Penn and Teller, in which Teller actually speaks.
Who is the writer?
Who is the writer?
Asimov. Now that you mention it, since he tried to tie all his works together into a single universe in his last years, I wonder how he thought that would work with the one you mentioned by name. There is little room in it for that Galactic Gaia he had his robots construct (or concoct) at the end of the Foundation series.
What was the name (English or French) of the 1988 animated film?
I have no earthly idea, but it sounds like the geek trifecta twice over: Asimov, robots, mutants, time travel, Penn and Teller, France. The only thing missing is an elf-wizard in a chainmail bikini (hopefully Cate Blanchett rather than Hugo Weaving, but ya never know with Elves....
)9. (2 pts) Comic books of course have no shortage of time travelers, robots, or mutants. The X-Men and associated works feature quite a few of these but the most well known are a pair of mutants though both were raised in very different times. One has a name of rather religious significance, but the other is a near messianic personage in his own times and has a much more down to earth name. Both have also appeared in animated shows as well as comic books. This being comics though, both characters have timelines more tangled up than the cables behind the TV’s you’d have watched them on.
Name the character with the religious name?
Name the character with the religious name?
In the immortal words of Asimov, "glub."
… and the other one?
From the questions wording, I will guess the Martian Manhunter.
10. (3 pts) Killer robots and mutants are pretty common in the time travel but so are killer cyborgs. This time traveler, played by Tom Baker from 1974 to 1981, regularly traveled through time and relative dimensions in space often fighting a species of genocidal cyborgs from the planet Skaro who sought to exterminate just about everyone.
Name the character
Name the character
The Doctor, once again; well played.
… and the name of his time machine?
The TARDIS. Do not ask me what the acronym stands for, I only remember the "Relative Dimension In Space" part.
… and the genocidal species of cyborgs?
The Daleks.
Bonus: This time travel movie features whales and transparent aluminum, and much of it takes place in San Francisco... name the movie.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I was actually discussing this on Grunnlovsdagen, because the boyfriend of my wifes best friend was contending that none of the Star Trek movies between Wrath of Khan and the re-boot were "successful," certainly not on the scale of the Star Wars franchise, and I offered it as a counterexample.
Plagiarism IS the sincerest form of flattery, incidentally, and apparently the most common form of time travel: Many of these would have been far more challenging if not for the sheer volume of re-boots and outright remakes in recent years; The Time Machine, the Rocky and Bullwinkle feature film, the Doctor Who reboot and the short-lived Sarah Connor Chronicles that butchered its series continuity almost as badly as the Star Trek reboot.
I have been 'round and 'round on the last ones merits with the friend referenced earlier. He keeps touting the official Abrams line about the continuity remaining intact under the Many Worlds Theory and the need to alter it to avoid the restrictions forty years of canon place on any prequels, to enable his portrayal of wholly new liberated stories. Sure, whatever; meanwhile, Wikipedia is already discussing Abrams developing project for a second Star Trek prequel revolving around Khan Noonien Singh: Star Trek II' will LITERALLY be a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, just without the antagonistic ancient history between Kirk and Khan leading to the original films most iconic scene. By the way, I have a question for you, as an ex-military officer: Does it seem REMOTELY plausible that ANY major military would place its flagship under the command of an officer who had not technically even graduated from the academy yet?
</rant>
Honorbound and honored to be Bonded to Mahtaliel Sedai
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Test Your Geekdom, Vol VIII: Time Loop
- 15/04/2012 03:06:15 PM
970 Views
I haven't looked through the ??, and I have a feeling my result is going to be very embarrassing.
- 15/04/2012 03:58:01 PM
564 Views
You really shouldn't get points for abbreviating the "Doctor" in "Doctor Who"
- 16/04/2012 01:47:30 PM
536 Views
Nicely looped; 18 (I do not do comics.)
- 22/05/2012 11:04:01 PM
646 Views